It suddenly seemed more than obvious what all the information on the computer was: Laura’s investigation, the reason she’d lost her son and husband, the thing she’d been obsessed with all that time. So these names and numbers…
Gonzalo opened the next folder of photographs.
He gagged and almost vomited pineapple juice onto the keyboard. There were hundreds of images of children, some very young—almost babies—who’d been horrifically abused. Many of the photos were hard-core porn so explicit they’d make anyone want to jump out a window.
“Good God, Laura, how could you cope with all of this alone?”
He closed the folder, feeling sick, and went to the window. His fingers trembled as he lit a cigarette. He had promised Lola he wouldn’t smoke, but what the fuck did it matter now? Inhaling deeply, he felt a sob rising up in his throat. How was this even possible? How could such depravity exist in the world? Gonzalo wasn’t naïve, he was a lawyer, knew the ins and outs of human misery, how nasty people could behave, but this…It was beyond all conception. Again he inhaled deeply, looking out at the night. Peaceful, calm, serene. A couple leaned against the hood of a car, kissing, laughing, kissing again. Gonzalo felt the urge to tell them to run, to get as far away as they could, as fast as possible, before the depravity caught up. How could Laura have kept seeing the world after descending to these pits of hell?
It took more than an hour before he could return to the laptop. He delved in with no idea what he was after, opening files and folders, and then once more tried the one labeled Confidential. This time he tried Roberto as a password, but the window popped up again, now warning him he had only one more try. He decided not to waste it.
What should he do with all this? Go to the police, of course. He thought about calling Inspector Alcázar immediately; he’d know what to do. The case on Laura and Zinoviev was closed, but it would have to be reopened in light of this new evidence. They would order a thorough investigation. He picked up the phone, but something stopped him, a question that had been buzzing in the back of his mind from the start: Why had someone sent him his sister’s computer?
The answer was there, he was certain, in the folder he couldn’t open. The password had to be somewhere. It was absurd for whoever had sent it to him to give him access to the laptop, the photos of child pornography, all of this information, and yet deny him entry to that one folder. He went back to the box. Tucked into the flaps he caught sight of the corner of a gray business card bearing the logo of a five-star hotel. His heart began to pound as he picked it up; perhaps it contained the password to the confidential file.
Instead, he found a laconic warning: If you tell anyone about this, we’ll both be dead. Believe me.
There was an address, too, where the person instructed him to be three days later, at a specific time, along with a threat: If Gonzalo didn’t show up, or went to the police, the unidentified person would disappear forever.
When he got home an hour later—home to the house he shared with Lola and the kids—Gonzalo sat down in his daughter’s room to watch her sleep. She smelled so good and her face was so trusting; she was so happy, so fragile. He thought of the nights that Laura, too, must have spent at the foot of her little one’s bed, watching him sleep, trusting, safe, protected. He imagined the anguish she must have felt stroking his face after having seen all those other children. And then, when her son was no longer there, she must have kept sitting on his empty bed, stroking the pillow, the sheets, his pajamas.
Gonzalo wept. He wept silently like he’d never wept in his life.
That night he crossed the invisible border separating him from Lola and spooned with her, shaping himself against her bent legs, draping an arm over her waist and telling her he loved her. Lola didn’t hear him, but her body did and responded to Gonzalo’s touch, surprised and pleased.
In the morning he was another man, he wanted to be another man. Lola and Patricia, each in her own way, realized that something was different, and the change—or the will to change, at least—surprised them both; they were hesitant in their joy. Gonzalo had gotten up before them and made a continental breakfast that, for lack of experience, was excessive: juice, toast, coffee, cereal; he’d even tried to replicate Laura’s fruit salad, a valiant but fraught attempt that ended up wasting half of the fruit. The kitchen curtains were open, as if he’d wanted the sunlight to bear witness to this declaration of intent. The vase of flowers he had placed on the table was in the way and took up too much room, but Lola appreciated the gesture and wasn’t upset at Gonzalo for not knowing that her routine breakfast was nothing but a large coffee, or that Patricia was allergic to grapefruit juice.
When Gonzalo said good morning, kissing Lola on the lips, he felt a little shudder of both joy and guilt. There was nothing new in the way Patricia launched herself into his arms as though she were still four years old, but what was different was his renewed devotion to her that morning. They sat at the table with fresh excitement. Gonzalo was chatty and witty in his own spare, awkward way; what counted was the clear determination to emerge from his recent stagnation. Lola observed without daring to participate in the forced joy, fearing that his song and dance would be short-lived. She also wondered why he felt the need to stage all of this, to stroke her hand under the table, gaze into her eyes, sweet-talk Patricia. She mistook the reason.
“What are we celebrating? The merger?”
Gonzalo’s expression contorted for a fraction of a second, which translated into too much butter on the tip of his knife.
“Not yet. I don’t want to rush into such an important decision.”
Given his outpouring of effort, Lola was willing to overlook Gonzalo’s shortcomings that morning, but this response disconcerted her.
“There’s no alternative, I thought it was all set.”
He picked up on the arrogant presumptuousness in her tone, but today he was able to endure it.
“I can’t renounce eight years of struggling to survive as an independent attorney just like that, Lola.” He made sure to restrain the damper in his tone, and this prompted her not to continue and thereby ruin what had started off so well.
But the black cloud was back between them already. It wasn’t yet evident, but things remained festive only because of Patricia’s incessant chatter. At that moment she intuited something special, realized that in some way it was her turn to keep it alive. Her parents tacitly acquiesced, compensating her effort by laughing, chatting about things both serious and frivolous, trying to end breakfast pleasantly.
“Where’s the family hermit? I didn’t see him in his bed last night,” Gonzalo said finally. He couldn’t conceal the slightly mocking tone that annoyed Lola, always on the lookout for signs of the subdued battle Gonzalo waged with his offspring. Each time her husband attacked Javier, she took it personally.
“I told him he could sleep at a friend’s house.”
“What friend? He’s seventeen years old, it would make sense for him to sleep at home. I bet they spent all night studying,” he said ironically. He was trying to be lighthearted, but Lola picked up on the paternal contempt. Words seduce, they create moods, and Gonzalo specialized in destroying those moods. By the time they cleared the dishes, the charm offensive he had so hopefully launched in the attempt to win Lola back had failed abysmally, leaving in its place a sad, disheartening emptiness.
“Last night there was more graffiti on the wall. The neighbors are starting to get upset; no one wants a psychopath wandering the neighborhood, and I’m started to get worried, too,” Lola said flatly, as though Gonzalo himself were the perpetrator.
He understood immediately her look of warning. Until now he hadn’t paid much attention to the threats. He’d been too busy dealing with Laura’s death, as well as trying to project a restrained response by making light of the matter so as not to scare his family. But the fact was that after the first time it had happened, Gon
zalo bought an old gun, which he kept hidden in the garage, out of the kids’ reach. Not even Lola knew he had it, she’d never have allowed it. Gonzalo had no intention of using the thing, in fact he didn’t even know how to aim. It was a preventative measure. But it wasn’t enough. He had to do something.
Miranda Acebedo must have been a real looker in her day. A copper-haired beauty who no doubt captivated the many tourists traveling to Cuba in search of women like her. The walls of her modest hair salon were covered in mementos from her time as a showgirl in the dance halls of luxury hotels. She danced moderately well, especially cumbia—which wasn’t even Cuban but the tourists didn’t care, as long as she shook her curvy hips and wore flouncy skirts as skimpy as her sequined bras. The pianist Bebo Valdés once heard her sing and told her she had talent. But talent counts for nothing if it doesn’t also come with luck.
“I’d rather be a hooker than a beggar,” Miranda told Gonzalo the first time she came to his office, a year and a half ago. She’d walked in with a black eye and one arm in a plaster cast. Friends had signed the cast and drawn cartoons on it, but they’d also left her alone with the man who swore before God to love and protect her when she married him in Havana and began abusing her before they’d even landed in Barcelona.
Miranda wanted to get divorced and take her husband, Floren Atxaga, for everything he had. I want him to pay for every day of hell he’s put me through, was the way she’d put it. Gonzalo had bent over backward to get her to file domestic abuse charges. It was the only way she’d be able to lose the husband but keep the apartment where—for better or for worse—she’d raised her two kids, the “mestizo bastards,” as Atxaga called them. Gonzalo himself had accompanied her to the police station, advised her throughout the trial and, after endless litigation, managed to get her a divorce and the house, and him four years prison on charges of rape, battery, and psychological abuse. Miranda was so thankful that she’d made him an amazing caramelized banana-and-yam dessert, and at the end of the meal offered to dance for him. Gonzalo had taken her up on the dessert but chosen to leave before being trapped by the dance.
There was nothing left of that Miranda in the woman now standing at the door in a washed-out quilted bathrobe.
“They shouldn’t have given him that furlough; they had to know he’d run,” she lamented, pained by the obvious.
Gonzalo said nothing. Life always stopped living up to expectations the moment you began to expect too much from it. And Miranda had hit the jackpot when it came to assholes.
“Has he come around?”
She shook her head, terrified at the possibility.
“The police have stopped by a couple of times, and they gave me a phone number. As if I could protect myself from the pig with that,” she said, pointing to an Office of Victim Assistance card magneted to the refrigerator.
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“Out looking for some other gullible fool to fall into his trap.”
“Brothels, bingo parlors?”
Miranda smiled as though ready to bark.
“No, no. Floren’s a Sunday Mass kind of man. Doesn’t smoke, drink, or gamble—even on checkers—and he definitely doesn’t go whoring. Even hookers would laugh at his pathetic little dick. He’s all smiles and good manners, with a stray-dog look to break your heart. He kept it up until we got married and moved here. Then he started in on me about my Cuban friends, began criticizing me for reading books—he called it an obsession, said I was trying to act like an intellectual. He said I read all the time just to make him look bad for being uneducated, like I was some nuclear engineer, even though all I ever read were dime-store novels. Then he started in on me for singing all the time, as if I did it to make fun of him. The first time he hit me was because he couldn’t get it up. The second time it was because he couldn’t get it all the way up. The third, because I got pregnant. By the fourth time he stopped bothering with excuses. But I’ll tell you this, we never missed Sunday Mass and then roast chicken lunch at the in-laws’, me wearing my best face even if sometimes the bruises on it were so dark that not even makeup could hide them.”
“Which church did he go to?”
“One in the neighborhood, close to here, Our Lady of Lourdes.”
Gonzalo craned his neck into the living room. Sprawled on the sofa, a honey-skinned teenager watched TV with a bored air. He must have been about fifteen, Miranda’s older son. If Floren Atxaga turned up, this kid didn’t exactly look set to defend her.
“I don’t think he’ll show his face; he knows the police are looking for him. But if he does come around, don’t hesitate to call me, any time of day.”
Gonzalo noticed a scratch behind Miranda’s ear, deep and recent. And when her robe fell open as she moved forward, he caught sight of a bluish shadow on one shoulder.
“Are you seeing anyone now, Miranda?”
Quickly, she pulled the robe tight around her, covering her shoulder.
“A nice man. If that monster Floren shows up, he’ll show him what’s what. A woman needs protection, right?”
Gonzalo felt heavy with resignation. Bad luck was like a vocation for some people. Some mistakes last a lifetime. That’s what he saw in her look—that, and fear, sadness, and pity. No pride and no love.
“Will you call me if your ex-husband makes any attempt to contact you?”
She said yes, but Gonzalo knew she wouldn’t do it. Just as he knew that one day Miranda’s body would be flung from the balcony and land on the shiny hood of a car parked below. By any one of the countless Atxagas prowling the planet in search of their next prey.
He thought of Laura’s laptop and once more debated taking it to Alcázar. There were too many wolves in the world, and he, despite his desire to be the opposite, was nothing but a sheep. It was all too much for him, a simple civil attorney. His only foray into criminal territory had ended up forcing him to buy a rusty revolver because he felt threatened by an altar boy who tortured his wife. If he couldn’t deal with that, how was he possibly going to confront the tidal wave that had swept his sister away? He was tempted to call the inspector, but the warning that the stranger had placed in the box dissuaded him. With the phone still in his hand, Gonzalo decided he would give it three days, meet whoever had left him the laptop, and then make up his mind. Meanwhile, he’d inform the police of Atxaga’s threats and call a security company to come install cameras on his property. Lola would rest easier, and he would regain at least some of the feeling that he was capable of handling this threat.
Rather than call Alcázar, he dialed Lola. He wanted to tell her that breakfast hadn’t been a fluke. He was going to take care of the graffiti issue; he would keep them safe, never let anything happen to them.
“Is Javier back?” he asked. Lola said no, and Gonzalo sensed concern in her voice.
It was an adequate room, that was about as much as you could say for it. There was hardly enough space for the creaky double bed, its faded magenta-colored mattress covered in bleach stains. Folded-down sheets were tucked beneath the pillows. The only window was misaligned in the sash and there was a TV hanging immediately above it, which made opening the window problematic. There was nothing to see anyway, just a heap of cement cylinders covered in bird shit. He turned on the bathroom light and the fluorescent bulb buzzed like a trapped dragonfly. The sink’s brass faucet was leaking and had left a rust stain trailing down to the drain. A bar of soap, with no sanitary seal, had been placed in one corner of the shower. The toilet tank had no cover, and when water ran through the pipes on the floors above his, the floater bobbed.
He went back to the bed, took off his shoes without untying the laces, and lay down, interlacing his fingers behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. The smell of deodorant wafted into his nostrils. Javier wondered how many people had been in this bed before him, perhaps just hours ago, hiding from the world, furtive as criminals. He�
�d certainly seen nicer places.
“Kind of a strange place for us to meet.”
“You don’t like the view? It’s spectacular.”
Carlos had taken off his shirt and draped it over the back of a chair. He was counting the money Javier had given him.
“This isn’t enough, I need more than this.”
“It’s all I could get. I’m not your personal ATM.”
Carlos frowned, disappointed. He was about to say something but then thought better of it. Instead he lay down next to Javier and kissed him full on the lips. Javier flinched, a look of repulsion on his face. Carlos watched, calm and scornful. It was as if he could read Javier’s thoughts and was mocking them.
“What’s with the face?”
His eyes hurt Javier, physically hurt him, as if they were making incisions on his skin. Suddenly he saw Carlos for the crass hustler he was, and everything about him seemed petty and unsettling. He’d seemed like an interesting guy when they first met, five months ago. Carlos had sat down next to him one night at a gay bar. At first he didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at him. He ordered a soft drink and sat watching the dance floor. “My name is Carlos,” he’d eventually said, turning to Javier, shaking peanuts like dice in his hand and flashing a smile full of promises. A worldly guy, no ties, no moral qualms, a free spirit who took what he wanted when he wanted it and went on his merry way. That’s what he’d seemed like. Javier had seen too late the error of his judgment.
It was, of course, no coincidence that Carlos had sat down beside him. He’d targeted him the second he walked into the bar. It was a matter of laying eyes on him and knowing that Javier would be his next victim. “First time?” he’d asked, placing a warm palm near Javier’s crotch. The combination of that hand and Carlos’s empty expression should have set off warning bells, but he was burning with desire. An hour later Javier was crammed into the backseat of Carlos’s gray Ford, giving his first blow job as Depeche Mode played in the background. He’d never guessed that the taste of a hard penis could be so sweet, despite having fantasized about it a thousand times. And when he felt Carlos’s breath on his own crotch, felt the explosion of pleasure and guilt at ejaculating into his mouth, he was hooked. Since then, Carlos had him eating out of the palm of his hand like a helpless little sparrow. Whenever he called, Javier came running, no matter what time it was or what he was doing, if it meant he could spend a few minutes with him. Sometimes Carlos didn’t show up, and the next time they saw each other he wouldn’t even bother giving an explanation.
A Million Drops Page 15