The Barcelona Brothers (17 page)

“Did you know the guy who got killed?”

Two ladies are sitting in the bus and talking. It’s only half full, and Alex takes a window seat behind them. One of the women is a Maghrebi, and the other has an Andalusian accent; they’re both in their forties, and they’re going to or returning from housecleaning jobs. Between her legs, the first woman has set a plastic tote bag with an assortment of floor polish, bleach, and other cleaning products, while the Spanish woman is clutching—quite firmly—the purse in her lap.

“I’d seen him around. A piece of work. I knew his mother better. She was from the same place as one of my cousins. But whatever the man did, he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“I don’t think so either.”

“It’s these gangs. Apparently somebody had a grudge against him.”

“Moroccans?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe from down there on the other side of the ocean.”

“South Americans? Wouldn’t surprise me.”

Alex would love to intervene in this conversation. He could make use of these ladies, qualified spokeswomen for the barrio, to spread a theory that would suit his interests. Then again, the best theory may be confusion. If nobody knows anything for certain, the only option remaining to the police will be the simplest one: the first guy who takes it into his head to drink too much or hit his girlfriend tonight is going to seriously complicate his life.

Only a few stops left. By now the ladies are talking about other things. Alex feels the temptation to stay on the bus, to skip going to the police station, to let the cards lie on the table however chance may deal them. But he pushes the button to request a stop, and when the moment comes, he gets off the bus and heads for the brand-new building. His stomach warns him that he’d better put something in it before dinner. Alex hopes the
mosso
he talked to on the telephone is still there. It hasn’t even been twenty minutes since he called. His only prayer is that Epi hasn’t called in the meanwhile.

The officer on duty behind the counter hardly pays attention to him. He remembers something about a mislaid cell phone, but the matter was handled by a fellow officer who’s gone off duty. Someone will come out immediately. Please wait in that room. Alex realizes he’s too nervous not to look nervous. He has to try to calm down. And so he takes a seat. He picks up a copy of a free newspaper from two days ago, but
he can’t concentrate. He gets up, crosses the room with long strides, and goes out the door, passing the counter in the entrance, where the
mosso
opts to carry on with what he’s doing. Alex walks to the other end of the lobby, and when he reaches the wall, he turns and retraces his steps.

He notices a gilded plaque that a gentleman more honorable than the rest unveiled to inaugurate the station two years previously. What must it feel like to be an extremely honorable gentleman? Coming here as the guest of honor, being waited for, pampered, even offered a pair of impeccably gleaming scissors and a little flag with four slanted stripes. An immaculate man, well-dressed, well-advised, with no problems related to money, health, or sex. Alex doesn’t understand how it can be that there aren’t people dedicated to killing for the sake of simple distributive justice: you’re dying because you have what I don’t. However, upon forming his thought into words, he corrects himself. Indeed, there
are
people with bombs in their underwear, but their motives are pretty ridiculous. They talk about God, about the Next Life, about Good and Evil, about harems filled with beautiful women waiting for them after their immolation. His feeling on this subject is equivalent to the way he used to feel about the biblical films his mother would make them watch during Holy Week in days gone by: that entire part of the planet depresses him. Desert, broiling sun, lizards, dusty robes, jars of water poured onto feet covered with pustules, sulfur rains, tattooed prostitutes, apocalyptic prophets, people raised from the dead behind great stones, rooms like caves, caves like pits filled with the dead, the dead
and the living stinking alike. On television, those persons, the losers, the murderers in the name of God, are always the same. And the dead are all carried in coffins on the shoulders of a screaming, fanatical crowd. As they’ve done for the last hundred centuries or so, they keep grinding their teeth, pulling out their hair, pounding their chests. The women, wrapped up like big black sausages, dutifully bearing soldiers to save the asses of the bigwigs and the sadists with their graying beards and horrible tongues, squeal like pigs and hurl themselves to the ground in a spectacle so painful it cuts them off from any compassion, at least in Alex’s judgment. Those people are “scum,” as his father would say.
You’re a miserable racist
, Alex says to himself. The thought makes him lift his eyes and look out through the tall, smoked windows of the police station at the sky, where Captain America’s starry shield will appear, returning from the black-and-white pages at full speed to stand at his side.
No, no I’m not; I’m just telling the truth
.

“Alejandro Dalmau?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Will you please come this way?”

The policeman starts walking, certain that Alex will follow him. The station consists of a multilevel labyrinth, purposefully designed to make escapes difficult. Alex quickens his pace to keep up with his escort. The doors of all the offices are open, and inside he sees police officers, men and women, typing on computer keyboards, carrying papers and folders, waiting impatiently for faxes, or gathered around water coolers. He sure wouldn’t mind downing two or three of those brimming
plastic cupfuls of cool water himself right now. Maybe he can ask the officer who hands over his cell phone for some water. Every time he sees a
mosso
, whether working in one of the offices or standing in the hall, Alex’s eyes are drawn as by a magnet to the pistol in its holster. It’s a childhood fascination that has never left him, the attraction of those deadly tools, slung within reach of their owners’ hands, cocked and ready to kill. But he knows he’d best avert his eyes and not think about that. Cops don’t like it when you obsessively and blatantly stare at their pistols.

“Wait here a minute.”

Alex enters a small white room. There’s a table with only two chairs on opposite sides, and on the table a computer, several sheets of recycled paper, and a cheap ballpoint pen lying on top of the paper stack. He sits in the chair and tries to personify serenity. He pats his pocket and feels his medication, his little pills. He reminds himself, repeatedly, that they’ve taken his statement and let him go once already. That he’s in this station only because of a moment of forgetfulness. That fate’s not playing any tricks on him. That in a few minutes, he’ll be back out on the street. But he doesn’t manage to convince himself.

“I’m sorry. Nobody likes to wait.”

“No problem.”

A police officer, not the one who accompanied him here, has entered the room. He has outsized hands, with practically deformed fingers that must make it hard for him to type. However, the rest of his body is completely the opposite; he has long
limbs, a narrow torso, and a ruddy complexion. He’s not very tall and seems to be an amalgamation of surplus parts left over from different models. He looks at Alex with black, penetrating eyes and speaks to him in a persuasive voice, the voice of a man who gives orders. He sits not on the other chair but on the table. Alex finds himself at eye level with the officer’s crotch, his thighs, the black Sharp cell phone inside a plastic bag, and, a little farther back, his empty holster, which Alex notices at once. He glances around, as if the pistol’s been forgotten somewhere.

“I’m the police inspector, and this is your cell phone. Is that right?”

“Yes, yes, you know it’s right.”

“Good, then let’s talk about cell phones and phone calls.”

At this point, a subordinate interrupts the conversation, which has hardly begun. The older Dalmau brother already knows things aren’t going well. Maybe his incessant calls to Epi’s cell have caught their eye. On the other hand, it seems only logical that he’d try to get in touch with his brother after being questioned about him no more than a few hours ago. No, but wait, the cops had his phone. There’s another possibility, and that one’s much worse. He notices that his hands are wet with sweat, that his back and shoulders are soaked under his shirt. But be that as it may, he must remain calm. He’ll try to resolve the matter as best he can, but his plans are starting to vary a little.

“We talked to you earlier, and I know what you told us. You don’t know anything. You didn’t see anything or hear anything. That doesn’t surprise me. If I told you how I get along with my brother …”

Alex knows that if he lets the officer talk, he’ll end up cooperating, one way or another. He’ll give away too much, or he’ll seek to ingratiate himself, or he’ll try not to disappoint this
mosso
, who’s taken the place of those others and feeds, like them, on the same ingratitude, the thanklessness of the herds they have to look after. Alex knows he has to cut him off. He needs to make him angry.

“Look, I’m not new at this, okay? I know my rights. Before, you questioned me without a lawyer present, and—”

“Don’t get dramatic, Alejandro … say, kid, what a name! What did your father do?”

“He was a schoolteacher. How about yours?”

“A cabdriver. Have you been sufficiently impertinent now? Look, if you knew your rights as well as you say you do, you’d know that you were here before as a witness, and therefore no shysters were necessary. Now you’ve come to pick up your cell phone, which was left here because of your carelessness and only because of your carelessness. You do want it back, don’t you?”

Alex makes a move to take the offered phone, certain the policeman will withdraw his hand at the last moment. But he doesn’t. Alex cradles the Sharp in his palm. The phone’s turned on. He says, “Can I go now?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Look, you all asked me about what happened in Salva’s bar, and I told you what I saw. Maybe it’s true my brother was out running around with Tanveer all night long, but at that moment, he wasn’t there, you understand? And as far
as I’m concerned, that’s all. You asked me about the van and my brother’s sprees with Tanveer, and I swear to you on my mother I have no fucking idea about any of that.”

“I believe you, Dalmau, I believe you. And you know why I believe you? Because if you knew what we were finding just by pulling on this one thread, you’d be so scared you’d shit your pants.”

Alex tries to search the police officer’s eyes to see if he’s bluffing. What could have been going on in the van? Were they dealing drugs, pimping whores, selling rich kids nights on the wild side? The cop keeps talking.

“As for Hussein’s death, what do you want me to tell you? In all sincerity, fuck him. There wasn’t the smallest possibility he’d ever do anything good his whole life long. But his demise has led us to other things. I don’t know if your brother knocked him off, or if it was this guy Muza you told us about, or if there’s something else, but it excites me to think there may be something else, because it gets boring always seeing the same stupid shit in the barrio. I want to know where your brother’s van is. All I want to do is talk to him. That’s all I want, damn it.”

“But I—”

“And I want to do all that before the barrio gets nervous on me and decides to start the holidays early.”

“I’ll tell you what I told you before. It’s all I know.” He makes a decision to explain part of the truth. “I’ve been looking for Epi all day. If you checked the cell phone, you know I’ve been spending all my time dialing his number and getting nothing.”

“Could be he’s afraid.”

“Could be. But look, I stand by what I said about this morning. I was there and he wasn’t. I can tell my brother from a Pakistani. But if he’s done something other than that, something with the van or anything else, go ahead and tear him a new one. If a guy’s man enough to charge, he’s man enough to pay.”

“Did your father teach you that?”

“No, I heard it from a cabdriver.”

The policeman’s eyes harden for a moment, but then he squints and immediately bursts out laughing. “You’re a real kick in the pants, Alejandro Dalmau.” The latter feels tempted to lower the tension, to do a little joking around himself, to slide between the cop’s legs like an aroused cat, waiting for his master to stroke him. But he resists. Nothing has happened yet. The card that troubles him the most remains face down.

“Look, I believe just about everything you told me. I’m not an asshole. But let me be clear. Your brother’s gone into hiding, and that’s not helping his case, if you see what I mean.”

“I’m sure he’s sleeping off last night’s binge at some friend’s place.”

“Does your brother have any plans to leave town?”

“No, not that I know of. Where would he go?”

“Granada, for example.”

ON THE VAN’S STEREO, BAMBINO’S IN TERRIBLE PAIN
. Epi turns up the volume. He’s either bored or impatient, he doesn’t know for sure. Checking for the hundredth time, he touches the Adidas sports bag—
MOSCOW 1980
—with his foot. The bag contains, among other things, the stolen hammer with which Epi plans to brain that animal Tanveer Hussein, who’s bellowing like a young bull in the back of the van, almost in unison with the Gran Bambino’s cohort of clapping and shouting
jaleadores
.

Epi lights another cigarette. He feels the snot running out of his nose, a sensation he hates. For some time now, cocaine’s been causing what seems to be an allergic reaction in his nasal cavity, but how can he go to a doctor and tell him that? And so he puts everything in one nostril and uses the other nostril for breathing. Smothering him would be so easy. A matter of covering his mouth and half his nose. He wishes it would be
that simple to take out Tanveer. But it won’t be. He remembers when his mother would fall asleep and look like she was already dead. Her wide-open mouth. The barely audible whistle of her breathing. The nostril holes like candlesnuffers, which had scared him ever since he was a little boy, seemed in her death agony to be caverns directly connected with hell itself.