Sweet Money (10 page)

 

In the meantime, Giribaldi opens the drawer, unfolds an orange flannel cloth, takes out a wooden box, places it on the desk and opens it. Inside lies a black Glock 17 with its Storm Lake barrel and its magazine with seventeen rounds. Next to it he places the cleaning kit with its bronze brushes, cleaning rag and the little bottle of lubricant, which is almost empty. He places the pistol on the flannel cloth. He presses the button that releases the magazine, removes all the bullets and lines them up one by one as if they were toy soldiers. He draws back the slide and makes sure no bullet is left in the chamber. He removes the barrel and the slide exposing the recoil spring assembly. With a watchmaker’s screwdriver he pushes down the plastic spacer. He puts on his reading glasses. The next step requires enormous care because the spring is being held at maximum tension. When he disengages the safety catch it might shoot toward his face. It could easily take out an eye. This is not a toy,
it is a killing machine and this condition is present in every one of its mechanisms. Giri manipulates the spring clip with great precision. He removes the hammer, then the trigger housing with the ejector, then presses down and holds the small silver safety button. He turns the extractor until he can remove it from the slide, then disengages the safety catch. He lines up all the pieces and looks at this orderly array. One drop of sweat falls off his forehead and draws a big yellow sun on the orange cloth. At this moment it is an innocent mechanism, incapable of causing harm. If someone attacked him right now, he would be unable to defend himself, for the individual parts pose no danger at all. Freed from its internal tensions, it is nothing more than a collection of greased metal parts designed to fit together perfectly. With great care he dips the tiny brushes in the cleaning solvent and goes over each piece thoroughly. He lubricates the moving parts then removes all the excess oil with the rag. Now comes the part he likes best. He pauses for a moment to memorize the exact location of each and every cleaned and oiled piece on the flannel cloth, starts the stopwatch on his wrist, closes his eyes and reassembles the pistol at top speed. He opens his eyes, looks at his watch – eighteen seconds – and smiles. He picks up the magazine and places it on the table. He polishes the bullets one by one before loading them. When he’s done, he inserts the magazine into the receiver in one energetic movement. Even though a pistol never loses its power to intimidate, it’s only when it is assembled and loaded that it takes on its full destructive capability. He grips it, then points it at the heads of the people in the pictures one by one: General Saint Jean handing him his
diploma; his father; himself as a cadet; Maisabé dressed for her first communion; Aníbal at the beach with his sour face. The weapon feels light and strong, powerful. He cocks it, it’s ready to shoot; this is the decisive moment, the tiniest movement of his middle finger resting on the sensitive trigger is all that separates whoever dares defy or disobey him from eternity. The only real power is that of life or death over other people.

He hears the elevator arrive, the doors open, the key being inserted into the lock. Aníbal walks by his door and says hello without looking at him. Three seconds later, Maisabé is standing in the doorway. The Glock is resting on Giri’s lap, where his wife cannot see it.

 

 

As she enters the kitchen, she has an attack of silent rage against her husband. The remains of a ham sandwich on the kitchen counter has turned into a restless mass of ravenous ants. Maisabé hates these industrious and tiny insects that, in all the years they’ve lived in this apartment, they’ve never managed to exterminate. She picks up a small pot, turns on the hot water tap and places the pot under it. With a familiar groan, the flames of the instant hot-water heater spread a blue hue over her movements, and as the pipes heat up the water they emit a painful cry. While the pot fills with water she observes the ants carrying their crumbs, rushing to and from the
food, crossing paths, stopping briefly, as if to chat. They are ruled by an orderly frenzy. She places the pot next to the edge of the counter and, using a kitchen towel, pushes the sandwich and the ants into the pot. The insects stop moving the second they touch the hot water. She, on the other hand, can touch it without getting burnt very much at all. She throws the water and the dead ants down the sink, picks up the remains of the wet bread and ham and throws it in the trash can. The hot water streaming out of the tap washes the cadavers down the drain, and the yellow rag finishes up those who are dispersed and disoriented, dazed. One last ant crawls around the counter in circles. Maisabé looks at it and, once it finally decides on a direction, smashes it with her thumb, the exoskeleton making a cracking sound as it breaks. She looks at the remains, the internal organs squished on her fingertip, and she is tempted to put it in her mouth. Instead, she rinses it off under the water. She takes out the cutting board and places a slab of meat on it. She picks up the wood meat pounder and brings it down on the meat, watching as the small veins break apart and the meat fibres bleed.

Her mind travels to a future after Giribaldi is dead, Aníbal has left and Roberto…
who knows?
She imagines herself alone in the world, alone in life, making the first, only, and last free choice: to swallow an entire bottle of sleeping pills. In her mind’s eye she sees herself as an old woman, lying down on her bed to die. She sees herself dead. The ants, in patient procession, come to devour her. Her body will be communion for those indefatigable creatures whose only god is hunger. By the time someone finds her, there will be nothing left
but bare bones; her flesh will have become part of that despicable army of obedient and minuscule beings who will remain in the house to torment its next residents as they have tormented her. In the end, the ants will be the victors, no matter how many she kills.

14

Alone. Lost. Confused. Wandering the streets. Surrounded by rushing strangers. Pursued. Hunted. Dressed as a construction worker and carrying a bag loaded with disorderly bundles of dollar bills. Trying to catch his breath, to calm down. Trying, without success, to quiet the wild beating of his heart, which is making him dizzy. Gasping for breath. The sirens of the police cars bounce off the buildings full of respectable white-collar workers. The adrenaline courses through his blood, prevents him from thinking, readies him for only fight or flight. Rage clouding his vision. His awareness that this state of mind is his perdition. Just when he feels his last edge of sanity cracking under his step, thunder echoes and it begins to pour. Strong, furious, as if it will never cease. A dense, ferocious rain, one that seems determined to wipe the human race off the face of the Earth. A rain that slows the rush and increases anxiety, that destroys the makeshift hovels of the poor and spoils the parties of the rich. A rain that forces suits paid out in six instalments to take refuge under the eaves and balconies, and their contents to look up to the sky, begging for a reprieve that will allow them to get to work on time. That’s when Miranda the Mole begins to walk under the
downpour. Refreshed, renewed, composed. He thinks about Duchess. As if she had sent him this storm to abate the squall within. He walks for blocks like that, calmly, until he enters the mouth of the underground. He lets the first train go by. The platform is momentarily deserted. He stands behind the newspaper stand, takes off his soaking-wet overalls and stuffs them under the stand. His suit has yellow stains on it.

 

When he re-emerges at Primera Junta station, the rain has turned into cold, sharp needles. He enters a second-rate clothing shop. He leaves behind him, to the astonishment of the sales people, a trail of water that could almost have been blood.

In the changing room he takes off his stained clothes, puts on some new ones, and dries the bag off with the old. In this minuscule space of privacy he slips his thirty-eight under his belt, takes out ten bills of a hundred dollars each, puts four in one pocket and six in the other. He bundles up his used clothes and stuffs them under a broken-down stool. He ignores the salesman who helped him and walks resolutely up to the cash register, where a smarmy man is doing some bookkeeping. He’s the one in charge. You can tell because he looks like a rat. Miranda places six bills on the counter, in piles of two, two and two.

 

 

He subtly adjusts his jacket to show his weapon.

 

 

The rat immediately evaluates the deal on the counter: just one of those Franklins pays for the clothes and one more covers the amount of Argentinean money the man wants. He nods, picks up the six bills with his effeminate fingers, and stuffs them into his pocket; then he opens the register and places three bills of fifty australes and five of ten on the counter. He turns back to his bookkeeping as if Mole didn’t exist. He never saw him.

 

 

Miranda walks out slowly. Along the way, he picks a raincoat off the rack, pulls off the price tag and throws it on the ground. Once outside, he trots to the corner, and with one small shove steals the only free taxi away from an elderly gentleman.

 

 

On the radio they’re talking about Percudani’s goal that beat the Brits in Tokyo. Miranda pays no attention to the driver’s enthusiastic remarks.

 

 

The driver looks at him through the rear-view mirror.
Why did I have to get this deadbeat?
He decides to ignore his passenger and starts driving slowly down Rivadavia, in the right lane, adding his horn to the general uproar.
Unconcerned, Mole watches the wet city go by while he tries to work things out: first, where to hide the bag with the money; and then, where to hide himself. The robbery was a disaster, as usual, the victim of happenstance. A plainclothes cop, hoping to get his picture in the papers, was waiting in line at window 6. He’ll be there in the afternoon edition, photographed in a pool of his own blood. The idiot drew his nine millimetre, but so clumsily that it fell on the ground, right at Dandy’s feet. He doesn’t understand why fat people have a reputation for being so calm. Dandy lost his head and shot him straight in his chest with his sawn-off twelve gauge, and for no reason at all because the copper was already unarmed. He had the advantage, but he killed him anyway. Bad nerves. The cop jumped back when the shells tore into his chest, then crumpled onto the ground. People started shouting as if they were all getting killed. Then Dandy shot into the air to make them shut up. Damn fool – a piece of plaster the size of a large pizza fell on him. Fastfingers, waiting in the getaway car at the door, heard the shots, put it in gear and hightailed it out of there. Mole had already packed up the loot, so he closed up the bag and pushed the dazed Dandy outside. When they got to the door, he told him to run in one direction and he took the other. In these cases, the best thing to do is separate. As he ran away, Mole managed to see Dandy slip, dropping his shotgun as he fell, at the precise instant a patrol car drove onto the sidewalk – two policemen grabbed him, and one knocked him out with a punch to his jaw. Mole’s last glimpse was of Bangs running across the street.

A fuck-up, a major fuck-up. But that’s life. Even when you’ve got the whole thing planned out to the very last detail, unexpected things happen, and then there’s a chain reaction that ends up making a mess of everything. Or, as his grandfather used to say,
when things are in a mess, the tip of the turnip points up.
At least he came away with some cash, even if the bag with the money weighs three tons at the moment. He’s got to think fast, hide out somewhere until things calm down. Which isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Back in the bank there’s a dead cop, and the police don’t like that at all, they always think it could have been one of them. He doesn’t have much faith in Dandy if they put pressure on him, which he assumes they’ll do. He considers running off to Rosario, but he immediately discards that idea. Loro Benítez got nabbed a week before, and the Reverend is still breathing, barely and only as long as they don’t unplug him.
Hell of a life I lead. Lía? No, Dandy knows her.

 

As he rides down towards the Avenida San Martín bridge, he’s already shuffled and discarded almost every possible place to hide. He decides to return to the one he has in the hopes that he hasn’t been followed for the last couple of days. He doesn’t think so, but you can never be sure.

15

Walking through the heart of the banking district, known as La City, Lascano feels alienated, as if Buenos Aires didn’t belong to him, as if an army of headless suits had taken over. The invaders are around thirty years old; they wear grey suits and loud ties. They keep their eyes peeled straight ahead of them, speak only to each other, have cords hanging out of their ears, and wouldn’t move aside even if their dying grandmother were trying to get through. Who are all these people, where did they come from all at once, and what happened to them? They go in and out of huge glass buildings. Some wear colourful backpacks, many haven’t shaved for a couple of days, most take refuge behind large sunglasses, all of them are in a hurry. They are insolent, shout when they speak and call each other
boludos
, or morons. As he walks down 25 de Mayo toward the business centre of the city, the crowd of
boludos
becomes denser and denser, more compact. He’s looking for the address he wrote down on a piece of paper; it must be one of these glass monoliths. In the lobby are two dark-skinned toughs dressed up in sheriff costumes, the little star badge and all. They look at all the men as if they want to punch them and at all the women as if they were about to rape them, but nobody looks at
them, except others with the same colour skin. One of the cowboys is guarding a row of turnstiles in front of the elevators. Lascano watches as they all open the turnstile with the card they wear hanging off their waists. Modern shackles for these corporate slaves, he muses. The Turnstile Sheriff points him to a round counter where there’s someone who looks like the marshal in a Hollywood Western – though this one’s a Mapuche Indian. After a brief exchange and several longish pauses, he gives him a pass card and tells him to return it when he leaves, as well as a piece of paper on which he must get the signature of the person he is going to see. Now he’s absolutely certain: this is a prison. He gives the guard at the turnstile a smile, but the other makes no sign of having received it;
he must be studying how to be a
boludo. The card lets him through and he enters the elevator, where five uncomfortable-looking
boludos
have already taken up residence. One of them looks him up and down, as if wondering what this guy is doing here. Finally, the elevator vomits him out into a hot, carpeted corridor lit by small lightbulbs. On the wall is a huge reproduction of the bank’s logo. He walks up to the door and rings the bell, another light turns on and above his head a tiny closed-circuit TV camera focuses in on him.