The Foreign Girls

by Sergio Olguin

  “All good with Chancha?”

  “He’s a fool.”

  It was all they said on that journey to San Fernando. Three had no idea where they were heading, but he knew there was no point asking. Five took him to a bar beside a river. At that time in the morning the terrace was still full of people having breakfast, except for one table, whose occupant was drinking a glass of wine. Doctor Zero. It wasn’t often you saw him. Usually everything was done by phone. He thought the doctor must want to give him some long instruction, or deliver a warning, or a dressing-down.

  Doctor Zero gestured to Three to come over. When Three arrived at his table, he pointed at the chair opposite. Five had stayed at another table, on his own.

  “Have you had breakfast?”

  “At the prison.”

  Doctor Zero drank some wine but didn’t seem about to call the waiter over to order anything for Three, who was sitting rigidly upright like a dog waiting for instruction.

  “I have a job for you.”

  “I’m at your orders.”

  Doctor Zero wiped his lips with a paper napkin. He crumpled it into a ball and a breeze sent it tumbling to the ground.

  “Simple and quick. But you need your brain in gear.”

  Three said nothing.

  “Are you still thinking about neutralizing the journalist?”

  Three nodded while watching the river sweeping serenely along the banks.

  “Don’t nod like a pansy. Say ‘yes’.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “You need to know you’re on your own for that one.”

  “I know that.”

  “If you fail for any reason, I’m not going to help you.”

  “All I need is some time to do it.”

  “Get this little job out of the way, then take some leave.”

  There was a long silence. Doctor Zero scrutinized him, concerned.

  “A professional kills for money. Revenge is a luxury reserved for people who can afford to pay someone else to do the killing. You don’t have the money it would take to hire someone else like you. This isn’t a joke, it’s a warning: don’t start thinking that the person capable of killing this girl isn’t a professional but a guy blinded by his lust for revenge. Because then you’re screwed.”

  III

  Five drove him to the apartment where he’d be staying for the time being. It was where Calle Brasil crosses Matheu, in one of those run-down buildings subdivided into many units. The building was located just a few blocks from the old Caseros prison, an irony not lost on Three, who had done time there at the end of the 1990s, not long before it closed down.

  He couldn’t go back to his old apartment because a prosecutor or judge might just turn up there accompanied by police. But Doctor Zero’s people had made sure his belongings were brought to the new place. Clothes, shoes, what little crockery he had, a CD player he didn’t use, an electric shaver, a fake ID that might be useful for some transactions but which would never pass muster with the police. Not much more. And the apartment was partly furnished: a table, two chairs, a mattress, a pillow, some blankets. They had also left him a bag containing maté, coffee, crackers, toilet paper, soap and a bottle of Bols gin. He opened the bottle and took a swig from it.

  Five had also given him a mobile with the number written on the back. There was a missed call on it, from Five, in case Three needed to contact him or Doctor Zero. He went out for a walk even though he wasn’t sure how far he could go without attracting attention. Feeling hungry and thirsty, he decided to walk to Calle San Juan and found a pizzeria where he ordered a small mozzarella pizza and half a bottle of Moscato. Now that he was free again he would have to go back to taking care of himself. He had started getting fat in prison. The exercises he was doing there weren’t the same as intensive training in the gym. The television in the pizzeria was tuned to a news channel, but there was nothing about a prisoner having escaped during a hospital transfer. Three returned to the building complex that housed his apartment. Nobody paid him any attention. A new neighbour wasn’t noteworthy. He plugged in the CD player to see if the radio worked, then threw himself down on the mattress with the bottle of gin beside him.

  The next morning Three went early to El Turco Elías’ gym on Flores Sur. El Turco greeted him with a hug. He was in a safe space: the police never went to the gym except to deliver Christmas greetings. El Turco also worked for Doctor Zero, keeping an eye out for promising thuggishness among the boys who went there to pump iron or to take part in more rigorous training.

  They sat down in the gym bar and El Turco ordered Three a protein shake he brought in specially from the United States: it nourished while at the same time burning fat and building muscle. Then he took him through to the offices. At the back was a room that seemed built to withstand a nuclear attack. There was a safe in it, where Three kept his savings and something else: a Glock 39 and four six-bullet loaders, .45 GAP calibre. But El Turco Elías had taken him there to give him two envelopes from Doctor Zero. One contained money: payment for the work he was going to do the following day. In the other was a gun, a 9 mm Sig Sauer with silencer, photos and details of the target. He put everything into the safe and went to the main gym room to start his routine. At midday, Five and Six turned up. They all went to the grill on the corner and ate sweetbreads with fries. Five explained the job to him. All very straightforward.

  After lunch, Five stayed with him to do weights. Three took a shower after his routine and then put his savings, the Glock, the loaders, the Sig Sauer and information about the target in his gym bag. Five offered to drive him to the apartment and left him on the corner of San Juan and Matheu. They agreed Five would come by to pick him up at half past eight in the morning.

  Three put the bag in the bottom of the closet and covered it with an old bedspread. As he had slept well the previous night and the exercise had filled him with energy, he decided to go out to a whisky bar on Avenida Garay, a little before Calle Boedo. He had been there a couple of times, but nobody knew him. Three picked out a girl with dyed blonde hair, small tits and a nice ass. She was wearing hot pants and a top that exposed her stomach. She was called Luli. They went to one of the rooms at the back of the building. He spent fifty minutes with her and came twice. Between one screw and the next, she told him all about her life, but Three wasn’t all that interested in the girl’s story. When he went, he left her a hundred-peso tip.

  He walked back to the apartment. Brought out the weapons. He cleaned the Glock and put it away again. He counted the money. He thought that he shouldn’t have taken out all his savings. Even though he had a job the next day, he couldn’t stop thinking about his revenge plan.

  When Three woke up at six o’clock in the morning, he drank a few matés and ate a few crackers. At eight o’clock he went downstairs. The same type of Audi that One and Two used to drive was parked across the road. Inside, Five was smoking with the window down.

  They had to get to Calle Moreno, in La Tablada, before ten o’clock and wait a few yards from a lottery kiosk called San Cono. At quarter past nine they were there. It was still early, so they drove around the area for a while. At quarter to ten they were back on Calle Moreno. They parked about thirty yards away, on the other side of the road.

  At exactly ten o’clock they saw the owner of the kiosk walk past, unaware he was being watched. He arrived at the kiosk, lifted up the shutter and went inside. Five and Three got out of the Audi and headed for the kiosk. When he saw them walk in, the owner knew straightaway that these guys hadn’t come to pick a lucky lottery number or place a bet on the horses.

  “Lads, I’m just opening. There’s nothing in the till.”

  Three took out his gun and stepped closer.

  “If Tito sent you, I can explain —”

  The first shot hit him in the forehead. Three finished him off with two shots to the chest. Thanks to the silencer, the bullets made more noise as they ripped into the tissue of the man’s body than when they were discharge
d. His body lay splayed behind the counter. As the lottery seller had grasped just before they killed him, the men weren’t there to rob him, but now they needed to simulate a robbery. They opened the till, which contained only a few pesos in change, and took the owner’s phone and his wallet. Job done, in under thirty seconds. They strolled back to the car then drove away. Once they were on Route 3, Five called Doctor Zero to let him know everything had gone as planned.

  Three gave the weapon they had used to Five, who also kept hold of the stolen items and the photos of the target. He would be responsible for ensuring there was no trace left of compromising evidence. Neither of the men knew who the Tito named by the dead man was, but he must be the one who had paid for their services.

  Even though it was early for lunch, on the way back they stopped at a grill beside the road. They ate tenderloin sandwiches and drank a bottle of Vasco Viejo, the best wine on offer. Then Five dropped him off at the gym and Three did a workout. When he finally left the gym that evening it was with the thought that now he could start putting into action the plan he had been hatching since he was first admitted to hospital.

  IV

  Three dreamed of being a champion wrestler. He had started boxing at the Huracán club, but he lacked technique and couldn’t move his waist and arms quickly enough. The boys who had been boxing there for a while used to beat the crap out of him. But one of the trainers thought he might be suited to kick-boxing because he had strength, stamina and the flexibility to kick with a raised leg. He took Three to El Turco Elías’ gym, where kick-boxing champions were made. And he was really good. He won a few contests, until one day he damaged his meniscus and had to take something like three months off and when he went back he just wasn’t the same any more. He was too cautious, fearful even, when delivering kicks. It was around that time he and another kid started stealing car radios, or whatever they could find in parked cars. Once he got caught breaking a van window. He was taken to the police station and his only thought was to ring the gym. El Turco Elías went to get him out. He didn’t say anything to him, didn’t scold him or give him a sermon or anything like that. A month later El Turco got him work as a bouncer in a disco.

  Now Three’s nights consisted of ejecting troublemakers, roughing up the odd prick, watching out for the people dealing drugs on the dance floor and making sure nobody bothered them. It was good work because he got laid a lot, took uncut drugs and made good money. After two years working there, El Turco Elías took him to Doctor Zero. He had to change his habits and, even though he had never stopped his daily training at the gym, he had to work on his fitness. Fewer drugs, no messing around with girls, better focus. The first few jobs for Doctor Zero didn’t involve any kind of weapon. Just fists. Then he had to learn to use a gun. It was three months before they sent him on a hit job. And that time he was just accompanying the man who was going to do the shooting.

  Six months in, Three killed his first man. The instructions that day would be similar to those in subsequent jobs: he would arrive with one other, or with two others, and suddenly, without a word, they would shoot the target. Killing quickly became a routine like any other, like going to the gym or a strip club. It didn’t produce any particular feeling in him, and perhaps for that reason he had always done his job perfectly. He had no weaknesses, and so Doctor Zero began to entrust him with more important jobs. He was one of Doctor Zero’s four favourites. Four professional hitmen who never failed. Until they failed. If there was one thing he didn’t understand about that whole saga, it was that the Doctor wasn’t as angry as Three was. At the end of the day, Doctor Zero had lost three indispensable men. But the Doctor seemed not to believe in vengeance. He had other men to call on. Whereas Three wasn’t going to let his months in hospital and prison be the end of the story.

  Since that first job, the procedure had been the same: to go to the designated address and do what they had been asked to do. Without questions, clarifications or any information beyond what was required to beat someone up, or to kill him. The intelligence work preceding the action was taken care of by other people, who were also Doctor Zero’s people but with whom he had no direct dealings. Now that he found himself planning a revenge killing, he had no idea how to approach this groundwork, since he had never had to do it: learning the target’s habits, familiarizing himself with her life, her relationships, everything needed to establish the ideal moment to get close enough to kill her.

  In prison Three had got to know El Gallo Miranda, who was serving time for attacking an armoured van and killing a security guard in the same operation. El Gallo had links with the police and with gangs who specialized in big heists, and got the kind of treatment in prison that a businessman would expect in a five-star hotel. Three got friendly with El Gallo, who offered to work with him when he got out, but Three turned him down because he already had a job and wasn’t planning to leave it. El Gallo liked that Three was loyal to his old boss and offered to help him whenever he needed it.

  “When I get out, I’m going to need someone to get some information for me.”

  El Gallo invited him to share a maté. They were in his cell, where he usually had meetings and conducted all kinds of business. Three accepted the maté but turned down the crackers with dulce de leche which an assistant of El Gallo’s had prepared and arranged on a plate.

  “Someone to do intelligence? For you?”

  “To find out someone’s movements, what they’re doing, where they go, all that stuff.”

  “And this is for you.”

  “Yes, for me.”

  El Gallo chewed thoughtfully on a cracker. Three passed him the maté gourd.

  “There are a couple of lads. They do good work. I’ve used them a few times and they never let me down. They’re called Nick and Bono. If you need to get into a bank’s system or to find out who an army general’s fucking, they’re not for you. It’s quite a basic service and for that reason they don’t charge as though they were stealing Obama’s sex tape.”

  He wiped his hands on a napkin and scrolled through the contacts on his phone, then wrote down a number on a clean napkin and passed it to Three.

  “Phone Nick. Tell him I told you to call. Is it going to be soon?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Best of luck then. Oh, and don’t be put off by the way they look. They know their stuff.”

  Now that he’d carried out the job Doctor Zero had assigned him, Three decided to get in touch with this Nick guy. He called him from a phone booth, but nobody answered. Half an hour later he called again and there was still no reply. Nearly an hour later, Nick’s phone was still ringing without anyone picking up. Three went back to the apartment thinking El Gallo must have given him the wrong number, either deliberately or by accident. But he woke up at dawn suddenly certain that his call hadn’t been answered because he had made it from an anonymous number. Using the protection of a public phone might work for him, but not for Nick. The next morning he called from his mobile phone and got through straightaway.

  “Nick?”

  “He’s not here. Who’s calling?”

  “El Gallo Miranda gave me this number.”

  “I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

  Before he had a chance to say anything else, the line went dead. Three hadn’t even got as far as giving his name. Less than five minutes later, the phone rang. The voice at the other end was the same, but the tone sounded much more friendly.

  “Hello, boss. El Gallo sends his regards.”

  “Hello, I need to speak to Nick.”

  “Go to the bar on Rivadavia and Misiones at three o’clock this afternoon.”

  “How will I recognize him?”

  “I’m Nick and I’m easy to spot: ginger, with a lot of freckles and tortoiseshell-framed glasses. I’m six foot two, although if I’m sitting down perhaps you won’t notice. I’ll be there with my colleague, who has no distinguishing features whatsoever.”

  El Gallo Miranda had been right to warn him a
bout Nick and Bono’s appearance. When Three arrived, they were sitting at a table away from the windows. The redhead was easy to pick out while Bono, as Nick had said, was almost completely nondescript: dark brown hair, neither tall nor short, not fat or thin. They both looked like university students playing at spies, or teenagers who spend too many hours watching porn on the computer. Nick was wearing a multicoloured shirt that was tight on him. Bono, meanwhile, wore a baggy black T-shirt with a picture of Che Guevara on it. They were drinking freshly squeezed orange juice. Three walked over to them and introduced himself. They looked at him the way you might look at a madman bursting in on a private conversation, eyeing him suspiciously and letting a few seconds elapse before Nick gave him a friendly smile.

  “Three. That’s what Doctor Zero calls you,” he said, motioning at him to sit down.

  If they wanted to surprise him, they had succeeded.

  “Have you been investigating me?”

  “It’s routine. And a bad habit picked up from work. If Doctor Zero ever needs our services, we’re at his disposal.”

  The waiter arrived and Three ordered a coffee. He noticed that Bono paid him no attention and seemed to be playing on a computer screen or some sort of device. Every now and then he said something to Nick in English or another language. Three would have thought he was a foreigner if not for the fact that, in a moment of frustration, he suddenly exclaimed “Qué boludo!” without taking his eyes off the screen.

  “What do you need, Three?” Nick asked him, in the bland tone of a sales assistant.

  Three said that he needed to know everything possible about the movements of a journalist called Verónica Rosenthal. He told Nick what he knew already, which wasn’t much, the fruit of research he had done while recovering from his injuries. Three had seen the journalist’s name in Nuestro Tiempo magazine. He had discovered that she lived in the apartment where he had been with his colleagues, seconds before they were run over. He didn’t know much more.