The Night Will Be Long, page 24
Cancino reported that when he asked the lawyer—who turned out to be Anselmo Yepes, the missing man’s brother and Estéphanny’s brother-in-law—what political beliefs had put Enciso Yepes in danger, he responded that Enciso had supported the Democratic Middle and participated in demonstrations against the peace accords and against the negotiations to hand the country over to the terrorists. Agent Cancino asked for more details, pointing out that if such beliefs led to death threats, half the country would be receiving them, whereupon the lawyer stated that he had witnesses who’d been with Enciso Yepes on two specific occasions on which he’d been approached by people on motorcycles who told him, quote: “If you keep opposing the peace accords, we’re going to break you, motherfucker.” Asked about the identities of those witnesses, the lawyer replied that they would be revealed at the appropriate time. According to the agent, when he asked if the people issuing the threats were known to anyone in Cartago, the lawyer said no, but that they were local to the area.
Regarding the nature of Mr. Enciso Yepes’s work, the lawyer said it consisted of providing security to the Pentecostal New Jerusalem Church, and that he’d been assigned to that post by the company VigiValle, which they were now suing, not just because VigiValle refused to accept its responsibility for Enciso Yepes but also because it had stopped paying his salary, claiming breach of contract and abandonment of duties, which was a violation of labor and human rights. This topic seemed to rouse Estéphanny, who’d come down from her high, and she said that he’d enjoyed the job at first because, like her, he was very religious, plus it paid well, so he liked it even though it required frequent travel to Cali and other cities, but that later, because of the threats and the dangerous atmosphere, he became more and more unhappy. When asked when Yepes had last been seen, the lawyer said three weeks ago.
Wrapping up his interview, Agent Cancino informed them that the prosecutor general’s office was investigating another case that might involve Enciso Yepes and asked them to remain available for further statements. The lawyer asked what kind of case but was told that for now that information was being withheld. Cancino also reported that before he left, Estéphanny gave him a loud kiss on the cheek and said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, detective, but next time you should accept the drink.”
Once outside, Agent Cancino reported that out of curiosity he looked in at the dentist’s office next door and that as soon as she saw him, the receptionist, a woman of indeterminate age—somewhere in her mid-forties to mid-fifties—invited him in and said, “Are you from the police?” He identified himself, and she unleashed the following: “That Estéphanny woman is a tramp. She’s sleeping with Anselmo, Enciso’s brother. Every time Enciso went to work in Cali, Anselmo would come visit her—the moaning was unbelievable! That woman isn’t right. When we neighbors complained, they started meeting at a motel, the Olafo, on the road to Pereira. I know because I saw them leaving there once in Anselmo’s car.” Cancino asked if she knew that Enciso Yepes was missing, and the receptionist said, “No way, I bet they killed him so they could get compensation from the government.”
Given these accusations, Agent Cancino decided to go to the Olafo to confirm what the dentist’s receptionist had said. It wasn’t hard to find, and when he arrived in reception with his badge from the prosecutor general’s office, the manager came out to speak with him. Before going in, Cancino had found two good photos of Estéphanny Gómez and her lawyer, Anselmo Yepes, on Facebook. When asked if those individuals had ever been in the establishment, the manager looked at his schedule and called the employees in. Of the eleven housekeepers, seven recognized the couple, since they were notorious among the staff, who’d dubbed them the macaws because of the raucous noise they made. When prodded for details, a young employee in a white apron and knockoff Crocs told the agent with a combination of shame and amusement that the last time the couple had stayed there, a few days earlier, she’d heard the woman shout things like “Pound me, honey, whip me good!” and “Harder, Papi, give it to me!” and “It’s so good to fuck stoned, baby.” At that, everybody started laughing and quoting things the couple had said: “Hurt me!” “Make it sting!”
The housekeepers said that when they made up the room they used to find empty bottles of aguardiente and rum, marijuana cigarettes in the ashtrays, and traces of cocaine. When asked about the last time, they said it had been two Wednesdays ago. An employee remembered because it had been her birthday. What time? In the afternoon. They’d arrived at noon and had stayed until nighttime. The manager looked it up in his records and confirmed that, in fact, on that date he had a payment of 408,000 pesos for a suite with a jacuzzi, two lunches, a guanabana smoothie, a tube of KY jelly, and a bottle of Viejo de Caldas rum, paid with a Bancolombia debit card in the name of Anselmo Yepes.
After this, Cancino decided to return to Cali.
On the drive, he called in to the central office and requested Anselmo Yepes’s rap sheet, but they told him they didn’t have anything. He was clean. It was clear, though, the agent said, these two were up to something and were looking to take advantage of the situation in some way. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with our case, Cancino said, and instead Estéphanny and Anselmo have been planning to run away together, so Enciso’s disappearance is good news for them. He emphasized that the wife hadn’t displayed the least bit of sadness about her missing husband.
In sum, though the relationship with the Pentecostal church pointed to a link between Enciso Yepes’s disappearance and the bodies on the San Andrés de Pisimbalá road, his trip to Cartago to interview the wife did not turn up any information to back up that theory. In any event, even if the two things were later found to be unrelated, Agent José Cancino recommended keeping an eye on this case, the unusual aspects of which roused not just his desire to establish the facts and ensure justice but also (and especially) his interest.
Agent Cancino attached a log of expenses incurred on said mission (tolls, gasoline for the car provided by the Cali prosecutor’s office, coffee at Parador Rojo) and listed the mission end time as 10:32 P.M., when he arrived in Cali once more.
Upon returning to his room, Jutsiñamuy sent a message to Agent Laiseca: Get in touch as soon as you hear anything. I’m at the hotel. Or just come straight here, but let me know first. He then pulled out his HP Xperia laptop and connected to the wifi network and from there, using the security protocol, to his private account. He had a new report from Wendy.
Confidential Report #2
Agent KWK622
Place: Cali
Operation: Holy Spirit
Date: Date of email sent
Approaching the informant: Update on report #1, sent yesterday, on the informant Yeni Sepúlveda. This morning, when I attended the Tuesday morning service at the church, I ran into her again. She told me she’d just dropped off her son Jeison Maluma at the neighborhood daycare center and was there to provide support to the girls battling coca-paste addictions; first she pointed them out to me and then introduced me to them. The three were very young, though looking at them they seemed older because of their parched hair and blackened or missing teeth and their sunken eyes, with a sour expression, like they no longer believed in anything. Yeni said they were the most recent arrivals, who were currently being treated and monitored via daily meetings. Then she took me to see two other girls, who were church helpers. Both had been into drugs but got out about a year and a half ago, and in fact you could see the difference: their hair looked healthy again, their skin younger, they had good teeth (they may have gotten some dental treatments, I need to find that out), and basically they looked more or less normal—I say “more or less” because all the same they still have this harsh, rigid gaze, empty of all feeling, even perverse, to the point where it seems like at the least provocation they could fall back into old habits, their miraculous healing a mere thread that could break at any moment. There those poor miracle girls were, kneeling, eyes closed, at the pastor’s words, which, this morning, spoke of the goodness needed to believe in what seems unbelievable or not believable, and he said it several times: “Believing in the unbelievable, working out of an urge to give truth to all those things that lack it, but need it,” he said, “the way each of us is a mote of dust in the dense, infinite air of God, but one that has weight nonetheless, we are all important to him, we all have weight in his world, so we should give thanks, not just in words, but especially in deeds, in doing all we can: only through doing shall we enter the shining path, the only one that will lead us toward those stairs, which could be made of wood or plexiglass or even sturdy traditional fibers such as cabuya—in short, stairs that must be solid, because they’re taking us straight to where Jesus abides, where he is sitting quietly, waiting for us to arrive, and when I say stairs it’s because I imagine that place is up above us, in the sky, but remember that this is only a metaphor—above is a human measure: he is above us because he has thought and reflected and come to conclusions that our minds cannot yet contain, and because his intelligence is divine. He is above us because of that: not because he’s the son of God, which all of us are, but because he possesses a mental fury and intensity and contains life and memory and the sound of stiff, dry trees, even those that have been felled and reduced to firewood; he still hears them swaying in the wind, and so he is divine, a supreme poet, because words anchor us to the earth and allow us to scream and give meaning to our sufferings, but those are very few, very few . . .”
That’s what Pastor Fritz said that Tuesday morning as a light drizzle fell on the auditorium roof, and though hardly anyone understood what he was saying (including the author of this report), they all wept and looked up at the ceiling believing that they were gazing at heaven, as if something inside them had understood—an intelligence lodged in their bellies or in their sinews that had comprehended the meaning of the pastor’s words. And so, though the lecture was brief, the audience was left dazed, motionless in their seats, and when the junior pastors, the priestesses, and everybody else came out to continue the program, they remained in a trance, and then, little by little, they began to pull themselves together and after a while trickled out, some to the bathrooms and others to the exits, and I swear, boss, nobody was the same as when they’d entered; it was like they’d been recharged, as if they’d connected to the pastor’s current and their batteries were at full power.
Afterward I went with the informant Yeni Sepúlveda and saw that the young former addicts were smiling, but their smiles now corresponded to something real; they weren’t the halting or frozen smiles of people in an altered, semi-unconscious state. We went for coffee and cassava cheese bread, and I heard their other stories—they talked about their children and how healing it is to be with them, take care of them, because in the past they’d left them with their mothers.
This mission’s investigation will continue along these lines, since both Yeni and the other former addicts have a close, direct relationship with the pastor that seems worth pursuing.
THEORY OF LIFELESS BODIES
After lunch with the prosecutors, Julieta and Johana went in search of a pleasant terrace where they could decide what to do, whether to return to Bogotá the next day on a morning flight or wait in Cali a little longer. After a short stroll they sat down at the coffee shop El Remanso, one street over from the hotel. Julieta wasn’t sure what her next move should be, but she sensed that it was here, in this steamy city, that the important elements of the story were brewing. At the same time she recognized that the information she needed wasn’t actually available to her, since she had to wait for the investigations of the prosecutor and his men to bear fruit. Most fascinating to her for now was the relationship between Fritz and the Brazilian pastor. Fabinho Henriquez. Her intuition told her that was the way to go.
They ordered two berry teas and disappeared into their telephones.
At the time of the incident—3:46 P.M., to be precise—the terrace wasn’t particularly full, just five tables. Some employees were taking orders at the counter, charging and handing out numbers, while others ran the food, mostly mid-afternoon platters of cassava cheese bread and oat drink or milky coffee. The Colombian palette isn’t terribly varied in such things. A few patrons ordered hot chocolate instead of coffee or a plate of fresh fruit.
But that’s all.
Everything happened very quickly and chaotically.
The motorcycle stopped on the street, just before the corner. The sicario was perched on the back, behind the driver. His face still hidden behind a helmet, he climbed the nine steps to the terrace and headed to the counter like he was about to place an order. Somewhere in her mind Julieta, already paranoid about motorcycles, registered him. Johana found it odd that the man hadn’t removed his helmet, and perhaps for that reason she watched him. And so she saw him loop around the far end of the room and approach a man from behind who was sitting at one of the tables against the wall. Her intuition told her, Alert, alert! and she tensed; a moment later, the sicario pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the back of the target’s head.
Johana grabbed Julieta’s arm and yanked her down onto the floor as five gunshots went off. Five booms that echoed in that tranquil environment, sowing confusion, shouts. The patrons from other tables also threw themselves on the floor, terrified. There was running and the crash of breaking glasses and mugs. The victim toppled over, lying on his left arm. The first and second shots had struck him in the head. The other three, probably unnecessary, in the chest.
The killer stopped and looked around, still holding the pistol, as if to confirm something. Nobody dared meet his gaze. Johana watched him from the floor, not moving. She was just five meters from the sicario, who stepped toward them, not to threaten them but to see the dead man’s head from another angle. The bullets had done the job. They’d entered from behind and gone out through the forehead, opening a hole in what had been his face.
The murdered man looked to be in his forties, Johana thought, but he seemed young and robust. If he hadn’t been stopped by the man settling scores with bullets, he would have lasted several more decades. Time is elastic in moments of panic, and remembering it in words seems longer than the event itself. Such was the case with the eight or ten seconds when Johana was staring at the killer’s feet, which were shod in blue Reeboks with dirty white soles. She guessed they weren’t the real thing. Paraguayan knockoffs purchased in San Nicolás. She could feel people’s breathing, their panic. A little knot of humanity suddenly assaulted by reality. Dense seconds. Fear of death upon seeing it close up.
Johana recognized the pistol: a nine-millimeter, fast, light.
Suddenly, as if reality had been set back into motion, the sicario strode across the terrace, leaped down the steps to the street, and climbed onto the motorcycle. The driver revved the engine and sped off going the wrong way, toward the river and Colombia Avenue.
What happens after a crime?
It depends—sometimes nothing.
Johana helped Julieta up. Everybody else gradually stood too, one by one. A few women were sobbing and saying, “Oh God, what just happened?” The terrace floor was slanted slightly so rainwater would run off, and the blood was already trickling down the drains. Death is a strange thing. Not just blood but also lumps of bread had fallen from the dead man’s mouth; he’d been chewing and about to swallow. Most people left without looking at him, but two of the employees came over to see if he was alive and exclaimed, “Don Alvarito!”
They crossed themselves.
Still dazed from the gunfire and the horror, Julieta couldn’t move. Johana went to talk to one of the employees.
“Who was this guy?” she asked.
“Don Álvaro Esguerra. He used to come in for breakfast or afternoon coffee.”
“A friend of the owner?” Johana persisted.
In the distance, they could hear a siren, which turned out to be an ambulance. Soon a team from the prosecutor general’s technical investigation unit would arrive. She didn’t have much time to question the woman.
“No, Don Alvarito was a good customer,” the employee said, wiping her tears. “He was a big tipper. To think he just got out of the army last year . . . He used to say the military had become a ladies club now that we were in peacetime, and now look at him!”
The body, doubled over with the arms pinned underneath, looked fragile and exposed.
Three police motorcycles arrived and six officers swarmed the terrace, cordoning it off and organizing people to record them as witnesses.
Julieta called Jutsiñamuy, but she got his voicemail. She made a second attempt, and a third. No dice. Suddenly her cell phone buzzed, and it was him.
“You’ll never guess what happened!” she said.
“Oh no, Julieta, don’t tell me . . .”
Julieta didn’t know where to begin. “A sicario . . . shot a guy five times right in front of us, in a coffee shop . . .”
Jutsiñamuy remained ever calm, even in moments like this one. “OK, Julieta, but which murder are you talking about?”
She was silent a moment, uncomprehending. “Which one? The one right here!”
Julieta explained that she was still in El Peñón, very close to the hotel.
“The thing is,” Jutsiñamuy said, “there were just several of these crimes all at the same time. Seems like there were four. I’m headed to meet Laiseca right now at one in the south part of the city, in Ciudad Jardín, which was at a café too. I’d already left when I learned about the one in El Peñón, but I had no idea you two were there! There was a third one at the Unicentro mall, and another at a no-tell motel. The sicarios were busy today!”
