No One Loves a Policeman (14 page)

Because of the position he held in C.P.F.—institutional relations manager or some such title—Edmundo had been asked to join the ranks of the N.G.O. aiming to transform all those workers without any hope of work into the spitting image of the New Man that the followers of Che Guevara had dreamed or hallucinated about in the '70s. The first contacts must have been formal, to sound each other out rather than to listen to worthy humanistic speeches about how, in order to save capitalism and western society, we ought to be paying more attention to the poor before they rise up and eat us raw.

This is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church that supported the
military dictators said, as did all those who financed the military adventures that have laid Argentina to waste. Nobody has a problem sounding off like this nowadays, despite the fact that thirty years earlier that kind of idea cost the lives of thousands of humble political and social activists and those who, dazzled by the thought of an armed socialist utopia, declared war on an army whose mission has always been to turn its weapons on its own people whenever called upon.

There was nothing odd, therefore, in the fact that an oil company chose to support those who said they were working on behalf of the dispossessed. Quite the contrary: newspapers, magazines and the T.V. are full of praise for these instances of “good” capitalism, whereas they castigate the ogres of the international lending agencies for coming up with adjustment plans that will steal the bread from the mouths of little orphans.

“Who is going to suspect that C.P.F. sets aside funds for the New Man not to feed the sparrows in the shanty town, but to buy and sell arms on the black market?”

This bald assertion of Wolf's had taken me aback more even than seeing Isabel's car go up in flames. They were only his suspicions after talking to his contacts in the dead of night, but they might at least explain why his bosses at the newspaper had taken such drastic measures against him. Nothing in what Wolf had published even hinted at what he had told me, but even so it had brought out the hemorrhoids on the dirty asses of those in charge at
La Tarde
. Although rumors of this kind are more common in newsrooms than coffee breaks, nobody is willing to print anything that could cause a stink. There is no analysis of what is going on, and still less reporting of it. The journalists are all far too worried about hanging on to their desks in their little compartments, making sure they live to enjoy the benefits and holidays they have worked so hard for.

“Poor guy,” I said to myself as I walked down the acacia-lined streets, taking in the intense perfume of jasmine wafting from houses with
gardens. Edmundo had spent most of his adult life in C.P.F. He had the classic career of an exemplary employee, from office junior to top manager. Thirty years of getting up at dawn, eating breakfast half asleep, rushing out to catch the 7:15 train, then spending the day between reinforced concrete walls that kept out the sun and rain, buried alive on one of the top floors of a building identical to thousands of others in cities all around the world, surrounded by zombies and transformed into a puppet just intelligent enough to accept the life he was living, an unbroken line drawn between youth and the moment when they gave him a couple of pats on the back and a gold medal for his loyalty to the company.

Nobody, not even Mónica, could have judged him for falling into temptation. Even if the apple he bit into was a shady business, a street with the unavoidable dead end. Not very different from the life he had been leading, except that in this case death caught up with him just when he thought he had found a way out, courtesy of a beautiful young woman.

“If he called you at midnight and asked you to come immediately, it was because he needed to confide in someone,” Wolf said, trying to see beyond the obvious. “Things were probably getting out of hand.”

“What could I have done?”

“I don't know, maybe he needed a front man, or a bodyguard …”

“Give me a break, Parrondo. I'm just a decrepit old animal, like Félix Jesús.”

“Who's Félix Jesús?”

“A decrepit old animal.”

I walked almost forty blocks through the warm spring night spiced with the scent of flowers and police sirens. As I had done so often over the past five years, from a public phone booth I dialed the only number I
could not wipe from my memory. I needed to hear a voice, to imagine that by saying a magic word I could recover the past, could retrace my steps like a little boy who runs away from home but as night falls starts to feel afraid and runs back to the maternal embrace.

You said hello, but then perhaps because it was so late or because of some strange music I could not hear but which pierced your soul, you said, yet again, “Please, please don't phone me any more.”

I hung up and wandered on, through more blind alleys in my labyrinth. “Don't phone me any more,” you said for the first time five years ago. “I don't want anything to do with a policeman.”

You had fallen in love with a toilet salesman and woke up when you heard all about my past in the National Shame. It was one night when we were drinking in a bar we used to go to where we could cling to each other for a few well-danced tangos. We were there, roused by the music and heading for bed, when fate, tired of shaking its tumbler, suddenly threw the dice and we lost it all.

The guy dancing with an old crone in a short skirt and red high-heels refused to get the point of me turning away when he lurched toward us and shouted: “Why, if it isn't Inspector Martelli … we've put away some crooks in our time, haven't we, eh? Tell her, tell my friend here, who we are.” He stopped dancing, leaving his partner to complete her twirls and then rush off, embarrassed, to the toilet, while my tiny world collapsed around me. Without a word, you turned and walked away, Mireya. Since then I have never plucked up the courage to tell you the truth, like a murderer forced to confess his crime before he can begin to explain it, explain why he aimed for the heart of the man or woman he hated, to explain that hatred, to explain why unreason is so much stronger than reason. I felt the same sense of shame as the old tart who had run to hide in the toilet, except that I stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the dance floor, having to listen to the guffaws of my drunken one-time colleague: “Let her go, Martelli, she doesn't deserve you. She'll never understand what we've been through together.”

I had handed in my gun when I was kicked out of the force, and never had another one until Isabel's snub-nosed .38 fell into my hands. That was the only thing that saved that idiot's life, defying me from the stinking bog he was drowning in, as though wanting me to kill him there and then, to put an end to his ghastly life. I was paralyzed by images that flashed through my mind like streaks of lightning in a storm, burning images of bodies tortured to the point of death, with this same man standing there, his whining voice deep in the jungle of desperate cries, complaining about going home late this night of all nights: “My boy's got an exam in the morning and asked me to help him.” He was saying this to a policeman who had joined the force because he had been promised the same as Edmundo when he first started at C.P.F.: you'll grow old without having to face death, you'll be protected, it's a life with all the support you need so you won't fall, even if you never learn to walk on your own. Not even that was true: death caught me out, it reached out and embraced me and I could never be free of it again. It had been with me ever since, and still was that night when yet again you hung up on me before I could say a word.

When finally I reached my apartment I was exhausted. The explosion, Wolf's revelations, my long walk, the telephone call like a distress flare in the darkness. To make matters worse, it was a full moon, and under its spell Félix Jesús had gone out to prowl on the rooftops.

I did not switch on the light. The silvery splendor of the moon through the living-room window bathed everything in brightness. I opened the fridge and poured myself a glass of milk to get rid of the acidity in my stomach. I drank it in small sips, trying to overcome my distaste. As I stood by the window I could see the silhouette of my cat on the ridge between my building and an old mansion that had been rebuilt and was now the Macedonian consulate. I have no idea whether
Macedonia is a country, a city, or one of those nightmares the world has woken up to after its Cold War sleep. Félix Jesús had no idea either, but he could not give a damn anyway, and perhaps the female he was pursuing was from there, perhaps she had crossed half of Europe and the Atlantic curled up in a diplomatic bag, just to meet him.

I poured the last quarter of my milk into Félix Jesús' bowl so that he could replenish his strength after his amorous adventures. I went to bed and had almost fallen asleep when the telephone rang.

I never answer the phone after midnight because blah, blah, blah…

Whoever it was rang off, then insisted a second time. I picked it up apprehensively, holding the receiver as far away as possible between my thumb and first finger, as if the call might not only be a threat, but be capable of carrying out that threat there and then. There was no sound at the other end, so I said hello.

“If you'd told me you had problems with wax in your ears, I could have syringed them for you.”

The music in the background suggested the doctor was out drinking, possibly in Pro Nobis. A woman's laughter confirmed my suspicions. The redhead, and the Swedish barman, too, no doubt.

“What are you doing up so late, Burgos—and with women?”

“I'm on duty, Don Gotán.”

“Why on earth does a forensic doctor have to be on duty? Are corpses in such a hurry to be cut up?”

“Nobody is really dead until they have their death certificate. Bureaucracy has spread so far it occupies spaces previously reserved for metaphysics, religious speculation, or any other science of uncertainty you care to mention.”

He lowered his voice, and it sounded muffled as he protected the mouthpiece with the palm of his hand, even though the techno music was so loud not even he could hear himself speak.

“I'm calling to tell you not to come. We're traveling instead.”

“Traveling where? And who is ‘we?'”

“Don't be dense, Don Gotán. Who did you meet in Bahía Blanca?”

I reeled off the names:

“A blond who doesn't travel any more, two police officers, one of whom owes me something for the going over he gave me in jail, and a forensic doctor who saved me from being locked up for something I didn't do.”

“The day after you left, another girl was found dead in one of those cheap motels on the outskirts of Bahía Blanca.”

“So why are you coming to Buenos Aires?”

“I'll explain tomorrow. Get some sleep now. I'm going to round up my passengers at first light and we'll set off then.”

He sounded as jolly about his journey as if he were going on holiday or to a picnic. I could just see him negotiating his sky-blue V.W. as fast as he could up Route 3, eyes half-closed against the bright sunlight and nursing the hangover he would have from the drinking he was doing in Pro Nobis.

“Take care,” I managed to say. “Not too fast, and take turns at the wheel.”

The doctor laughed at my concerns.

“Don't worry about us, Don Gotán. And polish up the obelisk for me.”

Provincials dream of finding an excuse to visit the city they hate the most: Buenos Aires.

This Goliath's head on a puny body is the favorite reason given for Argentina's eternal frustrations—when it is a provincial providing the
explanation. All the lifeblood, from the neck down, goes to feeding this megacephalic monster. This has been the case since the nineteenth century, when the Unitarians won the civil war against the Federalists. Then, as in every other war, it was not the good fighting the bad, but powerful leaders on one side confronting powerful leaders on the other, and using as their emissaries half-starving soldiers who, blinded since childhood by an enmity toward anyone who was different, had become warriors ready to lay down their lives for the fatherland, the flag, traditions, any of the symbols dragged out every time a people is called upon to tear itself to pieces.