After two weeks of persistent fog and damp and an intermittent drizzle that barely wet anything but penetrated down to one’s bones, this kind of beginning seemed a good omen. Rigoberto’s appointment in the office of the examining magistrate was for ten that morning. Dr. Claudio Arnillas, with his invariable gaudy suspenders and crooked-leg walk, picked him up at nine, as previously arranged. Rigoberto thought this new proceeding before the judge would, like the earlier ones, be a sheer waste of time—stupid questions about his duties and responsibilities as manager of the insurance company, to which he would reply with obvious explanations and equivalent foolishness. But this time he discovered that the twins had escalated their judicial harassment; in addition to paralyzing his retirement process under the pretext of examining his responsibilities and personal income during his years of service at the company, they’d opened a new judicial investigation into an alleged fraudulent action to the detriment of the insurance company in which he had supposedly been an accessory after the fact, a beneficiary, and an accomplice.
