Crocodile Tears

by mercedes Rosende

  What’s he doing here? And why is he out of prison? The case ended with Ricardo being found guilty; she doesn’t remember the sentence, but she knows they put him away for a good few years. What’s he doing in the park, this man who was found guilty of killing Auntie Irene? she asks herself, anxiously we suspect, if he has proved his innocence.

  He doesn’t know her, she’s certain he never saw her face, but the guy still makes her feel anxious; her conscience weighing on her, she feels the need to get away as quickly as possible. But, despite the urgings of her common sense, she knows she won’t leave. She skirts round a post, heads for a clump of three bushes, conceals herself behind the branches and waits. We’ve been here before: there’s nobody quite like her when it comes to spying without being seen.

  The woman from the first floor comes out of the building and down the stairs, two steps at a time. Ursula watches the other Ursula from her hiding place; she’s already crossing the street towards the park. The other woman takes the inner path and starts to do her warm-ups against a tree, swinging her arms, stretching her leg muscles. This time she’s added a quilted jacket to her usual outfit. Ricardo is standing next to the trunk of an ancient acacia tree; he’s seen her cross the road, he’s following her with his gaze, there’s no doubt he’s staring at her quite brazenly, he doesn’t care about going unnoticed, he’s not making the slightest effort not to be seen. The woman doesn’t seem to notice his presence until he approaches and they exchange a few words. It seems like a trivial conversation, maybe commenting on the weather or asking for the time. She finishes her stretches without hurrying and sets off at a gentle trot, warming up. The guy watches her go, follows her with his eyes and then walks after her, about twenty yards behind, at most. Every now and then he stops and looks.

  Ursula waits, picks up the pink handbag she had placed on the ground, removes a damp flyer that is stuck to it. Grand Concert: San Francisco Philharmonic. Villa Biarritz Park. Free entry.

  XVII

  He buys new clothes in a shop in the centre, the first one he sees when he gets off, very close to where the prison bus leaves him – some warm trousers, two checked shirts and a woollen jacket, a pair of good shoes – and when he comes out he still has some of the money Ricardo loaned him. He doesn’t care that it’s not a lot, all Diego cares about is getting somewhere, having a shower, turning back into a person. Starting again.

  It’s damp outside, and a yellow fog emerges from the drains and wraps itself around the lights on the avenue. This is neither the time nor the place to go sightseeing, but he comes out of the shop and starts walking. It’s just three blocks from here to Plaza Independencia. As we were saying, he comes out of the shop, raises his jacket collar and follows a route of grimy bars and sorry businesses, of closed storefronts with For Sale signs, of massage parlours and Korean mini-markets, making his way through crowds of people who have just finished work, towards the Palacio Salvo. He walks quickly; the bags aren’t heavy, the one with the new clothes in isn’t very big and the one he brought from prison is almost empty because, when they arrested him in the hideaway where he was holding Santiago, he just had the clothes he was wearing.

  He walks blindly, his eyes turned inwards, focused on his thoughts; he bumps into a blind old beggarwoman who curses him. Diego sees the toothless mouth, the dark fingernails, he murmurs an apology and hurries away as fast as he can. He is intimidated by the way the atmosphere changes at this time of the evening, becoming more sordid with each step, each yard.

  Diego sees the sign for the Chinese restaurant on the corner; all the bulbs are still blown and maybe they’ll stay that way until the end of time. The whores and transvestites are in their corners, the squatters in the abandoned building hang out their clothes like flags. He crosses Calle Andes, cuts through the arcade, and comes to the main door of the building with dull bronze fittings and dirty glass panes. He walks past an employee who he doesn’t know or doesn’t remember, and looks around: there’s a man behind a table covered with watches and an old woman counting coins. Nobody greets him, and he walks over to the elevator of this bastardized building, with its mixture of plastic fittings and porcelain tiles. He waits, gets in, presses number eight, the contraption lurches into motion, screeching as it passes each floor just like always, just as if this month he’s spent in prison never happened. But it did happen, and he spent it in prison, which is not the best place to spend a month – or even a day. Although we suspect that’s a subject Diego will never want to discuss, ever.

  He gets out at the eighth floor, listens to the echo of his footsteps in the silence of the corridor, walks along in the deathly gloom, feels cold shifting draughts, can barely make out the peeling walls in the weak light of the bulbs, the succession of closed doors, enigmatic doors which might open onto decrepit apartments, dark rooms. Better not to think about what the lives behind those doors might hide.

  Diego arrives at the door of his own apartment.

  The neglect that is eating at the building continues inside.

  The rooms are large, unequal, poorly laid out and surrounded by impossible corridors. Nobody builds like this nowadays.

  He goes in and sighs: he’s arrived home, at a place he can call home. Diego puts down the bags, takes a couple of turns around the apartment, checks it and finds everything as he left it. The police don’t seem to have searched too enthusiastically or turned the whole place upside down looking for his connections to a kidnapping to which, after all, he had confessed from the first moment. He checks the desk: his papers are organized just as they were before he went out for the last time, the night he disguised himself as a policeman to deceive Santiago and took him, unconscious, to the hideaway on the outskirts of the city. He’d imagined the worst – Diego always imagines the worst, we already know that – and he was careful not to leave any clues. All the information about Santiago, his schedule, his connections, all the information that son of a bitch Sergio had given him, all the material he now knows was as false as it was useless, ended up in the trash several days before the date the two men had set for the kidnapping. He just left a few coded phone numbers, written on the shopping list as if they were prices, and they are still there, of course, stuck to the fridge with a magnet. It was a childish, idiotic trick, but it was easy enough to guess that the Uruguayan police wouldn’t send the supermarket list of a failed kidnapper to their colleagues at the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.

  Diego goes to the bathroom, to the only mirror in the house; he looks at himself, at his beard, the lines on his forehead, the bags like a mask around his eyes, and shakes his head, denying something, although we have no way of knowing what. He looks at the jacket hanging from his shoulders, the shirt that is baggy at the chest, observes his trousers with their folds and creases around the waist, his worn shoes; these are the same clothes he was wearing in the place at Punta Yeguas where they were holding Santiago, the same clothes he wore day after day while he waited in vain for Sergio, the clothes he was wearing the last time he met Ursula, the victim’s wife, the same clothes in which he inexplicably fell asleep in the hideout (a development Santiago exploited to call the police, he thinks bitterly), the same clothes he was wearing when he woke up and the cops were already there, surrounding the shack.

  He touches his Adam’s apple, traces the contours of his sunken cheeks with his finger. Finally he begins to undress, slowly removing the jacket, which slips lifelessly to the floor; next he undoes his shirt, starting with the top buttons, gently and then more roughly, almost ripping off the bottom ones; he throws the garment away and it falls between the toilet and the bidet; a moment later, his trousers hit the shower wall and land on the floor, the legs dislocated; he tears off his underwear and is left naked.

  He gets into the shower, washes, scrubs himself; furiously tackling every inch of his skin, he takes his time. He allows the minutes to pass until the water is so cold it becomes unbearable. He gets out and dries himself carefully, lovingly. Then he gets dressed in the clothe
s he takes from his bag, adjusts the garments on his body before he looks up, smooths out the creases, corrects the hang of the fabric, straightens and flattens the cloth with his fingers. He looks at himself. Now he shows his teeth in an attempt at a smile, his first smile in a long time.

  He comes out into the corridor in his new clothes, the ones he will use to start a new life, the clothes he bought to become a new man and leave behind the forgotten failures. As we were saying, he comes out, but as he reaches the door he is already asking himself if he is not taking too big a risk, if what he is about to do to give himself a fresh start is really worth it. Diego, we already know, asks himself too many questions. And he tells himself yes, it’s worth it, and he feels a half-hearted, miserable relief, a relief that will gradually dissolve during the night, leaving no trace by morning.

  XVIII

  Good afternoon. I’m Captain Leonilda Lima. Yesterday you submitted a complaint to Section Ten, claiming that somebody was spying on you. We think it’s important to follow up such reports; that’s why we’ve called you in, to confirm it and to expand some of the points that weren’t clear. Please take a seat. I was notified of your case because it could be linked to another one I’m investigating. No, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you what the other case refers to. I’m going to ask you a few questions, starting with your personal details, your name, address, phone number, ID. Just let me write that down. I’d like to start by asking you to confirm your statement, so we can pin down exactly what the situation is, the precise nature of your complaint. Were they spying on you from the street? Okay. You say you’ve seen two people over the last few days, a man and a woman. Give me a moment to take a note of that. And they’re watching your house. Where are they? Try to be as precise as possible. In the park opposite. Excuse me for asking you this, but is it possible they’re simply enjoying spending some time in the open air? Couldn’t they be people who go out for a walk at a certain time of day? No, you don’t think so. They watch you, they just watch your home. You’ve even seen the woman with a pair of binoculars. I understand. And you know these people? Not the man. The woman’s face is familiar, but you can’t place her. Are you sure they’re watching you? They couldn’t be watching somebody else, someone in another apartment, for example, or just happen to be looking in your direction? You don’t think so, and you’ve even been followed by one or both of them. They’ve been there every day? So, you say you’ve seen them almost daily: you noticed the woman a couple of weeks ago, the man only appeared a few days back. Have you seen them arrive together? No, they don’t come together, or at the same time. Sometimes you’ve seen them at the same time, but they don’t behave as if they’re together. What was that? You saw them both yesterday; she was sitting on a bench and he was twenty or thirty yards away, standing next to a tree. No contact between them? No contact. And how do they behave? Do you think they’re trying to hide? The woman, maybe, you don’t know, you’re not sure. Sometimes she seems to want to go unnoticed and other times she gets out her binoculars right in front of you. The man definitely isn’t hiding: he stands in full view, makes no pretence, watches you pass, watches you insistently, even asked you once what time it was. Could he be trying to scare you, perhaps? Of course you don’t know. In other words, apparently, you’ve seen them on a daily basis, more or less? And you can see them from the window of your apartment, is that correct? Then you go out for a run and they’re there. Have they spoken to you? Yes, yes, you told me. The man asked you once what time it was. Did he seem threatening, intimidating, strange in any way? So he seemed threatening. He just asked you the time but he looked at you strangely, and although you went straight back to your routine of warming up and running, you were really thinking of getting away. That was the only time? He didn’t approach you on any other occasion? No? In the section report, there are some photos that I’ve looked through. Yes, you took them from your window, I understand. It could be very important, obviously. We’re going to look at them again, and I’ll add them to the file. The ones of the man are quite clear, you can see his face. The only one you took of the woman is fuzzier, you can hardly see her features. In addition to dark glasses, she seems to be covering her face with the peak of her cap and with her hand to avoid being recognized. Look here, next to her, on the ground, there seems to be a large handbag, pink. One question. How did you manage to take the photos without being noticed? Because I assume you tried to make sure they wouldn’t be aware. Of course. You closed the curtains, turned out the light and click, click, click, with no flash. Can you give a description of these individuals? A tall man, muscular, wearing a cotton hoodie that comes almost down to his knees, baggy trousers, oversized running shoes. And one of those baseball caps, I know the style. Dark brown hair. No distinguishing marks? When he talked to you he had his sleeves rolled up and you saw that he had tattoos on his arms. And the woman? Tall, a bit plump, fairish brown hair. Any particular features? Pretty, you say. Well, that’s relative. Anything more to add? No, madam. I’m afraid I can’t give you the details of the other case I’m investigating, the one that could be linked. As I told you, all I can say is that, based on the photos you’ve provided, the man could be a fugitive from justice, somebody we’re trying to track down. But I can’t tell you any more: the file is confidential. You’d like to know what you should do? It’s not easy to give you advice. You haven’t been threatened or robbed, you haven’t come to any harm. What’s more, you can’t say why they’re watching you. I wonder if they could be private detectives; perhaps somebody has paid them to spy on you. Oh, you don’t think so. The man doesn’t look like a private detective; in fact he looks dangerous, deliberately threatening. I understand, as if he wanted to scare you, right? Yes, you can call me immediately if you see these people again, but I have to tell you it won’t be easy for us to arrest them or question them just for standing in a park looking at your house, even if they’re using binoculars. They can always say they were birdwatching or looking at the sky. You’d be surprised at the weird hobbies some people have. And I’m afraid that in our country there’s a legal grey area with regard to stalking, and although you might think they’ve violated your privacy, that would be difficult to demonstrate in this case. It would be different if you could prove that they’re interfering with your mail or have accessed the hard drive on your computer. In that case, they would have committed an offence. No, I don’t think I can assign you police protection just because you suspect you’re being watched, madam. As I said, if you’d received a phone call or a letter or even a threatening email … nothing like that? All I can suggest is that you call me as soon as you see anything else odd. Here’s my number. Goodbye, madam.

  Leonilda closes the door, returns to her desk, looks at the photos again.

  She has no doubt this guy is Ricardo, alias the Hobo. The man who was doing time for the murder of Irene Salgado. The one who escaped from court when he was due to be questioned. The one who, all the clues suggest, murdered the Candyman.

  And who’s the woman in the other photo? She makes a note: Big Pink Handbag.

  XIX

  He struggles to stay asleep, refusing to abandon the warmth of his bed, to tear himself out of his lethargy, his drowsiness. He resists but his rage overpowers him, fury drilling into his skull, perforating it, exploding. Shit! He opens his eyes, furious. Fuck! He opens his eyes and feels the anger rising, the strident pounding, the relentless latent hatred throbbing inside his head.

  He turns over. He wakes up. He grinds his teeth. He clenches his fists.

  There can be no more delay, he must do it today.

  He gets up and starts the death ritual.

  This afternoon, the park is packed with people who are here to listen to the San Francisco Philharmonic, people in every square yard, on the paths, on the grass and on the streets which the authorities closed to traffic a few hours ago to allow concertgoers to move more freely as they arrive.

  The woman from the first floor of the brick building with its pol
ished brass fittings greets the doorman, crosses the street with her springy, sporty step. But she’s not wearing her sports gear today, she’s not going for a run. She’s wearing a red overcoat buttoned all the way up.

  He watches her approach from behind the tree where he stationed himself nice and early, puts on his dark glasses, emerges from the shadows and walks behind the red coat. He moves through hurrying spectators without losing sight of her, he submerges himself in the mass of humanity. He tries to close the distance by a few feet, to get closer to the red back. But it’s more and more difficult to move, to find a space through which to advance.