17 Stone Angels (15 page)

Fortunato coached Boguso and quizzed him on his progress each day, listening with dread as the killer repeated the horrific details one at a time. In the daydreams and nightdreams that came to him more and more frequently, his own self became confused with Boguso, with victims in hoods, with calm men sipping coffee while they rested between applications of the electric prod. He'd never hated any of the criminals he'd prosecuted, but he'd come to hate Boguso in a way that he found hard to conceal. He dreamed of killing him, of watching his face twist in pain as he crumpled backwards and down. He, who'd never wanted to kill anyone. Boguso came to represent all the unknown people who had gotten him into this: the Chief, always glib and cheerful with his tangos, Domingo the sadist, Vasquez with his
merca
, and a host of shadows who remained out of sight
in the upper reaches, beyond harm. In the distant upper reaches of the pyramid, vague and aloof: Carlo Pelegrini.

For his own part, the closer Boguso came to mastering his material the cockier he grew. “Amigo Fortunato,” he'd say, “let's talk about what happens after I'm convicted. I want to know more specifically when I'm getting out and how much money I'll have waiting. All these promises flying around in the air,” he shook his head distastefully, “it's not good business.”

“Don't be too clever, Boguso. You'll make more problems for yourself.”

“And how do I know you won't cut me as soon as it's over?
Killed while escaping, committed suicide in his cell
, crap like that. That's the oldest cop trick there is.”

He rested his hand lightly on the murderer's shoulder. “It's business, Enrique,” he said. “In business you don't kill your partner.”

The explanation sounded weak even to him.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

T
he
remisero
glanced at the piece of paper Athena showed him and looked at her doubtfully. “It's complicated, that neighborhood.”

“That's where I need to go.”

He muttered something, then motioned her into his car and set out into the cement streets, his tires thumping softly over the asphalt expansion joints. They quickly left the little stores at the center of San Justo and made their way deeper into the exurbs of Buenos Aires, past modest houses fortified with fences and barred windows. The “For Sale” signs showed the losing struggle to stay in the middle class. “They're all looking for something smaller,” the cab driver said.

The occasional desultory business interrupted the modest houses: a butcher, an ice-cream shop that also sold tickets for the
quinella
, a sickly-looking hardware store. They passed the uninterrupted brick wall of an abandoned factory. “Here they used to make televisions,” the driver said, “but it's been globalized, thanks to your friends at the IMF. Now we have Sony and Sanyo. Over there, in that other block, they made electric fans. Also globalized. They couldn't compete with
los chinos
. I know because I used to be their accountant.”

The
remisero
, it turned out, had a degree in economics from the University of Buenos Aires, and the rare presence of an American ear made him
voluble. “Thus the neo-liberal model, Señorita. The glory of Free Trade as imposed by your experts from the universities of Chicago and Harvard and promoted by the global corporations. Cut the importation duties, open the market to foreign corporations, privatize state enterprises. Then, when the national factories go broke, the multi-nationals can write in their annual reports that they have conquered a new market. Thus is the game. But don't worry: when they're finished with us, they'll do the same thing to you.”

“What do you think is the solution?”

He spit out a dry laugh. “A long brick wall and a few good machine guns.”

Something on the street caught her eye. “What's happening there?”

Three men had pinned someone in a sports jacket against a white plaster wall. One of them, in a blue jogging suit, cuffed the victim on the head and spat on him, then pulled several bank-notes from the man's wallet and threw it on the ground. The window was open and she could hear the assailant in the jogging suit cursing as they passed. He slapped the man across the top of his head once more and turned to face the
remis
, fixing Athena with a glare so malevolent that she turned away. The driver punched it through the intersection.

“It's troublesome, this barrio,” he said. “
Globalizado
.”

He dropped her at the corner she'd requested and drove off. The even files of small working-class houses died out here into unfinished brick walls and vacant lots, with yellow dirt footpaths lapping at the street. A few meager dwellings squatted behind weedy lawns and hopeful little plantings of hibiscus or avocado. A guard dog barked through an iron fence a hundred yards away. At three in the afternoon, the cracked and crumpled sidewalks buckled footless down the block.

Athena took out the piece of paper Ricardo had written for her and tried to orient herself. Cacho's house sat behind an empty lot with no address and Ricardo's diagram was ambiguous. She ambled hesitantly down the street, then returned, stopping before the concrete slab of an aborted construction project. Behind it she could see a brick wall with a few strange slit windows in it. She heard a car approaching behind her. Before she realized it, the car had pulled over to the curb and disgorged three men who quickly closed in on her. In the next second, she recognized the blue jogging suit, the dark, frightening rage. He tilted his chin up and glared. “What's happening with you? Eh? What are you doing here?”

She glanced up and down the street but the only movement was the dog several houses away, throwing itself against the iron fence. “Excuse me,” she said, sounding overly polite even to herself. “I'm looking for someone. Perhaps you can help me. Do you know Cacho Rivera?”

One of the men laughed, the other kept her targeted in his harsh black glare. “On whose part?” the jogger said.

“On the part of Ricardo Berenski. It's a personal matter.”

He stared at her over a long, unpleasant pause. She'd place him in his late forties. His black hair and dark skin stretched over sharp features and a prominent nose that had been broken and set back crookedly. With his shaggy hair shot with gray, he might have been an aging hippy, but he had nothing relaxed or benevolent about him, and the wrinkles and small irregular scars around one of his eyes layered a patina of violent experience over his face as though something inside was burning through to the surface. He had a hairspring intensity about him. “
Bien
,” he said at last. Turning to his cohorts, “
Muchachos
; as we said, eh?” They melted off towards the car and he motioned towards the brick building. “Let's talk inside.”

She followed him around the corner to a heavy metal door, which he unlocked and opened for her with a small polite gesture of welcome. She hesitated a moment before entering the isolation of the dim room. He was Berenski's friend, right? She went in and he locked the door behind them.

The room had a cool, stony smell, despite the heat of the day, and was surprisingly clean and well-furnished. The smoothly finished plaster spread from floor to ceiling like a fresh sheet of paper, interrupted by various expensive wall fixtures and several paintings and drawings in neat glassed-in frames. A leather sofa faced an oversized television screen, along with two stuffed leather chairs. A stack of unopened boxes containing video cameras stood in the corner. She noticed that the windows were barred and shuttered with steel. An assault rifle leaned against the television set.

He motioned towards the leather sofa and she settled nervously into the cool squeaking cushions. “Who are you and why did Berenski send you to me?”

She spoke as if they were sitting in an office somewhere. “I'm Doctor Athena Fowler. I'm trying to find out about the murder of a United States citizen and Ricardo thought you might be able to help.”

It seemed to annoy him. “Then maybe you should go and talk to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. We've got thirty thousand people murdered
with the best wishes of
Tio Sam
, and their families want to know what happened, too! That's the reality here in Argentina.”

She kept her voice level as she answered, though her blood was pounding. “Reality is wide and deep, Señor Rivera, and we all have our feet in it. If you want to talk about injustice, let's start with you and me. Why did you have that man against the wall ten minutes ago?”

His black features coiled at her question, then suddenly eased. He laughed. “You're very fierce, friend of Berenski. Would you like a drink?” He poured her a glass of red wine. “Soda?” he asked politely.

“Please.” He squirted some seltzer into the wine. The astringent bubbles of the mixture writhed on the surface of her tongue, refreshing her. Athena had to listen carefully to understand him: he had a thick barrio accent laded with
lunfordo
she knew wouldn't be found in any Spanish dictionary but, despite the slang and the coarse-sounding inflections, his speech betrayed the uneven polish of self-education.

“So, tell me how you know Berenski. Are you a journalist also?”

“No. I'm a teacher at Georgetown University, in Washington DC.” She told him how she'd met Ricardo, not hiding the lack of support from the embassy or the FBI. She knew that in Cacho's world the cardboard faces of official standing were of no importance, and the chance to speak honestly refreshed her. “The victim had a wife and daughter,” she finished, taking a line from her encounter with Carmen Amado. “That's who I represent.”

He went on quizzing her casually about where she was staying, her contacts in the city. Something about Cacho's physical presence exhilarated her: she could sense in him a man who had played it all many times before and was capable of doing so again without a second thought.
He's very dangerous
, Ricardo had warned her.
He killed a heap of Fascists
. At the moment, pulling open the steel shutters to let in the mid-morning light, he seemed tidy and domestic.

“So tell me about this murder,” he said, sitting down on the leather chair across from her, “and why you've come to me.”

“The victim was a man named Robert Waterbury. He was murdered in this neighborhood.” She watched his face for a reaction but saw only a steady attention. “Ricardo said you know a lot about what happens around here.”

He tipped his head. “I heard about that one. They made shit out of
some gringo over on Avellaneda. They burned the car, I believe there were a few chalks of
milonga
. . . ”

“The police thought it might be some sort of settling of accounts related to drugs.”

“And Ricardo agreed with them?”

“No. He thinks it's more complicated than that.”

Cacho didn't voice his opinion. He seemed to be calculating something. “And how does it go with the police? Who are you working with?”

“With Comisario Fortunato, of the Brigada de San Justo.” She watched his face but Cacho displayed nothing. “Do you know Comisario Fortunato?”

Cacho squinted as he reached for the soda bottle and sprayed another shot into his glass. “Very little. I know him more than anything by his reputation.” He drew his head back and peered at her intently, then changed the subject. “You're an athlete, aren't you?”

The sudden appraisal surprised and flattered her. “I'm a runner.”

“Of what distance?”

“Marathons.”

He raised his eyebrows as he considered it. “I could tell you were an athlete by the way you move. The way you sat down on the couch. You dominate your body. Some people are like that.”

“You're very observant.”

“In my profession, one has to be observant. Observe, gather information. That's the difference between the fuck-ups rotting in the Tombs and those of us breathing the free air. That, and luck. But now you've interested me in this gringo who got cut. What was he doing in Buenos Aires? Why would someone cut him?”

“He was a writer, looking for background material for a new book. It could be that he put himself in something by accident.”

“Without doubt.” He clicked his tongue scornfully. “
Boludo!
” Retard. He shook his head, then took a fresh breath. “You see, Athena, I'm the one asking for information from you. Forgive that I've wasted your time.”

She felt him wriggling away from her. “That's fine. But you said you knew Miguel Fortunato by his reputation. What
is
his reputation?”

Cacho hesitated, threw his shoulders up. “He doesn't have fame of being a torturer. He doesn't mount those little
operettas
, where they set up
a
muchacho
with a job and then kill him in a phony shoot-out. He's a good man. Taking into account that he's police, of course.”

She looked for a delicate way to phrase it. “Is he. . .Does he make
arrangements
with people?”

“
Chica
! He's a comisario!”

“Which means what?”

His look signaled that answering such a stupid question would be a waste of breath. “I'll tell you this: he knows how to investigate. And he knows the barrio very well.”