Authors: Leonardo Padura
Without a second glance, he got into his car, which turned the corner and disappeared from sight. It was the last time I saw Alcides Montes de Oca and the last time I tried to find out why the girl we all thought so happy ended it all, as if she were living out one of those boleros she so liked to sing.
A primitive jungle instinct urged the Count to ask the questions he’d been stifling as he went further into the tragedy of frustrated love recounted by that elderly woman. But when he saw the tears flooding the deep wrinkles on Carmen Argüelles’s face, he held back, restrained by the sorrow brought by death: he decided to live with his doubts. Although the woman’s confession rounded out a story that still lacked clinching detail, he finally had something firm in place and a first mystery he’d definitively cleared up. In effect, Violeta del Río had died more than forty years ago, as he already knew, but had done so under her real name of Catalina Basterrechea, and that circumstance helped by the last ripples from Don Alcides Montes de Oca’s muscle, explained the strict oblivion into which her other ego, Violeta del Río the singer, had been relegated a few months before.
Mario Conde promised to be back in a few days and said goodbye to the old woman, who now seemed even more feeble and shrunken, as if that descent into her past had worn her out physically. He stopped on the doorstep, then went back inside. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a few notes: one hundred and forty pesos, all he was carrying on him. He placed them gently in her lap.
“It’s not much, Carmen. Today’s pesos, but it all helps,” he said and, unable to contain himself, caressed the woman’s sparse, dank hair.
His team of bodyguards on Factoría slouched like troops defeated by boredom and the stench. They sat on the jamb of a staircase, surrounded by a cemetery of peanut shells, cans of soft drink and even two abandoned newspapers, remnants of the strategies they adopted to resist attacks of hunger and the long wait.
“Fuck, man, how long did that old woman witter on for,” protested Yoyi, and the Count imagined he was reckoning up the time invested in economic terms. “I suppose you know everything there is to know now?”
“What did she tell you, Conde, what did she tell you?” repeated Rabbit, and Conde promised to tell, but first wanted to rid himself of a thorn in his side.
“You lot coming with me into the barrio?” he asked, looking at his friends.
“Hey, Conde, what are you after now?” asked Rabbit, in the tone of someone already familiar with all the potential answers.
“Nothing really, just a walk across the barrio to show them I’ve not surrendered. Yoyi, do you agree with Juan that the guys in charge here are mafiosi? Well, they’ll see killing is the only way they’ll get rid of me. You coming?”
“Why the strongman tactics, Conde?” Rabbit smiled anxiously, displaying all his dentures. “You’ve never been the strongman type.”
“Well, must say I do like the idea. Let’s see if anyone wants a bundle and a round of grievous bodily harm from me,” spoke up Yoyi, touching the side where he’d got his steel bar. “Fancy daring to lay a finger on this guy who is blood of—”
“Cut it out, Yoyi. I want to go because I’ve got a hunch . . .”
“Not another?” quipped Rabbit, hurrying to keep up with the crowd.
With his left eyebrow bandaged, a black eye and slight limp in one foot Conde strode off towards calle Esperanza. A group of evil-looking black and white youths on the next corner watched the strange retinue advance: their keen sense of self-preservation warned them of approaching danger and they scattered swiftly like insects, much to the relief of the invasion party.
Conde stopped his friends in front of the slum where he thought he’d been beaten up. They looked inside the building, down both sides of the street, and he looked for a cigarette and lit up, as if to say, here I am. But only two uniformed police, a few cyclists, and a hard-pressed taxi-cyclist came along the street and, along the pavement, a couple of tarts, including one the Count identified as the mulatta from his frustrated whoring episode.
“Let’s go for a beer,” he suggested without thinking, turning his back on the woman, who carried on, apparently not recognizing him with his new look.
“Conde, watch it,” warned Rabbit.
“It’s OK, man, the guys in this barrio are all dicks anyway . . .” shouted Yoyi and Candito smiled.
“Forget it, kid,” said Red, “being born and living around here is a schooling you never had. You see how it’s all ugly, filthy and stinks? Well, that’s how people’s hearts are and they do ugly, filthy, stinking things as if it’s what comes naturally. God’s the only power that can change them . . . But hurry up, the Count’s turning into a hard man.”
Conde got his bearings and pointed towards the next block, certain it was the one with Michael Jordan’s alcohol shop. As he walked, he noticed something had changed in the barrio over the last two days, but couldn’t pin down where that feeling, more atmospheric than physical, came from. When he peered into the lot, before going in, he discovered the transformations were more drastic than he’d imagined: the inside patio, where three days ago several men had been drinking, blasted by music, was now completely deserted, as if the crowded, illicit bar run by Michael Jordan’s double had never existed. Conde worried about his sense of direction, perhaps he’d got the wrong place, and he looked for the African’s building to make sure that this was where they’d drunk those beers.
“They’ve shifted the bar,” he said, immediately suggesting an alternative. “Let’s go to Veneno’s chop shop.”
They walked back two blocks, turned left in pursuit of Veneno’s, and on their way Conde finally sussed out of one of the mutations suffered by the barrio: there were as many people as ever in the street, but music now only came from a few houses, unlike on previous occasions when he’d had to advance through a thick curtain of sound. As on his last visit to Veneno’s, Conde clambered though the hole in the wall separating the ruined building from the street and, followed by his friends, headed over past the precarious canvas and zinc roofs where newly arrived pariahs resided. He went on, searching for the yard with the improvized restaurant tables, and behind the big entrance found a panorama of desolation similar to what he’d found on the lot which once housed the illicit bar.
“Something big’s happened, Conde,” was Candito’s verdict when he saw his friend’s amazement.
“They took fright after the beating they gave the Count. Perhaps they thought they’d killed him,” ventured Pigeon.
“That’s right, and as they thought he was police . . .” concluded Rabbit.
“No, they knew I wasn’t in the force anymore, and that was why they did me over. Perhaps they thought they’d killed me,” surmised the Count.
“They didn’t think anything at all . . . If they’d wanted to clean you out of the way they’d have done it by now.” Candito looked at the closed doors of the houses opening on to the patio. “There’s something weird going on here. We’d better beat it.”
“Yes, Red’s right. Let’s go. Look at the sky, it’s going to rain.”
“I wanted to see a guy I know,” said the Count.
“Leave it,” insisted Candito. “We’re out of here.”
“So what did that woman tell you, Conde?”. Relieved by the prospect of leaving this barrio, Rabbit had recovered his perpetual curiosity.
“That Violeta del Río was really Catalina Basterrechea, that she had beautiful eyes and that singing love songs was what she most liked to do on this earth,” said the Count, beginning to tell the whole story.
“So you mean when you were in the force, you didn’t have computers?”
“Of course we did. A big brute of one . . . We called her Felicia. Hey, if I look old, it’s because I’ve worn badly.”
“Did you work with it?”
“No, I’ve always felt computers were a bit of a headfuck. I haven’t a clue when it comes to all that technology, I’m not joking.”
“But they’re easy enough.”
“I didn’t think they were easy or difficult. We don’t get on and I don’t have a clue . . . How many computers does Headquarters have now?”
“Two . . . but one’s broken.”
“I bet it’s more stupid than I am. What do you bet we find nothing at all?”
Sergeant Estévañez smiled and shook his head: this guy’s a joker. His mind couldn’t tolerate the image of a detective too thick to find a simple piece of data on a computer and be sure, in advance, whether it existed or not.
“What’s the name?”
“Catalina Basterrechea,” repeated the Count, agreeing with Lotus Flower that nobody could come on stage and sing a bolero after being introduced by such a mouthful.
The search was more arduous than the sergeant had imagined, and the Count felt happy when, after several attempts, the presumptuous cybernetic policeman was forced to use the phone and consult a specialist over locating certain files from the past.
Estévañez gave the machine new instructions, as it had refused to reply to his questions, and Conde went into the passage, and saw the tremendous downpour that had started outside. He rushed to a lavatory and, while urinating, realized he’d held on to it for too long. He sighed with relief as he felt himself unloading as powerfully as the summer clouds. Simultaneously a voice made him start.
“They say great friendships are forged in lavatories. Or that old ones have been patched up . . .”
Conde didn’t turn round: he was conscientiously shaking his penis, flicking it as if it were of slightly higher calibre than the one he actually wielded.
“But I’m not going to introduce you . . .” he said, putting his member away.
Captain Palacios preferred a stall, rather than one of the urinals where the Count emptied his bladder. When he’d finished, he twisted round and was shocked to see his ex-colleague’s bruised face.
“What the fuck’s happened to you?”
“They almost killed me, but evil weevils never die. And if they die, they re-incarnate, as a friend told me who knows about such things. It’s the risk you take prowling around when you’re not a policeman.”
“Well, they really had it in for you . . . Did you find anything?” asked the captain.
“A few things about the previous owner of the library and the girl who sang boleros. There are people who think she didn’t commit suicide . . . But don’t you worry, nothing that had anything to do with Dionisio. How about you?”
“I’ve hardly had time to do anything. This gets worse by the
day. There’s no trace of that bloody tall, lame black guy who was at the Ferreros’ the day before Dionisio died. The people trading in old books don’t know him . . .”
“I know,” said the Count. “I suspect Dionisio and his sister were fibbing about the tall black guy, and after what’s happened, Amalia doesn’t know how to wriggle out of the lie.”
“Do you reckon?” Manolo looked at the Count, intrigued by his suggestion. “Why would they want to do that?”
“The answer to what happened is in the Ferrero household, in the library, to be precise. The other day Dionisio or his sister said something to me about that library that I think holds the key to everything.”
“And you still don’t remember what?”
“I don’t remember who said it or what was said, but it’s buzzing around my head . . . For some reason I think it’s also connected to the bolero singer.”
“You still on that tack?... You know, Conde, my way’s much simpler: Dionisio refused to do a deal over some of those books, the person with him got upset, they rowed and he lost his temper and killed him. When he saw what he’d done, he took six books, because, whatever you say, they must be some of the most valuable ones . . .”
“Very neat,” said the Count, “and, best of all, neither Yoyi nor I fit that version. We didn’t need to kill anyone or steal books that Dionisio could sell us at a bargain price . . .”
“And what if Yoyi tried to reach a deal and leave you out? There were books you didn’t want to sell because they were so rare . . . You told me some manuscripts might be worth a fortune . . . And the person who entered the house was someone Dionisio was acquainted with. He even knew where to find his knife.”
Conde looked at Manolo’s vague expression, eyeing him as suspiciously as if he held the trump card.
“Yoyi may be many things but he’s not a murderer.”
“How can you be so sure? Yoyi is in business and crazy about money...’
“Yoyi is also my friend,” concluded Conde and Manolo smiled: he knew what such a status meant in the ex-lieutenant’s ethics. “Forget him and look elsewhere.”
“I’m looking everywhere, but it’s like being a magnet: you turn it round, and when you let go, things turn by themselves and join up again . . .”
‘If you’d listened to me like you used to . . . Tell me, do you know why Dionisio left the corporation where he was working after he left the army?”
“More or less, though you can’t get a straight answer from anyone. It seems Dionisio was too strict and didn’t like the way he saw things being done there. You can imagine what. It seems he started getting difficult and they made his life impossible. He was the only one who had to leave.”
“I’d imagined something of the sort. He was a man of rock-solid principles. He almost starved to death as a result.”
“Conde, Conde!” Sergeant Estévañez’s summons interrupted the Count’s disquisition. “Oh, Captain, I didn’t know . . .”
“What’s the matter?” enquired Manolo.
“I found something odd: the case on that woman isn’t open but it’s not closed either . . .”
“This is looking good. But we’d better leave the toilets,” the Count suggested, “otherwise they’ll start suspecting I’m some policemen’s favourite piece of ass . . .”
The evening rain cleared away the grey haze that had wreathed the city since midday, as if releasing it from an oppressive burden, capable of driving it back into its weary foundations. The newly washed sky recovered its summery cheerfulness and a cool breeze rustled through the trees, painted by the impressionist light of dusk.
Muscular and spare in spite of his age, the man rocked gently in his wooden chair. He was looking dreamily into the garden, and every twenty-five to thirty seconds lifted his cigar to his lips. His face was momentarily hidden in a cloud of languorous smoke that began the perfumed ascent from his mouth to paradise, where the spirits of well-made and even better smoked havanas lived on eternally.