Crocodile Tears

by mercedes Rosende

  Diego sees Ricardo’s fingers on the gun and he feels a wave of nausea. He tries to hold on but he feels himself falling; he tells himself he can’t faint, not now, that if he doesn’t flee, doesn’t get the hell out of here right now then he’s a dead man. He looks to the side, searching for an escape route, but his body doesn’t respond. He feels around. Where are the pills? He searches futilely for the blister pack.

  “I’m done with you. We’ve finished loading up the bags, I ain’t got no use for you now.”

  “No, Hobo, I —”

  “Shut up, chicken.”

  Ricardo takes out the gun, grips it, Diego observes the hand raising the revolver and holding it three inches from the midpoint between his eyes, he sees it and he wants to shout but his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth, his arms swing back and forward like a rusty crane. He makes an effort, tries to straighten his back, which has gradually hunched over, takes a breath and finds himself gasping. His eyes mist over. Diego tries to think about things he wished he’d done when he was alive but didn’t, he wants to see his whole existence pass before his eyes, but all that happens is that the wait becomes longer and emptier.

  Antinucci, who has been adjusting the sight of the grenade launcher, can’t believe what he now sees. Nervously, he tries to focus to get a clearer view. He turns the zoom left and right, puts his eye to it, adjusts it again. “Son of a goddamn bitch,” he swears without remorse. “Son of a no-good goddamn fucking bitch,” he says, impervious to sin. “Goddamn fucking cunt,” he adds, without the slightest desire to confess to Father Ismael. He focuses again, adjusts and finally sees a clear image of the woman who is walking, gun in hand, approaching the scene. Everything is going wrong.

  Diego feels the cold of Ricardo’s revolver between his eyes, tries to move back but can’t, closes his eyes tighter. His mind is empty, he waits for what feels like an eternity. And finally he hears the gunshot, squeezes his eyelids, clamps his teeth, clenches his fists, his whole body trembling as he waits for the pain of the bullet tearing his flesh. It takes a few seconds before he understands that the sound of the gunshot came from the wrong direction, from behind him.

  He opens his eyes.

  9.31 a.m.

  Before Diego understands what is happening, he sees the Hobo stagger and drop his gun. He has a strange expression on his face, his eyes are wide open, he’s looking at something, he takes a couple of steps back and stumbles, and looks behind Diego again.

  The sky darkens with the speed of an eclipse.

  Ricardo drops the gun and doubles over, clutches his stomach with both hands, manages to raise his head, sees the revolver with which he has just been shot, sees the hands in their surgical gloves, sees the woman holding the revolver, sees her eyes and, despite the pain now spreading through his body, suddenly becomes alert, his muscles tensing. From wherever it is he stores his memories, a house, a homicide, a robbery appear. The house is Irene’s, the homicide the one he was framed for but didn’t commit, the robbery the theft of a ring he never saw. As we were saying, he sees the woman who is holding the gun, and he remembers Irene’s niece, he recognizes her. He understands, or thinks he understands, that this is not her first crime. Then he sinks further, falls to the floor, and can no longer see or think.

  Ursula, still holding the revolver in the air, observes the fallen figure, motionless against the black tarmac, sees the bloodstain spreading from the man’s stomach, and thinks she should hurry up and get rid of the weapon before Ricardo recognizes her, although she doubts he’s in a condition to recognize anyone. She magics it away, slipping it into the bottom of her bag. Then she realizes she is very thirsty. She gets out the bottle of water, takes a couple of sips. She dabs her mouth with a white handkerchief, which she then folds and tucks into her sleeve. A haemorrhage caused by a gunshot wound to the stomach is not a good prognosis for survival, she thinks. She doesn’t like this face, this man; she goes up to the body and turns him over, turns him so he is lying on his front, his face hidden. That’s better.

  “Diego, don’t just stand there. Get a move on.”

  “Ricardo —”

  “He’s dead – or he will be soon. He was aiming at you, Diego, he wanted to kill you. Didn’t you see him? He’s a traitor: a traitor and a murderer. I knew him a little, and I can promise you he wasn’t a nice guy.”

  “Dead?”

  “As a dodo, I’d say.”

  “And you said you knew him?”

  “Just in passing. He was the boyfriend of my Auntie Irene’s maid.”

  Diego isn’t listening any more, he’s looking for support, something to hold on to. In the distance, a thunderclap sounds, like a warning. Or is it a police siren? His eyelids feel heavy.

  Antinucci has loaded his weapon. He’s struggling to focus the grenade launcher’s telescopic sight and curses the people who sold it to him, without pausing to think about Father Ismael or confession or penitence. He aims, his calculation little more than a wild guess. He swears again, feels he can’t wait any longer, he pants with the rage that all this unpredictability causes, at the setbacks which come from things not going the way they were planned, at the frustration of not being able to count on these fucking peasants. He fires.

  Three things happen at once: Diego faints and falls to the floor, Ursula bends down to help him, and the grenade fired from Antinucci’s weapon hisses over both their heads and hits the remains of the cash truck just a few yards away. A few moments later, the time Antinucci takes to reload, the next grenade arrives and hits the Nissan. The truck and the van catch fire, and within seconds both are enveloped in flames. The sound of a siren can be heard in the distance. More projectiles whizz past.

  Ursula is petrified by the noise of the explosions, dazzled by the flames. Crouching over, she grabs Diego by the neck and drags him a few yards to the Toyota, opens the door, and with some effort pushes him into the passenger seat without taking her eye off the fire which surrounds the vehicle. Then she gets into the driver’s seat, puts the van into first and gets going. She’s seen plenty of movies and she knows that, sooner or later, everything will go up in smoke. The siren sounds closer.

  Antinucci, two hundred yards away and looking through the telescopic sight, can only see smoke and flames, the street stained red and black, and he thinks to himself that none of this is what he planned. He tosses the grenade launcher into the back of the car, gets in, starts the engine. He feels his fingers tingling, his hands cold. The skin of his face feels tight, like when you sense a stone passing close to your head. He accelerates towards the fire. We wouldn’t like to be in his path.

  As he reaches the corner he hears the explosion, sees pieces of truck fly into the air, hears the sound of breaking glass as the windows shatter. Everything has gone wrong.

  Ursula, who has already driven east down Rosaleda, turns onto Moreras and goes another hundred yards before she hears the crash of the first vehicle exploding.

  “I knew it was going to explode,” she says, speaking to nobody in particular. And then she hears the second explosion. She nods to herself.

  At her side, Diego is oblivious. Ursula turns, takes Camino Maldonado towards Curva de Maroñas, just as Antinucci and Captain Leonilda Lima arrive at the scene, from the same direction and at the same time.

  Diego, despite being barely conscious, bursts into tears. Ursula ignores him; she’s no good at consoling people. Well, she thinks, life’s a bitch, and those who cry are quite right to do so.

  9.35 a.m.

  The rain starts to fall, softly at first, gently, and then comes beating down; the police cars arrive in a flurry of roaring engines and squealing brakes and wailing sirens, barely muted by the noise of the downpour, and they stop at a prudent distance from the fire, which the heavens are doing their best to extinguish.

  Like needles of stone, the rain cascades down onto the woman, the first to emerge from one of the patrol cars, and she runs and tries to shield herself with her hands, her arms, her jacket coll
ar, then stands rooted to the spot ten yards from the burning truck, observing the fire with a frown, her fists clenched, next to the smouldering remains, and finally lowers her arms, impotent against the elements and fate. She can’t believe it; she’s just a few blocks from where she was born, from where she grew up. She looks around. So many years ago. But she has to concentrate on the present.

  The agents deploy: they run to and fro, orders are hurled, heavy soles slap on the wet ground, voices shout in rough accents from tough areas on the outskirts of the city.

  Captain Leonilda takes a look round, does her reconnaissance. There’s nobody here. There’s been a struggle but there’s no trace either of living people or of their corpses. It’s like an abandoned battlefield: shards of glass, splinters of metal, fragments of plastic, scraps of burned paper. Banknotes? Are those pieces of banknotes? There seems to be a lot of burned cash flying around the street. There’s what’s left of the truck – the chassis and the armoured cab – and the remains of an SUV skewed across the street, maybe a Nissan, maybe the vehicle used by the robbers. In the middle of the road are the springs from a car seat, some polyurethane foam, and scraps of upholstery fabric blowing in the wind. Not a soul? Not a single human being?

  She closes her eyes, has the feeling she’s made a mistake but doesn’t know what, opens her eyes. She looks, again, at the smoke, the foam, the pieces of metal. She scans the scene, systematically, yard by yard. She shudders; ten yards away there’s something that looks like … an arm? It’s an arm. She’s sure it’s an upper limb. Breathe, breathe. She shudders again. Rage. They could have arrived in time to prevent what she suspects is a massacre.

  As we were saying, her men have fanned out, they’ve closed off both entrances to the street. The fire engines and the technical team are on their way, Rojas confirms. Leonilda orders them to hurry up, to get here and take photos of everything before the scene is contaminated. How on earth did they blow up this truck and the van? They must have used something really powerful, expensive, difficult to get hold of. Military hardware. She has to warn Ballistics, she needs everyone working on this case, it’s urgent.

  She walks around the armoured truck, there are people inside the burned cab, she thinks, bodies; she approaches then stops herself, knows she has to hold off and wait for the fire engines and the ambulances, follow the protocol without thinking too much.

  An Audi A6 has stopped behind the police cars. A man gets out of the Audi, and Leonilda watches him as he approaches with a confident step, wearing a suit and moccasins that are shiny despite the rain. He has a small head, eyes that are bulging rather than large, a high, almost dome-shaped forehead, a scar that perhaps was made by a fist, and a huge Adam’s apple, bouncing up and down like a ball. Why has she noticed these details? She doesn’t know. The guy marches over; he’s not wearing a raincoat or sheltering from the downpour. She signals to him to stop.

  “No access, sir. Please go back.”

  Antinucci appears not to have heard, he approaches, offers Captain Lima his hand.

  “Mr Antinucci, at your orders. I was just driving past when I heard the explosion, saw the flames. What on earth has happened here? It looks like a war zone. An assault on an armoured truck, apparently. If I can be of help in any way, perhaps as a witness… I saw the flames from a distance.”

  Leonilda shakes her head in annoyance, barely brushing the hand the man insists on offering her, just enough to have the impression that she has touched an invertebrate, a jellyfish. She’s sure she’s heard that name before, it sounds familiar, but just now she can’t put a face to it or remember where or from whom she heard it. No, she doesn’t think she’s seen him before, she’d remember that conceited air. And the Adam’s apple going up and down.

  “Agent Rojas, take this gentleman’s details so we can call him if needed. I want him away from the crime scene. Immediately.”

  She feels a twinge, a disquiet that she can’t explain and which disturbs her. The man in the shiny shoes hasn’t moved. He’s talking and gesticulating.

  “What a mess, right? A bloodbath. You’re going to need Forensics. Did you call Forensics?”

  “Yes,” she lies, and immediately wonders why she’s lied.

  “I’ll say it again; you can count on me. Here’s my card.”

  She takes the card without looking; mechanically, she puts it in her pocket. She sees the man’s car, the Audi A6 parked any old how behind the patrol cars, one of those vehicles which make the owner feel like he’s a big shot. Leonilda’s gaze meets two eyes that are like two slits, two horizontal lines that don’t seem quite human. Despite her training, her time at the police academy and all those years of experience, she feels the ground shifting beneath her feet. She has to take control.

  “You can’t be here. Don’t make me have you removed by force.”

  “I just want to help.”

  “Rojas, deal with him, please.”

  Rojas grabs the man by the shoulder and pushes him back. The man acquiesces, shrugs in a gesture of powerlessness, but before he retreats he scans the scene, a precise painstaking inspection that records every inch in a mental photograph. He stops. Antinucci’s scanner seems to have detected something. He frees himself of Rojas’s grasp.

  “There’s somebody there,” he says.

  Leonilda’s eyes follow the man’s finger – a long pale finger with a manicured nail – and she thinks she can see a body, yes, there’s a body just five or six yards from the armoured truck, half-hidden by pieces of fabric or plastic. She feels the cold in her bones, looks into the man’s eyes and thinks, again, that they are like two slits that have opened to analyse this lifeless body. Leonilda thinks she sees a glint in his eyes before they move on, continuing the search. The captain shivers, the first signs of fever. There are people whose gaze we must avoid, she thinks, whose attention we should not attract, strange creatures for whom just a glance, the merest persistence of a gaze, is enough to give them the excuse they are looking for. Sometimes it’s better to keep your eyes on your shoes. Leonilda overcomes this need to avoid looking at him.

  “Sir, if you don’t leave immediately I’m going to have you arrested. Agent Rojas, I don’t want this man inside the perimeter for one more second.”

  “I’m leaving. Don’t worry about me, Captain Leonilda Lima.”

  Her name is uttered like a threat and she shudders, her top lip beaded with sweat. How does he know who she is? Where does he know her from?

  “Leave,” she hears herself shout, beside herself. “Leave right now. Get out of here immediately.”

  “Captain, please remember that the man over there might not be dead.”

  “I told you to leave.”

  “I’ve got things to do too, Leonilda, lots of things. I can promise you. You’ve got my card; I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other. Give my regards to Inspector Clemen.”

  Leonilda watches him go beneath the downpour, his back straight, his stride martial, apparently unbothered by the rain.

  She gives an order: “Rojas, get hold of an unmarked car, have that guy followed. Don’t lose sight of him.”

  Leonilda watches the man pass beneath the yellow tape that cordons off an area some hundred yards wide; he gets into his top-of-the-range car, which will soon be swallowed up by the curtain of water. And she remembers the name: it’s Ricardo Prieto’s lawyer, the man the Skinflint said would be in charge of this robbery. Antinucci. She remembers now having seen his signature several times in the file of Ricardo Prieto, alias the Hobo.

  She looks at the body. She shouts, calls for help, urges the ambulances to hurry up. Forensics, we need Forensics. She tries to keep her wet hair out of her eyes. Tries to dry her eyes.

  Desperation, maybe that’s the word that would best define her feelings right now.

  9.40 a.m.

  Ursula is driving and tries to come up with a plan immediately, a quick solution which will take them far from the scene of the robbery. That’s what she calls it, the robbery
, the word her father used. She needs to find somewhere to offload the money. She needs to get rid of the Toyota van. And she needs to look after Diego, who appears to be catatonic. The first thing to do is cover the bags printed with the logo of the transport company. She has a lot to do, but Ursula doesn’t seem dazed or overwhelmed. She’s driving confidently, even with a certain flair, you might say, between buses and motorbikes, cars and pedestrians, weaving skilfully through the chaotic morning traffic; the whole city seems to have agreed to go into town. And she, too, is going into town: the Old Town. We can’t help asking ourselves why she wants to expose herself to such danger – why not flee in the other direction? – but she must have a reason.

  She drives skilfully, as we were saying, attentive to the noise and the signals, looking ahead, behind and to both sides; she has eyes in the back of her head and two strong hands that grip the wheel, change gears, lower the window, rearrange her hair, remove a fleck of dust from her coat. If you could see me, Daddy, with all this money. I bet you never saw as much money as this, there’s enough here for a house in Carrasco, a bunch of swimming pools, a whole load of cars. A thief, that’s what you are, Ursula. No, Daddy, I didn’t steal it; Ricardo did. You stole it, too. You and that idiot who’s passed out by your side. Don’t call Diego an idiot, Daddy, I won’t allow it. This is what you’ve become; a thief who has perpetrated a robbery with a bunch of criminals. I already told you I didn’t steal it, you old bastard, I’m just taking the money away before someone else does. And now get back in your grave, because the road is wet and this vehicle is groaning under the weight of all this cash.

  She breathes deep and looks at Diego, who still appears to be unconscious, and she continues to weave between the taxis, the bicycles and the passers-by. There’s a patrol car with two cops inside parked to her left. Is it her imagination, or are they looking at her? Impossible to know; they’re wearing dark glasses. They don’t stop her. She can’t let herself be carried away by paranoia. She sighs. She blinks faster than usual. She feels as if her mind is running riot but she reins it in and, as she reaches the corner of 8 de Octubre and Propios, she begins to put things in order.