Sweet Money (16 page)

 

Perro finishes his shower. He looks at himself in the mirror. Every day he spends a few minutes contemplating that scar that decorates his chest. It’s a pale island in the shape of a half moon. It still hurts if he touches it in the middle, but around the edges there’s no feeling whatsoever. Once, under circumstances he can’t recall, Fuseli told him that our scars are there to remind us of the past. Now, as he’s getting dressed, he feels like he’s about to crash headlong into that past. Soon, he’ll be with Pereyra, striking fear into the heart of the man who ordered his death. The fearsome Giribaldi himself, a man mentioned over and over again by the few survivors of Coti Martínez detention centre in the report, called
Never Again
, which documented the torture, murders and disappearances carried out by the military. Famous for giving his victims lessons in morality with the cattle prod in his hand, he wrote on the wall of his torture chamber:
If you know, sing; if not, singe.
As he walks out, he dedicates a thought to all those who will leave their houses today and never return.

22

A storm darkens the afternoon. With perfect synchronicity, he walks out of the door of the building at the very moment a bolt of lightning illuminates the streets, thunder crashes and the rain pours down, rain Lascano can’t help thinking must be dirty. He feels a chill, thinks these are bad omens, has a foreboding – almost a certainty – that something very grave is about to happen. He lifts the collar of his jacket and starts walking up Agüero toward Cabrera. As he gets into a cab, a wave of nausea washes over him, a taste of how he’s going to feel in a few minutes when he sees Giribaldi. By the time the cab stops, the rain has turned into a veil hanging in the air, drenching the world. Two squad cars and two Falcons without number plates are parked in front of the building. Marcelo is talking to a uniformed officer and four patrolmen stand off to one side, smoking and chatting. There’s tension in the air, and Lascano is not the only one who feels it. What he wouldn’t give right now for a cigarette. Marcelo holds out his pale, cold hand in greeting, then takes Lascano’s arm and walks through the door held open by the doorman. They are followed by the officer and one of the policemen. The doorman brings up the rear, waiting until the four men get into the elevator. When the light on the
panel shows that they’ve reached the first floor, he picks up the intercom and presses a button.

 

Giribaldi is checking the cleaning supplies when the buzzer sounds. The doorman whispers to him through the intercom that the police are on their way up to his apartment. He rushes out of the kitchen, takes four long strides down the hallway and enters his office. He finds the box where he keeps his nine millimetre, takes it out, checks to make sure it is loaded, cocks it and places it in the large top drawer of his desk. The bell rings. He takes a deep breath. He walks slowly to the front door and opens it.

 

 

As if they were performing a carefully rehearsed dance routine, Giribaldi moves aside, and Marcelo and Lascano open the way for the policemen to enter the apartment. Giribaldi stares at Lascano, obviously recognizing him. Pereyra motions to Giribaldi to go in ahead, and they follow him into his office through the first doorway down the hallway. The major sits down at his desk and motions to them to have a seat in front of him. The officer appears and indicates to the prosecutor that he has searched the house and everything is under control. Marcelo carries out the legal formalities, informing Giribaldi that he is under arrest and reading him his rights. Giribaldi looks at him as if from a great distance, absolutely indifferent to
his words. He looks down: through the crack of the open drawer he can see the black grip of his fearsome Glock.

 

Lascano has a hard time believing that this is the same man who held so many lives in the palm of his hand, who doled out so many deaths on a whim. But now, facing him, he cannot see even a trace of the confident and implacable tyrant he once was. That is a defeated man sitting behind that desk. The cruel sheen in his eyes has completely faded, and they now express nothing but insensible resentment. Nothing remains, there’s nothing to wait for, no hope is left. Suddenly, he turns his eyes on Lascano, and in a harsh voice, as if he were barking orders at his troops, he interrupts Marcelo.

 

 

Lascano goes on high alert. He moves his hand slowly toward his shoulder holster. He can see from the look in Giribaldi’s eyes that behind that calm exterior he is completely nuts. He knows that anything could happen at any moment. Marcelo starts up where he left off. Giribaldi stands up, does an about face, opens the window and returns to his chair. He smiles scornfully.

 

 

Giribaldi again looks down. Here he is, Lascano of all people, coming to finish him off, put an end to the little bit of life left to him. This is the collapse, the final act. He looks up and meets Lascano’s eyes. His mind is racing as it always does when he is about to go into action. He wonders, as a challenge to himself, if he’d have time to grab the gun and shoot both Lascano and Pereyra before they can defend themselves. He’s not used to having doubts, but now he hesitates. He imagines the report. The nine millimetre is a loud weapon.

 

Giribaldi doesn’t answer any of Pereyra’s questions. He doesn’t even hear them. He looks at him not only with resignation but also astonishment at the young man’s insolence. He stands up and walks over to the window. He sees the squad cars, the Falcons and the other policemen on the street. He looks at the time. Any moment now Maisabé and Aníbal will be arriving. He sits back down at his desk, rocks back and forth in his chair and looks at Marcelo and Lascano with opaque eyes. Marcelo shows impatience, stands up and walks out of the room. He suspected this might happen. Giribaldi realizes he has gone to get the policemen so they can place him under arrest. The image of General Videla, entering the court in handcuffs like a common thief, flashes through his mind.

 

 

Suddenly that face, that monstrous gaze of this merciless man, turns into a twisted grin of pain but also awe at what he knows he is about to do. Lascano feels a cold chill run up and down his spine. He clutches the handle of his gun. He has a moment of insight and knows for certain that they won’t both come out of there alive, like in a duel scene in an old Hollywood western. Giribaldi’s mind is empty and silent, but the next instant an engine explodes inside of him, his jugular vein bulges.

 

 

He moves with the speed he’s so good at mustering: he rises, pushes the chair back against the wall, grabs his gun, pulls it out of the box, puts the barrel in his mouth and… Lascano barely has time to draw his gun halfway out of the holster when Giribaldi flies backward, landing in his chair, his head banging against the seat back then falling forward on his chest. From his nostrils spurt two streams of blood that flow down onto his shirt; the gun drops out of his hand and his arms hang by his sides. The bullet, passing through the walls of the skull, has left the imprint of a bloody mandala on the wall behind Giribaldi – it frames his dead face, like the halo of a macabre saint. Silence. Footsteps. Pereyra bursts in, the two policemen behind him.

 

 

Perro, still shattered by the shock, staggers out of the room. Pereyra gives an order to call the coroner. For a split second of hope, Lascano imagines that Fuseli will be the one to show up, as he has so many times in the past. He walks into the living room and collapses into a chair. On the wall in front of him hangs the pennant of the Colegio Militar, with its image of a castle chess piece surrounded by a laurel wreath. Pereyra comes up to him, sits down, takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to Lascano. He looks at it as if it were a lover who had jilted him. He reaches out his hand, but seconds before grabbing it he lifts his palm in a gesture of refusal. He’s sweating. He stands up, walks over to the window, opens it and goes out onto the balcony. Below, standing next to the patrol car, a woman with a child is talking to the officer. He turns and enters the building. Lascano returns from the balcony. Pereyra stubs out his cigarette. Perro walks through the final cloud of smoke and inhales deeply. The apartment is full of police. The officer who was talking to the woman approaches them.

 

 

Pereyra and Lascano look at each other, wondering who will be the one to tell her the news. Without exchanging a word, they decide it will be Perro, because he is older. As if being that much closer to death confers upon him more authority. They ride the elevator down in silence.
When they get to the ground floor, Marcelo opens the door and lets Lascano go out before him. Maisabé is a few yards away, standing in the street with her back to them, a policewoman on one side and the child on the other. As they start to walk toward them, the woman turns and looks at them, questioningly. Marcelo takes the child by the hand and asks him to come with him. Maisabé glues her eyes on Lascano.

 

 

The woman glares at him with fury, turns her back on him and walks resolutely toward the patrol car, where a policewoman is talking to the child. Marcelo walks up to Lascano.

 

 

Pereyra knows he’s not going to get any sleep tonight. They shake hands and say goodbye. Lascano walks to the corner. For some unimaginable reason, he turns and looks at Pereyra talking to a policeman, who nods and heads to the building. Marcelo goes up to the child, talks
to him, then gives him his hand and they also begin to walk toward the door of the building. At that moment, the child turns around and looks at Lascano. His heart skips a beat. Those eyes! That combination of defiance and melancholy, yes, more than anything, it’s the look in his eyes. Could it be? He watches him disappear behind the door, holding Marcelo’s hand, and he feels beleaguered, undone. A taxi drives by, he stops it and he gets in. There’s a pack of Lucky Strikes on the dash.
What the hell.
Lascano asks the driver for a cigarette, which he gives him reluctantly. He lights it and leans back in the seat. Behind him, the corner where that tragedy took place begins to drift into the past tense.

 

23

Several times during the long night, Lascano is woken by the same dream. He’s stark naked and walking down a narrow corridor of fog, which seems to go on forever. Suddenly, through the haze, there emerges the greyish outline of a human figure carrying a lance adorned with multicoloured precious stones. The faceless man points the lance at him and says:
If you don’t do something with your life, I’ll take it away from you.

In the morning, he cuts himself near his lip while shaving; the blood spurts out. He lets it drip down his face. Contemplating himself in the mirror, he is reminded of a vampire in a B movie, the kind he’d see in the neighbourhood theatre when he was a child and when this life he is leading was still unimaginable.

 

He decides to go and pick up Miranda. But first he must see Pereyra to get him to expedite the order that would make Mole’s detention a formal arrest.

When he gets to Marcelo’s office, they tell him they don’t expect him until noon. He leaves word that he will be at the Usía, the café in front of the courthouse on Tucumán. He leaves the Palace of Justice, enters the café and starts reading the paper.

He’s about to finish when Marcelo arrives, sits down in front of him and orders a
café cortado
.