He counts the money he has left. He’s got to do something, and he’s got to do it now. He gulps down three aspirins, gets dressed and goes out without a clear idea where he’s headed or what he’s going to do once he gets there. He walks through the streets, trying to recognize this Buenos Aires that’s shining in all its plastic splendour. The new economic policy, the Austral Plan, is basically just more of the same: a repeat performance of the plata dulce, or “sweet money” period during the dictatorship. Finally free from state terror, consumers are partying it up, officials are getting their knickers in a twist talking about democracy, and the majority say they never heard of the atrocities committed during the Dirty War. The dollar is worth less than the austral, and people are rushing all over the place trying to buy the very latest imported toys. Shop windows manage to look little better than a bad imitation of their cheapest American counterparts. The frenetic compulsion to buy is heightened by the unconscious certainty that this prosperity is fleeting. In the meantime, the faces of hunger and poverty that nobody seems to want to see are already showing up at the party. The captains of the financial sector accumulate capital as they gnaw constantly at the feet of the presidential throne where, buoyed up by his image as the champion of democracy, Alfonsin reposes in confidence.
He heads for the city centre. He’s considering a visit to police headquarters; he’s still got one friend in Criminal Records, but it may be too dangerous to get anywhere near the place. If the Apostles killed Jorge, he might be in their sights as well. Ramona’s fear when she found out and the alacrity with which she washed her hands of him can only mean one thing: he’s a marked man. She didn’t say it in so many words, but it is implicit, and even if he was being paranoid, entering headquarters through the main door doesn’t seem like the best way to find out.
He keeps walking till after one o’clock. He sits down on a bench in Plaza Lavalle. The effect of the aspirin begins to wear off, and the wound in his chest starts to hurt, less than yesterday though, and more than tomorrow, Lascano thinks in an unusual burst of optimism.
The shootout happened just a few blocks away; that was the day he saw Eva for the last time. He’d rented a safe deposit box at a nearby bank and put twenty thousand dollars in it. Eva had found the money by accident in a house she was hiding in when the military came to get her. Then, when all hell broke loose with Giribaldi and his death squad, they went to get the money so they could get out of town, but there they met Giribaldi’s henchmen, right at the door to the bank, and that’s when it all came down. The last thing he saw was Eva running away. Did she manage to get the money? Maybe yes, maybe no. What if it all happened so fast she didn’t have time, and she had to escape without it? He knows he’s desperately clutching at straws, out of necessity, because he can’t come up with another idea. Someone he used to know, a guy named Fermin, worked at that bank. He decides to go there, only a few blocks away. When he gets there, he sees that there is, indeed, a bank. His memory of it, though, is quite different: the one he remembers had a kind of Soviet-style austerity and a different name. He goes in anyway. The safe deposit boxes used to be in the rear, almost within reach, the offices have made way for desks separated by carpeted partitions, and the tellers are all very young women dressed in uniforms of skirts and jackets, which look just like men’s business suits with a touch of sexy “lite”. Banks used to look like prisons; now they look more like a cross between a boutique and a brothel. The walls are covered with posters showing young men and women, smiling and prosperous, offering “package deals” with bombastic names, that include bank accounts, credit cards, loans for the life you deserve. Everything carefully designed to neatly package and tie up the customer. The deviousness here is so obvious that even the guy who designed the poster should be put in jail. On one side is the only office with glass walls. A small sign says “F. Martinez — Manager”. Lascano lowers his eyes and meets those of Fermin, who looks at him as if he were seeing a ghost.
Lascano? How ’re you doing, Fermin? I see you got a promotion. Please, please, come in. I can’t believe it. I saw you, dead, right here in front of the door. Well, I guess I wasn’t that dead. I can’t believe it. Start believing it.
It takes Fermin a good while to get over his shock. Lascano invents a story that will suit his temperament. Fermin is sincerely happy that Lascano has survived, this despite the fact that Lascano was the one who arrested him for robbery when he was a young man. Perro had rescued him, half dead from fear, right at the moment they were about to work him over, hard.
Look, Fermin, I’m here because I got this crazy idea. I don’t know if you remember that I opened a safe deposit box. I remember very well. What happened to it, does it still exist? Nope. The bank changed ownership, I mean, just between us, the only thing that changed was the name and the decor. Then, when they started the construction that turned this into what you now see, they notified the owners of the inactive boxes and gave them a certain amount of time to come by the bank and close out their accounts. Those who didn’t show up, their boxes were opened in front of a notary. I handled it personally. There were three or four, and one of them was yours. They were all empty. I see.
Perro looks down, the little wisp of hope vanishes without a trace, just as he suspected it would. Fermin notices.
Are you in trouble?
Sticking in bits and pieces of the true story, and seasoning it just right to prevent him from getting the idea that it would be dangerous to help him, Lascano spins a yarn about political rivalry within the department that, along with his gunshot wounds, left him on the street. He tells him he’s hoping to recover the money that was in the safe deposit box, which no longer exists, and which, it appears, a treacherous female associate has stolen from him. When Lascano says “female associate” Fermin understands “lover”, and he doesn’t ask the amount or the source of the money. Nobody would ever think that a police superintendent would have a safe deposit box to stash his salary, and these days no banker is going to worry about where money comes from.
What are you planning to do? I’ve got a few job interviews. But it’s not easy. These days, if you’re over thirty-five you’re all washed up.
They keep conversing until Fermin has to attend to an important client. They agree to meet another day after work, and Fermin tells him he’ll see what he can do for him.
Even though Fermin came away thinking exactly what Lascano wanted him to, the visit brought about no tangible results. He needs to reflect, and walking is the best way he knows to do that. His world has shrunk even further. By now, he’s got almost nothing left. With Jorge’s death — whether brought about by the Apostles or a gift to them from Heaven — they won the battle. Chances are high that his own life’s in danger. Suddenly he’s overwhelmed by that same confused, diffuse and constant fear he had during the dictatorship, that sensation that at any moment he could be captured, tortured and killed. He doesn’t know if his friend, Fuseli, and Eva, his too-brief lover, are in exile or if the military made them disappear. He wants to believe, he hopes, they managed to escape. Then, just as he turns down Corrientes, she appears: crossing the street diagonally toward him. He catches a brief glimpse of her profile as she walks by. Is it her? The air she stirs up as she walks past swirls around him. He feels like he’s falling into the slipstream of foaming pheromones she leaves in her wake. Her catlike walk compels him to quicken his pace, like the cyclist who drafts behind a truck, taking advantage of the vacuum created by the movement of a body through space. Suddenly, she breaks into a trot to get to the bus waiting at the stop, and she boards. When she’s on the stairs he calls out her name, she turns, it’s her, it’s not her. As this anonymous woman departs, Lascano sees the love of his life, love lost. He remembers Marisa’s coffin being carried along the paths of the La Tablada cemetery, Fuseli’s last words on the telephone, the foreshortened figure he saw from where he lay bleeding on the ground: Eva running away. That very real Eva who loved him one stormy night. Just when he thought
he had nothing more to lose, she appeared, and from there unfolded the entire story that has brought him to this exact moment when he truly has nobody or nothing left. Lascano angrily pops two aspirins into his mouth and bites into them; the sound echoes inside his head like a pair of smashed and broken testicles.
11
He’s been wandering aimlessly around the house ever since he woke up, out of sorts, unable to make sense of what he’s doing, but finally it’s the clock that gives him orders about how to proceed. He has to quickly get dressed. He hates rushing. Last night Vanina suggested they meet for breakfast. For her, it’s always “we have to talk”. She’s always going on about their relationship, their connection. Marcelo has the impression that all those years of psychoanalysis poisoned her language and that “we have to talk” comes so frequently it can’t be healthy, even though to her it seems the most natural thing in the world.
In the elevator, he presses his briefcase between his legs and finishes adjusting his tie. The outside world greets him with a massive traffic jam accompanied by a deafening symphony of insults and honking. Buenos Aires drivers are a plague. He looks at his watch and calculates that he’ll arrive no less than ten or fifteen minutes late. He knows Vanina will wait for him, but only so she can tell him how angry she is, a privilege she allows herself because she herself is never late. To top it off he wants to get to the office early, he’s got a ton of things to do, but as he didn’t write anything down he’s afraid he’ll forget. Last night, on his way home from his mother’s house, he had a breakthrough on the Biterman case. In a moment of inspiration he saw each and every step he needed to take as well as the order he should take them in — which is as important as the steps themselves. He told himself he was going to write it all down in his little grey notebook on his way to meet Vanina, but he has now decided to walk to avoid the traffic. To make matters worse, he knows that Vanina is going to come with demands, a pile of questions about their intimacy, and what are we going to do about it, and she’ll make the whole thing so tangled and complicated that he’ll be left totally in the dark. The light changes just as he gets to the corner of 9 de Julio, leaving him stranded. The avenue roars in front of him like a tsunami of metal bodies. He stares at the little man in the box, and waits anxiously for him to start blinking on and off. The only way to cross the widest avenue in the world on one light is to run. So Marcelo runs and keeps running till he gets to the corner of Corrientes and Uruguay, where Vanina will be waiting for him, a stone in each hand to throw at him. Not so long ago he played rugby, so he’s in good enough shape to dash down these few blocks, using evasive manoeuvres to avoid all the other creatures in the judicial jungle who, at this hour of the day, are also rushing to be among the first to arrive at the courthouse. Half a block before El Foro he reduces his pace to a brisk walk, taking deep breaths to slow down his pulse. He tries to locate Vanina through the window, but he doesn’t see her. He enters and looks for her at all the tables brimming with coffee cups, croissants, cigarettes, newspapers and legal briefs. She’s not there. Were they supposed to meet here or in Ouro Preto? No, it was here, he’s certain. A young female lawyer, wearing a very tight pin-striped blue suit, gets up to leave, prompting a wave of greedy stares. She walks by him, her breasts pushing against the buttons of her white blouse, stretching the buttonholes and producing a gap through which he glimpses the delicate lace of her brassiere. She leaves in her wake a cloud of sickly sweet perfume, easily compensated for by the sight of her hips’ enchanting ability to slip between the tables. Marcelo sits down in the chair she has just vacated. He can feel the warmth of this fantastic woman’s body that still permeates the vinyl.
He orders a cortado, an espresso with a little hot milk, and takes his grey notebook out of his pocket. He’s grateful that Vanina is late. It gives him the opportunity to jot down some notes and offers him impunity from her reproaches for his habitual lateness, at least this time.
Twenty minutes later he arrives in his office. He picks up the telephone and calls Vanina’s house. The line is busy. He takes off his jacket, hangs it up, opens his briefcase, takes out the envelope of the Biterman case, his grey notebook and Kelsen’s book, and places them on his desk, sits down, calls Vanina again. It’s still busy. He opens his notebook, picks up the telephone, presses the buttons with the eraser of his yellow-and-black Pelikan pencil.
Assistant Superintendent Sansone?… Pereyra here… Very well, thank you, and you?… Do you have something for me?… When was that?… Are you sure?… What’s the girl’s name?… Who told you?… Where is she?… If we call her in as a witness, will she come?… I understand… You don’t say… Where can I find that doctor?… He told you he gave… What do you mean he himself asked for it?… In Martinez?… But the girl was already pregnant when they captured her… Could anyone be such a son of a bitch?… No, of course, I know… Do we have an address?… Wait a minute… Go ahead… Yes… Yes… Good. One more thing… Do you know Superintendent Lascano?… Yes… Really?… But he got away… Where can I find him?… I understand… If you see him tell him to call me, I want to talk to him about the Biterman case… Thanks… I’ll let you know if I hear anything else…
Marcelo stares at the name and address he just wrote down in his grey notebook. It is the same address, where he took the envelope to Giribaldi? He doesn’t think he can tie him to the whole string of murders the military committed to cover their tracks, but he’s planning to use the information to pressure him and get some information about the whereabouts of several children “appropriated” during the dictatorship. There are three pieces of evidence that would tie everything up and finish the package with a flourish. One: find the weapon Biterman’s murderer had put in hock at the Banco Municipal. All the information he needs for that is in the envelope. Two: interview the witness the military kidnapped in Martinez. Three: find Lascano.
He leans back in his chair, places the pencil between his teeth. He is happy because his investigations are finally bearing fruit, but that sensation is quickly replaced by another: the revulsion he feels at being happy about solving cases that are so utterly abhorrent. Then he remembers Vanina, picks up the telephone, and calls her parents.
12
This morning Miranda has come to this working-class neighbourhood in Villa Del Parque dressed as a construction worker. He’s sitting down in the street and leaning against a wall, his legs crossed and his yellow hard hat pulled down to his eyes, spying on the house where his wife and son live. Fernando, his son, is the first to leave. He’s on his way to school. Mole is both distressed and pleased to see how much the boy has grown; such a short time ago he was just a child. For some reason he can’t quite figure out, he’s putting off his encounter with him. Fernando takes out a Walkman and turns it on. He puts the earphones in his ears and places the player in a small pouch attached to his belt. Miranda remembers that at his age he carried a gun in the same place. He waits. He hasn’t yet seen any signs of men hanging around. Not during the day or at night, when Fernando goes out and she stays home alone. In the room on the first floor, at about ten at night, the blue light of the TV goes on, and less than an hour later it goes off, and nothing else happens all night. Duchess goes out very little, and then only to buy groceries. Sometimes, in the afternoons, she gets a visit from Pelusa, the neighbour who lives on Pasaje El Lazo, and they sit in the kitchen drinking mate.
Susana leaves the house and walks toward Jonte. Miranda stands up and follows her. She’s walking in front of him in her flowered housedress. He knows all too well what’s beneath that innocent-looking article of clothing. The whole time inside he was longing for that body, and now he has it, right here, almost within reach. His plan is to show up tomorrow, then take things from there. There’s no other man in the picture, he’s made sure of that. She stops at the grocery store, then the greengrocer’s. When she enters the butcher’s shop, Miranda keeps walking till he gets to the bus stop. The sun’s reflection off the shop window of La Vaca Aurora doesn’t
let him see what’s going on inside, but he can watch the door from where he is now.
When she enters, Pepe looks up and smiles at her. She lowers her eyes and waits for him to finish attending to her neighbour. After his wife died he started looking at her in a different way. He always gives her the feeling he’s about to say something but that he never quite musters the courage. They’ve known each other for years, he knows who her husband is, and maybe that frightens him off. He used to be bolder before his wife died; he flirted with all his women customers, flattered them and shot them suggestive glances. Now he seems more reserved; he must feel more vulnerable. Through the curved glass of the display case, Susana watches him work. He plunges an old knife that is by now almost all handle into the sirloin steak on the wood slab. With quick confident movements he hones the new knife with the sharpening steel. He places his hand flat down on the meat and starts slicing off cutlets with highly skilled precision, each movement identical, each slice the same thickness, all falling gracefully one at a time in a neat stack that mimics the original shape of the steak. You said a kilo? He asks her only as an excuse to talk to her, only so she’ll look up at him, only so their eyes will meet. She does so briefly, and nods. Will he ever summon the courage to say something to her, to ask her out? He doesn’t believe she’ll say yes, but he keeps asking her with his eyes. He keeps asking her when the scale reads a kilo and a quarter, and he charges her for only a kilo. And she feels flattered, he makes her feel beautiful, desired; she likes it. She walks out with her skirt swaying just a little more than usual, carrying with her the butcher’s gaze, glued upon her.
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