Dance With Snakes Read online

  That’s when someone called on the radio.

  The Deputy Commissioner got up and looked at his watch. It was twenty after nine.

  “The party continues, boss,” said Flores. “He blew up a gas station. The Esso near the exit to the harbour.”

  “What!” He rubbed his eyes. It wasn’t possible. “You mean it exploded?”

  “Exactly, boss. Just a few minutes ago. First the snakes attacked and then there were some explosions. There’s a whole bunch of dead and injured people. Should we come and get you or do we meet you there?”

  There was no time to waste. They’d meet at the gas station.

  He floored it. The siren wailed while he asked himself what the connection was between Doña Sofía Bustillo and that gas station.

  The chaos was impressive. You could see the flames from blocks away. The gas fumes were unbearable.

  He left the Nissan about a hundred metres from the scene. He walked over to where an ambulance and a patrol car were already parked, covering his nose with a handkerchief.

  “Is there any danger that more underground tanks could explode?” he asked a sergeant, who didn’t pay him any attention.

  It was a horrifying sight. A dozen cars were scorched by the flames and there were bodies everywhere. The intense heat kept everyone back.

  An officer pointed to an anxious man who was giving orders, cursing and complaining.

  “That’s the manager,” he said.

  The Deputy Commissioner took out his badge and introduced himself.

  “Of course there are more tanks underground!” the manager shouted. “That’s what I’m trying to tell them, everybody needs to get away from here!”

  The firefighters hadn’t arrived yet, nor had detectives Flores and Villalta. The wailing sirens, the thick smoke, the crackling of the flames, the bodies, the charred cars, and the people running around crazed: they’d never seen a situation like this, not even during the war.

  Then Handal saw the manager run out into the street, his back to the gas station, as if he were being followed by the devil himself. He did the same, but didn’t get very far. The explosion threw him to the ground. Dammit! He felt the heat of the flames at his back. He saw how they lit up the sky. He stayed on the ground, afraid there’d be another explosion. This was the hell a madman named Jacinto Bustillo had dreamed up. He raised his head. The manager was on his feet, looking fearfully at the gas station. The Deputy Commissioner was getting up and dusting off dirt and pieces of pavement when he heard someone asking him a question.

  “Are you okay, boss?”

  It was Flores and Villalta. They’d arrived just before the explosion and saw the moment their boss had turned away and run.

  “Ask that man if there are any more gas tanks!” he ordered Villalta, pointing at the manager. A fire truck and more ambulances arrived on the scene. It was going to be hell finding the right witness in that confusion, Flores said, still open-mouthed, watching the spectacle.

  “No, boss, that was the last tank left,” said Villalta.

  Handal was a mess: hair dishevelled, face sweaty, shirttails out, and the knees of his pants and the elbows of his jacket torn. The case had gone beyond all reasonable limits now. Furious, the Deputy Commissioner grabbed the first witness he could find. The gas station attendant, whose uniform was spotless, said he hadn’t realized what was going on until he saw the stampede of cars trying to leave the parking lot and the terrified girls screaming that snakes were attacking left, right and centre.

  “But how did the explosions start?” asked Handal. He had the attendant by the arm and was shaking him as if he’d been responsible for the disaster.

  He just ran without thinking or trying to see anything, as fast as his legs could carry him. He was terrified of snakes. He hadn’t come back after that. He was still trembling.

  “Which way did the Chevrolet go?” Handal asked, shaking him again.

  Villalta clenched his big jaw and gritted his teeth menacingly.

  “Talk, you son-of-a-bitch, or you’re going to have problems,” he threatened.

  Suddenly, another explosion threw them to the ground. A gust of heat, shards of glass and pieces of metal mingled with the stench of gasoline in the air. The flames had reached a car. The attendant took the opportunity to clear off to where the manager was standing. Flores approached a group of onlookers to ask if anyone had seen the yellow Chevrolet.

  The gas station’s manager and assistant manager told the Deputy Commissioner that when the snakes appeared, dozens of cars tried to escape and one of them crashed into a gas pump. That’s how the explosions started. But as far as they understood, most of the deaths were caused by the snake attack and not by the explosion.

  A short guy with chubby cheeks had seen the yellow Chevrolet.

  “I threw up all the rum I’d drunk when I realized that was the car they were talking about on TV,” he told Flores. “But then it was every man for himself because it was like the snakes were coming out of nowhere. I managed to lock myself in my Volkswagen.”

  He told Flores and Handal that the yellow Chevrolet had been at the entrance of the parking lot and then left for the boulevard, towards Jardines de la Sabana, a nearby neighbourhood. The Commissioner ordered Villalta to ask headquarters to set up a perimeter and search the area. They had to catch this crazy son-ofa-bitch no matter what. All units should be on red alert. Handal, Villalta and Flores knew they’d better get back to the Black Palace. Bustillo would surely attack again and they needed to try to predict his next move.

  Then the gas station owner’s eldest son arrived. His father, a filthy-rich Lebanese guy, was out of the country. The kid was dressed like he was on his way to a party and told them that neither he nor his father had any connection to someone called Sofía Bustillo.

  “Shit!” Handal shouted. The theory that Jacinto Bustillo just wanted to hurt his wife was crumbling. It looked like the suspect had gone insane.

  He walked over to the Nissan and radioed a request for units to be stationed at all the bars, nightclubs and gas stations in the area. It was crazy to try to do this on a Friday night, but Bustillo liked to let his snakes out in a crowd.

  He was getting ready to start the car when someone told him the Commissioner was on the line. His voice was shaking with either rage or astonishment. He’d just been informed that one of his nieces, the most beautiful one, the one he loved the most, had been killed by snakes that attacked her while she was hanging around with her high-school friends at the Esso station near the exit to the harbour. What the hell happened? He wanted an explanation right away, and it better be convincing, because his niece’s body, his sister’s eldest daughter, was lying there in the parking lot! What the hell had he been doing since he’d been put in charge of stopping that lunatic with the snakes?

  “Sir, it’s been awful,” Handal stammered. “We’ve been working non-stop, but this guy’s crazy, he’s a psychopath – totally unpredictable. We know where he went. We expect to find him in the next few minutes.”

  The Deputy Commissioner got out of the Nissan and headed for the gas station. He walked with his head down, his hands in his pockets. He felt useless. Not just because of his appearance, but because this piece of shit was slipping away from him much too easily.

  And there was the Commissioner’s niece. She was easy to spot: two officers were already guarding her corpse. The girl was lying on her back. Her little miniskirt showed off her perfect but now lifeless body. A fat guy with a look of terror frozen on his face lay next to her.

  Handal went to look for the man in charge of the Red Cross unit, a small guy with a bulbous nose who moved like a robot.

  “How many bodies?”

  He said there were thirty-one killed by snakebites, and another thirteen burned by the explosion, although that wouldn’t be the final number. They still had to search through the flames. Crestfallen, Handal was getting back into the Nissan when Flores radioed him to say Bustillo and his snakes had attacked
again.

  “Where?” Handal asked, his adrenaline pumping. He looked at his watch – it was ten-oh-seven. In a residential area called La Primavera, about five minutes from the gas station, said Flores, in a DICA agent’s home. They were almost there.

  “Godammit!” the Deputy Commissioner shouted.

  The case was getting more complicated. Now another department was involved. There was a possibility he’d be replaced as head of the investigation. He needed to come up with a plan to surround the area immediately. The suspect probably hadn’t slipped away yet. He made a mental calculation – if he attacked the gas station at a quarter after nine, he must have reached the detective’s house by nine-thirty at the latest, so by now he could have left the area.

  Villalta was waiting for him in the driveway in front of the DICA agent’s house.

  “He’s turned into a real bastard, boss,” he said while they walked to the house. “There are seven dead DICA agents in there. All of them killed by snakebites.”

  This was going to turn into a maelstrom soon. As the head of the Criminal Investigation Unit (DIC), Handal understood the rivalry between his men and their DICA counterparts only too well – bureaucratic disputes over leadership, over the allocation of resources. The narcotics agents were the golden boys, arrogant and spoiled by the gringos. The case was heating up.

  “They aren’t here yet?” Handal asked, picturing Chele Pedro, the chief of DICA, appropriating the evidence and trying to take over the investigation. Villalta said no. They went inside. The scene was grotesque. There were bodies lying all over the living and dining rooms, as though victims of a gangland execution. The Deputy Commissioner checked the bodies, saw what was left of the cocaine and marijuana on the table, and went to the bedroom to have a look at the body of Raúl Pineda, the leader of the group.

  “There were shots fired, according to the neighbours,” said Flores.

  “They showed this one no mercy,” said Handal. Pineda’s tongue was an enormous lump. It looked as if all the venom had concentrated in that one spot. The Deputy Commissioner spotted the blood in front of the bathroom door and the drops that led out to the street. “They got Bustillo,” he added, after verifying that none of the bodies had any gunshot or knife wounds.

  “More like one of the snakes,” Flores said. “A neighbour says he saw the suspect leaving carrying a reptile with its head blown off.”

  “Obviously Pineda was the guy Bustillo and his pets were looking for,” Villalta ventured in his high-pitched voice.

  Handal got a flash, a feeling, an unmistakable intuition – something that wouldn’t hold up with just the evidence they had so far, but was there, waiting to be discovered.

  “Let’s go!” he ordered.

  They hurried out of the driveway when they ran into Chele Pedro and his squad, a dozen men in black uniforms carrying M-16 rifles.

  “What happened?” the head of DICA asked.

  “The snakes,” said Handal, barely stopping.

  “What do you mean, the snakes?”

  But he was in a rush. He had no time to explain.

  “I’ll see you at headquarters,” he said, walking on.

  Before they got into their cars, he ordered Flores to get a detailed file on narcotics agent Raúl Pineda, and Villalta to ask Bustillo’s relatives for the name of the woman he had an affair with.

  He passed the gas station on the way back. The firefighters had managed to put out the flames, but the whole place reeked. That bastard Bustillo: he loved distracting them before he attacked his real target. Of course! They had to step up the surveillance in the bars and clubs, an attack there would be just what he needed.

  The atmosphere at headquarters was anxious, the way it was during the war, when the sight of Handal climbing the staircase commanded more respect. He went into his office and then to the washroom to clean off the grime and to change. He always kept a spare change of clothes. Refreshed, he sat down in his swivel chair, put his feet up on the desk, stuck his left finger deep in his ear and looked at the clock. It was ten-fortyeight.

  Then the phone rang. Just what he needed – Rita. She’d been to the gas station and was just leaving Raúl Pineda’s house. What was behind the attacks? What was the link between the events at noon and those this evening? Was there a connection between Mrs. Bustillo and Agent Pineda?

  “I’ve been asking myself the same questions, sweetheart,” Handal said reluctantly. “I promise to have an answer for you early tomorrow.” He hung up.

  Flores came in carrying a folder with Pineda’s background information. The Deputy Commissioner knew what he was looking for: “Marital status: widower,” it said. Next to that it said the agent’s wife had been killed in a mugging three years earlier. He threw the folder on the desk, satisfied and smiling. Here was the first confirmation of the intuition he’d had about the case. Now he just needed Villalta to bring him a first name, it didn’t matter which, and a very specific last name.

  “What’s going on, boss?” Flores asked. “Did you find something?”

  Handal got up, went to the whiteboard, erased what he’d written that afternoon, took out a marker and wrote “Jacinto Bustillo” in the middle. Then he put the names “Sofía Bustillo,” “Raúl Pineda,” and “? Pineda” next to it.

  “The narcotics agent’s wife was the mistress of the psychopath we’re looking for,” he explained. “I’m sure of it. Everything fits. We just need to confirm the name.”

  “But, why did he attack the gas station?” Flores asked.

  To distract them, to throw the investigation off, or just for the lunatic murderer’s pure pleasure – what mattered was the revenge. A crime of passion committed three years after the fact.

  “Go see Narcotics,” he told Flores. “See if anyone there remembers Pineda’s wife’s name and whether she worked as a secretary at the Steel Tube Company. And look in the files for muggings reported on this day,” he added, opening the folder and pointing to the date. He sat back down in his swivel chair. He felt calmer because the basic motive for the crimes had been found. Now they just needed to arrest that crazy piece of shit. He knew that no matter what, he’d have a sleepless night. He looked at the messages on his desk. One said that Vargas, the chief forensic psychologist, was out of the city and would be back only on Monday. He leafed through the folders of the day’s reports: the bodies of two homeless men who’d fought each other with knives and broken bottles were found with no identification that morning in an alley in the red-light district.

  The clock struck eleven.

  He called Adriana Sosa to ask if her brother had come back yet. She answered the phone anxiously, because she’d been waiting for some news from Eduardo, but she still hadn’t heard from him. As soon as they got their hands on Bustillo they’d find out whether he had anything to do with the young man’s disappearance, the Deputy Commissioner told himself.

  Flores got back to him with the information he was looking for right away – there was a report in the files that stated Mrs. Aurora Pineda, secretary at the Steel Tube Company, had been shot and killed by two thieves. Villalta had gone and disturbed Bustillo’s daughter in the middle of her mother’s wake. She told him she remembered that the bitch her father had got mixed up with was called Aurora or something like that. But Handal wasn’t ready to claim victory yet, much less call the Commissioner without having Bustillo in handcuffs and some minced snake meat.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” he ordered.

  They were on their way down the stairs when they ran into Chele Pedro and his squad. Overbearing, potbellied and double-chinned, the DICA chief blocked his path.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  The Deputy Commissioner explained the facts of the Bustillo case, especially his relationship with Agent Pineda’s late wife. He told him he needed to catch the suspect, who was moving around town in a yellow Chevrolet, right away.

  “There’s something fishy going on here,” Chele Pedro mumbled. “Pineda an
d the boys were in the middle of a very delicate investigation.”

  An officer told them that at that very moment, the Commissioner was pulling into the parking lot. They saw him climb the stairs in his immaculate suit, his eyes a little glassy with drink. He’d clearly come from some fancy dinner or reception.

  “You two, in my office,” he ordered. He had a fierce look in his eyes and he was scowling. Right away, before they’d even closed the door, he laid into Handal. How could that madman still be out killing people all over the place without having been arrested? And he’d better have a good explanation for the murders of the DICA agents! Didn’t he realize they were the best agents trained by the gringos? And for what? To come back and be killed by a lunatic who was supposedly getting revenge over an affair he’d had with Agent Pineda’s ex-wife three years ago! Did he think anybody was going to buy a story like that?