Caballero Read online

  “Did you get it?” I asked.

  The former dean stood up to help her. “Call an ambulance!” He shouted.

  The crowd left their seats to move closer to the stage.

  “Did she pass out?” Asked the President, forgetting the microphones were on.

  “What a mess...” the dean complained.

  One of the guests raised his hand bragging about his PhD on Medicine. He jumped off the stage and searched for the woman’s pulse.

  “Don’t do this, Monica.” The doctor said and everyone could hear it. “Come on. Be strong.”

  “Is she dead?” Asked the president, puzzled as if he was at the zoo.

  “There’s no heartbeat. We have to revive her.”

  “Are you a friend of hers?” The dean inquired.

  “I’m from the Faculty of Medicine,” he replied overwhelmed. “What the hell does that matter now?”

  A team of three women and two men doctors from SAMU rushed into the room like a locomotive.

  “Everybody out, please!” The woman leading the way yelled. “Right now!”

  I took a look at the room and saw Hidalgo disappearing through one of the side doors. I couldn’t believe it. The guests started to go crazy. What was the next step? The new dean was dying minutes before she was invested. The adrenaline from knowing what was happening and fantasizing about it was overwhelming. I left the press behind, walking in the opposite direction with my head down, before one of the paramedics realized I was one of them. Taking advantage of the darkness, the only way to stay there was to hide, so I did. I laid down between the seats in the shadows and listened to what they were saying.

  “Shit, Jose Luis... She’s not breathing.” Said one of the paramedics.

  “Give her epinephrine,” another men replied. Monica’s body was still on the ground.

  “She’s not waking up. She’s gone...” one of the women added.

  “Fuck, Juana, don’t be so morbid!”

  “Do something! For God’s sake!” the former dean shouted, covering his face with his hands and pulling his tie to loosen it. Then I felt something touching my left foot.

  “Sir?” said the female paramedic who had kicked everybody out earlier.

  “Yes?” I answered back like a scolded child.

  “Please, get out of here immediately, I beg you.” She ordered with an unfriendly face.

  I turned around and glanced at the woman. She had messy hair and the disappointment of a mother on her face. Without saying a word, I picked myself up and left, no questions asked, as if I was sorry for what I had done. I needed to smoke, to see Hidalgo and get my thoughts in order. I left the building and headed for the university entrance. I took out a cigarette, lit it and took a deep drag. I exhaled like an exhaust pipe and noticed a presence in the corner of the eye. Someone was watching me.

  Next to me stood a man with thin glasses and average height. He was wearing an argyle sweater and a pair of jeans. He had thinning hair and was a little overweight. He appeared harmless, but was actually quite the opposite.

  “You need anything?” I asked with boredom.

  “I was wondering if you could give me one of those...” He responded with a soft melodic voice coming from his diaphragm. He seemed to pay more attention to his thoughts than to my presence. I took out another smoke and gave it to him. He thanked me and lit it with a flint-stone lighter. The man observed the filter and gave it a puff. We were both in silence and I wondered who would be the one to break it.

  “Are you from the press?” I asked bluntly, knowing he wasn’t.

  “Me? No,” he replied looking at me funny. “Not at all. Huh! I’m a university professor. God, it’s been a while since I last smoked one of these.”

  “That’s not good for you.” He seemed surprised at that comment.

  “Boy, given everything that’s happening...” He blurted, worried. “What are we gunna do now?”

  “Well, go home, I guess...”

  “What just happened puts us all in a very delicate situation.” He said looking down. “I doubt anyone’s going to want to run for dean now.”

  “The university will get some headlines, at least, don’t you think?”

  “You are a journalist, right?”

  “Observant.”

  “Nah, you just talk too much gibberish” he answered, “Like everybody in your trade... What happened to Monica Llopis is serious. I hope you don’t blacken her name just to sell more papers.”

  “Nobody buys papers anymore, so save your words.” I said. “We don’t know what went on in there, yet. How did you know Llopis?”

  He looked around; there was nobody else but us. “We were friends. We’ve worked together for a few years.”

  “So you’re a doctor, too.”

  “Yes, but not in a medical sense. I’m a biologist.” He highlighted. “Monica and I worked in the same department. What a tragedy! What are we going to do now? I just hope they don’t have that jackass from the Faculty of Humanities replace her.”

  “Do you think anyone had some kind of interest in getting Llopis out of the picture?” I asked, ignoring the comment about my friend.

  “Well, I don’t know... but I wouldn’t rule it out.” He replied. “Anything is possible.”

  As the echo of those last words resounded in my ears, I saw a figure walk through the gate to the building. I ignored the professor’s questions to focus on that face. It was the same man I had seen on the photos from Monica Llopis’ private album, a stranger whose name I was eager to find out.

  “What the hell could he be doing there?” I asked myself. As soon as he came out, the paramedics from SAMU walked through the door with Monica’s body wrapped in a thermal blanket. The journalists appeared again, like rats running from the fire, to intrude in the doctors’ way. They were taking her to the hospital that was for sure. Alive or not, that only they knew.

  I tossed the cigarette butt and followed the stranger, leaving behind the annoying scientist who had asked me for a smoke. I pretended to be talking on the phone as I chased him. His gray blazer fit the muscles in his arms tightly. His body language seemed too focused on the pain to notice I was following him. When we arrived at the parking lot, he took out a remote control and the front lights of a black BMW X3 flashed on.

  I observed the plate and typed it on my phone. The man started the car and looked through me. Then, he sped up to intimidate me and faded in the distance.

  4

  WHEN I WENT BACK TO the main hall, the situation had gotten worse. From the distance, I discerned Hidalgo talking to the rest of the university representatives and a hungry group of reporters from the competition. The president of the Valencian government was escorted out of the place and got inside an official car. Hidalgo, with arms akimbo like Superman, argued, frowning and rotating his wrist out of stress. Poeticizing my presence, I approached them as if I was at my favorite bar. Hidalgo gave me a piercing look without opening his mouth. He was not joking. I decided to save my insolence for another time and went to talk with him.

  “Do we know anything new?” I asked, making way among the crowd.

  “As I was saying...” Antonio muttered, “I hope you treat this situation with delicacy, you know. Soon, the national press will find out, if they haven’t already. The President walked off feeling uneasy about it... This is just going to ruin even more the image people already have of us.”

  “Don’t be so negative, Hidalgo.” The vice chancellor said. He was a bold man with a moustache and a tweed blazer. “Things like this happen everywhere.”

  “People talk, Ramirez. They talk too much...” Hidalgo groaned. “By observing the political situation we have here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the conservatives start pointing their finger at me now.”

  “The conservatives? At you?” The vice chancellor asked. “But you are...”

  Before Ramirez could finish his sentence, two police cars pulled up in front of us. The car doors opened and the conversation fa
ded away like sand in a summer storm. Two uniformed officers got out from one of the cars and entered the building.

  Another man in civilian clothes got out of the other car, accompanied by an officer. The policeman, a little younger than his partner, exchanged a few words and went inside the building with the rest. He looked like a scarecrow with his hair stuck to his scalp, a Prussian moustache covering his lip and marked wrinkles due to his permanent bad mood. A classic. A craft work. I knew he was a detective and that soon, Ortiz would phone asking why I wasn’t at my desk writing about the bombshell of the year.

  “Good morning, sirs.” Said the man, drying his forehead with a tissue. The intense heat of the early afternoon made circles of sweat appear under his chest. The detective was wearing a pair of Docker slacks, moccasins and a short-sleeve Lacoste polo shirt tucked in his belt. He then showed his badge for a second and put it away. His presence didn’t please any of the people there.

  “If we can be of any help, detective...” Ramirez suggested.

  “Botella,” he replied, “Detective Botella. Homicide.”

  “So we are dealing with a crime here?”

  The detective looked me over from top to bottom.

  “A reporter?”

  “From Las Provincias.”

  “Were you in the hall when Ms. Llopis fainted?”

  “She didn’t faint,” said the vice chancellor trembling.

  “Nobody knows yet.” The detective replied. “That’s our job.”

  “Yes, like the rest, I guess...”

  “So you’re a witness.”

  “I already said yes.” I blurted. I didn’t understand his game.

  “Wait here, for your own good. I’ll be back later.” He advised me and then pointed at Ramirez and Hidalgo with the index finger in his right hand. “Now, I’d like to speak with you two. Alone. Would you mind?”

  Hidalgo nodded yes with his eyes and said to me,

  “Be cautious, Gabriel.”

  The vice chancellor Ramirez, nervous due to the situation, walked ahead of Detective Botella towards the hall. Again, alone in the building, I had the feeling I was missing something. A plate number, that’s all I had. That and hope for Hidalgo to show signs of life. Before losing myself in a tornado of thoughts, the phone vibrated in my pocket once again. It was Ortiz. I knew what to expect.

  “Everybody is talking about what happened! And you... where the hell are you?!” He groaned through the microphone.

  “People don’t know anything, Ortiz.” I replied. “Stop yelling at me or I won’t answer the damned phone.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Caballero.”

  “Okay, okay...” I said, making a huge effort to stop myself from laughing. I loved the image of Ortiz on the other end of the phone, with his red neck and the veins on his chicken skin. “All the press were kicked out of the scene, but, luckily, I managed to stay. Then the police showed up... Detective Botella. Sounds familiar?”

  Ortiz remained silent.

  “No.” He finally answered. “Botella?”

  “Fuck. Yes!” I complained. “Homicide, Ortiz. They are onto something.”

  “Are you stupid?” He asked disdainfully. “That guy was sent there by the President, I guarantee you. Pure bureaucracy. By the way, why aren’t you here writing the goddamned article for tomorrow’s edition?”

  “Alright, alright!” I yelled. “The Detective wants to ask me a few questions, you know, as a witness.”

  “Don’t forget you ask the questions, Caballero.” He reminded me. “Please, hurry the hell up and come here. El Informacion is way ahead of us and they keep calling from Valencia asking what’s going on. You’d better bring something good or someone else will be sitting in your chair... and in mine too!”

  “Relax, man. I’ll bring something really good.”

  “It better be, Caballero.” He answered back, softening his voice. Ortiz was like the dog that always barks but never bites. In the end, he loved to be petted. I won him over once again. “Do your job. Find out what you can and don’t piss me off. I’ve had enough as it is, understood?”

  “One last thing, Ortiz.” I said. “You know someone who worked at the DMV, right?”

  “Yes, my brother-in-law,” he replied with little interest, “but if you are going to tell me you got a ticket...”

  “I need a favor. Grab pen and paper and write down this plate number.” I explained as I checked the numbers typed on my phone. “Find out who owns that car.”

  5

  ORTIZ DIDN’T GET ANYTHING from the license number I gave him. The plate was registered under the name of Alejandro Maciá, a young entrepreneur who had been successful with several start-ups. The province was beginning to see the first signs of innovative business growth being produced by the new generation. The grandchildren of those that, in the fifties, had reinvented the shoe industry took advantage of private education to import financial models from North America. Many of those rich young people wouldn’t go through university. They preferred to spend their money on champagne bottles and trips to Ibiza on their parents’ yacht. The ones who chose the easy way would end up living off their assets. However, the smartest ones took advantage of the university education boom as an excuse to mingle with youngsters who studied in the best business schools of London, Switzerland, Boston or California. Years later, they would use those contacts and the knowledge they had acquired to become independent entrepreneurs and pay back the money their relatives had invested in them.

  Alejandro Maciá belonged to that second group. When I searched online, I couldn’t find any social network profile other than that from a little start-up in the pharmaceutical industry where he was the CEO.

  After the phone call, Detective Botella went back to the place where we had met and exchanged a few words. After the meeting with Hidalgo and the vice chancellor Ramirez, he seemed calmer. The conversation was short since I had nothing to contribute to the investigation. Botella warned me not to do anything stupid and I didn’t manage to get any information out of him. The detective was there because someone had sent him to calm things down and his face exhibited the dissatisfaction of a man who had to work on his day off.

  We cordially exchanged business cards and I offered to help him as long as it was related to Ms. Llopis case. That night the competition kept watch outside the Perpetuo Socorro Hospital looking for something to fill their journal’s pages. Indeed Ms. Llopis had died of a cardiorespiratory arrest that froze her lungs and her heart. That’s what they said. According to research, in Spain, someone suffers a heart attack every half an hour, so that just made Llopis part of the statistics.

  A tragedy, a drama.

  After the informational disaster, Ortiz gave me the day off to clear my head and have some rest. Patricia had made plans with her friends and continued to ignore my phone calls, still mad about the previous day, so I dialed Antonio Hidalgo’s number and made an appointment to have lunch together and listen to an external opinion.

  We met at the front door of Aldebaran’s restaurant, a luxurious viewpoint located on top of the Regatta Royal Club of Alicante’s Port. Hidalgo had insisted despite my refusal. I love expensive restaurants and well cooked food, but I wasn’t going through the best of financial times. Nevertheless, Antonio told me not to worry and enjoy the meal. The headwaiter guided us to a round table for four people next to a window where we could gaze at the ships docked at the port, the mountain and Santa Barbara Castle protecting the city. I glanced at the flower arrangement on the table and couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten on a white tablecloth.

  “How are you?” He asked me.

  “Terrible” I replied, “I think Patricia is going to leave me.”

  “Don’t worry. There are a lot of Patricias in this world.”

  Hidalgo was more silent than usual. The slower pace of his words and his fake calmness made me suspicious. The unconnected sentences were mostly about mundane topics, as if what had happened wasn’t anything but
just an unlucky event. Patronizing advice, phrases with second intentions. I put myself on his shoes and understood why he didn’t want to get tangled up in painful topics. It was quite natural to feel that way after the last forty-eight hours. We ordered a bottle of white wine, roasted octopus and red tuna tartare to get our juices flowing. Once the headwaiter had served our drinks, Hidalgo proposed a toast.

  “To life, Gabriel” He said with nostalgia, rising his glass. “We are here today, by the sea, enjoying the moment, and tomorrow we could be pushing up daisies.”

  “Cheers, my friend.” I added.

  We took a sip and I glanced at the motionless ships under the afternoon sun.

  “What did Detective Botella want?” I asked. He raised his eyebrows.

  “Nothing important...” He replied. “You know, routine questions about our relationship with the deceased and all that. He didn’t seem very keen on his job.”

  “He’s a reserved man” I said. “However, there is something not quite right here, Antonio.”

  “Are you talking about yourself in this table or about what happened?”

  “Nice”, I said after putting a piece of octopus in my mouth. “With all due respect, as a friend, we both know Llopis was going to win, despite your good relationship with the students and some of the departments.”

  “In fact, she did win. It was her investiture as dean,” he replied with a smile. “Don’t remind me, alright?” He was being sarcastic.

  “Don’t you find it weird? The first female dean and she goes down the hole before saying thank you.”

  “Of course I do!” He exclaimed, sipping on his glass. “Bad things that happen to others can also happen to you.”

  “She was too young to die of a heart attack. I don’t know...”

  “Didn’t you read the news, Gabriel? Every half an hour...”