Fabian appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. He’d exchanged his tweed jacket for a black windbreaker and he had his pistol in his hand. “Athena. So many unexpected meetings tonight!”
He was smiling, but it didn’t run very deep. The face she’d always considered so handsome now gave off a sense of cold cunning. “You know that your friend Fortunato shot Comisario Bianco an hour ago in front of a full audience at the 17 Stone Angels.”
“No!”
“Sí, Doctora. In cold blood. Not to mention a quadruple homicide some fifteen blocks from here. Among the deceased our own Inspector Domingo Fausto! Very disagreeable: each victim was finished with a shot to the head. My guess is that the ballistics will show that at least one of them was finalized with a nine millimeter bullet from the Comisario’s gun. He is also under suspicion in the murder of Robert Waterbury.” Fabian sighed, a parody of his old self. “It’s logical, I suppose. The thriller must always end with a bloodbath, where the bad ones take the bullet and the good one dies with the beautiful woman shedding tears above his bleeding body, or goes limping off into the rainy night as the colored lights of the police car—”
“Shut up, Fabian. He already told me that he killed Waterbury. He said it was all arranged beforehand between Domingo and someone else. They tricked him. He thought it was going to be for intimidation, and then the other two shot him. He finished him out of mercy.”
“And you believe him? Who would want to kill a harmless boludo like Waterbury?”
She remembered who Fabian worked for, and put on an idiot face. “We never got that far.”
The answer seemed to please Fabian. “To die without knowing the truth. That, yes, seems to me quite sad. He lived in illusion and he died in another set of illusions. That is all we can put on poor Comisario Fortunato’s tomb. He was the man who made ten thousand arrangements, and in the end he was played by an inspector and a merquero of the lower depths.”
Fabian moved further into the room, his gun still in hand, and noticed the scattered pile of green bundles spilling out of the briefcase. “What do we have here? The Comiso’s savings?” He bent over and pawed quickly through it, leafing through the interior of the bundles to check their denominations. “It looks like he still has the first peso he ever stole!” He quickly sifted the bundles. “It must be close to four hundred thousand dollars. What a pretty pension.” He gave a sigh and clicked his tongue, still kneeling by the money. “What a shame, Doctora, that you have to see this. It gives a very poor picture of the Institución. But there it is, all that black silver. Soon the police will get here, and surely the money will go into the first pocket on the scene, or else disappear into police funds.” He looked up at her, no longer smiling. “If I wasn’t so honest I would say half for you, half for me, and we leave here immediately and let the Federales take care of this mess.”
“Sorry. That’s not my way.”
“No, you’re too idealista for something so realistic. So it must be …” He lifted his gun towards her, the irony stripped from his voice. “All of it for me, and none for you.”
She refused to take him seriously. “You’re an idiot, Fabian. They’d catch you in an hour.”
“Oh?” He reached down quickly and took the Comisario’s gun from inside his jacket. “In my version of the story, the Comisario did it.” He glanced at the window, seemed to be nerving himself up as he tried out his story. “You come upon the Comiso collecting his money to make an escape. You threaten him, and he shoots you with this gun to protect his escape.” He quickly checked the chamber to see if it was loaded. Now his voice sounded uncharacteristically tense, and he threw his hand spasmodically to the side. “It’s not so bad, that story.”
A squeal of tires nearby interrupted the moment. Fabian glanced at the money and at the window. “The reinforcements!” It seemed to confuse him for a moment. “I frightened you, no?” He hurriedly put Fortunato’s gun back in its holster. Outside, doors slammed and a voice shouted, “Police! Drop it, hijo de puta!”
Fabian lowered his own gun down to his side, shrugged, and looked out the window. “Ah, our colleagues, the Federales. It was a joke, eh? I wanted to give you a taste of the real police life. Just for fun.” He gave her an alligator smile and returned to the window. “I’m Police! Inspector Fabian Diaz,” he yelled, his gun pointing loosely at the ground. “Don’t shoot!”
There was a silence, then she heard a thunder and the whine of bullets bouncing through the room. Bits of chipped plaster sprinkled in her hair as she threw herself to the floor, and she saw Fabian flung backwards into a pirouette, hitting his face on the bedpost as he collapsed. He tried to reincorporate himself for a moment, pushing his torso up, then a burst of fire from right outside the window cut the last strings. Everything was quiet for a moment.
Athena wasn’t sure what to do. They had executed Fabian as efficiently as any firing squad, and she didn’t know if she might be the next. “It’s me!” she shouted. “Doctora Fowler of the United States! Don’t shoot!” She heard footsteps running up to the door, then suddenly three men in plainclothes stood around her in a semicircle, all of them pointing at her with shotguns or pistols. She could see the officers look at each other, as if wondering whether to pull the trigger once more, then their commander came into the room, a man of about forty-five dressed in a leather jacket.
“What are you doing here?” the Federal Comisario shouted at her.
“Señor Fortunato called and asked me to come.”
The Federal stared down at her aggressively, a man accustomed to having his questions answered. “What about him?” he asked sharply, indicating Fabian’s body. “Did he say anything?”
“Him?” Athena came slowly to her feet and leveled her cool green eyes on those of her interrogator. “He was talking about the Boca-River game.”
It seemed to confuse the Federal: he looked for guidance to a man that lurked in the doorway. The man had thinning hair combed over a bald spot and a navy blazer. He examined her coldly, like a carpet cleaner examining a troublesome stain. There was a long, nerve-wracking pause.
Suddenly a voice came from the next room. “I’m Nicolosi, of the Bonaerense,” it announced, and an officer wearing the uniform of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police walked in. “Inspector Nicolosi!” he said stiffly, pulling out his identification. “Of the precinct of San Justo!” His mouth dropped open as he got sight of Fortunato’s ruined body, then formed into an “o” as he noticed Fabian. He shook his head to clear it, then looked at Athena with astonishment.
“Doctora Fowler,” he asked her gently. “Do you need assistance?”
The Federal Comisario turned to Nicolosi and motioned towards Fabian. “He’s a bad cop, and we had reason to believe the girl was in danger. He raised his weapon at us.” To Athena, “You saw him raise his weapon, didn’t you?”
“It was difficult to see from my angle, Comisario.”
“Hernandez!” he barked at another policeman. “She didn’t see anything! Get her declaración right now!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The initial explanation by the Federales was the classic: a settling of accounts between a band of corrupt police had left four police and three civilians dead in what would soon become known as the Night of the 17 Stone Angels. A few days later, at a press conference with Doctora Athena Fowler, a very different story was told, one that began a new frenzy of journalistic activity around the Grupo AmiBank, Carlo Pelegrini and the previously unknown name of William Renssaelaer. Questions were raised as to why Fabian Diaz had been shot when his weapon was pointed harmlessly at the ground, and why William Renssaelaer, a foreign citizen, had accompanied a Federal task force to that final execution. Judge Faviola Hocht widened her investigation to the Grupo AmiBank and RapidMail. In the most bizarre and comic iteration of the entire scandal, a top executive of the Grupo AmiBank appeared on the front page of Pagina/12 under the headline Pablo Moya: Red Hot and Wet!
Much was made of the fantasma Frances
a referred to by Doctora Fowler, but without her testimony no intellectual author could be definitively linked to the murder of Robert Waterbury, and it appeared that the material authors had already submitted to an alternative and more exacting justice system. Athena Fowler stayed four more weeks in Buenos Aires, a guest in the home of Carmen Amado de los Santos. By the time she departed all plans to privatize the Argentine Post Office had collapsed under the eye of public scrutiny. Beyond that, without the presence of the mysterious Paulé or other hard evidence, neither Carlo Pelegrini nor William Renssaelaer could be officially accused of anything.
When Athena returned to the United States she had been away two months. In comparison her own country seemed half asleep, anesthetized by consumer goods and narcotized by a steady stream of corporate news blended into a placenta of entertaining facts. No one had heard anything about the events in Argentina, and American newspapers displayed little interest in the complex foreign policies of RapidMail and AmiBank. A week later a small yellow slip arrived from her local post office: they were holding a piece of registered mail for a Doctor Athena Fowler.
She walked there with the slip in her pocket, cheered by the sight of the modest but orderly building, with its flag above the doorway and its plain black letters spelling out the branch and zip code. She’d grown up with this post office, remembered going there with her parents to pick up packages at Christmas. It was one of the institutions that worked reliably and without change, beyond politics or party lines. She stopped a few steps inside the entryway.
A large poster had been hung above the counter, with the Stars and Stripes pulling into their embrace two logos: RAPIDMAIL AND THE US POSTAL SERVICE: PARTNERS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY! Next to the counter stood a neat metal RapidMail box, with its logo expropriating the colors of the American flag.
“They just started rolling it out three weeks ago,” the clerk told her. “RapidMail gets a drop-box in every post office in the country. They help us move the parcels so we can concentrate on the mail. They call that a strategic partnership.”
She looked at the cheerful, contented face. “Strategic for who?” she answered. “They’ll take the profits and leave the taxpayers with the crap, and ten years from now they’ll replace you with someone who earns twenty percent less. Because by their calculation, you make too much money.”
The clerk went sour and looked at the yellow registered mail slip that she gave him. “Brazil, eh?”
He disappeared and returned a minute later carrying a thick manila envelope with no return address. The bulk of it made her think of letter bombs, and she felt carefully around its edges with her fingers. As a consideration she opened it outside.
It was a different sort of letter bomb. The envelope was stuffed with photocopies of documents detailing financial transactions between Argentina and various offshore banks. Carlo Pelegrini’s name appeared all over them. On top was a letter from Paulé. Paulé—the Patron Saint of Desperation.
Estimada Doctor, she wrote in her flawed Spanish, even here in Rio one can buy the Argentine papers. There were things she had not told her on the Night of the 17 Stone Angels. That Robert had given her these documents two days before his death, and one more thing, maybe useful to her. Robert had not been alone on the day he had spotted William Renssaelaer and Pablo Moya together. She too had seen them, could identify William Renssaelaer from his pictures in the newspaper. She was ready to make her declaración.
Athena put the papers back in the envelope and clutched it tightly to her side as she began to walk. A sudden surge of emotion seemed to lift her off her feet and carry her through the streets. She was thinking of her night out with Fortunato, and his story of the sculptures that were supposed to have looked down from the Palacio de Justicia and instead had ended up surveying the errands of pimps and fading tango singers. Thus is life, Fortunato would have said. Even in a world where seventeen stone angels are stranded beyond reach, one more can always be found.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I couldn’t have written this book without the help of the following people:
Titi, Cristina, Marcos, Anabel, Karina and the muchachos del barrio:
Chispa, Pepe, Gabriel, Enrique, Cuervo and Fabian.
Ricardo Rajendorfer and Luis Ernesto Vicat, who shared their knowledge of the Buenos Aires Provincial police.
Fellow writer Comisario Mayor Eugenio Zappietro of the Federal Police of Buenos Aires, who was generous with his time and explained so much without explaining.
The following people provided help and personal support along the way: Brad Cure, Jonathan Wolfson, Bruce Kimball, Jed Cohen, Dr. Ken Brown, Lt. Kevin Siska, Eliot Cohen, Bess Reed, Luisa Hairabedyan, Sheila Ferreira, Raul Schnabel, Mariana Ponce de León of Amnesty International, Hebe de Bonafini and Sergio Schocklander of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. A particular thanks to Dra. Maria del Carmen Verdu and Paola of the CORREPI.
I must acknowledge the inspiration and information provided by the courageous work of Argentine investigative journalists Miguel Bonasso, Ricardo Rajendorfer and Carlos Dutil, Andres Openheimer and others. Foremost among them Rodolfo Walsh, author of Operacion Massacre, and Jose Luis Cabezas, whose murders are still awaiting solution.
Thanks to Joe Regal, loyal and tireless agent and friend, who encouraged me to keep running. Body of a rock!
And I thank especially my prized friends Martin Vilches and Claudio Vilarino, que me bancaron cuando yo hacia mi ultima jugada.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stuart Archer Cohen has traveled extensively through the Americas, from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic, as well as China. His trading company, Invisible World, imports and retails wool, silk, alpaca and cashmere clothing from South America and Asia. Cohen’s other novels include Invisible World, The Army of the Republic and This Is How It Really Sounds (April 2015). He lives in Juneau, Alaska, with his wife and two sons.
STUARTARCHERCOHEN.COM
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