The Buenos Aires Quintet (24 page)

Carvalho picks up the phone and dials.

‘Don Leonardo? We ought to dine together tonight in Puerto Madero. What about Chez Patron? No, it’s not simply a whim. It’s highly likely you’ll see Señora Fanchelli there in person. We can get together a convincing table. You supply the credit card, and I’ll do the rest.’

Alma wants to know: ‘What’s a convincing table?’

‘You, Don Vito, me and Don Leonardo.’

Alma sweeps out of the office without so much as a backward glance, and shouts over her shoulder: ‘Count me out. I’ve got my own ideas about what convincing means.’

‘But it’s Chez Patron. Are you going to miss it? A table without a woman isn’t convincing. What if I brought a cousin along?’

Out in the front doorway, Alma looks at her watch. She looks impatiently for a taxi. One appears suspiciously quickly.

‘To the university, as fast as you can. I’ll be late.’

Alma stares out of the window at flashes of cars and people as they speed by. The taxi sets off towards the university campus, but all of a sudden Alma realizes they are taking a very long route, then she sees they are going down a road she does not recognize. Alma taps on the glass separating her and the driver.

‘Are you sure this is the way? I told you, I’m late.’

The driver does not even bother to turn round. Alma decides not to worry, but cannot help it. Then she discovers that the doors are locked and she cannot open them. By now she is not only worried, she is frightened. She starts beating at the car windows, trying to attract the attention of the rare passers-by in this out of the way spot. The taxi speeds on down streets she has never seen before, but which she imagines must be in the Quilmes neighbourhood. It seems an eternity until the car has left the city behind, and is travelling through scrubby woodland. It turns down a track into the leafy darkness. Alma’s terror does not prevent her from seeing the driver click a button to release the doors. She pushes open the right-hand side one, and leaps out – only to find herself confronted by two motorcyclists, who seize her by the arms, and stun her with a punch to the jaw.

When she comes to, she can see the tops of the trees and the cloudy sky, but also four motorcyclists and the fat man staring down at her. She has been tied to the ground, legs and arms apart, with four stakes. The fat man starts giving her gentle kicks in her sex with the tip of his shoe. Alma screams with fear or pain. The fat man leans over her. His face looms close to hers.

‘Do you know what this is?’

He shows her a cut-throat razor.

‘What would you like me to cut off first? Your nipples? Your clitoris? Or perhaps you prefer this.’

A gloved hand thrusts a slimy bundle at her.

‘Here, eat this shit. It’s cleaner than the shit that comes out of your mouth. It’s my shit. Fresh this morning.’

Alma shakes her head desperately and clenches her teeth, but cannot prevent the slimy stuff dropping on to her mouth, her nostrils.

‘This is your last warning. Be careful what you say to your students. Be careful with your brainwashing.’

The fat man vanishes. Once again, the tops of the trees. The sky. Alma’s tears rolling down her bespattered face, Alma retching, as tears and her stomach refuse to let her vomit.

Pascuali’s eyes will not let him believe what they see on the ground. Behind him, Vladimiro is trying not to throw up, and another two policemen await their orders, paralysed by compassion and shame. Alma opens her eyes to let the terror out. Pascuali overcomes his paralysis and kneels down to pull out the stakes and release the woman. His colleagues rush to help him. One of them brings a water can from their car, and Pascuali wets his handkerchief to clean off Alma’s face, but there is not enough water or cloth for the job, until Alma herself snatches the can and pours it over her face and head. She is standing sobbing under the streams of water, and instinctively seeks comfort in Pascuali’s arms. He does not refuse, and his Adam’s apple bobs up and down in silent dismay as she sobs disconsolately against his chest. All at once Alma realizes where she is and pulls brusquely away, as though she were clinging on to something repellent. Her face and Pascuali’s confront each other, suspicious and distant once more.

‘Who was it?’

‘You mean you don’t know? Ah, of course...you were just out for a stroll in the woods and found me by pure chance. Is this your favourite wood?’

‘We got a phone call. Did you recognize anyone?’

‘Use your imagination. Do I really have to tell you who would have the nerve to do something like this? Who still enjoys complete impunity?’

‘In today’s Argentina, nobody’

Alma screams hysterically: ‘Nobody? You’re telling me nobody enjoys impunity? Well I’m telling you I saw that fat man, that bastard who is the Captain’s sidekick. And those others who are always on motorbikes. Are you going to arrest him? Shall I come with you?’

Pascuali persuades her to get into the patrol car. Sits with her in the back. Vladimiro is driving, and looks in the rear-view mirror at Alma refusing to say another word and Pascuali equally silent, until Alma suddenly says: ‘Drop me off at home, would you?’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t take you straight home.’

‘I’m in no mood to make a statement.’

‘You’ll have to make one at some point. But there’s something else too.’

Alma has to endure another lengthy trip across Buenos Aires, which finally takes shape when she recognizes the surroundings near Robinson’s mansion. Pascuali’s car passes through the open garden gate, and pulls up alongside other police cars and an ambulance. Alma’s defiled, weary, astonished face peers out of the car window. She is told to get out and follow Pascuali. He walks quickly, far too quickly for her exhausted body, up the pink marble staircase to the first floor, along a corridor to a spacious bedroom, in it a huge double bed, and on the bloody sheets the half-naked body of Robinson. His throat has been slit from ear to ear. The llama is grazing in a far corner. The parrot on its perch calls out now and again: ‘I love gays. I love gays.’ Alma turns away from the bloody mess, struggling to prevent herself laughing at the parrot’s stupid refrain.

‘Was it really necessary to bring me here, in the state I’m in?’

‘You knew each other. You were here a few days ago – you, your Spaniard and that Jewish clown.’

‘What do you so dislike about Norman: the fact that he’s a clown, or a Jew?’

Pascuali does not respond, and Alma starts to pace up and down the room.

‘Is he the only victim?’

‘How many do you want?’

‘What about Friday?’

‘Friday? Ah yes, Robinson and Man Friday. No, he’s not here. D’you think it could be a crime of passion? A black homosexual servant slits the throat of his white homosexual master, who just happens to be Robinson Crusoe.’

The parrot appears to favour Pascuali’s theory.

‘I love gays. I love gays.’

‘Was Raúl here when you came?’

‘No. I swear he wasn’t. But Robinson, or whatever his name was...’

‘His name was Joaquín Gálvez Rocco, and I’m sure that means something to you. He was a member of the oligarchy that you and your friends blackmailed, reviled and sometimes kidnapped, ambushed and murdered, executed or submitted to revolutionary justice – what was the phrase you used?’

Alma stares down at the body as if recognizing it for the first time.

‘Gálvez Rocco.’

‘Who would benefit from his death?’ Pascuali wants to know.

‘Mankind as a whole. Gálvez Rocco was one of the oligarchy who supported the military junta, like Ostiz or Pandurgo or Mastrinardi. So don’t waste too much time on him. What about me though? Are you going to pick up the fat man?’

‘We won’t be able to find him. He won’t be so foolish as to wait at home for us to come calling. And anyway, we don’t know where he lives.’

‘What about raiding the Captain’s place?’

Pascuali hesitates.

‘You don’t know where he lives either?’

‘That’s confidential information, at least as far as I’m concerned. Nobody knows where the Captain lives, no one is sure what his real name is, and that makes it all the more difficult to find the fat man.’

The brass knuckles beating the fat man’s face to a pulp seem to be enjoying the cracks, tears, bumps and bruises they have been creating. His mouth is bleeding; he lifts a hand to it and pulls out a smashed tooth. Like a whipped dog, he looks up in fear and apprehension at his assailant, but is rewarded only with two more blows, one to the spleen, the other to the pit of his stomach. He groans and collapses. Crumpled on the floor, his eyes beg for mercy. It’s the Captain who is standing over him. Ice-cool. He kicks at the fallen man, then lifts him by his lapels and in spite of his enormous bulk, pushes him up against a wall, and knees him in the groin.

‘Boss, please... !’

‘Who asked you to get mixed up in this? Who asked you to kidnap the professor? Who asked you to kill that joker?’

‘I didn’t kill anyone, I swear to you, boss.’

He’s a bloody mess slumped against the wall. He even looks thinner. He takes advantage of the pause in the beating.

‘I admit I went too far with the woman, because I was worried about the harm she could do the kid. But I didn’t kill anyone, ask them over there.’

The group of motorcyclists stand silently in the dark.

‘Who has been killed, boss?’

The Captain starts the video. The screen shows Robinson’s body with his throat cut, on the bed.

‘It took an expert to do that.’

‘But it wasn’t me, boss, I swear. I know who it could be. It’s well done. But it’s not my handiwork. I just wanted to protect the girl.’

‘Perhaps this murder will protect me more than her. But then again, if I’m protected, so is she.’

Carvalho restrains the impulse to grab Pascuali by the lapels. Pascuali had been expecting it anyway, and one of his fists has tightened to white knuckles.

‘You’re the perfect cop, aren’t you? This woman has been kidnapped and beaten up, and you keep her here for hours without any reason.’

‘She’s been looked at. Our medical team has examined her. They’ve also given her some tablets, and if she’s still here, it’s for the same reason that you are. You were the last identifiable people to see Robinson and Friday alive.’

‘What are we waiting for? Or do you just like keeping us in your police station?’

‘We’re waiting for Robinson’s son. He specifically asked to see you.’

‘He wants to see us?’

Pascuali does not deign to answer. He turns his back, condemning them to a further wait that Silverstein fills by stroking Alma’s violated face, and Carvalho by cursing the day he came to Buenos Aires and the fact that he feels close to these human and historical wrecks. He stares at the
pietà
Norman and Alma are forming, and repeats his complaints out loud, with a mixture of rancour and compassion.

‘You love yourselves too much. You feel too sorry for yourselves.’

‘What’s the masked Spaniard saying?’

The masked Spaniard does not have the chance to reply. It is obvious someone important has come in. A man of around forty, sportily dressed – sports fashion at its most elegant – passes by, followed by two men who could not be anything else but lawyers. He walks with the assurance of someone who has ten gold credit cards in his pocket, and speaks to the guard on the door as if he were a porter.

‘Inspector Pascuali is expecting me. I am Gálvez Aristarain. Tell him I’m here.’

The guard-cum-porter shows him the way to Pascuali’s office. The newcomer walks past Carvalho’s bedraggled troops, lost in introspection and too weary to react. The office door opens to reveal a frowning Pascuali who listens to the announcement by the guard-butler as he reads the business card he has just been handed.

‘Señor Gálvez Aristarain.’

Gálvez Jr. dispenses with the man’s services and holds his hand out to the inspector.

‘Señor Pascuali?’

Pascuali is drawn to his hand as if by a magnet.

‘I’m sorry to be so late, but my plane was not built to cope with real storms. It’s a miracle we got here at all. I went to the morgue. And yes, it is my father. Until a couple of years ago, we only communicated through our lawyers, and since he became Robinson Crusoe, we spoke occasionally on the phone.’

Pascuali invites him into the office, but pauses to point out the three people sitting outside.

‘Take a look at this bunch: a university professor, a Spanish private detective and a comedian. No, I’m not off my head. These are the three people we know who last saw your father alive. The beggars who lived with him have all vanished. Friday, his butler...’

‘Liberto. My father got him to call himself Liberto when he took him on. I can’t remember his real name.’

‘OK, well, Liberto has disappeared too, and I have to ask you a question that will go no further than just the two of us: did your father and Liberto have relations – I mean...’

‘When my father handed over the running of nearly all our businesses to me, he also revealed some family secrets. You don’t need to know most of them, but yes, my father told me he had always been bisexual and that from about fifty-five or fifty-six onwards, he had become openly homosexual.’

‘We know that Friday – I mean Liberto – is in the final stages of AIDS. We have seen his medical records, and he has only a few months to live. And our three friends out there are people your father met for reasons which I suppose...’

‘What reasons?’

‘In recent months, the old mansion in San Isidro became a kind of hospice for all the dregs of society. One of them was a “disappeared” person, a crazy guy who is related to or friendly with those three, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your father was the link between them. I kept them here to talk to you, to see if it throws up any clues.’

Gálvez Jr. studies the trio, then shakes his head.

‘I’m not interested.’

‘But you told me...’

‘I know what I told you, but now I’m telling you I’m not interested in talking to them.’

Pascuali shrugs his shoulders, and is still shrugging when he releases Carvalho, Alma and Silverstein.