He called her at his apartment. The strains of “Tanguron” were playing in the background when she answered. “From the sound of the music, you’ve found my Victrola and tango records.”
“Yes,” she said, “and your books. You have lovely books. Not much food, though.”
“Don’t go out,” he said. “I will bring you a sandwich. Stay inside.”
“Don’t worry. I am staying here.”
He wanted to tell her he loved her, but it seemed too soon. “I’ll be back as quick as I can,” he said instead, aware of a stirring below his waist. He had too much to do today. But he knew what he would do after dark. No night shift for him tonight.
He drove to an Italian store not too far from his house and bought bread and cheese and delicious fried rice balls with meat sauce in the center that the Sicilian proprietor sold at lunchtime. He wondered if Pilar would like a beer. He bought two and a bottle of orange soda.
At the club she drank highballs. Not like a drunk. She sipped them. He didn’t know anything about her. Except that she had no family. Had she known her father? Where had she learned to sew well enough to have the job she had at her age? How old was she anyway? She wasn’t the virgin his grandfather had told him he should marry. He had never wanted a virgin—too much work, too much responsibility. All he knew was that he had to have her. And she seemed to want him as much as he wanted her. He wondered if she would think he was some kind of animal if he tried to make love to her as soon as he got through the door.
He found a parking place on the side of the building, though he preferred to leave the car in front, where he could keep an eye on it. The closer he got to Pilar, the faster he moved. He let himself in the downstairs front door with his key, but he knocked on his own apartment door before he went in.
She called out, “Come in.”
He prepared himself to hold back from jumping all over her. The second he saw her, his passion evaporated. She sat on the sofa with her arms crossed and eyes full of suspicion and wrath. She was wearing the dress she had had on the night before, too fancy for the daytime.
“What’s the matter?” He could not fathom what could have made her angry between the time he had spoken to her on the phone and now. “I brought you lunch,” he said, holding up the brown paper sack from the store. It was all he could think to say, and it softened her not at all.
“I am not hungry,” she said coldly.
Her behavior completely stymied him. Women were incomprehensible. “You said on the phone there was no food. You must be hungry.”
“I already told you. I am not.” There was not a glimmer left in her of the warmth of last night or the trust of early that morning.
He went into the kitchen and made up a couple of plates and poured the beer into glasses. Girls liked to drink beer out of glasses. Of that he was sure. He put the plates on the little kitchen table, near the window, and carried the beers into the living room.
Now she was crying. He sat next to her and tried to put a hand on her arm. She slapped it away. He lost his temper. “Oh for Christ’s sake. What did I do?”
He got no answer but sobbing and then silence. He knew better than to yell again.
“You better take me home,” she said.
He stood up. “I am going to eat something first.” He went into the kitchen and wolfed down some bread and cheese. And drank the orange soda.
When he went back into the living room she was standing by the door, holding her little purse. That’s when he realized that she wanted him to explain something. There was Subte fare in that little bag of hers. If she was really done with him, she would have gone home rather than wait for him to come home so that she could stage this little drama. “What made you think you could not trust me?” he said.
“How do you know something made me not trust you?” She was trying too hard to show him he was wrong. She was so cute. So hurt and soft under all this fake anger.
“I am a detective,” he said.
Her mouth twisted. It could be the beginning of more wrath or tears, but neither came.
“What did you do while I was gone?” She could have made phone calls. Certainly she had taken a bath. He could smell his soap on her.
“I looked for a towel,” she said, as if that should answer the mystery.
“A towel. Did you find one?”
“Eventually.” The sarcasm had returned to her voice. Now he was getting somewhere.
“What else did you find?”
Now the tears started to fall again. “I found your other girls.”
“In the closet in the bathroom with the towels?”
He had her now. He knew it all. And she saw that he was going to win this one. She was struggling to stay angry and not cry.
“You have lots of girls,” she said. “What do you need with me?” There was real anguish in her voice. His heart fell on the floor.
He took her by the hand and went into the bedroom. He opened the top drawer of his dresser and took out the pictures. “You’ve been looking at these?”
She nodded. “Even if you are not with them anymore, you keep their pictures. You have had a lot of girls. You will pick me up and drop me, too.”
He wanted to laugh out loud. He wanted to tease her by saying he would never drop any of the girls in those pictures, but he couldn’t bring himself to prolong her agony.
She stamped her foot and punched him, but it didn’t hurt. “Why are you smiling? It’s not funny.”
“Oh, but it is,” he said. He held the pictures at the level of her face. “Señorita Borelli, I would like you to meet my sisters. This is Carmen. She is a year and a half older than me. She’s married and has three children. This is Emilia. She is five years younger. She is a nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children and is engaged to a mathematics teacher. And this is Norma. She is eleven years younger and still in colegio.”
She pointed to another, still in the drawer. “And this one? She is the prettiest of all.” She was still defensive.
He put his head back and laughed in pure glee. “I have been thinking about her a lot for the past few hours. I want her to like you. In fact, I want her to love you. When I tell her what you just said, I am sure she will. That’s my mother. Also Emilia, the Spanish beauty who stole my Irish father’s heart.”
More tears dropped. “You want to introduce me to her?” She spoke as if she hardly believed it.
He hardly believed he had said it. He had thought about it while he was driving home just now, but when it occurred to him, it had seemed months in the future. She looked at him as if he had already asked her to family lunch next Sunday. He would not be able to go back on it now and didn’t want to anyway. So he kissed her instead.
She threw her arms around him and wept into his shoulder and held him so tight that he could hardly breathe. He looked at his watch. “Wait. Wait,” he said, though significant parts of his body did not want to wait. “We have to go in five minutes. I have to get you home to your place to change. If I take you to spy on Puglisi this afternoon in that dress, there is no way you won’t be noticed.”
* * *
Back in her home on the Calle Posadas, Evita did not eat the lunch Cristina tried to serve her. Miguel Angel Mazza had called her at Pierina’s to tell her that he had to speak to her in private. Since she could not ensure privacy at Pierina’s and she was still wary about traveling around the city, she had asked the chauffeur to take her home.
She barely had time to refuse the offered food when the courtly Mazza arrived. Evita asked Cristina for coffees and went with him into the salon.
“I have given up on Bramuglia,” she told him. “I don’t know what to do next.” She did not mention her Sunday drive through the villas miserias. She was still unsure of what he and Perón’s other supporters would think of her actions. “I don’t want to give up trying to get Perón released, but it seems impossible. I have packed our bags to leave. I don’t know what else to do.”
Mazza smiled at he
r, like an indulgent father. The kind of father she had had, but who had abandoned her and her brother and sisters. “Don’t worry. As long as we do what we can, but very quietly, it will be the right thing.”
She nodded. She believed these words as if they came directly from Perón’s lips. She burned to shout, but she took Mazza’s words into her heart. She had to find a way to work, but quietly.
Mazza put a hand on her shoulder. “I wanted to see you privately,” he said, “because I have excellent news, but we must not let anyone know about it. I think we have found a way to get Perón back to Buenos Aires.”
Her heart leaped. “Out of jail. Without a writ?”
Mazza motioned with his hand as if to slow her down. “Not free. But as a first step, we can get him out of Martín García.”
She could not understand exactly what he meant but it made her afraid. He must have seen that in her face because he whispered, “By faking an illness.”
She felt wary, as if Mazza were trying to break it to her easy that her colonel really was ill. “What good would that do?”
“We will bring him to the military hospital here in Buenos Aires. He will be nearby when Step Two takes place.”
“Step Two?”
“Events are afoot,” he said. “There may be a way to bring the Fárrell–Avalos government down and put Perón back in power, but on top this time.”
* * *
While Leary sat on Pilar’s little cot and watched her, she changed into a plaid pleated skirt and plain white blouse, trying to make herself as nondescript as possible.
“Do you have something that will cover your hair?”
“My hair?”
“It’s very beautiful,” he said. “A man would remember it. I am going to try to fix things so that Puglisi doesn’t see you, but I want to make sure, even if he catches sight of you, that he won’t recognize you.”
She dug into a beat-up old trunk at the foot of her narrow bed and found an old straw cloche that had belonged to her mother. She pulled it on and looked in the mirror. It covered all but a small fringe of her hair.
“Good,” Leary said. “Let’s go. I told him I would meet him at the union hall at three. We’ll be lucky if we make it in time.”
She felt guilty that she had delayed him with her jealousy, but happy, so happy that her joy sent her fears away.
“Here’s my plan,” Leary said. “There’s a dingy coffee bar near his office. I am going to get him to go there with me. You will already be there. There are a couple of tables in the place, one away from the window where there is not much light. You will sit there and pretend to read the newspaper. I will come in and stand at the bar and have a coffee with him. I will try to get him in a position where you can get a good look at him without him taking notice of you. Then I will go back to the hall with him. Once he and I leave, you will immediately go to my car. I will leave the key with you. You get in the car and lock yourself in. I will break off my conversation with him as soon as I can and meet you at the car. I’ll take you to police headquarters, where you can swear out an affidavit. Then I’ll get a warrant for his arrest. He will be in custody by six o’clock.”
She found it thrilling to be helping him catch a criminal, but she was still afraid. “Suppose I am not sure?”
He looked disappointed. “You will tell me the truth?”
“Yes.”
“As long as you tell me the truth, it will be okay.”
“Suppose it isn’t him?”
He looked even more dismayed. “Then I will take you home.”
“Home?”
“To my house. Or to yours. Whichever you want.”
She wanted it to be his. She didn’t want to disappoint him. She almost hoped that the murderer would be Puglisi, so that Leary would be proud of her for helping him catch the killer. But she was too afraid to hope too hard.
Leary parked the car three blocks from the union hall, bought a newspaper at the kiosk in the corner of the square, and waited around the corner while Pilar took the paper into the café. He gave her time to order a coffee. She was counting out her change to pay when he went past and on to the union hall down the block.
As he entered the dim, smoky office, someone was saying, “All the workers support Perón.”
“Think about it, Tulio,” another voice shouted. “Without him you wouldn’t have a paid vacation. Nobody loves going to the beach more than you.”
Tulio answered with his typical refrain, “Yeah. Hitler gave me health insurance. Mussolini gave me a week at the seashore in Mar de la Plata. Hooray! Let’s have a party!”
The same voice that had spoken before said, “Watch out, Tulio—if you keep mouthing off like that, they will label you a communist and ship you off to the camps in Patagonia and no one will ever hear of you again.”
Evidently, his fellow union leaders were just as bored with Tulio’s rants as Leary was, because they all walked away from further discussion. Leary suggested a break, and Tulio’s eyes lit up immediately. He grabbed his jacket to go out to the café.
When they went in, Leary took off his fedora and put it on a hook next to the door. As he had hoped, Puglisi did the same with his hat, giving Pilar a clear view of his face. She was sitting, her back to the corner, with a newspaper open on the table in front of her. She was chewing on her forefinger and giving a good imitation of reading the movie schedule. With her head down and her hair covered, and in that dowdy outfit, Leary would not have recognized her himself had he not already known it was she. Carefully, he placed himself between her and Puglisi, giving Pilar a good view of Puglisi’s face.
“They are going to strike on the eighteenth,” Puglisi said. He held up two fingers and pretended to drink from a demitasse cup—the hand signal to the barista for a double espresso. Leary raised a thumb to order the same.
“I already know about the strike,” Leary said. “The cops are always warned.” He knew Puglisi would get suspicious if he pretended to be there for chitchat about the political chaos. “I wanted to ask you again about what happened after Perón’s farewell rally.”
Puglisi stared daggers at him. “Are you still on that nonsense? The country’s falling apart, man.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m a flunky,” he said. “There is absolutely nothing I can do about the insanity in this town, so I am amusing myself with this little murder. It passes the time.”
The barista put down two cups. Pretending he was maneuvering for the sugar, Leary managed to change places, so that Puglisi was no longer facing Pilar.
While Tulio was downing his coffee, Leary glanced at her. She shook her head, stood up, and left. As she passed them on the way out, she kept her head down and her face obscured. She was smart, this one.
“Look,” Puglisi was saying, “I told you last time. I don’t know anything more about this. Don’t you have anything to do but to hound me for information I don’t have? As far as I am concerned, you should be arresting Perón’s actress before she stirs up even more trouble. There must be some law on the books that you could use. Not that the lack of legal backup has ever stopped the present government from tossing anyone it wants into jail.”
“Okay,” Leary said. He drank the last sugary drop of the coffee. “I had to be sure.” Puglisi was right about who got arrested and who didn’t. Some people were allowed to protest the government and some were not. The generals had their reasons for who got picked up. Someone might understand the reasons, but they were never made clear to the arresting officers.
“And are you going to leave me the fuck alone about this now?” Tulio was loud and incredulous. The barista looked a bit scared.
“Keep your temper, for Christ’s sake,” Leary said. “It’s one thing to be passionate about politics, but it doesn’t pay to come across as someone on the verge of violence.”
Puglisi threw a handful of coins onto the bar and started for the door. “You sound like my mother,” he said over his shoulder.
They grabbed their h
ats. Leary jammed his on his head. “I’d listen to my mother if I were you.”
“Fuck you,” Puglisi said under his breath as they parted company.
Leary rushed to the car. Pilar was sitting in the passenger’s seat, wearing that ugly hat and an expression to match. She looked so angry that he was surprised she unlocked the door for him. Here we go again, he thought.
“Are you sure it wasn’t him?” he said. He reached for the ignition, but the key was not in the dash.
She held it up, dangling from the rabbit’s foot key chain that had brought his uncle luck in New Jersey. Evidently, the charm had lost its potency when it crossed the equator to Argentina—at least as far as women were concerned. He took the key, turned the car on, and started the motor. “So?” he said.
“So?”
He shook his head. “So, what have I done wrong now?” Maybe he wouldn’t introduce her to his mother after all.
“You told that Tulio guy you’re amusing yourself. ‘It passes the time,’ you said.” She did a creditable imitation of his voice. “That’s what I am to you. A pastime.”
He jammed his foot on the clutch as if he wanted to kill it, as if a new clutch for this car would be an easy thing to come by in Buenos Aires. He could not suppress a groan of exasperation. “I was lying to him. I had to lie to cover up what we were doing.”
“Lying? You do a lot of that, it seems. Is that why you slept with me? To get me to spy for you?”
“Is that what it seemed like to you?” He backed up until he was in position to pull out of the parking space, put the car in gear, and popped the clutch so that the tires squealed, as if new ones for this car would be easy to find as well.
He couldn’t say more without shouting, so he shut up. He drove her to her house.
“So I guess that’s it. You got what you wanted from me.” She pressed the chrome handle to get out of the car.
He grabbed her by the wrist harder than he had intended to. “Wait.”
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