Renaldo
Page 33
He came in here singing your praises. How on earth did you manage that?
I have seen him reduce rookies to tears with only a stare,” laughed Octavio
Suarez.
“I just decided that I didn’t want that same stare directed at me any more
than was necessary. There was no sense in antagonizing the man, so I made
him feel like I respected his rather dubious talents.”
“Be careful, son. He is a very mean customer, and he can turn on you in
an instant. Don’t ever let your guard down when you are around him. But in
the meantime, let’s hope you can sidestep the opposing defenders as well as you
just deflected ‘Killer’s’ known dislike for untested newcomers,” coach Luque
interjected.
“Renaldo, I know you are used to playing the forward line, but I want
you to start out as a center halfback for now. I have a feeling that if your ball-
handling skills are as deft as I think they are, you may just end up being the
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general of our attacking forces. You will have more room to demonstrate your
considerable talent at halfback. My main problem, as I perceive it, will be
communication between the backs and the halves, and then the halves and the
forward line. A truly great halfback can play the transition game from defense
to offense with uncanny skill. That is the role that I want to train you to fulfill.
If, heaven forbid, Nico Garcia is unable to join us from Europe, then I will have
to reconsider and put you on the forward line. For now though, you will be my
transition halfback.
We will start out playing a 4-3-3 formation, with two outside attacking
fullbacks to assist in the thrust forward. We will be expected to play offensive
football by our supporters, and that is what I intend to do. We need to score
goals, and for that reason, I am putting you at center half. You can use the
whole pitch as your canvas to create a masterpiece from that position, Renaldo.
Whenever I have seen you play, I have always thought that you could make
your feet do exactly as your brain desired. Prove it to me. Stay in shape, train
hard, and keep out of trouble. We will be together again on the twelfth of next
month, for the introduction of the team to the entire country.
My assistant will be in touch with you a few days in advance of that with
the final details of the evening. Here is a sheet of phone numbers to use if you
have to contact any of the three of us for whatever reason. Well, I guess that is
all. Look after yourself, and I will see you on the twelfth.”
Octavio Suarez shook Renaldo’s hand, as did Luque. Estes Santos just gave
the boy a sly wink as the rookie player exited. Alone in the corridor outside of
the meeting room, one thought kept racing through the boy’s mind.
Your feet do exactly as your brain desires. Head and feet as one, isnt that the
way Gordero phrased it on the train from Córdoba? He remembered The Fat Man
and the way he had twisted his fingers like a pretzel. He stood there in the
hallway, absent-mindedly twisting his fingers, trying to duplicate the feat he
had witnessed on the train.
“Whoa, Renaldo, baby, are you alright? What did they do to you in there?
Torture you or something? What’s with the fingers? Somebody slam a door on
them?” Ramon Vida had watched his new friend doing digital contortions for
several seconds before proceeding down the hall to meet the coaching staff. An
embarrassed Renaldo De Seta smiled bashfully and shrugged his shoulders as
he disappeared around the corner of the hallway.
“Damn fingers, they still have minds of their own!”
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Chapter FiFteen
Señor Figueroa, there is a message for you here.”
Lonnie stopped dead in his tracks as he started to ascend the poorly lit
staircase. It was the first time since he had rented the small room in the
Versailles district on the outer limits of the capital that anyone had spoken to
him. His eyes strained to see who was addressing him from the shadows.
To his relief, the old janitor shuffled into sight, his arm outstretched,
clutching a piece of paper. The old man had rented Lonnie the room a few
weeks earlier. He had been a good source of information regarding the other
tenants and the general layout of the neighborhood.
The building was occupied almost exclusively with migrant workers who
were either employed temporarily or seeking employment in one of the many
industrial complexes in the area. People came and went with great frequency,
and the turnover in rooms was never ending. It was exactly what Celeste had
told Lonnie to find. No friendly neighbors snooping around, and no one tracking
his comings and goings.
He had arrived in a battered Chevy Corvair, giving his name as Marco
Figueroa. He was seeking employment in one of the several oil refineries that
were only a few blocks from this dilapidated tenement. Lonnie had told the
janitor that he had no idea how long he would require the room, but he paid
the man four weeks in advance to allay any questions of his financial stability.
It was not unusual for tenants to disappear in the middle of the night with
all their belongings and money owed on their accommodations. That is why
the old man worked the night shift, his main job being to catch any ‘fly-by-
nighters.’ The payment in advance had put Lonnie in his good graces, and the
custodian had given him a toothless smile the few times that they had crossed
paths.
The new resident thanked the janitor as he took the note and hustled up
the stairs to his room. There were no telephones in the building, so any contact
with the outside world had to come via the pay phone at the cantina down
the street. He would usually meet Celeste around the corner from the bar at
a designated time after receiving her call there. This was the first time that a
written communication had been transmitted to him. He found it strange that
she would take such a chance.
JAMES McCREATH
He unlocked the door to his room and flicked on the interior light switch.
The now-familiar yellowish-white walls greeted him again. The only decorative
touch on their peeling surface was a faded portrait of the Virgin Mary over
his less than comfortable bed. A wooden chair and dresser completed the
adornments. It had been necessary to purchase an electric fan to make the fetid
room bearable in the humid February air. The washroom was down the hall,
shared with the other tenants on that floor.
Lonnie found it perversely humorous that he was now residing in
‘Versailles,’ for he had visited the French palace a few years past on his summer
vacation. The comparison between his new residence and the fabled home of
the French monarchs reassured him that he had truly cast aside his monied
upbringing and was now living the lifestyle of the oppressed working man.
Celeste had been right. He did have to live their pain to understand it. Just
hearing the stories of the unemployed day after day as he sat in the cantina was
enough to convince him. The despair and hopelessness that many of the men
exhibited convinced Lonnie that th
e junta would do nothing to improve their
plight.
Millions of dollars were being spent on military hardware, but relatively
nothing on job creation and social assistance. He had been totally oblivious to
the predicament of the working class while living within his ivory tower and
swanky Palermo mansion. Celeste Lavalle had changed all that. She had opened
his eyes to the injustice and made him feel like he could make a difference.
The boarder sat down on the bed and opened the note. The handwriting
was Celeste’s. He had waited for three hours at the cantina that night for her
call, but it never came. By closing time, he had consumed so many beers that
he was feeling no pain at all. It was probably a good thing that she had not
contacted him during that last half hour or his slurred speech would have given
him away. He stared at the piece of paper. Its message was brief.
‘Call at ten a.m. tomorrow. Hotel Bolivar, room six. 555-5344.’ It was
signed with a simple letter ‘C.’
Something’s up, he thought. The change in routine must be for a reason. He
had not phoned her flat since he arrived in Versailles. Why is she staying at Hotel
Bolivar? Maybe there was finally going to be some action.
God knows he had trained hard enough to be put to the test. The entire
month of January had been spent at a secluded Montonero training facility
north of Tucumán near the town of Taft Viejo. The cool Andean air had proved
both mentally and physically invigorating to Lonnie. In the shadow of those
towering mountains, he had engaged in everything from classroom studies of
the great left-wing visionaries, to hand-to-hand combat, small arms training,
and high explosive assembly and detonation. The instructors were known
only by colors, never by their given names. In doing so, Señor Verde, Señor
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Rojo, and Señorita Azul protected their real identities from infiltrators and
counterterrorists who might have gained access to their inner circle.
As a graduation present, Lonnie was presented with a nine millimeter
Spanish-made Llama handgun. Its thirteen-shot clip rendered it a very deadly
weapon in the hands of a trained shooter, and Lonnie had scored the highest
points for marksmanship among the new trainees. His reward for this feat was
a German-made Merkel twelve-gage shotgun. The camp’s munitions expert,
Señor Amarillo, balanced this over-and-under beauty to perfection as he sawed
off the stock and barrel to suit Lonnie’s grip and upper thigh length. A special
leg strap holster for his two-shot widow-maker completed the transition of this
former schoolboy into a walking human arsenal.
Itching to put his diploma to use, Lonnie returned to Buenos Aires with
Celeste to arrange for his false identification. They then set out to scrounge up
enough secondhand clothing to make his new identity believable, bought the
old Chevy Corvair with money Lonnie gladly donated to the cause, and rented
the room in Versailles.
The newly indoctrinated terrorist was able to spend a week at Celeste’s flat
while all the arrangements were being completed. This allowed her to fulfill
her part of Lonnie’s graduation present.
Initially, their passion was purely animalistic. Lonnie was left drained and
handcuffed to her brass headboard to fall asleep that first night. He awoke the
next morning to find his manhood in the process of being completely devoured
by her sensuous mouth, and when it had risen to its full majestic splendor, she
straddled him and rode him as if he were a stallion at a Wild West rodeo.
When he finally gained freedom from his metal captors, he returned the
favor in kind, working her swollen clitoris until she begged for his cock to be
thrust deep inside her. He did not oblige, but left her still handcuffed to the
headboard just short of orgasmic splendor. He rose from the bed, looked down
at her writhing form with disinterest, went to the refrigerator to get a beer, then
turned on the television. The sound of the announcer’s voice prompted a stream
of expletives from the bedroom. Lonnie’s impatient response was immediate.
“Shut up, you little commie puta. The boxing match is about to begin.
Now be a nice, quiet little slut, and I might decide to come and fuck you
between rounds. Otherwise, I’ll just leave you there and go out for pizza with
some of my university friends. Maybe I’ll bring them all back to work over that
little terrorist pussy of yours. Now be quiet, or I’ll be forced to gag you.”
It was all bluff, of course, for he had no intention of leaving her now or ever
again. Their brashness could quickly turn to tenderness, and they would make
love as if they were society newlyweds on their consummation night, cautious,
nervous, and yet curious about the wonders each other’s body possessed.
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JAMES McCREATH
He hated to leave her when his forged documents finally arrived, for he
had no idea when they would be able to spend time together again, in such a
carefree manner.
Lonnie De Seta was about to step over the brink, leaving his old life behind
him with the distinct possibility that he would never be able to return to it
again. His family, the privileged upbringing, society status, all those women,
and yes, the money . . . they meant nothing to him now. He was a soldier of the
people’s revolution, and he had a feeling that he was about to cut his teeth with
the phone call that he would make at ten the next morning.
“Are you ready to stop playing games and see what you are really made of?
If so, bring your car and your gifts and meet me at Café Ultimo on San Martin
Avenue at noon. We have work to do.”
The receiver went dead. She was all business again, no more honey in her
voice. Cold, strictly business. Well, he was man enough to stop playing games.
He ached to prove himself to her once and for all.
The gifts that she referred to were the weapons that he had received upon
graduation at Taft Viejo. They were hidden in the trunk of his car, and he now
brought them to his room to clean, in preparation for the activities to follow. He
did not shave, for he wanted to look as rugged and fearsome as possible. Blue
jeans, old beaten-up cowboy boots, a torn short sleeve shirt, and an oversized
baseball cap completed his wardrobe.
He stood staring at the reflection in the mirror, quite proud of himself.
He looked exactly like any of the thousands of transient, unemployed laborers
milling around Buenos Aires that summer. Nothing set him apart from the
restless hordes now. No one would suspect that only two months before, he had
dressed in the finest designer jeans, wore only Gucci loafers, ate at the capital’s
priciest restaurants, and squired his dates around in a Mercedes.
His dumpy Corvair was the crowning touch to Señor Marco Figueroa’s
new identity. It was so ugly that no one had given it a second glance, not even
the young car thieves that roamed Versailles at night. Ugly on the outside, but
under the hood she was supercharged for action. A mechanic friend of Celeste’s
had retrofitted the engine so that the four
-speed manual transmission was
performing to its maximum efficiency. The grease-monkey had told Celeste
that, while the car could be quickly overtaken on the highway, in city streets
with lots of turns and quick braking and acceleration, it would have no equal.
The room in Versailles had been chosen primarily for the easy access its
location provided to all parts of the capital, and if necessary, westward into
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the hinterlands. Avenida Juan Justo was a major artery running from the city
limits on the west, straight into the heart of Palermo. It intersected the capital
ring road, Avenida General Paz, only a block from Lonnie’s new home. He
had driven the streets of Versailles many times, learning their nuances and
directions in case of an incident involving police pursuit. A small garage had
been rented from an elderly woman who no longer had an automobile as a
safe hideout for the Corvair. The Montoneros had been very thorough in their
preparations, and it was finally time to show the oligarchy and the junta that
the revolution was still very much alive.
Lonnie arrived half an hour early at the café, but he remained in the parked
Corvair across the street. He had been taught to never make himself noticeable
in any situation where someone could give a description of his appearance. A
waiter, another café patron, anyone. Celeste arrived exactly at noon and noticed
the parked Corvair before she even set foot inside the café.
“Good job, Lonnie! I half expected you to be sitting in the sunshine
sipping on a beer,” the lady smiled as she climbed into the passenger seat.
Celeste was wearing a realistic, shoulder-length red wig.
“I’m not some dumb cowboy, Señorita. Don’t forget, I’ve been to terrorist
school. Nice hair. Sexy redheads always get my cock stiff!”
“Drive! Head north.” Her voice was suddenly steely, all business. “Take
General Paz up to Avenida del Tejar, then turn south. Do you know where the
army headquarters is by General Paz Park? All the top military men do their
banking at a large branch of the Banco Nacional across from the park. We are
going to make a withdrawal from that branch and leave that scum a message
they won’t forget.”
Lonnie noticed that his palms were perspiring as he held on to the steering