17 Stone Angels (5 page)

A narrow lot between two abandoned factories, their long empty walls closing off the view. Broken glass and a few burnt-out cars left by dismantlers, lit only by the pink glow of the city lights against the thick mist. Fortunato had known the place because his brigada used to provide “security” for the factories until Chinese imports had driven them out of business. He had chosen it with the same care with which he'd conducted the surveillance and planned the abduction.

He and Domingo had watched Waterbury for five days, noting his movements and his habitual places. Waterbury went around with a pretty woman who frequented the Bar Azul, some sort of tango dancer. He had a friend who worked at Grupo AmiBank in the financial district, someone high enough in the hierarchy to have a car waiting for him after work each day. Another day Waterbury was visited by a woman who arrived in a limousine and carried a cardboard portfolio, returning twenty minutes later without it. A curious assortment. With more time and more men he would have found out everything about the target and his associates, but this was only a squeeze, so they did the minimum and marked out the night.

Waterbury had gone to dinner at his habitual restaurant and Onda, the lookout, advised them on the radio when he paid the bill. He came strolling toward the entrance to his pension seventeen minutes after midnight. The building on the corner was getting a new facade, and Fortunato approached him behind a large container full of construction debris.

“Señor Waterbury,” he'd said, addressing him like an acquaintance.

Waterbury stopped short. Maybe he'd already been jumpy, or perhaps he sensed Domingo and Vasquez approaching ten meters behind him. Maybe he realized that the scaffolding and debris concealed him from the street.

“I've heard a lot about you,” Fortunato had said, appealing to his ego. “May I chat with you for a few minutes?”

“About what?”

He shrugged. “Not about big things. Just to chat.”

“Who are you?”

By then Domingo and Vasquez had caught up with Waterbury, and as he heard their brisk footsteps among the crumpled papers he turned. Domingo had the stun gun out. “Excuse me,” Domingo said in a friendly voice. “Is there a problem here?” This confused Waterbury for just the amount of time necessary for Domingo to close in and hit him with fifty thousand volts. Waterbury went down and in less than ten seconds they had him cuffed and in the car. Domingo pushed him to the floor. “Tell Onda to follow us closely,” Fortunato told Vasquez. When they drove off Waterbury was still disoriented, indignantly demanding answers from below. Domingo said admiringly “They're very good, these little machines, no? In the old days, you'd have to split their heads open to be sure they were down.” Only thirty, Domingo referred to the days of the Dictatorship like a golden era. That puffy dark smile in the rear-view mirror. Fortunato said nothing.

There the declarant found an auto Ford Falcon, sedan, color metalized gray, interior color light brown, serial #A287-56682-306-1986, with the front doors closed and the rear doors open. The auto was burning, with most of the damage being in the front section, around the motor. Both rear doors were open, and the deceased could be seen on the rear seat, stained with a substance that resembled human blood, apparently dead. The firemen of Cuartel de Bomberos de San Justo arrived at approximately 01:40 and rapidly controlled the fire
.

Waterbury's voice came up from below the seat. “What is this about?” Domingo had his foot on Waterbury's head so that he couldn't rise, and Fortunato saw Domingo shift positions as he shoved the gringo's face into the thin carpet. “Don't be clever,” Domingo snarled at him. “You know why you're here.”

“If you move I'll blow your balls off!” Vasquez added. His nose was running and his greasy auburn hair flopped across his forehead as he looked down at the gringo. The gold hoops glinted in his ear.

“Is this Carlo?” the writer had asked in a muffled voice. “Did Carlo send you? Tell him he's made a mistake!”

None of them answered. Carlo who? They let the silence work on Waterbury as they crossed into the exurbs of La Matanza.

“Tell Don Carlo that he has nothing to worry about,” Waterbury said from the floor and then yelped, which told Fortunato that Domingo had kicked him in the head again.

“
Tranquilo
,” Fortunato said in his calmest voice.

Waterbury spoke again after a few minutes, sounding more frustrated than fearful. “I didn't do anything! You understand? You have to tell him that. Or better, I'll tell him. Take me to him right now and I'll explain the whole thing myself.”

“Of course,” Domingo laughed. “But no one needs your explanation.”

Fortunato sensed that even now Waterbury retained a certain amount of composure. Still banking on his passport. He probably thought that things like this didn't happen to people like him.

“Listen, tell Señor Pelegrini that all I want to do is go home to my wife and daughter and forget all about this. I know nothing and I care about nothing. Understand?”

Carlo Pelegrini
. The vaguely familiar name made Fortunato uneasy, but then Domingo kicked another yelp out of the gringo. “Shut up, faggot! Nobody wants to hear your lies!” Fortunato took a breath and reassured himself. Waterbury was a blackmailer and he had to learn the hard way. It was a necessary part of the operation.

They'd reached the poorer streets where the houses became scabbed with tar paper and corrugated tin. Weedy lawns languished beside vacant lots. Onda's headlights in the rear view mirror. The Northamerican couldn't see anything, but maybe he sensed that he had reached his ultimate destination. Fortunato could hear a new timbre in his voice. Now he was truly afraid. “This is Renssaelaer, isn't it? Renssaelaer sent you.”

The sound of the gringo name puzzled the Comisario. Renssaelaer . . . and Pelegrini . . . What was this?

“Tell Señor Renssaelaer he has nothing to fear from me. I'm going home and I won't tell anyone. I'll go home tomorrow!”

The fire extinguished, the declarant examined the body and found it
without signs of life. The cadaver was of masculine sex, in a fetal position with his dorsal side to the back of the car and his head towards the passenger side. The cadaver's hands were cuffed in front of him, with handcuffs of make Eagle Security
.

Idiot Domingo! To leave the cuffs at the scene! Eagle Security was the police brand. Why didn't he just write down his badge number on the dashboard! The gringa was scribbling something in her notebook, something about the handcuffs, and he felt his stomach tighten.

The cadaver presented five wounds, presumably from firearms, one in the left hand through the palm, one in the left thorax, frontal zone, one in the frontal zone of the right thigh, one in the testicles and rectum, one in the right temple apparently exiting through the left socket
.

“They tortured him!” La Doctora said, shuddering. Her sharp green eyes flickered into Fortunato's.

Fortunato didn't answer, hiding in the dispassionate typescript of the declaration. Finally he croaked, “The one in the hand is a defensive wound.”

The night was going off
again, like an alarm. Domingo and Vasquez in the back seat, Vasquez with his swastika tattoos and his
papelitos
of
merca
one after the other. Vasquez, an addled coil of blue-tinted muscles, a
guapo
of the new style, always ready for a fight, but preferring a few bullets pumped from behind to a head-on contest with knives. Bad news from the start, and now coked up so high that his eyes were blazing. They'd pulled Waterbury upright in the seat so they could hit him in the face more easily, Domingo shouting, “You think yourself clever!” A blow. Waterbury's nose bleeding, his eye swelling up. “You think yourself clever, eh?” Waterbury no longer protesting about Carlo Pelegrini. He kept looking at Fortunato because Fortunato was older, the orderly one with the comprehending face and the voice of a kind uncle. Fortunato tried to tell him with his eyes,
Bear up, hombre. Nothing's going to happen
.

“I have a wife and daughter,” the gringo said to him. “You know that?”

Vasquez spitting at his victim, “We'll fuck your wife in front of the daughter, and then we'll kill everybody.” Waterbury still looking at him over
the seat as if they were in this together, because, after all, he was the Good Cop. And Domingo was supposed to scare him. He was the Bad Cop.

The following items were collected from the floor of the car. Rear seat section: one bullet, apparently 9mm. Five shell casings, four .32 caliber, make: Remington. One 9mm, make: Federal
.

La Doctora scribbled another flurry of words in her notebook.

Three pieces of blue metalized paper, each containing traces of a white substance, similar to that known as chlorhydrate of cocaine
. . .

Vasquez' ten-peso folders. Domingo, getting out to piss and making that long loud snuffing sound and turning to the car again with the white crust of
merca
hanging from his nose.

“Son of a bitch, what are you doing? You can't do that on a job!”

Domingo with shining eyes now: “Don't fuck with me, Comi.”

Even Waterbury sensing that things were getting out of control. “Look—” the gringo began. Domingo grabbed his jaw and pulled his face close. “No, you look, faggot! You think you're a clever gringo! More rapid than anyone else—”

Vasquez suddenly with his gun out, a little silver .32 automatic, putting it to Waterbury's temple. “Is this clever,
hijo de puta?
Is this clever?”

Waterbury was starting to panic and Fortunato felt it spreading. “Put the gun away!” Command words, trying to stifle the hysteria that had invaded Vasquez” burning eyes. But Vasquez didn't hear him. He was in it already, his little fantasy of power, owner of life and death. As Fortunato watched he took the gun and pointed it down again, grinding the barrel into the writer's thigh and then, with a twitch that came from the drugs, or maybe from the writer's involuntary flinch, the gun exploded.

The rest happened before Fortunato could move. Waterbury thrust his manacled hands towards the gun, wrestling it sideways, and it went off again.

Vasquez screamed. “Aaaah! My foot! You son of a bitch!” and in the dirty light Fortunato saw the gun come up again. Domingo shouting, “No, idiot, you'll hit me!” and grabbing at the little packet of dull silver, and for
a moment four hands contested. It went off again, blasting through Waterbury's hand and into his chest, and at this Domingo managed to wrestle the pistol free. Vasquez was howling and swearing, Waterbury instinctively putting his hands up for protection.

“
Puta
!” Domingo screamed, and he lowered the gun and shot directly into Waterbury's groin. In five seconds, everything had gone out of control. Vasquez was cursing and Waterbury was screaming and twisting on the bloody vinyl. “Give me that, Domingo.” Fortunato reached for the barrel of the gun and peeled it down and sideways out of Domingo's hand. Waterbury was still writhing.

Domingo was cursing at him. The gunshots had roused Onda from the second car and he was staring into the window with his mouth open. Onda,
Vibe
, only twenty-one, just a hippy thief hired to drive a car, not to witness a murder.

Fortunato ordered Domingo out of the car and then went around and pulled the wounded Vasquez out, throwing him into the mud. The dome light cast a dirty gray film over the seat and the bloody victim. Waterbury was rolling on the seat in torment. Fortunato knew the Northamerican was screaming, but as he looked at him he was conscious only of a deep sense of silence that seemed to engulf the car and the arid vacant lot. The wound in Waterbury's inner thigh was bleeding heavily and his groin was worse. He had another wound in his chest, and Fortunato could see blood bubbling in with his saliva. His eyes looked like those of a deep-sea fish pulled suddenly to the surface. Fortunato took out his Browning. He could feel Onda watching him.

People said that the first person you killed was always the worst. “Look,
hombre
,” the Chief had told him at a barbecue the following week. “There are unpleasant things to be done and one has to have the balls to do them. That's how it was during the war and that's how it is now. This Waterbury was mixed up in
something
.” He'd spotted Fortunato's discomfort. “Besides, the truth is that it was the other two morons that killed him. You just put him out of his misery. Should you have let him suffer for a few more hours?”

La Doctora reached the end
of the first declaration and hurried through photocopies of various receipts and credentials. The first photos of the crime scene stiffened her.

Even in black and white, they were horrific. The first was an exterior of the car with the back door hanging open. The front of the car was blackened from the fire, its hood flung open. The windshield was shattered by the heat. Through the dark opening in the door projected a shoe, and a leg in light-colored trousers.

The next photo was closer, through the open window. Waterbury lay on the seat with his mouth half-open, his skin laced by rivulets of black blood. The next photo was a closeup.

Athena gasped, turning away and dosing her eyes.