“Ezcurra,” I interrupt him.
“Yeah, sorry about that sir”—he smiles his servile smile—“it’s just when I get worked up the Good Lord himself can’t stop me. Well in the small hours when the Super gets back the first thing he asks me was whether anybody’d come to ask about Ezcurra, and me I go No news Superintendent sir thinking he’d be relieved, but instead I thought I could see something like disappointment on his face. Went straight to his office he did and locked himself away in there all morning. They say he was calling Rosario, the milicos, to come and take him away, I dunno. Don’t go thinking I knew everything going on just ’cause I was there, it wasn’t like that—I was just a corporal, I’m only telling you what I saw. The only thing I know is the milicos didn’t show up. Left us holding the baby they did. I was dropping so I found an empty cell right next door and slept like a suckling pig and round about noon it must’ve been I was woken up by the prisoner screaming for them to call his lawyer, call his mother. You understand? He wanted his mummy. I reckon it must of been the heat, the pigsty was a little two-by-two room in those days with no windows and a corrugated-iron roof which at the hottest time of day heated up like you wouldn’t believe and when it was your turn to dish out some pig—”
“Dish out what?” I interrupt.
“Beat the inmates to death,” Guido translates.
“Not always,” Sayago clarifies. “Sometimes we never even touched them, you’d just leave them there for a few hours and they’d squeal all by themselves they would, the ones who knew what the score was that is. But Ezcurrita didn’t, what would he know. So the Super had to come and spell it out for him didn’t he so he’d understand, shut up then all right. Still it couldn’t go on like that. All the common criminals listening in see, some who might be out shooting their mouths off on the street in a few days and to make matters worse the day after was visiting day. So the Super decided to move him. Problem was where to. He locked himself in his office with Greco who’d been there since the early morning too and when they came out you could see they had it all sorted and went to fetch him with a couple of low-ranking officers and took him away in Greco’s double this time not a patrol car, must’ve put him on the floor I reckon ’cause it was after siesta by then and the streets were beginning to fill up with people again, and it wouldn’t do to go parading him round the streets like a carnival queen. The town’d seen quite enough the night before.”
“Where did they take him?” I ask to confirm what I already know.
THE OFFICIAL NAME of the dirt street skirting the limits of the railway station is La Niña, but everyone calls it Eucalyptus Way. Guido and I will stroll between its tall, peeling trunks, submerged in the glittering green light and the murmur of the wind, impregnated with their scent as it blows through the treetops. A little further on the abandoned freight wagons stand on a stretch of disused siding. Wading into the weeds, getting my pants soaked to the knees with dew, I’ll scan the corrugated-iron sides of the nearest one, lead grey where it isn’t eaten away by rust. There are holes through which an adult body could easily fit and, poking my head through one of them, when my eyes get used to the half-light raked by sunbeams, I’ll make out the signs of recent occupation—old newspapers, sheets of cardboard, soot-blackened tin cans. I’ll get hold of one of the rusting metal edges and effortlessly pull off a piece, which will crumble like puff pastry between my fingers.
“Could this have been the one?” I’ll ask.
“Who knows. The metal’s had twenty years to rust. Could’ve been any of them. Does it matter?”
“I guess not. And I don’t think our friend will want to tell us. How many ribs did you say?”
“Three.”
“Think we’re a few short?”
I’ll manage to get a smile from him. The situation will make me feel a little selfish. At the end of the day, when this story’s all over, I can go home and say fuck them, but Guido has to go on living here. And you never know with cops.
“There won’t be any problems will there?” I’ll ask. “With the cops I mean.”
“I’ve taken care of it,” he’ll reply. “They stopped by the factory yesterday.”
“You didn’t say anything,” I’ll protest. “I swear I—”
“Wasn’t worth bothering you about. I’ve told you, it’s all taken care of.”
“How much?”
“A hundred.”
“I’ll give you half,” I’ll offer, reaching for my wallet. And then he’ll look me in the eye and grin from ear to ear, like when we were kids and had got into a spot of bother.
“Please,” he’ll raise his hand to reject the offer. “The next one’s on you.”
“THEY PUT AN OFFICER on guard for the night, Ramírez or Rodríguez, can’t remember. Poor Ramírez, the slapping he took. But you got to understand, Saturday at Carnival time the whole town’s out on the razz and down at the binge at the sports centre nearby the air blew him the music of the dance and the whiff of skirt up for a fuck and him all on his tod in the derelict station, with nothing but the toads for company and the snivelling of the bloke in the wagon, which only stopped when Rodríguez went and banged on the side with an iron bar. So he did a bunk, gave the padlock on the sliding door the once-over and went off to the sports centre to find his girlfriend and a couple of bottles of red. That’s right, took them back to the train station—he might of been thoughtless but not irresponsible—and he opened up another of the wagons for his own private party. He was woken up in the small hours by Sergeant Chacón kicking him in the head. He got out you dumbass! He got out! He was shouting at him and threw him out of the wagon half bollock-naked as he was and arse-kicked him along the tracks.” Ex-corporal Sayago chuckles again and, when he manages to stop, he looks at us with tear-filled eyes and then at me:
“’Nother round Maestro?” he asks with a naughty wink. He’s beginning to get matey, it’s time to call it a day. But what can I do?
IT MUST BE ABOUT twelve blocks from the abandoned wagons to the entrance of town, but they’re dark blocks, where a dead light bulb can sit in a street light for months—almost vacant blocks, with dirt streets so seldom trodden that they’re sometimes overgrown with grass from sidewalk to sidewalk—so there’s nothing strange about no one seeing Ezcurra on the first leg of his getaway. What is strange is that he didn’t head for the paved road, where his chances of stopping a passing car and getting away from danger would have been better; the most plausible explanation being that the odds of a patrol car, or someone who’d call one, going past were equally high. What is certain is that between the time they locked him up in a freight wagon and five o’clock, when they got the call at headquarters, any trace of his movements was lost. The people at the sports-centre festivities, which lasted until six in the morning, will assure you he didn’t come that way, and you’d better believe it, because for all the boozing and the debauchery and the costumes, the figure of Darío Ezcurra, with bulging eyes and missing a shoe and a sleeve, his clothes stained ochre from the beating and from squeezing through the rusting metal of the wagon, can’t have been a sight easily overlooked. And without a precise time of escape, it’s impossible to say how long he was wandering about for, who (if anyone) he turned to for help, how many doors (which stayed shut) he knocked on before he resurfaced at the little first-aid ward, where you could always find a light and a duty nurse on at the weekend.
“I CAN TELL YOU THAT,” Guido had told me at the table in Los Tocayos a few days earlier, and Leticia, who was with us, along with the perennial Licho and Iturraspe, nodded gravely. Leticia’s one of the few women from Malihuel who dares to sit at the eminently male domain of the tables in Los Tocayos—says she prefers men’s company to the harpies who only gather to tear strips off other women (her for example, for being here now) and the men certainly appreciate hers, which they flatter with compliments and lighted lighters and even the odd glass of something, with prior permission from her ever-present husband, who proceeded to relate t
he events of the small hours that final Sunday. “I worked as a volunteer driving the ambulance for two years, not in those days of course but later on, and one of the two nurses, Doña Isadora de Mendonca, the pharmacist’s mother, who’s dead now, told me the story. It was getting light, she said, she’d nodded off reading the magazines opposite the door, which used to be left open in summer, with just the strip curtain, when she saw him appear through the coloured fringe she nearly had a fit from the shock, because like all the others she’d already given him up for dead and the man staring at her from the door looked more like a ghost than a living human being. Help me Doña Isadora, I’m hurt, he managed to get out and she reacted, his voice still coming from this world. She half carried him to the first consulting room, laid him down on the stretcher, undid his shirt and washed his face and body with some gauze soaked in distilled water to see how bad the cuts were. He had two deep ones on his scalp that he’d got on the edges of the corrugated iron when he stuck his head out to scream for help, and another in his groin which was still bleeding badly; the rest was grazing. Call Soandso or Soandso she says he kept repeating, Tell them to come and fetch me, tell them to tell my Mamá. But she was worried about the wound on his leg and decided to call Dr Lugozzi, who was in charge of the little ward till the cancer took him.”
“He realised he was going to die when he saw his tests,” Leticia intervened, and Guido gave her a stern look before going on:
“The doctor came straight away, in the first pair of trousers he could find and his white coat flung on any old how, with his hair all standing on end from bed and his eyes red he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into his office. Are you crazy? How come you let him in? Don’t you know he’s wanted by the whole provincial police force? This man’s a fugitive from justice and we have to report him rightaway! And she says Doctor, look at what they’ve done to him already and he says you want us to end up like that too? Go and ring straight away and from the next-door room she heard the doctor saying to him take it easy Darío, Isadora’s calling your family, come here and I’ll fix you up, and three minutes after hanging up the nurse heard the squeal of brakes and the slamming of car doors. It’s only six blocks from the headquarters.”
“Didn’t Ezcurra do anything?” I asked.
Guido, Leticia, Iturraspe and even Nene Larrieu looked at each other for a few seconds before one of them dared to reply. Only Licho, who thinks Ezcurra has a wife and children in Casilda, stayed out of it. It was Leticia who finally plucked up the courage.
“Doña Isadora swore blind that after they brought Ezcurra out with legs so weak they had to carry by the armpits she found a used syringe in the bin liner which she’d changed at the start of her shift and an almost empty phial of some injectable tranquilliser or other on the steel table.”
“JUST AS WELL the call from the doc got to us before news of the escape,” ex-police corporal Carmen Sayago sighs with relief twenty years after the event. “The Super who’d spent the night awake at headquarters was there never seen him like that I hadn’t motherfuckers he was saying you want to ruin my career you’re doing this to screw me all blue in the face like inside the car screaming put the fear of God into you and Greco in that little arse-licking voice of his don’t get upset Superintendent sir”—Carmen Sayago softens his voice like a woman’s while quoting—“Dr Lugozzi’s assured us everything’s under control, and the Super was all Arielito this and Arielito that when he was in a good mood but when he flew off the handle shut it the wagons were your idea if he escapes you can do the explaining to the milicos in Rosario now and we’ll see if they swallow yer poncing about had to put my hand over my mouth to stop myself laughing I swear, first time I’d seen him give Greco a piece of his mind and in front of his subordinates too I reckon that was when Greco started harbouring a grudge against me probably kicked me out the force ’cause I was a witness to his humiliation didn’t he. ’Cause I never did a thing to him to make him treat me like that honest I didn’t a grudge he’s got all ’cause I was faithful to Superintendent Neri happens a lot that does one on his way down another on his way up and the new one gets rid of all the last guy’s men so he can bring in his friends and to justify it they invent some cock-and-bull story about err you orchestrating some malicious intent and then on top of getting rid of you they build a reputation for this that and the other and nobody’ll hire you for anything after that. And my old man my old man if Neri’d of been there he’d of gone and talked to him but Greco came along when my old man was retired and then all the respect he’d earned in thirty years thirty years of service like Greco gave a shit. Couldn’t give a shit sir, wouldn’t even’ve seen him he wouldn’t, and me when Neri give him a dressing down I didn’t laugh at all didn’t even look at him but I ended up getting it in the neck just ’cause I was around, ’cause you should of seen his face white with rage he used to go a colour like candlewax, between his face and the Superintendent’s made you want to crawl under the seat it did, good thing the journey was short just five blocks and we stowed the three patrol cars and marched into the little ward in a posse guns out. Dr Lugozzi put his hands up like in one of them cowboy films and yelled Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’ve already subdued him! And later when we was carrying the rag doll he says to the Super Is there a reward for capturing him? And the Super goes Go to bed Doctor and pretend it was all a dream will you. Nene, ’nother shot of caña over here!” yells the ex-corporal, and then to me, half brash half snide, says, “If you’re still buying that is Chief.”
“Go ahead,” I reply without returning his smile.
“Such a pleasure being amongst mates,” he says and goes on. “On the way back I went in the car with Chacón and this first corporal who they said was a fucking cocksucker ’cause nobody never saw him with a bird, which ain’t got nothing to do with nothing just popped into my head, where was I oh when we got there they’d already got him out the car and were shoving him along he’d take two steps and fall over ’cause of the jab the doc gave him must of been, while the sergeant went off to the wagons like I told you and gave Rodríguez the thrashing of his life, the rest of us followed the Super and the Subsuper who steered him towards the train station, the Super talking to him all the time, talking to him, saying You know why we’ve come to this? Eh? ’Cause you’re a dickhead who can’t listen when he’s spoken to. How many ways did I try and warn you about what was coming? What? Thought I wouldn’t dare, thought I didn’t have the balls? Gave you every opportunity I did, but not him, His Lordship had to get all cocky didn’t he, show everybody he’s a big man here in town, an untouchable, the Super said into his ear, and slapped him every time he said it: Untouchable are you? See how I can touch you. Untouchable? You ask me he didn’t understand a thing any more except the punches, could barely put one leg in front of the other, all wobbly like this like spastic like a flan and every time he’d fall over Neri or Greco’d pick him up by the scruff of the neck. It’d started getting light so we turned off the torches and our clothes were soaking with dew. I thought we were going to do it at the Federal Shooting Range, it looked as good a place as any, but before we went through the gate we turned right and headed for the silos, know where I mean? Down where the old mill used to be?”
“The one Ezcurra’s grandfather burnt down,” I nod.
“The very one and … up for another little drinkie I am, if it’s no skin off the present company’s nose eh, but we never got as far as the mill, we stopped at this corrugated-iron shed, isn’t there any more but in them days—”
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