An American who wore a beard offered to drive her in his car from Hato Rey to her house in Puerta de Tierra. He told her his name and said he was sorry about her husband. He drove slowly, making other cars blow their horns and pass them. Her husband’s car, when he owned it, was much larger and more comfortable. This car, the road was right there in front of them and the seat was small. She was thinking of her husband’s Chevrolet, which she had sold for 2,500 dollars, when the American asked her if she had enough money to live.
She looked at him now, to see into his bearded face, and told him yes, she had money. She had bought a color television and new clothes for the children.
He drove so slow…
“Why did you tell your husband to be careful of that man, Teddy?”
“Because he’s call Mr. Magic.”
“That’s only his name.”
“Yes, what he is.”
“But he isn’t magic, it’s his name. It sounds like magic.”
Yes, well? She said, “Let me ask you what you think they are going to do to him?”
“They’ll take him to Superior Court and put him on trial for murder.”
“Yes?”
“As soon as the district attorney has proof to show in court.”
“Yes?”
“And then, well, I think they’ll send him to Oso Blanco for life.”
“Tha’s what you think?”
She was wrong. This one didn’t know any more than the policemen. She was disappointed. But he was rich, he gave her money when they stopped in front of the house. Five one hundred-dollar bills and then five more when the children came out to see the car. He was generous, kind to her; so she said, “I’ll tell you something. You don’t think he’s magic?”
He shook his head at her. “No.”
“Then why are they going to let him go free?”
This time the Criminal Affairs investigators having lunch at El Cidreño would look over at the table-see, the same one, with the beard, still on medical leave but without his cane-and know what he was discussing with Lorendo Paz. Lorendo looking immaculate, as usual, and the bearded guy looking the same as before. Some of the investigators were discussing the same thing as Lorendo and the American detective: the fact that Teddy Magyk had killed the taxi driver, there was little doubt of it, but would be walking up Franklin Delano Roosevelt Avenue by six o’clock this evening. “We had him, on the Loíza ferry,” Herbey Maldonado told the man seated at the table with him, “and we let him go.” The American detective, look, had hardly touched his dinner. “I know how he feels,” Herbey said. The American detective was drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes today.
“You have to understand the influence of the district attorney in our system, in our preparing a case.”
“The clout,” Vincent said.
“Yes, the clout; that’s good.”
“He doesn’t want to try a case if there’s a chance he might lose.”
Lorendo shook his head. “No, he doesn’t want to see a defendant get off on a technicality, so he makes himself very objective looking at evidence. He doesn’t try this guy he’ll try somebody else, what’s the difference? This one, he sees more holes the guy can use to walk out than ways to keep him in… Come on, you know what I’m talking about. What else is new, man?… Even if we can show he took the picture, yes, at a place directly above where the body was found, how do we prove it was taken the day of the murder? What day was the murder? There’s no date on the print. The Fast Foto place, they say maybe they have his name somewhere, they’ll look. But it won’t prove nothing anyway. Okay, witnesses that can put Teddy with Isidro-”
“Me,” Vincent said.
“I have you. You saw them at a beach, not on a mountain. I have a doorman at the DuPont Plaza, he maybe saw them together once or twice. The only person I have who can positively identify Teddy is the victim’s wife, and she never saw the guy before today. You like to hear her testify?”
“She knows he’s getting off.”
“We should know it too, right away. Why didn’t we?”
Vincent didn’t answer.
“You say he bought a handcarved parrot at the rain forest gift shop and gave it to Iris. Oh, he did? What day?”
“Teddy’s gun,” Vincent said.
“We say is the murder weapon,” Lorendo said, “but we don’t find any bullets in the victim. Shot twice, only one exit wound, I thought we would have a slug for comparison.” Lorendo shook his head. “He was badly decomposed, two weeks or more out there, some of him eaten by animals. I don’t know what happen to it. But it’s the only chance we got to prove anything, if we find that slug. So I’m sending a crew out there again, have them go over the ground with their toothbrushes.”
“Can you hold him in the meantime? Lock him up?”
“No way. I can’t even hold him for the gun. You brought it, he didn’t. His lawyer would say, who are you? You have no jurisdiction. Teddy says it’s not his gun, he never saw it before, so… All I can do, tell him he can’t leave Puerto Rico until we finish the investigation. Put some men at the airport to make sure. Then stretch it out, uh? Maybe think of some other way. I don’t know, Vincent, it look good when we looked at it. We should know better, not get excited too early.”
“He did it,” Vincent said.
“You don’t have to tell me, I believe it. But we both been here before.”
“Too many times,” Vincent said.
“You had the feeling he wouldn’t be extradited, you said so. You had a feeling all along. So you bring him, maybe we’ll run him through, shut the door on him.”
“Maybe,” Vincent said.
“But it doesn’t work like that, here or Miami or Atlantic City, it’s the same, the bad guys have the advantage. I ask him if he like to plead. You know what he said?”
“I know he’s killed three people in the past three weeks,” Vincent said.
“Yes.”
They sipped their drinks, a silence between them within the clatter and voices in the restaurant. Lorendo looked over at a table and back to Vincent.
“You know Herbey Maldonado…”
“On the Loíza ferry.”
“Yes. Herbey says take him out there again and don’t bring him back. Is he kidding or not? Some of these guys-you know them yourself in Miami, they wouldn’t think twice about it, and they’re good guys.”
Vincent didn’t say anything.
“I hope,” Lorendo said, “you don’t have something like that in your mind. Not you, Vincent. Okay?”
Vincent didn’t say anything.
“Come on-you worry me. Please. Where are you?”
Here but not here. His dinner barely touched. Cigarette stubs in the tin ashtray. He raised his eyes to Lorendo.
“Never worry about anything that’s already done or you have no control over.”
“I believe that too, yes.”
“Never seek revenge…”
“Don’t even think about it, no.”
“It’s for losers…”
“Yes, because they can’t win.”
“But that’s what this is all about. He wants to pay me back. The cab driver learned something and he killed him. He killed Iris to bring me up there. He killed and raped a woman because he needed money or that’s what he likes to do and before that he did try to kill me.”
“Because you sent him to prison.”
“Because he’s crazy. Because he has nothing better to do. Who knows? I think I’ll ask him and find out. Have a talk with him.”
“Vincent…”
Again there was a silence between them, within the sounds of the restaurant.
“Let’s wait and see what we find,” Lorendo said.
“It would be self-defense.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Lorendo said. “Not the way you’re thinking.”
He drove out of that downtown Hato Rey business world to the tourist world of beaches and high-rise hotels, to Isla Verde and the resort that resembled a mosque.
“I go in there,” DeLeon said, “I feel I should have a prayer rug with me. You know what I’m saying? Kneel down in the lobby facing Mecca, which would be… that way.”