Holy City (29 page)

Nobody had ever told him he was meant to be a jolly good fellow. That is what they are singing to him now, roaring with laughter, God knows when they started celebrating. “Here comes Oso Berlusconi, switch the light off, he's almost here,” the whisper ran round all of them gathered there, most of whom could no longer remember why they came out to this mansion, brought here by someone who in his turn obeys others higher up than him and so on up the pyramid, the tip of which is lost in thick, dark, inaccessible clouds.

They look like an Italian family from a film about the Mafia. Some of them probably are
mafiosi
, born on both sides of the Atlantic, in Balvanera, Argentina or in Sicily, in Corsica or San Telmo. The older ones proud of their origins in the worst neighborhoods, boasting
about childhoods stunted by misery—stealing food in the post-war years, empty pockets, wallets with more pictures of people killed in combat than banknotes—among unemployed passengers on trams and buses in Rome, Turin, Naples and Milan.

But those are the patriarchs, the ones dying a natural death, who grow nostalgic and reminisce about their memories of the war, disguising their age in the remote past, a hideout from time where they can protect their decadence and prepare to die.

They would not have condemned Oso Berlusconi for the kind of mistake he made that night. They know, because once upon a time they fought against powerful enemies, that all wars are fought blindly, that there is never enough time. Still less second chances. As soon as they heard of the massacre, the patriarchs came out in defense of Oso. “It was an ambush,” they said. “Oso knows what he's doing, but he was betrayed.”

“We've been talking a lot about your performance last night, Oso.”

By now they have finished singing and drinking glasses of the best champagne, its bubbles like golden gems, although Oso did not manage to get any. Now the man at the head of the table is asking them all to be quiet—“or did you not see that Oso is here?”

It is an old, very old estate. It belonged to a patrician with one of those double- or triple-barreled surnames you see today as the names of streets or avenues in the most elegant neighborhoods. The original owner benefited from the handout of land the military who conquered the desert rewarded themselves with after they had cleared it of the filthy, ragged, smelly and barbarous indians living there. Of the many chieftains calling for vengeance, the extravagant gods of capitalism must have listened to some Pampa or Tehuelche chief. Decadence is a kind of justice, administered without meaning to by the unjust. And the selfishness of the descendants, who turned on each other when there was no-one else to destroy, and who ended up serving the banquet at the
mafiosi's
family table.

The new owners stored away the fine furniture made by French craftsmen, smashed all the Italian glassware in nights when it rained alcohol, and vomited all over rugs imported from Iran in the days when it was known as Persia and the Yankees were betting on Rehza Palevi's eternal life. There are too many of these newcomers, and they are as barbarous as the Tehuelches and the Pampas. They even have their chieftain.

“We've brought you here for you to tell us what happened last night, Oso,” says this chieftain. He has managed to obtain silence and is stroking a Rottweiler, one of those dogs that every so often eat a child, then lick their lips and wag their tail. “But obviously we don't want to hear the nonsense that appeared in the press. We want the truth. Even if it's painful, Oso, even if after you've finished telling us what really happened we find it unbearable.”

The Rottweiler growls, licking its whiskers with its long, red tongue. Its jowls are covered in saliva; it is as if he is the one Oso has to justify himself to because he does not take his eyes off him.

*

So as not to startle her, he did not use the entry phone. He wanted to warn her a few minutes ago, a couple of blocks before he arrived, but Verónica's mobile is off and nobody replies on his land line.

He has to admit to himself that he is not sure what to do. It has been years since he had any women in his home, he has not even had a home: what little that has happened to him has all taken place outside, in the street, in other people's houses—although most often nothing happens, simply meetings, words, sex without caresses.

Sometimes, Carolina is with him. But who is Carolina? Nothing, nobody, loneliness without caresses. Besides, he is never at home, always in darkened bars, other people's faces, a mask covering the exhausting chaos that is his memory.

So he preferred to go upstairs like this, silently, without a word. By
the time he gets to the corridor, then comes to a halt outside the door to his apartment, he already knows Verónica is not alone. It is his cop instinct, what makes him a moving target in the sights of thieves, murderers, drug traffickers, work colleagues.

Even so he opens the door. It is not that he is confident about what he will find, more an inertia he does not have the strength to resist. Before he sees her, he knows it is her from the cheap perfume she covers herself in, the one she is so proud of because she says it attracts men. They fall at her feet and all she has to do is humiliate them a little more, to gain control of them slowly, not violently the way she did with Verónica. She has forced her down onto her knees to receive their visitor. Later she will have to slit her throat and then eat her head.

Carroza stares down at the tip of the barrel of his .38, so intently that the rest of the room is a blur. He knows it is her, because of the perfume, the voice, the disappointment she never bothers to hide whenever they meet.

“I told you not to open for anyone,” he reproaches Verónica, before he lowers his weapon and allows Miss Bolivia to throw her arms round him.

It is not her. Or in any case it is a force she cannot control, an uncontrollable chemical reaction that alters her cell by cell until she does not recognize herself. Even her voice sounds strange when she tells the taxi driver the address, says it's urgent and that she'll pay him double if they get there in half the time.

“I'm working, lady, and I have to respect the regulations,” the driver protests, but accelerates all the same. It is late on a Sunday night, the avenues are almost empty apart from a few groups of Boca fans wandering down the center in their T-shirts, carrying banners and drums they are no longer playing, on their way home after celebrating victory away to River Plate. “Hooligans,” the taxi driver shouts scornfully.

What is she doing? She does not know Ana Torrente and could perfectly well go on living without ever meeting her. Who or what is she obeying, then?

Five minutes down Tacuarí heading south, speeding through junctions where by some miracle they do not collide with any other vehicle. It is as if the taxi driver has been taken over by the same force that leads him to forget all about regulations. From time to time he casts a quick glance into his rearview mirror, as if to reassure himself his passenger is still there, has not got out or vanished into thin air.

“Is someone sick?” he ventures to ask as he slows up for a red light, looking right and left before accelerating again. Laucha does not answer. She does not hear him, apart from a low murmur, sees only a distant blur rather than the driver's face. The only thing she sees clearly is that she has to get there as quickly as possible, even though she is sitting there unrecognizable to herself, with a voice, a body that is not hers, filled with memories of a world in which she has never been. “Here we are. That will be eighteen pesos times two: that makes thirty-six. But I'll settle for twenty, I don't like to take advantage.”

She gives him thirty and the world keeps turning. The taxi driver cannot decide whether to thank or insult her; he thinks it must be urgent, there is a sick person about to pass over, something serious that can explain why he has to humiliate himself and pick up the banknotes Laucha has tossed on the floor of the taxi before getting out without so much as a thank-you or good night.

*

He removes Verónica's gag with the steady hand of a surgeon removing stitches. She does not shout or make any reproaches, merely gives a dry cough out of pure anxiety. Her eyes burn into his face.

“Romano trusted you so much,” she says at length.

Carroza says nothing. He cannot bear her look and turns to watch the street through the curtainless window.

“She's here,” he says.

He steps back from the window so that Laucha will not spot him. She is studying a piece of paper, making sure it is the right address. She has never been here before, nobody has ever been to any of the lairs he chooses at random in the nameless city only he inhabits.

“Don't hurt her,” says Verónica. She knows who is coming because she heard Miss Bolivia talking to her, although she has yet to understand why. “What are you after, what do you two want from us?”

Verónica knows there are no answers to her questions. When someone is in control of a situation, a country, the tiniest piece of hell, then there are never any answers. At most there are orders, which can be contradicted if things go wrong. But no remorse.

Carroza's mobile throbs again at his back. Veronica watches as he moves away, whispers something forcefully into it. Skeleton man is so sure of himself it as if he knows every single one of the supposed laws that control the universe.

“We're leaving,” he says to Ana when he gets off the phone.

“What do you mean, ‘we're leaving'? What about them?”

The entry phone buzzes.

“Open the door for her. You take care of her; I'll wait for you in the car.”

He slips out of the apartment before Miss Bolivia can protest. He passes Laucha on the dark stairway. She thinks she recognizes him but cannot be sure. Carroza does not pause, but plunges on head down, his eyes and soul heaven knows where.

He leaves the building and jumps into the Renault parked the wrong
way by the opposite pavement. He switches the engine on and waits. Five minutes later Ana comes out. She is carrying her high-heeled shoes in one hand and seems to float across the street like a ghost. Carroza has already opened the car door for her, so she settles alongside him without a word.

“I hope you didn't hurt her,” says Carroza.

“I don't hurt anyone. I leave the pain and blood to the Jaguar.”

It is not for nothing they call him the Bear. There have to be a lot of them to take him on, to surround him like this. The ten men all have their guns trained on Oso, who stands there without moving in the center of the circle, staring at them one by one, memorizing their faces. All ten of them know that even if they pour bullets into him, Oso's body has so much violence within it, in his past, that it is impossible to deactivate it like that.

At his feet lies a pool of blood, with the lifeless Rottweiler almost floating in it. Oso crushed its head with a single kick, almost without glancing at it. The dog must have come too close without meaning to, perhaps it was even hoping he would stroke it: violence is a magnet, a centripetal force.

“Dogs like him are very expensive. And affectionate in their own way,” the chief complains. He is sitting a couple of meters outside the circle of men training their guns on Oso. “He was guarding you, Oso, and much better than any of these thugs.”

The weapons sprouted in the ten men's hands as soon as Oso smashed his boot into the dog's skull. The Rottweiler did a somersault, like a trapeze artist launching himself into mid-air only to discover the next trapeze is nowhere to be found. It crashed to the floor and the blood flowed out as it gave a last few spasms.

“So what do we have?” the chief goes on, not looking at anyone in particular. He is comfortable in a big armchair that must once have been used by some rich guy with two surnames to read the property section in
La Nación
, the social pages devoted to other rich guys like him who were “resting at home” following their return by ship from Europe, weary, old, the decrepit scions of a society proud of having exterminated its young.

“We have an international scandal,” he says, and his voice is the only sound in this vast room in the mansion, the stale atmosphere filled with agitated breathing, submissive silences. “France, Germany, Italy … incredible what the stupidity of a mindless cop can achieve, a crisis that must be on the lips of the entire United Nations, the Security Council and all the European parliaments.”

Oso stares at the dog, as lifeless as he is inside. If any of the armed men around him makes a move, if a single finger tightens on a trigger, Oso is going to be aware of it even before it happens. They all know this and none of them wants to be the first, because they are all afraid they will be the last.

“Everyone in the Western world has their eyes on us,” says the chief. “On the police in a banana republic in the south of Latin America. Police who are clumsy, inept, corrupt, unable to take care of their visiting citizens.”

“Somebody betrayed me.”

Three words from Oso, who until then had seemed prepared not to say a thing, at least until after he was dead.

“You wouldn't be alive if I didn't know that,” says the chieftain of this tribe of crooks, usurpers in this setting where the noblest oligarchs once comfortably glided. “What did you expect? That those who hate you most would be faithful to you? That those who want to make an example of you to conceal their own crimes would make a hero of you?”

“The minister promised me his support.”

“I couldn't give a shit about the minister, Oso, and the minister feels
the same way about you and all the rest of us. No dog, not even the one you've just killed, bites the hand that feeds it. But ministers do, Oso.”

“There must be a traitor.”