Replay (13 page)

“In my letter, I told my wife that we hadn’t adopted a child only to orphan her all over again when she grew up.

“My wife loved our daughter more than anything. You don’t love someone just because you have the same genes. They’d never been apart, except when Paolina left for Uruguay with Sam.

“You must think I’m a monster, separating them like that, Mr. Stilman. But the thing was, when Lea first came to us, she kept repeating a word that we took for baby’s babble. She would cry out
niang
all day long.
Niang
,
niang
,
niang
, she’d keep saying, looking at the door. Later on, when I asked my colleague if it meant something, he told me sorrowfully that in Chinese,
niang
means mother. Lea had been calling to her mother for weeks, and we hadn’t understood.

“She was our daughter for less than two years. When she’s seven or eight, maybe even sooner, she’ll have erased us from her memory. As for me, I’ll still be able to see her face if I live to be a hundred. Until the very last moment of my life, I’ll be able to hear her childish laughter and shouts and smell the scent of her round little cheeks. You never forget your child, even if that child was never truly yours.

“When I got back from China, the apartment had been cleared out. Paolina had taken everything except our bed, the kitchen table and a chair. There wasn’t a single toy left in Sam’s room. And on the kitchen table, in the spot where I’d left the letter in which I’d begged her to forgive me one day, she had written just one word in red ink:
Never
.

“I don’t know where they are. I don’t know if she’s left the U.S., if she’s taken my son to Uruguay, or if she’s simply in another city.”

The three men remained silent for a moment.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Pilguez asked.

“What would I have said to them? That I’d kidnapped my daughter and that my wife had paid me back for it by running away with our son? So they could hunt her down? So they could arrest her? So that social services could place Sam with a foster family until a judge sorted out our story and decided on his fate? No, I didn’t do it. We’ve had our share of suffering. You see, Mr. Stilman, desperation can sometimes transform itself into anger. I’ve damaged your car, but you’ve destroyed my family and my life.”

“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Capetta.”

“Now you are, because you sympathize with my pain, but tomorrow morning you’ll tell yourself it wasn’t your fault, that you were only doing your job, and that you’re proud of doing it. You reported the truth. Fair enough. But there’s one question I want to ask you, Mr. Stilman.”

“Anything.”

“You wrote in your article that five hundred American families, maybe even a thousand, had been mixed up—in all innocence—in this child trafficking business. Before that article went to press, did you think for one single moment about the tragedy you were going to inflict upon them?”

Andrew lowered his eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” Capetta sighed. Then he handed Pilguez the list of words the policeman had ordered him to write.

“Here’s your stupid list.”

Pilguez took the sheet of paper. He took the copies of the three letters Andrew had recovered from the newspaper’s security division out of his pocket and placed them on the table.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “It’s not the same handwriting.”

“What are you talking about?” Capetta asked.

“Mr. Stilman received some death threats. I thought perhaps you’d written one of them.”

“Is that why you came?”

“Among other things, yes.”

“I went to that parking garage to get revenge, but I wasn’t capable of it.”

Capetta took the letters and glanced at the first one.

“I could never kill anyone,” he said, putting the sheet of paper back on the table.

He paled as he picked up the second letter.

“Have you still got the envelope this letter came in?” he asked, his voice trembling.

“Yes, why?”

“Can I see it?”

“First answer the question,” Pilguez broke in.

“I recognize this handwriting,” Capetta murmured. “It’s my wife’s. Do you remember if there was a foreign stamp on it? I suppose you’d have noticed a stamp from Uruguay?”

“I’ll check first thing tomorrow,” Andrew replied.

“Thank you, Mr. Stilman. It’s important for me to know.”

Pilguez and Andrew got up and said goodbye to the theology professor. As the three of them exited, Capetta called out to Andrew.

“Mr. Stilman, I told you back there I’d be incapable of killing anyone.”

“Have you changed your mind?” Pilguez asked.

“No, but after what’s happened, I can’t say the same for Paolina. I wouldn’t take her threats lightly if I were you.”

* * *

Pilguez and Andrew took the subway back downtown. At that time of day, it was the fastest way to get to Andrew’s office.

“I have to admit you’ve got a talent for winning people over,” said Pilguez.

“Why didn’t you tell him you’re a cop?”

“If he knew he was talking a cop he’d have invoked his right to remain silent and insisted on having his lawyer present. Believe me, it was better for him to think I’m your bodyguard, even if it’s not very flattering.”

“But you’re retired, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that’s right. What can I say? I can’t get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t have thought up that idea of dictating a list to compare the handwriting.”

“What, you think I make it up as I go along? I’ve been a cop for a long time.”

“But the list of ingredients was totally stupid.”

“I promised the friends I’m staying with I’d make them dinner tonight, and it so happens that that is my shopping list. I was worried I’d forget something. Not so stupid after all, huh, Mr. Journalist?” Pilguez grew serious. “Capetta’s story was heartbreaking. Does it ever occur to you to think about the consequences of what you write about people?”

“Have you never made a mistake in the course of your long career, Inspector? Haven’t you ever ruined the life of an innocent person just because you were sure your suspicions were correct, or because you wanted to wrap up an investigation at any price?”

“You bet I have. In my line of business, choosing whether or not to turn a blind eye is an everyday dilemma. Do you send a petty criminal behind bars, with all that that entails, or do you let it slide? Do you give your report an accusatory slant or not? Depends on the circumstances. Every crime is a special case. Every criminal has his own story. Some you’d like to shoot in the head; others, you want to give them a second chance. But I was just a cop, not a judge.”

“Did you turn a blind eye often?”

“This is you, Mr. Stilman. Don’t miss your stop.”

The train slowed, then came to a standstill. Andrew shook the inspector’s hand and stepped out onto the platform.

A
t twenty-four, Isabel was the mother of a two-year-old girl. Her husband Rafael Santos, only slightly older than her, was a journalist. The couple lived in a small apartment in the Barracas neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Isabel and Rafael had met in college. Like him, she was studying journalism. He always maintained that she had a snappier, more confident writing style than him, and a particular gift for writing profiles. But when their daughter was born, Isabel had chosen to put her career on standby until María Luz went to school. Journalism was the couple’s shared passion, and Rafael never sent in an article for publication without getting his wife to read it first. Once their daughter had gone to sleep, Isabel would sit at the kitchen table, pencil in hand, and revise his drafts. Rafael, Isabel and María Luz led a happy existence, and the future held the promise of even better things to come.

The coup d’état that placed the country under the control of a military dictatorship destroyed all of their plans.

Rafael lost his job. The moderate newspaper that employed him,
La Opinion
, was shut down, even though it had taken a “prudent” editorial stance toward the new ruling power. The couple began to have serious money problems, but for Isabel the newspaper’s closure was almost a relief. The only journalists still publishing articles had sworn allegiance to General Videla. As left-wing Peronists, there was no way Isabel and Rafael would agree to write so much as one line to appear in
Cabildo
or any of the other dailies still in print.

Rafael, who was good with his hands, changed jobs and started working for a neighborhood carpenter. Isabel and her best friend shared one job as supervisor at the science school, each working one day and caring for both of their children the next.

Rafael and Isabel struggled to make ends meet, but their combined salaries enabled them to scrape by and to provide for their daughter’s needs.

When Rafael returned home from the carpentry shop, they would sit at the kitchen table after dinner. Isabel completed sewing jobs she’d started taking in to earn a little extra money, while Rafael wrote about the injustices being committed and repression under the regime, the corruption of the state, the complicity of the Church and the sad state of affairs that had taken hold of Argentina.

Each morning at 11, Rafael would step out of his workshop for a smoke. A cyclist would stop next to him and ask for a cigarette. Rafael would give him a light and discreetly slip him the article he had written the previous night. The messenger would carry the forbidden text to an abandoned factory housing an underground print shop. Rafael was a regular contributor to a dissident newspaper that was printed daily and distributed in the utmost secrecy.

Isabel and Rafael dreamed of one day leaving Argentina and going to live in a country where they would finally be free. Some evenings, when Isabel’s spirits flagged, Rafael would take a little notebook with a red cover out of the chest of drawers. He would count their savings and tick off the number of days left before their departure. Once they were in bed, he would recite the names of cities to her in a low voice as if he were recounting a dream, and this was how they fell asleep, Rafael usually being the first to drop off.

After dinner one early summer evening, with little María Luz already fast asleep, Rafael put aside the article he was writing and Isabel her sewing work, and they went to bed earlier than usual. Isabel slipped naked under the sheets. Her skin was pale and smooth. Rafael’s hands had become callused since he’d started his carpentry job, so he had taken to stroking her very gently, afraid she’d find their touch unpleasant.

“I like your worker’s hands,” Isabel murmured, laughing into his ear. “Tell them to hold me tighter.”

Rafael was making love to his wife when they heard someone banging on the door of their small apartment.

“Don’t move,” said Rafael, grabbing his shirt from the bottom of the bed.

The banging got louder, and Rafael worried the racket would wake their daughter.

When he opened the door, four men in hoods threw him on the floor, raining blows on him to force him down on his belly.

One of the men kept him on the ground by pushing a knee into his back. Another grabbed Isabel by her hair as she came out of the bedroom in a panic. He pushed her up against the wall of the kitchen, rolled a dish towel around her neck and pulled it tight. When Isabel’s screaming was stifled, the man loosened his grip just enough to let her breathe. The third man quickly searched the apartment and returned to the living room carrying María Luz and holding a knife to her throat.

The men wordlessly motioned Rafael and Isabel to get dressed. They were dragged outside and shoved into the back of a small truck. María Luz was put in front.

The vehicle raced across the city. The noise of the engine filled their ears, but Rafael and Isabel could still hear their daughter calling out to them through the partition between them and the cab. Isabel sobbed uncontrollably each time she heard her little girl scream “Mamá.” Rafael held her hand and tried to soothe her, but how does one soothe a mother who can hear her child screaming?

The truck came to a stop thirty minutes later and the doors were thrown open to reveal a courtyard. They were pulled out. Rafael got another blow to his head when he tried to turn back toward the truck where his daughter was being held. When Isabel tried to break free, one of the men dragged her back by her hair.

They were pushed roughly along to an open door in the building enclosing the paved courtyard. Isabel screamed her daughter’s name, and was given a punch in the jaw that sent her hurtling down the staircase in front of her. Rafael was kicked in the back, and tumbled down the stairs after her.

They landed at the bottom of the steps on a patch of bare earth stinking of urine. Isabel was taken off to be locked up in a cell, and Rafael in another . . .

“What are you doing?” Andrew asked, coming into the living room.

Valerie put the sheaf of paper she’d been reading back down on the coffee table.

“Is it because they were journalists that you’re so obsessed with this investigation?”

“Dammit, Valerie, that’s confidential! I’m not going to put my notes under lock and key in my own apartment! Look, try and understand. This is my work, okay? I just need you to respect that,” Andrew said in a calm voice, collecting up the papers.

“Isabel was allowed to read what her husband wrote, and even make suggestions.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t hold it against me. I hate for anyone to read my notes.”

“‘Anyone’ just happens to be your future wife. ‘Anyone’ puts up with being alone when you’re off on work for weeks on end. ‘Anyone’ understands about you being distracted even when you’re around because you’re so taken up with your job. ‘Anyone’ accepts all of that because she loves you. But don’t ask me to live with you if I can’t share a little of your passion.”