Mapuche

by Caryl Ferey

*

  Drugged with sodium pentothal, loaded into trucks or cars, gagged, bound, and hooded, subversives extracted from the prisons were taken to military airports and thrown alive into the Río de la Plata. Night flights, in helicopters or more often in airplanes. Sometimes the cadavers were found trussed up on the coast of Uruguay, dismembered or mutilated bodies that the waves brought in depending on the variations in the currents. The unexpected storm the preceding week had driven the photographer’s body back toward Buenos Aires, as often happened during the worst days of the Dirty War.

  Lost in these reminiscences, Rubén saw the scene once again in violent flashes, the kidnapping of María Victoria and the person she thought was her brother as they came out of La Catedral, the transvestite whom they tortured in front of her to make her talk, the screams, the confessions, their separation, Orlando sent to the deserted quays of La Boca, María drugged to transfer her to an airport in the countryside, the rich industrialist’s daughter reduced to a package thrown into the trunk of a car, a simple number to be erased, to be made to disappear, María inert on the floor of the fuselage, flying over the drop zone, the black skin of the ocean crinkling under the moon, she still deep in her chemical dreams, feeling neither wind nor fear, the voracious and muddy waters at the mouth of the river far below, and then María Victoria cast into the void, her fall, her interminable fall toward the ocean. Hitting the sea after falling 6,000 feet is like hitting a concrete wall: María’s bones had exploded in her flesh.

  Rubén was driving down Corrientes, shaken after his visit to the Morgue Judicial. His hand snatched at the night air through the open car window. His shirt was drenched with sweat, his loaded Colt was in the glove compartment. Big cars were rolling down the swarming Centro Avenue; the signs on the luxury shops were still illuminated and sparkled under the eyes of old ladies in furs whom aging hidalgos were taking to dinner after the show. The people downtown seemed rich, happy, healthy, guardians of the porteño soul. His father would be their age if he’d lived.

  Rubén arrived at the apartment in Palermo, his eyes burning with fatigue. The lamp in the Japanese living room was lit and the curtains were drawn, but the room was empty.

  “Jana?”

  The smell of weed floated down the glass staircase. He found her upstairs, sitting cross-legged in front of the low table that served as a desk, her eyes glued to the computer screen.

  “Dracula left me some flores,” she said, handing him the joint.

  Jana wore a threadbare gray shirt over her shoulders and black jean shorts just as threadbare as the shirt. A butt had already dried out in the ashtray—local marijuana—under the wise eye of the big white cat who had finally emerged from his hiding place and positioned himself on the chest of drawers. Rubén chased away the images of death that had been haunting him since he left the Forensics Institute, took the joint between his lips, and leaned down to look at the screen.

  “The Montañez you’re looking for must now be at least fifty-five years old,” she said, “if he’s still alive.” She showed him the notes she’d scribbled on her loose sheets. “I’ve found a dozen of them on the Internet: the former petty officer might be one of them.”

  Rubén ran through her notes: truck driver, restaurant owner, delicatessen, public scribe, none of people named “Montañez” that Jana had listed worked in a private security or caretaking firm.

  “What did you find out at the morgue?” she asked.

  “María Campallo was thrown out of an airplane,” he drawled. “The currents washed the body up on the coast. That implies a pilot, a suitable plane, an airport close enough to Buenos Aires to be able to organize the transfer, accomplices . . . ”

  He passed the joint back to her.

  “I can take care of that,” the sculptress said.

  “You don’t know my files, the classification system.”

  “Do you think I’m retarded? Just tell me what to look for.”

  Her coldness perked him up.

  “Pilots’ names,” he replied. “Compare them with the ones appearing in the files. Also look into their backgrounds, the kind of airplanes used on the weekend of the double murder, the nature of the airports around the city, with or without control towers . . . Anything you can find.”

  “O.K. And Montañez?”

  “We’ll have to look in the Navy archives. File a request with the appropriate authorities. That can take weeks.”

  He yawned, weighed down by the musician’s flores and his lack of sleep the night before.

  “O.K.,” Jana said. “Go to bed, I’ll deal with the airports. You can sleep in the downstairs bedroom.”

  He nodded. The Mapuche’s face was very close, her full lips delicately drawn. Rubén abruptly stood up straight and rocked back and forth over Jana, who had already turned her attention back to the internet.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Try to get some sleep, you stubborn ox.”

  Ledzep, who had been following the conversation from the chest of drawers, jumped down and followed Rubén.

  The hope of finding Miguel alive was growing slimmer by the hour. One chance in a hundred, according to the detective: without him, Jana would have no chance at all. She relighted the joint and began to surf the websites. There were half a dozen airfields scattered around the city, private flying clubs perennially short of funds and therefore not very picky about the people or merchandise that passed through their facilities. The smallest did not have a control tower, and seemed to limit themselves to giving flying lessons. Two of them bordered on Route 9, the main highway nearest the Río de la Plata. Jana took down the pilots’ names listed on the first one, three men with smiling faces out of Top Gun, and entered the data into Rubén’s files. More research. Cross-checking. Available photos. Comparisons with the organizational charts of the oppressors and their accomplices—wasted time: none of the three pilots appeared on Rubén’s blacklists. She made notes on what she found anyway, who knew.

  The second airfield didn’t have a real Internet site, just a vague advertisement with photos that looked like they dated from the 1970s. No proper names: just the fees charged and the options available. Ledzep, who must have been thrown out of the bedroom, nuzzled her bare feet with the assiduity of a wild animal reconquering territory. Jana looked at the clock; it was very late. Too agitated to sleep, she left the computer on standby and went down the glass staircase. Thoughts flashed into her head, each more sinister than the last—had the killers already thrown Miguel into the estuary? She smoked a joint of pure flores while looking out at the street behind the curtains. The city’s lights flickered like fireflies in the violet sky. She suddenly felt lost, foreign to the place, as if time was passing without her. Without him? Rubén was keeping his distance, as if something ineluctable were going to happen and crush them both. Jana didn’t give a damn about their differences, about the violence that lay just under his skin, even about his age. The body had feelings that didn’t lie. His burning hands, his cock, the passionate embrace the other night, in the yard . . .

  Ledzep’s mewing brought her out of her night owl’s thoughts—he wanted to go to bed, too. Weary, she put out the joint, drank a glass of water, and brushed her teeth in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom. A designer mirror, king-size bed, minimalist furniture, oriental lamps that shed a subdued light to produce a voluptuous atmosphere. Jo Prat had put a bouquet of flowers on the night table, red roses, obviously; they were magnificent. Rubén was sleeping fitfully on the white sheets, having taken off just his shoes, his arms hugging the pillow as if it might escape. Hope, despair. She wavered a moment under the effect of the THC, closed her eyes to the disaster, and sank down without regret in the shadow of his arms.

  Two black holes cast into the void.

  4

  The population of Buenos Aires, which had no land use policy, had settled along the rail lines, with the result that the
city was shaped like an open hand. The indus­tries had then slipped into the interstices, continually extending the suburbs and their three ring roads. Rubén was driving on Route 9, which was jammed, listening without flinching to the nonstop news on the radio. He’d slept eight hours straight, and the fatigue that had dogged him for two days had been diluted in black coffee. The newscaster had just announced the death of María Victoria Cam­pallo, whose body had been found on the shores of the ecological preserve. No other details at the moment, except that an investigation had been opened. Not a word regarding the burial, which would take place that evening, nor about her murder, even though it was fact by now. Had her father, who had contacts in the media, ordered that the matter be handled that way?

  Jana had listed three airfields where María might have been taken for a night flight, one south of the city, two north. Rubén was returning from the San Miguel flying club, where all the pilots had provided information about their flights on the night of the kidnapping. It was now past noon, a stormy heat was making the air in the car sticky, and the mufflers of the stacked-up cars were rumbling. He passed depressing areas saturated with billboards, tediously flashy shopping areas that had been inflicted on them since the triumph of Wal-Mart and financial capitalism, a tacky hedonism smoking over the void that would soon submerge the planet. Bar-coded despair; Rubén was thinking about lethal waves when he turned off toward the residential suburb of El Tigre.

  An area where the well-born used to have vacation homes at the turn of the twentieth century, the little city of El Tigre was located at the entrance to the eponymous delta that extended north of the capital. Rowing clubs, swimming clubs, and cricket clubs: on weekends, people from Buenos Aires crowded around the open-air cafes in the marina, from which they travelled the canals in wooden boats of an old-fashioned luxury. The houses here were surrounded by flowers and had large gardens and carefully tended lawns. The storm had given way to wicked sunbreaks during which the puddles on the asphalt glistened: according to the map, the airfield was located not far from the city.

  A field of lush grass was followed by a marsh. A few cattle ready for export were grazing there, half-asleep; beyond the barbed wire, Rubén spotted the red and white windsock at the airfield, inflated by the breeze. He stopped the car at the end of the dry land that served as a parking lot and stretched his shoulder muscles.

  A dilapidated shed with closed shutters stood next to the gas station at the edge of the runway. Too small to have a control tower, the El Tigre airfield consisted of a corrugated iron hangar, a prefab office, and a training plane, which was sitting on the tarmac—a little two-seater with faded white paint. A country airfield, deserted, where time seemed suspended. Rubén made his way past the office, glanced briefly at the plane on the runway, and walked to the hangar. Another plane was parked at the back of the hangar, a Cessna 185. Neither pilot nor mechanic anywhere around. He retraced his steps, moving along in the shadow of the buildings.

  A fan perched on a stained counter was blowing around the damp air in the main office. An obese man was halfheartedly wiping his brow in front of a computer screen; bits of greasy paper rolled into balls were lying near the keyboard. Valdés, the manager of the flying club and head pilot, hardly raised his head when he saw Rubén come in. He had played forward on a high-level rugby team, and had even thought for a while of going pro before being taken down a peg by the steroid-charged players from Tucumán. Valdés had completed his pilot’s certification and because afterward he got no exercise, he’d gained fifty kilos in pizza, which he seemed in no hurry to lose.

  Rubén showed him his detective’s badge.

  “I’d like to talk to one of your pilots,” he said, peering into the adjoining room. “It looks like there isn’t anyone . . . ”

  Disturbed just as he was having an electronic success, Valdés raised his walrus-like chin.

  “What do you want with my pilots?”

  “How many of you work here?”

  “My secretary is far along in her pregnancy and I have to deal with the paperwork all by myself,” he replied gruffly. “There’s only Del Piro. When he’s here.”

  “Is he one of your pilots?”

  “The only one. Except for me. But I no longer fly very much,” the big man added.

  “I can see that. Where is he, this Del Piro?”

  “He took a week off to do a training course in acrobatics. Why?”

  “You have no other instructors?”

  “Haven’t for the past two years,” the head pilot said. “There’s an economic crisis, have you heard?”

  Rubén looked at the dusty shelves and the file drawers behind the guy.

  “Was the acrobatic ace on duty at the end of last week?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” Valdés replied. “Here we give lessons, not information.”

  The old rugby man went back to his computer screen, moved a few electronic cards in the cooling breeze of the fan. Rubén leaned over the counter and pulled the plug. Valdés’s face looked like that of a forward before the scrum.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “A night flight,” Rubén said. “Do you keep a record of what happens here or are your planes there for show?”

  Valdés stared at him with sullen eyes. The detective didn’t blink.

  “Open that damned register.”

  The swiveling fan blew in his direction.

  “There’s no law that says I have to do that, fellow,” he replied.

  “It will take you two minutes. Maybe two years in the joint if you refuse to cooperate. I’m conducting an investigation into a murder that also interests the cops, and I’m sure that they would be delighted to nose around in your accounts. You don’t seem to be doing a lot of business,” Rubén insinuated, looking around.

  Valdés bared his teeth, which sparkled with disdain, despite the tobacco stains.

  “I just want to verify one or two things on the registers,” Rubén went on in a voice he tried to make conciliatory. “Then I’ll leave you to your little affairs. Unless you have some reason for refusing?”

  Valdés shrugged, blew out enough air to fill two dirigibles as a sign of consent, made his way around the desk, and opened the register in which the flight plans were recorded.

  “The weekend of the eighth, right?” he grumbled. “Nope, there’s nothing mentioned.”

  Rubén turned the document over to check. Nothing.

  “Maybe the pilot didn’t file his flight plan,” he suggested.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To go take a piss at two thousand feet.”

  “Not Del Piro’s style,” the manager retorted, with a jeering look.

  “Is that right? And what is his style?”

  “Skirt-chasing. Like all pilots.”

  “I see. What about you, where were you last weekend?”

  “With my wife. It was her birthday, and we’ve been married for twenty years. If you have a problem with that, comfort yourself with the knowledge that I do too: O.K.?”

  “Can I see Del Piro’s file?”

  Valdés complained but pulled the file out of a metal drawer and threw it on the counter, fairly exasperated.

  Gianni Del Piro, born April 15, 1954, residing in El Tigre. Tanned, emaciated face, graying sideburns, a rather good-looking man despite the look of an eagle on the hunt that he tried to give himself in the photo.

  “Did Del Piro get his pilot’s license in the army?”

  “Like nine-tenths of the guys I’ve met,” the manager answered.

  Rubén took out his BlackBerry and took a digital photo of Del Piro’s name and address. Valdés ruminated.

  “Are you the one who lives in the shed outside?” he asked.

  The obese man shook his jowls.

  “No. It’s had a leaky roof for years. I live in town.”

&
nbsp; “So the flying club is empty at night.”

  “Yep.”

  “Does Del Piro have a set of keys to the hangar?”

  “Of course,” Valdés grumbled. “This is a small flying club: the pilots don’t wait for me to be there to give their lessons. Are you going to go on bugging me like this for a long time?”

  Rubén picked up the flight plan registers.

  “Give me the key to the Cessna in the hangar.”

  “Why, are you planning to cross the Andes in that little thing?” the chief pilot joked.

  Rubén didn’t laugh.

  “Hurry up, let’s get this over with.”

  Valdés threw a set of keys on the counter and pointed to the registers.

  “You’re going to bring those back to me, right?”

  It smelled like motor oil and grease in the hangar. Rubén briefly inspected the equipment stored there before going to the Cessna at the back of the hangar. The little touring plane could carry two persons in front and the same load in the back: by taking off the door, you could very easily push out a body in flight and return to the airfield. He climbed into the cockpit.

  The pilots recorded the number of hours on the motor after each flight. Rubén compared the log with the plane’s timer. The numbers corresponded. Del Piro could also have disconnected the timer. Rubén pulled out the stick in the gas tank, put on latex gloves, dug around in the cockpit, ran his torch over the rear of the plane: the floor, the seats, the back of the cabin, everything was immaculate, or recently cleaned. In any case, there was nothing to indicate a phantom flight.

  The sun dazzled him for a moment as he came out of the hangar. He walked alongside the tarmac and headed for the gas pump, fifty yards before Valdés’s office. It was a very elementary service station with a simple pump and a register in which the pilots recorded their fill-ups. Rubén consulted the document: no fill-up was mentioned during the weekend in question.

  He calculated the average fuel consumption based on how often the tank was filled, compared it with the flights made by the Cessna and the raised fuel stick on the plane, and frowned. There was something wrong. Del Piro had filled up too early following the weekend of the 8th.