“Maybe. On the other hand, Major Ventura was in the casino last night, which meant there were plenty of police in and around the hotel. I can’t see that anyone who had just shot someone dead would risk running into a cop with a gun that had just been fired six or seven times. Especially if this was a professional killer. Frankly, it looks professional. It takes a cool head to fire that many shots and hit the target several times and expect to get away with it. An amateur would probably have panicked and missed more. Maybe even dropped the gun here. My guess is that he just dumped the gun somewhere on his way out of the hotel. In my experience, all sorts of stuff can get smuggled in and out of a hotel as big as this. Waiters walk around with covered trays. Porters carry bags. Maybe the killer just dropped the gun in a laundry basket.”

Captain Sánchez called one of his men and ordered a search to be made of the Campo de Marte and the hotel laundry baskets.

I went back into the office and, tiptoeing around the bloodstains, stared down at Max Reles. There was something covered with a handkerchief: something bloody that had leaked through the cotton. “What’s that?” I asked the captain when he had finished giving orders to his men.

“His eyeball. It must have popped out when one of the bullets exited the victim’s head.”

I nodded. “Then that’s a hell of a thirty-eight. You might expect that with a forty-five, but not a thirty-eight. May I see the bullet you found, Captain?”

Sánchez handed over the bullet.

I looked at it and nodded. “No, I think you’re right, it does look like a thirty-eight. But something must have given this bullet an extra velocity.”

“Such as?”

“I have no idea.”

“You were a detective, señor?”

“It was a very long time ago. And I didn’t mean to suggest that you don’t know your job, Captain. I’m sure that you have your own way of handling an investigation. But Mr. Lansky here asked me what I thought, and I told him.”

Captain Sánchez sucked the little cigarillo and then dropped it on the floor of the crime scene. He said, “You said Major Ventura was in the casino last night. Does that mean you were here also?”