17 Stone Angels (16 page)

The validation, such as it was, heartened her. So maybe he'd compromised a little to reach his position; Maybe he'd had no choice.

The criminal sat watching her with his legs crossed and his chin resting on his hand. She had a sense of her own exoticism in his life, just as he felt exotic to her. She'd never met a revolutionary before, or
terrorista
, as they'd been called at the time. “Ricardo said you two know each other from the Seventies.” She stopped, then prompted him. “That you were in the
Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo
together.”

He looked irritated, assessing her with an acid look. “Yes. Us and some six hundred retards against forces of security that numbered 400,000. Our average age was twenty-three.”

The thought of a few hundred youths arrayed against an entire state gave her a depressing sensation of hopelessness but, at the same time, a certain awe for the man in front of her, as if he were the incarnation of something profound and mystical. “How could you join a cause that seems so . . . impossible?”

“Ché won! Fidel won!” The tough barrio accent gave way to a more philosophical remove. “It's not a thing of the numbers. It's a way of seeing. You're the vanguard of the Revolution, the sacred Liberators fighting for the People. The side of Good. Of Justice. Of Historical Destiny.” He shrugged. “Stupidities like that.”

He made a bitter little show of teeth. “I'll tell you how it was,
Profesora
, so you can write it up for your classes. Our leader, Santucho, had been defying the statistics for so long that he lost contact with the reality. In his mind, we would triumph because of our wills of steel. Win or die for Argentina, that was our slogan. He imagined that the masses would rise up to support us, that our six hundred conscripts were the beginning of sixty thousand. That was the dream. But they tortured our sympathizers and murdered our
families and in the end it was they who ambushed us, they who had the stronger intelligence. It was a ring of iron that Santucho couldn't break with his transcendent thought.”

Her eyes drifted past the vapors of sad history to the pile of stolen video cameras. He went on in a sonorous voice. “We had too many amateurs, people with shaky hands and bad judgment. Those are the ones who get you killed. Then begin the meetings where your contact doesn't show, or where you drive past the safe-house to find a plainclothes cop or a pair of
milicos
smelling up the whole block. Your friends start to fall. Clara falls, Luis falls, the Buffalo falls. This one is taken prisoner at his mother's house, another is killed in a gunfight; some you never find out what happened, they're just gone.” He continued the soft hypnotic eulogy. “Claudio falls, Carlos falls, Elena falls, Billy falls. Mario falls, Rodolfo falls, Oscar and Juana,
el Pibe Loco
, Sandra and Silvia and Mauro and Nestor. They all fall. All of them.” Resentment stiffened his voice. “But Ricardo doesn't fall, because Ricardo's out of the country. Because Ricardo ran to Mexico.”

He fell silent and Athena could tell that his mind had gone back twenty-five years, to long-dead people who gazed back at him with smooth hopeful faces. And he, with all the skills of the brilliant guerrilla gone adrift, his own fall so utterly complete. She remembered what Ricardo had said; that some survivors were intact and others broken. Her last question was so awkward and intrusive that she didn't dare phrase it as a question. At the same time, she couldn't keep from saying it.

“So you left the Revolution.”

He frowned at her. “Didn't you hear me? Did I go into exile?” He sat upright. “In 1975, when they killed Santucho and all the little hens scattered for Mexico and Switzerland, I stayed planted! I kept hitting the banks and the comisarias until I was the only one still standing.” He practically spit. “I never deserted the Revolution! It deserted me, revolution of shit!” He became hard again, contemptuous. “I'm a criminal! That's my political statement! Tell
that
to Ricardo! I did my service to
La Revolución
. I brought the final justice to one of the worst
hijos de puta
that they had, a murderer of dozens, of hundreds. I did it! And you? You can't even find the killer of one! All you do is make ornaments for the oppressors with your clever little reports!”

“What kind of political statement is it to cooperate with the police who were hunting down your friends twenty years ago?”

The challenge blanked him, and then a murderous fury blossomed in his face. She was afraid in that instant that he might get up and hit her. “Who are you, to come here asking these types of questions? You talk about matters of life and death as if
you
could judge
me!
Don't be so confident! Don't imagine that your passport protects you here! That was the mistake of your friend Waterbury!”

She fought down her fear. “What do you know about Waterbury?” He glared at her for a few seconds and then let out a disparaging hiss. “
Qué concha brava
!” What a bold cunt. He looked to the side and then a cool impersonal manner dropped over him like a cloth. He stood up. “Ricardo sent you so I attended you. Now I have things to do.” She followed him to the door and he unlocked it for her. “Wait at the kiosk on the corner and I'll call a
remis
to look for you there. And don't mention me to anyone.”

As she walked out she turned to him and extended her hand. He had something dark and luminous about him, like obsidian. “Thank you for meeting me, Cacho.”

She could see the forces working away behind his harsh agonized face, the struggle between the disinterred revolutionary and the hardened criminal. At last he took her hand, then leaned over and gave her a last cologne-scented kiss. “You're
brava
, friend of Berenski. You don't know what disillusion is yet. I'm talking to you from the other side. Stay here a while in Argentina. After, we'll revise our accounts.”

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

T
he problem now, Athena thought as she waited for the Comisario in the conference room, was how to tell Miguel that she wanted to bring Ricardo Berenski into the investigation. Elements of the Buenos Aires police had thought highly enough of Berenski to threaten to kill him, and she hadn't yet sculpted a good excuse for why she had sought him out behind Miguel's back. Nonetheless, Berenski had turned up a stunning bit of information: the number in Waterbury's pocket had belonged to Teresa Castex de Pelegrini, the rich woman who Berenski had met with Waterbury that night six months ago, and the wife of Carlo Pelegrini. Fortunato's authority and experience could help now, and she'd decided to bank on her gut feeling about him. On some unquantifiable level, he wanted to see this through and, as if in confirmation of this, he had announced over the telephone that he'd finally come up with something “of great significance.” When he'd summoned her here for a briefing she'd felt like calling up Carmen Amado to tell her that yes, there was an honest cop in Buenos Aires.

A familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Athena, the Goddess of Love!”

Fabian filled the doorway with his smile, his ash-blond curls as perfect as if he'd just come from the beauty salon. He wore a sports jacket of eggplant-colored suede, matched by a maroon shirt and an olive tie with
gold and purple stripes. The combination so surprised Athena that she didn't bother to correct his mythological error. “Interesting jacket.”

“It's unique, no? With this color? At first I thought No, Fabian. No. But after . . . ” He made a discerning little frown, like a chef adding ingredients. “I calm it a little with the shirt and balance it with the green . . . It remains half-dignified, no?”

“No.”

“Ah!” he said, easing into the room and bending down to give her a patchouli-scented kiss. “You are bitter chocolate!” He put his hand over his heart and broke into an old song, looking deeply into her eyes: “
El dia que me quieras
. . .” stopping after the first line. “This is by the immortal Carlos Gardel, who died tragically in an accident of aviation in 1935. I, personally, hate tango, but you can't argue with Carlos. Every day he sings better!” He slid into the seat across from her. “I can't stop thinking about your case. That one of Robert Waterbury.”

“You're very much the thinker!”

He accepted the ironic compliment with a wave of the hand. “I was reading in my screenplay book last night and I found something that might be useful.” His face became nearly mystical with the power of his insight. “At this point, I think you must consider the Chief. Have you thought about that?”

She wasn't sure how to react, and Fabian plowed on. “Because in the movies, it's always the chief that did it. The hero's partner is killed, and then three quarters of the way into the plot it's always “My God, it was the chief all along!” Don't tell me you haven't seen that a thousand times.”

Athena looked at the clownish policeman, unsure of his intent. “Are you talking about a particular person, Fabian?”

“Of course not!” he answered, with a fatuousness that incited suspicion rather than allaying it. “That would be inconceivable! I'm talking of concepts, of plot mechanisms. But if you have no other ideas and you're here, why not? Moreover, the idea that some sinister chief committed the crime is much more interesting than this tired hypothesis of drugs, of the settling of scores. At least, from the cinematic point of view.”

“Your joke is in very bad taste, Fabian.”

He dropped his smile. “You're right. The truth is, I feel sorry for you. It's difficult to come to a foreign country and try to solve a crime like this.
There's much frustration. But I would like to help you. What I suggest is this: after work, privately, without telling the Comisario, you and I should go and make some inquiries. To survey once again the crime scene, see if some clue has been missed. Then there is dinner, with one of our excellent red wines, and we should visit some interesting bars in Palermo and San Telmo, to familiarize you with the ambiance of the events. There is one that is
very
interesting called—”

“Fabian—”

“El Gaucho Maricon—”

“Fabian! I don't think that would be appropriate—”

“Doctora,” he interrupted her, leaning close and speaking in an urgent near-whisper, “you are in Buenos Aires! The city where love and death never stop changing their thousand beautiful masks!” He suddenly let go of the poetic approach. “Am I too transparent?”

“I knew boys in high school who were less transparent than you.”

“Ow!” He winced. “Now, you hit me hard, Athena! My ego has shrunk to the size of a coffee bean.” He stood up and broke into a smile. “Thus is life. No? I give you the number of my cell phone.” Extracting a card from his pocket. “If you need help at any moment you can call your friend Fabian. Until then . . .” She felt his curls tickle her skin as he kissed her cheek. He stopped in the doorway, shaking his finger at her. “You're going to like my police story. You don't know it yet, but you're going to like it.”

The sight of Comisario Fortunato's
weary face pasted in his drab office dispersed the queer cologne of Fabian's games. He gave an officer a few pesos for coffee and inquired about her previous days in Buenos Aires. Had she passed them well? How was she occupying her time? She answered blandly as he stacked some papers on his desk, something about meeting with a few people, enjoying the cafés. She was eager to find out what he'd uncovered.

“
Bien
.” He put the papers to the side. “I have good news for you. After we spoke I asked all in the brigada to inquire among their sources for information about Waterbury. This was not so simple; many times the
buchones
, for reasons of their own, are not eager to chat. As this is priority one, we did it, and thankfully it rendered quite a bit. It seems that one of our informants heard another criminal boasting about killing a German and, following that
line, it turned out that it was not a German after all, but a North American. It's not sure yet, but it seems that we already have the killer in custody.”

Athena felt her heart beat faster but she said nothing.

“It seems that one of the material authors of the crime is a delinquent named Enrique Boguso, who has already been processed on a different murder that he committed after that of Robert Waterbury. We think he is dose to a confession.”

“Why did he do it?”

“The motive still isn't clear, but, as we suspected, it had something to do with drugs. Waterbury wanted to buy a small amount, and then they decided to get clever: It's not known yet. Let's see if it gets clearer in the next few days.”

As glad as the news made her, she felt cheated that it didn't involve a connection to Teresa and Carlo Pelegrini. Chiding herself: she was complaining because the murder was too mundane? And yet . . . “There's something I need to tell you, Miguel. Something of interest to the case.”

“What, young one?”

She felt timid before Fortunato's kind eyes. “I went and talked with Ricardo Berenski. He's a journalist, perhaps you've heard of him.”

Fortunato rubbed his chin. “He writes about sports, no? About
futbol
.”

She almost laughed with relief. The Comisario's features had never seemed so endearing. “No. He's an investigative journalist. I went to him just to get another view on the case.”