Asking that his name be withheld, a former employee of Tunkul, a popular eatery and bar at the edge of town, relates how Mayor Gamez and six cohorts from South America, all inebriated, showed up after midnight insisting on being served. Told that the kitchen was closed and the bartender had gone home, Gamez pulled a gun from his belt, cocked the hammer and jammed the muzzle between the waiter's eyes. Gamez earns a modest salary. He drives a late-model car and owns a large house in the center of town. When it comes to bad news, Copanecos react with robotic conformity.
Silence being the simplest form of disinformation, they say nothing or change the subject.
If pressed, they deny and abjure events that still give them nightmares. It's gossip in reverse. When persistent probing and insightful conjecture meet with stony silence, when doors slam shut, when friendly smiles turn to scowl, the truth, hideous and foul, is surely lurking underfoot like a viper squeezing beneath a rock. Asking too many questions, in a hamlet that pulls in its sidewalks at dusk, is as perilous an endeavor as it is brazen. Efforts to shed light on the unsolved Candido Amador affair have driven this point home and forced this writer to make a hasty retreat a year ago.