Alex paid her fare at the window of the taxi cab and stepped to the sidewalk on the Carrera de San Jeronimo. Across the street stood the Hotel de Cataluna. She tipped the driver generously and turned as he gave her an appreciative nod. It was only then that she noticed that there was some disorder, that something grievous had happened.
The hotel was a restored nineteenth-century building not far from the museum triangle. A thick, hot night gripped the city. Several meters from where Alex stepped onto the sidewalk, many of the patrons of the Cafe Giron, where intellectuals had gone to argue for generations, stood looking up into an alley. Several couples stood on the opposite side of the street, discussing what had happened. Their faces were contorted. They spoke in hushed tones. Two women jockeyed for a good view of what had happened, got one, then shielded their eyes and abruptly averted their gaze
Alex looked up, scanning the side of the building. She was staring at the back wall of the hotel where Floyd Connelly had said he was staying. There were human figures at several windows, people looking down, gawking at a spot where a knot of other people had gathered below in an alley. One woman on the third floor was holding her hands to her face in horror. A man poked his head out, looked down, and quickly looked away. Alex worked the side of the building with her gaze. There was a seventh floor window that was wide open with window drapes out and flapping gently. She recalled where Connelly said he was staying-
For good measure, hoping against hope, she tried Connelly’s cell number. His voice came on. Voice mail. She disconnected.
Alex crossed the street. She walked to an alley that led behind the hotel. In front of the alley was an ambulance and in front of the ambulance was a police car. Emergency vehicles, but no one seemed to be in much of a rush. The police weren’t setting much of a perimeter yet. They had that “just arrived” look.
She passed between two iron gates that led into an alley. The alley led to a place where garbage was stored and where service vehicles could enter the hotel’s service entrance. But the garbage and the vehicles didn’t matter right now.
A Vespa with a rider on it emerged from underneath of the hotel and with a whining whirring noise, accelerated as it climbed the driveway. The small knot of men who had gathered there, some in police uniforms, gave way to the bike and rider. Alex stepped back so the vehicle wouldn’t run over her toes.
The boundaries of the alley were marked by a high, old wrought-iron fence with spikes on the top. The spikes resembled old-fashioned spears. Part of the spiked railing had been torn from the rest of the fence. It was there that the knot of men were focused.
Alex pushed through the crowd. She could see partially what had brought everyone together. A man in a blue police uniform knelt over a bulky body that was sprawled in impossible directions. The body wore suit pants and a blue shirt with a necktie, but already the color combination had turned from the prosaic into the grotesque. Fragments of the victim’s skull, tufts of white hair caked with crimson fluid, were not far from the corpse. Other men stood awkwardly behind the policeman, peering through whatever inches of space were possible between bodies.
Alex worked her way to the edge of the small crowd and managed to slide her way to the front where she could get a good look at the corpse. A wave of nausea overtook her. She suppressed it. She had seen atrocities in her life-human beings torn apart by bullets in Venezuela, by a rocket attack in Ukraine-but this was the worst she had seen.
She looked at the fence, looked upward at the seventh floor window again, turned away, and looked back. It was all clear.
Connelly had come out of the window.
He had plunged from a hundred feet up and crashed into the fence full force when he’d come to earth. The spikes had torn into and through his upper body, ripped his neck apart, had taken off half his skull. Some of the spikes had impaled themselves in his upper chest. But the impact of the big man’s fall had taken out a section of the old iron fence and brought it to the concrete with him.
And so there he lay, dead as a crushed bug, his bodily fluids continuing to flow, not a breath of life left in him. He didn’t look like Orson Welles anymore, and he didn’t look like Gutman. He didn’t look like anything human.
For a moment, which turned into several moments, all Alex could do was stare. She stared and wondered what it was that he had wanted to tell her, what it was that he wanted to pass along. It must have been good because people don’t voluntarily go out windows when they’re waiting to share a secret with a lady. Not usually. It had to have been good unless it had been nothing.
A black vehicle pulled to the curb behind her, not far from the death scene. Alex recognized it. Bodyguards jumped out and opened the door for a man in the backseat. Colonel Pendraza of the National Police emerged. Her heart beat a little faster.
Pendraza’s security people stayed with him as he approached the death scene. The uniformed police present recognized him and gave way. Miguel, his lead bodyguard, seemed to be always on duty. He was standing point as the colonel moved toward the fallen body. Alex saw the flicker of recognition in Miguel’s eyes when he saw her.
Pendraza moved to the front and looked at the body. Alex gave him a few seconds, then walked toward him. One of the bodyguards intercepted her, raising a powerful arm to block her path.
“I need to see the colonel,” she said in Spanish. She spoke past the bodyguard who stopped her, and addressed Miguel.
Miguel turned to ask the colonel, who was a few feet away. The colonel glanced in Alex’s direction. He gave a nod. Alex moved past his bodyguards and into the small group that surrounded the corpse.
They too spoke Spanish. “Bad night,” she said.
Pendraza had seen his share of corpses in his career. “They’ve
“Yes.”
“I recognize him,” the colonel said. “Or what’s left of him. The pieta again?”
“That would be my guess,” Alex said.
An electric drill went on with a screech. Emergency workers started to cut away the sections of the fence that had impaled the body. It sounded like dental work on steroids. Alex looked away. The workers were disengaging the spiked rails from the corpse, and to do that, they needed to cut away a small section of Connelly’s shoulder.
“It’s been a completely rotten day,” Colonel Pendraza said. “There was a woman murdered in the Metro a day or two ago. One of our track walkers. They only found the body this afternoon.”
“Where exactly?” Alex asked.
“It was up by the Calle Maldonado,” he said. “Nice neighborhood. What’s this city coming to?”
She thought about it. Then it hit her. “That’s not too far from the US Embassy,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
“About a block away,” he said. “And there are a lot of embassies in the area. Not just yours. Don’t jump to conclusions.”
She tried to assimilate the information. “Where was the body found? In a Metro station?”
“No. In one of the underground tunnels.”
“What tunnels?”
“There’s a whole network of them,” he said. “Don’t worry. They’re old and they’re sealed. There’s no danger.”
“Can I have a look?”
His eyes narrowed. “At what?”
“The area where the body was found. The tunnels.”
“Why would you want to?”
“Because it’s near the US Embassy.”
“If you wish to,” he said. “Call my office in the morning. I’ll arrange a police permit and keys to some of the locked doors.”
“Should I clear it with the Guardia Civil?” she asked.
“If you want to waste your time, certainly,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
