Mapuche (8 page)

An acrobatic painter harnessed to his pulleys was repainting the shutters of the little apartment building next door, accompanied by a mutt's shrill barking: Rubén looked at the worker's overwhelmed face, kicked the dog to make it go away, threw his cigarette in the gutter, and went into the lobby. A polished marble stairway led to the upper floor. Informed of Rubén's visit, the singer immediately opened the door.

The last Grinderman album was playing in the living room of the apartment decorated with a refined taste that clashed with the lugubrious look of its owner: pasty-faced, made-up eyes, dressed in black leather pants despite the humid heat, Jo Prat received him rather coolly.

“You don't look like a private eye,” he said when Rubén came into his lair.

“Were you expecting some guy with a fedora and a flask in his pocket?”

“I no longer drink anything but green tea,” declared the former rocker. “Do you want some?”

“
Vamos
.”

A Fender guitar hung on the wall, and there were engravings and a finely-worked teapot steaming on the table of the Japanese-style living room. A white angora cat straight out of an old Disney film jumped off the armchair from which he dominated the scene and, intrigued by the stranger's Italian shoes, sniffed them with the assiduity of a professional feline.

“Ledzep,” Jo Prat said in lieu of an introduction.

The animal rubbed against the leather as if he wanted to make a genie come out of it, then relaxed a bit. Rubén folded his legs underneath the Japanese bench while the master of the household did the honors. An inhaler lay on the table. Ventolin.

“Well?” inquired the singer.

Rubén explained the situation, María Victoria's phone call to
Página 12
, the silence that had since surrounded her. As Rubén talked, Jo Prat's face contracted, which only made his double chin more noticeable.

The cat was doing his best to settle down on his knees, and Rubén was struggling to stay perched on the bench.

“Have you seen her or talked to her on the phone recently?” he asked, his face full of cat hair.

“No,” Jo replied. “Why, do you think something happened to her?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“So long as you don't blow your poison in my face.”

Ledzep didn't much like the cigarette, but he remained concentrated on his objective.

“Did María talk to you about herself or about her problems?” Ruben went on.

“Not really. On tour, people say stupid things to each other. It's either that or stress,” added the musician, pragmatically.

“I found antianxiety medicine in her apartment. Does María have a tendency to get depressed?”

“Huh?”

“Is she in therapy?”

“Like everyone else here, no?”

Buenos Aires has more psychoanalysts per capita than any other city in the world.

“Hm. What kind of relationship does María have with her parents?”

Jo shrugged. “Normal.”

“And that means . . . ?”

“I had the impression she doesn't see them much.”

“Do you know why?”

“Goodness no.”

“Her father is one of the wealthiest men in the country,” Rubén insinuated.

“Right. That's nothing to boast about,” the rebel grumbled, pouring another round of green tea.

“Does María have a reason for being angry with him?”

“With her father? I know that María went through her grunge, or gothic, period when she was a teenager, but that's no reason to throw yourself off a bridge. And then that's the time when you resist your parents: hers may be rotten with money, but in photography María found her way and the means to be independent, with regard to her parents and the rest of the world.”

“A loner?”

“Rather someone who knows how to compartmentalize her life: private on the one hand, professional on the other. That's what we have in common.”

At the cost of a stubborn battle against gravity, Ledzep had found his balance between Rubén's thighs.

“Is María involved in politics?” Rubén asked.

“You mean on the left?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know any right-wing artists?” Jo Prat laughed.

“Nobody's perfect,” Rubén admitted, pushing aside the angora tail that prevented him from seeing his interlocutor. “And you haven't answered my question.”

“No, not especially involved. Just in what she does. That's already enough,” Jo remarked, calling upon Rubén to witness what he'd said. “Look, Calderón, why don't you ask her parents directly? If anybody can help you, they can, can't they?”

According to Carlos, who had ended up contacting their servant, María's parents were returning that day from Mar del Plata. Rubén crushed out his cigarette in the bowl of sashimi without disturbing the cat.

“You live in the same neighborhood as María and you haven't seen each other for weeks,” he noted.

“I've been on tour since the beginning of the summer,” the singer replied. “I'm at home between two series of shows. In any case, we almost never see each other outside work. Why are you asking me all these questions?”

Ledzep played dead; Rubén had to helicopter him to the floor in order to reach his jacket pocket. He turned on his BlackBerry and showed Jo the pictures he'd found in María's loft.

“These photos were taken in late November,” he said, “during your concert in Rosario. What do you think about them?”

“They're pretty flattering, don't you think?”

Annoyed, Ledzep shot the stranger a haughty glance.

“María Victoria hasn't contacted you since she developed the shots?” Ruben asked.

“I'd have told you.”

“Unless you've got something to hide.”

“My fat belly gives me enough to worry about,” Jo replied.

“I found marijuana and cocaine in her night table. Was she taking drugs?”

“If fucking on Ecstasy is a problem for you, you're the problem. María is not a junkie,” Jo assured him. “By now I can tell one a thousand miles off.”

Sure.

From the other side of the table, Rubén looked at him hard with his coal-black eyes.

“Can you tell me why you're looking at me that way?”

“Because María Victoria is pregnant,” the detective told him point blank.

Jo Prat paused. “Pregnant?”

“Three months gone, according to analysis,” Rubén confirmed. “I don't know much about kids, but in my opinion María plans on keeping it.”

The seducer frowned, covering his forehead with deep wrinkles.

“Do you sleep together often?” Rubén asked, taking for granted that they did.

“Almost every time we meet,” Jo Prat replied without blinking.

“The last time in Rosario, at the end of November?”

“Possibly. If you're including me among the potential fathers, keep in mind that in thirty years of touring I must have fathered at least a dozen rug rats.”

Rubén lit a cigarette, less courteously.

“Paternity moves you to the point of tears, doesn't it?”

“I've never wanted children I couldn't take care of,” Jo explained. “So far as the rest goes, get used to it. Not to mention that María could have slept with other men during the same period.”

“She got pregnant at the end of November, according to the analysis. You were together that week, and your portraits are hanging in the middle of her loft. Sorry to have to tell you this, but everything suggests that the baby is yours.”

The bags under the singer's eyes got a little heavier under his makeup.

“I imagine she never told you about it to avoid having to get a clandestine abortion in the event that you insisted on it,” Rubén added.

Abortion was still not legal in Argentina. Jo Prat emerged from his thoughts.

“Do you think the fact that she's pregnant has something to do with her disappearance?”

“I don't know.”

A siren howled in the street. The news left the ex-star in the middle of a minefield. For a moment, he remained perplexed in front of his cold tea. Images were rushing through his head: María's smile when they'd had sex in the hotel room in Rosario, the champagne she'd hardly touched, his not using a condom—as usual with women he already knew—her sweet, peaceful look on the pillow when they fell asleep in each others' arms after making love . . . Did María already know, by some feminine magic, that she was carrying his child? Was she planning to tell him someday?

The silence that followed the revelation brought him back to the voice of Nick Cave coming out of the speakers. Jo ran his hand over his slicked-back hair.

“Do you know anything else, Calderón?”

“That María Campallo's father is financing Torres's campaign, that she left a message with an opposition journalist, and that nothing has been heard from her since. For the moment, that's about it.”

The vampire paled in the gloom of the twilight that was filtering through the venetian blinds. Even if María had concealed the existence of this child from him, even if she was only looking for someone to father her child, she'd chosen him. He couldn't leave her like that, lost out there somewhere.

“Who are you working for?” he asked the detective.

“Nobody.”

“You think María has disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out.”

Jo Prat hesitated a moment. Then without a word he got up, stepped over the white cat lying on the floor, and went to the desk near the front door. He dug around in a drawer and came back to Rubén, who was still the prisoner of the Japanese bench.

“Here's thirty thousand pesos,” he said, his eyes dark. “As an advance.” (An envelope dropped on the tea table.) “Find her,” the rocker said. “Her and my damned kid.”

A short note in the day's newspapers referred to an unidentified body found the day before near the old ferry in La Boca: a man about thirty years old. Nothing more. The barbarous mutilation, the possibility of a sex crime, the victim's gender, and all the sordid details of the affair were not mentioned.

Jana had risen early to buy the newspapers and after reading them she called the La Boca police station to obtain explanations: according to the cop she talked to on the phone, the investigation was proceeding. It was impossible to determine the victim's full identity, to find out whether his family had been informed, whether the police had questioned any suspects or found Luz's purse in the area. Jana had persisted, but the cop on the phone got exasperated: if she had revelations to make, she could request an appointment with Sergeant Andretti; if not, there was no point in calling back.

A violent wind was blowing on the metal structures in the shed in Retiro. It was ten in the morning, and Jana was pensively finishing her breakfast when Paula slid open the door to the workshop.

The transvestite was wearing a raw-milk dress over black tights, a necklace of opalescent pearls, and a wall of old makeup after making the rounds of the city's clubs.

“Hi!”

“Hi, Jana! Up already?”

Her heels squeaked on the bits of glass and concrete that were all over the floor, and stopped in front of the monumental sculpture.

“Are you remodeling?” she asked, kidding.

Great Tortoise Island and its autochthonous territories, which she had pulverized—her masterpiece. Jana let it go.

“You want a beer?”

Paula eyed the remains of Jana's breakfast on the bar; the
alfajores
, cheap little cookies that kids loved, tempted her to risk everything.

“You don't have any coffee?”

The rain started pounding on the roof again. Jana went off to the kitchen while her friend collapsed on the seat from an old Peugeot 404 in the “living area.” She had listened to the message Luz had left on her cell phone the night of the murder: a few brief words—”I've got to talk to you about something really important,” without any clue except vague music in the background.

“Well?” the Mapuche said, screwing the top on an Italian expresso pot.

“I made the rounds of all the bars, clubs, after-hours hangouts, and fuckodromes in the area,” Paula sighed. “Nobody had seen Luz, nowhere. Damn, I've had it.”

Paula checked her eyeliner in the mirror she took from her bag, it wasn't great, either.

“Here,” Jana said, handing her a cup of black coffee.

“Thanks.”

Jana sat down with her on the car seat.

“It was past one o'clock when Luz left you the message, and there was music in the background: maybe she hadn't gone to work that night.”

“She would have told me.”

“Unless she had a reason to keep it from you: a date with a special guy, for example,” Jana suggested.

“Who might have had something to do with that ‘really important' thing?”

“Maybe, yes.”

Paula screwed up her badly-powdered face in disgust.

“If this guy was the murderer, Luz wouldn't have taken the time to call and make a date with me; she would have asked for help, or said what he was up to.”

“Hmm.”

Jana worked out scenarios but none of them fit. The La Boca cops kept their information to themselves, probably to stay clear of the scandal sheets, which were just as terrible here as elsewhere, to avoid creating a climate of fear, and certainly to conceal their enormous incompetence. According to Paula, for the police to solve the crime, the perpetrators had to be stupid enough to use their victims' cell phones.

“Who are the johns, generally speaking,” Jana asked, “people on drugs?”

“Them too, yes. Often people who are alone.”

“Was she using drugs?”

Paula shrugged and clasped her knees on the seat.

“Maybe.”