The Angel's Game (36 page)

“What year are we talking about?”

“Nineteen hundred and four.”

Don Basilio sighed.

“That’s going back a long way. A lot of water under the dam.”

“Not enough to wash the matter away.”

Don Basilio put a hand on my shoulder and asked me to follow him to the editorial department.

“Don’t worry, you’ve come to the right place. These good people maintain an archive that would be the envy of the Vatican. If there was anything in the press, we’ll find it for you. Besides, the archivist is a good friend of mine. Let me warn you that next to him I’m Snow White. Pay no attention to his unfriendly disposition. Deep down—very deep down—he’s kindness itself.”

I followed Don Basilio through a wide hall with fine wood paneling. On one side was a circular room with a large round table and a series of portraits of an illustrious group of frowning members of the aristocracy.

“The room for the witches’ Sabbaths,” Don Basilio explained. “All the section heads meet here with the deputy editor, yours truly, and the editor, and like good Knights of the Round Table, we find the Holy Grail every evening at seven o’clock.”

“Impressive.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Don Basilio, winking at me. “Look at this.”

Don Basilio stood beneath one of the august portraits and pushed the wooden panel covering the wall. The panel, yielding with a creak, revealed a hidden corridor.

“What do you say, Martín? And this is only one of the many secret passages in the building. Not even the Borgias had a setup like this.”

Don Basilio led me down the corridor to a large reading room surrounded
by glass cabinets, the repository of
La Vanguardias
secret library. At one end of the room, under the beam emanating from a lampshade of green glass, a middle-aged man was sitting at a table examining a document with a magnifying glass. When he saw us come in he raised his head and gave us a look that would have made anyone young or sensitive turn to stone.

“Let me introduce you to José María Brotons, lord of the underworld, chief of the catacombs of this holy house,” Don Basilio announced.

Without letting go of the magnifying glass, Brotons observed me with eyes that seemed to go rusty on contact. I went up to him and shook his hand.

“This is my old apprentice, David Martín.”

Brotons reluctantly shook my hand and glanced at Don Basilio.

“Is this the writer?”

“The very one.”

Brotons nodded.

“He’s certainly courageous, stepping out into the street after the thrashing they gave him. What’s he doing here?”

“He’s come to plead for your help, your blessing, and your advice on an important matter of documental archaeology,” Don Basilio explained.

“And where’s the blood sacrifice?” Brotons spat out.

“Sacrifice?” I asked.

Brotons looked at me as if I were an idiot.

“A goat, a lamb, a capon, if pressed …”

My mind went blank. For an endless moment, Brotons kept his eyes fixed on mine. Then, just as I started to feel the prickle of sweat down my back, the archivist and Don Basilio roared with laughter. I let them laugh as much as they wanted at my expense, until they couldn’t breathe and had to dry their tears. Clearly, Don Basilio had found a soul mate in his new colleague.

“Come this way, young man,” Brotons said, doing away with his fierce countenance. “Let’s see what we can find.”

T
he newspaper archives were located in one of the basements, under the floor that housed the huge rotary press, the product of post-Victorian technology. It looked like a cross between a monstrous steam engine and a machine for making lightning.

“Let me introduce you to the rotary press, better known as Leviathan. Mind how you go: they say it has already swallowed more than one unsuspecting person,” said Don Basilio. “It’s like the story of Jonah and the whale, only what comes out again is minced meat.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating.”

“One of these days we could throw in that new trainee, the smart aleck who likes to say that print is dead,” Brotons proposed.

“Set a time and a date and we’ll celebrate with a stew,” Don Basilio agreed.

They laughed like schoolchildren. Two of a kind.

The archive was a labyrinth of corridors bordered by three-meter-high shelves. A couple of pale creatures who looked as if they hadn’t left the cellar in fifteen years officiated as Brotons’s assistants. When they saw him, they rushed over, awaiting instructions. Brotons looked at me inquisitively.

“What is it we’re looking for?”

“Nineteen hundred and four. The death of a lawyer called Diego
Marlasca. A pillar of Barcelona society, founder-member of the Valera, Marlasca & Sentís legal firm.”

“Month?”

“November.”

At a signal from Brotons, the two assistants ran off in search of copies dating back to November 1904. It was a time when each day was so stained with the presence of death that most newspapers ran large obituaries on their front pages. A character as important as Marlasca would probably have generated more than a simple death notice in the city’s press and his obituary would have been first-page material. The assistants returned with a few volumes and placed them on a large desk. We divided up the task among all five present and found Diego Marlasca’s obituary on the front page, just as I’d imagined. The edition was dated 23 November 1904. It was Brotons who made the discovery.

“Habemus cadaver,”
he announced.

There were four obituary notices devoted to Marlasca. One from the family, another from the law firm, one from the Barcelona Bar Association, and the last from the cultural association of the Ateneo Barcelonés.

“That’s what comes from being rich. You die five or six times,” Don Basilio remarked.

The announcements were not in themselves very interesting—pleadings for the immortal soul of the deceased, a note explaining that the funeral would be for close friends and family only, grandiose verses lauding a great, erudite citizen, an irreplaceable member of Barcelona society, and so on.

“The type of thing you’re interested in probably appeared a day or two earlier, or later,” Brotons said.

We checked through the papers covering the week of Marlasca’s death and found a sequence of news items relating to the lawyer. The first reported that the distinguished lawyer had died in an accident. Don Basilio read the text out loud.

“This was written by a chimp,” he pronounced. “Three redundant paragraphs that don’t say anything and only at the end does it explain
that the death was accidental, but without saying what sort of accident it was.”

“Here we have something more interesting,” said Brotons.

An article published the following day explained that the police were investigating the circumstances of the accident. The most revealing piece of information was that, according to the forensic evidence, Marlasca had drowned.

“Drowned?” interrupted Don Basilio. “How? Where?”

“It doesn’t say. Perhaps they had to shorten the item to include this urgent and extensive defense of the sardana, a three-column article entitled ‘To the Strains of the
Tenora:
Spirit and Mettle,’” Brotons remarked.

“Does it say who was in charge of the investigation?” I asked.

“It mentions someone called Salvador. Ricardo Salvador,” said Brotons.

We went over the rest of the news items related to the death of Marlasca, but there was nothing of any substance. The texts parroted one another, repeating a chorus that sounded too much like the official line supplied by the law firm of Valera & Co.

“This has the distinct whiff of deception,” said Brotons.

I sighed, disheartened. I had hoped to find something more than sentimental remembrances and empty news items that threw no new light on the facts.

“Didn’t you have a good contact in police headquarters?” Don Basilio asked. “What was his name?”

“Víctor Grandes,” Brotons said.

“Perhaps he could put Martín in touch with this person Salvador.”

I cleared my throat and the two hefty men looked at me with frowns.

“For reasons that have nothing to do with this matter, or perhaps because they’re too closely related, I’d rather not involve Inspector Grandes,” I said.

Brotons and Don Basilio exchanged glances.

“Right. Any other names that should be deleted from the list?”

“Marcos and Castelo.”

“I see you haven’t lost your talent for making friends,” offered Don Basilio.

Brotons rubbed his chin.

“Let’s not worry too much. I think I might be able to find another way that will not arouse suspicion.”

“If you find Salvador for me, I’ll sacrifice whatever you want, even a pig.”

“With my gout I’ve given up pork, but I wouldn’t say no to a good cigar,” Brotons replied.

“Make it two,” added Don Basilio.

While I rushed off to a tobacconist on Calle Tallers in search of two specimens of the most exquisite and expensive Havana cigars, Brotons made a few discreet calls to police headquarters and confirmed that Salvador had left the force, or rather that he had been made to leave, and was now working as a bodyguard as well as conducting investigations for various law firms in the city. When I returned to the newspaper offices to present my benefactors with their two cigars, the archivist handed me a note with an address:

“May the publisher in chief of
La Vanguardia
bless you,” I said.

“And may you live to see it.”

C
alle de la Lleona, better known to locals as the Street of the Three Beds in honor of the notorious brothel it harbored, was an alleyway almost as dark as its reputation. It started in the shadowy arches of Plaza Real and extended into a damp crevice, far from sunlight, between old buildings piled on top of one another and sewn together by a perpetual web of clotheslines. The crumbling, ocher façades were dilapidated, and the slabs of stone covering the ground had been bathed in blood during the years when the city had been ruled by the gun. More than once I’d used the setting as a backdrop to my stories in
City of the Damned
and even now, deserted and forgotten, it still smelled of crime and gunpowder. The grim surroundings seemed to indicate that Superintendent Salvador’s premature retirement from the police force had not been a step up.

Number 21 was a modest property squeezed between two buildings that held it together like pincers. The main door was open, revealing a pool of shadows from which a steep, narrow staircase rose in a spiral. The floor was flooded with a dark, slimy liquid oozing from the cracks in the tiles. I climbed the steps as best I could, without letting go of the handrail, but not trusting it either. There was only one door on every landing. Judging by the appearance of the building, I didn’t think that any of the apartments could be larger than forty square meters. A small skylight crowned the stairwell and bathed the upper floors in a
tenuous light. The door to the top-floor apartment was at the end of a short corridor and I was surprised to find it open. I rapped with my knuckles but got no reply. The door opened onto a small sitting room containing an armchair, a table, and a bookshelf filled with books and brass boxes. A sort of kitchen-cum-washing-area occupied the adjoining room. The saving grace in that cell was a terrace that led to the flat roof. The door to the terrace was also open and a fresh breeze blew through it, bringing with it the smell of cooking and laundry from the rooftops of the old town.

“Is anyone home?” I called out.

Nobody answered, so I walked over to the terrace door and stepped outside. A jungle of roofs, towers, water tanks, lightning conductors, and chimneys spread out in every direction. Before I was able to take another step, I felt the touch of cold metal on the back of my neck and heard the metallic click of a revolver as the hammer was cocked. All I could think to do was raise my hands and not move even an eyebrow.

“My name is David Martín. I got your address from police headquarters. I wanted to speak to you about a case you handled.”

“Do you usually go into people’s homes uninvited, Señor David Martín?”

“The door was open. I called out but you can’t have heard me. Can I put my hands down?”

“I didn’t tell you to put them up. Which case?”

“The death of Diego Marlasca. I rent the house that was his last home. The tower house in Calle Flassaders.”

He said nothing. I could still feel the revolver pressing against my neck.

“Señor Salvador?” I asked.

“I’m wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to blow your head off right now.”

“Don’t you want to hear my story first?”

The pressure from the revolver seemed to lessen and I heard the hammer being uncocked. I slowly turned round. Ricardo Salvador was an imposing figure, with gray hair and pale blue eyes that penetrated
like needles. I guessed that he must have been about fifty but it would have been difficult to find men half his age who would dare get in his way. I gulped. Salvador lowered the revolver and turned his back to me, returning to the apartment.

“I apologize for the welcome,” he mumbled.

I followed him to the minute kitchen and stopped in the doorway. Salvador left the pistol on the sink and lit the stove with bits of paper and cardboard. He pulled out a coffeepot and looked at me questioningly.

“No, thanks.”

“It’s the only good thing I have, I warn you,” he said.

“Then I’ll have one with you.”

Salvador put a couple of generous spoonfuls of coffee into the pot, filled it with water, and put it on the flame.

“Who has spoken to you about me?”

“A few days ago I visited Señora Marlasca, the widow. She’s the one who told me about you. She said you were the only person who had tried to discover the truth and it had cost you your job.”

“That’s one way of describing it, I suppose,” he said.

I noticed that at my mention of the widow his expression darkened and I wondered what might have happened between them during those unfortunate days.