Part 20 (2/2)
He had stopped walking and was regarding her again. This is as far as I can go, his eyes said. The rest is up to you.
”I'm beginning to be all alone, Oleg.”
She stood quietly before him, and the fingers of surf pulled the sand out from under her feet each time they rolled up and pulled back. The Russian smiled a friendly, somewhat distant smile. Sad.
”How strange to hear you say that. I thought you'd always been alone.”
15. Friends I have where I come from, people who say they love me
Judge Martinez Pardo was not a friendly sort of guy. I talked to him during the last days of my information gathering: twenty minutes of not particularly pleasant conversation in his office in the national court building. He only grudgingly agreed to see me, and only after I sent him a thick report on the state of my research thus far. His name was in it, naturally. Along with many other things. The usual choice was to take part comfortably, or stay out. He decided to take part, with his own version of the events. ”Come and we'll talk,” he said at last, when he came on the phone. So I went to the court building, he coolly shook my hand, and we sat down to talk, facing each other across his desk, with the flag and a portrait of the king on the wall.
Martinez Pardo was short, chunky, with a gray beard that didn't quite cover the scar on his left cheek. He was far from being one of those stars of the judiciary who appear on television and in the newspapers. Gray and efficient, people said. And bitter-an angry man. The scar dated back to a time when Colombian hit men hired by Gallego narcos had come after him. Maybe that was what had soured his temper.
We began by talking about the situation of Teresa Mendoza. What had taken her to where she was now, and the turn her life was going to take in the next few weeks, if she could manage to stay alive.
”I don't know anything about that,” Martinez Pardo said. ”I don't have a crystal ball for people's future, except when I'm given the opportunity to sentence them to thirty years. My job is to look into their past. Events. Crimes. And crimes, Teresa Mendoza has committed more than her share.”
”You must feel frustrated, then,” I ventured. ”So much work for nothing.”
It was my way of repaying the warmth of his manner with me, I suppose. He looked at me over the top of his gla.s.ses, as though deciding whether to hold me in contempt of court. Gray, efficient judges have sore spots, too, I told myself. Their personal vanity. Their frustrations. You've got her but you haven't got her. She slipped through your fingers, back to Sinaloa.
”How long were you after her?”
”Four years. A long time. It wasn't easy to gather the evidence we needed to prove that she was implicated in the drug traffic. Her infrastructure was very good. Very intelligent. It was full of security mechanisms, blind alleys. You'd take something apart and come to a dead end. Impossible to prove the connections up the ladder.”
”But you did it.”
”Only in part. We needed more time, more freedom to work. But we didn't have it. These people move in certain circles-including politics. Including my circle-judges. That allowed Teresa Mendoza to see things coming, and stop them cold. Or minimize the consequences. In this case in particular,” he added, ”it was all right. My a.s.sistants were all right. We were about to crown a long, patient effort with an important takedown. Four years getting the spiderweb all in place. And suddenly, it all went poof.”
”Is it true that it was the Ministry of Justice itself that stopped the investigation?”
”No comment.” He had leaned back in his chair and was staring at me with what seemed like annoyance.
”They say that it was under pressure from the Mexican emba.s.sy that the minister himself pressured you.”
He raised a hand. An unpleasant gesture. An authoritarian hand, that of a judge who hasn't stopped being a judge just because his robes are off. ”If you continue down that road,” he said, ”this conversation is over. n.o.body has pressured me, ever.”
”Explain to me, then, why in the end you didn't do anything to Teresa Mendoza.”
He thought about my question a moment, perhaps to determine whether the form of the question-Explain to me, then-was enough to hold me in contempt. Finally he decided to let it go. In dubio pro reo. In dubio pro reo. Or whatever. Or whatever.
”As I said, I didn't have enough time to put all the evidence together.”
”Despite Teo Aljarafe?”
He looked at me again, like before. He didn't like me or or my questions, and that one hadn't helped the situation. ”Everything having to do with that name is confidential,” he said. my questions, and that one hadn't helped the situation. ”Everything having to do with that name is confidential,” he said.
I allowed myself a small smile. Come on, Judge. At this late date?
”Can't make much difference anymore,” I said. ”I'd imagine.”
”It does to me.”
I meditated on that a few seconds.
”I'll make you a deal,” I said at last. ”I'll leave the Ministry of Justice out of this, and you tell me about Aljarafe.” I replaced the small smile with a gesture of friendly solicitude while he considered it.
”All right,” he said. ”But there are some details I can't reveal.”
”Is it true that you offered him immunity in exchange for information?”
”No comment.”
Bad start, I told myself. I nodded thoughtfully a couple of times before rejoining the fray: ”People a.s.sure me that you pursued Aljarafe relentlessly for a long time. That you had a hefty dossier on him and that you brought him in and showed it to him. And that there was no drug trafficking in it. That you got him from the money side. Taxes, money laundering, that sort of thing.”
”That's possible.”
He was regarding me impa.s.sively. You ask, I confirm. And don't ask for much more than that. ”Transer Naga.” ”No.”
”Be nice, Judge. I'm a good boy-answer a few of my questions, huh?”
Again he considered it for a few seconds. After all, he must have been thinking, I'm in this. This point is more or less common knowledge, and it's over.
”I admit,” he said, ”that the business dealings of Teresa Mendoza were al- ways impervious to our efforts to penetrate them, despite the fact that we knew that more than seventy percent of the drug traffic in the Mediterranean came in through her Senor Aljarafe's weak spot was his private wealth. Irregular investments, movements of money. Personal accounts abroad. His name appeared on a couple of murky foreign transactions. There was material to work with there.”
”They say he had properties in Miami.”
”Yes. We learned there was a nine-thousand-square-foot house in Coral Gables, with coconut palms and its own dock, and a luxury apartment in Coco Plum, a neighborhood of lawyers, bankers, and stockbrokers. All, apparently, without the knowledge of Teresa Mendoza.”
”A piggy bank. For a rainy day.”
”You might say that.”
”And you got him by the b.a.l.l.s. And you scared him.”
He leaned back in his chair again. Dura lex, sed lex. Dura lex, sed lex. ”I don't like that language,” he told me. ”I don't like that language,” he told me.
I'm beginning not to like this whole interview, I thought. This holier-than-thou bulls.h.i.+t.
”Translate it as you see fit, then.”
”He decided to collaborate with Justice. It was that simple.” ”In exchange for ... ?”
”In exchange for nothing.”
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