17 Stone Angels (38 page)

“Which ones?”

“Federales and those of the
Bonaerense
.”

“Do you have their names?”

The clerk hesitated, perhaps wondering for the first time who he was talking to. Fortunato maintained his look of expectation, and the clerk took several cards from a drawer. Federales: a comisario from Homicide, and a sub-co from the local station. Officers of some rank. There was a certain seriousness to the investigation now. The other card, of the
Bonaerense
, struck him like a familiar slap. Domingo Fausto, Inspector. Checking their trail. The cruel beefy face flashed across his vision; he put it out of his mind. “And what did you tell them?”

“The truth. That the Northamerican was out when I came to work and he never returned. That I finished the shift without event.”

Fortunato nodded his head approvingly, his voice warm and sympathetic. “
Bien, muchacho
. And no other guests came that night?”

“There were some, but I don't remember well. That was six months ago.”

Fortunato nodded. “The registry, please.”

The clerk produced a large ledger book with names in it. Most were couples, without the identification numbers or passports required by law. He made an automatic mental note that he could squeeze the owner for that omission, then concentrated on the names again. All common last names, their stays lasting only a few hours. He'd expected that.

A whistle came from the television as the referee called a foul against River. Fortunato glanced at it with annoyance. “Lower the volume.” He waited for the clerk to comply. “You rent rooms by the hour here?”

“Some. The girls come over from Reconquista. But it's tranquil. We never have any problems.”

“Do you remember anything unusual about the clients that night?”

“No.”

The policeman pulled out a photo he'd brought with him. “Do you remember seeing this man?”

Two black brows moved together. “Yes. Yes.
Un tipo
“Rock Star.” He came in with a girl around. . .twelve-thirty, one in the morning. Not long after I arrived.”

“How did he act?”

He shrugged. “When they come in here like that, it's not to introduce themselves and make friends with the guy at the reception. He came, he signed, he went upstairs with the girl and he left two hours later. See . . .” He pointed at the check-out time in the register, then squinted. “But if I remember well, the woman left first. I wondered what he was doing up there the last hour.”

So Fabian had been alone in the hotel for at least an hour while Waterbury was taking his last ride.
Puta!
“And was he carrying anything when he left?”

“I think he had an athletic bag.”

The detective nodded, then asked a few more questions about the woman, gathering only that she wasn't one of the regulars and that nothing about her stood out. The clerk knew nothing else. If Pelegrini's men had come in to search the room later, they must have done it on a different shift.

“Fine. You did well, young one. Fortunately, in our department there is money in the budget to reward citizens like yourself.” The Comisario limbered ten hundred-peso notes from the roll, probably two months” salary for the clerk. He handed them over but kept his fingers on them. “But I want you to forget you saw me. The element of surprise is critical to the investigation.”

The clerk put his hand over the bills and pulled them across the counter. “Don't worry, Uncle. You don't exist.”

Fortunato nodded with the faintest hint of chill. “Good. If you keep your word, I'll know. And if you don't,” his face lost all expression, “I'll know that, too.”

Once outside, Fortunato staggered through
the night. He had suspected that the journals had been taken from Waterbury's room, but if Fabian had gotten them
while the squeeze was happening
, he had to have known about the abduction from the start! How? Through Domingo? A sense of shame and anger mixed within Fortunato. All of them plotting behind his back! Like when the colonels and lieutenants plotted behind the generals” backs in those barracks uprisings. And him the stupid
gil
, playing the commanding officer!

The rage to kill someone swept across Fortunato and left him with his heart pounding and his fists clenched. The incident in the vacant lot in San Justo had removed the concept of murder from the realm of idle fantasy. He pushed the notion aside and concentrated on the problem. Fabian knew he'd abducted Waterbury and that he could do nothing but wait and hope while others were making a bed for Pelegrini.

Fine. The situation was developing. One had to pursue it more profoundly now, at a level where things were closer to the blood. He opened the door to his car and looked at his watch. One in the morning. He put in a call to Cacho.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

A
s he'd expected, the former revolutionary was far too wary to meet him someplace private: that kind of caution had kept him alive when an entire country was hunting him. He recommended a café in the middle of Ramos Mejia, a pizzeria large enough to guarantee some empty space around them in the dead hours of the afternoon the next day, but too central to allow someone to cork him without a dozen witnesses. Fortunato drank a whiskey as he made his proposition, and Cacho refused him before he could even get to the price.

“I'm not putting myself into this, Fortunato. I already told you that. Look for someone else to pick up Vasquez. Ask Domingo.”

“I'm doing this apart from Domingo. It's private.”

“Even more crazy. Look for someone else.” The thief stood up.

“Cacho, don't be so hard. It's just to talk with him.” He saw the man hesitate. “I'll give you two green sticks.”

“Twenty thousand? To talk? You could have him cut for that money, and buy the widow a new car afterwards. What's happening, Miguel? What does Vasquez know that's worth twenty thousand?”

Fortunato shrugged offhandedly. “Maybe he knows why Robert Waterbury was killed.”

Cacho shook his head of gray-streaked black hair. “I already read about
the
opereta
with Onda. Very nice, Señor, but no thank you. That's not my business. You want to talk about stolen televisions, call me.”

“Maybe he can tell us who killed Ricardo Berenski.”

Fortunato's words halted Cacho at the edge of the table, and the Comisario could see he'd hit something. “You two are old
compañeros
, no? Berenski worked in Propaganda for the ERP; that's well-known. Berenski kept up the struggle, in his manner. That's why they killed him.”

“What would a
merquero
like Vasquez know about that?”

“Sit down, Cacho. Chat a little more with me. We're old friends now. I know your crimes, you know mine. There's little to hide. But of that night, of the gringo, it's not like it seems.” The criminal sat down and lit a cigarette. Fortunato looked over his shoulder and went on in a confidential voice. “I fired the last bullet. That's the truth. But it was Domingo and Vasquez that shot him up first. When I fired, it already was. I did it because . . .” He hesitated, remembering Waterbury's agony, the look he'd given him before everything had gone bad. He'd been lying so long he had to work to try to muster the sincerity of the truth. “I did it because he was suffering. Vasquez shot him in the balls, the thigh. Domingo shot him in the chest.” Fortunato felt his voice cracking as he remembered the night. “There was no alternative, hombre. It already was. I killed him, yes, but for mercy. I never wanted to kill him! You know me. I'm not the type to kill an innocent man for a few pesos!”

He composed himself, continued in a more analytical tone. “I believe Pelegrini ordered the squeeze. There was a matter with the writer and Pelegrini's wife. But I was told to squeeze him, not kill him. It was Vasquez who started shooting, then Domingo. I think someone else wanted him dead. And now,” he cleared his throat, “it falls to me to solve the crime.”

The criminal stared at him with a mixture of pity and amazement. He felt comfortable with the old Fortunato, the arranger, the tranquil bureaucrat. This other Fortunato made him nervous. “
Estás loco, Comiso
.”

“
Mirá
, Cacho,” the policeman said hurriedly. “You used to be for the Revolution, those years ago. Even the worst of the subversives had their idealism. A search for some . . .” the word felt strange and hypocritical to him, “justice.” He shrugged. “Maybe I'm looking for the same thing.”

“What could you know about the Revolution!” Cacho returned harshly. “It was a thing of the spirit! You were dedicated to killing all that!”

Fortunato gazed down his drink, his shoulders bowed around his gray head. “It's not so
thus
, Cacho.”

Cacho looked at the crumpled man in front of him. He had seen a thousand little plays tried out by petty criminals and petty cops, and if this were a lie it would be such an obvious ridiculous lie that the Comisario wouldn't even bother telling it. Something had happened to the Comisario. His wife's death or the murder had tripped some strange switch that was changing him, cell by cell, giving him a conscience. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just the cheap remorse of those who know they are about to fall.

“Forget it, Miguel.” He stood up again, but he couldn't make himself walk away. “Where do you see Berenski in this?”

Fortunato was heartened by the reprieve. “I'm still not sure where he enters.” He thought of telling about RapidMail and Pelegrini, but it was too vague in his own mind and it might spook Cacho. “But I know that Berenski had started to investigate the Waterbury case when they killed him. If Vasquez knows who really killed Waterbury, maybe it will tell us who put down Berenski.”

Cacho seemed drawn into the possibility for a few seconds then shook his head. “You talk about it as if it wasn't you! You're selling something! This is a trap!”

Fortunato heard him out and didn't bother with denials. “You don't believe me, Cacho. With reason. I'm an
hijo de puta
and if there is justice in Argentina I'll end up rotting in Devoto for that crime and many others. Maybe it will turn out that way, but those are things that will be arranged later. In this case, I'm simply trying to do what is just.”

He stopped talking. Cacho was considering it and Fortunato could sense him handling the contours of his own history and whatever fierce idealism had once sent him on operations so unlikely that only the most visionary hopes for the future could induce a person to begin.

“Three green sticks,” he said at last. “And you pay me in advance.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

A
thena had never been a liar, she'd always clung to the Truth as some sort of holy text which automatically sanctified one's cause. The Truth had failed her miserably here. It upheld no righteous banner, attracted no allies other than Berenski and Carmen Amado de los Santos, who were unable to help her now. All she had left were lies, and the facts of the murder as revealed in the faulty
expediente
. Her mentor was Comisario Fortunato.

She picked up the small packet of business cards and looked at them. It amazed her how the tiny print and pasteboard of a business card could wipe out in one stroke her entire identity. How easily one erased and remade oneself. Now she was Helen Kuhn, a Vice President of Development at American Telepictures. She handed out the card as she made the rounds of the tango schools. She was looking for a dancer named Paulé who had been suggested for a role in a movie they were shooting. Who had recommended Paulé? Why, the maestra of the classes at the Confiteria Ideal, or of the Dance Club El Arrabal, or the Escuela de Tango Carlos Gardel. She acquired a list of names and facts as she went, dropping them casually into her inquiries. Edmundo, the booking agent at Carlito's, had spoken highly of Paulé, and Norma, of the Teatro Colon, had attested to her thick French accent.

To her surprise, the lying came easily and not unpleasantly. The faces she spoke to always brightened credulously at her introduction, eager to
slip into the world she created for them. For someone like her, passing through Buenos Aires without history or future, it didn't really matter who she pretended to be. She became a memory as soon as they turned their backs, a story they might tell their husbands that night and remember as the vague blonde woman with the disappearing face. She became like the lurid characters of Fabian's movie script, or the violent personages delineated by Enrique Boguso in his first, false confession: a vapor in a world made of vapor.

Nevertheless, after three days something real began to emerge from all the half-truths. Paulé had moved some months ago, a dance teacher said, and had given instructions to keep her new address strictly private. Something of a too-insistent ex-boyfriend, although she wondered if it might be problems with immigration. But for the chance at a film role! Why not come here to the ballroom at ten o'clock the following night, when she would surely come to teach the beginners!

Athena called the Comisario as soon as she reached her hotel. “I found her!”

“Where?”