Holy City (23 page)

“I've been living there for two months. It's not the best neighborhood, but that doesn't matter, because you're not going out, until tomorrow at least.”

“Where is calle Azara?” Verónica asks, refusing to remember the names of streets. “I'm not a taxi driver, I have enough trouble trying to remember the numbers of our laws,” she adds in self-defense.

Carroza pulls up outside his apartment and hands her the keys. It is true, the neighborhood does not seem very welcoming: old houses, deserted streets of colonial cobblestones, high pavements for the days when the river rises, overflows the drains and floods everywhere; mist creeping up from the nearby Riachuelo.

“Don't open the door for anyone or answer the phone. Only your mobile and only then if I call you.”

Verónica feels protected and defenseless in equal measure. Carroza is the one least at risk if blood really starts to flow, because he has already lost most of his. His skinny tissues feed more on memories than on red and white cells. She trusts him, but the immortality she attributes to him is not transferable.

It is too late to reconsider anything now: within the hour all the sharpshooters Oso Berlusconi has called are due to meet up. Fifteen men trained to kill and ready to carry out whatever orders they are given. Carroza still has no idea what it is all about and perhaps will not know until the minute before he has to swing into action. He thinks it must be a big raid, combing through an area where they can discover something to show the press next morning.

“We're to meet near here, that's why I thought it must have something
to do with the Riachuelo market,” he tells Verónica. “As far as I know, which isn't much, the place where they're hiding those tourists can't be far from that tribe of wandering delinquents.”

Verónica is jolted upright.

“Are the kidnapped people from the
Queen of Storms
?”

Carroza is no expert in English, but thinks yes, the tourist liner that ran aground in the river. Verónica asks if anyone who was not a cop called him that afternoon. Carroza says no, although he was not at home, he was out digging up the dead, as per usual. He did not miss anything on his mobile—he checks it: no messages or missed calls.

“Stay here, I'll be back as soon as I can,” Carroza repeats. He is not too concerned with her question, he is in a hurry to get to the meeting point. Verónica bites her bottom lip hard. “We'll talk later,” she says. She does not know whether Pacogoya's partial confession that morning has anything to do with all this, but she intends to give him a call as soon as she is alone.

*

Far from the Swedish woman in Esquel—although he had not warned her he was coming—and too close to Buenos Aires—although he has no idea where he has been brought to—hanging upside down from the ceiling, Pacogoya starts to swing from side to side, like one of Hemingway's bells. He is encouraged by the increasingly loud creaking sounds from the wooden beam that the monster tied him to. If he does nothing, his head is going to explode like a blood-filled pomegranate, or the devil is going to come back and torture him to reveal what he does not know.

In extremes such as this, his weak physique is a positive advantage. He does not need iron muscles to overcome gravity and sway energetically to and fro. It is like being in a hammock, although not quite so comfortable, and he becomes as enthusiastic as he was in his childhood.
The beam creaks even more loudly. Now Pacogoya is worried that the whole ceiling might come down on top of him, but even so, to die buried like that could never be as fearful or painful as to be slowly finished off at the hands of an unscrupulous son of a bitch who has complete impunity on his side.

The sound of his mobile, which his captor left on the table, takes Pacogoya by surprise. At the first ring, the beam gives way and cracks into several pieces. The clapper drops out of the bell and falls heavily to the floor, although he quickly arches his back to avoid splitting his skull open. Even so, a sharp snap and a stab of pain between the shoulder blades tells him a bone must be broken. He clenches his teeth; he is gagged so tightly he can hardly breathe and the handcuffs are cutting into his flesh; only his feet are free now that the rope has come loose. He tries to stand up, but the pain is so bad he can only kneel: all this penance and not a single virgin in sight. And the mobile is still ringing.

Holed up in the Azara apartment, Verónica ends the call, although she promises herself to try again in a few minutes.

She searches in the kitchen for something to drink, even if it is only water, but the fridge is empty. So are the cupboards. This may be a spider's nest, but it is hard to see how its usual occupant manages to survive, what he has to eat, or how he amuses himself—there are no books in sight, the radio has no batteries and the black-and-white television only receives ten channels of the seventy or more available on cable. Pushed into a corner is a computer that runs on the kind of D.O.S. system that Viceroy Sobremonte must have used to compose his letter of resignation when he heard the English had landed on the shores of Quilmes in 1807.

Verónica makes do with what there is: tap water tasting of chlorine. She can put up with it for a night, she might even try to sleep a little, but at first light she is determined to get back to her own routine. She is not completely convinced that what Carroza calls the
Kristallnacht
is
going to happen, or that she is part of it, or could be hit by some stray bullet. If as seems likely they want to get rid of her, they have already shown how good they are about letting her know it. Now they must be waiting for the report she gives the magistrate, based on her own observations in the field and the accountant's calculations. With Chucho out of the equation and after the chase the previous night, they probably feel they have made their point. The magistrate will thank Verónica for all she has done so that nothing will change and she will at last receive her well-earned fees.

The land line rings and Verónica freezes. She scuttles warily round the room like an insect, tempted to pick up the phone. The ringing stops, then starts again a few seconds later. She is touching the handset with her fingertips when it goes silent again. She realizes that although Carroza has no answerphone, he does have a call register. And the number on the dial looks familiar.

She rings it and waits. She is not surprised when a beauty queen answers.

“Where did you get my number,
doctora?”

“I want my Bersa back.”

Miss Bolivia laughs. She is so young that she plays with death the way she did until recently with other dolls.

“You gave it to me. I didn't ask for it.”

“So that you could defend yourself. I didn't want you to take the initiative.”

“Nobody has died,
doctora
,” she laughs, then goes on calmly, sure of herself: “Nobody of any consequence. How did you get … ?” Verónica has no intention of telling her; that would be giving her position away. She does not have to, Miss Bolivia can think on her feet. “You're with him, aren't you? I knew you were friends, but not lovers.”

Verónica does not bother to correct her. For years now she has let people believe what they see, even if that is only shadow puppets.

“He's not here. He's been called out on a mission tonight.”

“So you stayed in charge of the home. Congratulations,
doctora
, on the cops you choose.”

“I want my gun, Ana.”

“OK, I'll come and bring it back straightaway.”

*

Deputy Inspector Carroza does not have to go far to reach the meeting place. He parks in a desolate street in Barracas, parallel to the railway embankment, in front of an old rusty iron shutter with a red tin “For Sale” sign attached. During the dictatorship, this abandoned warehouse was probably a place where they tortured people. Better not to think about it.

He goes in without knocking through a small side door that has been left ajar. Inside it smells of oil and rat droppings.

“Well, look who's here!”

Oso Berlusconi celebrates his arrival. The others are already there, standing round him in the middle of the warehouse like cocks round a hen. Each of them has got his toy with him, automatic rifles distributed as and when they arrived. They are joking and hugging one another. “It's been a long time since the gang got together, just like the good old days, you've put on weight, haven't you? And you, where did you leave your toupèe?”

Carroza is a good fifteen years younger than Oso, although if they were stripped and photographed together he could be taken for his undernourished grandfather. They have never worked together, but were always aware of what each other was up to. Neither of them is a cop of the sort who joins the force with one idea in mind: to be pensioned off as soon as possible and then grow old working for a security firm. Oso was very young during the dictatorship, but did his bit in the killings and is proud of it. Carroza joined later on and is sickened by torturers, although he has always suspected that if he ever came face to
face with a
guerrillero
he would have shot first and asked questions later. But Carroza is a good marksman and he is proud of that: it saves the police ammunition.

Oso talks to the whole group, but is looking straight at Carroza. He does not trust him, but had to call him in because he is the best shot in all the federal police force. He explains what he calls “Operation Tourism.” The military and the cops always call their day- or nighttime raids, legal or illegal, “operations.” He outlines the location and where each of them is to position himself. He will be out in front, that is why he is the leader, and besides, he wants to make sure none of the tourists is killed. All their necks are on the line, he warns them. “You can forget about your career in the police force if any gringo gets hurt.”

Oso is calm and reasonably satisfied. The ransoms for the Italian and French couples have already been paid. The money has been transferred to Switzerland and Thailand, to solid banks and serious countries backed by reserves supplied by pension funds from all over the world. Only the Germans refused to pay up: the old Teuton arrogance. They still consider themselves superior, they still cannot accept that they lost the war. Oso was hoping to soften them up tonight, but the minister's phone call forced him to change his plans.

The orders are clear. Both the ones he gave to the people guarding the kidnap victims half an hour ago in the Descamisados de América shanty town: “When you hear the first shots, slip out at the back. As usual, we'll come in from the front and sides, firing into the air, just to make some noise. You run off as quickly as you can, then tomorrow when you've had a bath and changed, come for your money.” And the ones he has just given to his squad: “Choose five of you. They are to get behind the shacks and as soon as the guards come out, shoot them. I don't want a single one to survive: we have to cut down on medical expenses, they're running out of bandages in our hospitals.”

There is only one thing still sticking in Oso's throat, a bone that prevents him really enjoying the feast. Somebody betrayed him, tore the
choicest morsel from his hands: Osmar Arredri and his lovely girlfriend Sirena Mondragón.

And he cannot even bring himself to imagine that it was the man or woman he is beginning to suspect.

*

They travel in five cars, three to a car, just as in the good old days some of them took part in and which the others have heard of. They are not in Ford Falcons anymore, “those really were armor-plated,” chortles a bald fat man, 130 kilos without a weapon, a retired inspector, “three months in jail, at the mercy of those crooked lawyers and all those bleeding heart lefties in human rights,” he shouts from the back seat of the Renault Carroza is driving, silent and concentrating hard.

“Who do you think you can catch in this old jalopy, Carroza?”

They go round the Río Riachuelo, through neighborhoods with no people, only rubbish and rats. The rats' eyes shine through the mist, a dark blue mist like spilled ink, mingling with the smoke from the piles of garbage. Carroza's Renault is bringing up the rear. The others tried to convince him to get into another car, but he has not been anyone else's passenger for a long time now. He would not accept a ride even if he were dead. And he is not dead yet.

He feels a vibration in his kidneys: a call on his mobile. From Verónica.

“Don't open the door to her,” he whispers curtly while the fat inspector goes on laughing at his own exploits when he weighed forty kilos less and was a member of the dictatorship's “task forces”; “it's dangerous, don't open the door.”

With that he hangs up. He gives Verónica no time to tell him the door downstairs has already been buzzed open and she is on her way up, so young, so beautiful, so Miss Bolivia, to the spider's nest.

He has got it. Scotty has got it.

Shame that Carroza has switched his mobile off. He does that whenever he goes into action; he leaves it behind so that he does not confuse it with his 9 m.m. or whatever gun he has with him when the shooting starts. Answering the phone rather than pulling out his gun could cost him his life.

But Scotty has got it. It was so easy, right there within his grasp. Being on duty at headquarters meant he could watch the whole of the Boca-River match as well as have a look at what the blond Miss Bolivia had been up to. Inspector Margaride (who has the same name and rank as another one in Argentina, notorious in his day for arresting longhaired youths and shaving their heads) dug the information up for him. This Margaride works for the police in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and has been a friend (or whatever the relationship between cops in different regions or countries is called) of Scotty's ever since they attended a Panamerican police convention where the North-American instructors explained that human rights were for middle-class suspects with good lawyers, not for the indigenous scum packed into the margins of the big cities of Latin America.