The Barcelona Brothers (10 page)

“No, she’s out shopping.”

“The thing is, you have to bring Percy here.”

“Where? The interview’s in forty minutes.”

“You’ve got time. It’ll be close, but you’ll make it,” Tiffany assures her, knowing full well her sister will have to run all
the way if she’s to have any chance of arriving at the appointed hour. An excellent joke on her, then. “I’m in the apartment on Granada Street. The one illegals use. Yes, stupid, 20 Granada, third floor, second door.”

“But I’ll have to take the bus, because—”

“If you leave right now, you won’t need the bus. Touch the doorbell, I’ll buzz the door open, and Percy can come upstairs by himself,” Tiffany says, making a concession to her older sister. “You don’t have to bring him all the way up. Come on, get a move on. I’ll wait for you, but remember, I have things to do, too.”

Tiffany insults her sister as she hangs up, not caring whether she hears her or not. Now she has to wait. Shit. As she does every morning, she thinks about making up some excuse and calling Tanveer, but no, she’s not going to do that today, either. Tiffany’s eighty percent pride and the rest self-esteem, as Doña Fortu likes to say. She’s not about to humble herself for the sake of that son of a bitch. Furthermore, tonight she’ll stop being good, she’ll go out and party. She’ll go out to a few places she knows. Either he’ll show up, or there’ll always be some informant who’ll tell him how Miss Tiffany Brisette was doing. How pretty and stoned she was, how much fun she was having. Who she was with in the wee hours of the morning. She’ll go to bars and clubs, and he’ll have to leave as soon as she appears. The restraining order that says he has to stay a thousand meters away from her can be a bar of cold iron or warm rubber, depending solely on the quality of her mercy. And she has a feeling that tonight she’s going to use that iron bar to break his knees.

The street door slams shut and footsteps begin to mount the stairs. She figures it’s Epi and decides to add a little drama to their meeting. First, some sulking for having been made to wait and kept in the dark about the reason; then we’ll see. She hastens to light another cigarette and goes over to the other end of the room, casting a glance at the window that someone, but not her and not the rain, ought to clean sometime. It’s a pretty day, she thinks, a good day to take a walk around the barrio or head for the beach. Anything would be better than hanging around in a dreary, empty apartment. She’s surprised that Epi’s taking so long to walk up a few flights of stairs. Deciding to abandon her pose—femme fatale, waiting in the farthest corner of the room—she goes to the door and partly opens it. From there she’s able to verify that yes, it’s him. He’s halfway up the last flight of stairs, leaning on the wall, with one leg raised and resting on the banister. He’s talking on his cell phone to someone whose identity he apparently wants to hide from her.

What’s this all about?

When she’s not with Tanveer, fooling around with Epi—a purely gymnastic exercise for her vanity, sometimes—never ceases to be like toying with a bomb that could explode at any moment. For that very reason, the only way to defuse it is—as in the films Epi likes so much—to remove the red cable when the red cable needs removing and to remove the blue one when the blue one does. You can do that, or you can get fed up with the whole thing and yank out both cables at once and let the world go under. Tiffany believes she controls the
game because she’s the only one who knows for certain that there’s a game. That’s always an advantage, isn’t it?

Men are obtuse creatures who occasionally appear to be extremely wary and even devious. But they only appear so. She discovered that very early on. When she was a girl, when she practically had to exchange her dolls for a real baby. Wasn’t that one more proof that the world is shit and has always been shit? She can’t even remember what he looked like, the guy who got her pregnant one night during the neighborhood celebrations in her old barrio. Her mother acted the victim; her father wanted to kill the seducer and tried to force her to have an immediate abortion. But that effort backfired; the maternal instinct rose up in her out of who knows where, perhaps because she wanted to upset everybody, and the upshot was that she moved to another barrio with Percy in her arms.

From that moment on, her father, who’d already exercised more rights over her than he possessed, began to wonder: if she’d already had sexual relations with another man, then why not with him? By way of self-protection, she’s forgotten almost everything. And she’s made up the rest. She remembers quite clearly, however, seeing him once when his back was to her. Maybe he was looking for something in the dresser. That naked backside of his, fitter to arouse compassion than desire: white buttocks, flabby flesh, a doughy mass you could write on or ripple, like a flag of surrender.

Now he too knows that you don’t play games with Tiffany. She gets money out of him. Almost as much as she wants. Including the use of the apartment for Doña Fortu. Did she or
didn’t she know, Doña Fortu, what had been taking place in her home? It was difficult to say. Besides, once you arrive at the truth, what can you do with it? It’s no good for erasing or hiding what happened, and nothing stable can be built on it, either. But that information, the possession of that secret, gave her power over her mother’s reproaches and subjugated her will. In fact, she separated from her husband without wishing to do so. She did it because Tiffany wanted them to separate. As clear as that. Doña Fortu denied her suspicions; childish foolishness, according to her. And so, as often as she could, she and her husband met in secret and went dancing. To salsa music, of course, and real close together. He’d hold her hand when they walked down the street, take her to afternoon tea, and give her flowers that Tiffany would find later in the most ridiculous and remote corners of the apartment. A genuine soap opera. Just like when they were girlfriend and boyfriend, back in Peru. When Tiffany found out about their deceptions, she felt betrayed and swore again she would denounce him. But in the end, she didn’t, because she needed Doña Fortu to manage the household. And also, a child needs a place to live. A certain order.

Epi can’t manage to open the door. He keeps trying keys; he doesn’t remember which of them is right. Obviously, Tiffany doesn’t even think about helping him. And if she were to do so, it would be with a violent gesture that would proclaim, loudly and clearly, her intention not to receive him but to clear out herself. However, everything’s become more complicated now. Her sister will arrive with Percy at any moment, and
Tiffany has to wait for them. She’s irritated at having been rousted out of bed in the early morning and commanded here and there ever since, all for the sake of other people. That’s why she’s finally decided to get out of there and resolve the matter of her son after she’s in the street.

Epi’s face lights up when he sees Tiffany. As for her, she’s so furious at him that if she were to do what her body yearns to do, she’d throw herself on him, give him a couple of good smacks, tell him to go fuck himself, and threaten to have him tossed in the slammer if he ever so much as gives a sign of life again. But she compels herself to wait a few moments. Curiosity gets the better of her. Besides, Epi’s disheveled and pallid, and his elongated face, with the isosceles triangle formed by his brows and his long, slightly upturned nose, looks dazzled, as though by some marvelous discovery or some deep tragedy; it seems equally possible that he’s suddenly become a millionaire or that the subway was blown up this morning and he’s the only survivor. His eyes are glittering, they want to tell her everything, but his tongue is silent. He smoothes his hair and rushes over to kiss Tiffany, but she steps aside.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I wasn’t able to come earlier.”

“But you
were
able to make me wait a little longer while you had a phone conversation on the stairs.”

As soon as she says the words, the girl regrets them. For nothing in the world would she want Epi to believe she could harbor the least shred of jealousy on his account.

“I was talking to my brother. His phone doesn’t have much range.”

Realizing that Tiffany isn’t going to kiss him, he crosses the room and stands at the window. Like a character in a film about a cornered man, he looks up and down the street. He hopes to spot a long black car with a passenger in the back seat, a short guy wearing a hat and enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke. But nobody’s in sight. Nor is there a trace of the country’s patriotic police. He lowers the blinds. That’s quite convenient, he thinks. It gives him time, enough time to stop looking scared and to explain to Tiffany why he killed Tanveer. Time to assess her reactions. Time to be so convincing that she bursts into tears and takes refuge in his arms, knowing that their nightmare is over and that now they can be happy again.

“Was anyone here?”

“When?”

“When you got here.”

“No.”

Epi looks around the apartment and like Tiffany before him notes the clues indicating it hasn’t had many tenants recently. It does, however, appear dirtier and untidier than he remembers. In what would be the living room in a conventional apartment are two black bags filled with cables and wooden boards, unusable PlayStation controls. There’s also the sofa with its transparent plastic covering, a piece of furniture Epi remembers from forever. He walks over to it, intending to take a seat.

“It’s been some time since he’s been here.”

She doesn’t reply. Mentally, she’s counting up to fifty or a hundred or two hundred before she clears out without a
word. Inside her purse, her hand strokes the bundle of keys and selects the apartment key, the longest one on the ring. Epi lets himself drop onto the sofa. It offers little resistance to his weight, and he sinks all the way into it. Amused and absurd, Epi finds himself twisting around on the floor, surprised that life can be so unpredictable. How readily you can pass from the most difficult thing to the simplest, from killing a man to stifling a guffaw, the latter unsuccessfully. He hopes the situation has struck Tiffany as funny, too. As he rolls on the floor, picking up all the dust on his arms and clothes, he hears a muffled sound but fails to identify it as the main door slamming shut. Nor does he immediately grasp the fact that Tiffany has locked the apartment door from the outside to protect her flight. The girl goes down the steps two at a time. She’s not afraid. It’s more like running away after a prank. When she reaches the street, she gazes in all directions, just in case she could be lucky enough to locate that imbecile Jamelia. But she isn’t, and so she starts running, planning to intercept her sister while at the same time trying to call her to find out where she is and whether she’s walking or taking the bus.

By the time Epi succeeds in opening the door and reaches the street, it’s impossible to know which way the girl has gone. Fed up with the way things never turn out right, he represses an urge to burst into tears. He decides it’s best, all in all, to go back up to the apartment, calm down, and think about how to get out of this whole mess, how to get five minutes with Tiffany so that he can explain to her why he did what he did and who Tanveer was, the Tanveer that only he knew.

PEP MANAGES TO FIND A PARKING SPOT CLOSE TO THE
police station. He’s just in time for his shift. He rubs his cheeks and chin, pleased by the smoothness of his skin and by the memory of the pleasant shower he took a few minutes ago. Also, the music on the way was just right, and last night’s dinner was great. And that’s all the good news. The bad news is that he’s been notified of a murder in the barrio. In Salva and Mari’s bar. This strikes him as strange, because the woman has always tried hard to keep dealers and unpresentable types out of her place. He doesn’t yet know who the victim is or why he was done in. The bad news continues: the shift partner he has to work with today is Rubén, a handsome blockhead worthy of being seen and admired but not of being listened to. Pep utters a sigh of resignation, grabs his jacket, and with difficulty gets out of his car. He thrusts out his long legs, which seem to construct themselves as they exit
the vehicle. When he stands on the sidewalk, a pleasant gust of wind blows his blond bangs over his eyes. He tosses his hair back and smoothes it. After he locks the car and turns around, his attention is drawn to the opposite sidewalk. There’s a guy walking down the street in a peculiar way. He looks like a character in a silent film. Stepping along at a good pace, taking long strides. As if he’s escaping from someone or something. We’ll all wind up like that, Pep thinks. He drapes the jacket over his arm. Now he has to hurry; he goes on duty in a minute.

The guy Pep’s looking at with some surprise is Alex. The older of the Dalmau brothers is hearing voices behind him, but he’s not about to turn around to confirm anything. He keeps walking quickly. No need to run. There are few things more suspicious than breaking into a run while leaving a police station. What do those voices want? Who are they? The police, maybe, with one more question for him. Or maybe he’s forgotten his identity card, his medical certificate, or his prescriptions in the station; it’s even possible there’s another document that needs to be signed. He scolds himself for being so nervous, for having such sweaty hands, for the way his shirt is stuck to his armpits. He tells himself he has nothing to hide. Nothing bad can happen to him. If all else fails, it’s Epi who’ll have to pay for the crazy thing he did, not him. Then again, with the police, you can never be absolutely certain you’re clean. And besides, they’re apparently concerned with more than the killing of Tanveer Hussein. As their questions proceeded, it became increasingly clear that they were also
interested in matters that Alex knew absolutely nothing about: a van, consumption of and perhaps trafficking in drugs, attacks on prostitutes … And the chief effect of all that was to make him, if possible, more nervous. Obviously, as it turned out, he’d taken too much for granted—for example, that Epi had killed Tanveer out of jealousy or spite. Now Alex thinks there might have been other reasons.