No One Loves a Policeman

by Guillermo Orsi

  “That’s why I brought the torch, asshole,” replied the other.

  The first man, who must have had some mastiff in his blood, still seemed more interested in the dog’s behavior than the electricity problem. He started toward me. He might not have a torch, but I was willing to bet he had a gun on him. The dog must have recognized him because when he was only two meters away from me, he roused himself and set off to greet him, wagging his tail.

  Two or three seconds at most must have passed between the flash and roar of the gun and the brief, heartrending yelp of pain. I flattened myself against the ground as the second man came running frantically toward where his colleague had fired the shot. The circle of light from his torch illuminated the massacre.

  “You killed the dog, you idiot.”

  “Something moved in the darkness and came for me,” the other man said.

  “You killed the dog … you bought that Chinese crap, and now you killed a dog whose only fault was to wag its tail at everyone.”

  “What did you expect me to do? You had the torch. I thought someone was attacking me.”

  “Who’s going to attack you? Who else is out here? We’re in the middle of nowhere. You’re just paranoid, and I don’t want someone who’s trigger-happy alongside me. Next time you’ll take a pop at me. Get a transfer to headquarters, find a desk job and run the numbers game. Poor dog, look what you did to it!”

  The dog-killer tried to defend himself: “Don’t insult me like that or I’ll beat your brains out. I’m going back to town tomorrow, you can stay here doing this crappy job, and see where it gets you.” He was still protesting as the two of them headed back toward the darkened house.

  I lay flat on the ground for a while longer, covered in mud and with the rain beating down. If I stayed like that, in a couple of hours I would be putting down roots. As soon as I thought the danger was over, I stood up stiffly.

  At least I had learned something. The muscular but polite gentlemen were either police or army, and they did not seem to be on an official mission. And one of them was so jumpy he was ready to fire on anything that moved without identifying itself.

  I edged back toward the house, this time heading straight for the small bathroom window. It was big enough for me to wriggle through if I could remember the Houdini tricks I learned long ago in the circus run by my uncle, a wandering artist and unforgettable magician. For me he was like a human porthole who allowed me a glimpse of other worlds, even though I did not choose to explore them when I grew up.

  I jumped up at the window and hung from the sill for what seemed like an endless minute. My muscles were no longer used to this kind of exercise, and I was afraid I would slide off, but instead I discovered that inside each one of us there exist, like veins of mineral in a gold mine, reserves of energy that we only need sufficient conviction to summon up.

  At the age of seventy, my uncle could not only still free himself from a mass of chains in under five minutes, to the delight and applause of his public, but was also capable of making love twice in a fortnight, as his fourth wife told me. She was thirty years younger than him and a trapeze artist.

  I thought of my uncle and hauled myself silently and easily into the bathroom.

  It would be simpler getting out—unless I was discovered, that is. The floor of the bathroom was higher than the ground outside, so jumping out in an emergency would not take so much effort, especially as I would probably be impelled by the desire to save my skin.

  I opened the bathroom door stealthily, and slipped into a corridor. The only light was a feeble glow at the far end of the passageway. I edged my way down until I came to a small living room where the gentleman who had killed the dog was yawning like a hippopotamus and scratching at his crotch ostentatiously. Perhaps he had crab lice. There was not much light, but even if there had been, I was sure his face would have shown no sign of remorse for his stupid, senseless act.

  I crept back halfway down the corridor, where another, wider passage led to more rooms. I finally decided to switch on the torch.

  The first room I went into had no roof. A fine drizzle fell onto a sideboard that was the only piece of furniture. Portraits of somebody or other’s ancestors hung on the walls. I looked in the sideboard drawers, but they were empty. The next room I went into was similarly rundown, but had more furniture: a bed with the frame leaning against the headboard, a bedside table, another, smaller sideboard. It was raining in here, too, and the sideboard was also empty.

  I thought I could hear voices, so switched the torch off before making my way toward the third room. I held my breath as I stepped inside, worried that one of the floorboards might creak and give me away. This room did have a roof over it, so there was no drizzle inside. I could not hear voices now, only two people breathing at a steadily increasing rhythm.

  I stepped back out of the room. I hate being a peeping Tom, even if in this case I could not see a thing. Pornographic spectacles have never excited me. Pathetic exhibitionists, if you ask me.

  Instead, I went down the corridor and into the last room. This was another living room, bigger than the others, with an oval table and chairs, and a glass-fronted dresser with enough crockery for a decent dinner service. What a strange place, I thought: half the roof missing, some of it tumbled down, and yet with plates and cutlery to hold a dinner party and stage a pleasant social occasion.

  The light from my torch, which I was shading with my hand, showed there were papers spread out on the table. They looked like maps: somebody must have been studying them when the lights went out.

  I could not make them out clearly because I did not have my glasses with me. Besides, it was so dark. They seemed to be diagrams of a military barracks. There were blockhouses and big open spaces; it could also have been a hospital, if an arsenal had some medical purpose, as there was an arrow pointing to one of the oblongs with a list of weapons written in the margin. These were not weapons like Isabel’s .38. They were the latest rifles with infrared sights, and helmets with cameras built into them, like the ones the Yanks and the Israelis use when they go on their tourist trips to the Arab world. Each category had its own column listing the technical details and quantities—hundreds in the case of the rifles, tens when it came to missiles, which were also listed.

  I was startled by what I took to be a cry of terror. It was like being at the local flea-pit as a child when the vampire appeared and, before sinking his teeth into the damsel in distress, turned to the camera licking his lips as if to say: watch out, kids, you’re next.

  The cry, which had nothing to do with terror, came from the bedroom with the roof. It was a woman, but almost at the same time a man’s groan raised the noise level to that of an operatic soprano’s vibrato. A thunderclap outside was like a roll of drums, and the crockery in the sideboard crashed like cymbals.

  I never discovered whether what shook the house to its foundations was the storm or the orgasm.

  PART TWO

  Paradises and Plots

  1

  So, on one side there was arms trafficking. On the other, a serial killer of women who, if not exactly of loose morals, were not of very tight ones either. This seemed like two worlds from completely different systems, like Pluto and Ganymede. No way the two of them could meet. Even the existence of one of them was questionable, as if it had not yet swum into the astronomers’ ken.

  I left the ruined or half-built house the same way I had got in. I felt angry with myself for not having the courage or the lack of scruples to avenge the dog. The killer was sleeping peacefully while his colleague was enjoying himself in bed.

  I was still squirming out of the bathroom vent when someone opened the door. If I had waited a second to see the face of the person coming in, holding a candle stuck in the top of a beer bottle, I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.

  I sell bathroom furniture. I am not a detective. When I was in the police force I was not one either, and I hate speculating over things I know nothing abo
ut. There are detectives with diplomas, philosophers, people trained at university to sniff out the unknown. The National Shame has its homicide and scientific experts; it is not Sherlock Holmes we need in Argentina, it is the will to investigate. If the greatest living criminals in our history are walking around freely, it is because somebody right at the top has decided they should not be punished.

  I strolled calmly away from the house beneath a heavy, steady rain, which helped dissolve and wash away the mud I was covered in. I drove back to the hotel in Isabel’s car. It was not a four-wheel drive, but coped splendidly with the mud-bath of the track, and when we reached the asphalted road it wanted more speed than I could risk because the town was so close.

  As soon as I woke the next morning I rang Mónica and Isabel’s number in Buenos Aires. Something told me that if anyone answered it would not be Isabel.

  “Pablo, thank God! Where did you get to?”

  “Where am I, you mean. I’m at the Cabildo Hotel in Tres Arroyos. We were supposed to meet here.”

  Mónica fell silent, then a few seconds later started to sob. She had no idea I knew something of what had happened to her, and could guess the rest. Still sobbing, she began telling me about their ordeal: she and her daughter had been intercepted on the bus they had decided to take from Bahía Blanca to Tres Arroyos. Two men—“polite but all muscle” I was tempted to say, but did not—got on the bus after swerving in front of it to bring it to a halt. My hotdog driver had forgotten to tell me this particular detail.

  “There was a woman driving their car.”

  “A young woman?”

  “Yes, and very pretty. She looked like a T.V. presenter.”

  I wondered whether I was dealing with the illegal arms racket or the white slave trade. Perhaps it was both: after all, they are different markets, and modern marketing gurus tell us we should spread our portfolios.

  “Is Isabel with you?”

  Mónica broke down again. After a while, choking and spluttering, she tried to explain. No, Isabel was not with her: the men had taken her off somewhere else. As soon as they were forced into the car, the two of them had been blindfolded. Then the car sped off along what Mónica thought from the way it lurched and swayed must have been a dirt road. Finally they came to a halt and Isabel was literally yanked from her side. Mónica heard her shouting, desperately calling out to her:

  “Mummy,” she shouted, “Mummy, help me.”

  Mónica was still sobbing, but there was no stopping her now.

  “‘Let go of her,’ I screamed, ‘if you want someone, take me.’ Then somebody hit me on the head: I thought I was going to die, Gotán, but I must have only passed out. I could still hear her shouting, I was begging them to let her go, thrashing to and fro as if it was a nightmare. After that they must have given me a sleeping pill or something, I don’t know. When I woke up, I was in the Accident and Emergency department in Haedo.”

  “In Haedo?”

  “Yes, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. I asked them who had brought me there.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The police.”

  She could not deny it, and did not seem surprised at my magical powers of deduction. She had been taken there in a police patrol car. “We found her by the roadside,” the officers had told the duty doctor. “When she’s recovered, send her home, if she can remember where she lives.” None of the police had stayed to keep an eye on her, but one of the doctors was so concerned that he offered to take her home. Mónica accepted, but did not tell him anything about what had happened.

  “I don’t trust anyone, Gotán. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  To calm her fears, the doctor said he earned less than a housemaid, and so had to keep his mouth shut and get used to seeing very strange goings-on. Mónica timidly asked what kind of strange goings-on. The doctor, who had only been out of medical school for a couple of years, said his parents had told him all about what had happened in Argentina during the ’70s dictatorship. He had always found it hard to believe there could be criminals as vile as that in such a beautiful country, with its bountiful land packed with cows and soya, as well as hard-working people like his parents, who had slaved their asses off—he used a more polite term, because he was speaking to a lady—so that he could get to university, become a doctor, take an oath to save lives, all lives, including those that were not worth saving.

  But now he did not know what to think.

  “It’s true the armed forces thought they could bring Nazism to the south of Latin America. But they were thrown out twenty years ago. In the ’60s, twenty years after the Second World War, you wouldn’t find a single Nazi in either of the two Germanies, not even in a museum. Here they stroll down the streets like lords,” said the doctor, trying to navigate a traffic jam on Avenida Rivadavia, heading in toward the center of Buenos Aires.

  I reminded Mónica that one of those two Germanies had been full of prosperous capitalists, while the other was filled with reluctant Communists. In response, Mónica reminded me quite rightly that all she was interested in was finding her daughter alive.

  “If you want to discuss politics, go and find the doctor in Accident and Emergency at Haedo,” she said.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said.

  When they reached her apartment, the doctor had asked her if she knew what had happened to her.

  “I was on the verge of telling him, Gotán. But as I said, I don’t trust anyone now. He could have been another policeman in a doctor’s gown.”

  “I’m a policeman,” I said.

  She sighed wearily. It was all too much for her, only a few hours after she had buried Edmundo, even if he had been such a disappointment to her.

  “You were one, Gotán.”

  “You’re right. Now I sell bathroom furniture.”

  “I wouldn’t buy anything from you. I’d be worried every time I went to the toilet: ‘Where did he hide the microphone?’”

  Our shared laughter was forced but necessary. I told Mónica to take care, to make sure she did not open her door to anyone, and that I would see her in Buenos Aires.

  Before leaving Tres Arroyos I called Burgos’ mobile. He must have been busy cutting up the latest corpse, because all I got was his voice telling callers to leave a message. In the thirty seconds I had, I urged him to get somebody to go out and look over the farm in daylight; the estate agent could tell them where it was and how to get there.

  I had no problems on the drive back to Buenos Aires. The traffic police stopped me at Las Flores and asked to see my papers. I handed them the I.D. card I had been given in Bahía Blanca in the name of Edgardo Leiva. That was no problem, but they did almost arrest me for not having my registration or any other of the documents required to drive legally.

  “I’m sorry, lads,” I told them, and flashed my old police badge. They saluted and waved me through.

  A couple of kilometers further on, I threw Edgardo Leiva out of the car window.

  2

  I was right to get rid of my false I.D. I was no fugitive, there had never been any murder at the Imperio Hotel in Bahía Blanca, and nobody had been looking for me or missing me while I was away. Félix Jesús was asleep on my armchair in front of the T.V., and yawned as he grudgingly gave me a welcoming purr.

  Had the serial killer claimed another victim? Yes, he had: a body had been found on the verge of the Viedma highway. The victim had been difficult to identify “due to the advanced state of putrefaction” but eventually “it was established that it was the body of Catalina Eloísa Bañados, also known as ‘Lorena’ in fashion circles,” according to the crime reports buried deep in the inside pages. The papers also reported the “regrettable disappearance of a loyal company servant” in a paid announcement from the C.P.F. oil firm.

  It was as if Cárcano had died of old age while writing his memoirs. There was even a death notice from his widow and daughter, although Mónica later told me they had not paid for it and had no idea it was going to appear. None
of his friends or work colleagues wondered why there had been no laying out of the body or burial, somewhere they could send a wreath or a bunch of flowers to. None of them bothered to call his home and leave their condolences: the only message on Mónica’s answering machine was a threat: “Your husband was no innocent, so don’t make waves,” a hoarse, distorted voice had said.

  “Who are they? Who’s behind this nightmare? Where is Isabel?”

  Mónica had no-one but me to ask these questions of, and I could only guess at the answers in silence, like someone who has seen a flying saucer but cannot tell anyone because they will think he is mad.

  I had gone to see Mónica as soon as I reached Buenos Aires. She hugged me tight, repeating the same three questions over and over, then cried until she had run out of tears. After that she made some coffee and we sat together in the charming living room her husband had abandoned to chase after his blond.

  “We never know when we take the first false step, when we make that first fatal mistake,” I said. “Edmundo thought he was finding happiness, but instead it was death that was waiting for him.”

  “He was a dirty old man,” spat Mónica, as angry as she must have been when he left. “You’re all the same, young men too: they all lose their heads over whichever Lolita they happen to bump into.”

  I did not argue: after all, she was only saying what I had.

  Love out of season is devastating. It destroys all our certainties: what should be a gentle warm breeze turns into a fierce forest fire driven on by the wind. All our past and the intricacies of our uncertain future are reduced to ashes. And when it is all over, the dirty old man is left gray and hollow, dead without being aware of it if he has survived, or well and truly dead if someone has taken a pot-shot at him from pointblank range, as in Edmundo’s case.

  If this last love does not help prolong life, what is the point of charging like a horse into the blazing meadow?