The Angst-Ridden Executive

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The Angst-Ridden Executive Page 8

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán


  ‘Is he Opus Dei?’

  ‘He probably flirted with the Opus when he was chasing promotion, but judging from the way he lives his life I’d say he’s never taken vows of poverty or obedience. Or chastity either. . .’

  ‘Screws like a dog, does he?’

  ‘He’s an unusual sort, Pepe. You might think he’s effeminate, because he has the mannerisms of an English butler. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a jacket, even in the middle of August. When he became aware that people were saying he was queer, he began hanging out with women. Dozens of them. A different one every night, and some of them pretty classy. And he keeps a couple of regulars in tow for when he needs a change.’

  ‘Family money?’

  ‘Not at all. He’s the third son of the fifth son of the brother of the heirs to the Gausachs dynasty. Cotton manufacturers. They used to hobnob with the Guells, the Bertrans and the Valls y Taberner until the cotton crisis hit. They’re only now beginning to pick up again. But Martin Gausachs has no real connection with them. His father was a lawyer who didn’t have two cents to rub together. A solicitor, in fact, dealing with separations and neighbourhood quarrels.’

  ‘Do you have all this information on your files here?’

  ‘No. I know about the Gausachs family from when we were doing a study of Catalonia’s economy. The name carne up, and since it turns out that one of the Gausachs is tied up with the far Left I was curious to find out about the rest of the family. They’ve got all sorts. A Maoist, and another one who’s more or less a Maoist. Then there’s Martin, the perfect executive. Another brother supports the nationalists. He’s got a daughter who’s in the Communist Party, and two young boys still at college—one studying with the Opus, and the other with the Jesuits.’

  ‘A family that’s determined to survive, come what may.’

  ‘Correct. An inexorable law of nature. Every ruling class tends to perpetuate its power by reproducing other ruling classes, either through the mechanism of economic inheritance, or via political adaptability or cultural power.’

  Not a hint of irony in all this. Parra spoke a language that was just as much jargon as Bromide’s or Golden Hammer’s.

  ‘I’m leaving this bank with an impression of having got something for nothing.’

  ‘Send a cheque to Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, or to Trias Fargas. They’re both on our board of directors.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I reckon an hour of my time is worth four hundred and sixty-six pesetas. I spent two hours on all this, so that makes nine hundred and thirty-two. I’ll give you a discount—let’s say eight hundred in total, or if you’re feeling generous you can send my boss a cheque for a thousand.’

  ‘Florentino—this friend of mine used to be a poet too.’

  The porter looked up and stared at them to see if they were making fun of him.

  ‘A progressive poet—one of your lot.’

  ‘Poetry isn’t progressive. Or raspberry-coloured. Or anything at all. It’s just poetry, or it’s nothing,’ the poet said, without anger, but with all the dignity of a Flemish burgher.

  Nuñez arrived on time, complete with his faithful sweater and the tips of his shirt collar floating above the crew neck like the shoots of some strange, hidden vegetable. He wore a fixed smile and a laid-back expression that was pure Actors’ Studio.

  ‘The only people who are punctual in this country are those who were active in the underground.’

  Nuñez returned the menu to the patron.

  ‘An hors d’oeuvre to start with, followed by a confit d’oie.’

  Carvalho followed him in ordering the confit d’oie, but he decided on snails ala Bourgogne as a starter. He picked a Saint Emilion from the limited wine list, and now he and Nuñez had no further excuse for putting off their discussion. Nuñez’s embarrassment formed part of his way of relating to people. Carvalho’s, on the other hand, was a lingering echo of his residual respect for the man—the same respect he felt towards his old teachers, or to other people that he had admired. With a sigh, Nuñez took a photograph out of a shabby wallet in which Carvalho could see a solitary five-hundred-peseta note.

  ‘Here, take this. It’s like a family memento.’

  An amateur snapshot, with a scalloped edge and worn by the passage of time. Four young men standing at the back, and two squatting in front. The year must have been about 1950, and they were all aged between eighteen and twenty, but now they seemed from some undefinable, far distant era. They were all wearing suits and ties, except for Marcos Nuñez who was wearing a suit jacket and a roll-neck sweater. Jauma was presumably the one standing on the left. A thick head of hair, his Sephardic features accentuated by his thinness.

  ‘Who are the others?’

  ‘The cast, in order of appearance. Next to Jauma, Miguelito Fontanillas, a lawyer, like the rest of us, but doing very nicely thank you. In other words, he’s the company lawyer for God knows how many firms, and has three houses and four swimming pools.’

  Unkempt-looking, with a bit of a squint, and wearing a suit, in the photograph he looked like a young wide-boy from the barrio in his Sunday best.

  ‘Tomas Biedma. Labour lawyer. The tall one, there. The one who looks a picture of seriousness and good sense. He’s the biggest red of us all. Certainly more left-wing than me. He leads a small ultra-leftist group.’

  There was something of the young Bourbon prince in those features, a sensuality contained by youth.

  ‘He looks like the mayor of a big city.’

  ‘He’ll never get to be mayor of anywhere unless he manages to storm the Winter Palace first. I told you, he’s on the far Left. He sees me as a revisionist and a cynic. Now, there are a lot of people who see me as a cynic, but for different reasons to Biedma. He says that I’m a cynic because I know enough not to be a revisionist, but that I’m still a revisionist for all that. The other one standing there is the novelist Dorronsoro.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The elder of the two. Juan. The one that’s just published Weariness and the Night. I’m one of the characters in it. Don’t let that put you off, though. I come out just the way you see me now.

  ‘How do you know how I see you?’

  ‘That’s one of my favourite occupations. Working out how other people see me. Sometimes I help them build the picture. And sometimes I try to throw them off the scent. Not for long, though, because I get bored very quickly. Bored with everything except getting bored. Anyway, if I concentrate on one thing for too long it prevents me from being aware of what’s going on round me. You’ll have noticed already that I don’t like over-exerting myself.’

  ‘Who’s this one here?’

  Squatting next to Nuñez was a lad who looked the picture of happiness. A thick crop of hair sitting like a beret on his head, glasses with bifocal lenses, features that were small and hard but were softened in the photograph by a broad smile, and the whole weight of his body seemingly behind the clenched-fist salute that he was giving to the photographer.

  ‘Who took the photo?’

  ‘That’s a source of some contention. Señora Biedma claims that she took it, but there’s another friend, who’s not in the photo, who claims he took it. The probability’s on his side, since he is, or rather would like to be, a film director. Jacinto Vilaseca by name. He’s not had a lot of luck in films. As you know, it’s not an easy world to break into, and Vilaseca’s not much of a stayer, really. What’s more, he’s on the far Left. He used to run a small political group—not the same one as Biedma, though.’

  ‘What a bunch! Out of seven friends we’ve got two extreme left organizations, one executive, one society lawyer, a novelist, yourself, and what about this one, the one with the glasses? You still haven’t told me his name.’

  ‘Argemi. In those days he was well set to become the next great exponent of the grand old tradition of Catal
an poetry. These days, though, he’s a leading yoghurt manufacturer. He’s the one I see least of, because he spends his time either abroad or at his mansion in Ampurdan—a huge seventeenth-century farm that he’s converted into a hi-tech palace.’

  ‘What are my chances of getting hold of their addresses?’

  Nuñez reached into the top of his sweater, and extracted a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket.

  ‘Here. I thought you might be wanting them.’

  ‘What sort of relationship did they have with Jauma?’

  ‘Very good. But only on a one-to-one basis. . . Or two at the most. We’ve only ever all met together on two occasions. Once at a party that they gave for me when I returned from exile, and another time, about a year ago, when we were all invited by Jauma. He’d suddenly become incredibly paranoid for some reason and wanted us all to meet up. It was a disaster! On a one-to-one basis, we generally manage to find a common language and a common history. But when we were all together, all trying to sort out who remembered what about whom, we just all ended up in a mess, with everyone trying to justify what they had become. I could see from the way they looked at me that they’d expected better of me, and I suggested that perhaps I would have expected better of them. Then they started to get ratty.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘No. Not Dorronsoro. He wasn’t saying a lot. I think he was sizing us up as characters for his next novel. Since he only writes ten lines a day, with us he should have enough material for a lifetime.’

  ‘Was Jauma especially close to any of them?’

  ‘He’d given Fontanillas a few bits of work connected with his company. He’d also used Biedma on a number of occasions, because he valued his “rationality”. And he occasionally went on trips with Argemi.’

  ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘Pleasure, really. With their wives.’

  ‘And what about the wives?’

  ‘They were all more or less part of the same group. Most of them got engaged while they were still at university. All of them, in fact, except Argemi’s wife. She was the daughter of a man who owned a small yoghurt factory. Then Argemi came along and transformed the family firm into a major industrial concern. He exports all over the world.’

  ‘Aracata?’

  ‘Precisely. It’s apparently called that because one of the directors is from Aragon, and the other—Argemi’s father-in-law—is Catalonian.’

  The confit was excellent; it was nicely browned, and the fat had been transformed qualitatively into something quite other, full of tactile surprises. An elusive sort of flavour, with the meat slightly burned, and the skin basted with fat and with a light crispness that melted in the mouth. The meat was fibrous but not at all dried-out, and had absorbed the flavour of the herbs and spices throughout its sleeping form as it lay in the cold lard.

  ‘What would you like to follow, gentlemen’?

  Nuñez winked at Carvalho and asked:

  ‘Bring me an Aracata yoghurt, a glass of orange juice, and a brandy. I’ll mix them myself. I recommend it, Carvalho. It’s Argemi’s own recipe. He orders it in every restaurant he goes into, because that way he gets to sell another yoghurt.’

  Nuñez had drunk in moderation and eaten without excess. Carvalho sensed that he fought hard to look younger than he really was.

  ‘I’m going to ask you the same question that I’ll be asking your friends. Give me your version of Jauma’s murder.’

  ‘I’ve read detective stories, so I know one has to look for a motive. The official version is that it was the result of Jauma’s over-active sex life. The widow doesn’t believe this. I myself have no reason not to believe it, but on the other hand it all seems a bit too clear-cut and simple—a bit stage-managed. If we abandon that version, I am not the best person to propose an alternative. In a novel Jauma might have been killed for business reasons, or by one of his workers getting his own back, or by one of his heirs, or because of a row with his wife’s lover, or maybe even as a case of mistaken identity. Take your pick. None of these options has a lot going for it. You tend to get “business” killings among small businessmen, or among industrialists who have to slog it out against their competitors on a day-today basis. But not among senior executives. As for industrial disputes, as I told you, Jauma tended to move very carefully, and was good at defusing situations. The idea of his heirs killing him for his money would be ludicrous, partly because his children are too young to be killers, and partly because he didn’t have a lot in the bank. He had plenty of possessions, but he was still paying for most of them. And anyway, an executive’s salary doesn’t look so big when it’s converted into a widow’s pension without yearly bonuses and so on. I’m sure he had a decent life insurance, but probably not enough to provide Concha with the same standard of living as when he was alive. As for the jealous wife killing for revenge, I imagine that now you’ve met her you’d find that as implausible as I do. So that just leaves mistaken identity. In my opinion, it was probably a case of mistaken identity.’

  There was a note from Biscuter informing him that the lawyer Fontanillas had rung. Carvalho noted that important people were beginning to pursue him, and he rang the number marked as the one most likely to reach the lawyer in the middle of the afternoon. The fact that Fontanillas could only be reached via two secretaries, one after the other, testified to the man’s social status, and the voice that finally came onto the line had the stressed and modulated manner of a priest, doctor or lawyer, when they try to disguise the fact that the slightest slip on their part can consign us all to kingdom come.

  ‘Señor Carvalho! Delighted to make your acquaintance. Let’s spare the formalities, since we’re both busy men. Señora Jauma has given me a rather strange task—she wants me to find out whether the women’s knickers found in her late husband’s pockets had been used or not. As you can imagine, this isn’t my normal line of thing, but since Concha asked me, and because it was to do with my great friend Jauma, I contacted friends and pulled a few strings. To cut a long story short, I now have the answer. They were unused.’

  ‘Unused?’

  ‘It may interest you, or amuse you, to know that they were, to be precise, completely new. I have to say that I find the whole business a bit of a bore, because a few minutes ago I had a phone call from a police inspector wanting to know why I was so interested in this particular detail. I had no choice but to explain, and unfortunately I had to bring you into it. In other words, the police now know that you’re making inquiries on behalf of Jauma’s widow.’

  ‘They know more than they ought to know.’

  ‘I had no choice. And now I must leave you, because I have people to see.’

  ‘Don’t hang up. Before you go, I need to arrange to meet you. It’s important that I get to talk with Jauma’s circle of friends.’

  ‘Wait a moment.’

  The emphatic voice turned silky smooth as he addressed an aside to his secretary, to ask how his diary looked for the following day.

  ‘Do you like sport?’

  ‘Only sports that involve the imagination. Eating and sex.’

  ‘There, I’m afraid, I cannot oblige. However I do have a free hour between one and two o’clock tomorrow. I was thinking of calling in at the Cambridge club for a game of squash, a sauna, and a massage. I can take guests, and I would be delighted if you could make it. We can talk there. I’m afraid I have to go now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Carvalho had his doubts about the advisedness of this sporting rendezvous, but Fontanillas gave him no chance to reply. So he put the phone down and took a few deep breaths in a parody of something he had once been capable of. He flexed his knees and squatted on his haunches, laughing to himself for no apparent reason. This was the moment that Biscuter chose to come through the door, holding it open with one knee as he struggled through with his hands full of shopping.

  ‘Yo
u all right, boss?’

  ‘Sure. Squatting’s good for you.’

  ‘What’s it good for—the spine?’

  ‘Good for something. . . I can’t remember what, though.’

  ‘I’ve been to the Boqueria to buy a couple of lamb’s feet. I’m going to do them with peas and artichokes, because I know that’s the way you like them. The place needs a good clean-up too. It’s starting to smell.’

  He lifted himself off the floor and became aware of shooting pains in his legs.

  ‘We should go into training, Biscuter.’

  ‘Not me, boss. I do enough already. And when I don’t have anything else to do, I invent something. That’s what they taught me in the orphanage. Idleness is the mother of evil.’

  ‘Shut up, Biscuter. When you start moralizing you get on my nerves.’

  ‘Do you want a coffee, boss?’

  ‘No. A glass of orujo from the fridge. I’ve got to go out. I want you to phone all these people for me. Make me an appointment to see each of them. I want you to pack them in so that I can see them all in one day. Be careful, though—don’t book me in with two at the same time.’

  He added Gausachs’s name to the list that Nuñez had given him.

  ‘And, Biscuter, try to sound a bit respectable on the phone. I don’t want you screeching at them. You have to sound like a proper secretary.’

  As Biscuter settled himself down with the telephone, Carvalho tried to find his bearings in the Jauma case. He was up against a blank wall with not an opening in sight. It wasn’t even obvious which side of the wall he should start climbing. He’d taken a few steps, in a direction that might be right or wrong, based on the near-certainty that the motive had been falsified. All at once the disgust with which Carvalho customarily took on smaller cases—almost all a product of the moral pettiness of small-minded people—seemed preferable to the uneasiness he felt at finding himself involved in a case where he was probably out of his depth. What chance have I really got? I’ll stir up a few cans of worms, and maybe I’ll find the clue there. But what if I don’t? Señora Jauma, those knickers can be as new as you like, but your husband was killed in a fight. Perhaps instead of asking for the ones that the girl was wearing, he had stolen a pair of new ones from her wardrobe. Or maybe he’d come up showing her a pair of new knickers:

 

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