Crocodile Tears

by mercedes Rosende

  He drives one more block down Treinta y Tres. He stops and waits to allow people to cross: a boy with a dog, a man carrying a huge box. His lungs fill, normally. He bites his lip, lowers his head, thinks. He looks behind him.

  Diego puts the car into first.

  10.44 a.m.

  A few minutes after leaving the multistorey, before dumping the Toyota close to the port road, Ursula passed a damp tissue over the steering wheel, the dashboard, the gearstick, the driver’s seat and the front passenger seat, the door handles and even the sun visor. She exited the parking garage without any problems and drove a few blocks until she reached the waterfront. Originally, she had been planning on jumping out of the vehicle, fleeing from the pursuers – who must have been alerted when they stopped receiving the signal – by abandoning the van on the spot. But the time of day, the heavy traffic and the number of people on the streets made her feel protected; she didn’t see anyone who looked suspicious, and she followed her impulse to do things properly, the way they should be done, the way Daddy would have done them.

  She’s just removed any traces of DNA that might remain and is wrapping the dirty tissues in a bag which she throws into a garbage bin on the street.

  When she’s finished she closes the door, walks away from the van and drops the keys down a drain, like she once saw in a movie, then walks a couple of blocks. Ahead of her is the port, huge cranes, towers, shipping containers stacked high. The wind is blowing from the south, the air is damp, cold, salty. She opens her handbag, looks for the cardigan, rummages around; whenever she’s looking for something in a hurry she thinks she has too much stuff, that she should declutter, get rid of some of the contents of her bag. In a few minutes she’ll be in the garage with Diego, with the money that, for her, is not money but houses in Carrasco, gardens, swimming pools, real cars and not this crappy VW Golf. Her thoughts fly from Carrasco to the bags of cash. The bags will be made from something strong, she thinks, and she wonders if she’ll need special scissors. No, there are some of Daddy’s craft knives in a box, she can use them. If they’re still sharp. Don’t you dare use my things for your crimes, Ursula. I can’t talk to you just now, Daddy darling, I’m busy. Later, okay? Don’t bother me just now. Go back to your grave. A gentle, grey shimmer floats in the sky over the bay, the air darkened by thick low clouds; she knows it’s midday, but it feels like dusk. She zips her coat all the way up, raises the soft woollen lapels, and walks another fifty yards.

  Out of nowhere two men appear, blocking her path. One of the men stands in front of her, the other says, “There’s a gentleman who’d like to have a few words with you.” He grabs her arm with vice-like fingers, makes her walk a few yards, pushes her, tries to bundle her into a car that has just appeared and that Ursula hadn’t noticed.

  She’s strong, she resists, braces her arms against the door frame. Someone inside the car is talking on the phone in an affected voice.

  “We’ve got her, don’t worry,” Ursula hears him say.

  In the middle of the tussle, she spots a police car driving along the waterfront, some thirty yards from where they are. She frees her arms, waves them around frantically, shouts to the police.

  “Help, help! I’m being kidnapped.”

  But the police don’t stop, perhaps because they don’t see or hear her – the wind is gusting, sweeping the sound away, bearing it off to the city centre – and the spectacle Ursula puts on comes to nothing.

  “Come on, stick her inside and get moving,” says the voice. “And don’t bother resisting, because you won’t get far, madam. All that money is mine, and I’m going to get it back right now. And there’s no point trying to escape, because I’ll follow you to hell and back.”

  Ursula sighs, pushes the thugs away, and gets into the car on her own. She makes herself comfortable, smells the shiny new leather, the cashmere, the vetiver-scented soap; she casually tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and looks for the first time at the man who is speaking to her from the seat at her side. Blue suit, black shiny shoes, gelled hair. The vehicle moves off and she notices that the daylight has faded, or perhaps it’s the colour of the windows of this oh-so luxurious Audi.

  “Let’s cut to the chase. The Toyota’s empty. Where are you holding my money?”

  The car, driven by one of the thugs, glides noiselessly down Calle Baltasar Brum, along the waterfront, and Ursula watches the customs building go by, the market hall, the container ships queueing in the distance, on the horizon, floating on the waters of the Río de la Plata. When she answers, she does so without looking at her interrogator.

  “Your money? I’d say it’s my money. I earned it.”

  The constant movement of the Adam’s apple in the man’s throat, a ball bobbing up and down, grabs her attention.

  “You’re joking, right? I organized this operation…”

  “You organized it badly. So badly that the armoured car arrived early, you didn’t recruit enough people to do the job, one of your three men deserted halfway through the robbery, another turned out to be a crazed assassin who was on the verge of killing everyone in the neighbourhood, and the third fainted because he had a panic attack. Can you tell me exactly what you organized?”

  Antinucci moves his face to the side, sharply, as if he’s just been slapped. His voice sounds a little less forced.

  “So, am I supposed to be grateful you turned up, killed one of my men, kidnapped the other and took over the operation, not to mention running off with the cash?”

  “It’s your business if you don’t want to recognize your shortcomings in planning and in choosing accomplices for your hold-ups.”

  Antinucci’s cheeks flush, overlaying the usual grey pallor of his face with red; he even seems a little less martial than usual, perhaps because his bottom lip is trembling slightly. When the phone rings again, he takes it out and looks at the number but doesn’t answer it.

  “I saved this operation. If I hadn’t intervened in time, the maniac would have carried on picking fights and taking coke, he would have killed the depressive, the police would have arrived, and all the money would have been left in the Toyota – which, by the way, I’ve just cleaned thoroughly, wiping away every last fingerprint, and abandoned a long way from the scene of the crime.”

  Antinucci raises his hand to his perspiring forehead, unbuttons his coat. His face is burning and his head is spinning. He feels a growing discomfort. He repeatedly checks the screen of his phone.

  “Where’s the money?” he croaks.

  “I’m not going to tell you. How stupid do you think I am? You could kill me, chop me into pieces, I’m not going to tell you.”

  “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

  She smiles, but the man notices that she is only smiling with half of her mouth. The other half is serious, fierce, almost hostile. Antinucci is starting to feel very tired.

  “Are you going to shut me away in a dark room?”

  What room is this woman talking about? Antinucci asks himself. Where is all this talk leading? He opens and half-closes his eyes; his head hurts and he has an odd taste in his mouth. He hears his mouth say something he disagrees with, but he doesn’t have much to lose.

  “Okay, okay. I need that money right now. Let’s negotiate.”

  “Very good. We’re beginning to understand each other.”

  “How much?”

  “How much what?”

  “How much do you want?”

  Silence. There’s a lengthy silence.

  “I’ve got the cash. You’re the one who should tell me how much you want. And I’ll think about it.”

  Antinucci looks at the phone and looks at her. He loosens his tie and undoes the top button of his shirt.

  “Let’s be realistic and mathematical. As far as I know, there’s four million. Keep one million and give me back the rest.”

  Ursula turns towards the man until she is facing him directly.

  “I’m going to tell you what I think. There were fo
ur people involved in this operation: you, the deserter, the maniac and the depressive. After a series of eventualities that I won’t repeat for fear of embarrassing you even further, the only ones left are you, the depressive and me. So we should divide it like that, between the three of us. One point three three three million each.”

  “You’ve forgotten something. Or someone. Another partner.”

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  “That’s no surprise. What a shitty world we live in. You can’t even trust the law. Fine, we’ll divide it four ways then.”

  “All right. Now take me to wherever it is you’ve hidden the loot, and we can bring this to an end.”

  “Now we’ve reached an understanding, tell these thugs to get out of the car. I don’t want any witnesses to see where the money is.”

  Antinucci responds in a tone that is far from military. “Are you crazy? I’m not going to dismiss my men.”

  “I’m telling you it’s better if there are no witnesses. Listen to me.”

  “No way, lady. This is as far as I’m going in this negotiation. Tell me the address, and we’ll go and pick up the damn money.”

  “Treinta y Tres, all the threes.”

  “I think you’re crazy,” Antinucci says, but almost in a whisper.

  Neither Antinucci nor Ursula have seen her, on the opposite side of the road, observing from an unmarked car: it’s Leonilda, checking the profile of the woman sitting in the Audi.

  She can’t see much through the tinted glass, just an outline blurred by the greenish-grey window, but the captain smiles; she had more than enough time to observe the woman when the two thugs approached her near the port and made her get into the car. She had time to recognize her: it’s the woman in the photo she’s holding in her hand, taken from the identification register. Leonilda has her details, too; she reads that the woman lives on the corner of Treinta y Tres and Sarandí.

  Antinucci’s car drives off, and she follows it at close range.

  10.48 a.m.

  Diego roughly dries his tears. He needs to concentrate on what he’s doing and make it to the rendezvous, he can’t collapse now he’s just a few yards from the garage door. He thinks again and again about the narrow space, and the symptoms return: the shivering, the sweating, the palpitations in his chest and throat.

  He reaches the house and turns left, and starts to shake when he sees the door, calculating how much space there will be on either side of the car. He switches off the engine. He’d like to take these damn bags in, put them away, hide them, finally be done with his part of all this, and just sit and wait for her without anything else to do, anything else to think about. Or run far away, flee from it all. But he can’t, he can’t do either of those things, and once again he feels as if he’s dying of fear: the lack of oxygen, the sweat soaking his back so his shirt sticks to his body, sweat dripping down his armpits, his chest, his neck. His hands search for the handle to open the car door but don’t find it, and instead they grip the edge of the seat like claws. He wants to escape, to disappear, to die. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe; a hoarse sound of snot and tears comes from his chest.

  Time passes and Diego doesn’t register it; he knows it’s important, but just now he can’t remember when he arrived. How long has he been sitting here? Ten minutes, half an hour, forty minutes? He has to breathe, has to calm himself. The panic passes, it always passes, he knows that, but he’s afraid there will come a time when he can’t bear it.

  The air enters his lungs again, imperceptibly, his breathing steadies, the fear persists but it’s no longer terror.

  His fingers manage to grab the handle and he gets out of the vehicle, leans on it, tries to think rationally. He has to calmly assess the width of the door and just get the car in there, he tells himself again and again, but his body refuses to move even one inch.

  He finds a pill in an unchecked pocket, pops it out of the blister pack, throws back his head and chucks the pill into his mouth.

  His heart rate and his breathing slow.

  Diego straightens up, stretches his arms. He has to get moving: Ursula’s about to arrive and he hasn’t even started. His fingers rummage around in his pockets, find the garage key; he takes it out and looks at it, shining in the palm of his hand. He raises his head and looks into the distance. Far away. When the panic starts to recede, he feels like the survivor of a nuclear disaster. Now, what’s more, he feels the responsibility on his shoulders, and it weighs down on him like a granite obelisk.

  God spits out the faint-hearted, he thinks. He approaches the garage door, checks the surroundings, observes the faces of passers-by, tries to give his own face an innocent air, the half-smile of the naive or the idiotic. He turns the key, pushes the door. A dark fog emerges from inside and he reels back; it’s a smell of age, of stained peeling walls, of graveyard soil. Diego’s nostrils quiver. He thinks of the corpse of a rat or an opossum; the stench clings to the inside of his nose. He can’t see anything, but he smells death.

  He closes the door, turns around, doubles over and throws up the breakfast he ate more than three hours ago. He gets into the car, starts the engine and drives off. He feels a disconnection between his body, which is still moving, and his mind, which is completely immobile.

  Diego takes the waterfront road, drives fast, his anxiety returning; he wants to flee. He’s driving, the car is loaded with cash, and he doesn’t know where he’s going.

  PART THREE

  DADDY

  Between a rock and a hard place, like always.

  There you are, sweating away as the suspicion, the fear, the anxiety grow, yearning to eat despite the circumstances, desperate to swallow something, because right now you’re hungry and you’re thinking of food, despite the situation, despite the fact that this man has awakened your alarm and your mistrust.

  When did it all begin, Ursula? This nameless, disgusting, diabolical thing growing inside you, when did it start? I’m asking you. Don’t cover your ears, don’t tell me to be silent, it’s quite futile. And don’t tell me it was because I punished you by shutting you away in your room in the dark, because I know it was much earlier than that. It was when you made the brutal discovery that your sister Luz was – is – more beautiful and thinner than you. When you realized, what’s more, that she was – is – a better person than you.

  I can see you, I can see you getting out of that sinister black car, crossing the street flanked by two hoodlums and that mafioso, Antinucci, and I ask myself what you’ve got yourself into, Ursula, my daughter, how you got caught up in this robbery, all these deaths; what you’re doing with all these underworld types, squabbling over your ill-gotten gains. I’m shouting at you to run, to get away from that house, from the door into which you are inserting the key with such precision, calm despite your rising misgivings, and I’m telling you to run from this street and this neighbourhood, to run while there’s still time. But you cover your ears, you whisper insults at me, you concentrate on the moment and hug your arms to your fat body to conceal the smell of your sweaty armpits. And you open the door.

  I see you, Ursula, entering that garage that smells like a damp grave, apprehensively feeling for the light switch, suspiciously; you have a bad feeling things haven’t gone the way you planned, that something has gone terribly wrong. You’re losing your calm but not your appetite, fumbling for the switch with one hand, gripping the handle of the revolver with the other – your nervous, chubby hands – and despite the fear and the bad omens, you feel as if you’re in a thriller, as if your life is taking on meaning.

  I see you overcome your misgivings and start sketching out a plan; you push away the anxiety, the sweat in your armpits freezes, a cunning look appears in your eyes. Your hands are still on the light switch and the revolver; you turn on the light that hangs from the ceiling, enter and turn around, facing Antinucci and his thugs, you feign surprise, you say – as if it was necessary – there’s nobody here. Diego can’t have arrived,
you speculate, or, even worse, he must have made off with the loot. The man turns pale, he confronts you, he shouts, gesticulates and curses, you see him through the drops of sweat which, once again, are trickling down your forehead and onto your eyelids; the man talks exclaims shouts interrogates demands insults. You listen to the tense angry words that ignite a furious, explosive hatred within you. The door to the street, which was slightly ajar, opens a little more, blown by the wind. In this garage that smells of piss and mildew and decay, there are four people – Antinucci, the thugs and you, Ursula – and there’s not much space; it’s narrow, you’d need to be an escape artist to make a getaway without them stopping you, to reach the metal side door that’s no more than three yards from where you’re standing, to open it and make it through to the other side, then close it and lock the bolt – which you know is open because Sebastián never locks it – all in the blink of an eye.