by Jerold Last
Until midway through the first half of the 20th Century, Salta was one of the wealthiest and more important cities in Argentina. The houses and some of the shops were a mixture of the modern, which looked like any small town in the USA except the houses were generally smaller, and the older buildings, which were typical of the Spanish Colonial architectural style. The older houses and shops had bland walls with doors facing the street. They all looked pretty much the same. Behind the doors in these walls were the houses themselves, some modest and some elaborate. Some had gardens, while others were minimal and plain. The wealth and status of the owners was effectively hidden to those on the street. I thought of the old expression, ‘you can’t tell a book by its cover’. In this case you could not tell a house by its visible façade on the street.
We found the Casa de Empanadas without any difficulty. The large restaurant, which occupied most of a block, had tables indoors or outdoors on a lovely patio in back. We chose the patio. Service was fast. At the Casa de Empanadas, we could select from among three varieties of empanada: cheese, beef, or potato. Empanadas are mini Hot Pockets, looking a bit like Chinese pot stickers and about the same size, but baked in a very hot oven so the outside is a crust of dough like a pie. Fillings, as we later found out in other restaurants, could also include chicken, pork, or mystery meat, either alone or mixed with potato, onion and/or other seasonings, and usually served with salsa as a side dish. They were certainly the most highly flavored of the Argentine foods we had encountered thus far, and quite good. In this restaurant, they were served with a mildly spicy salsa for dipping and were quite rich. Six empanadas were a complete and filling meal for me.
After too many empanadas and several cups of coffee we were ready to go. Tipping isn’t customary in Argentina, or consists of only whatever loose coins you might have in your pocket. The customary 15%, or more, tip of a food server in a restaurant in the USA is not expected. Cash is; they did not accept, or expect, credit cards. We deliberately over-tipped the waitress with a few peso notes, then asked her whether she recognized Suzanne’s father from a photo she carried in her wallet. She thought she did but wasn’t sure. We asked if we could see the manager to ask him the same question. She led us to a small table at the back of the patio, introduced us to Cesare, the manager, and left us there.
Cesare was heavy set, in his 60s, prosperous looking, and very cooperative. Suzanne showed Cesare the photo and explained why we were asking our questions.
Cesare looked closely at the photo and nodded his head in recognition. “Your father had breakfast at the Casa de Empanadas several times, mostly with another man,” Cesare told us. “Your father was a good customer who always tipped the waiters and waitresses. The other man he would eat with is in his mid-50s, prosperous looking, heavyset. He is a regular customer here whose name is Senor Rodriguez-Garcia. He lives somewhere in the neighborhood, but I am not sure of his address.”
I checked the phone book at the cash register while we paid our bill. Sometimes you get lucky doing the obvious, which is why it usually pays to follow your ordinary routines when working. There was a listing for Eduardo Rodriguez-Garcia at an address just a few blocks away.
On the way out of the restaurant we saw a man sitting by himself at one of the tables reading an English language newspaper. He wore a nondescript gray hat inside the restaurant, had a scar on his left cheek, and was the second guy who had followed us here from Los Angeles and who we had seen in the bar the night before. We both pretended not to see him and waited until we were outside on the street before we talked.
Suzanne was obviously excited. “I recognized him about the same time you did. We were probably correct when we assumed that they’re running short of manpower. That would explain why we’re seeing one or the other of the two guys who followed us from Los Angeles to Salta just about every place we’ve visited.”
I started walking toward the address I’d found in the phone directory for Senor Rodriguez-Garcia’s house. Suzanne walked beside me. “We can probably conclude, at least for now, there are only two of the bad guys from Los Angeles we have to worry about here in Salta with us, plus whatever local talent they can hire,” I replied.
It seemed worth a good deal more than a short walk to find out whether we had actually identified Robert Foster’s sometime breakfast companion. There was a very good possibility that the guy with the scar would follow us wherever we went. Trying to lose guy number two before looking up Senor Rodriguez seemed too unlikely to succeed to be worth the effort, and should pose only a negligible risk to Mr. Rodriguez.
We walked through a neighborhood of middle and upper-middle class houses on small, but very well tended and obviously cared for, lots. Flowers, shrubs, bushes, and trees were scattered among the lawns in front of the houses we could see, but several of the houses were behind walls or false fronts in the Spanish style and couldn’t be seen from the street. The address we were looking for was an older house with the false front style of design, so couldn’t be viewed from the street. We went to the door in the wall and rang a bell. After several minutes, a heavy-set man in his 50s with a cane, who was almost certainly the Senor Rodriguez we had come to meet, opened the door.
Suzanne introduced us in fluent Spanish and explained why we had come. “Please follow me,” he said, leading us into the house. “We can sit and talk quite comfortably inside.”
We went past a beautiful, and obviously well tended, garden with an elaborate fountain in a courtyard, through a massive oak front door, into a paneled foyer with original oil paintings on the walls and past several rooms containing elaborate and expensive furniture. He led us into a living room containing a huge and obviously valuable oriental rug, on which were placed several chairs and a large sofa. Senor Rodriguez directed us to the sofa, while he sat on a chair across a coffee table facing us.
Once we were settled comfortably inside in the living room, he resumed his role as the gracious host. “We can switch to English if you would be more comfortable, Senor Bowman. Would you prefer coffee or our local caffeinated beverage of choice, mate (pronounced mah-tay), a tea made from ground up and dried leaves of the local yerba mate plant?”
These were both easy choices for me. “Yes to the mate and yes to switching to English”. I always accepted coffee or tea when it was offered during a visit to the house of a witness or suspect. The beverage ritual was an effective icebreaker that changed things from formal to friendly when one stranger was asking questions of a second stranger. A maid appeared from somewhere and placed a tray on the coffee table between us containing a thermos of very hot water, cup-sized gourds made from glazed and decorated squash shells, silver utensils that were both straws and spoons with filters called bombillas, and small pastries.
Senor Rodriguez demonstrated as he instructed us, “Add mate powder to the gourd until it is about one-third full. Then fill the gourd with hot water from the thermos to create the tea. Let it steep for a few moments. Put your bombilla in the mixture, stir it, and slowly sip your mate through the silver straw. After you drink several ounces of mate, you should refill the gourd with more hot water from the thermos and repeat the process. Now you try doing it.”
We did. I sipped the mate. It was hot, bitter, and contained a lot of caffeine. Mate was obviously an acquired taste, but it was OK. I found myself coming back to the gourd and thermos for several more sips throughout our visit. It certainly was a lot better source of caffeine, and no worse tasting, than the coffee at the hotel.
Senor Rodriguez continued, “The traditional ritual with mate would be one gourd and one bombilla that we would all share. We would share the mate on and off all day. The bombilla is usually made from an inexpensive metal alloy that looks like silver called alpaca, but it might be real silver if your host is wealthy enough. Mate sharing is an important ritual in this country for spending time with friends and for certain social situations. For many Argentines, especially the poor and the working class, mate is the fuel that gives them energ
y to work long hours at low pay and stay awake on very little sleep. Mate is grown here in Argentina or in Paraguay, and is very cheap compared to coffee. You will see most workmen and many people who work in shops drinking mate all day.”
It appeared that the formalities were now over, and I could politely begin to question our host. “Did you know Suzanne’s father, Robert Foster?“
“Yes,” he replied. “We met several times over breakfast at one of our local restaurants, the Casa de Empanadas, which you should try.”
“May I ask what brought you two together and what you discussed?”
“What brought us together was our shared interest, or should I say passion, for wine. We discussed where to buy land in the Lerma River valley south of here for a vineyard and winery. While everyone knows about the city of Cafayate and its surroundings as a place where some of the best wines in Argentina are made, land in Cafayate has become very expensive. Because of the high price of getting started in Cafayate, there has been an expansion of the industry into several of the valleys between Cafayate and Salta, where land prices for the old ranches are more affordable. In addition, there are subtle differences in the terroir.
“Terrior is a fancy term that suggests that the combination of soil, weather conditions, and other geographical factors give a specific flavor and personality to the wine. I am among other things active as a broker arranging purchases and sales of land, mainly old ranches and estates, in the rural regions of the Lerma Valley. I was trying to assist Mr. Foster in finding suitable land for him to buy to establish a vineyard and winery here.”
Suzanne carefully put her mate gourd and bombilla down on the table, before looking directly up at our host. “Did you find any specific properties that he was interested in?”
“Yes we did,” answered Senor Rodriguez. “There were two old estancias especially, both in a place called Condor Valley. He looked at both of them and decided they were too isolated for what he wanted to do. He suggested the costs of transporting materials to, and wines from, the area would be higher than the cost of buying land just outside of Cafayate to the south, in the foothills of the surrounding mountains. We found a listing of a property for sale near Cafayate that he visited a day before he was killed, but we never had a chance to discuss whether it was what he was looking for. I do not handle real estate transactions in Cafayate, so I referred him to a colleague there.”
I took a last drink of my mate, emptying the gourd of its liquid content. “Can you give us directions to this Cafayate property so we can find it? We’d also like the name and phone number of the agent he would have met there to discuss business with if that is possible.”
“Certainly,” he replied. Rodriguez went off to another room and returned a few minutes later with the information I asked for, as well as a phone number with which to contact the real estate broker in Cafayate.
We rose to say our goodbyes. “You’ve been very kind and generous with your time,” Suzanne said formally. “Please be extra careful around strangers over the next few weeks. My father was murdered and his killers are still at large. I don’t think you are personally in any danger, but we don’t know why he was killed. It’s possible that for as long as we’re here investigating the crime, we may be putting the people we talk to at risk.”
He remained silent while he pondered her advice for a moment. “Thank you for your warning and I will take your advice. Please feel free to call me at any time if you need more information.”
We left the house. As we walked back to the hotel, we discussed our impressions and tried to make sense of what had happened thus far. Suzanne’s first observation was she would never have guessed how wealthy Senor Rodriguez obviously was by looking at the street he lived on.
She commented that his house was just like an empanada. “There’s an outside wall that looks exactly like every other wall in Salta. The good stuff is all hidden inside, and it’s a surprise until you bite into it. The house itself, which isn’t ostentatiously large, looks like every other house in the neighborhood. The furnishings and servants indicate wealth. This whole set-up reminds me of my father, especially the excess wealth Rodriguez has for a man with his job and apparent life style.
“His wealth could be inherited old money, but I don’t think so,” she continued. “It feels much more like recently acquired wealth to me. Perhaps too much wealth for a man who is, in essence, a real estate agent, unless it’s inherited wealth. This raises the question of whether he isn’t a complete innocent, but is mixed up in some way with my father’s killing.
I nodded to her as she said this. “I agree with you. You’re assuming a lot more than I initially did, but it gives us a starting point to do some digging. I think we should stop by the police station to see if Lieutenant Gonzalez is available and ask him to check out whether the legal system has any knowledge of Senor Eduardo Rodriguez-Garcia indicating that he’s more than what he seems to be.”
Suzanne continued to think aloud. “Another possibility is that it suits Senor Rodriguez’s business to assist us to find out who killed my father, and he’s using us to do his dirty work for him. We’d already planned to check out Cafayate. Based on what Senor Rodriguez told us, we may find out more while we’re there if we start by talking to his colleague the real estate broker.”
We agreed on our next step being the police, followed by lunch, a short siesta at the hotel, and visiting a few more places in Salta that were on our list of locations Robert Foster had asked directions to.
Chapter7.Back to the police station
By sheer luck we found Lieutenant Gonzalez in his office when we dropped in to see him. Or maybe he stayed at his desk all day every day, a likely conclusion based on how fat and out of shape he was. We told him how much we appreciated all of his help the previous day, and we were visiting him again to fulfill our promise to share any information we learned with him. I explained what we had found out at the Casa de Empanadas restaurant and what Eduardo Rodriguez-Garcia had told us. I didn’t mention being followed to the restaurant by Suzanne’s shadow. Finally, I asked whether Senor Rodriguez was familiar to the police.
The lieutenant excused himself for a moment and turned to his computer. There were the usual clickety-clack sounds. After a moment or two he started reading a file, which he printed out for our benefit so we could all read it. It was a thick file, in Spanish, of course. Somehow it wasn’t a big surprise to find out Rodriguez had been arrested and charged several times with narcotics-related offenses. He had never come to trial on any of these charges, and was believed to be one of the major players in the local drug scene in Salta.
It took me a while, and a lot of help from Suzanne, but I finally got the gist of what the file contained. “What do you think?” I asked Lieutenant Gonzalez.
He looked thoughtfully at the computer screen. “Interesting, perhaps suggestive, but not enough for me to do anything about at this time,” replied the lieutenant. “Perhaps you two should follow up on this piece of information and keep me informed of what else you find out.”
It crossed my mind that Senor Rodriguez-Garcia was not the only man in Salta who seemed to be quite content to let us do his work for him.
We thanked the Lieutenant and went out to eat lunch at a restaurant near the central plaza. We found a nice looking place a block or two away and decided to try some of the local specialties other than beef. Suzanne started with locro, a slightly sweet, thick soup made from dried corn, hominy, squash, and meat. I ordered humitas, a blend of corn meal and goat cheese wrapped in a corn husk and steamed (similar to Mexican tamales, but without the chilis and very mildly flavored). We discovered yet another thing we had in common, a tradition of sharing food so we could taste twice as much in a meal. Both dishes were substantial and good, but I would have preferred more highly seasoned versions. The main course was a thick, rich stew made from mystery meat we both ordered that was very good.
Dessert was our introduction to Argentina’s favorite food, dulce d
e leche (literally “sweet from milk”). We had cookies filled with the extremely sweet stuff that looks like caramel and is made by cooking evaporated milk with huge quantities of sugar. It was far too sweet for me, but there’s no way to hide from dulce de leche in Argentina.
We had a bottle of a Torrontes, the local white wine, with lunch. This particular brand was not very good to my taste, thin and sour. The Argentines lead the world in per capita wine consumption. Wines are cheap and readily available in restaurants and supermarkets. A bottle of wine with lunch and dinner was expected. Personally, I prefer the red wines. But the wine contributed to the appeal of a siesta.