Money to Burn

by Ricardo Piglia

  'Yes, yes, of course you do,' replied Police Commissioner Santana Cabris of the Investigations Bureau. 'But primarily you are a vicious Argie bastard who murders my police officers.'

  Nando knew about torture, he knew he had to remain silent for as long as he possibly could. Because with the cattle prod, if you begin talking, you find you just can't stop. He was going to try to say nothing at all, not a single word, because he was afraid of having the location of Malito's safehouse forced out of him. Malito counted as his friend, not just any old fellow, he was a true old-style bandit and an idealist, this Malito, who could yet become a popular hero after the fashion of Di Giovanni or Scarfó, or even like that Ruggerito or the forger Alberto Lezin and the rest of the wild bunch who'd fought for the nationalist side.{15} They were going to have to kill him, thought Nando, 'cause he wasn't going to give away Malito's hiding-place.

  He tried not to think while they were taking him down to the torture chamber. Nando had decided to keep his mind a blank, white as a new sheet or an unwritten page. They had bound his eyes, and were possibly intending to bring him before the judge within twenty-four hours. He had seen them in uglier moods on other occasions, and this time was certain the press were behind the police and that they would publicize the fact of his being taken prisoner.

  The truth was that Heguilein's capture went almost unnoticed in the tight contract between the journalists and police back at Headquarters, when it transpired that they had found the missing face among the Argentine gunmen. It was from this time on (according to the reporter on El Mundo) that the greatest barbecue that had ever been 'roasted' in the police annals of the River Plate division started heating up.

  A few hours into the afternoon, in a Buenos Aires province police aeroplane, tourist class, the chief of the Buenos Aires police from Zona Norte, Police Commissioner Cayetano Silva, arrived at Carrasco airport to cooperate with the Uruguayan authorities.

  As they taxied down the airport runway, and before descending from the aeroplane, Silva was sifting the information from his colleagues.

  'We came across them quite by accident, in a ridiculous incident. They were switching the licence plates on a stolen car.'

  'They're on their own. They've no further contacts.'

  'Time to put on the pressure.'

  'It's not necessary to go around arresting everyone. You need to leave some elements at large and wait until the Argies try and contact them.'

  'With Yamandú picked up, they'll be out there, isolated.'

  'So,' said Silva, 'if they're out there, isolated, they'll change their plans. What can they do? They'll attempt to leave the city.'

  'Impossible, we've blocked all the ways out.'

  'It's important to put it out through the newspapers that Yamandú is collaborating with us.'

  The investigators had reached the conclusion that Malito and his accomplices were now finding themselves with rather less money in their pockets. The purchase of documents; the expenses of their clandestine transport - in the yacht the Santa Monica, as sources in the police department confirmed - across to Uruguay; the orgies that took place in their refuges; the hiring of cars and the apartments being used as hideouts, had all eaten into their capital. Tales of the orgies were related by Carlos Catania, a rent-boy who presented himself to the police spontaneously, and gave an account of the previous weekend's events. The evil-doers acquired boys and women and quantities of drugs, spending two days in a 'rave', as they called it, filled with 'acts of abject depravity'.

  'They're sound,' said the seventeen-year-old, 'they gave me a suit.'

  This youth was the first to mention Kid Brignone's visits to the redlight zone around the Plaza Zavala, and his friendship with Giselle.

  'I want to speak to that girl alone,' Silva said.

  Personnel from the Interior Ministry, exploiting the inexhaustible source of specific references which together make up night life in Montevideo - whisky bars, gaming rooms and the like - thus learnt that the Argie gunmen channelled their attempts to find 'a good place to go to ground' through the mediation of a young escort (the country girl from over the River Negro) who worked in the neighbourhood.

  In tandem with the attempts to rent an apartment for a few days, the gunmen were preparing a safe passage into Paraguay, for which they were offering an exorbitant sum. The attempts ended up in the hands of certain persons who owned an apartment in the Liberaij building (at number 1182, Julio Herrera and Obes Streets), who, it transpired, had certain connections with the police world.

  A further unconfirmed version relayed that the Argentines had reached the flat thanks to a minor connection with the Uruguayan underworld and that this contact ('a patsy'), in order to rid himself of the risk posed by the Argentine gang, had acquired the lease on the flat and had immediately 'sold' the information on to the police without the original property owners or their tenants knowing who on earth the birds who had flown to seek refuge in apartment number nine at 1182 on Herrera and Obes Streets really were.

  In short, it's a long and complicated story which twists and turns into and out of every nook and cranny of a nocturnal existence, where it's easy - as someone might say out of sheer neighbourliness - for the honest night-club punter to hook up with the smuggler, the assailant and the pickpocket, without realizing what their occupations are. It's left to the police to explain all that. Meanwhile, the one thing that's certain is that the Argentine criminals entered the apartment referred to above only a few minutes after ten o'clock yesterday evening.

  Flat number nine is the garçonnière shared by the two farmers from the East, who had subcontracted it from the proprietor for a sum of 480 Uruguayan pesos a month. The two farmers are male cousins, both around twenty-five years old. Both, again, habitually frequent the night-club circuit and enjoy the low-life with the rent-boys from the port.

  How on earth did the gunmen Brignone, Dorda and the Crow Mereles get as far as this flat, being sought on all sides by the police department? The journalist didn't know but had various hypotheses to propound.

  One version recounts that the gunmen had done a purchase deal with their legitimate proprietor (a Uruguayan of Greek extraction), likewise a nocturnal animal, who lived more in Buenos Aires than in Montevideo and whose surname, it was said, could have begun with the letter 'K'.

  The gunmen had handed over an initial payment of 80,000 Uruguayan pesos to 'K', without his knowing anything of their real identity, having only met up with them on their nocturnal circuit around the Old City.

  Going beyond conjecture, what also seems certain is that the flat on Julio Herrera and Obes Streets was a genuine 'rat- trap' set by the police to attract the fleeing gunmen. No one knows quite how, but through some means or another, the police set things in motion so that the gunmen came to take refuge there.

  One source who requested to remain anonymous says that the Argentines confided in another Uruguayan crook who turned out to be a police nark, and that he brought them to the attention of people linked to the Homicide Division.

  Another version indicates that it was the police who indirectly placed the flat at the disposal of the Argentines and that they got themselves into their lair' without the least suspicion that their Uruguayan protector had sold them to their pursuers. If that's really the case - in which instance, it would be necessary to set aside the other version which says that the Argentines bought the flat with a first deposit of 80,000 Uruguayan pesos - the police no doubt operated cautiously because they knew the lay of the land and the threats posed by the fugitives.

  Once these fugitives were surprised on the street, the battle was both inevitable and highly perilous for Montevideans. The police desired a situation in which the criminals would be gathered together and to this end, it was said, they had spread their nets wide from the Headquarters in the desire to hand them an apparently secure apartment on a plate - somewhere central, comfortable, furnished etc. - while the Argentines awaited the contact who was supposed to transport them, acco
rding to what Nando had told them, across to Paraguay.

  If this is an accurate account of what transpired, and everything leading up to it, the timing mechanism that went into operation to detain the Argentines was triggered at exactly ten o'clock on the night of the move.

  Shortly before the appointed hour, the twenty-one-year- old country girl who occupied the flat during her free hours had dressed in a light-blue-coloured suit and was ready to go out, as was her custom, to the night-club in the city centre where she spent her night waiting for the dawn. She carried with her a black handbag and shoes to match, and there's no doubt she had not the faintest notion of what was about to happen.

  It was precisely ten o'clock at night. At that moment the intercom downstairs on the building rang and an unknown voice asked permission to come up and speak to the country girl from north of the River Negro. She pressed the buzzer and let him enter.

  The man identified himself as a senior officer from Police Headquarters, according to the night-club girl's story (it transpired her name was Margarita Taibo, alias Giselle).

  'Get out of here ... Leave at once,' the man ordered her.

  The girl, followed a short distance behind by the senior police officer, did indeed go straight outside on to the street without even finishing applying her make-up, and the apartment remained empty, like a trap awaiting the arrival of its prey.

  It was approximately 10.10 p.m.

  The dark girl from north of the River Negro went to the home of a friend who lived on 25 de maio Avenue, and then, with the friends of this friend, they all went together to the night-club in a car with Brazilian licence plates.

  Taking advantage of the fact that they knew the flat, which they then went on to bait as a 'rat-trap', the Intelligence Section of the police service controlled the gunmen's moves from the very start, from the first instant they established the contact which gave them access to taking over the hideout.

  According to one version, the police stuffed the place with microphones, because they wanted to discover where the stolen money - some 500,000 dollars - had been stashed. Others said that the surveillance and bugging system anticipated the arrival of the gunmen and had been used to survey the possibly illegal activities of the night-club owners (basically drugs trafficking, and white slavery). Be this as it may, the attempt to recover the loot is (according to certain sources) the one plausible explanation for the strange flaw in the operation.

  As is well known, it's current practice in police proceedings to set 'rat-traps' for crooks. This consists in preparing the ambush inside the house or flat they know will have to be visited for some reason or other and making a surprise entry before a defence can be mounted.

  In the present instance, it would appear that an error was made. They prepared the rat-trap the wrong way around, working from the outside in rather than from the inside out. If the police, when they went in to bring out the young occupant of apartment number nine, had surrounded the place, they could have denied the criminals access to the immense arsenal at their disposal to resist the siege until the moment reached by the description given in this account.

  But the police (from Argentina) were looking for something more. What's most likely is that they wanted to kill them off rather than take them alive, in order to prevent them from incriminating any of the officers who (according to the same source) had clandestinely participated in the operation without receiving the share of the booty promised to them.

  What remains certain is that the gunmen's red Studebaker entered the garage downstairs in the building at 10.11 p.m.

  Kid Brignone ascended the staircase followed by the Crow Mereles and the Blond Gaucho. The Kid inserted the key into the lock and with a light push the door to the apartment opened.

  6

  The garçonnière installed in flat number nine, on Julio Herrera and Obes Streets, is a small complex of near-empty rooms, painted a pale green. The door to the flat (the bell doesn't work so, to get in touch with its occasional inhabitants, it's necessary to do so via the intercom system down at street level) opens on to a narrow corridor where (the youth who wrote the police reports for El Mundo pointed out) the doors to other flats are also located. It's on the first floor of the apartment block, which has no lift, being only three storeys high. It is important to bear this detail in mind.

  Once inside the flat, the first sight afforded to the viewer is that of a kind of living-cum-dining-room of some four metres by three, on whose left-hand side there runs a kitchen, in which there's finally a window giving on to an inner well intended to provide air and light. The kitchen contains a marble-topped counter with a sink in the middle and cupboards underneath. The visitor who enters this flat will meet with empty walls and scant living-room furniture. The door that ought to separate the living room from the kitchen is also missing.

  Next in line, opening on to the living-room, there are three doors leading to the two bedrooms and to the bathroom.

  The first of these rooms, overlooking the central well, is the alcove used by the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro and in it can still be seen a bed, a shelf and a small wardrobe, a wicker table with a glass top, and a chair. There was nothing else in there at all apart from a small lamp on the shelf and, also on the shelf, a photo of the country girl. The bare walls give the flat that atmosphere of precariousness which such places have.

  The next room looks on to a second inner well (for light and air) and is also an alcove which was used by the subtenants of the flat, along with the numerous occasional visitors who came, by one way or another, to have the key to the apartment or to have access to borrowing it. There's a double bed in the middle of the room, a toilet to the left and a wardrobe to the right, facing the foot of the bed. To the right, in the middle of the room, another window opens on to the inner well (affording light and air). The basic difference between this bedroom and the other is that the one belonging to the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro has polished parquet flooring and its walls are whitewashed, in this room the reverse is the case. The room has no regular incumbents: nobody is bothered to keep it in even a minimum state of cleanliness.

  Finally there is the bathroom, containing nothing but the usual fittings, just a General Electric boiler and a blue plastic curtain running around the bath. Above the bath there is a window that opens on to the inner well, affording light and air.

  'Across the other side there's nothing at all, only the patio.'

  Mereles had clambered on to the edge of the bath and was leaning out, looking downwards from the window. Grey walls, lit windows and beneath them the corrugated iron roof of a shed. The Kid and Dorda headed into the living-room.

  'There's a TV here, look ...'

  'Didn't I tell you it was reasonably well furnished ...'

  'Che, what a stink there is in the toilet...'

  'So,' the Kid continued explaining, 'we went, because you'll remember, Crazy, that before, we wanted to go to Mexico, and I had a friend who went and bought a passport, because he had so many stamps on his, he was called Suárez and was helped by his surname (because every other person is called that) and it was in Mexico they finally bumped him off...'

  'Listen to me, Rubberlips, who in their right mind would think of going to Mexico ... The altitude bursts your eardrums, and once in La Paz my snout poured blood simply from opening my bedroom window.'

  'But what I'm telling you is that you have to get to New York. There's a highway that runs from the Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, didn't you know that? Look at the map and it's like a thread, running and running, all through the open countryside, the Germans built it, they brought in the diggers, made the natives do the work and you could get from one end to the other by bicycle.'

  'I'm going to crash here, chuck over the bolster, would you? Let's eat something.'

  They had bought chickens on a spit and whisky and corned beef, enough reserves to last them a week, in case they couldn't move around.

  'Hi Che, and is Ma
lito coming over soon?' Mereles was stuffing chicken down him and drinking whisky out of a plastic tooth-mug. 'Should we wait for him? Does the country girl know him or not?'

  'I've sent a message to let him know we're here.'

  'I saw on the TV that you can rob a cinema if you come in through the rear door, through that little room where the projectionist sits ... You enter, cut off the exit, fire over the heads of the audience to get them down on the floor, and make off with the loot of all those punters who came in to see a film and then you get out through the window of the projection room. It's perfect, all in darkness, the film keeps on running and covers any noise you make ...'

  'What do you mean, you saw it on television?'

  'It was a programme about security lapses in public places ... Imagine the dosh you could make from a full cinema ...'

  They had to await Malito's arrival with a new car and papers, to leave with him at dawn and head out north, bury themselves in the countryside, hide out in a maizefield in Durazno, or Canelones.

  'So as far as you're concerned, it should all be left in the hands of fate ... If he comes, he comes, and if he doesn't come, then what? It seems a poor deal to me.'

  'It's a rough deal, but there isn't another on offer. We have to stick together and wait.'

  'If we hold out for a week here for things to die down outside, that'd be better. I like this place.'

  'But Malito's due to turn up here by tonight? ...'

  'Listen, if you want to strike out alone, just try it, you're taking a big chance.'

  'Don't be an idiot, what do you want...'

  'Anyway, where do you know this guy from, that flatface who wants to take you off to Mexico?'

  'I got to know him in Bolivia, he had a Harley-Davidson 500 with a sidecar and travelled full tilt across the country, shooting at hares with his .45, over arid desert, with his helmet and goggles, the peasants leaned on their spades and exchanged glances, the madman making his bike leap like a spring trying to re-enter a trap, but the bike, you know what they're like, like aeroplanes, those bikes, always up in the air, and the guy was a madman, seriously mad, right, I can tell you that he kept his daughter locked upstairs at his farm because she looked like her mother, the girl did, and the flat- face made her dress up in the dead woman's clothes, and walk along in front of him, and I dunno what lots of other things he made her do, and when he went to Mexico he wrote letters to his daughter, she was a stunning looking bitch, you know, that girl, amazing little breasts, and even after they killed the guy, the girl continued receiving love letters from her father, I'd no idea who was writing them, the kid was a real headcase after being mixed up in all that ...'