Mapuche (37 page)

“Well, are you going to play?” El Toro shouted from the terrace.

“No!”

The pilot was grumbling under the line of pine trees that bordered the watercourse. The mosquitoes were attacking in the twilight, and he was upset by the idea that he might lose Linda—what an ass she had!! A taxi-boat had passed by earlier, too far from the dock to see them, raising a few little sluggish waves along the riverbank. It was the first boat that had gone by for two days. A really remote place.

“
Puta madre
,” El Toro yelled, his cards in his hand, “it's no fun playing two-handed Truco!”

“Yeah!”

It was hot on the shady terrace. The fat man turned to his partner and jeered:

“I've got an idea!” He threw the pack of cards on the table. “Come with me!”

El Picador got up without asking what the idea was and followed his friend toward the wooden house. Gianni Del Piro was spraying his clothes with the only mosquito repellent sold in the country when the two men reappeared on the terrace. They had brought the prisoner out of the bedroom, a tranny who couldn't stand up; they were carrying him at arm's length.

Miguel Michellini's eyeliner had run over his eyelids, which blinked when he saw the evening sun through the branches. Del Piro stiffened on his armchair: they had
untied
him.

“Fuck, what are you doing?” he snapped at them, twisting around.

“Ha, ha, ha!”

El Toro was laughing in the transvestite's face. The poor fellow had cried a lot when he'd beaten him. El Picador had not deigned to get involved, leaving the ladyboy to his colleague, who had in fact enjoyed himself—Miguel's wedding gown was still covered with blood.

“Let's go, sweetie,” El Toro spluttered, “come play with us.”

They lifted up the marionette and dropped him heavily on the chair. Miguel groaned in pain and clutched the edge of the table. His torturers reminded him of those Komodo dragons that devour their prey alive, in a pack, those disgusting beasts whose bites poison the blood of their victims, who are then doomed. The monsters. They had kept his face intact in order to make it up—a transvestite was sort of like a Barbie doll!—and to have fun they'd smeared him with shit. It had dried on the livid little runt's cracked cheeks.

El Toro blew his beer breath on him.

“How about a little game of cards, Madonna?”

Miguel felt tears welling up in his crusted eyes.

“Get fucked, you filthy pig.”

“Ho, ho, ho! Did you hear that? Did you hear him, the rebel?”

El Picador, playing his role, limited himself to a faint smile. His buddy stood up, excited.

“Deal the cards, I'll be right back.”

Del Piro shook his head and waved his arms wildly to drive away the mosquitoes that were assailing him; he hadn't been present during these “work sessions,” but he had heard the little homo's piercing screams. The pilot was expecting the worst, and he was not disappointed. El Toro soon returned to the terrace, a basin in his big hands. It was obviously full of shit.

El Picador, who had dealt the cards as Miguel watched with his haggard eyes, sat back in his chair.

“It's fresh!” El Toro laughed.

He put the disgusting basin on the table, delighted with his trick. Miguel looked away to avoid the stench, while the big guy put on his dishwashing gloves.

“Hold him on the chair!”

El Picador grabbed the poor fellow.

“What the fuck are you doing, for God's sake,” Del Piro growled, spraying himself with mosquito repellent. “You're going to destroy him.”

“Don't worry about it! We're going to cook him! Ha, ha, ha!”

Miguel no longer had the strength to resist, hardly enough to spit in their faces. He had told them what he knew, and didn't understand why they were keeping him alive, why they were tormenting him. He closed his eyes while they smeared shit on his face.

The odor of excrement reached as far as the dock.

“Jesus, you guys are really swine!” Del Piro said, not budging from his chair.

El Toro was creating a sculpture
in vivo
, encouraged by the ironic laughter of his acolyte.

The pilot sighed—these guys were making him sick—and headed for the house. They could go fuck themselves with their scatological madness: he would telephone Linda while they were busy, just two minutes, long enough to sweet-talk her—with a little luck and talent, he might be able to calm her erotic fury . . . As night fell, mosquitoes and moths were banging against the kitchen windows. The last thing Gianni Del Piro saw was three men sitting around a card table, a scrawny transvestite, with cards stuck to his face covered with shit, and two men in their forties laughing at him.

“Your turn, Madonna!”

 

Parise called that same night. The Campallo girl hadn't said that she was pregnant when they tortured the transvestite kidnapped with her as they came out of the tango club. Calderón knew that. Who could have told him except the kid's father? Three months pregnant, according to the information Eduardo Campallo had revealed on the morning he committed suicide. Parise finally had a trail to follow. And the timing helped.

The Grandmothers had set up a crisis committee at the association's office. They remained absolutely discreet regarding the goal of their research, reduced their communications to a minimum, and postponed meetings indefinitely for reasons of health, but the headquarters was a beehive of activity. The bits of paper Rubén had brought them were like the Greek fragments of the pre-Socratics, but the Grandmothers had begun by entering the legible names into their database. Drawing on the files of civilian and military hospitals, archives, court records, and reports, they worked in teams to find dozens of connections, often dubious, to verify the leads. Samuel and Gabriella Verón, the parents who had disappeared, did not appear in either the Durán hospital's DNA bank or their files, which suggested that no member of their families had claimed their bodies. Had their loved ones also been swept away by the state machinery? If the DNA of the bones Rubén had dug up corresponded to that of María and Miguel, then they could bring the case before a judge, demand protection for the witnesses, unmask Eduardo Campallo and his wife as
apropriadores
, and expose the people who were trying so hard to hush up this affair.

Campallo's suicide, which they had just learned about, pulled the rug out from under them.

The servants in the house in Belgrano being on vacation, it was Campallo's wife Isabel who had found the body in the early morning. Eduardo was lying on his desk chair, a bullet in his head, the gun still hanging from his hand. Isabel had immediately called 911, but he had put the barrel against his temple and the bullet had blown away his frontal lobes. Her husband had died instantly. He had left no suicide note, but traces of gunpowder, fingerprints, and burns showed that he had pulled the trigger. Since the pistol, a Browning, belonged to him—he had a permit—there was little doubt that he had committed suicide. The elections were approaching, and his death was a hard blow for Francisco Torres, the mayor, who lost both a friend and one of his main financial supports.

For Rubén and the Grandmothers, it was their number one witness who had disappeared. One more.

The detective had a long discussion with the Grandmothers and Carlos as they drove toward the Andes. Since there had still been no response from the pilot's cell phone, the hope of finding Miguel Michellini alive was decreasing. Campallo's death forced them to revise their battle plan, but another character in the drama had just reappeared: Franco Díaz.

The Grandmothers had done research based on the name and the photo of the passport Anita Barragan had sent them. They had a file on the man from Colonia, which Elena had sent to her son's BlackBerry.

Franco Díaz, born August 11, 1941, in Córdoba. Military training in Panama (1961-1964), served at Santa Cruz, Mendoza, then Buenos Aires. Joined the SIDE, the Argentine intelligence service, in 1979. A black hole until 1982 and the Falklands War: a liaison officer in a helicopter unit, Díaz was decorated—his squad had taken possession of the island by capturing the handful of sleeping English troops who were holding the place. At the trial of the generals in 1986, he testified in support of General Bignone, one of those most to blame for the Falklands fiasco, and also suspected of having destroyed the archives concerning the
desaparecidos
before leaving power. Emigrated to Uruguay in the late 1980s. Retired, Franco Díaz received an army pension and had never again been heard from.

A hero of the Falklands War, a man who was in theory unassailable. An agent close to Bignone, Díaz had been able to keep the ESMA file incriminating Campallo. For what purpose? To sell it to his paperazzo neighbor in order to create an unprecedented scandal? Why would Díaz have decided to torpedo a man associated with his former employers? To take revenge? On whom? On Eduardo Campallo or someone else mentioned in this document? The photo sent to Rubén's BlackBerry dated from the time of the trial, in 1986, but Anita had duplicated the photo in his passport: Díaz hadn't changed much—the same man with an indifferent face, dull eyes under his bald head. Ferreted out in Colonia, the former SIDE agent had gone back to Argentina. Rubén still didn't know whether he was trying to sell or deliver the original document to a third person, but if Díaz took the risk of returning to the scene of the crime, he might lead them straight to the person running the show.

The tankers were followed by semis on the main highway. Jana was concentrating on her driving, the windshield covered with orangish dust blown down from the Andes. They had picked up the Hyundai at the garage in Uspallata and since then had been taking turns at the wheel, stopping hardly at all. The miles rolled by, monotonous; after the stress of the police roadblocks at the provincial borders, the night spent in the desert seemed almost distant. Rubén dozed, his head resting against the side window, exhausted by the hot day, or meditated, his mind full of steaming equations. Jana kept an eye on the rearview mirror, lost in her thoughts. Something had happened during that night: one of the most important events in her life. Why was she so sad? So sad and so happy? The fire that was burning her could drive her mad, she felt it boiling in every pore of her skin, her dirty Indian skin that the
winka
had thrown to the dogs. “Who kills the dogs when the leash is too short?” They would be free. Soon.

The sun was flooding the plains. The Mapuche put her hand out the open window to absorb a bit of coolness, then put it back on Rubén's knee and let it sizzle. He was asleep.

Buenos Aires, 215 miles.

 

*

 

Jo Prat had played all night even though he could hardly breathe. These outdoor concerts gave him terrible colds, and even the hieratic calls of the trio of groupies piling up their breasts at the foot of the microphone had left him cold. Drenched with sweat in his tight leather outfit, the asthma attack came over him as he left the stage. Get out of there. Get away from all these people who held his past glory against him.

Prat inhaled two sprays of Ventolin and quietly left the festival through the VIP exit. He had no appetite for sex this evening, and still less for talking to people he didn't know: he took another hit of Ventolin, the third, to ward off the approaching asthma attack. Maybe he was getting old, or he'd given all he had, abused drugs too much, whatever, he dreamed only of getting back to his hotel room, a somewhat antiquated, calm little suite in the upscale neighborhood of Belgrano, where no one would recognize him: he'd take a shower and sleep with the air conditioning turned off until the cold went away.

Living in a hotel was the only luxury that suited him. Calderón and his witness had been hiding out in his flat for several days, but beneath his sovereign airs, the dandy had been shaken by María Victoria's death. The poor little thing. Who would have believed it? Jo was sick about it. Even if the photographer had not told him he was the father (María wanted a baby more than a husband), she was carrying a bit of him in her belly, and she hadn't chosen him at random. Her portrait dominated his loft, and that was after all a proof of gratitude if not of love. Jo had promised the detective a bonus if he discovered the truth regarding the circumstances of her death: Calderón hadn't reported anything, but he had confidence in him—this guy looked as furious as his songs had been back in the day.

Jo Prat sniffled, his head down, his hands in the pockets of his leather pants. He'd gotten past the various barriers, his Sesame badge around his neck. A half-moon escorted him out of Lezama Park. He was thinking about María, about the baby who had died with her, when a pedestrian who was coming toward him stopped.

“Jo Prat?” the stranger asked.

The rocker looked up: a giant with pocked skin was standing in front of him, a bald man about sixty who was going to great lengths to appear friendly. A stranger was always a pain in the ass.

“Sorry,” Prat said, “I'm in a hurry.”

“The Campallo girl, was she your girlfriend?” the man asked with a fishy smile.

A leaden weight fell on the musician's shoulders. The man who'd come up to him seemed definitely unpleasant.

“If you're a journalist, tell your readers that I have nothing to say.” He coughed. “The same if you're a cop.”

He tried to start down the lane but the colossus blocked his way.

“You're the one who knocked her up, huh?” the man continued with an aggressive familiarity.

“Are you deaf? I have nothing to say to you, O.K.?”

“Three months along,” the man went on. “I checked the dates on her site: you were on tour together when she got pregnant. You're the father of her kid. María Campallo's little pal who informed Calderón.”

Parise had seen this face at the photographer's home when he cleaned the apartment, the black-and-white prints she'd hung on a string like trophies. He couldn't make the connection with the moment of the kidnapping, but before he died, Campallo had revealed things about his daughter that had put a bug in his ear . . . The rocker scowled.