The Angst-Ridden Executive

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘Boss—señora Jauma has been chasing you for two days now. She wants you to get in touch with her, urgently. Should I give her your Vallvidrera number?’

  ‘Certainly not. If she calls again, tell her I’m out of the country.’

  ‘As it happens, I already have.’

  The seven minutes that it took him to get from Vallvidrera into the centre of town seemed longer than usual. He decided against waiting for the slow, asthmatic and over-ornate lift, and walked up the worn pink marble steps that led to the flat of Alemany the accountant. He was met by a tearful señora Alemany, and all she could say was:

  ‘He’s dying. He’s dying.’

  It did indeed seem that Alemany had decided to die. He lay there with his yellow blotchy face more or less sunk into the pillow. He tilted his head slightly at the sound of his wife’s voice, and his eyes still had the fierce look of the badly wounded eagle that senses the mystery of its own death approaching.

  ‘Alemany—I wanted to ask you something else about señor Jauma.’

  ‘The father?’

  ‘No, the son.’

  ‘Ah, the son.’

  His eyes returned to the ceiling as if he was Washing his hands of the business, but the way he tilted his head slightly in Carvalho’s direction indicated that he was all ears.

  ‘About the money that was missing from the Petnay accounts.’

  ‘I will only discuss that with señor Jauma.’

  ‘He’s dead, Alemany. Remember? He was killed because of something to do with those accounts.’

  ‘So many people dying, so many. . . !’

  ‘Alemany, how was that money channeled out of Petnay? What company did it go through?’

  ‘They’ve taken all of them. My collection. My books.’

  ‘He’s dying, he’s dying!’

  ‘What are you talking about? Who’s taken them?’

  ‘He’s getting confused. Señora Jauma rang me yesterday, and she had a very good offer to make me. A friend of hers was interested in buying my husband’s accounting books. You see, he used to keep copies of all the most important accounts for his archive, and this gentleman told me he wanted to buy them all for the library of some business college he’s involved with.’

  ‘You sold them?’

  ‘Yes. Yesterday. Two gentlemen came to look at them, and they said they definitely wanted them. I asked my husband what he thought. They made us a very good offer, and they told me that if I sold the accounting books they would also make me an offer for our collection of posters of the Generalitat, and for my husband’s correspondence with Macia, Companys, and Pi i Sunyer.’

  ‘Who made this offer?’

  ‘One of them was called Raspall, and I don’t remember the other.’

  ‘Did they pay you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A decent figure. It pained me to sell them, but what would I have done with them otherwise? All I have is this flat, a pitiful pension, and a few shares that are worth nothing. They wouldn’t have been any use to the children either.’

  ‘Who signed the cheque?’

  ‘Mr. Raspall. My eldest son paid the money in this morning.’

  ‘Does Alemany know that you’ve actually sold them?’

  ‘I told him. At first he said no; then he agreed. At the moment he’s grumbling and shouting at me every now and then, but then he says it was a good idea because that way I end up with a bit of money.’

  Alemany was sleeping, or pretending to sleep. Carvalho raised his voice, to wake him.

  ‘Alemany, you’ve got to tell me —who was responsible for siphoning off that Petnay money?’

  The old man was like a block of marble—either deaf or fast asleep. He didn’t respond to Carvalho’s shouted questions, and the noise brought his children running. Politely, at first, and then with growing anger, they asked Carvalho to leave so that the old man could die in peace.

  ‘So many people have died—so many. . .’ the old accountant murmured, evidently aware that he was about to become the next in a string of dead acquaintances, and that nothing and nobody was any longer worth opening his eyes for. The approaching footsteps of the Alemany children more or less drove Carvalho out, and when he found himself alone on the landing he had the sensation of other steps sounding behind him too—the same footsteps that were dogging his trail and always seemed to get there before him. First there was the buying of the bar, and now buying up Alemany’s papers. Maybe Concha Hijar, unbeknownst to herself, had done a deal with her husband’s murderer. There would be no point in confronting her and demanding to know the name when he only had a hunch to go on. Tense with fear and anger he arrived at the Petnay offices. Gausachs’s secretary stepped out of the way just in time to avoid being pushed and Gausachs himself spluttered a protest and made as if to get up, but then sank back into his chair under the pressure of the inevitable. The inevitable, in this instance, was Carvalho, standing in the middle of the office, with the secretary at his side spluttering accusations at him and apologies to Gausachs.

  ‘It appears that you learned your trade from American gangster movies.’

  ‘It’s not often that I get to deal with big-time crooks. Like yourself, for example.’

  Gausachs closed his eyes wearily and gestured to his secretary. She was evidently well trained, and withdrew, shutting the door as she went. Carvalho picked the chair that was furthest from Gausachs, sat with his legs hanging over one of the arms, and from this sprawling position waited for Gausachs to emerge from his puzzlement.

  ‘Well, I mean. . . This is unheard of!’

  ‘Choose your words carefully, Prof. For something to be unheard of means that it has to be said, and up till now I haven’t even said good morning.’

  Gausachs came round his desk and stood in front of the detective. He ran his hand through his thick, blond hair, and the same hand then fumbled in the breast of his waistcoat, ending up finally in the pocket of his trousers. By this time Gausachs had mustered up a smile.

  ‘What have you come for? The cheque or an explanation of an alleged embezzlement dug up by some amateur accountant?’

  ‘As far as the cheque goes, don’t rule it out, and as for the accountant, he can’t be so very amateur if someone’s seen fit to buy up his records for a seven-zeroes figure.’

  ‘He must have written his accounts in illuminated lettering! Anyway, as regards the alleged embezzlement, you can relax. Head office in London has explained it all to me. You must have got the figure of two hundred million from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, though. Every year small amounts of money go unaccounted for. These are moneys spent by Petnay in direct contacts between the company and its subsidiaries or associated companies technical training courses, public relations, entertainment expenses and so on. Jauma was surprised when he discovered this expenditure, which is controlled from London, and which is authorized by special managers that Petnay maintains in its subsidiaries. If he hadn’t then started going round like a bull in a china shop, he would have waited for the company’s world-wide accounts to arrive from London, and he would have discovered that there was nothing to get alarmed about.’

  ‘In other words, he wouldn’t have found out about the wheeler-dealing.’

  ‘Don’t be so childish, for God’s sake. What wheeler-dealing?! Do I have to spell it out in words of one syllable?’

  Gausachs’s reaction betrayed impatience, surprise, and a measure of irritation.

  ‘Somebody’s psyched up a village pimp to get him to own up to the Jauma killing.’

  ‘Would you mind translating that into Castilian?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. Somebody has bribed a small-time pimp to confess to Jauma’s murder. And that same mysterious somebody has bought up the lifetime records of the accountant Alemany, which include, among other th
ings, the trail leading directly to the person responsible for laundering this missing money from the Petnay accounts.’

  ‘You’re the kind of person who thinks that the Jesuits put poison in our water.’

  ‘Somebody has been putting tons of bromide into our water, so that we all go to sleep, and you must either be a cynic or a halfwit if you don’t smell the immense amount of shit around you. Or maybe your nose has just got used to it.’

  ‘I’m asking you this as a favour. Accept Petnay’s offer and leave us in peace. For your own good. And for mine. And for Concha’s. Stop trying to play James Bond.’

  Nuñez looked as if he’d slept the night with his clothes on. He opened the door with a damp floorcloth in one hand. In the middle of the room—which, judging from the shelves full of books and the table piled with papers, was a hallway, a bedroom, a dining room, and a work room all rolled into one—a bucket of dirty water seemed to be contemplating its existential condition as a bucket of dirty water. Nuñez wrung out the floorcloth and put it on the floor next to the bucket. He took a bottle of cologne from a shelf and sprinkled it on his hands, flapping them around and waiting for it to evaporate.

  ‘My ladyfriend is out at work, so I was cleaning the flat.’

  A long, silent pause. Time for mutual observation.

  ‘Concha wants to call it off. She’s been trying to get in touch with you. I haven’t been able to dissuade her.’

  Slowly Carvalho unfolded his version of what had been happening:

  ‘That money must have been destined for some illegal end. If it had been a case of personal embezzlement, Petnay wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to cover it up. This was money that was disappearing with the company’s consent. Jauma must have suspected something. He felt isolated, surrounded. So he consulted someone he thought he could trust. He went along with the company’s explanations at first, but this year either the amount was too big, or Jauma discovered something that made him particularly uneasy. Deciding to kill him was a very serious step. There’s only one real explanation. Jauma was becoming a threat. The conclusion is obvious. They decide to kill him, and then bring all their political and economic influence to bear so as to cover their tracks. What I don’t understand is why Jauma was so naive. He knew perfectly well who he was dealing with. Either he was trying to make a quick buck by blackmailing Petnay, or he was too free with someone he thought he knew and trusted. The former possibility fits perfectly with how things have turned out. The latter makes things a bit complicated. Jauma would have to have told someone what he had found out, but perhaps he told the wrong person. Or maybe he went directly to the person responsible and came right out with it. Either way it suggests that he trusted the person he contacted. Whether he was opening his heart or accusing him, he would have to have known the person quite well. He is then betrayed. And murdered. My hunch is that the murderer comes from your group, one of the high flyers in the photo. Logically it would have to have been either Fontanillas or Argemi. Both men had direct links with Petnay, the first because he was an advisor to various Petnay subsidiaries, and the second because he owned a company that was dependent on Petnay, On the other hand, we can’t rule out the possibility that it was one of the others in the group—the lifelong reds. They kill Rhomberg because he knew something, and they were afraid that I would talk to him. There’s a lot of potential in all this—perhaps too much potential for a person like me, I could get a lot of money out of it. The widow will pay me very generously to prevent me from jeopardizing her rather handsome company pension. Petnay is also willing to pay me to drop the case. Never have I been within reach of earning so much money in such a short space of time, and that worries me. What can I do? We live in what’s almost a democracy. Maybe I should go public with it. Tomorrow I arrange a meeting with a few journalists, and I openly accuse Petnay. There’s a big fuss, and a public inquiry, which concludes that a tenth-rate private detective was trying to use a public scandal to advance his own personal position.’

  ‘The way you put it, there’s no way out.’

  ‘There is a way out. It all depends on you, and Jauma’s other left-wing friends. You could give the case a political dimension.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I don’t think I could create complications for my party at a delicate time like this. Can’t you see that it would be a disaster for the party to take the side of a sex maniac who was light-handed with women’s knickers? Because that’s what would come out at a public inquiry. We’re just coming out of years of silence and persecution. You don’t really think we could afford to get involved in a scandal like this, do you?!’

  ‘What about the others? Vilaseca and Biedma?’

  ‘Vilaseca doesn’t come into it. He would be of no use to you. Biedma, on the other hand, would go along with you, I’m sure, but he’d be your worst ally. Like David against Goliath, a raving red, and a down-at-heels private investigator teaming up to take on a respected multinational and drag its name in the mud. . .’

  ‘So what do I do—take the money and run?’

  ‘That’s your problem.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t do anything at all. I’d just go home and wait for a more propitious time, when the balance of power was more in my favour. One of these days Petnay is bound to put a foot wrong, and that will be the time to revive the case. If you want to leave it for a bit I might even be able to give you a hand.’

  ‘One evening, when all the various occupants of the building where I have my office have gone home, a couple of unpleasant characters will come up the stairs. They’ll take advantage of the fact that Biscuter is out, probably on a shopping expedition. When Biscuter returns he’ll find me as dead as a doornail, and the papers will call it: “The curious case of the killing of a detective who flirted with the underworld.” My curriculum vitae doesn’t read too well. An ex-communist ex-member of the CIA with a girlfriend who’s a prostitute and who’s not so much select as selective. Or maybe they’ll kill me in my house at Vallvidrera and then set fire to it. I generally have a fire in the house, even in Spring. It helps me think. You got me into all this. . .’

  ‘So what do you expect me to do? I could arrange to be with you when they come so that they kill me too. If it makes you any happier, I could come to your office every evening to keep you company, or to your house every night. I’m game. I can understand positions of individual morality. Mine, however, begins and ends with myself.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t fancy dying. Not even in the company of the likes of you.’

  ‘I feared as much.’

  ‘The problem is that I think I’m going to have to follow this through.’

  ‘You’re prepared to go it alone?’

  ‘I’ll find out who murdered Jauma, and I’ll get my money off the widow. I need to. I’m saving for my old age.’

  ‘I’m not. I do just enough translation work to be able to smoke without getting cancer. At the moment I’m working on Karl Marx—The Critique of the Gotha Programme.’

  ‘Be sure to send me a copy. I’m in the habit of lighting my fire with transcendental books. The more a book has pretensions to being transcendental, the more guilty it is. At some point in its life it must have conned someone.’

  ‘You’re one of those who reach for their guns when they hear the word “culture”.’

  ‘No. I reach for my lighter. Culture means cooking with or without sauces, living like a mortal or an immortal, worshipping your own wife or someone else’s wife. Culture is either French or English, Spanish or American, Eskimo or Italian. What you call culture is just verbal orthopaedics.’

  ‘All those years of learning German, and now it turns out it was all a waste of time!’

  ‘The tongue has offered you no sexual satisfaction?’

  ‘Are you referring to the spoken tongue, or to the tongue as a muscle?
’

  ‘For the moment, the spoken tongue.’

  ‘I can’t complain. Even though I was living in a country as puritanical as East Germany, I was still having a girl a week. Beneath the semblance of the nation’s Marxist rigidity vibrated a deep romanticism. One of them insisted on cutting a lock of her pubic hairs, and gave it to me as a souvenir.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘I left it there. Imagine what would have happened if they’d found it when they searched me at the border!’

  ‘You communists are the world’s reserve of puritanism.’

  ‘One day we’ll be vindicated.’

  It wasn’t easy to prise the widow Jauma out of her territory of children deprived of a father and a flat where even the windows were starched and ironed. Carvalho’s solution for a situation that was threatening to get out of hand was to arrange to meet her down by the port, to ignore her remonstrations, and to put her in a position where they had to continue their conversation in a pleasure cruiser that toured one of the dirtiest harbours in the world. Maybe it was going a bit far to invite her for moules marinières in a cheap restaurant beneath the lighthouse.

  ‘Just exactly who do you think you are? Stop thinking you can treat me like a dog on a lead. Don’t forget, you’re working for me.’

  Carvalho downed his mussels and then used a mussel shell to raise spoonfuls of the sauce to his lips.

  ‘They’re disgusting. I don’t know about “marinières” . . . they taste of petrol and they look more like they’ve been shipwrecked. . . Look how many cloves they’ve put in. The cook must have been a Murcian. Murcians put cloves in their food the way the Jews put nails into Christ on the cross. My grandmother was from Murcia, and she used to make fish soup. It was cheap but good. She used slices of swordfish, a green pepper, onions, tomato. and cloves.’