The Art of Political Murder by Francisco Goldman Read Free Book Online

sleeper, but that night, he said, soon after partaking of the purportedly drugged leftovers from Marco Tulio’s plastic bag, he fell into a deep sleep that was undisturbed until six in the morning, when police and investigators from the prosecutors’ office roused him. That was when El Chino Iván would describe his own encounter with the no-longer-shirtless man. After he’d gone back to Don Mike’s for his forgotten cigarettes—he said that Don Mike handed them to him through the now lowered gates—and was headed back into the park, he came on the same half-naked man he had spotted talking to Rubén Chanax minutes before, except now the stranger was wearing a shirt that El Chino Iván described as light beige with light brown checks. According to El Chino Iván, the stranger said, “
Compadre
, sell me a cigarette.” El Chino Iván handed him two cigarettes, and the stranger gave him a onequetzal bill, worth about fifteen cents (El Chino Iván later turned the bill over to the police), and said, “
Buena onda, gracias
”—roughly, “Cool, dude, thanks.” Then he left again, this time heading out of the park and down Sixth Avenue, in the direction of the presidential residence.
    The question of whether it was really only a few minutes, or quite a bit longer, between the moment when El Chino Iván turned back for his cigarettes and the time when he returned to the park, would come to obsess ODHA’s investigating attorney, Mario Domingo. It was one of many nagging, seemingly small mysteries related to the crime, and one that Mario Domingowould not solve, at least to his own satisfaction, for another five years.
    Rubén Chanax said that he hadn’t partaken of the allegedly spiked food and drink. He and El Chino Iván lay down to sleep in their usual space in front of the garage, and when the man from Eventos Católicos arrived that night, before eleven, to bring the indigents their meals, he rose to receive his, quickly devoured it, and went back to sleep. The man from Eventos Católicos said later that the only unusual thing he noticed that night, apart from how soundly the
bolitos
were sleeping, was that the light inside the garage was on.
    Don Mike, whose real name is Miguel Angel Hércules Garcia, and who was thought by park locals to be an informer, had little to say about the events of the night of the murder. He would claim, in his first statements, that he had closed his shop before nine-thirty, and that El Monstruo Jorge and Pablo el Loquito had been inside earlier, watching the movie. He claimed not to know anyone who went by Rubén Chanax’s nickname, El Colocho, but he said it was possible that, if he saw such a person, he would recognize him. Later Don Mike would refuse to say very much more to investigators and certainly not to journalists. Whenever any of the latter came to his shop to talk, he would withdraw into the back room.
    The
bolitos
El Monstruo Jorge and Pablo el Loquito didn’t seem to have anything useful to communicate to investigators about that night either. But no one will ever be able to discover if it was simpy alcohol and drugs that erased whatever memories they might have had or if simple fear played a role. Within just a few years the two indigents, like virtually all of the other
bolitos
who were sleeping outside the parish house on that Sunday night—with the exception of Rubén Chanax and El Chino Iván—would be dead.

    U SUALLY, ON ARRIVING back at the San Sebastián parish house on Sunday nights after his dinner with his family, Bishop Gerardi would phone Juana Sanabria, the parish administrator and his longtime close friend, to let her know that he had arrived safely. On Saturday nights, Bishop Gerardi customarily dined with Juana Sanabria and her teenage daughter in their home, and then they would watch a movie starring Cantinflas, the classic Mexican comedian, on television.