by David Hewson
Menéndez took out a pen and started to write.
‘Your name is Frederick Famiani. You are from Laguna Beach, California. You came here last Wednesday, by train from Malaga. When did you arrive in Spain?’
‘A month ago. Saw some old buddies down on the coast. They run a tennis school near Mijas. Teach the golden wrinklies how to serve overhand. Jesus, some way to make a living. Then came here. Do some sightseeing, some more training. Goddamn tourist people in New York said the weather would be, and I quote, “mild”. Some kinda mild.’
‘Why are you training?’
‘You don’t follow sports? Next month, the Berlin Marathon. One big event, fifteen thousand runners, and one huge purse. All around the Wall, in and out the Brandenburg Gate. Came fifteenth last year – reason is I was a little under the weather and, to be perfectly frank, this was my first European race and I just wasn’t used to running through all that dog poop. Enough of it on the streets to make you barf, man. Even worse here. Start a marathon here and you can call it the slippery brown Nike special. I’ll just slide all the way from start to finish. This year’s different, see. This year the dog shit don’t faze me. And I’m fitter too. Leastwise I was, until you guys started taking slugs at me. You get sued much here? No? That surprises me. Do not move to America. You’d never get professional indemnity insurance. I could make a lot of money out of this back home. Jesus! More than a whole year of marathons.’
‘Do you know anyone in the city?’
‘No one except you charming people, though some of the places I go running there’s all sorts of ladies keep wanting to say hello. Are they just naturally friendly or is there something else going on I should know about?’
He smiled at Maria.
‘Say, you’re sort of pretty. You a cop too? Naw. Not possible. Pardon my mouth. My trainer says if I could keep it shut more often I’d win more races: cut down on wind drag and conserve my energy. Know what I mean?’
The American looked into her cold blue eyes and found silence sometimes came naturally.
‘And tell me again, please, this time slowly and in detail, how you came to acquire this.’ Menéndez held up the dart, now encased in a plastic exhibit bag.
‘Er. Not quite right, my friend. It acquired me. OK?’
Famiani gulped down some more water. Torrillo thought this could take forever.
‘See, I like to run early in the morning and late at night. You don’t bump into people so much, and it’s cool. Good discipline for a runner, you know. Get out of bed early, hit the road. Eat some supper, wait for it to digest a little, do the same. So I’m staying in some semi-converted flophouse over, like’ – he pointed out of the window, beyond the Giralda – ‘like, over there, which is not exactly Holiday Inn standard and comes complete with piped groin music from the neighbouring bedsprings. Seems to me the best place to train is this park. You know the one just outside the barrio? With the weird trees round the back of that palace place?’
‘The Murillo Gardens?’
‘That’s the one. So usually I get up early, eat some breakfast, if that’s what you can call it, and I go there, like I done the last three mornings. That’s where it happened.’
‘What happened exactly?’
‘Exactly? Told you. The guy stuck me with the dart.’
Famiani rolled up his sleeve.
‘Here. You can’t see it now ’cos of the Band-Aid, but the bastard threw that thing right at me from, like, no further away than you are now. Just walked right out from behind one of those trees, then threw it at me. You know what? I think he was gonna throw another one, too. The lights aren’t too great there, but I saw him. He was like reaching for something else. Another dart. I dunno. Maybe it was something bigger than that. It was hard to tell.’
Famiani shook his head. ‘You know something else? I think that crazy sonofabitch was surprised. I think he actually expected me to, like, start something, there and then. He had this kind of aggressive pose. You know? You get to read it when you go around the streets a lot like I do. It’s the OK-punk-let’s-do-it look. Someone tried something just like it in Marina del Rey once, just because I nearly bumped into his shopping cart or something. Not with the dart, you understand, just kind of . . .’
He threw up his fists.
‘This all comes of a bad diet. Yin and Yang seriously out of kilter, my man. Too much red meat and shellfish, bad for your inner balance. You should talk to my trainer Benny, he knows about these things. Fish, chicken, steamed vegetables, keep you regular, keep you harmonious. You guys should try it. From what I’ve seen, most of the time you people live on lard. Your choice, but distinctly unharmonious.’
Menéndez kept scribbling and spoke without looking up from the page. ‘But instead you ran?’
‘Ran? If some lunatic throws one of those things at me, you bet I ran. I was out of there faster than shit off a hot shovel. Shame there weren’t no prizes around ’cos I would have won ’em, you bet your ass.’
‘Did he try to follow you?’
‘Didn’t stand a chance.’
‘And you can describe him.’
‘Nope.’
All three looked at him and waited. Maria said, ‘I am sorry, Mr Famiani. Perhaps you did not understand the question.’
‘Sure, I understood it. You said: Can I describe him? And I said, no, I can’t. You people listening to me, or did I miss something out? I didn’t even see the guy. Just . . . it!’
‘Maybe I should slap the little shit around some more,’ Torrillo said in Spanish.
‘Hey, hey, hey! I think I got a little whiff of that one,’ Famiani spluttered. ‘I’m not trying to be funny with you, really. Scout’s honour and all that stuff. Just that it’s true. All I saw was that funny kind of costume thing you guys wear when you’re waving your incense around and stuff.’
‘Costume?’
‘Yeah. You know. Like the Ku Klux Klan. Bad taste if you ask me, making your church stuff look like the kind of things those bastards wear. Your country, you understand, your choice. Seems bad taste to me.’
Menéndez tore off a piece of paper, drew a figure on it with the pencil.
‘You mean like this?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t I say that? This long cloak that goes all the way to the ground, with the flappy arms. And the big pointy hat, slitty eyeholes. I didn’t see nothing behind that. Nothing. Not even the eyes.’
‘His hand.’
‘Sure, his hand. Must have seen that. He pulled out that fucking dart with it. Then, after he stuck me, I saw him fumbling around inside of that cloak like he was looking around to pull out something else. I dunno what. A Uzi? You have them here? Spooky watching him fumbling around like that, man. You seen that bit in Alien? Where, like, the guy has got this thing in his stomach and it starts to writhe around inside him, kind of pushing up his T-shirt on the way out? Gross! It was sorta like that. Writhing. You bet I ran the fuck out of there. And like I said, wasn’t no way he was going to follow, not if he was Jesse Owens. Not with that outfit round his ankles. My old man could have beaten him out of there.’
‘Can you describe his hand?’
‘White. Fingers on it. How else you gonna describe a hand, for Chrissake? What next? You gonna give me hand pictures to look at, see if I can find one I recognize?’
‘And there was nothing on his dress? No jewellery?’
‘Dress? Jewellery? This some kind of queer thing? Jesus, this place is fucked up. No. There was nothing on his dress.’
Famiani sniffed again, then stretched his long legs.
‘Nothing more I can tell you. Can I go now? I wanna catch an afternoon train to Madrid. Benny’s meeting me there. No offence, but this place gives me the serious heebie-jeebies. Guys in frocks throwing darts at you . . .’
‘You’re not planning to leave Spain in the near future?’
‘Nope.’
Menéndez scribbled down contact addresses in Madrid, Berlin and California.
‘You nee
d to go back to the park with one of the detectives to identify the exact place where the attack took place. I will assign someone to you. After that we will happily drive you to your hotel and then to the station, if you wish.’
‘Kind of you, but I guess it’s the least you can do in the circumstances.’
‘If you think of anything else, here is my number.’ Menéndez handed over a small, white business card, with the city coat of arms on the top.
‘Sure. Nothing more to say, you know. This was all over in a few seconds. Thank God. And I’m not the kind of guy goes around looking closely at things when I’m running, in any case. Running requires focus.’
‘Thank you,’ said Menéndez, stony-faced.
‘Tell the baboon he doesn’t need to see me out. I’ve been helped enough for one day.’
Famiani stood up, wiped his nose on his sleeve, grabbed one ankle, then yanked it up behind him to stretch the muscle, released it, then did the same with the other leg, gave a little grin.
‘Don’t feel too bad, all things considered.’
He walked to the door, took hold of the handle, then turned back to them.
‘The dress. It was red, kind of. I said that, didn’t I? Sure I did. Deep red. Like scarlet. Weird. The Klan kinda like ’em white, which makes sense, I guess. Red’s a new one on me and, to be perfectly frank with you people, you’re welcome to it.’
TEN
Quemada and Velasco played footsie with the legs of their desk and looked unhappy. The incident with Famiani had taken them well over the end of their shift, which should have seen them off duty at nine, and they did not like kicking their heels in the main office while Torrillo and the woman had all the fun elsewhere. They watched glumly as the American came out of the interview room, booked in with one of the day team for a visit to the Murillo Gardens, then left with some passing crack about how nice it would be to get the hell out of town. Torrillo beckoned for them to follow down the hall into Rodríguez’s office. They came, sizing up the woman from behind as they did so. Same faded, floppy jeans, different cheesecloth top. Hair still looked like it needed some care and attention. But all things taken into consideration, it seemed best to suppress the wisecracks.
Menéndez opened the drab green door and led the way in. Bright sunlight came through the windows in big, thick chunks that shone as dusty shafts of light across the room. The blackboard was unchanged from the previous evening, but the captain’s desk now looked awash with paper, much of it torn-off pages from notepads, covered in scribbled writing. The lieutenant sat down in the leather chair, suggested they did the same, sent Torrillo for some coffee, waited for him to return, then said, ‘The captain asked me to take this meeting for him. He’s busy. Well?’
Velasco took a deep breath, unconsciously polished both knees of his suit with his sweating palms and wondered why his partner always left it to him to do the explanations. This chalk-and-cheese partnership seemed to work fine most of the time. It had for the best part of three years. Yet still, in spite of the jokes, in spite of the odd bout of frantic, spontaneous drunkenness together after work, he felt there were ways, many ways, in which he didn’t know Quemada. Velasco stifled his little bundle of inner resentment and said, ‘You aren’t going to like this.’
Then he took a long gulp of overstewed coffee and began.
‘The way we see it, this place in the old girl’s mansion must have been something like, I don’t know, a kind of rumpus room for the boys.’
Menéndez was writing again and didn’t look up. ‘Explain.’
‘We spoke last night to people they knew in Madrid and Barcelona, and the duty captain even gave us permission to make a long-distance phone call to New York and talk to some people there.’
‘They knew about the apartment here?’ asked Menéndez.
‘Well, kind of,’ said Velasco. ‘See, these guys, it’s not like they have a family around them we can talk to. All they have is acquaintances. Far as we can make out, they had their homes in Madrid and the rest of it, and they lived there when they were doing business. You know, seeing agents, morons who used to buy their junk, going to parties with the kind of B-list celebrities you get in the magazines. Being seen. But it was like they didn’t have a life there.’
‘Exactly.’ Quemada pulled out a notebook. ‘I spoke to their agent, some foreign guy called Mendelsohn in Madrid, and when we asked him who the brothers’ friends were, he just said: None. They didn’t have none. So I says: Well, who did they see, like who did they spend their time with? And he says: Whoever invited them to their parties. It was like their life was just about parties, about drumming up business. Nothing else. Now seems to me that these boys are not the sort to have no acquaintances at all. So I ask him: Where did they go to have fun, least the kind of thing they called fun? And he says he’s not sure, but he thinks they used to come here, ’cos sometimes they’d be away for a few weeks, when they got sick of all the partying with the nobs, you see, and when they’d come back, he said, they were glowing. Some of our guys in Madrid and Barcelona turned over their houses there and they’re clean, ’part from some dirty books and a few grams of pot. Whereas . . .’
‘Whereas it looks like that little old lady’s house was knee-deep in spunk and spit, most of the time the boys were in it.’ Velasco smiled. That was one line he wasn’t going to let his partner steal. ‘They found enough syringes in the drawers to run a medium-sized infirmary. No dope, though – that’s funny. Other stuff too. Kind of kinky stuff: handcuffs, rubber suits, things you could get beat up with. There’s a bare bed in one bedroom. Some traces of blood, not the brothers’; it’s being tested now. Not enough to make it look like someone got seriously hurt, you understand. Fun and games.’
‘We made some other calls too,’ said Quemada. ‘Around the network. The rent boys knew them – some pretty well, apparently.’
‘Any names?’
‘Not at the moment. We plan to talk to some people tonight. The important guys in this business don’t work days, and God knows where they go when they go off duty.’
‘Good.’
Menéndez picked up a sheet of paper in the pile on his desk.
‘You went through their diaries?’
‘They were too smart to put down anything there except a few appointments. Maybe they kept some private diaries somewhere, but we haven’t found anything much.’
Quemada nudged his elbows, winked and said, ‘Apart from the one thing. Tell him.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Velasco. ‘They liked the bulls. Madrid, Barcelona. A couple of times here. That was one of the circles they moved in too. The agent confirmed that. Bullfighters’ parties. They liked getting their pictures taken with these guys. And vice versa.’
‘The ears,’ said Quemada.
They stared at him.
‘When the matador’s a good boy, he gets to keep the bull’s ears,’ Quemada added. ‘Am I the only one seeing the connection here?’
He scratched his bald head.
‘Still don’t understand why he’d leave one and keep the other, though.’
Menéndez rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. ‘We’ve got enough to work on without worrying about the ears. You boys are way over your shift already. Can you spare me another half-hour?’
They nodded. They didn’t like Menéndez, particularly didn’t like the way he kept chasing the captain’s job. But they liked to be around when things were happening.
‘Good. Take a break. We’ll resume in fifteen minutes.’
The meeting ended. The two detectives finished their paperwork. Torrillo took Maria round to the Alarcon where, in the middle of a gaggle of noisy cops, he ate two huge slices of toast, soaked in bright-red pork dripping, washed down with a coffee and a copa of brandy. She sipped a mineral water and, after thirty seconds, gave up trying to wave away the clouds of cigarette smoke that spilled over them from every side.
‘You writing this down in your report?�
�
‘What?’
‘“And after an hour they then go to the bar around the corner to stuff their faces with lousy food.”’
She laughed and Torrillo thought that was something that didn’t happen often.
‘No.’
‘So what will you write?’
She thought. ‘I don’t know yet. I have some notes, but . . .’
Two traffic cops pushed their way to the bar and barked out orders.
‘Jesus!’ bellowed Torrillo. ‘Can’t you see there’s a lady in here?’
One of the traffic cops turned to look at him from behind opaque sunglasses. ‘Sure I can, Bear. Just can’t figure out why, that’s all.’
From behind the sunglasses, someone observed her.
‘Hey!’ said the traffic cop. ‘I know who she is. Quemada told me. She’s the ice queen. Stands out a mile. You worked out how to teach these guys to do their jobs yet, lady?’
Maria could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. The opaque sunglasses continued to stare at her, stifling the words in her throat.
Torrillo bellowed, ‘Goddamn bike riders think they’re something out of the movies . . . get out of my way.’
He barged past the motorcycle cop to the corner of the tiny bar, neatly stacked a pile of dirty plates and glasses to make way for their own, then slowly turned a half-circle that pushed open enough space for Maria to stand with a degree of comfort. She placed her glass of water on the grubby plasticized table and, for a moment, wished she had never given up cigarettes.
‘Ignore these people, Professor. Big mouths go with the job usually. It don’t mean anything.’
‘No,’ she said, and wondered whether she should feel amused or angry.
‘You were saying . . .’ Torrillo wanted to get the conversation back on track as fast as he could.
‘The thing is . . . I’m meant to be writing about existing methodologies – pardon me, existing procedures.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And I’m still trying to work out what they are.’
He squinted, screwing up the big, round face. ‘You mean like: Where’s the handbook?’