Outlaws (13 page)

‘The day I’m talking about must have been a Monday or a Tuesday because there weren’t many people in the bar and Mondays and Tuesdays were slow days in the district. When we went in Hidalgo and I always carried on straight to the back, where we could get a good view of the whole place, and we stayed there while Vedette or her husband pressed the button that turned the red light on in the rooms and the girls moved away looking at us from the other end of the bar with the usual mixture of suspicion and indifference. We talked for a while with Vedette, and then I left her with Hidalgo and went to talk to three girls who were alone at the bar. The first two didn’t tell me anything out of the ordinary, but, after a few minutes of conversation, the third told me or led me to understand – or maybe it slipped out – that Zarco and his gang had spent a fortune in the place the previous Saturday night. I spoke to the first two girls again, who confirmed the story a bit reluctantly, and one of them added, probably to make up for her previous silence, that one of the kids had mentioned that he or someone from the gang or the whole gang had been in Lloret that afternoon. I went back to the bar and told the owner what her girls had told me; a little grimace gave her away: because it was in her interest, Vedette had always behaved very well towards us, but she was an astute woman and knew that information was power and liked to be the one who handled it and doled it out; in any case she immediately realized that she neither could nor should refute what her charges had said, so she had no choice but to confirm it, although she tried to play down Saturday’s orgy, assuring us that Zarco and the rest had spent much less money than the girls had claimed and denied having heard anything to do with Lloret.

‘The first thing I did when I got to the station the next morning was to ask whether there’d been any robberies in the city or province that we hadn’t heard about. Nobody knew anything, but Hidalgo, Mejía and I started making inquiries and soon found out that the Civil Guard in Lloret had received a complaint the previous day of a break-in at a bungalow in a housing development called La Montgoda. That’s how we connected one thing to the other. And that’s how I got my first suspicion that the gang we were looking for was Zarco’s gang. How do you like that?’

Chapter 7

‘It was at the beginning of August, not long after I slept with Tere on the Montgó beach, outside the Marocco, and it was like cresting a hill not least because from that moment on the gang was reduced almost by half. I’m talking about Guille’s death and the arrests of Chino, Tío and Drácula.

‘It happened at the same time as my parents went away on holiday. Until then I’d always gone with them, but I spent the month of July announcing to my mother that I was going to stay in Gerona with my sister and she and my father finally accepted it. My parents’ departure simplified things, because it allowed me to stop leading a double life – that of a
quinqui
with Zarco’s gang, that of a conventional teenager with my family – and to enjoy much more liberty than I’d ever enjoyed before. I don’t think my parents left without me calmly, but I don’t think they had much choice either, because at sixteen it was impossible to force me to go with them and on top of that they must have been more than fed up with the arguments, complaints, rude remarks and hostile silences, and maybe they thought it would do me good to spend a month apart from them. What my parents did try to do was keep me under control through my sister, although she wasn’t much help to them: as soon as I understood that they’d put her in charge of keeping an eye on me and keeping them informed, I threatened her, told her I knew a lot about her and that, if she told our parents anything I was up to, I’d do the same; of course, I was bluffing, I had no idea what kind of life my sister was leading and had not the slightest interest in finding out, but she didn’t know that and she did know I was serious, that I’d changed in that brief month and a half of summer and was no longer the fragile adolescent or faint-hearted little brother I used to be, and on account of that she had begun to fear my reactions, if not respect me. So she had no choice but to shut up and accept the blackmail.

‘I’m sure I don’t need to clarify that my parents’ departure affected me, not the gang; what affected the gang was, as I was saying, Guille’s death and Chino, Tío and Drácula’s arrest. The episode was pretty confusing, and I wasn’t involved, so what I’m going to tell you is not what happened but what I reconstructed after it happened. That afternoon Guille’s group didn’t even come into La Font; I knew they were up to something but I didn’t know exactly what, which was quite normal anyway, because normally only Zarco and Guille knew what we were all up to and the rest of us knew nothing or only knew about stuff once it had already happened. This ignorance wasn’t premeditated, a security measure or anything like that; it was just a symptom of our absolute subordination to Zarco and Guille, proof that, in the hierarchy of the group, those of us who weren’t Zarco and Guille were no more than extras. The thing is that Guille and his group had planned a robbery in a village near Figueras that afternoon and the robbery went wrong because, as we began to learn that night and as was related in the newspapers the next day, while Guille and Drácula were inside the house the owner and two of his sons showed up firing hunting rifles and scared them away. Everything would have ended at that if some neighbours, alerted by the gunshots, hadn’t called the police and if not for the coincidence that there was a milk cart, which is what we called the white Seat 131s of the police fleet, nearby; these two things meant that, when our guys pulled out onto the main road fleeing the failed robbery, they practically crashed into the cop car and a full-speed chase ensued that ended a few kilometres further on, when Tío took the curve of the Bàscara bridge too fast and lost control of the Seat 124 they were in, and the car flipped over several times before going over the railings and falling into the river. Guille got stabbed in the sternum with the gear stick and died instantly; Tío, Chino and Drácula survived, although Tío broke his spinal column in several places and was left a quadriplegic.

‘The days following the accident were very strange. None of us went to Guille’s funeral or visited the injured guys in hospital or showed any concern for them or their families (only some time later Tere did); actually, everything went on as if that catastrophe hadn’t happened, except for the fact that for three days we were sort of dormant, we even stopped stealing cars, and people in the district and at Rufus bombarded us with questions and the secret police interrogated us several times. But between ourselves, as far as I remember, we barely mentioned the accident, or we only mentioned it in a neutral and dispassionate way as if it had nothing to do with us. I don’t have any explanation for that either. Perhaps it was all a pose, or we were like punch-drunk boxers, or in reality the accident and its consequences overwhelmed us, and that’s why we talked so little about it. You could say that, but I’m not sure it’s true.

‘What is true is that the incident changed everything. I remember very well how the change began. One afternoon, after about four or five days of total paralysis, Zarco, Gordo and Colilla went into a villa at La Fosca beach, between Calella and Palamós, while I stood guard by the door, and they came out of there with an armour-plated safe they could barely carry between the three of them; and we put it in the trunk and tried to open it in an empty field, but we quickly realized we wouldn’t be able to without help and took it to the General’s house. The expression on the General’s face changed when we told him what we had in the car and he told us to leave the safe in the yard and then asked us to wait there. We waited there, accompanied or guarded by the General’s wife, who came in and out of the yard in silence, with her grey hair and grey housecoat and vague eyes. The General came straight back. With him came two men carrying two toolboxes. After examining the safe, the men took out some safety goggles, gloves and a pair of blowtorches and got to work. An hour later they’d destroyed the lock and opened the safe.

‘The General saw the two men out. As he did so we looked through the safe: inside were stacks of files full of documents and a gold ring with a precious stone set in it. When he came back out of the house, the General found his wife examining the gemstone against the light. When she saw him, the woman rubbed the stone against her housecoat, as if she’d sullied it and wanted to shine it up again, and then she handed it to Gordo, who in turn handed it to Zarco, who in turn handed it to the General. How much do you want for this? the General asked Zarco, after studying the ring and gem carefully. Nothing, said Zarco. The General looked at him with distrust. I don’t want cash, Zarco clarified. I want hardware. The General’s expression went from distrust to incredulity; I looked at Gordo and Colilla and realized they were as perplexed as the General or, for that matter, as I was: Zarco hadn’t said a word to them about weapons either. The General looked sceptical, scratched his sideburns and said: What happened to Guille has upset you, son. Zarco smiled and shrugged, although he didn’t say anything; his silence was his way of insisting, or that’s how the General took it, and he added: I don’t have weapons: you should know that. Yeah, I know, said Zarco. But you can get some if you want. The General asked: What do you want them for? What’s it to you?, Zarco replied softly; and just as softly asked: Do you want it or not? If yes, fine; if not, fine too: I’ll find someone who does. Before the General could reply something nobody expected happened: his wife intervened in the discussion. Get them for him, she said. We all looked at her; standing between us and the General, the woman had her hands hanging down at her sides and, with her blind-woman’s eyes, she seemed not to be looking at anyone or to be looking at us all at once. It was the first time I’d heard her speak and her voice sounded cold and piercing, like the tyrannical voice of a spoiled child. After a moment of silence she repeated: Get them for him. Have you gone crazy too?, the General asked then. What if they turn us in? Can’t you see they’re just little kids and that . . . ? They’re not kids, his wife cut him off. They’re men. As much as you are. Or more. They won’t turn us in. Give them guns. Indecisive or furious, the General put the gem in his shirt pocket, walked over to his wife, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the back of the yard; there they stayed for a while, whispering (the General was gesturing, as well), and then both of them went inside the house and a short time later the General came out alone. What do you need?, he asked briskly. Not much, replied Zarco. A pistol and a couple of sawn-off shotguns. That’s a lot, said the General. That’s a lot less than the stone’s worth, Zarco replied. The General only thought for a second. All right, he said. Come by tomorrow afternoon and they’ll be here. Before we could consider the deal done he looked at each of the four of us one by one and said: One last thing. It’s a message from my wife. She’s asked me to tell you just once and I’m only going to say it once: anyone who lets it out is dead.

‘The next day the General presented us with a long-barrelled 9mm Star pistol, two homemade sawn-off shotguns, a couple of magazines and a couple of boxes of ammunition. That same afternoon we spent several hours shooting at empty tin cans in a forest in Aiguaviva, and two days later we held up a grocer’s shop in Sant Feliu de Guíxols at gunpoint. The takings were scant, but the job was safe and comfortable, because the shopkeeper was so startled that he offered no resistance and didn’t even report the robbery to the police. I don’t know if our first armed robbery made us think that they’d all be very easy; if it did, the illusion didn’t last long at all.

‘Two days later we tried to rob a gas station on the way to Barcelona, near Sils. The plan was simple. It consisted of Zarco and Tere going into the station and pointing their guns at the guy behind the counter while Gordo and I waited outside, with the engine running, ready to drive out at full speed as soon as they came out with the money; the car, incidentally, was a Seat 124, which was the car we started to use systematically for our hold-ups because it was fast and powerful and easy to handle, and didn’t attract attention.

‘The plan was simple, but it went wrong. As soon as we stopped at the gas station, Zarco and Tere got out and started filling up the tank; meanwhile, Gordo and I stayed in the car, watching as two men waited to pay at the cash register inside the glass-walled station shop, and, when the second man finished paying and left, Gordo gave a signal to Zarco who gave a signal to Tere and they both pulled stockings over their heads at the same time, got out the guns – Zarco the Star and Tere a sawn-off shotgun – and walked into the glass-walled shop aiming them at the proprietor. I saw it all from inside the car, holding my breath beside Gordo, clutching the other shotgun and keeping one eye on the entrance to the gas station and the other on the glass-walled shop: through the huge windows I saw how the owner of the station raised his arms, how then, slowly, he lowered them and how, when he’d lowered them already, he made a strange quick movement. Then there was the thunder of a gunshot followed by a muffled swearword from Gordo, I looked at Gordo and then I looked back at the shop, but now I couldn’t see anything or I only saw shattered glass. A couple of seconds later Zarco and Tere rushed into the car and Gordo pulled away and skidded out through the entrance to take the highway in the direction of Blanes, while in the back seat Zarco explained, swearing his head off, that the money wasn’t where they’d expected it to be or where it should have been and that the owner of the gas station had tried to grab the pistol and in the struggle, while Tere shouted threats at the man, the gun had gone off and the shot shattered the window. Now we were speeding as fast as possible down the main highway, Zarco and Tere seemed calm in the back seat (or maybe it’s just that I was so nervous in the front seat) and, as we got further away from the gas station, Gordo began to ease off a bit on the accelerator, until after a little while, when we were almost going normal speed and the four of us were beginning to feel that the fright had passed, he said, looking in the rear-view mirror: We’re being followed.