They’d taken eighty pesos from his wallet and then tried the credit card at a bank on Avenida Regimiento de Patricios, only to have it be overdrawn on the first try. “Marco got angry. He thought the gringo was giving us the wrong identification number, and moreover, he was half-crazy from milonga.”
“By milonga you mean cocaine?”
“Yes. He was snorting from the chalks, which were pure, and he hits the gringo and says “Hijo de puta, are you trying to screw us?” And then I hear him beating the gringo with the butt of his pistol.”
“You are driving?”
“Yes.” Boguso glanced in the direction of the observation mirror. “A 1992 Ford Falcon sedan, colored metalized gray, with an interior of light brown. Marco had a .32 pistol, I believe the ammunition he used was Remington, I had a nine millimeter in the glove compartment, an Astra, and I was using cartridges of the make Federal—” Something too rehearsed here! It was too much detail, too fast, in the very language of the expediente! She glanced across the dim closet toward the Comisario of #33 and the judge, expecting them to return her look of skepticism, but the two of them watched without flinching. Was it just her? After all, here was a man confessing to a murder six feet in front of her face. People lied to proclaim their innocence, not their guilt!
Comisario Fortunato reacted to Boguso’s rush of strangely wooden description. “Slow down, Enrique. What happened then?”
“I heard the gun go off and Waterbury made a terrible scream: he was shot in the hand and I think the body.”
Fortunato questioned him a bit more sharply. “But you told me the gringo was lying on the floor. How could you see it?”
Boguso hesitated, then went on like a student with the right answer. “I couldn’t see the gringo. But I could see Marco, and how it all turned out after.”
Fortunato nodded and Boguso went on with the description: how they had panicked and driven him to San Justo, how the Uruguayan, in a frenzy, had shot him several more times and how, arriving at the vacant lot, he himself had finished Waterbury with the nine millimeter.
She felt the Comisario of #33’s hand on her shoulder, as if shielding her from the impact of the murder’s final moments, but it wasn’t the brutality of the words that bothered her, but rather their perfection. By the time he had finished she knew for certain that his testimony was full of lies, no matter how well they matched the record. Maybe he’d been involved in the murder. Maybe he’d even fired the final shot, but something bigger was being neatly interred in this flawless confession, and she knew no one was going to help her dig it up. Her stomach began to churn. If she took part in this sham she became little more than an accessory to Waterbury’s murder.
When Fortunato joined them afterwards in the Comisario’s office, he seemed exhausted by the recounting of the crime. His shoulders slumped and at first he didn’t fully involve himself in the conversation with the Comisario of #33 and Judge Duarte. They discussed the whereabouts of the Uruguayan and the procurement of a search warrant for Boguso’s apartment so that they could sequester the murder weapon. Judge Duarte, with an uncharacteristic zeal, promised to have the proper papers by the end of the day. Athena brought up the matter of Teresa Castexe Pelegrini’s phone number but the three men discarded it as a bit of errata, complimenting her on her admirable persistence. “She’s already half Inspector,” Judge Duarte said, but when she began to voice her other objections Duarte lost patience. “Doctora Fowler, when I have a confession that perfectly supports the physical evidence, I don’t go inventing reasons why it couldn’t have happened that way! We’re in the real world here, not the university.” She blushed. When Fortunato drove her back to the Sheraton, he tried to console her with an invitation to go and get the missing Astra the next day.
She paused before she got out, steeled herself. “Boguso is lying, Miguel.”
He kept looking at her with his silent, attentive face. To accuse Boguso of lying after Fortunato had signed off on his story was to accuse Fortunato himself of lying. She backtracked. “I don’t know if it’s all lies or just partly lies, but there’s something wrong here. I can’t …” She looked away and then back towards Fortunato’s gleaming brown eyes. “Miguel, it’s lies. I can’t go back and tell Robert Waterbury’s family that I heard the truth. You know he’s lying.”
She thought she saw the Comisario swallow and stiffen in his seat. “It was strange,” he agreed, slightly off-center. “But a murder like this, that’s not for money, not for passion … It defies you.” The weight of the afternoon seemed to bear down on him all at once and give his words a tired, plaintive tint. “Even when the killer is rotting in Devoto, you can never put things back in balance.” He added in a low, wounded tone, “If I had the power to undo the wrongs—”
The bullying scream of a car horn behind them vaporized the blue moment. The horn let up for a second, then issued a second blast, along with a stream of curses. Fortunato shrugged. “It’s a world of insults.” Pulling the door closed. “Let’s see how the murder weapon comes out.”
They managed that operativo with Inspector Domingo Fausto, the fleshy, slightly sinister officer who had run over and then dispatched the dog the previous week. Something aloof and frightening about the man: the way he pretended she wasn’t there. They raided the apartment without incident; they even had Athena stay and watch the wife while they searched the other room, finding the gun under the mattress as Boguso had indicated. The wife and Athena had a conversation about the price of domestic appliances in the United States. A message from Ricardo Berenski waited for her at the Sheraton, but he didn’t answer his phone. Meanwhile other pressing matters prevented Comisario Fortunato from meeting with her again.
In deference to her schedule they expedited the ballistics tests on the Astra and matched them with the bullet the following day. By now the weight of the physical evidence lent an irresistible momentum to Boguso’s testimony. Judge Duarte put out an order of capture on the missing Uruguayan, although Fortunato admitted that he might have fled back to his own country by now. If so, he assured her, he would see the extradition through. She tried again to reach Ricardo to tell him the resolution of the case and to say goodbye, but still without success. She did reach Carmen Amado de los Santos at INCORP, who received the news of Boguso’s confession blandly. “How convenient that they already had the killer in perpetual chains,” she said. Her tone implied that she’d expected nothing more from the Bonaerense and their lackey from the United States.
As the matter of Robert Waterbury’s human rights drew to a close, her anger began giving way to resignation. Boguso had satisfied the police and he would satisfy the State Department, and now the name of Athena Fowler would be high on the list when the US government was looking for someone to observe an election or oversee an aid package. However happy the US government might be, though, there would be no such easy sale to Naomi Waterbury. All she could tell her was that she didn’t really know.
As she made her reservations to return to Washington, Athena felt for the first time a sense of futility in her own future. Behind all the satisfactory explanations she would parrot back to Washington, Waterbury’s mysterious transit through Buenos Aires kept smoking and sputtering through her thoughts. A French artiste, a billionaire’s wife, arguments about the quality of champagne shouted over a tango: it seemed a life apart from everything she knew. She’d be leaving that enigma here, though. The author’s last journals, if they existed, would never be found, and the only other sources were the memories of people whose extravagant voices she would never have time to collect. Robert Waterbury’s final lunge at success would dissolve into the infinity of unfinished tales that would henceforth compose her Buenos Aires, her Comisario Fortunato, her life.
Miguel took her out one last time—to Carlito’s Bar to listen to Melingo, one of the acclaimed new voices of tango. The Comisario wore the same comical-looking houndstooth of the week before, now with a gray ascot that gave him a sense of old man’s bravado.
“What are you thinking of, Miguel?” she asked him after one long pause. “Your wife?”
He looked up slowly, lifting his lips into a ponderous smile. “The truth is, young one, that there are times when one feels abandoned.” She reached across the table and touched his hand. Whatever his role as a policeman she couldn’t help caring for him. “Miguel. Your wife didn’t abandon you. It wasn’t her choice.” She had difficulty voicing her next thought. “And I’m not abandoning you, Miguel. There’s limits for me.”
“No,” he murmured. “There are times one feels abandoned by one’s self.”
She didn’t understand him and the only explanation he gave was to lift his glass of wine and soda and wordlessly toast to nothing.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He went alone to the Sheraton the next morning, without the need for an entourage to bolster his image, just as she had dressed in blue jeans for the flight back, no longer needing a professional gloss. She looked young and fresh at the check-out desk. He smiled as he approached her, overcome by a surge of affection. He touched her on the shoulder and she looked up at him. “Miguel! I knew you’d be early! You’re in a hurry to get rid of me!”
“No, daughter. Never believe that.” He bent down and kissed her on the cheek, his sight filled for a moment with the filaments of her straight golden hair. For some reason his mind roved back to Marcela, and the emptiness of his house.
Athena cast off the moment. “You’ll have to say goodbye to Ricardo Berenski for me if you see him again. I couldn’t reach him.”
“Of course. I think Señor Berenski and I have much to discuss.” He excused himself and Athena finished settling the bill and wandered over to the door to wait for him. Outside she could see Palermo Park shining brilliantly in the morning light, overlooked by the wrought iron balconies and lushly carved facades of the buildings that surrounded it. She wanted to memorize it and keep it fresh as an antidote against the regularity of her life, but she could feel the stately black railings and molded adornment of the city begin to fade as soon as she looked away. She had played the game in Buenos Aires, had gone along without any accusations or denouncements, just as she had played the game to get sent here in the first place. Now she was taking back something counterfeit, whose report would become the official truth and would lead to a career burnishing official truths, like a content provider to some corporate website.
She heard someone calling her. “Athena! Athena!”
To the left she saw a striking green sports jacket, and immediately recognized Fabian coming towards her at a quick pace. He wore his usual open smile, gave off his usual aura of handsome availability. “Doctora!”
She couldn’t help but be glad to see him. “Fabian!” She stepped into the circle of his cologne and exchanged kisses.
“Today you depart!”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
He grasped her arm and squeezed it eagerly. “But I had something to tell you about the Waterbury case! I was reading in one of my screen writing books last night, and I think I found a structural element that is critical to this investigation.”
His persistence in this conceit annoyed her. “Fabian. It already is. Boguso confessed. We found the murder weapon and they’ve put an order of arrest out on the other murderer.”
“Yes, but to me, this doesn’t feel like the end of the story. You know? It feels more like Act One, where, just as everyone is about to accept the obvious answer to the crime, the detective finds some new piece of evidence that sends the plot in another direction. So let’s think: what new clues are there? What clues don’t fit in?”
She looked at this strange man in his gigolo clothes, and his theatrical grimace copped from a low-budget rendering of Sherlock Holmes. Fabian played life like a football game, and though she had tired of his tricky passes and feigned injuries, she couldn’t resist. After all, she would never see him again. “Fine, Fabian. Here’s one: the mortuary found the telephone number of Carlo Pelegrini’s wife in Waterbury’s pocket? How’s that?”
Fabian slapped his forehead. “Of course! The billionaire is inescapable! And there must be a multinational corporation, like a bank. A North American bank, because it’s for the North American market and you have to have a few North Americans for interest, like yourself, and Waterbury. This is incredible! It’s just like in my film!” He shook his head, beside himself. “I’m going to tell you about it now, but you have to promise not to steal it. Promise? Because it also belongs to my cousin in Los Angeles; we’re both depending on this to get rich. He’s already working on it. It starts out with the voiceover of the failed writer, desperate to rescue his career and his family with one bestselling Policial.”
Something strange was happening. Fabian put aside his jester persona and began to speak in English. It was tippy and heavily accented, but she could tell immediately that the words had been carefully learned, as if they belonged to someone else. “I realized on the long flight down that there comes a time when one’s imagination has consumed everything else and begins to devour its host. Yet here I am in Buenos Aires, with a stack of primers about police procedure and three cheap handbooks on How to Write a Mystery, making my last ridiculous play.” Fabian tipped his head and fell silent behind an unnerving smile.
An odd falling sensation came on her, as if all of the lobby were slipping away. “What are you trying to tell me, Fabian?”
Fabian’s unsettling expression didn’t change. “Here the story becomes a bit complex, Doctora. That’s what you must do in Act Two, deepen the plot, as in the formula. If you don’t, they shit on you. Like in Waterbury’s second book. He didn’t follow the formula and they threw it to the wolves. And that was the last of a series of disappointments that sent him running to Buenos Aires, into the path of that final nine millimeter bullet.” He took a breath and let it out in a long nasal breeze, looking directly at her. “I have read the declaración made in Comisario #33, and I can assure you that my version is a thousand times more entertaining and, unlike that of Enrique Boguso, based on a true story.” He bore in on her with his eyes, and for the first time she could see his cara de policia, a different one than Fortunato’s old-fashioned Mussolini face, more devious and sardonic, now changing again into the seductive young leading man. “Shall we take a coffee?”
Fortunato came up on them and Fabian greeted him with his old good humor. “Comiso! Phenomenal!”
The Comisario didn’t completely hide his annoyance. “What are you doing here, Fabian?”
“I came to have a chat with you both about the Waterbury case. It seems that new evidence has come to light. There’s much more to this than what Boguso has told you. I think we must re-open the case.”
Fortunato didn’t react for a few moments, then he dismissed it with an exasperated sigh. “Leave it, Romeo! Don’t swell my balls with this nonsense!” Looking at his watch, “It’s almost eleven, Athena. Allowing time for any unforeseen inconvenience—”
Fabian implored him. “Comiso! What inconvenience? There’s another flight tomorrow! I know the perfect café close by. We can sit and take a cortado.” He smiled at the Comisario. “Don’t you want to find out the truth?”
Athena was staring fixedly at Fabian, whose parrot-green jacket now looked modern and sophisticated beside the dull camel wool worn by Comisario Fortunato. She could sense a rivalry between the two, the clash between one man on his way up and another, perhaps from this very instant, becoming obsolete. She could sense Fortunato’s embarrassment and something that might have been fear, but she had to take sides now. She turned to the Comisario. “I’ll fly tomorrow, Miguel.” She nodded at Fabian, who once again basked in theatrical grandeur. �
��Fine, Fabian. Let’s see what happens in Act Two.”
PART TWO
WATERBURY’S LAST PLAY
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“The character of the desperate novelist is a cliché, is it not? All that well-worn despair and tiresome financial difficulty. And yet, from time to time we have no choice but to find ourselves living those clichés. Like you, Doctora, as the crusading guardian of human rights, or the Comisario here, as the hardened policeman trying to solve his most difficult case. The image of things overwhelms us and turns us to its will. That, it seems, is what happened to our Señor Waterbury.
“The boludo had enjoyed some success in the publishing business. His first book, The Black Market, emerged in twelve countries and won various prizes. He’d sat on literary panels, given interviews, seen his words in foreign alphabets.
“But success was cruel to Robert Waterbury in a strange way; it made him lose all fear. He had been flattered and greeted with that tone of reverence that seduces all writers: Ah, Robert Waterbury! You wrote The Black Market! A fatal voice, one that washes away the foundations of the real world. He heard the call to take his place among the Great Ones of Literature. A quick look at the accounts of his predecessors would have warned that the odds were against him, but in the world of Destiny there are no statistics. He left his position at the bank and moved, with his family, to South Hampton to struggle with his next book. He was a novelist now. He would say that when he met people, feeling slightly embarrassed by the grandeur of that word: novelista.
“With time, though, that mythical life began to call in its loans. The wife was injured in a car accident and could not work for six months. His house needed a new roof. His car gave up and he bought a new one, banking on the income from his next book. He began to borrow from his retirement savings.”
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