17 Stone Angels

by Stuart Archer Cohen

  “The writer remembers Don Carlo’s hatred of journalists and decides not to complain. ‘The dog was a bit nervous. It’s nothing.’

  “‘No, amigo, it’s not nothing! How can it be nothing?’ He turns to the butler, who is waiting at the door. ‘Nestor! Tell Abel to wait after his shift is over. I want to know why my guest is arriving with blood on his hand.’

  “‘It’s already stopped, Señor Pelegrini. Don’t worry.’

  “He raises his hand. ‘This can’t pass here! We will need a doctor to look at it. And your jacket … Afterwards we’ll arrange it. Nestor, bring the Señor another handkerchief. And what else? A coffee? A drink? Perhaps a sandwich?’ He dispatches Nestor to fetch coffee and sandwiches, signaling him also to wheel in a cart covered with liquor bottles. Waterbury notes that Don Carlo’s accent is slightly drier than the traditional Porteño voice, giving him a masterly patrician air despite his informal attire. ‘So, you’ve come to Buenos Aires doing some journalism?’

  “‘No. I’m not a journalist. I’m a novelist.’

  “‘Of course! You are Robert Waterbury.’

  “Waterbury smiles accommodatingly, unsure whether Pelegrini is mocking him, but the billionaire goes on. ‘The Black Market!’ he says, waving his hand. ‘Genius! It’s genius! That moment when the dead friend finally confronts him.’ Don Carlo looks distantly into space and recites the key line in Spanish with the perfect blend of comprehension and sadness: You are an expert on debt, but no one ever told you about memory, which is the same. They are both things that linger from the past, and they both arrive at a point where they can no longer be negotiated. He shakes his head in admiration. ‘Excelente! I wanted to stand up and applaud! That mix of business and psychology and metaphysics … Genius! I read it two times!’

  “Waterbury listens in complete astonishment. Any writer would feel gratified to have his work resuscitated in such vivid colors, but coming from one of the wealthiest and most mysterious men of an entire country, the effect is as exhilarating as an unexpected inhalation of chemical solvents. Amidst the spectacular strangeness of the moment, Robert Waterbury feels shame at abandoning his literary scruples for something base and mediocre. He has the brief sickening feeling that perhaps when he came to Buenos Aires he left the best part of himself behind.

  “Don Carlo continues with his critique. ‘You hit the international banks perfectly: they’re a pack of jackals! But Indigo Down,’ he grimaces, ‘it was very … heavy. All that about justice and corruption … ’ He grimaces again. ‘A bit swollen.’

  “‘Indigo Down was different,’ Waterbury protests. ‘I wanted to write a sacred text.’

  “Don Carlo gives Waterbury one of those deep smiles. ‘With yourself as God, no?’

  “Waterbury laughs. ‘Perhaps, Señor Pelegrini, but with the knowledge that, as with all gods, the majority of the people would not take me very seriously.’

  “Now Teresa Castex speaks up, a bit stridently. ‘I preferred Indigo Down. You didn’t run away from difficult themes.’

  “There is something vaguely sardonic in Pelegrini’s voice. ‘Of course, Teresa! Teresa is the one who discovered you. We were vacationing in Barcelona when she picked up your book, and something about it captured her—’

  “‘It was the image of the lost wife,’ Teresa says.

  “‘For me it was those metaphysical themes,’ Don Carlo continues. ‘Borges, too, swims in those matters of memory and existence, though yours is more sensual and his is more on the side of the ascetic.’

  “Waterbury, who normally hates to be compared with anyone, takes the compliment to heart. ‘So you two are great readers?’

  “‘I, a little. It’s very difficult to find time. But Teresa, yes,’ he waves lightly in the air, as if at a mosquito, “she goes around a lot in the arts.’

  “‘People who can write a novel amaze me,’ she says. ‘You have to imagine a whole world. It seems like something impossible.’

  “‘No, Señora Castex. What is impossible is to stop imagining the world.’

  “Don Carlo laughs as Nestor arrives with a warm washcloth and a towel, followed by a maid with a silver coffee service. At Don Carlo’s request Nestor removes Waterbury’s torn and soaking jacket and returns with a fresh white polo shirt with a famous brand name on the label. Waterbury slips it on in the smoking room then returns to his coffee.

  “They talk some more about literature, with Don Carlo guiding the conversation and his wife inserting the occasional opinion. She takes advantage of a brief silence to inquire, ‘And what are you doing in Buenos Aires, Robert? Are you writing a new work?’

  “‘Yes. I’m doing the initial research.’

  “‘And can you say what it is about?’

  “Waterbury has good reason to be shy. Pelegrini was even then making the occasional appearance in the newspaper linked to matters of contraband and money-laundering, and Waterbury doesn’t want to display any interest in such things. ‘This one is going to be a thriller type, set here in Buenos Aires. Something more commercial.’

  “‘Of course, Robert. Even artists need to eat!’

  “As in a work of theater the butler enters with a tray of little cakes, which they eat as they discuss the themes of literature and art. As Teresa Castex is telling of Rodin’s stay in Buenos Aires, Don Carlo’s cell phone distracts him and he excuses himself to the next room. The acrid conversation curls out like smoke beneath the door, and Waterbury hears the words ‘Grupo AmiBank,’ slapped harshly alongside the phrase hijos de puta. When Don Carlo returns his mood has changed. His pleasantries seem like a crust floating on a pool of lava, and Waterbury knows that it’s time to go.

  “‘But look,’ Don Carlo says, mustering one last show of warmth. ‘Your jacket is ruined. Why don’t you go with Teresa and she can help you buy a new one. No, amigo … ’ Waterbury feels Don Carlo’s arm around his shoulder, can feel with equal intensity the force of his smile. ‘I insist.’

  /

  Fabian looked down at his steak, of which he had only taken a few bites in his rush to tell the story. “Look at this! I’m talking, and this poor Uruguayo is getting colder and colder.” Fortunato felt that he gave him a particularly smug grin. “We can’t let him go to waste, no?” The young detective began ostentatiously to cut and eat the steak, conscious that his companions were watching him. “Skinny!’ he called across the room to Lucho. “Another beer!”

  Athena rose abruptly. “Don’t start again until I get back,” she warned. Fortunato watched her recede towards the bathroom and then lit a cigarette. Fabian went on eating as if he were alone.

  “Why, Fabian? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  The young man held up his hand until he finished chewing. “Until now I’ve been checking out the information. I needed to be sure. A matter like this, you don’t want to throw it all to the four winds without being completely right. Besides, you said you didn’t want me on this case.” He cut off another piece of steak and popped it into his mouth.

  Fortunato kept his cara de gil, his idiot face, firmly in place, just as Fabian was wearing his. That Fabian was revealing all this, after Boguso’s confession had effectively settled the matter, meant that he had heavy people behind him. Fortunato spoke as casually as he could. “But Fabian, with all due respect for your literary abilities, let’s skip to the end of your story. Do you have evidence that it is someone other than Boguso?”

  Fabian refused to tip his hand. “We will talk of Boguso when we reach that part of the script. My cousin in Los Angeles … ”

  Fortunato cut him off, raising his voice slightly as he would speak to an officer of lower rank. “Stop swelling my balls about the cousin! What I want from you—”

  “You want the truth! I know!” He shrugged, took another bite. “But do you really, Comiso? Truth is such a brute. Like King Kong, it doesn’t notice who it crushes. Lies, on the other hand … ” He cocked a smile at him. “They’re a little more humanitarian.”

  F
ortunato felt as if a cannonball had gone through his stomach. Fabian knew something, and the fear that had started at the Sheraton Hotel had been intensifying with every mention of Pelegrini’s name. Along with the fear though, something equally cutting: Fabian could answer him in his own time, or not answer him at all, because in the space of two hours Fabian had gone from a subordinate to a superior, a member of the fashionable set, while Fortunato had become a lonely old widower living in a shabby little house in the suburbs, trailing off towards an undistinguished retirement. He, who’d risen cautiously through the ranks of the Buenos Aires police without ever arousing a shred of suspicion. Who’d earned public citations from the mayor, and private respect from the Chief and all the others who had benefited from his thirty years of orderly business. Now, to be dictated to by this low-level inspector!

  The thought whipped through his mind of killing Fabian, and the silent image of Fabian crumbling to the floor transited his brain like the flapping of a bird’s wings.

  As if in answer Fabian wiped his mouth with a napkin, said quickly as he looked over Fortunato’s shoulder, “Stay tranquil, Comi, and the storm will pass over your head.” Speaking across him, “Ah, here she is!”

  Athena sat down and took a drink of water. “Okay. I’m ready for the next installment of your … ” she swirled her hands in the air, “whatever this is.”

  “Very well, Doctora. But before I continue with the next part, do you know much about Carlo Pelegrini?”

  “Only what I read in the newspapers.”

  “Ah, the newspapers!” The inspector turned his face to the Comisario, seeking agreement on the old gripe. “There’s no limit to the malice of those journalists, no? Pointing out that Pelegrini has a private postal system and a part ownership of the Customs warehouses, and claiming that he maintains a force of private security operatives estimated at nearly two thousand armed men. For this reason journalists such as Ricardo Berenski like to use the term ‘A State within the State,’ as in that headline in Pagina/12 last week.”

  He turned to Athena. “And Berenski is the worst of all, isn’t he? With those insinuations about money laundering, and his exposition of Don Carlo’s attempt to take over the National Postal System? If I were Berenski, I think I’d walk in the shade for a while. He already makes much of his exile during the Dictatorship: these boys working for Carlo Pelegrini are the type who he was fleeing from. Raul Huaina Gomez, also called The Peruvian, ex-integrant of the Allianza Anticomunista Argentina that assassinated more than three hundred people before the military took over for them in 1976. Pardoned in the Amnesty of 1989. Hugo Gonzalez, called The Tiger, denounced by human rights investigators for twenty-six incidents of torture during his military service at the Escuela de Mechanica, and also child theft, extortion, robbery and rape, pardoned by the Law of Due Obedience in 1992. Abimael Zante—you remember him, Comiso, he was in one of your task groups at the Brigada of Quilmes for a while.”

  Fortunato nodded, the unpleasant recollections of Zante returning to him. “I had him transferred to Vicente Lopez to get rid of him.”

  “Thus the security apparatus of the esteemed Carlo Pelegrini. Very wholesome, no?”

  Fortunato kept his eyes trained on Fabian and his perfect blond ringlets. He’d never seemed so dedicated to wholesomeness in all the juicy squeezes he’d armed at the racetrack and in the discos. “So, returning to the theme of the victim … ”

  “Of course, Comiso. Forgive me.”

  “La Señora de Pelegrini arranges to meet Waterbury at a brilliant café in La Recoleta, where Waterbury groans over the price of a coffee. The little silver trays and tableware make perfect accessories for the well-wrapped clientele. Teresa Castex strides in and kisses him in a mist of perfume and sits down for a coffee. ‘I hate this café,’ she says. ‘It’s quite pretentious, but it’s an easy place to find and my driver can wait outside with the car.’

  “Without the jewelry of the massive Mansion Castex, she seems much like any upper-class woman in the room. As Waterbury will observe in his journal that night, she’s a woman on the unkinder half of the forties, with stiff brown hair and a thin voice that seems always on the verge of a complaint. She had once been beautiful in a delicate way, but over the years her slight body seems to have dried and hardened like an Inca mummy, with sharp rigid shoulders that thrust out of the top of her blouse and hands like spiders. Her skin has stayed youthful, well-cared for by spas and surgery, but her bright silk scarf and Tiffany jewelry cannot alleviate the permanent frown that pulls at her mouth. She gives the impression of perfectly dressed unhappiness.

  “‘And Robert; what do you think of Buenos Aires?’

  “Waterbury expresses his awe that so much beauty has been blended with so much corruption and horror.

  “‘Oh, that,’ she shrugs. ‘It is no longer news to us.’ They chat about literature for a while. Teresa Castex is partial to the French Symbolists, who she reads in the French. ‘But Carlo is crazy for Borges,’ she adds. ‘It’s a bit incongruous, because he’s so much in the commercial world and Borges is so abstract.’

  “‘Those of Borges are more puzzles than stories.’

  “‘Exactly. I think for him it’s like a game: if he can solve the story, he has equaled Borges. He’s very competitive, Carlo.’

  “‘It seems he’s done well. Your house is beautiful.’

  “‘The house is mine,’ she says with a trace of venom. ‘It’s the Castex Mansion and I am Teresa Castex. Perhaps those two words, de Pelegrini, make me his property, but the house still belongs to me.’

  “The intrigues within other people’s marriages never make for light conversation, and Waterbury retreats from the subject. They return to literature.

  “‘It’s very special to write a novel,’ Teresa says. ‘’I’ve always wanted to write one, but I lack discipline. I sit down, but it all feels futile. Who am I to contend with the masters? Am I a great spirit?’ Her face is a little bouquet of admiration. ‘Perhaps you are, Robert. I could sense you were different from reading your book, and then from your visit at our house. Maybe, in some small way, it is destiny that we meet. We’ll see.’

  “Waterbury isn’t sure how to react. Destiny is a surface that has proved rather slippery for him. Her coffee arrives with the perfect pat of tobacco-colored foam lingering against the white china. To his relief, she pays the bill.

  “They stroll down the Calle Santa Fé, past gleaming shops with famous names. In an Italian clothing store they examine the light weight suit coats of spring, looking for a replacement for his old one.

  “‘Linen, no!’ Teresa protests with indignation. ‘The only place to wear linen is if you happen to be in a Renoir painting. Otherwise, it wrinkles.’ He tries another in navy blue. ‘Oh, Robert, you look very handsome in that. Perfect for author appearances. Why don’t you get that one, and try on this other one made of silk and cotton.’

  “‘Teresa! You can’t buy me two!’ But then he feels the cool slippery weight of the jacket, notes the sheen and the little universe of sage and tan within the intricate weave and a little rat-voice tells him that he may not get another chance. She insists on buying neckties, a belt and a pair of khaki pants. He stops her at the shoes.

  “‘But Robert, you can’t go around in those dead dogs you’re wearing! Don’t be ridiculous!’

  “He looks down at the polished-over scuff marks of his old wing-tips and accedes to the shoes. By the time they walk out she has spent five thousand dollars.

  “She suggests that they lunch while the store completes the appropriate alterations, and Waterbury is surprised to see her lead them into the same restaurant he had visited with Pablo a few weeks before, La Rosa Blanca. Again Waterbury is besieged by that fear of having to pay the bill. After all, she’s just spent several thousand dollars on making him look rich; he should try to act the part. He looks fearfully at the menu larded with French words and ingredients from far-flung places.

  “‘They take your head off he
re!’ Teresa grimaces. She leans towards him. ‘I’ll just put it on my husband’s account. He’s an investor in this restaurant; he bought it for his mistress.’ She sees that Waterbury is uncomfortable. ‘Don’t worry, Robert; there will be no drama. She’s only here at night.’ She finishes with a poisonous little twist, ‘That’s when she does her best work.’

  “Waterbury again is reluctant to become the confidant of Teresa Castex and wonders, as they order, what spirit of auto-immolation would bring her to her rival’s dinner table. He tries to leave the thought behind as they chatter about clothes and their favorite places of Europe.

  “‘So, Robert, excuse me if I intrude.’ Teresa is looking at him over a glass of white wine. ‘Of the artistic part, no doubt remains: you’re an excellent writer with the chance at becoming a master, which very few have. But let’s speak about the part, shall we say, less romantic. The economic element. Did it go well for you?’

  “Waterbury too has drunk a glass of wine. Now the slightly brittle aura of Teresa Castex has softened, and Waterbury feels an allure that he will stereotype as the ‘jaded patrician.’ Maybe it is because she admires his books, or perhaps it is the presents she has bought him, but the moment becomes suddenly intimate and private, as if the little table is at the center of a whirlpool. ‘The truth is, Teresa, that the economic part has been very difficult.’

  “La Señora Castex begins to question him as to the specifics of his situation: whether he has savings, debts, what advance he expects to get for his next book. The level of detail surprises Waterbury but he doesn’t feel he can refuse her. Finally she leans forward and smiles like a teenager. ‘I say all this because I have a proposition!’

  “Waterbury goes cold, but at the same time feels a thrill.

  “‘It’s thus: I have always wanted to write a book, but I have no talent. All the same, year after year, I keep perfecting it in my mind. It has much passion, and intrigue. Much corruption and even murder. It’s the perfect story of Buenos Aires that you are looking for. I have always wanted to write this novel … ’