Far South

by David Enrique Spellman

  I waved a palm, turned around and walked back to my car. I got in. I lit a cigarette. I could still see her in the rearview mirror. She stood on the sidewalk like a shell-shocked bag lady. I still had time to make that meeting with the Temenos theater group. It seemed like Ana and those artists belonged to another world. Somehow, it had intersected with that of Arenas and Matas and Maria to nobody’s advantage. I started the car and eased it into the traffic. I hated to leave Maria standing on the sidewalk like that. I wanted to get Matas.

  Where the fuck was Fischer?

  I drove between the concrete struts of the new overpass with the soundtrack a rattle of heavy plant, and truck engines, and the creak of cranes and the shouts of men in hard hats. I aimed the Ford’s black hood at Highway 60.

  I met Ana in the Temenos parking lot. I was still shaken by the meeting with Matas and Maria. I bent down to exchange a simple cheek kiss. The ropes of Ana’s dreadlocks scraped against my face.

  ‘Come on,’ Ana said, ‘we don’t want to be late.’

  ‘What’s with the meeting?’

  ‘We have to decide what we do about the performance in Buenos Aires next week,’ Ana said.

  ‘The performance?’

  ‘Yes, the one we were rehearsing before Gerardo disappeared.’

  I nodded. I guess Temenos was a kind of commune. Maybe they had meetings all the time. I guess all of the people up here were dedicated to some kind of ideal: writing or painting or music; or – like Ana – for the theater group. Gerardo Fischer had been a charismatic focus for her dedication to that ideal. Why hadn’t they just stuck to theater and kept out of politics or crime? I guess that’s unfair. Crime had come to them in the form of Arenas, and politics had always been an integral part of Arenas’s criminal career. Maybe Fischer’s, too.

  Ana and I followed the path from the parking lot down through the pines towards the meeting hall. She didn’t hold my arm, or my hand, and we might have been two strangers, or a client and an investigations consultant on our way to a meeting, which we were.

  On the hillside paths from the cabins, other residents of the colony were headed toward the same place. Down near a small wooden bridge over the tree-shaded creek, cigarette smoke rose above the heads of two women and a man. Out of politeness I guess, they were keeping away from the main gathering of people in front of the hall. I raised a hand in greeting.

  ‘Hi,’ I called.

  One of the women, about forty years old, had a halo of thick black hair, a thick waist, clothes stained with paint.

  ‘You’re the investigator,’ she said.

  Ana kept on walking as if she hardly knew me.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  I lit another cigarette to calm myself down some more. All these images in my head: flat-faced Matas, bruises on Maria’s face, Ana’s face framed by dreadlocks that fanned in ropes across her pillow.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ the dark woman said.

  ‘What? Oh, yes.’ I dragged some smoke into my lungs.

  The male was wearing a brown sports coat that had seen better days. He was unshaven, a bit jowly. Either he ate badly or too much. The other woman had her hair cropped short and dyed a bright red, big eyes and cheekbones, a slash of bright red lipstick.

  ‘We should go inside,’ the redhead said.

  ‘Sure.’ I stubbed out my cigarette in a sand bucket with other butts.

  Ana was with Sara, framed by the doorway of the meeting hall. Everyone started to drift into the meeting. When I got to the door, Ana took me by the arm.

  ‘You sit next to me,’ she said. I was glad of that.

  Inside the meeting hall, the shutters had been folded back from the windows so that the theater space was flooded with light. The walls were black: ceiling and floor, too. Bleachers were bolted to heavy alloy scaffolding. It seemed to me that most of the colony’s residents were gathered in the hall.

  Sara stayed at the front of the auditorium, facing the bleachers. Ana and I sat midway up the bleachers just off the aisle. I kept imagining the faces of Matas and Maria. I just didn’t want anyone else getting hurt. My nerves were raw.

  ‘Who’s in the actual theater company?’ I leaned toward Ana. ‘You’ve got a lot of people in here.’

  ‘Right now the company is made up of three Argentines – myself, Justo and Enrique – then we have an American, two Australians, a Frenchwoman, and the Irish set painter, Damien, the guy you met last night. The others who live here are painters, potters, writers… I’ll tell you their names as they speak.’

  A gray-haired biker type limped into the auditorium.

  ‘That’s Dean Mills,’ Ana said, ‘an American writer.’

  Mills was leaning on his cane, a black cane with medals from AA or NA dangling off it. It was the right leg that was stiff. The pain of it gave him a sour expression and it seemed he was in a mood to match. He sat down on one of the wooden folding chairs against the wall below the bleachers. Damien Kennedy, his gray blond hair hanging over the big features of his face, was the last to arrive.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ Kennedy said to Sara. Mills nodded to the Irishman and Kennedy sat down on a chair next to him. Kennedy pressed his palms together and brought his rough thumbs up to the level of his mouth, stared at the floor in front of him.

  ‘Can we start?’ Sara said.

  Sara pointed me out on the bleachers.

  ‘This is Juan Manuel Pérez,’ Sara said. ‘He helped us all out when Melissa, Miriam, Carlos and Ramón were robbed some time ago. He isn’t with the police any more. We’ve engaged him privately to help us find Gerardo.’

  I was shocked that Sara had started the meeting off by introducing me. It felt as if I was on stage, not in the bleachers. The edge of my seat dug into my legs just behind the knees. I needed to piss really. Right away, one of the foreign guys said: ‘So what happened exactly? We just heard rumors… do you know?’

  I leaned forward on the bench.

  ‘That’s Paul,’ Ana said. ‘He’s from Australia.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’m sure Sara and Ana will have told you all we know at the moment,’ I said. ‘Three days ago, Gerardo Fischer disappeared from his house. There was no sign of violence. No clue as to where he might be or how he might have disappeared. It’s been reported to the police. For them, so far, it’s a simple missing person case. For sure, they’ll investigate fully but you have to understand, he’s only been gone a little more than seventy-two hours. For the police, statistically speaking, he could turn up any minute having just skipped out to meet someone. Ana and Sara are worried about him. They asked me to help find Gerardo. I’ll do everything I can to find him.’

  ‘Gerardo could be anywhere. He might have just taken off.’

  That was a deep voice from the front of the room.

  ‘That’s Patrick,’ Ana whispered to me. ‘He’s Australian, too.’

  His Argentine accent was quite passable. He must have been here for quite some time. It was because of Gerardo Fischer that all these theater-group gringos had come here to this place. They believed in him. Just like Ana. And Damien Kennedy. Believed that he could take them further than they had ever been before in their lives. Not just in the way they made theater, but how they lived their lives making theater. Temenos. Sacred space. I wished I had a belief like that in my life. It might help me deal with the violence that was Matas, was Arenas, and all the violence of the past. I was trying to find the man who transformed these people’s lives, who gave them this motivation, almost like a religion.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s possible he’ll turn up. The police will assume there’s a simple explanation unless he stays missing. And I hope they’re right. But I’ll do everything I can to find out one way or another.’

  ‘So what can we do?’ Carine the Frenchwoman said.

  ‘I’m going to get me a Doberman,’ Dean Mills said.

  ‘Why don’t you get a gun, Dean?’ Carine said.

  ‘Because I’m not an Argent
ine citizen and I’d get put away for murder if I shot someone,’ Dean said. ‘Even in self defense.’

  ‘Look,’ Patrick said. ‘We just don’t know where he is… that’s all. Maybe he’ll just turn up.’

  ‘I’d like to come around and talk to some of you,’ I said. ‘Anything you can think of, anything that might be helpful. Sooner or later, the real cops will be involved. I know some of them. I can work with them, too.’

  I intertwined my fingers and gripped them tight between my knees. It was sinking in deep now how much I really missed being a cop and how proud my father had been of me when I got out of training, and how quickly I was drafted in to work with the violent crime squad. He must have been desperately disappointed when I left the force. I could always sense it in his body when we sat around the table in his garden, to drink mate.

  A French accent cut into my thoughts.

  ‘Gerardo has missed six rehearsals with us so far,’ Carine said. ‘He’s been up here for months rehearsing with us. Every day the same routine. He’s meticulous about that. That’s what’s so strange: that he’d say nothing and just not show up for rehearsals when the show is so close.’

  ‘Nobody saw any strangers around here?’ I said.

  Total silence.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘If someone can think of something desperately important right away, tell me now. Otherwise I’ll come around and talk to you all one by one. Does anyone object if Sara gives me your residence details and phone numbers?’

  No one said anything. A lot of head shaking. No public objections.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in touch with you.’

  I didn’t like being the center of an audience’s attention.

  ‘Okay, but we’ve all still got a problem,’ Patrick said. ‘We’re supposed to perform in Buenos Aires starting next Wednesday for two weeks. Do we call it off?’

  ‘No, we go ahead,’ Carine said.

  ‘With no director?’ Paul said.

  ‘We’ve been rehearsing for six weeks already,’ Patrick said. ‘We’re close.’

  ‘But with Gerardo missing…’ Paul said.

  ‘He’d want us to go ahead no matter what,’ Carine said.

  Ana’s voice, right beside me: ‘I think we should go ahead,’ she said.

  Outside the first dry thunder rumbled. It would pour with rain soon.

  ‘Do want to vote on it?’

  Ana leaned over and she whispered to me. ‘That’s Justo. He’s Argentine, too.’

  ‘It’s not about a vote,’ Carine said.

  ‘Carine’s right… either we all want to do it… or we don’t do it,’ Paul said.

  ‘I want to do it,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Me, too,’ Carine said.

  ‘I’ll say yes,’ Ana said.

  And then they all agreed. I found it kind of funny that they had this kind of ‘show-must-go-on’ attitude. There was a kind of childish innocence to it. Something I didn’t have. But that was really none of my business. A squall of rain rattled on the straw thatch of the roof. Everyone began to fidget.

  ‘Okay,’ Sara said. ‘Anybody have anything else to say?’

  Nobody did. I guess they weren’t communists or we might have been there for hours.

  ‘Let’s close the meeting,’ Sara said.

  Ana held onto me as we left our seats and went down the steps of the bleachers. My cell phone rang. It was my father. I opened the phone.

  ‘Hello, Juanma,’ he said.

  ‘Pa, what can I do for you?’

  ‘There are no files on Arenas or Fischer in the police department.’

  ‘No files?’

  ‘No files,’ he said.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the way it is.’

  ‘That’s what they’re telling you.’

  ‘No, that’s the way it is. They’re not there any more.’

  ‘Who’s got them?’

  ‘Come around later this afternoon,’ he said, ‘we’ll go for a ride together in the mountains.’

  Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez

  January 12th 2006

  Hours: 16:00 to 17:30

  When I pushed through the entrance to my father’s garden, he was sitting on the low gate that opened onto the stream and its steppingstones. He was relaxed, smoking a cigarette. A mate gourd in his left hand rested on his knee. Next to his right riding boot was a metal thermos flask. In the paddock across the stream, both of the bays had been saddled. Costanza brushed at the haunches of one of them. The reins of the other were looped over the branch of a pine tree. At first I thought that she and Pa were about to go riding, or had been riding, but Costanza was wearing rubber flip-flops and tight shorts. If they were to go out riding together, she would always dress in britches and boots. She always dressed for the occasion. Pa put down the gourd and stubbed out his cigarette on the gatepost. When he kissed me on the cheek he had that reek of nicotine on his breath and on his clothes that was particularly fresh – or particularly stale – depending on how you wanted to see it.

  ‘Let’s go for a ride,’ Pa said.

  I held my arms open. I was wearing slacks and loafers and a linen jacket. And the .45 was hooked on my belt.

  ‘Leave your jacket with Costanza,’ he said.

  I took off the jacket but I left the weapon on my belt. Pa held the gate open for me. He was making an effort to show his paternal affection. I walked through the gate and crossed the stream. In the paddock, Costanza kissed me on the cheek. I handed my jacket to her and slid the hip holster back a little. I took the horse’s reins from Costanza. I adjusted the tooled leather stirrup, got a foot into it, and swung up onto the horse. The saddle was padded with sheepskin, and a quilted blanket. I enjoyed the sensation of sitting up straight on a horse again. The bay tossed her head for a second, twitched her ears. I leaned forward and stroked her neck and she relaxed under my touch. Costanza brought Pa the reins of the other bay. He pulled himself up into the saddle, turned the horse around and we moved up the slope toward the gate that led out onto the hillside. Pa leaned over and unlatched the top gate, drew it open, let me through, and pulled it shut behind him without needing to dismount. We got out into the broom and scrub above the paddock and then we took a trail that led up towards some high granite rocks on the ridge. From up here we could see down into the village of San Pedro, across the valleys with their ranch houses among woods and paddocks, and – just above Pa’s property – the whitewashed shrine to the Virgin. The sunlight picked out the borders of its walls, edged with yellow and gold paint that glittered.

  The hooves of the horses kicked up puffs of dust and sent mica skittering off trailside as we eased into a canter. When we reached the highest point of the ridge Pa sat his horse and allowed it to crop at some sweet grass in the shade of one of the big boulders. Granite glittered where the boulder’s facets reflected the bright afternoon sun. Lizards flitted across the rock surface and back into the shadows.

  ‘Arenas speaks very highly of you,’ I said.

  ‘Stay away from Arenas,’ Pa said.

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  My bay’s head lifted and her ears twitched and I laid a palm on her neck to quiet her down.

  ‘A lot of people are looking for this guy Fischer,’ Pa said.

  I looked at Pa. He wasn’t generally in the habit of sharing this kind of information, even with me. But he had bothered to go to his friends in the police department… only to find out that Fischer’s file was missing. And Arenas’s, too.

  ‘Some people want to drag up the past again,’ Pa said. ‘They’re looking to get people arrested and prosecuted for what happened about thirty years ago. And they’ve come very close to some interfering with the business interests of some very powerful people. This is not good for anybody.’

  ‘Some of this I know.’

  ‘Look, Juanma, this Fischer knows a lot of people… including these two queer guys who got robbed. And these quee
rs have been asking a lot of questions around town and it seems they can contact any number of people who might be willing to talk and implicate a certain number of other people in activities who don’t want to be implicated in anything. And not just about the past. About things that have happened since… and things that are happening now. Do you understand? This guy is not good news.’

  ‘And somebody took the files on Arenas and Fischer away to study them?’

  ‘I don’t know who took the files away, or why, and I don’t care.’ He looked across at me as if asking me not to judge him. He’d found out a lot in the past twenty-four hours. And he was letting me in on some of that. Not all. I didn’t want to judge him. He was my father and I didn’t want to see him go to jail. Whatever he had done in the past he was still my father and whatever he might have done to others, he had treated me with love and support as I grew up. He was a cop and he told me stories of cops who stood against what he called those who would take too much advantage of decent people who had worked very hard to be in the positions they were in. He also stood up against those he considered would undermine the fabric of what he deemed a decent society. My father even went to church, every Sunday when I was a child, and pretty often now. His churchgoing didn’t stop him from divorcing my mother and taking up with Costanza but that was in the realm of human frailty and could be confessed to God who would understand and forgive him; even if the Church wouldn’t recognize his divorce, or his new marriage, and would consider that he and Costanza were living in sin. Pa may also have taken the odd bribe to turn his head the other way in the case of some questionable business deal but that, too, was normal and was how business was conducted in order that society benefited those who had initiative and took care of their families. One of the main duties of a policeman, as he saw it, was not to interfere in business matters where there were venial sins involved. He had no doubt that movements for what was called social justice were entirely suspect and he feared such movements would undermine the fabric of a society that honored the family, the fatherland, and God, whom he honored in that order. In his own way. With a certain degree of ruthlessness. I may not share any of his beliefs on that front, but that’s the way he thought.