The Dancer Upstairs (12 page)

I doubt whether General Merino had read the report. He was unable to take Ezequiel seriously, regarding him, with mannered disdain, as a college professor who had dropped out. Revolutionaries who showed their faces – that's what he was used to. But Ezequiel was sneaky. He wasn't a manly Castroist like Fuente who boldly and openly entered a bar and, in full view of his victims, shot dead fifty of them. The General, faced with my attempts to describe Ezequiel's revolutionary philosophy, would dismiss them with an air that suggested he had seen it all before, in far more virulent form.

“You think Ezequiel's people know about Mao and Kant and Marx, but they're just going back to the same buzz words. They sit around the fire and pretend to warm their hands with European nostalgia. Really, they're itching to get out their knives. Especially the women. They adore to kill. It's an event. Then they make love for three days after. No, Tomcat. This isn't a world revolution. It's a fuckathon.”

His attitude exasperated me, but his hands were full elsewhere, his mind preoccupied with staff morale, pay, an epidemic of internal corruption. There was pressure on him from the government, the military, the drug enforcement agencies. The “World Revolution” came low on his list. The capital was the General's priority, and to date Ezequiel had restricted his actions here to one or two attacks on the Central Highway, some tyres burned and a demonstration on Labour Day. And dogs hanging from the streetlights, of course. He was irritating in the way a cigarette butt in the lavatory is irritating, still bobbing up after every flush. So the General had left me to deal with him. I wasn't on the take, so he could trust me. Because of my Indian blood I could be expected to shed light on the phenomenon. Better than some of his officers, anyway. And most important to his way of thinking, I'd met Ezequiel, hadn't I?

Now the lavatory had blown up in his face.

He'd had a presentiment of this. Or so he would, confess in one of the watchful nights ahead. One evening after work he'd be sitting in his favourite bar by the port, dreaming fish, and – snap! – the lights would go out. He would order another drink while they hunted for candles and half an hour later a tapping at the window would divert him from his cinnamon-flavoured brandy and Sucre would be making goldfish lips against the glass.

“What's that, Lieutenant? Stop that nonsense. Come inside.”

“It's Quesada.”

“What about him?”

“He's been shot.”

And he'd feel this pain – actual pain – in his clouded head and all the bright days when he shouldn't have taken the boat out would slyly wink at him from his brandy glass.

The prospect of a meeting with Calderón filled him with apprehension. He began adjusting the position of his mobile telephone.

“It's in your report, I know. You've done a good job, Tomcat. But remind me. How did this begin?”

“In Villaria. At the university.”

“Villaria, eh?” He looked at the map on the wall behind his desk. An orange slice moved uncertainly over the Andes. “Now Villaria,” he said, as if considering the matter for the first time. “Isn't that a strange place to start a world revolution?”

He turned to me. And the questions fell out of him until they lay between us in a pathetic heap. Why weren't we catching him? Where did he get his funds from? What did China have to do with our country? How many men did he have? Why communism? Wasn't communism dead? On and on, with me doing my utmost to answer, until he finally said:

“What does he want, for Christ's sake?”

“Absolute power.”

“Why?”

“He says the state doesn't care for the people.”

“Amen to that,” said the General.

He sucked at another orange quarter, then looked at me over the rind. “You know what worries me–”

The telephone on his desk began ringing, long pauses between each ring. He rolled his eyes despairingly and threw the peel into the bowl. “Time to swallow the hemlock,” he said.

He extended the mobile's aerial and climbed inelegantly to his feet, walking to the window. “Yes, Captain,” said the General. “Speaking.” Perhaps he decided he was being rude, or maybe he wanted me to share the burden, because he walked back to where I was sitting, drew up a chair, and sat down next to me, facing his own empty chair across the desk, and held the mouthpiece between us so that I could hear too.

The voice was clipped and quick, too low for me to catch.

“I do understand,” said the General reasonably. His cheek all but touched mine. I smelled the brandy.

“Do you think we haven't –”

The other voice broke in. The General listened, breathing heavily until it subsided.

“It is a sorrowful state of affairs. Twelve years . . .” He was echoing the words he'd just heard. “It's difficult to say, Captain. Perhaps you have no idea how diff–”

Another angry outburst. Again he listened, nodding. He reached for the fruit bowl, edged back. “Do you think that is necessary? I mean –” He looked at the space above his chair where he had been sitting.

“Of course. I understand, Captain. I will do what I can.”

He slapped down the telephone and shook his head from side to side, testing the bridle of Calderón's order.

“I tell you. Tomcat, I feel just like . . . like . . .” The simile escaped him.

He walked round his desk and collapsed in his chair. “He's cancelled all leave.”

“I'll tell the men.”

“If we don't find the assassins, he'll bring in the army.”

“I have no names for you,” I said.

“Then who do I tell him was responsible for putting a bullet through our boss's head?”

“They were dancers, sir. A man and four women.”

“And why can't we catch them?”

“They're known as ‘annihilation detachments'. Twenty years old, often younger. They probably came in from the countryside and disappeared there afterwards.”

“Who helps them?” No pause for breath.

“No one who helped them would have known who they were.”

“Women? Jesus. What's happened to the women in this country? Have they gone nuts or something?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“There must be thousands of poor bastards who don't know what's going on in their women's minds. The point is not that these women are terrorists, but that there are all these stupid husbands who don't know what the hell's going on.”

I said nothing.

“These women, have we ever convicted any?”

“The evidence is never enough.”

“We let them go?”

“Yes.” He knew all this.

“Don't we have any suspects at the moment?”

“There's the woman we arrested with those pamphlets –”

He leaned forward, alert. “Who is where?”

“Downstairs. We have her in detention.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about,” said the General, springing from his chair.

The lift was not working. We walked downstairs, the General stumbling behind me in the dark. As we reached the basement, the lights flickered on.

Hilda Cortado sat on the corner of her bed, rubbing her eyes. We studied her sad face through the grille. She was muttering to herself, readjusting to the light. According to my notes, she was nineteen.

“She's a sexy drop,” said the General, polishing another orange on his shirt. “Where's she from?”

“Lepe.”

“Indian, is she?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At police college, we used to make the Indians eat dog shit,” he said wistfully.

Hearing him, she turned to face us.

The arrest of Hilda Cortado a week before had, for me, first raised the possibility that Ezequiel might be preparing the fifth and penultimate stage of his New Democracy: the assault on the capital. Deceived by Quesada's broadcast, by a cindered corpse beneath a blanket, we had overnight lost interest in her. Now she incarnated all the General's earlier failures to take notice of Ezequiel.

“OK, Tomcat, I'll be the good cop,” said the General genially, unlocking the door.

Once inside the cell, he took up position in the corner furthest from the bed, beaming.

I approached Cortado. “I have some questions.”

The spit landed on my forehead. I left it there, not reacting, then stepped towards her. Her eyes flared and she braced her head, expecting to be hit. Holding her stare, I wiped the spit from my forehead and touched the wet fingertips to her lips. She pulled back, tightening her mouth.

I crouched before the bed, looking down at the floor. It hadn't been swept. She had scratched some words in the dirt. Viva El Presidente Ezequiel.

I took a breath and became the bad cop.

“Hilda Cortado,” I began. My voice rose. “Listen up, bitch.”

“Hey calm down, buddy, calm down.” From the corner, the General made mournful eyes and shook his head. “She's young. She's got a right to her silence.”

I turned from him to glare at her. “You had something to do with planning that business last night, didn't you? Didn't you?”

She sat very still, unblinking, her expression not altering. If I accused her of too much, she might confess to something. That was the idea, at least. But I'd interviewed her already. I knew she wouldn't confess to anything, even if I had found her with a dripping knife in each hand. Yet I wanted the General to see this for himself. I wanted him to understand that Ezequiel wasn't an invention, a rumour, an abstraction. I wanted him to know the frustration of dealing with people who never speak.

“Three murders,” I said. “That's a life sentence. Three times over. The rest of your life in a cell like this. And you know who we're going to pin those murders on, Cortado? You.” I held up a pamphlet, one of two hundred we'd found in her bread basket. I opened it. “Incitement to rebellion. Ten years for that. But after last night, I think most judges would link you with Minister Quesada's death. Don't you?”

Her expression didn't change. Even if she didn't know anything about the Quesada operation, she wouldn't say. She had been trained for this.

“But that's not an option, is it?” I said. “Oh, no, Cortado. Because you know what we do with assassins like you, don't you?”

She'd know about the cattle-prods, the buckets of water, the magnetos wired to genitals. Fuente had been sat on a box of dynamite and blown into the sky.

I produced a pamphlet and stroked it back and forth against her nose.

“Where did you get this, Hilda? Who gave them to you?”

“The wind blew it into my hand.” She hissed the words. Her lips had no sooner opened than they clamped shut.

I rubbed out the letters on the floor. My fingers were still damp with her spit and the dirt stuck to them. I began again, quieter. We had been preparing for this interview when General Lache's men blew up “Ezequiel” in his lorry.

“Lepe, eh? I used to race around that square when I was your age. Jorge, the grocer, remember Jorge? I could beat him.”

She wasn't looking at me, but listening. No one beat Jorge the grocer.

I wiped my hand on my trousers and glanced up, catching her eye. She turned her face away.

“Benavides? Remember how he used to let down our tyres?”

She closed her eyes. I no longer saw her large pupils. I knew too much. The thought of that possibility beat at her defences.

Kindly, I said, “And Domingo. You know my godson?”

On the bed the body tensed. Another hiss.

“He never mentioned you.” This time the lips remained open, glistening with spittle.

“Remember that ship in a beer bottle? On the shelf where he kept his music? Remember his guitar eyes, Hilda? Remember him going on about Mao and Marx, reading aloud from those books? Well, I gave him those books.” I straightened. “We're fighting the same people, Hilda.”

She stared at me, her body slumped, miserable, the slope of her shoulders like Sylvina's after an argument.

From the corner, I heard the moist slap of the General's tongue. I was being too gentle. This, after all, was the role he had elected for himself.

I brushed the pamphlet against one cheek, then the other. “Ezequiel, where can I find him?”

But the General had heard enough. He stepped from the shadows. “Get out, Tomcat,” he ordered, “Let me stay with her a few minutes.” He looked towards the bed, his eyes filled with consideration. “Hilda, can I have a word?” Even someone who knew the trick usually ended up telling the good cop something. But the General had never dealt with anyone like Hilda Cortado.

Full of concern, he went on smiling at her. “I'm sorry about my colleague here. He's a hothead,” and he jerked a thumb in my direction. “He gets out of line sometimes.” He put a hand on her cheek and tilted her head, like a man studying the label on an unfamiliar brandy. “Want a piece of orange, kid?”

The spit hurtled into his left eye.

If she was surprised by the ferocity of the General's assault, she didn't show it. Without blinking, she allowed herself to be slammed against the wall.

“Tell me where Ezequiel is, you bitch.”

For the first time she smiled.

7

The blackout had sent the clocks haywire. I found Sylvina stacking plastic bags of thawing food on the kitchen table. The freezer door was open and ice dripped into a bucket.

“Thank heavens you're home. I've no idea how to reset anything.”

I lifted the clock from the wall and turned back the numerals to 19.20. Then I advanced the date from 24 to 25 February. I could sense her eyes scanning the side of my face.