David Unger - The Mastermind

So the reporter can only conclude that a poor fucker going out for a Sunday bike ride has been killed: a typically vicious crime in Guatebalas that will produce no guilty party for now and forever more.

* * *

On Tuesday morning Guillermo buys La Prensa Gráfica again and sits down on another park bench, this time across from the cathedral. The front-page headline shows the same picture from Monday, but it’s half the size as the day before. The caption reads, “Sospechado narco-traficante mexicano asesinado en frente de su casa”(“Suspected Mexican Drug Dealer Murdered in Front of His House”).Below the headline, the boldfaced type declares that the dead cyclist is, in fact, Boris Santiago, the alleged leader of the Guatemalan Zetas cartel. He was shot from less than twenty feet with five or six bullets from a Beretta 92, blowing the features off his face. The article speculates that Santiago has been killed by a rival gang rather than by unhappy members of his own mob. The reporter goes on to posit that Santiago may have been killed by a secret paramilitary force within the Guatemalan army fed up with the Mexican domination of the drug trade.

There’s a second, shorter article on the bottom of the front page. It states that the Guatemalan military has been tasked by the president with carrying out the investigation and reporting its findings to him and the Congress. An anonymous congressman claims that an elite squad within the army might be behind the assassination — Israeli Mossad style — but wouldn’t claim credit for the killing in a hundred years. “Everyone is free to speculate,” says the congressman, who refuses to give his name, knowing that Boris’s killer will never face justice and he himself could be killed for his speculation. “We may never know what happened. After all, 97 percent of the murders in Guatemala go unsolved.”

Guillermo sits back against the park bench. He’s surprised that his planned suicide has brought about such unexpected results. There’s no mention of him anywhere in the newspaper, certainly nothing about the release of the DVD. He realizes that Miguel will not release the recording now that Boris has been murdered and Guillermo has gone missing. For all he knows, Miguel might be thinking he has been kidnapped by the same assassin who killed the drug dealer, or that he had a bout of nerves and simply decided not to go through with it. Unless he resurfaces or is discovered, Miguel will most likely say nothing publicly, and will put all his resources into finding him.

Guillermo has to lay low to escape detection. For the first time in weeks, he feels true relief — the sensation that he is not required to do anything for anyone. He’s not despondent, he is not angry, he’s no longer consumed by the deaths of Ibrahim and Maryam. The rage has turned into a loss that is quiet, private, and constant — one that is part of him and colors his changing view of the world. He feels fortunate to have been given the opportunity to vanish into thin air. The only regret he feels is over his children and what they might think when they fail to hear from him, and eventually get the news that he cannot be found, or is presumed dead.

* * *

For the next three mornings Guillermo follows the same ritual of eating breakfast in the pensión at eight thirty and then going down to a park bench to read La Prensa Gráfica . He turns the pages each day expecting some new revelation about Boris Santiago’s murder. Each succeeding edition of the newspaper has an article about the murder, shorter than the last, full of conjectures about who might have wanted the drug kingpin dead. And then on Friday there appears a larger “weekend” article claiming that an autopsy has shown the dealer was killed by the second shot to the face, and that fingerprints and dental records have certified the victim’s identity beyond a doubt. As he is about to close the paper, he finds on the next-to-last page, in a section of Central American news briefs, a headline that mentions his name. His hands start shaking as he reads, “Guillermo Rosensweig, Guatemalan Lawyer, Missing.”

Guillermo reads on. Braulio Perdomo, his bodyguard and chauffeur, has reported him “disappeared” going on the third day, when in fact he has been gone now for five. This report is confirmed by his secretary Luisa Ortega, though Guillermo had furloughed her two weeks ago. The article says that his ex-wife Rosa Esther has no comment about his disappearance, but is concerned for his safety. The unnamed reporter claims there’s no evidence of foul play because no ransom note has appeared. Perdomo testified that his boss was not depressed, so the police won’t presume that he disappeared on his own. Miguel Paredes, a friend, contradicts the chauffeur — Miguel’s own employee — by claiming that Rosensweig was still despondent over the brutal deaths of his client Ibrahim Khalil and his daughter Maryam Mounier outside Khalil’s factory near Calzada Roosevelt the month before. The reporter mentions that the lawyer’s valid passport was in his top drawer, implying he hasn’t run away. The article ends with a police request that if anyone has any information regarding Guillermo Rosensweig’s whereabouts, to please contact them immediately.

Guillermo stares out across the square to the cathedral. The morning sun is hot, making his face sweat. He is surprised by these developments, the fact that no one wants to presume anything. It’s odd that no one has noticed that the missing lawyer and dead drug dealer live in the same community, blocks apart. The fact that both disappearances happened at about the same time has not been mentioned. He wonders if he should call Rosa Esther and tell her that he’s alive to calm the children, but he immediately nixes the idea: the less she knows, the better for him. Her telephone might be tapped. He also cannot rely on her silence, and he needs time to plan his next move, whatever it might be.

He’s surprised, however, by the lack of curiosity of both the police and the press. It seems to him that they accept everything as it is, at face value. Why not investigate further? There might be a connection between the murder and the disappearance, he conjectures, as if he were a detective assigned to the case. Why did it take Perdomo and Paredes so many days to report his disappearance, and why did they contradict one another?

But then Guillermo thinks he understands: there’s nothing to be gained by connecting the two events. In truth, keeping the investigations separate will in effect contribute to a confusion ideal in preventing both crimes from being solved. Better to move on to investigate or report the next gruesome crime, since every day five to ten Guatemalans are reported missing. Vaporized. Disappeared. Departed. And every week a dozen new bodies appear, with slit throats or chests decorated with bullet holes in the shape of a clover.

Guillermo had assumed that, because he is a lawyer — a respected member of Guatemala’s upper crust — his vanishing would awaken further scrutiny and outrage. He’s not just a pordiosero.

And there are facts worth noting that the reporter skipped. Guillermo was recently separated, his law practice was going south, and the murders of two of his closest friends, father and daughter, remain unsolved. Wouldn’t any of those pieces of information be enough to draw interest in his absence? Maybe it all hinges on the words apparent disappearance . In Guatemala, a country of speculators and myopics, the word apparent has great significance: nothing conjectured is ever really worthy of investigation, until corpses are unearthed.

Indeed, why would the police start a manhunt for a wealthy lawyer, a womanizer, a divorcé? For all anyone knows, Guillermo Rosensweig decided it was time for a change in his life, bought a fake passport, and is living happily in Palermo or Malta, drinking wine and sunning himself, going fishing for sea bass every couple of days, or practicing yoga in Ambergris Caye.