Holy City

by Guillermo Orsi

  Holed up in the Azara apartment, Verónica ends the call, although she promises herself to try again in a few minutes.

  She searches in the kitchen for something to drink, even if it is only water, but the fridge is empty. So are the cupboards. This may be a spider’s nest, but it is hard to see how its usual occupant manages to survive, what he has to eat, or how he amuses himself—there are no books in sight, the radio has no batteries and the black-and-white television only receives ten channels of the seventy or more available on cable. Pushed into a corner is a computer that runs on the kind of D.O.S. system that Viceroy Sobremonte must have used to compose his letter of resignation when he heard the English had landed on the shores of Quilmes in 1807.

  Verónica makes do with what there is: tap water tasting of chlorine. She can put up with it for a night, she might even try to sleep a little, but at first light she is determined to get back to her own routine. She is not completely convinced that what Carroza calls the Kristallnacht is going to happen, or that she is part of it, or could be hit by some stray bullet. If as seems likely they want to get rid of her, they have already shown how good they are about letting her know it. Now they must be waiting for the report she gives the magistrate, based on her own observations in the field and the accountant’s calculations. With Chucho out of the equation and after the chase the previous night, they probably feel they have made their point. The magistrate will thank Verónica for all she has done so that nothing will change and she will at last receive her well-earned fees.

  The land line rings and Verónica freezes. She scuttles warily round the room like an insect, tempted to pick up the phone. The ringing stops, then starts again a few seconds later. She is touching the handset with her fingertips when it goes silent again. She realizes that although Carroza has no answerphone, he does have a call register. And the number on the dial looks familiar.

  She rings it and waits. She is not surprised when a beauty queen answers.

  “Where did you get my number, doctora?”

  “I want my Bersa back.”

  Miss Bolivia laughs. She is so young that she plays with death the way she did until recently with other dolls.

  “You gave it to me. I didn’t ask for it.”

  “So that you could defend yourself. I didn’t want you to take the initiative.”

  “Nobody has died, doctora,” she laughs, then goes on calmly, sure of herself: “Nobody of any consequence. How did you get … ?” Verónica has no intention of telling her; that would be giving her position away. She does not have to, Miss Bolivia can think on her feet. “You’re with him, aren’t you? I knew you were friends, but not lovers.”

  Verónica does not bother to correct her. For years now she has let people believe what they see, even if that is only shadow puppets.

  “He’s not here. He’s been called out on a mission tonight.”

  “So you stayed in charge of the home. Congratulations, doctora, on the cops you choose.”

  “I want my gun, Ana.”

  “OK, I’ll come and bring it back straightaway.”

  *

  Deputy Inspector Carroza does not have to go far to reach the meeting place. He parks in a desolate street in Barracas, parallel to the railway embankment, in front of an old rusty iron shutter with a red tin “For Sale” sign attached. During the dictatorship, this abandoned warehouse was probably a place where they tortured people. Better not to think about it.

  He goes in without knocking through a small side door that has been left ajar. Inside it smells of oil and rat droppings.

  “Well, look who’s here!”

  Oso Berlusconi celebrates his arrival. The others are already there, standing round him in the middle of the warehouse like cocks round a hen. Each of them has got his toy with him, automatic rifles distributed as and when they arrived. They are joking and hugging one another. “It’s been a long time since the gang got together, just like the good old days, you’ve put on weight, haven’t you? And you, where did you leave your toupèe?”

  Carroza is a good fifteen years younger than Oso, although if they were stripped and photographed together he could be taken for his undernourished grandfather. They have never worked together, but were always aware of what each other was up to. Neither of them is a cop of the sort who joins the force with one idea in mind: to be pensioned off as soon as possible and then grow old working for a security firm. Oso was very young during the dictatorship, but did his bit in the killings and is proud of it. Carroza joined later on and is sickened by torturers, although he has always suspected that if he ever came face to face with a guerrillero he would have shot first and asked questions later. But Carroza is a good marksman and he is proud of that: it saves the police ammunition.

  Oso talks to the whole group, but is looking straight at Carroza. He does not trust him, but had to call him in because he is the best shot in all the federal police force. He explains what he calls “Operation Tourism.” The military and the cops always call their day- or nighttime raids, legal or illegal, “operations.” He outlines the location and where each of them is to position himself. He will be out in front, that is why he is the leader, and besides, he wants to make sure none of the tourists is killed. All their necks are on the line, he warns them. “You can forget about your career in the police force if any gringo gets hurt.”

  Oso is calm and reasonably satisfied. The ransoms for the Italian and French couples have already been paid. The money has been transferred to Switzerland and Thailand, to solid banks and serious countries backed by reserves supplied by pension funds from all over the world. Only the Germans refused to pay up: the old Teuton arrogance. They still consider themselves superior, they still cannot accept that they lost the war. Oso was hoping to soften them up tonight, but the minister’s phone call forced him to change his plans.

  The orders are clear. Both the ones he gave to the people guarding the kidnap victims half an hour ago in the Descamisados de América shanty town: “When you hear the first shots, slip out at the back. As usual, we’ll come in from the front and sides, firing into the air, just to make some noise. You run off as quickly as you can, then tomorrow when you’ve had a bath and changed, come for your money.” And the ones he has just given to his squad: “Choose five of you. They are to get behind the shacks and as soon as the guards come out, shoot them. I don’t want a single one to survive: we have to cut down on medical expenses, they’re running out of bandages in our hospitals.”

  There is only one thing still sticking in Oso’s throat, a bone that prevents him really enjoying the feast. Somebody betrayed him, tore the choicest morsel from his hands: Osmar Arredri and his lovely girlfriend Sirena Mondragón.

  And he cannot even bring himself to imagine that it was the man or woman he is beginning to suspect.

  *

  They travel in five cars, three to a car, just as in the good old days some of them took part in and which the others have heard of. They are not in Ford Falcons anymore, “those really were armor-plated,” chortles a bald fat man, 130 kilos without a weapon, a retired inspector, “three months in jail, at the mercy of those crooked lawyers and all those bleeding heart lefties in human rights,” he shouts from the back seat of the Renault Carroza is driving, silent and concentrating hard.

  “Who do you think you can catch in this old jalopy, Carroza?”

  They go round the Río Riachuelo, through neighborhoods with no people, only rubbish and rats. The rats’ eyes shine through the mist, a dark blue mist like spilled ink, mingling with the smoke from the piles of garbage. Carroza’s Renault is bringing up the rear. The others tried to convince him to get into another car, but he has not been anyone else’s passenger for a long time now. He would not accept a ride even if he were dead. And he is not dead yet.

  He feels a vibration in his kidneys: a call on his mobile. From Verónica.

  “Don’t open the door to her,” he whispers curtly while the fat inspector goes on laughing at his own exploits
when he weighed forty kilos less and was a member of the dictatorship’s “task forces”; “it’s dangerous, don’t open the door.”

  With that he hangs up. He gives Verónica no time to tell him the door downstairs has already been buzzed open and she is on her way up, so young, so beautiful, so Miss Bolivia, to the spider’s nest.

  10

  He has got it. Scotty has got it.

  Shame that Carroza has switched his mobile off. He does that whenever he goes into action; he leaves it behind so that he does not confuse it with his 9 m.m. or whatever gun he has with him when the shooting starts. Answering the phone rather than pulling out his gun could cost him his life.

  But Scotty has got it. It was so easy, right there within his grasp. Being on duty at headquarters meant he could watch the whole of the Boca-River match as well as have a look at what the blond Miss Bolivia had been up to. Inspector Margaride (who has the same name and rank as another one in Argentina, notorious in his day for arresting longhaired youths and shaving their heads) dug the information up for him. This Margaride works for the police in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and has been a friend (or whatever the relationship between cops in different regions or countries is called) of Scotty’s ever since they attended a Panamerican police convention where the North-American instructors explained that human rights were for middle-class suspects with good lawyers, not for the indigenous scum packed into the margins of the big cities of Latin America.

  It took the Bolivian Margaride no more than an hour to find the files on the person who liked to be known as the Jaguar.

  “His real name is Ovidio Ladislao Torrente Morelos.” Scotty writes this down and whistles in admiration, while at the same time watching Sabiola advancing toward the Boca goal. “As far as I can tell, he shares parents with Ana Torrente, chosen as Miss Bolivia in September 2004.”

  “Hang on a second … what do you mean by ‘shares parents with’? They are brother and sister …”

  “Not necessarily,” Margaride says, staring at the photo of the Jaguar, blue-eyed, staring into nothingness, dark-skinned, the face of a Nazi refugee burned black by the Andean climate. “But they are twins: I’m not sure if they are identical, I don’t have that information. They themselves are probably unaware of it.”

  A peal of rejoicing in Buenos Aires, because of Margaride’s comments and because Sabiola has just scored a fabulous goal. River 1, Boca 0. Scotty can scarcely believe either piece of news.

  “They were born the same day, but in different places.” Scotty’s laugh turns into a dry, incredulous cough, because Palermo has intercepted a ball that was heading safely into the hands of the River goalie. Margaride goes on: “The mother, whose personal details we do not appear to have, gave birth to the Jaguar in Yacuiba on January 23, I suppose in the early hours. That same day, but twenty hours later, at almost midnight, she brought into the world a baby who grew up to become a beauty queen, the pride and joy of my beloved Santa Cruz de la Sierra.”

  Boca score, to make it a draw on the hour mark. Unbelievable, obviously unfair, the referee observing an eclipse of the third moon of Saturn and the linesman chewing a hangnail while Palermo broke every offside rule in the book and scored. The whole stadium erupts: an evil hour is coming, Scotty can sense it.

  “Late that same night she had an emergency operation,” the Bolivian Margaride, the soul of patience, explains. “The birth that morning had been up in the mountains, with no-one to help except perhaps a local midwife who helped her pull the Jaguar from her entrails. Then the indian, because that’s what she must have been, a poor ignorant indian, continued on her way on the back of a truck, still bleeding and with a high fever. She didn’t die on the way because God is Bolivian.”

  “I thought he was Argentine.”

  “That’s another God; ours is called Viracocha and he protects indians, not the descendants of European imperialists. In Santa Cruz de la Sierra the woman gave birth to the remainder. We have a record of that, because she was dealt with in the Central Hospital, and before she died of septicemia she chose the name Ana for that remainder.”

  “And the father of the twins?”

  “I’ve no record of that. Come on, Scotty, I’ve already done more than enough for you, seeing as it’s Sunday.”

  It is only when Scotty has recovered from Palermo’s goal that he takes a proper look at what he has scribbled while the Bolivian Margaride was talking to him. It is then that he tries without success to talk to Carroza.

  *

  She does not ring the bell, but scratches softly with her manicured red nails at the door to Carroza’s apartment in calle Azara in Barracas. When she realizes she is being studied through the small circle of the spyhole, she explains quietly that she is on her own. The door opens.

  She had been missing the fresh pink oval of Verónica’s face.

  “It’s not what it seems.”

  “You don’t say. And anyway, who cares?” scoffs Ana, amused at the attempt at an explanation that no-one has asked for, her least of all, because she never holds anyone to account. She has learned to recover her debts without the need for an invoice. She leaves the Bersa on the coffee table, the only piece of furniture in this spider’s nest. This initial friendly gesture is a declaration of intent that reassures Verónica, who is still unsettled by Carroza’s phone call.

  Languid warmth outside and inside the apartment. The mist creeps through the slats in the closed shutters and seeps into the room, which has probably not been ventilated since Carroza first rented it two months earlier. The heat is swamp-like, the air is catacomb gray, barely enough for bats to breathe in.

  “I don’t know how that skeleton man can sleep in a place like this.”

  “I was wondering the same,” Verónica agrees.

  “Perhaps that’s why it suits him: there is no air or light or hope in here.” They laugh together, with that mimesis that has been theirs since the first meeting. It is as though they mirror each other and when they laugh at the slightest thing they are pulling faces at one another. “What are you doing here, doctora, what are you looking for?”

  The direct question catches her out, leaving her no chance to make conversation. Verónica feels at a disadvantage, even though the Bersa is there on the table and Ana’s voice sounds even more friendly, trying to win her over. She decides to respond equally directly, like someone who rides a punch and waits for his chance.

  “I know Carroza, probably from before you do. He was Romano’s colleague.” Ana says nothing and again Verónica feels uneasy. Every so often she gets the feeling that this beautiful blond woman is a mythical idol given human form for heaven knows what mission on earth. And as if she did not have enough problems already, she had to be a client of hers. Ana sits down on the coffee table and gestures for her to come closer. “Where do you know him from?” asks Verónica, refusing to budge.

  Ana’s ironic smile illuminates her face as if she were lighting a cigarette.

  “The skull? I found him in an archaeological museum, liked the look of him and brought him home with me. Afterward, I felt bad about it: perhaps I had stolen him from someone without meaning to.”

  She insists Verónica goes over to her, but now she has no need to gesture or pout. It’s enough for her to be there, like a magnet, and for Verónica to realize too late that she has nothing to cling on to.

  She is pulled toward the magnet—in this case, Miss Bolivia—like someone falling into an abyss.

  *

  He has been given his orders by Oso Berlusconi. These are always the same anyway: spread out and surround the house, do not go any closer than a hundred meters, at the command “fire at will” on the radio link, ratatatat, spray the windows with bullets, the walls too if they are made of tin as they usually are in the shanty towns. “The people kidnapped are not going to be sitting out enjoying the cool night air,” says Oso. “They’ll be tied to a bed, that’s what always happens, or sitting cuffed together on the floor. The ones walking around are th
e mastiffs guarding them. You can shoot them without a problem, no-one is going to hold you responsible.”

  That was why Carroza was surprised when Oso stopped at the end of De La Noria Bridge and the five civilian cars, crowded with cops like landing craft off Normandy, pulled up on the beachhead in sight of the nearby provincial police post. Three minutes later, and the small caravan of headlights coming from the province turns out to be two armored cars full of uniformed provincial police equipped with rifles and helmets, which halt on the other side of the road.

  “Nobody warned us we were going to war with Iraq,” says the bald guy who weighs 130 kilos without his weapon.

  “I’m not getting out of this car,” says the lantern-jawed cop sitting next to Carroza, his head shaven and wearing dark glasses typical of the service he provides, which is not exactly customer service. “They shoot you in the back.”

  “Let’s wait and see what happens, if we want to be alive tomorrow,” says Carroza, still staring into space as if not wanting to see what he already knows by heart, like a blind man who sets off walking down an avenue, his useless eyes wide open, only to find death avoiding him at every step.

  The two men in charge get out of their vehicles: Oso and the commanding officer of the provincial troops. The glow from the cigarettes they smoke nervously in the middle of the beach-head are like two red fireflies. They agree on deployment and firing positions, knowing that if they are both there it means the medals will be shared out between them and wanting to make sure that if anyone is going to die it is not going to be either of them.