The Barcelona Brothers (5 page)

Alex knows he’s got to talk to the
mossos
, sooner rather than later. But no one likes going to a police station or an outpatient clinic. You can never be completely sure that the door closing behind you will open for you again. In any case, he has to talk to Epi first, so that the statements they give the police will gibe. However, his brother’s still not answering his phone.

He turns into the street on his right. In Salva’s bar, no doubt, they’re gathering evidence and all that sort of thing. Alex walks past the barrio basketball court, next to the high school. It’s only a few minutes before classes will begin, and some boys are making their final moves. Their schoolbags lie in piles under the baskets, and their sneakers squeal on
the cement court. A little farther on, feigning indifference, a group of adolescent girls watch the game. They’re chewing gum nonstop, the tiny strings of the thongs they all wear are showing, and they’re having a try at choreographing a confused rhythm that goes
sha la la ra la la
.

It’s nine o’clock, and the doors of the Michi Panero School are opening. Alex walks through one of the mobs of students stampeding toward the main entrance. If only he’d be lucky enough to meet Tiffany taking her little boy to nursery school! That would save him half the trip.

Epi’s brother wonders what’s passing through Epi’s mind right about now while he, Alex, slips though the multitude of kids without taking the trouble to notice whom he’s pushing or where he’s putting his feet. Up until now, he hasn’t asked himself why his brother has chosen to fuck up his life the way he has. On the other hand, he probably hasn’t wondered about that because the answer seems so obvious. Therefore, it’s more than possible that Epi’s with Tiffany, or that at least he’s contacted her.

Alex turns left at the next corner, enters a pedestrian zone, dodges a van, and reaches the girl’s street. He hopes she’s still living with her mother, but the truth is that he’s hardly seen her in the past few months, not since Tanveer got out of jail. Everybody assumed she’d go back to him, and as Epi grew increasingly embittered and bad-tempered, he only confirmed that assumption.

Tiffany Brisette and her son live with Doña Fortu, her mother, and Jamelia, her older sister. The girls’ parents are separated,
in part thanks to some maneuvers by Tiffany that have never been clarified. The whole episode served to reaffirm Tiffany Brisette’s ascendancy in the home, especially over her mother. The end result, however, also entailed the defeat of her sister, a sad, slow-witted girl who arrived that way on the plane from Peru; always dressed in grandmotherly clothes, always clinging to her mother’s everlasting arm, she was addicted to Oreo cookies and the songs of Luis Miguel.

Doña Fortu’s obsession with extravagant names seemed to have infected Tiffany like a sickness, for she had named her son—she was a single mother—Percy José. As if a name were something more than a name. As if it were a kind of magic spell with which you summon the future to play and you win the hand. The years to come may bring all that’s good, luxurious, and exotic to someone named Tiffany Brisette, but what can they bring to girls named Pilar or Amparo? Maybe that wasn’t it; maybe Doña Fortu’s penchant for fancy names was just a roundabout way of taking a special sort of revenge. Having probably read books doesn’t give you the right to name your daughter Fortunata Jacinta, as Doña Fortu’s mother had done.
^*
Nonetheless, it’s more than possible that Doña Fortu harbored hopes for her arrival in Benito Pérez Galdós’s homeland, hopes that her mere name would immediately cause the Spanish to consider her an extremely cultured distant cousin.

But obviously, that wasn’t what happened. She looked like an Indian, in Peru she’d been poorer than the rats, and nobody in the barrio was going to waste time with realistic novels. And so, as soon as she set foot there, Doña Fortu secured a position as something like a character out of a child’s comic book, an object of pure mockery, a figure very far from the one in her illusions.

Her home was a disaster in spite of, or because of, her attempts to make it the opposite. She spent money she didn’t have, she waited for what never arrived, and she had no trace of an education. All this drove Tiffany to desperation. During the periods when circumstances obliged her to stay under her mother’s roof, dealing with the girl was impossible. She turned into an unpredictable, irritating creature. Without notice, she’d disappear for weeks or months, leaving her son with Grandmother Fortu and Aunt Jamelia, only to reappear like a biblical plague, tormented by remorse and bad luck.

At one end of the street there’s a financial institution, at the other a bar, and more or less in the middle, number 36. Alex is almost certain that the apartment’s on the fourth floor, letter A or letter B. He rings both, but neither responds. He tries again and again: useless. He finds this odd; it’s very early, and someone must be there. He heads for the bar and looks inside. Not many people. And no Tiffany Brisette. Suddenly, something makes him turn his head. He sees people leaving Tiffany’s building. It’s Jamelia, taking the boy to nursery school. In fact, they’re walking in Alex’s direction, holding hands, stepping out briskly because they’re already late.

IT’S HARD FOR ALEX TO TELL WHETHER JAMELIA’S SEEN
him or not. She has, however, come to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. They’re separated by a distance of about thirty feet, far enough to exasperate Alex. He’d like to shout the news to her, to tell her he’s got a murder to pin on somebody and a jerk-off for a brother who’s liable to fuck up all their lives and a bunch of
Mossos d’Esquadra
waiting for him at the police station. All at once, woman and child start walking again, and when they draw even with him, Alex cuts them off. Jamelia’s options are to push Alex out of the way or to step down off the curb and walk in the roadway with the child, who’s doing his best to free himself from his aunt’s hand.

“Hello, Percy, how’s school?”

“Epi, Epi, Epi …”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. But it’s a bad connection. I’m not Epi, I’m his brother Alex. Do you remember me? You used
to come to my place a lot, don’t you remember? Say, listen: Where’s your mama?”

“Epi, Epi, Epi.”

It occurs to Alex that the little details are the ones that let you know you’re getting old. For example, the way you can’t maintain a squatting position for more than half a minute, or the way you have less and less patience with children.

“Jamelia, I need to talk to Tiffany. Do you know where she is?”

Alex hopes that sooner or later she’ll say something that might qualify as a response, but for the moment she doesn’t answer him. All things considered, his question is neither dangerous nor hard to understand. The girl looks frightened. Or mortified. But then again, that’s her natural state; she always seems to be on the verge of apoplexy if someone speaks to her in the street. He repeats the question, but Jamelia remains silent, looking at the ground, as though counting the seconds remaining until her interrogator finds his task impossible and gives up.

“Please, I’m looking for Epi. It’s important.”

“Epi, Epi, Epi …”

“Right, exactly, Epi. Tiffany surely knows where he is. Is she still at home right now, sleeping off last night? Fuck, Jamelia, at least tell me whether or not you’ve seen Epi.”

“Epi, Epi, Epi …”

“Percy, honey, you’re going to have to shut up now, please.” The child seems to understand and obeys. “Has he come
around this morning? Come on, Jamelia, this could be a matter of life and death.”

He says it without thinking. But suddenly he’s seized by doubt: Is what he just said true? Was the scene in the bar with Tanveer just the first act of the Great Fuckup? But no, that wouldn’t make any sense. Tiffany’s participation in Tanveer’s murder must have been limited to inspiring it, with or without her consent. It doesn’t make sense to think anything else about Epi. Alex says, “Jamelia, I need …”

Maybe it’s the change in her respiration, maybe it’s the slight movement of her head, but Alex believes he can make out the promise of a glance, and even of a reply, behind the tangled curtain of her hair. And so he decides to wait and speak not a word, to wait and let her be squeezed by the silence and her thwarted haste. He employs the time in examining her as a man examines a woman; he lets himself be carried away by the fantasy of becoming her lover and dragging her out of her self-absorption. How much love she must have pent up inside, waiting for someone to let it escape! To penetrate her, to hear her moan in her little girl’s bedroom. But without Alex’s knowing exactly why, the erotic image he’s contemplating suddenly turns miserable.

“I, I, I don’t know—”

Alex defends himself against his own meanness, thinking that if Jamelia is to become a woman a man can desire, she’ll have to stop bleaching her hair, get rid of her fuzzy sideburns, and give up looking at people with those demented eyes, which are now looking at him as she begins to speak.

“I—”

The worse thing about loquacious interior voices, loud music inside cars, and sexual fantasies is that they distract you. That may be the reason why Alex realizes too late that he’s being lifted off the ground by the crotch and shaken.

“What’s up, man? What are you doing so far from your burrow?”

“Son of a bitch, you scared the shit out of me!”

“Have you heard about Tanveer?”

Allawi’s an Algerian, a handsome guy with slightly Asian features. He’s also the only person alive on earth today who still drinks Diet Coke with Lemon. He’s the official barber of the barrio, and he sports a vertical tattoo that runs from his right ear to the base of his neck and reads, in English,
I LOVE VANESSA
. But if there’s anything Allawi doesn’t like, it’s people inquiring about the said Vanessa. He’s calm and congenial, as if the lotions he inherited from the previous barber, Señor Juan, a man known for calmness and congeniality, had promoted these qualities. From inside the café on the corner, Allawi spotted Alex and decided to step out and talk to him. Today he’s wearing his hair short and dyed platinum blond, but there’s a good chance that tomorrow he’ll have a different color and a different style.

“What about Tanveer?”

“He was killed in Mari’s this morning.”

Alex glances over his shoulder at Jamelia’s terrified face. He wants to get rid of the Algerian as soon as possible so he won’t lose his chance; the girl seemed to want to talk. As if
Alex doesn’t have enough problems, Percy José starts singing his little song again: “Epi, Epi, Epi …”

“They shot him a couple of times.”

“Holy shit …”

“It was the cops. Those fuckers are going to kill us all, because we’re not lily-white like you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Apparently they tried to frisk him, and Tanveer wasn’t up for that. You know how crazy he could be sometimes and … hey! Kid!”

Percy has run away, heading back toward the apartment building where he lives. When Jamelia takes off after the child, Alex prevents her, figuring that the boy will stop when he gets to the main door. But that’s expecting a lot of him. Percy reaches the building, keeps on running, turns right at the corner, disappears. Alex lets Jamelia go after him. She runs awkwardly in her low-slung shoes, which are no match for Percy’s sneakers.

“They took him off to the hospital. The police don’t do things halfway, as you know. Apparently the problem is us Africans. We’re fucking up everything. Because of us, there are more cops around here than ever before. You’d think we blew up the
Sagrada Familia
.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“You’re a racist Catalan pig.”

Alex has failed to take into account the barrio’s extraordinary capacity for inventing fables. But he tells himself he’d do well not to confide in anyone. He remembers the Coyote. The
enormous boulder that seems to be rolling away can reverse direction and squash not only Epi but also himself. It’s not for nothing that he’s the murderer’s brother, or that he was there when Tanveer’s head got itself split open.

“Will you come in and have a drink with me?”

Alex is on the point of refusing the offer, but he knows Allawi’s powers of persuasion are practically invincible. Besides, it occurs to him that it would be a good idea to start damming the neighborhood’s free-flowing fantasies. He saw that Paki waste Tanveer, so why not proclaim it to the four winds? Why not begin with the most popular barbershop in the barrio?

“Come on, a quick coffee, I’ve got things to do.”

At this point the cell phone in the inside pocket of Alex’s overworked jacket begins to ring. It’s Epi. Alex stays outside while Allawi goes back into the bar. There’s a man in there who calls himself “Professor Malick, Master Keta,” whatever that may mean. He’s a black man, sitting at the end of the bar, near the corridor leading to the kitchen and the restrooms. A kid he says is his nephew hands out flyers offering the Professor’s services to the customers. Alex, who enters the place in a vile temper, also receives one of these announcements. He doesn’t even read it. He knows the green-and-yellow photocopies all too well. The charlatan’s marketing department has inundated the barrio with the miraculous catalog of his powers: solutions for all the problems in your life. He can convoke the swiftest spirits in existence and resolve any romantic difficulty radically and immediately. The Professor receives from eight in the morning until ten at night. In point of fact, Professor
Malick, Master Keta, hardly ever rests. Results within a maximum of three days, one hundred percent guaranteed. Problems related to marriage, work, and business; illnesses of unknown origin; love problems; how to get your mate back, how to attract people you’re fond of, how to break spells; problems of sexual impotency; legal problems; how to be generally and euphorically lucky in life. Professor Malick resolves all, thanks to his innate, supernatural power. In addition, he speaks to Jesus and Mohammed. To the dead and the absent. It goes without saying that his work is serious and guaranteed.