Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

Jacinto Gómez Estupiñán leaves home at seven in the morning and goes to the restaurant, then to the market to supervise the purchases of meat for the day, the specialty of his establishment being fresh meat, straight from the farm. At noon he drops by the main branch of Su Motor, on Calle Acacias, and talks with his partner, Arnulfo Solano Arango. Then he has lunch at home with his wife and mother-in-law, but takes his siesta at the house of Señorita Fernanda Osorio Timoco, in the Antioquia district, a young woman of twenty-seven with whom Jacinto Gómez has a relationship of a sexual nature, and for whom he pays the rent on her house, which is 280,000 pesos. Señor Gómez has his account in the Banco Ganadero.

He read the report several times in quick succession, one after the other, and one word surged up inside him: Revenge. . Revenge!

Religion says that we should forgive, but Ramón was not ready for that. Let the bastards beg for forgiveness! If they come to me humbly I may forgive them, but first I want my revenge. He was overcome with rage and something unexpected: a strange happiness within the rage, a dizziness that gave him a tingling in his fingers. In losing his illusions, he had become free. He drank the rest of the bottle and wept, of course, but also felt a kind of pleasure in imagining how it would be when he had taken his revenge. He did not feel up to looking at the photographs yet. He would leave them for later.

The next day he wrote to the detective:

Excellent work. Now I need you to find out a few more little things. Firstly, what is a paramilitary known as Dagoberto doing now, tell me if he is still operating in the area or if he is cooperating with the authorities. Tell me when you think you will be able to give me that information and how much it will cost. I will send you the money wherever you tell me to, without asking questions. Secondly, I need to know what connection there was between Jacinto Gómez and that Dagoberto and when it started. Thirdly, I want to know if Soraya Mora was already involved with Jacinto before his divorce, and when that started too. I need dates. I want you to find out how long Soraya had known Dagoberto and why she did what she did and in return for what. Fourthly, find out what happened to that ex-partner, Ramón Melo García, if it is known where he is, and since when Jacinto has been a partner in those repair shops.

The next day the detective replied:

Oh, my friend, what you are asking me is definitely going to cost a bit more, especially as asking questions about the paras in this region is more dangerous than shaving your testicles with a knife when you’re drunk, ha ha, sorry, I joke about everything. This is embarrassing, but I need to ask you for three million pesos, friend’s rate, of course. Send it to me by Western Union, made out to the Agency, and addressed to our office in the central market in Villavicencio. As soon as I receive the money, I’ll get down to work, boss, over and out, and one last thing, I know this is all very hush-hush, so I want to assure you, now that I’m on the case, you can trust me absolutely. Best wishes, XY.

He sent the money from a numbered account and waited, more taciturn than ever before, brooding on his plans, completely given over to his one obsession: revenge, revenge. He was gradually putting it together, one element at a time, like a bird building a nest branch by branch with its beak, confined to his apartment and his office, supervising his workers almost without speaking to them, without calling Daisy at all, given over body and soul to the task of hating, feeling anger, knowing that very soon he was going to feel that thunderclap that meant his revenge was complete.

Until he read the next report:

What I am able to tell you is that Dagoberto gave himself up to the authorities seven months ago as part of the new government accords; they have in him in custody in the prison of Cómbita, Boyacá. He admitted to six murders in La Cascada, Puerto Lleras, and Lejanías, which weren’t massacres, but said, in order to avoid being put on the list for extradition, that neither he nor his group had ever been involved in drug trafficking. Of course, there are witnesses in the town who say that the man was indeed a trafficker and was smuggling cocaine to Venezuela; that there are a number of mass graves filled with his victims and that he’s a major criminal. He’s represented by a very good lawyer here in Villavicencio who is advising him to stay and do his time in Colombia. They’re plea bargaining for a lenient sentence, six years maximum, which means he’ll be able to keep the business going through front men while he’s inside and reestablish himself in no time at all when he gets out.

Jacinto met Dagoberto through Soraya Mora’s brother Hernán Mora. It’s important to note that Jacinto was already having an affair with Soraya while married to his former wife, Araceli, and that was how he got to know Hernán Mora. Her boyfriend, Ramón Melo García, was a good friend of Jacinto’s, and the rumor in town is that the FARC took him away to protect him, because he was a Communist, but as he was also a small businessman and owned auto repair shops in La Cascada they ended up extorting money from him and then killing him. Jacinto was a good friend of the family and took over the shops, but then Ramón Melo García’s mother died, so that Jacinto was left with everything, in partnership with Arnulfo, Ramón Melo García’s chief mechanic. That’s the official version, boss, but as I’m good at my job I dug a bit deeper to find what really happened, and it’s this: Jacinto was giving it to Soraya Mora every time Ramón Melo went off to Villavicencio to buy equipment for his shops, and through that relationship he became friends with Hernán Mora, who had just come back from Medellín and had contacts with the paras. As soon as he got back to La Cascada, Hernán Mora starting working for Dagoberto, and one fine day, after both of them had been drinking aguardiente, Jacinto told Hernán he loved his sister Soraya and the one thing stopping them becoming brothers-in-law was that Communist Ramón Melo García, who had been a Communist since he was small because his dad had fought with the guerrillas in the Plains, and so Hernán Mora said, don’t worry, I’ll talk to my sister and then we’ll ask Dagoberto to get that Communist bastard off our backs, Jacinto, I’ll take care of everything, the bastard deserves what’s coming to him.

Jacinto talked with Arnulfo, the man who managed Ramón Melo’s shops, and asked him to let him know about Ramón Melo’s calls and movements, and told him that if he didn’t they might kill him too, because his boss was a Communist and hated Colombia and our president and that was why they were keeping an eye on the people he worked with. Arnulfo Solano let himself be won over, partly out of fear, and partly because if he did what they asked him they told him they would make him a partner in the shops. He said yes without thinking twice.

With Soraya Mora, from what I’ve been able to establish, things were more difficult, because she was in love with Ramón Melo and they had to work on her a bit more. Obviously she was also in love with Jacinto and that was why she let him have sex with her, but although I’m not a student of character or anything, I do think women feel attracted to their boyfriends’ friends, and so the woman ended up sharing herself between the two of them at the same time, although she was officialy involved with Ramón Melo García. Hernán Mora won her over by telling her that Ramón was a member of the FARC, but they themselves were patriots so it was better if she forgot him. It took him a week to win her over.