Lunde returned. He was now wearing a small pair of glasses perched on the tip of his nose as he peered down into a book bound in brown leather. ‘Now let’s see...’
‘Mind if I tape this, for the record?’
‘Of course. The taxidermy of the word.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I visited Tomás Gomez on October 7.’
‘You visited him?’
‘He invited me for some of his home-made chilli con carne. It was extremely tasty.’
‘Do you usually visit your customers’ homes?’
‘Not always, but if possible I like to see where my work will be displayed. To see what sites are available and find out which spots the pet frequented, how my customers were used to seeing the animal. It can be useful in deciding the ultimate pose of the finished piece. And the lighting is important. Enough to highlight the details, not so much that the work fades.’
‘You take this extremely seriously?’
Lunde looked at Bob over the top of his glasses. ‘I try to take it every bit as seriously as my customers do. I feel it’s something I owe them. But of course—’ he smiled wryly — ‘it has happened that sometimes I take things a little more seriously than my customers. So I need to listen.’ He flipped on through his diary. ‘By that time we had had three... no, four meetings in the store, I see here.’
‘And you did what? The cat still being in the freezer, I mean.’
‘What I said.’
‘What you said?’
‘I listened.’
Bob Oz nodded slowly. ‘To what he had to say about the cat?’
‘To what he had to say.’
Bob put down his pen. ‘And what did he say? People I’ve spoken to already have told me Tomás Gomez was the taciturn type.’
Lunde shrugged. ‘It took a while. But in the end, everybody talks.’
‘Oh really? Why don’t they do that with me?’
Lunde smiled. ‘Perhaps because they know you only want to hear one thing: the confession. Gomez told me that he and his family came here to Minneapolis as illegal immigrants from the south.’
Bob picked up his pen again. ‘So he has family? Do you have names and addresses?’
‘He had a family. Even though both Gomez and his wife were university-educated they didn’t have much money. They lived in a tiny house in Phillips West and were eating out when two gangs began shooting at each other inside the restaurant. Teenagers with guns. His wife tried to cover the little boy on the floor while Tomás headed for the exit with his daughter, she was in a wheelchair. He got her outside and almost to shelter behind a car when two of the boys came out and shot Tomás in the foot. He fell, and the next bullet, meant for him, instead hit the back of the wheelchair. By that time his son and wife had already been executed. The boys were on their way to deal with Tomás, who was trying to drag himself over to his daughter, when the first police car arrived, and they ran off. The daughter died in her father’s arms.’
Bob felt a sudden pain in his jaw and realised that he had clenched his teeth.
‘The police later told Tomás that gangs usually only shoot at each other.’
Bob put a finger on his cheek next to his jaw and pressed hard. ‘That’s correct. As a rule they aren’t bothered about witnesses either.’
‘Tomás asked what did I think, why had they shot his family.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told him the truth, that I didn’t know. What do you think, Detective Oz?’
Bob watched through the window as a couple passed arm in arm, her with her head on his shoulder, and it took a moment for him to shake off a memory.
‘It’s a question of numbers,’ said Bob. ‘They have shit jobs as foot soldiers for the Black Wolves, X-11 or another of these gangs where they get paid three dollars an hour for standing on street corners getting their balls frozen off selling crack and meth. One in four of them is going to get killed on the job. So it’s about moving up the system, becoming a runner, a security chief or a banker for the outfit, straight away you’re earning ten times as much and you’ve got a much better chance of surviving. But to get there you have to be noticed. And the quickest way to be noticed is to show you’re willing to kill.’
‘Interesting. And this you know from your own experience?’
‘I know because I read it in an article about the economics of the narcotics trade.’
‘I see. So it was simply a matter of economics?’
‘Economics and incentives. Morality is about how we want the world to function, economics is about how it actually does function.’
Lunde nodded.
‘You look as though you don’t agree,’ said Bob and glanced down at his notes.
‘You probably want to hear more about Gomez?’
‘There’s no hurry as long as we have no idea where he is. Go ahead.’
‘Right. Well, I think they shoot because they can. Because they recognise no limits. And they have these incredible weapons. Because it feels good to shoot, doesn’t it?’
Bob Oz coughed. ‘Dunno. I don’t shoot. Did he mention any other family or friends, here or elsewhere?’
Lunde shook his head. ‘Only that his parents live south of the border.’
‘What does he live off?’
‘Casual work. An education from his own country is no use to him when he doesn’t have the necessary residence permit.’
‘Can you recall the names of any employers?’
‘I’m sorry, we didn’t talk about things like that, about... about our everyday lives. I remember only that he said the longest he had worked at the same place was two months.’
‘Maybe the reason he didn’t want to talk about his everyday life was that he made his money working for X-11,’ said Bob Oz.
The man in front of him wrinkled his brow in disbelief.
‘I spoke to the doctor who writes his insulin prescriptions and he told me that Gomez had an X-11 gang tattoo on his back.’
‘But that’s... ridiculous,’ said Lunde.
‘Why so?’
‘Because he told me that the boys who shot him and his daughter were wearing X-11 jackets.’
A sound cut through the silence. A solitary police siren that rose and fell somewhere out there. Bob checked his watch. ‘Do you think he’ll be coming back here, Lunde?’
‘Maybe. I can’t read people, but as long as his cat’s here there’s a chance. People who have lost loved ones often end up feeling closer to their pets.’
‘Will you let me know if and when he does turn up?’ Bob offered him his card. Lunde hesitated a moment, then took it.
‘I do things slowly,’ he said as he placed the card inside his diary. ‘As you’ll have noticed, I think slowly, and I talk slowly. So if he does show up, I might be a bit slow about calling you too.’
‘But you will call?’
Mike Lunde nodded slowly. ‘I guess I probably will, yes. This innocent man he shot...?’
‘The name is Dante and he’s a gun dealer in Jordan. Probably works with several gangs, but mostly the Black Wolves.’
‘So he...’
‘Yes, I lied, he probably has a few lives on his conscience. Always assuming he has a conscience.’ Bob pushed the notebook back into his pocket.
The bell above the door tinkled as Bob left. And jingled again when he came back in moments later.
‘Yes?’ said Mike Lunde, who was squatting in front of the wolverine with a spray.
‘So then what did you talk about?’
‘What did we talk about?’
‘If you didn’t talk about jobs, friends, family.’