“On the third floor,” Hi said, “Room 67.”
“Looking out on the back, what? Well, looking out on the front wouldn’t have been much more cheerful. The palace, the Santiago and the cathedral. I’d like to raze them all three and start afresh.
“By the way, about your Santiago. I am a night bird. I pass the back of that hotel at night at two in the morning. You can get in at the back through the cellar-grating. The negro waiters run a gambling hell there; fan-tan, what? They also do a private trade in the hotel liquor. And now forgive me everybody for being so late.”
“You are scandalously late, Manuel,” Rosa said. “You deserve no lunch.”
“I want no lunch,” he said, “but coffee and some bread. I am late, because I have been tracking a crime. Estifanio Artigas was murdered in this city last night.”
“Then it was murder?”
“We were talking of him a moment since.”
“That will be death to the poor mother; her only child.”
“There is more than this,” Carlotta said. “The murder was planned. By whom?”
“The Murder Gang of the Palace. A club of young criminals headed by Don José, the son of our Dictator, Mr. Ridden. They murdered the lad in that tunnel or passage where the windmills used to be. I have been with the murderer. Here’s a copy of his confession, made before Chacon, the notary. I’ve sent copies of it to Chavez and Hermengildo, as well as to your brother, Carlotta. Who could want food after this? Now the Whites move again; we have a cause and a case.