NO ONE KNEW what Hernán Gallego did with his money. He’d been in politics for almost fifty years: nearly half a century with his claws in the public purse. Common sense insisted that he must have salted away millions, but he lived as quietly as a spider in a monastery outhouse. His colleagues amused themselves with rumors that he’d built a fabulous domain in the far South and populated it with fabulous prostitutes. Male prostitutes, possibly. (He’d never married.)

In fact, he never left the capital unless it was on government business, and then reluctantly. He lived where he worked. The new and expanded Ministry of Internal Security occupied a glittering crescent of glass-and-steel offices in a floodlit emptiness. Within this crescent, embraced by it, was a garden: an expanse of ruthlessly maintained lawns and geometric flower beds. And at the end of this garden, just within the security walls, was the old, original ministry: a three-story building with a classical Spanish facade disguising drab and functional offices. One quarter of the top floor was an apartment intended for officials to overnight in at times of crisis.

Gallego had occupied these rooms for eleven years and had never troubled to refurbish them. He had, however, installed in one of the smaller rooms a big plasma-screen digital television with surround sound, and a pair of huge leather armchairs that resembled crouching pachyderms.

On this evening of premature darkness he occupies one of these chairs and Nestor Brabanta the other. Brabanta is drinking the cognac that he has had the foresight to bring with him. Gallego is, as usual, drinking Pepsi. He has a four-pack, uncooled, close to his feet. They are watching the extended early news.

“Ha!” Gallego exclaims. And again, like a darting crow: “Ha!”

The screen shows the press conference that Hilario Nemiso has been pressured into giving. It is an unruly affair, and the NTV cameraman is having to shift position to get an unobstructed view of the proceedings. Nemiso himself sits at the center of a table along which microphones are ranged. To his left, three other police officers: a stout young dark-haired woman named Navarro and two men from the CCB’s legal department. To his right, but at some distance, sits a severely handsome woman who gazes out at the melee with barely disguised disdain. Camera flash flickers like sheet lightning over all five faces.

“Who’s she?” Gallego says.

“Consuela Perlman. My daughter’s lawyer. And mine, now and again.”

Gallego gleams at his friend. “Excellent. Can’t do any harm to have an uppity Jew getting in on the act, eh?”

On screen, Nemiso manages to impose something like silence on his impatient congregation.

“I repeat, I shall take a limited number of questions after I have read a statement.”

“By God,” Gallego croaks happily, “that poker-faced prig is really rattled, isn’t he?”

Nemiso reads from a typescript. He is noisily interrupted several times, and when this happens he stares unspeaking and expressionless into the middle distance until he can once again make himself heard.

“I have called this press conference in order to correct inaccurate, irresponsible, and misleading reports in the press and other media relating to the investigation into the murder of Bianca Diaz. I hope — indeed, I expect — that this statement will forestall the appearance of further stories of this kind. They are extremely unhelpful to us, the police. They are also deeply injurious to the reputation of Otello.” Here he glances at Perlman.

“Pompous fool,” Gallego mutters over the sounds of protest, and some jeering, that come from the TV set.

It takes Nemiso fifteen minutes to get through a speech that should have taken him five.

“To conclude, and to ensure that there is no misunderstanding: Otello was not arrested. He was not taken into custody. He is not, and never was, a suspect in this case.”

“Shit will stick, though, eh, Nestor?”

“Otello has cooperated fully and willingly with the Special Investigations Unit. In fact, he and Señora Brabanta provided us with information that has proved very useful, and we are grateful to them. Our search for the killer of Bianca Diaz continues.”

Babble erupts. Nemiso points into the mob, leaning forward and cupping his ear. He has to ask for the question to be repeated. Brabanta and Gallego manage to hear only part of it.

“. . . take Otello’s computer away for examination?”

“It is perfectly normal police procedure in cases like these,” Nemiso says, and turns his eyes away from the questioner. But there is uproar among which only isolated words and phrases can be made out.

“. . . three days?”

“. . . you mean, cases like these?”

“Captain, Captain . . .”

“. . . child pornography . . .”

Nemiso sits out the hubbub. He is clearly struggling to mask his anger and contempt. He looks like a furious Buddha.

“I thought . . . I am deeply disappointed that individuals in this room are raising the subject of child pornography. I thought I had made it perfectly clear that child pornography has nothing whatsoever to do with this case.”

Interruptions.

“I repeat: the pictures of Bianca Diaz on Otello’s computer were entirely, ah, legitimate. They were not, any of them, in any way, pornographic. Otello and Desmerelda . . .”

Gallego says, “Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed anything this much. Isn’t it excellent? Because it doesn’t matter what Nemiso says. It doesn’t matter how many libel writs your Jewish woman throws around. Our gloriously scabby press is not going to let Otello off the hook. And Nemiso has made such a mess-up of the whole thing that I’ll have every reason to transfer him to San Juan or some other godforsaken hole up North to take charge of the traffic department.”

He takes a celebratory swig of Pepsi. “You know the only thing that riles me, Nestor?”

From the depths of his chair, Brabanta makes a sound — something like “Gnuh” — that encourages Gallego to continue.

“It’s that we didn’t organize this. I said, didn’t I, before the election, that this is exactly the kind of thing we should do. Stitch the black so-and-so up, neuter him. Silence him. You remember that, Nestor? Eh?”

Brabanta does not reply. A few moments earlier he’d experienced a wave of tiredness so extreme that he’d had difficulty swallowing the cognac in his mouth. The television had lurched out of focus. He couldn’t see anything clearly that was farther away than his shoes. He’d forced himself to sit more upright, but as he’d done so, he’d felt as though something was trickling down the front of his face. He could not imagine what it was. It was like blood trickling from his scalp. He’d tried to wipe it away, but his arm and hand refused to move. Then a darkness moved over his brain like the curtain at the end of a play. He could almost hear the swish of it, feel the stroke of its hem.

When he wakes up, Hernán is peering at him around the side of his chair, repeating the word Nestor.

Brabanta says, “It’s all right. I’m just a bit drunk,” but it’s as if he is mumbling into a pillow on a bed that is a great distance away.

Gallego does not hear him. “Nestor? For God’s sake, man. What’s wrong with you? Nestor!”

Brabanta gazes up at him with a comical, lopsided leer on his face. His left eye winks. “Shnight. Shnunk. Wassarm?”

“Hell’s teeth, Nestor,” Gallego says. Then he sees the way Brabanta’s right hand is cupped inward, connects that with the foolish droop on one side of the face and the mute pleading of the one good eye.

“Jesus,” Gallego murmurs, and goes to the intercom. He hits the red button that will summon his men, two of whom are paramedics.