Blood Makes Noise (40 page)

“Where are the toys, Ara?” Michael asked. “Not the farmer’s head you keep in a hatbox for parties. The real stuff. The playroom, Dr. Ara. Where do you play?”

Michael coughed violently, bending over, and that ripped open another cut, soaking his back. “What’s wrong with him?” Ara asked. The doctor looked over Hector and Gina, their dusty clothes, the broken scabs on their faces, and shrugged. “Never mind.”

“The room, Ara. Where’s the room?”

“Nobody enters that room. Not alive.”

“Your choice.”

Ara chuckled to himself. “For the Senora then, yes?”

“Open the room.”

Ara took from his coat a string of keys, pulled back a faux bookcase, and unlocked the steel door behind. He gestured to the others. “Please.”

The door led to what was once, years ago, an adjoining suite of apartments. The long entryway had been left paneled in prewar woods. Along each wall, mounted like Roman busts, were embalmed heads. African heads, Asian heads, Indians, Gypsies…some clothed in native headdresses, most of their eyes closed but some open, sparkling clear irises and imprisoned souls.

You couldn’t help but linger, and Gina, who thought she had no tears left in her life, wept silently as she passed these trapped horrors, filed here in Ara’s personal purgatory.

“Excellent collection,” Hector said, nodding.

“Thank you.”

The corridor of heads guarded a larger room, maybe the old parlor, also richly paneled. Here were entire bodies, stretched out in glass cases like a rare library. Some wore magnificent costumes, others the simple worn coats of cobblers and street vendors. There were children, smiling, and Michael willed his eyes from them.

A large, snarling black bear stood on its hind legs in one corner. “I wasn’t aware you did animals, Dr. Ara,” Hector mused.

“An early dalliance. I never took to them, though. No soul. Or a soul that flees too quickly. With people you have more time. To
capture
them.”

It figured that it would be here, among his stable of horrors, that Dr. Ara would at last warm to his guests.

Hector noticed, among the cases, Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin. “One of your celebrity copies?”

“I was asked to consult during his embalming in ’24.”

“I remember.”

“January in Moscow. No heat. Unbearable. But I had ample time for a thorough study of the man.”

“The work is exceptional.”

“Yes. An excellent piece.”

“What was your basic model? Your materials?”

“Well, Hector, who says this one is the copy?”

“Remarkable…” Hector muttered.

“Insane,” Gina said. She had Michael’s arm, helping him along, as Ara opened the final door that led to his laboratory. It was all white tile, deep autopsy sinks, and steel worktables.

On one bright metal table rested a three-month-old infant. Smiling, eyes open, arms out, cooing to its mother, and Ara’s guests froze in numbed desolation. Gina turned away and placed a hand over her eyes. “We’re all mad…this entire trip…madness.”

Ara covered the child with a sheet and lifted it away. “Just something I was working on.”

They brought Evita in, placed her atop the table, and cut away the canvas covering. She seemed less strange here, with her creator fussing over her dress, her hands. It’s extraordinary, Michael thought, what you can get used to.

“Her skin is fine, only a few small cracks. Her hair needs cleaning, of course. Some small damage to the nose. There’s ash in here.”

“It was a long trip.”

“I’ll begin work immediately.”

“Not just yet.”

Ara straightened up, his enthusiasm replaced by imperial bearing. “Yes?”

“Take the key out.”

Ara just stared at him. “Come, Doctor,” Michael said, “don’t play dumb. You’ve always known it was there, right? It was your X-rays blown over that Recoleta café.”

“The safety deposit key,” Hector said, nodding to himself. “Of course.”

“You didn’t know?”

“The key?” Hector said. “No. We suspected, even cared once. But now? Now is just politics, Michael.”

“Was Evita’s brother, Juan, murdered for politics or money, Hector?” Ara asked.

“As I said, once we cared.”

“Why didn’t you keep the key?” Michael asked of Ara. “You had her. She was yours for months. Why wait nineteen years for Lopez Rega to bring it up?”

Ara stepped away from the body and faced Michael directly. “Assuming the money mattered to me, young man, I was the only one who knew. Why hurry? Bank rules would never allow the money to be touched for years. Possessing the key would only cause me danger. Especially after the X-rays were stolen by your friends. It was perfectly safe with the Senora…till she disappeared…”

“The key still with her,” Hector finished, “and only Michael knowing where she was…”

“Get the key,” Michael said.

“You’d defile her? Now? After all this time?” Ara challenged.

“Don’t butcher her like Lofton would have. Use your skill, Doctor. Your knowledge of the woman. Make it clean. Make it respectful. But get on with it.”

Ara turned from Michael and opened a surgical tray. From it he removed a scalpel. Gina looked at Michael, horrified. “The money? Was it about the money for you too, Michael?”

Hector, who was also watching Michael and perhaps gleaning his thoughts, answered her for him. “No, my lady, I don’t think so.”

“What, then?”

“A close of the cycle. Yes, Michael?”

Michael didn’t answer, was watching silently what they all watched now: Dr. Ara drawing the scalpel across Evita’s burial gown. The stiff muslin parted, and Ara made another incision, through layers of impregnated plastic and chemical injections, reached into the dry but intact viscera with a pair of forceps, and
removed one specially made, multialloyed key. He wiped it with a towel and handed it to Michael. “Satisfied?”

“Nearly.”

“What now?”

“Bring in Lofton.”

Gina rolled in Lofton’s wrapped corpse and together they laid it roughly onto a second examination table. “Open the shroud.”

Ara drew his scalpel along the material, and Lofton emerged from within not looking much different: old, wasted, eyes half-mast, orange dust everywhere. “Some journey,” Ara said.

“It’s not over yet.”

“What do you want with him?”

Michael stood beside Ara and looked down at Lofton’s face. “Ed Lofton drank too much. Since the day I met him. Didn’t eat well, either. It always left him skinny and emaciated looking. His body seemed to me in those days almost…feminine.

“I was thinking of Lenin out there, of the fake celebrity heads you used to seduce women in Buenos Aires. After Evita died, we were doing surveillance on a house one night, and I saw you show off Evita’s head. Only it couldn’t be
Hers
; Hector had the entire article. You’d made a copy. Surgery on some poor dead peasant woman. Just a game, right?”

“My art was never a game, young man.”

“Fair enough. Where is the head now?”

“That was years ago.”

“Where is it?”

Ara measured Michael. “Here.”

“Get it.”

“And then?”

“Make Lofton Evita.”

“You’re insane.”

“Still…”

“He’s five inches taller than Her.”

“Cut his feet off.”

“He’s a man.”

“Is someone going to look up Her dress? Now? He’s a skinny man. Put her head on him and people will see what they need to.”

“Why, Michael?” Hector.

“A promise.”

“And Argentina?”

“Argentina wants an empty vessel to jam their superstitions and dreams into. I wouldn’t deny them that.” Michael pointed Hector’s gun at Ara. “Now cut Lofton’s goddamn head off.”

Michael waited with Gina in the living room. The one without the displayed heads. He closed his eyes, and the room spun with viciousness. He reached out to Gina, she held his hand, but he was running low—too low—and when he passed out, Gina took the gun, kept it in her lap, and with the Guardia’s medical kit, dabbed and redressed his wounds.

Michael screamed when he woke and the nightmare lingered too long before his eyes. When it finally cleared, he felt Gina beside him and saw Hector waiting on the sofa opposite. “He’s finished.”

Michael fought to remember what he was talking about. It took everything just to lean forward. “Bring me Ara.”

The doctor was along presently, wearing his physician’s smock. “Success?” Michael asked him.

“It’s a sixty-five-year-old man with the head of Evita. A monstrosity.”

“
Success
?”

“It is not my best work. It is not even good work. I spent nearly a year on Evita, do you understand? A year!” Ara took off his smock and threw it over a chair. “But in a limited way, it could work. In a
very
limited way.”

“Sit down, Doctor.” Ara sighed and took a seat beside Hector. Michael closed his eyes, closed them a long time, and Hector wondered if he was coming back. He did. “Dr. Ara, I remember you told Hector once, in a dark alley a long time ago, to remember that though Evita was a symbol to so many, she was also a woman. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“You cared for her.”

“I still do.”

“I could shoot you now, Dr. Ara, and release every soul trapped in this horror den. But I believe you when you say you cared for Evita. I care for Evita too, Dr. Ara, and I believe her service to her country should end here.

“I intend to deliver to General Perón that monstrosity in the other room, which they may parade through the streets, run up a flagpole, or rip in half looking for a key. But they will not disturb her peace. You can help in this by authenticating the body we deliver, or you can destroy it and me the moment we walk in. I am asking you, in the name of her, to help.”

Ara was silent a long moment. Something small and alien crossed his features. Something…human. It rested strange on his elfin mouth. “In return you guarantee her peace?”

“And several million dollars.”

It was midmorning when the military truck arrived at the gates of Perón’s villa in exile. Michael wasn’t sure what he expected, an honor guard maybe, but it was the Spanish cleaning staff that emerged and carried Evita inside—now protected in a makeshift casket from Ara’s office. They set the casket atop Perón’s dining-room table.

Michael, Gina, Hector, and Ara were shown into the parlor, where General Perón and Isabel awaited them. Both had dressed for the occasion, and if they noticed the condition of the others,
didn’t say. Perón sat on the sofa, Isabel standing at his side. “She’s here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hector said.

Perón turned to Dr. Ara. “You’ve examined her?”

“The body of Eva Perón is in excellent condition.”

“I have prepared a place for her. Upstairs. Until our return. This a great day for my wife and me. For all of Argentina.”

“Yes, General,” Ara purred.

“This is Michael Suslov, General,” Hector said. “He and his friend Gina brought the Senora to us.”

“You’re a remarkable man, Mr. Suslov.”

“Just one with nothing else left.”

“Well, that describes all of us, doesn’t it?”

“Where is Lopez Rega?” Hector asked.

“The hospital,” Isabel said.

“There was trouble at the border.”

“So I understand,” she added without emotion. Isabel turned to Gina. “You helped bring our beloved Senora to us?”

“Yes.”

“You are always welcome in my home.” Isabel rested her hand on Perón’s shoulder. “Shall we go see her?”

They filed from the parlor into the dining room. “Michael,” Hector said, “will you do the honors, please?” Michael unbolted the coffin lid. He looked once at Hector, longer at Ara, then opened it.

During the final weeks of Evita’s cancer death, Perón had never visited her. His first wife had also died of cancer, and the strain of another had been too much. He had waited, in the hall, silently each night as she slipped away. Even when Ara had begun his long preservation process, he had come no closer than the embalming door. And when she was paraded through the streets, when she was put on public display, he had stayed at home.

Now that wife lay on his dining table, and it was the new one, Isabel, who approached first. She studied the face, the rosary-clenched hands. “I never met her…”

“Isabel,” Perón said, his voice cracking, “this is Evita.” Isabel reached out and touched Evita’s hair. “I’ll comb it. Every day.” She looked up and offered the general her hand. “Come, Juan.” Perón was still in the doorway, his view blocked by the coffin lid. He walked now anciently toward Isabel, came up beside the casket, and took her hand. Husband and wife smiled to one another, then, with great reluctance, for the first time, Perón turned to the image of Evita.

“She shall be with us always, Juan,” Isabel chanted. “She will be our inspiration, our hope and future…our power…”

And as Perón fell deeper and deeper into the image, as he reached out and touched the surgically altered head of some nameless peasant, as he caressed the stiff body of FBI officer Ed Lofton, his eyes filled with tears of melancholy love, and he turned away.

T
hey stood outside the villa in singeing heat and were not missed. “And now, Michael?” Hector wore his suit coat, the ubiquitous dark-blue one, and as usual was impervious to temperature.

“We’re wanted, Gina and I. We’ll need new passports. Argentine if you like.”

“Done.”

“You’ll need one too, Hector.”

“Oh? Where are we going?”

“Switzerland.”

A week later Michael, Gina, and Hector stood on the cobblestones outside Kredit Spoerri Bank, new clothes, bodies banged up but clean. “I’m supposing,” Hector said, “that you have a reason for coming to this particular bank.”

Michael pulled from his pocket Lofton’s wallet. Choked with sand, among his FBI ID, driver’s license, and passport was a Kredit Spoerri business card for one Otto Spoerri.

“Herr Spoerri?” His secretary on the speaker box. Otto was pacing his office, glaring at his ancestors.

“I asked not to be disturbed.”

“You have three visitors.”

“What visitors?”

“They say they represent friends.”