I told him the whole story from the beginning. I chose (or maybe it just came out that way) a calm, measured tone, much calmer and more measured than the one Sandoval and I, once his hangover subsided, had employed to gloat over our success. Something told me that the little bar was no place for such emotions as triumph, euphoria, or joy. The only part of my account where I let myself get a little more vehement, a little adjectival, a little gesticulatory, was when I described the magisterial intervention of Pablo Sandoval. Of course, I avoided quoting the two or three hair-raising phrases with which Gómez had dug his own grave, but I spoke clearly enough to do justice to the splendid way Sandoval had tricked us, both Gómez and me. Finally, I revealed that Judge Fortuna Lacalle had signed a preventive detention order for first-degree murder without objecting to so much as a comma.
“So now what?” Morales asked when I’d finished talking.
I told him that the investigative phase of the case was almost over. By way of solidifying it even further, I said, I was going to order that a couple of witnesses’ statements be expanded and a few more tests made, and I’d also initiate some small legal maneuvers intended to prevent a clever defense attorney from complicating our existence. In a few months (six, or eight at the most), we’d conclude our indictment and send the case to the sentencing court.
“And then?”
I explained that a year could pass, or two at the outside, before a final sentence was handed down, depending on how fast the sentencing court and the Appellate Court worked. But I told him there was nothing to be concerned about, because we had Gómez dead to rights.
After a long silence, Morales asked, “What will he get?”
“Life in prison,” I declared.
That was a somewhat thorny subject. Would it be worthwhile to point out that Isidoro Gómez, no matter how severe his prison sentence, would probably be eligible for release in twenty or at most twenty-five years? I’d kept quiet about that on another occasion and did so this time, too; I didn’t want to cause Morales any more suffering. He sat sideways on his stool, facing me, heedless at last—maybe for the first time in three and a half years—of the flood of people streaming toward the platforms.
As if he were able to read my thoughts, Morales turned back to the window. His stool squealed on its axis. Ingrained habits don’t go away so easily, I reasoned. But something had changed. Now he was looking at the passersby without insistence. I waited for another question, but it never came. What could have been going through his head? After some thought, I believed I understood him.
For the first time in more than four years, Ricardo Agustín Morales didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life. What was left for him now? I suspected that the answer was nothing. Or, worse yet, that what was left for him was Liliana’s death. And apart from her death, nothing. Something else happened for the first time that evening: Morales was the one who got to his feet and brought our meeting to an end. I stood up as well. He held out his hand. “Thank you” was all he said.
I didn’t answer him, limiting myself to looking him in the eye and shaking his hand. Although at the time I didn’t realize this, I had accumulated several reasons for thanking him, too. He put his hand in a pocket and came out with the exact change to pay for his coffee. The fat man behind the bar was absorbed in La oral deportiva, a sports talk radio show. He wasn’t sufficiently aware of us to perceive that he’d just lost a customer. Morales walked to the door and turned around. He said, “Please give my best to your assistant … what did you say his name was?”
“Pablo Sandoval.”
“Thanks. Please convey my respects and tell him I appreciate his help very much.”
Morales barely lifted his hand, turned around, and disappeared into the seven o’clock throng.
Abstinence
Would that be the best conclusion for the story he’s telling? Yesterday, Chaparro finished recounting his second meeting with Morales in the little bar in Once station, and now he’s tempted to let his book stop there. It’s cost him a mighty effort to bring the tale around to this point. Why not be satisfied? He’s described the crime, the investigation, and the discovery of the murderer. The wicked is imprisoned and the good is avenged: a happy ending, of a sort. The half of Chaparro that hates uncertainty and almost desperately longs to be done with his project suggests that he’s reached the perfect stopping point; he’s managed, more or less, to tell the story he proposed to tell, and he feels that the voice he’s found to tell it is adequate to the purpose. The characters he’s created have a startling resemblance to the flesh-and-blood people he knew, and those characters have said and done, more or less, things the real people said and did. His cautious side suspects that if he pushes ahead, everything will go to hell, his story will overflow its banks, and his characters will wind up acting at their own whim without sticking to the facts, or his memory of the facts, which in this case amounts to the same thing, and all his efforts will have been in vain.
But Chaparro has another half, and a strong desire to be guided by it. After all, it’s the part of him that felt the urge and made the decision to write what he’s written so far. And that part constantly reminds him that the story didn’t end where he’s ended it, that it kept on going, that he hasn’t yet told it all. So why is he so tense, so nervous, so distracted? Is it simply that he’s unsure of how to continue? Anxious about being in the middle of the river and unable to make out the other bank?
The correct answer is both simpler and more difficult, and that’s because for three weeks he’s heard nothing from Irene. Well, why should he? There’s no reason why he should, he acknowledges, and he falls to cursing her, himself, and his goddamned novel. Once again, he begins to circle the telephone, distracted from his book merely because he’s busy inventing a series of more and more unlikely excuses for calling her up.
This time, it takes barely two days of fasting, insomnia, and literary inaction before he picks up the phone and dials.
“Hello?” It’s her, in her office.
“Hello, Irene, this is—”
“I know who this is.” Brief silence. “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been all this time?”
Another silence.
“Are you there?”
“Yes, yes, sure. I’ve been wanting to call you, but …”
“So why didn’t you? You didn’t have any more favors to ask me?”
“No … I mean, yes … Well, it’s not exactly a favor, I just thought maybe you’d have time to read a few chapters of my novel, that is, if you want to, of course …”
“I’d love to! When are you coming?”
After their conversation is over, Chaparro doesn’t know whether to be happy about Irene’s enthusiasm (and about the fact that he’s going to see her very soon—next Thursday—and about the way she recognized his voice before he told her who he was) or terrified because he’s offered to bring her some chapters to read. And why would he make such an offer? Because he’s stuck, that’s why. Chaparro suspects that no serious writer would be prepared to show his work in such an unfinished state.
In any case—and this is unusual for him—he realizes that it doesn’t bother him very much to think he might not be a serious writer. What’s much more important is that he’s going to have coffee on Thursday with Irene.
24
Isidoro Gómez languished in Devoto Prison for an entire month before finally deciding to go to the showers. In all that period of time, he hardly closed his eyes, and when he did, it was only in snatches, and only during the day; he spent his nights sitting erect on his bunk, with his fists tight and his eyes fixed on the other beds, prepared to repel any assault by his fellow inmates. For most of the daylight hours, he sat in some isolated corner or perched on the sill of one of the big, heavily barred windows, blatantly staring at the other prisoners. Throughout the whole course of a month, he never lowered his guard and never changed his aspect, which was that of a fighting cock, ready to do battle.
On his thirtiet
h day in Devoto, having at last made up his mind to wash, he marched resolutely—chest inflated, brow furrowed—down the aisle that separated the two rows of bunks and led to the showers. He was pleased when another prisoner seemed to move a little to one side as he passed.
Calmer now, and surer of himself, Gómez stood next to a wooden bench with gray slats and took off his clothes. He walked across the damp floor of the shower room and turned on a faucet. The jet of warm water striking his face and streaming down his body gave him an agreeable sensation of well-being.
When he heard someone clear his throat behind him, he spun around and clenched his fists in a movement that might have been tenser and faster than he would have liked. Two prisoners were standing in the entrance to the shower room and looking at him. One of them was tall and heavily built, big as a house in fact, with dark skin, dark hair, and the appearance of a dyed-in-the-wool criminal. The other, a fair-haired, skinny fellow of average height with light skin and eyes, stepped forward a few paces and held out his right hand in greeting. “Hello,” he said. “So you’re finally washing off all that grime, darling? Excellent. I’m Quique and this is Andrés, but everybody calls him Snake.” Quique’s way of speaking was well mannered and affable.
Gómez backed up against the wall and raised his guard a little higher. His fists were tightly clenched again. “What the hell do you want?” he asked, using the sharpest and most aggressive tone he was capable of producing.
The other apparently didn’t notice or chose to ignore Gómez’s reaction. “Think of us as your welcoming committee, babe. I know you’ve been here awhile, but what could we do? Today, though, I can see you’re loosening up a little. Am I right?” “Loosen up your ass.”
The blond prisoner appeared genuinely surprised. “Oh! Please, please, what manners! Would it hurt you to be a little nicer? Acting like a mean jerk isn’t going to get you anywhere around here.”
“What I do or don’t do is none of your fucking business, faggot.”
Quique opened his eyes and mouth very wide. Then he turned to his companion, as if inviting him to intervene or asking him for an explanation. The big man, who’d been leaning in the doorway, drew himself up before he spoke: “Shut your trap, shrimp, or I’ll pull your tongue out through your ass.”
“Stop, Andrés. Don’t you start talking like that, too. Obviously, the poor—”
The blond prisoner was unable to complete his sentence, because Gómez gave him a sudden, hard push, driving him into the wall, where the back of his head banged against the tiles. He let out a shriek and slid down to a seated position. A furious grimace twisted his friend’s face, and in two strides he was standing in front of Gómez, fully clothed and two heads taller. “I’m going to kick the shit out of you, you dumb little punk.”
“Fuck your mother, big black fag—” Gómez’s retort was cut short. With one blow, the large, dark-haired prisoner struck him down, and before he could get back up, a ferocious kick in the chest left him gasping for air. He tried to crawl away, slipped on the soapy water that covered the floor, and curled up into a ball, protecting his head and chest with his arms as best he could. The swarthy prisoner, holding on to a faucet to keep from slipping in his turn, began to kick Gómez in the back with the fierce indifference of a man booting a ball against a building. From time to time a muffled moan could be heard. Several curious prisoners, attracted by the commotion, gathered around the shower room, summoning others with their shouts to come see the show. One of the first to arrive hissed to get Andrés’s attention and then handed him a large knife: “Here, Snake. Take it, man! Open him up and get it over with!” The big fellow accepted the weapon, taking hold of it carefully so as not to cut himself.
“Stop, Andrés! Don’t do anything crazy!” The blond prisoner’s voice was a desperate prayer, uttered as he tried to get to his feet.
“Cool it, Quique.” The swarthy prisoner’s voice was gentle, affectionate, ever so slightly amused, as if his comrade’s distress touched him. He turned back to Gómez, whom he’d left writhing in pain, and discovered that his opponent had taken advantage of the pause to rise to a sitting position. He was holding his stomach with both hands; his back hurt him even more, but he had no way of touching it. Snake hesitated, apparently unsure whether to continue the punishment or heed his companion’s pleas. Some of the onlookers urged him to carve the fresh meat with his knife.
Because Gómez’s kick to his ankles was surprisingly violent, or because it caught him unawares, or because his feet were too close together on the soapy floor, Snake pitched sideways as if the ground had ceased to exist beneath him. He instinctively thrust out his arms to break his fall, but as he was still grasping the knife in his right hand, upon impact the blade sank into his palm and wrist. Now it was his turn to cry out in pain. His blond companion leaped to his aid and almost immediately stood upright again, his hands and shirt covered with blood and a howl of panic in his throat.
As several figures rushed toward Gómez, who was still on the floor, lying on his side, he watched them getting closer, and then another kick, this one in the jaw, stopped his vision.
25
Three days later Gómez woke up in the prison infirmary. It took him a while to remember who and where he was. When the male nurse saw him move, he called two guards, who without much ado sat him in a wheelchair and set out for a part of the prison that inmates seldom saw.
At the end of the little excursion, the guards wheeled Gómez into an office where a man seated at a bare table and smoking a cigarette seemed to be waiting for him. Except for a thin strip of hair on both sides of his head, the man was bald, but he had a thick mustache. He was wearing a dark jacket over a shirt with a wide collar and no tie. The guards pushed Gómez’s wheelchair in front of the table, left the room, and closed the door. The prisoner didn’t speak. He waited for the man to finish his cigarette. Gómez kept silent not only because of his confusion and surprise, but also because the mere act of swallowing saliva hurt his throat so much that he was afraid moving his lips and tongue would cause him intolerable pain.
“Isidoro Antonio Gómez,” the other said at last, speaking slowly, as if carefully selecting his words. “I’m going to explain to you why you’ve been brought here.” As he spoke, he played with the hinged top of his cigarette lighter. His chair must have been comfortable, because it allowed him to lean back far enough to put his feet up on one of the corners of the table.
“Son, my goal in this friendly meeting is to figure out the answer to a question: Are you an intelligent guy, or are you a hopeless moron? That’s my entire purpose, nothing more or less,” the bald man said, and only then did he look at the prisoner. The sight seemed to shock him very much, but then again, everything about him seemed exaggerated. “Shit,” he said. “What a mess they made out of you, boy. Goddamn … but okay, look. The thing is, I have to make a complicated decision, and in order to make it, I need to answer that question I mentioned. Do you understand?”
There was another pause, and then he opened a notebook that lay on the table beside him. Gómez hadn’t noticed it before, but now he saw that it was filled with writing.
“Ever since the cell guards rescued you in the shower room, I’ve taken a strong interest in your case. You got off easy, you know. If Snake doesn’t give himself that atrocious cut, then the others don’t call the guards to help him, and instead, my friend, he and his pals open you up, you bleed to death like a butchered pig, and that’s the end of the story. You may not believe it, but I was already familiar with your case. I didn’t know you, obviously, but I knew your case, at least the first part of it. I had to read the rest to bring myself up to date. God, talk about coincidences. I know it sounds asinine to say it’s a small world, but I’m more and more convinced that it’s true.”
He flipped rapidly through the notebook until he found a page that interested him. From then on, he turned the pages more calmly, speaking as he did so. “All right, let me come to the point. That girl you ki
lled … a nasty business, buddy, a mighty nasty business. But none of mine. As a matter of fact, I don’t really give a damn about it. But I noticed you didn’t leave any incriminating evidence at the scene, and afterward, when the police were looking for you, you vanished completely, you just flat stopped showing up anyplace where people might know you. Am I right? And then you spent three years on your best behavior so no one would have an excuse to fuck with you. So I think about all that and I say to myself, this is an intelligent guy. And then I read on, you see, and I find out you got busted for fare-dodging on the Sarmiento Line and fighting with a conductor, and I say to myself, this guy’s an asshole. But on the other hand, I consider the fact that the boys in the examining magistrate’s court don’t have anything, or hardly anything, they can tie you to the crime with, and I say to myself, all right, he can’t spend his life looking over his shoulder, this is a guy who thinks logically. And then I read still further, and I learn about your deposition in the clerk’s office and how you sang your heart out like you were Carlos Gardel, and so I feel justified in concluding, my friend, and I speak with all due respect and consideration, that you’re as dumb as a fucking post. But I keep on reading, and I find out some more stuff, you know? Because that’s what I do, I find out things, it’s the way I am. It’s how I live. And I find out you wound up in Devoto and spent a whole month with your ass intact, and that sets me thinking again. This kid must be some kind of smart, I think. But then I read that you got a visit from Snake and Quique Domínguez, two of the sweetest guys around, and a married couple to boot, until death do them part, the only thing they’re missing is a pair of golden wedding bands, and the best idea you can come up with is to react like a fifteen-year-old virgin who feels disrespected, you punch out poor Quique and fix it so Snake has to kick the shit out of you to save face after such an insult. And listen, what I just told you about Snake and Quique is common knowledge, even the people in the corner bakery know it. If you didn’t cop to that after living with those guys for a month, Gómez, I’m going to be forced to return to my earlier thoughts about you, the most, shall we say, pessimistic thoughts, namely that you’re a total and incorrigible asshole.”
The Secret in Their Eyes Page 16