Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel

by Victor del Arbol

  “We have to operate right away. I don’t understand how you haven’t seen a doctor before; you must have realized that something was wrong.”

  María had apologized to the doctor, as if she had been unforgivably negligent, in spite of the fact that it was her brain, and not the doctor’s, that was falling apart. She had thought that it was tiredness, stress. Lately she’d been under a lot of pressure … If she had known … The neurologist had written something in her file with a serious air. Then he had torn off a note resolutely and handed it to her.

  “We have to prepare you for the operating room. We need blood work and a full medical history. You’ll have to take some pills in the preop.”

  From one minute to the next, María had the feeling that she had invented that memory. That nightmare. But there she had the damn paper in front of her on the table. Her life was slipping away in the hands of that doctor who went to and fro with ascetic brutality, as if she weren’t there. She felt that she was inside a bubble and that it was all nothing more than a strange, macabre game. Two days earlier she was a healthy woman. Now she was practically a lost cause. But that reality hadn’t penetrated her intelligence in the slightest; it remained on the surface, floating.

  The neurologist who was going to operate on her had advised María to get all her personal and legal affairs in order.

  “It’s a good idea to be prepared,” the doctor had said as he extended his hand to her. He had merely stated an irrefutable fact. He wasn’t concerned with the patients’ reactions, just their readiness. María had looked suspiciously at those long, cold fingers that were going to operate on her. Those fingers like spider legs would enter into her private space, into her thoughts, her memories, her intelligence. They would break her neural connections; they could make her a vegetable or kill her … Why didn’t she think that they also could save her?

  She looked out on the street again. She looked at her watch again. She ordered another coffee, very hot and very strong. That routine gesture seemed suddenly very important, like the sun that flooded the café, like the sound of the slot machines, like the noise of the traffic that slipped in every time someone opened the door. That moment had the sweetness of the everyday routine and the anguish of knowing that something so simple might never happen again.

  She was terrified, but not even in those moments was she fully aware of what was happening to her. Although everything inside her contorted, something in her core remained still, silent. A deep truth that she refused to rationalize: she was going to die. She had seen the process of deterioration with her father’s disease. In the best-case scenario, she too could end up like a plant doing photosynthesis beside a window. Maybe Greta would want to change her diapers stained with feces, wipe away her drool, and give her hot soup to drink with a bib. But maybe María wasn’t willing to accept that.

  She hadn’t told anybody what was happening to her. But, compelled by a strange serenity and clear-sightedness that had a lot to do with her resignation, she had plainly seen what her next steps would be. The first thing she had done the day before, after leaving the clinic, was to find a phone booth. She dialed the number of the Modelo prison. But she didn’t ask to speak with César Alcalá. She asked to speak with his cellmate.

  She had mixed feelings about Romero. He seemed unable to hurt a fly. He was polite; his gestures were restrained; his tone of voice was friendly. More friendly the longer you listened to him. Hypnotic like the rattle of a snake. But his gaze, intense, vacant, and therefore sincere, was more intimidating than anything else. That man seemed capable of stopping the world and making it spin in the opposite direction if that was what he wanted. Yet César Alcalá trusted him. He spoke about his cellmate as if he were talking about a good friend, someone worth taking into consideration.

  Romero gave her the feeling that he was expecting her phone call. That he had been waiting for it a very long time. He agreed to meet with María later that day.

  It was a strange conversation, between two dead people who for some reason still appeared to be alive. Was that what Romero saw in her? Her fear, her certainty that she was going to die? The absence of life, of hope? Perhaps. But they quickly came to an agreement. Neither of them expecting anything of the other, they had barely seen each other fleetingly before when María went to the visiting room to see César. But they’d both heard plenty about the other. In some way, they were the two ends of a thin string that César Alcalá walked on, trying to keep his balance. That was their common link. The desire to help him, although it was hard for María to understand what could push Romero to want to get involved in something like what she suggested when they met. Yet after listening to her, Romero barely hesitated. He even seemed amused by the harebrained scheme for getting César out of there that María described to him in full detail. María was tempted to believe, remembering Romero’s expression, that he had almost felt relieved, as if he were getting a heavy burden off of his back.

  “If you are willing to help César, you should assume that it will bring serious consequences for you.”

  “Serious consequences,” repeated Romero as if he didn’t like the term. “Do you mean they’ll add a few more years in prison to my long rap sheet? Don’t worry about that. When you’re already soaked, you don’t mind a little more rain. Besides, I like this place. I think I’d feel like an alien outside.”

  A strange guy, Romero. María checked her watch for the umpteenth time. If he had fulfilled his part of the deal, César should already be outside of the prison walls. She would know for sure soon enough. As soon as Inspector Antonio Marchán showed up in the door of the café.

  She had barely formulated that thought when Marchán appeared.

  The inspector stopped for a second, his hand on the doorknob. He thought that María looked nervous. She had barely had time to put on her makeup, and it was clear that she had gotten dressed in a hurry. He noticed that the top button of her shirt was in the wrong buttonhole. Her gaze had a frenetic intensity, and her hands were clenched on top of the table. Around her the other customers were having breakfast and flipping through the morning newspapers. He wondered if that was the attitude of someone about to confess to a crime. That was the impression he had gotten when she called him to arrange the meeting. Marchán glanced around quickly. Of course that wasn’t a discreet place to meet, and perhaps not the best choice. Publio’s men could be following her. They could be following him. Since he had taken on the investigation into Recasens’s death, the pressure on him and his superiors was unbearable. Congressman Publio and the head of the CESID were playing their best cards to get him off the case.

  María got up from the table and extended her hand cordially. Marchán shook it. It was cold, and her arm trembled imperceptibly.

  “Wouldn’t you prefer we talk somewhere more discreet?”

  María shook her head. Here was fine. Surrounded by people, she couldn’t get carried away by her desperation.

  Marchán agreed and sat down with a slightly worried air.

  “I think you have something important to tell me. Very well, here I am, although I should warn you that anything you tell me will be on the record.”

  “I’m a lawyer, Inspector. I know how this works. And I didn’t come to see you at the station because what I am going to tell you has no probative value. This isn’t going to be a confession, you understand?”

  Marchán arched one brow slightly.

  “Then what is it going to be?”

  Suddenly, María felt uncomfortable. Calling the inspector after what Lorenzo had told her was an irrepressible impulse, a pressing need. But now that she had him in front of her, she didn’t know what to say or how to act. That irritated her. There was no reason she should have trouble communicating with him. He was a policeman, he seemed honest, and he didn’t give the impression that he was hiding anything more than the simple little lies that punctuate all truth.

  “I think they are going to kill me, Inspector.”

  “You t
hink, or you know?” asked Marchán, leaning his head a bit toward her, but without becoming very alarmed.

  It was a ridiculous, almost strange, question. María felt judged again, as in the neurologist’s office, as if she were the guilty one.

  “I know, but you don’t seem very impressed. I didn’t just say that I broke a leg jaywalking. I said that they’re going to murder me. And I see you don’t give a shit.” It was unfair, and she was about to let herself be carried away by gluttonous self-pity, but she reined it in and apologized.

  “You don’t seem very worried for someone whose life is in danger. It’s as if it doesn’t affect you, as if you were talking about something happening to some acquaintance at the office. But even if that’s the case, tell me: Who wants to kill you? And why?”

  “It has to do, in part, with Recasens and that note you found in his pocket with my name and Congressman Publio’s on it. Of course, I see in your face that you still think that I had something to do with his death, that you consider me a suspect. Cops are like that; they get something in their head, and they channel their brains into proving that idea, no matter how absurd or wrongheaded it is.”

  Marchán didn’t bat an eyelash. He waited for her to tell him what she wanted to say.

  “But you are wrong, Inspector. My ex-husband, Lorenzo, works for the CESID. Recasens was his boss. They both asked me to meet with Alcalá since he had confidential information that incriminated Congressman Publio. But Alcalá wasn’t willing to talk to anyone about that matter as long as his daughter, Marta, was still being held. My mission was to convince the inspector that the CESID could help him find his daughter in exchange for the information.”

  Marchán listened without moving a single muscle in his face. But the tips of his fingers were turning red. It was unfair to give false hope to a man with as little hope as César. First of all, nobody could prove that Publio was behind Marta’s kidnapping. Second, nobody could know if she was still alive or know her whereabouts. That girl’s face was one of the hundreds of missing faces that line the walls of police stations. Faces and dates, people who one fine day just vanished into thin air without leaving a trace and who have never been heard from again. There were too many of them, and too few policemen responsible for searching for leads.

  In the case of Marta, Marchán had devoted almost all of his energy for years. And the most he had turned up were a few photographs of a house in some part of the city’s outskirts. He had searched all the similar houses between Sant Cugat and Vallvidrera without coming up with anything. He had followed leads based on rumors, names that appeared here and there, almost always linked to the Mola family or Congressman Publio, that was true. But they were too vague, too volatile. Still, he hadn’t stopped, he hadn’t ceased his efforts, perhaps led by guilt at not having supported Alcalá with sufficient fervor during his former partner’s trial. But when he’d believed he was getting close, when he thought he’d found a minor credible lead, his superiors forced him to let it grow cold, they changed his assignment, they gave him another case, or they used the flimsiest excuse to take disciplinary action against him.

  And now that lawyer showed up with a spy story. A story of crimes that perhaps was too big, even for him.

  “The death threats have to do with the Recasens case?”

  “In part. I’m sure that Recasens had found a way to charge Publio, maybe without the papers and evidence that César was unwilling to give him. And I know that Ramoneda was the one who killed him. The same person who’s now coming for me.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Lorenzo, my ex-husband, told me everything. He works for the congressman. They are preparing something important, a military coup. And Publio wants to eliminate any obstacle that distracts him from that.”

  Marchán let out a slight whistle. Something told him that this was going to get complicated, very.

  “Would he confess to all this?”

  “Lorenzo? I doubt it. I don’t even know why he told it to me.”

  “And you, are you willing to testify to what you know?”

  María paused to think. She had been waiting for that question. She had been practicing her answer while she waited for the inspector.

  “Yes, but I have conditions.”

  Marchán stiffened.

  “This isn’t a store where you just grab what you can pay for. I can force you to make a statement to a lawyer, accuse you of complicity in a murder, or of covering up activities of high treason against the government.”

  “You can, but that won’t do you any good. It’s my word against yours. And I’ve done my homework, Inspector Marchán: I know that your word doesn’t carry that much weight lately in the police department. Especially since you’ve been carrying out the investigation into Recasens’s murder. I imagine that many people would like to see you crash and burn all on your own. I am offering you the possibility to get your way, to solve the case. But it will have to be according to my rules and with my conditions.”

  Marchán’s face darkened. He understood María’s anger, her fear disguised as rage, her desire to beat him about the head with words because it was what she had closest at hand. She could have easily gotten up and started breaking the vases filled with dried flowers on the tables, or the glasses, or started insulting and spitting at the diners.

  “What do you want?”

  María felt very tired. Really, the only thing she wanted was to get up, run to the hotel she had made her home, and lock herself in the room with the light turned off, sink her head into the pillow, and fall into a deep sleep. But the hardest part was still ahead of her.

  “I want you to put Greta into protection in case Ramoneda comes near her, and I want protection for me, too.”

  “That won’t be complicated,” conceded Marchán.

  “There’s more. I know that you are the only one who’s taken Marta Alcalá’s disappearance more or less seriously. I want you to share that information with me.”

  Marchán clenched his lips. Then he relaxed them, looking at the palms of his hands.

  “That’s not going to be possible. That is confidential information. And even if I decided to do it, you think you’re going to be able to get farther than me? There is no reliable lead on Marta’s whereabouts. Who knows? Most likely she’s been dead and buried in some empty lot for years.”

  María carefully weighed her words.

  “That’s not true. There is someone who says that he knows where she is being held.”

  This time Marchán lost his typical composure and looked at María with his eyes squinted and anxiousness clearly on his face.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Fernando Mola … I see that this name isn’t unfamiliar to you … Tell me about him, about that family.”

  For more than an hour, Marchán laid out on the table all he knew about the Mola family. He didn’t leave out the fact that there was evidence that pointed to Andrés Mola having survived that fire in the fifties.

  “I always suspected that the fire was the perfect excuse, the alibi for Publio to make his godson disappear. Andrés was a problem, but Publio couldn’t just get rid of him. Guillermo had declared him executor of the family with the condition that he keep Andrés safe. And Publio needed him alive to use the Mola fortune that brought him to his current position.”

  “But Fernando was the elder son. He should have inherited the Mola fortune.”

  “Fernando Mola was disinherited by his father. Besides, Guillermo thought he’d died on the Leningrad front at the end of World War II.”

  “Well, it looks like he’s not dead. My father paid him a visit. But I don’t understand why he told my father he knows where to find Marta. What does he have to do with all of this?”

  Marchán lit the second consecutive cigarette, and he let it burn up in the jammed ashtray.

  “I imagine that you understand the magnitude of what you’re doing here.”

  “That doesn’t
answer my question, Inspector.”

  Marchán sighed heavily. He shifted his gaze toward the exit. Anybody there could be an agent of Publio or of the CESID. Any of them could be discreetly taking note of that meeting, and if that were the case, his career was over. But wasn’t it over already? Wasn’t it time to put an end to so many years of swimming in shit and go home with his conscience clear?

  “Andrés Mola was a real psychopath. Accused of several murders where nothing could ever be proven. The evidence always coincidentally disappeared, the witnesses retracted their statements, or the case got shelved. But the truth is that the little samurai-obsessed asshole killed at least six women between 1950 and 1955. All of them had something in common. They looked like his mother, and they were decapitated with a saber. The heads of the corpses were never found. Later, supposedly one of the cadavers found in the fire at the asylum was identified as his. But I’ve already told you that I always suspected that he’s alive and being hidden by Publio in some house in Collserola Park or the surrounding area. Rumors tell of the former Mola estate, a house with blue ceramic roof tiles. I asked for several search warrants to inspect the house, but they were denied. When I decided to go there on my own, I was received by several of Publio’s thugs. I suspect that the bastard is still there, living walled up like a zombie.”

  “But I don’t see what that has to do with Marta.”

  “Look at a photo of Marta Alcalá and compare it to one of Isabel Mola in her youth. The resemblance is remarkable. Andrés was very close to his mother. And Marta’s grandfather, Marcelo Alcalá, was Isabel’s murderer. I think that Publio knew how to use Andrés’s hatred as a tool to keep César’s mouth shut. Of course this is all conjecture. There is no proof. But Fernando’s appearance gives it more credibility. Maybe he found his brother, and maybe he knows that he’s living in that house with Marta. It may be that this is too much for the elder Mola son to bear any longer, and he decided to put an end to it.”