Elías smiled, head lolling forward and back. He said something in Russian and then remained there, kneeling, head bowed forward, the back of his hands on the ground. He wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t going to die until the pain began to fade, to ebb like a wave that had passed over. A tranquil sea in which he could finally relax, and float. And that wasn’t too bad, not too bad at all.
After Laura drove the knife into her father’s back, Gonzalo ran to find their mother and explain incoherently what had happened. When they reached the shed, Laura was sitting with her back against the wall, legs stretched out on the floor. Elías lay on his side at her feet. He was still breathing, although his face was turning the color of olives in September.
“Help me get him up,” Esperanza ordered, but Laura didn’t move. She was in shock, absently scratching the ground with a broken fingernail and banging her head against the wall. Esperanza slapped her hard and shook her shoulders.
“Help me move him!”
Laura blinked, frightened, as though awakening from a bad dream. She saw her father’s body before her, looked at the blood in dismay, glanced back and forth between her mother and brother, and—without a word—obeyed.
Elías was heavy as a ton of bricks, and it was quite a task for mother and daughter to get him into the back of the old Renault. Esperanza got behind the steering wheel and started the engine.
“Go home and put Gonzalo to bed; I’ll be right back. And if anyone comes by asking for your father, not a word. Do you understand me?” She had to repeat her question firmly to startle Laura into doubtful assent.
Gonzalo watched the taillights as the car made its way down the road, finally disappearing around a curve on the way to the lake. The moon slipped behind the trees’ leaves, and what returned was the image of Laura, frozen on the porch, by the door. Now that his father’s body had disappeared and the sound of the car’s engine was fading, she looked like his sister again. As long as he didn’t look her in the eye, he could believe that.
“Nothing happened here, Gonzalo. Do you understand?”
Gonzalo nodded. At that moment, only five years old, when his mind was just beginning to form memories, he decided that indeed, this night had never existed.
30
BARCELONA, NOVEMBER 2002
From the balcony of Luis’s unfinished house, he could see the dense woodlands that extended almost to the sea. Alcázar imagined that Siaka had made it to the road on the other side by now. He tried not to think about it, to keep from regretting his decision. By letting him escape, he’d also let escape the only chance he had of things ending remotely well for him. Alcázar felt around in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and offered one to Gonzalo, who almost refused out of habit. Then something inside him gave a wry smile. What absurd gestures we go through, he thought, to fool ourselves into thinking we haven’t thrown in the towel. He accepted the cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
“I thought you were going to kill Siaka,” Gonzalo said, staring in the same direction. The sea was calm, the sound of the surf gradually making its way over the cliffs to them. The sky was beginning to take on the dusky tones it did every afternoon, bathing their faces in violent colors—oranges, reds, yellows, violets.
Alcázar smoked slowly, savoring the tobacco like a man on death row.
“I thought so, too,” he admitted, “but I told you once: I’m not a murderer. I’ve never killed anyone in my life and I’m not about to start now.”
In spite of that fact, he didn’t tell Gonzalo that when he’d fired the gun it was only in the last fraction of a second that he’d decided to misfire slightly so as to graze Siaka’s cheek and dust his face with plaster. Only at that moment did something tell him that there had been enough senseless death already.
“I hope he got the message: Run and don’t look back.”
Gonzalo turned to glance inside the house. Luis was still handcuffed by the fireplace downstairs, but his cries had died down to a soft whimper, as if he was dreaming. His pant leg had taken on the brownish tone of dried blood and urine.
“What are you going to do with Luis?”
Alcázar shrugged. Maybe Gonzalo should take him to a hospital and leave him there, at the door of the emergency room. Anything he might possibly say or do would be irrelevant within a few hours.
“This is all I need,” Alcázar said, stroking the smooth surface of Laura’s laptop with his thumb. His hostility seemed to have morphed into sad resignation, and this disturbed Gonzalo, who recognized it as the feeling that overtakes those who are about to abandon the fight. It was something commonly seen in soldiers who decided to desert or switch sides, and in those who decided to place themselves—unprotected—in the line of enemy fire at the next opportunity, because they no longer had the strength to keep fighting.
“So, what happens now?”
The ex-inspector finished his cigarette and contemplated the hot ash as it slowly died out. He looked strangely placid. “Whatever is meant to happen. Isn’t that the way it’s always been? Every step we’ve taken, believing it was done of our own free will, was nothing but a dance choreographed by Anna.” Alcázar smiled ruefully on recollecting that he’d talked to her about Igor as though the man was still alive, the high priest of the Matryoshka. He thought of all the years he’d known Anna, how intransigent she was despite her friendly words, the way she left no room for doubt, no loopholes. He thought of the way her unbending will was always made clear in those gray eyes. She’d been the one there the whole time, behind every decision, behind every death.
He turned to Gonzalo and gave him a look approaching admiration, though it was too somber to be affection. One of the things he’d admired about Laura in the beginning, when they met again all those years after the night at the lake, was her happiness. Her smile made everything seem possible. And it made him feel like a better person than he was. Cecilia had been the same way.
“Good people, if you think about it, tend to laugh more than others. I don’t know why, but you end up remembering them by their laughter, their joy. But you’re like your father, Gonzalo. You never laugh, you’re too sensitive, too aware of everything.”
Alcázar glanced at his watch.
“Give me a couple of hours. That will be long enough to visit Laura’s prosecutor friend. Then take Luis to the hospital and go see your father-in-law. Tell him what happened and make sure he understands that you had nothing to do with Siaka getting away or me ending up with the laptop. Lie. Tell him I threatened you, tell him whatever you want.”
“But without Siaka, the evidence on the laptop is useless.”
Alcázar exhaled deeply. Night fell so quickly in November, he noted. Cecilia preferred the summer, sitting at the window watching dusk go on forever. He did, too, he liked standing close behind her, his arms wrapped around her, absently stroking her head as she leaned back into him to trap his hand. Cecilia would close her eyes and say that it was beautiful to be alive. Yes, it was. Or it had been.
“It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t testify. In fact, I think the prosecutor will prefer my testimony.”
Gonzalo blinked. “You’ll be sent to prison. Or worse.”
“Worse. The good thing about fear, Gonzalo, is that once you’re free of it, it suddenly stops crippling you. I’m old, and tired, and sick of being used and manipulated. One way or another, my fate is sealed, but you have something you still need to do and that’s what you should focus on: Keep your family safe. Take care of your son and daughter, and don’t let the Matryoshka hurt them.”
With that, Alcázar and his bushy gray mustache, shaved head, and droopy shoulders walked away.
“Would you have done it?”
Alcázar turned and gazed back at him, one eyebrow arched. “Done what?”
“At the breakwater that day, you threatened to kidnap my daughter if I didn’t get out of your and Agustín’s w
ay. Would you have hurt her?”
The ex-inspector’s look was so cold it hurt.
Two hours later, Luis was nearly unconsciousness. Gonzalo examined the wound on his ex-brother-in-law’s knee. It didn’t look good. Rock climbing, skiing, horseback riding, and riding a motorcycle could all be crossed off the list: His Roman centurion body was going to be on crutches for life. Gonzalo unlocked the handcuffs with the keys Alcázar had given him and lifted Luis by the armpits, helping him stand. Luis swore under his breath, cursing the pain.
“I need your car keys.”
“Are you turning me in to the police?”
Gonzalo still didn’t know what he was going to do.
“For now, I’m taking you to a hospital, though what I should do is let you lie here and bleed out. You’re a sick, evil son of a bitch.”
Luis tucked a lock of hair behind his ear in an absurd attempt to maintain style. He glared at Gonzalo in restrained rage. “You shouldn’t have let Siaka go. And you shouldn’t have let the inspector walk out like that. They betrayed her.”
Gonzalo squeezed the cuffs in his hand like brass knuckles and fought the urge to smash them into Luis’s pretty-boy face to destroy his flawless features.
“What about you? Didn’t you betray her? Weren’t you the one who pushed her to take her own life?”
He grabbed Luis by the lapels and kicked his wounded knee. His ex-brother-in-law howled in pain and fell like a rotted tree. Gonzalo watched him squirm without an ounce of compassion, lips trembling, body shaking with rage, dried up old rage that was now gushing forth, coming back to life.
“When Roberto died, what did you do? You accused her, destroyed her, simply because you could, because deep down you’re the kind of vulture who feeds off of those weaker than yourself. And then what did you do? You took off to London, got a divorce, and left her to spiral into self-destruction as you watched from the distance, reveling in what you saw because you thought she deserved it. Who the fuck do you think you are—God? You’re a piece of shit, a coward and a scumbag! Don’t you dare talk to me about justice, because all I can think of right now is bashing your skull in with an iron rod. So shut the fuck up before I regret my decision.”
Luis squirmed like a worm that’s been cut in two, but he kept his mouth shut. He’d never seen Gonzalo with such fury in his eyes and realized the man would carry out his threat without thinking twice.
They struggled the last few yards to Luis’s car, moving carefully. Luis weighed too much for Gonzalo, who huffed and snorted like an exhausted horse. After stopping countless times, he managed to get his ex-brother-in-law into the passenger seat. As soon as he stuck the key in the ignition, music began to play: one of Chopin’s nocturnes.
How appropriate, Gonzalo thought, pulling out.
It took no more than fifteen minutes to reach the city. Driving along Ronda de Dalt, Gonzalo quickly made it to Valle de Hebrón hospital and drove straight into the emergency parking lot—the one reserved for ambulances. When a security guard came to tell him off, Gonzalo said he that he had a gravely injured man who’d been shot. The guard immediately radioed in and asked him not to move until the police arrived.
Gonzalo had no intention of going anywhere. He was going to tell the truth, all of it, regardless of how bizarre and far-fetched it sounded. Perhaps Alcázar was signing his confession with Laura’s prosecutor and the examining judge at the same time, telling the same version that Gonzalo had decided to tell the police. Alcázar had given him good advice: Take care of his family, his kids. That’s what he was going to do. He had no intention of letting Anna Akhmatova manipulate him at will.
The paramedics and on-call doctor rushed over, tending to Luis as Gonzalo stood to one side.
“She told me, once, what your father used to do to her when she was a girl,” Luis said, grabbing hold of Gonzalo’s wrist. Gonzalo could hardly make out the words, with so many voices speaking at once and Luis moaning in pain. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to.
The sun shone directly into his eyes as he walked out of the police station. The empty streets smelled damp; it had just rained and a dawn chill was in the air. Gonzalo wished he had a cigarette. His eyelids were heavy, drooping after hours spent giving testimony. In his jacket pocket was a summons to appear before the judge in a few days’ time, in theory as a witness. There were officers with Luis in the hospital room where he was recovering after an emergency operation, agents who would wait for him to wake from the anesthesia before officially informing him that he was under arrest for murder, attempted murder, torture, and unlawful detention. Was Gonzalo satisfied with that? Not in the slightest. Discovering that his sister was innocent only to find that it was her husband who’d been the murderer was not what he’d expected.
Nothing was what he’d expected.
Eyes were watching him from a car window across the street, waiting for him. Gonzalo couldn’t deny that he was happy to see Tania. Perhaps after what he and Alcázar had just set in motion, Anna Akhmatova’s daughter was not the best person for him to be seen with in front of a police station, but he was exhausted and needed to take refuge—even if for only a few minutes—in her smile, the smile of the woman he now knew he was falling in love with.
Tania couldn’t conceal her nervousness when Gonzalo got into her car. She stroked his stubbly, pale, flaccid jaw.
“How did you know I’d be here?” he asked.
She kissed his chapped lips and had the urge to linger over them, to soothe him, but Gonzalo swiftly closed the door on that possibility, at least for the moment. It was inevitable, she thought sadly, for mistrust to have risen between them like a shadow. It was up to her to make sure it didn’t turn into a wall, and the best way to do that was to be blunt and not beat around the bush.
“Alcázar called my mother to tell her what happened and what he was planning to do. If I’m not mistaken, by now he’s given his statement and the police will have a warrant to search your father-in-law’s office. And quite probably yours as well.”
Gonzalo thought about calling Luisa but realized it was unnecessary. If Tania was right, no doubt his assistant was in the loop, and as soon as it happened she’d be the one to phone him.
“And what about your mother?”
Tania took off his glasses and began cleaning the lenses. He hadn’t realized until that moment how dirty they were. For a minute, Tania’s face went blurry but her voice remained clear.
“They have nothing on her. My mother would never risk being caught by a signature or compromising document. Stern trained her too well for that. Officially, she’s just an old woman who runs a neighborhood bookstore. Of course, there will still be consequences. The corporations in the ACASA consortium will be investigated and the ones your father-in-law represents will pull out of the lake development immediately.”
“Which means…”
“…that they’ll halt all construction. There’s been too much commotion already—environmental organizations, police raids, neighborhood protests. With Agustín González being charged, that will be the final blow. My mother’s associates don’t like attention; they’ll go back into hiding and wait for another opportunity. In Spain there’s always another opportunity.”
But that wasn’t what Gonzalo was thinking about, and although the idea of his arrogant father-in-law’s downfall was appealing, he worried about the position it would put Lola and the kids in. Lola might have found out by now—if not, she’d hear about it this morning—and she would need Gonzalo by her side, to comfort her. And here he was letting Tania fuss over him, longing to go to her apartment and make love to her to the point of exhaustion and then fall into a deep sleep in her arms, the smell of her hair tickling his nose.
But what he was thinking about was Laura, and his mother, and the empty grave where only shrubs seemed to survive, only weeds seemed to bury their roots. If they didn’t end up dredging the lake,
perhaps they’d never find out what happened to his father’s body that night—whether it was dumped in the lake as his mother maintained, or taken someplace else as Alcázar had always claimed. Maybe it was better this way, he thought, better to let still waters lie, not to make waves, to allow the secrets to remain hidden. And maybe it was also better for him to get out of the car right now, say goodbye to Tania forever, forget about the beautiful butterfly on her neck fluttering like a promise. Maybe he should go back to Lola and the kids, promise to take care of everything, do what was expected, take over Agustín’s firm, and fight Anna Akhmatova head-on until he could finally pull off the mask, as Laura had.
Perhaps it was better to forget some offenses and tackle others, pick a side and remain loyal to it.
He took his glasses from Tania’s hands and put them back on. The contours of her face came clear, and he examined her with poorly disguised concern and then shook his head.
“I don’t know if I can trust you, Tania. I don’t know which parts of you are true. You’re her daughter.”
Tania said simply, “And you’re Elías Gil’s son, and Esperanza’s son. But here we are, and it’s time that we live our own history.”
Tania spent the next twenty minutes telling him everything she knew about the Matryoshka—what she knew for certain, what she intuited, and what she suspected. She also tried to convince him that Anna had never hated Gonzalo or Laura, that she’d always set them apart from her fights with Elías and her resentment, and that Anna had had nothing to do with Roberto’s death.
A Million Drops Page 59