Target in the Night (20 page)

“What money?” Croce said.

For days this was a joke that everyone in town repeated. Everyone used the phrase as a default. Regardless of the question asked, the answer was always:

What money?

In any case, Croce refused, he defied the summons to hand over the money, using as a shield the need to keep crucial aspects of the investigation in the hands of the police. His idea was to wait
until the owner of the money showed up for it. Or until someone showed up to claim it.

He was right, but he wasn't allowed to carry out his plan because they wanted to smother the affair and shut down the case. Maybe Yoshio had left the bag filled with the money in the storage room of the hotel, Cueto argued, because he planned to go back and get it once everything calmed down. If the murderer had taken the money for himself, the case would be closed. If it could be proven that the money was destined for someone else, the affair remained open.

At this point Cueto convinced Saldías to turn against Croce. He intimidated him, he made promises, he bribed him—no one ever knew how exactly. Whatever the case, Saldías issued a statement in which he declared that Croce had the money hidden in a closet, and that the Inspector had been behaving strangely in recent weeks.

Saldías betrayed him, that was the truth of it. Croce had loved him like a son (of course Croce loved everyone like a son, because he didn't really know what that feeling was like). People remembered that there had been some tensions and some differences about procedures, and of course Saldías was part of a new generation of criminology. Even if he admired Croce, the Inspector's investigative methods were not, to his way of thinking, proper or sufficiently “scientific”—which is why, he said, he agreed to give a statement about Croce's irregular behavior and his eccentric methods. He doesn't use proper criteria in his investigations, Saldías declared. He was probably looking for a promotion and needed Croce to be retired. And that's what happened.
Cueto made a number of comments about old country policemen and a new redistribution that fell under his judicial oversight, and everyone in town understood, with a certain amount of sadness, that things didn't look good for Croce. Soon an order came from the Province's Chief of Police and Croce was moved into retirement. Immediately Saldías was appointed as the new Municipal Inspector. The money that Durán had brought to town was requisitioned and sent to the court in La Plata, the Capital of the Province.

After Croce was retired his behavior became even more bizarre. He shut himself up in his house and stopped doing the things he always used to do: no more morning rounds ending in the Madariaga Tavern, no more walks through town, no more being the main presence at the police station. Luckily, everything in the house where he'd always lived was in order, so they couldn't evict him until the inquiry was complete. People saw him in his yard at night, but no one knew what he was doing. He'd walk around in the dark with his little mutt, which would whine and bark as if it were asking for help.

Madariaga came by one afternoon to say hello but Croce didn't want to see him. He came out wearing an overcoat and a scarf and waved and made other gestures with his hands, which Madariaga didn't understand very well. Croce seemed to be trying to say, with hand signals, that he was okay and that they should stop bothering him. He locked the front door to the house and Madariaga, outside, was unable to go in after him.

After this Croce started writing anonymous letters. He wrote them by hand, altering his handwriting slightly, as he'd probably
seen criminals do at some point. He'd leave them secretly on park benches in the main square, under a few pebbles so the wind wouldn't blow them away. He had the facts, he knew what had happened. The letters spoke repeatedly about the Belladona brothers and the factory. The anonymous notes became famous in town, everyone very quickly found out what they said and started speculating about their origin.
They want Luca to be thrown out of the building of the factory so they can sell the plant and build a commercial center there
, the letters said, in short, with slight variations. So the versions about Luca resurfaced, that he had called Tony, that Croce had gone out to see him, that he owed a lot of money. The stories flowed like water sneaks under the door in a flood. A few times the town had flooded when the nearby lake had overflowed. Now, the anonymous letters and the gossip were having the same effect. Several days passed before anyone said anything and then, one afternoon, when Croce showed up and started handing out his letters to people as they were coming out of church, they put him in the asylum. There might not be a school in a town like this, Croce said, but there's always a mental hospital.

Renzi listened as he ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. Everyone talked about the case, spinning different theories and reconstructing the events in their own way. The dining room was big, with tablecloths on the tables, floor lamps, all laid out in a traditional style. Renzi had published several articles supporting Croce's position about the case, and the turn of events had confirmed his suspicions. He didn't know what would happen next, he might have to return to Buenos Aires, he was being told by his newspaper that the story had lost interest. Renzi was thinking about
this, eating a shepherd's pie and slowly finishing off a bottle of El Vasquito wine, when he saw Cueto enter the room. After saying hello to several of the customers and receiving what appeared to be pats on the back and congratulations, he walked over to Renzi's table. Cueto stood next to the table, without sitting, and spoke to him almost without looking at him, with his condescending and snobbish attitude.

“Still around here, Mr. Renzi.” He used the formal address to let him know that he came to talk to him about a serious matter. “The case is solved, there's no need to keep going over it. It'll be better for you if you leave, my friend.” He threatened him as if he were doing him a favor. “I don't like what you write,” he told him, smiling.

“I don't either,” Renzi said.

“Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong.” He was speaking now with the careless, cold tone that thugs use in the movies—which, according to Renzi, had taught everyone in the countryside to sound worldly, like wise guys. “It'll be better for you if you leave—”

“I was thinking about leaving, actually. But now I think I'll stick around a few more days,” Renzi said.

“Don't get cute with me. We know exactly who you are.”

“I'm going to quote this conversation.”

“As you wish,” Cueto smiled at him. “I'm sure you know what you're doing.”

He walked toward the exit, stopped at another table to greet people there, and left the restaurant.

Renzi was surprised, Cueto had taken the trouble to come over
and intimidate him, it was very strange. He went to the counter and asked to use the telephone.

“It's like a UFO,” he explained to Benavídez, the newsroom secretary at
El Mundo
. “There's a bag full of money, it's really a weird story. I'm staying.”

“I can't authorize that, Emilio.”

“Don't fuck with me, Benavídez, I have a scoop here.”

“What scoop?”

“They're putting the screw on me.”

“So?”

“Croce's in the mental hospital, I'm going to see him tomorrow.”

It sounded confusing when he tried to explain it, so he asked to speak with his friend Junior, in charge of special investigations. After a few jokes and long explanations, Renzi convinced Junior to let him stay a few more days in the town. The decision was a good one, because all of a sudden the story changed—and so did his situation.

The light in the cell went out at midnight, but Yoshio couldn't sleep. He was lying still on the mattress, trying to remember as precisely as possible every detail of the last day that he was free. He carefully reconstructed the events, from Thursday at noon, when he accompanied Tony to the barbershop, to the fatal moment on Friday afternoon with the loud knocks on his door when they came to arrest him. He could see Tony sitting on the nickel-plated chair, covered with a white towel, facing the mirror, and López lathering his face. The radio was on, “La oral deportiva” was playing, the broadcasters recapping the latest score lines, it must have been two o'clock. Yoshio realized that reconstructing every
detail of that day would take him an entire day. Or maybe more. You need more time to remember than to live, he thought. For example, that last day, at six in the morning, he was sitting on one of the benches in the station and Tony was showing him a dance step that was very popular back in his country.
The Crab Dance
, it was called. With great agility, Tony would move backwards in his white shoes, keeping the rhythm, dancing backwards, his heels together, his hands on his knees. It had been a very happy moment. Tony moving to the beat of an imaginary song, leaning forward, his elbows out as if he were rowing, moving back elegantly. They were in the empty train station, dawn had already broken, the sky was very clear, blue, the tracks shone in the sun. And Tony smiled, a little agitated after his dance. They liked going to the station because it was usually deserted and they could imagine that they might take a train and go somewhere, anytime. All of a sudden, a dead bird fell on the platform. With a dry, muffled
plop
. Out of nowhere. From the immense empty sky. It was a very clear day, peaceful and white. The bird must have suffered a heart attack mid-flight and fallen dead on the ground. An ordinary bird. Not a hummingbird, which can fly in place in front of a flower, miraculously, flapping its wings in such a frenzy that they die, sometimes, because their heart fails them. Not a hummingbird, nor one of those featherless pigeons seen on the ground sometimes, the ones that take a while to die, opening their red beaks, their necks featherless, their eyes enormous as if they were the thirsty mouths of tiny Argentine babies. It was a
chingolo
, a rufous-collared sparrow, perhaps, or a
cabecita negra
, a hooded siskin, lying there dead, its body intact. The strangest thing was that a flock of similar birds started to circle
overhead and squawk and fly lower and lower over the dead bird. The birds' joint horror before one of their own species, dead. It was a premonition, maybe, his mother could read the future in the flight patterns of migratory birds, she'd move like a frightened sparrow, her small feet under her blue kimono. She'd go out to the patio and watch the swallows flying in triangle formation and announce what they could expect that winter.

Yoshio was unable to organize his memories in the order in which the events had occurred. The sound of the water in the pipes, the muffled complaints of the prisoners in the nearby cells. He had a nearly physical awareness of the tomb in which he was buried and of the anxious murmur of the dreams and nightmares of the hundreds of men sleeping between those walls. He could imagine the corridors, the barred doors, the different blocks. From the patio he could hear the strumming of a guitar and a voice singing a few lines.
From the school of pain I have drawn my lessons / From the school of pain I have drawn my lessons…

Yoshio felt sick, he heard voices and singing because he'd suddenly stopped smoking opium. He remembered the pipe he'd calmly prepared and smoked, laying on his tatami that last morning. He'd fallen asleep to the quiet sweetness of the flame burning on the tip of the bamboo pipe. When you're on the drug, giving it up seems easy, but when you're sick with withdrawal, your entire body burns and you'll do anything for it. Had he been able to reduce his whole life down to a single decision, it would be to quit the drug. He wasn't an addict, but he couldn't quit. He was afraid they'd tempt him by promising him a fix and forcing him to sign the confession that the Prosecutor had shown him several times.
It was already written out, it said that he confessed to killing Durán. He was able to get codeine pills in the prison, he took them whenever he felt as if he were dying. It was like a burning, although the word didn't do justice to the pain. He was obsessed with the thought that his father might think that his job at the hotel was a woman's job, that he'd betrayed the traditions of his race. His father had died a hero. He, on the other hand, was lying in that pit, moaning because he did not have his opium. If he'd done his job dressed as a woman, he thought all of a sudden, maybe they wouldn't have accused him and he wouldn't be in jail now. He could see himself dressed in a blue kimono with red flowers, rice powder on his face, his eyebrows plucked, taking small, little steps as he slid down the hallways of the hotel.

Tony's death hurt Yoshio more than his own fate.
An owner next door
, he heard the man singing in the distance.
The neighbor next door / they killed one of his workers / they put the blame on me / and did me in at the trial
. Everyone in jail was innocent. That's why Yoshio refused to speak with the other prisoners. He'd had his visit by the court-appointed lawyer assigned to his defense. One afternoon they took him from his cell and escorted him to the office of the prison warden. The lawyer—a fat, unshaven, dirty-looking man—didn't bother to take a seat, he seemed in a hurry to tend to other, more important matters. Yoshio, handcuffed, wearing prison garb, listened, dispirited. “Look, mister, it'll be better for you if you make a deal and accept the terms, your sentence will be shorter that way. This is the offer from the Prosecutor's office. If you sign, you'll be out in a few years, otherwise they'll accuse you of premeditated murder and intended malice, and you'll get
stuck with life. There's not much choice in the matter, all the evidence and the witnesses are against you. It won't be much fun for you if you don't make a deal, my dear.” He was telling him for his own good, but Yoshio refused. So he was sent to a block with prisoners awaiting their sentences, and of course no one had done anything more since he'd been put in there. And now he was in hell, waiting, hearing the voice of someone who seemed to be singing in a dream.
A prisoner doesn't know which way / the scales will tip, / but waiting makes no sense / this much I know: / any man who enters here / leaves all hope behind…