Behold Things Beautiful by Cora Siré

Author:Cora Siré
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Signature Editions
Published: 2016-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

13

Patrón Pindalo’s power and grief were a lethal cocktail. Since their encounter the day of Ernesto’s burial, Gabriel had anticipated retribution, waiting anxiously for the moment in order to put it behind him. When Patrón Pindalo finally showed up in his office, Gabriel adopted the same attitude he’d reserved for Ernesto, restrained contempt.

“I want you to know, Seil, that we’ve reconstructed my son’s last days,” he said, installing himself on the chair across from the desk. “He was here at the cemetery.”

Gabriel looked out the window, wondering who the “we” included. The police, the military or the band of gangsters in Pindalo’s employ? Outside, Castillo stood spraying the bed of white camellias with a hose. The gravel road was full of cars that morning. It was the beginning of the Jewish holidays and many had come to visit their dead. Their presence reassured.

Patrón Pindalo crossed his leg, clasping a tanned hand over the knee of his grey trousers. The casual posturing gave him away. Gabriel reminded himself that if Patrón Pindalo had really wanted to harm him, he’d have dispatched an emissary to ambush him on a downtown street some night.

“What was his state of mind?”

“Anxious.”

“Suicidal?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“He left his wife and children a month before he died.”

“I didn’t know that…he didn’t say.” Gabriel couldn’t pretend that he didn’t care. No, it haunted him, Ernesto’s agitation the day before his drowning. If he judged himself harshly, he could argue that if he’d spoken to Ernesto as he lay in the campus grass, the guy might not have flipped out. “I didn’t know him that well. He was a friend of Roberto, my brother.”

“I know that. So what did you talk about?”

“Regrets.” Not exactly a lie. There had been remorse in Ernesto’s desperation. Why else had he stolen the files?

“What regrets?”

“Nothing specific…he just seemed…agitated.”

“How long’s your brother been gone? More than a decade, right?”

The man’s eyes, narrow as a viper’s, bored into him. He was soulless. To display this level of arrogance here where generations of Pindalo ghosts, including Ernesto’s, resided as witnesses. The heavy stapler on Gabriel’s desk would be the perfect weapon. But why stoop to his level? “Maybe he regretted his inaction. He might have saved my brother.”

“Yes and no. Not on his own.”

Gabriel’s stomach churned.

“Did he mention any documents?”

“No.” Now that the bastard had indirectly admitted he could have intervened to save Roberto, it was easy to lie.

“Ernesto was seen at the university the day before his death. Why?”

“No idea.”

“Do you know Professor Molino?”

“Yes.”

“Did you introduce him to my son?”

“No.”

“I ask you again, Seil. What was he doing here?”

“Maybe he came to visit his mother’s tomb.”

“She’s been dead a long time. Why would he come to the mausoleum now? Unless…he was contemplating taking his life and came to face his ultimate destination?”

It struck him that Pindalo was improvising.

“Death, you see enough of it here. Can’t you smell it coming?”

Gabriel stared out the window so as not to see what he understood intuitively, Patrón Pindalo’s need to know, the importance of detail in an unexplained death.

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