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?”
“Hehada family. Even though both Gomez and his wife were university educated they didn’t have much money. They lived in a tiny house in West Phillips 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 realized 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 worried 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 doyouthink, Detective Oz?”
Bob watched through the window as a couple passed arm in arm, 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 organization, right 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 recognize no limits. And they have these incredible weapons. Because it feelsgoodto 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?”
“Day labor. 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.
