The Second Son: A Novel (16 page)

“I said probably.” Mueller was resting his gimp foot on the car’s running board as he took the last few pulls of a cigarette. Most of the smoke was trailing in at Hoffner through the window.

The Modelo 10 was a recent addition for Gardenyes, a four-seater out of Ford’s Barcelona plant that, up until the July fighting, had been churning out cars at an unusually healthy clip. It was unlikely that any of the driving enthusiasts who had bought the Modelo 10s or 8s had realized that they were sporting around on a German-made chassis and brakes and any number of other German components. Back in January, Ford London had sent down the word that Herr Hitler wanted better results out of his Ford Deutschland plants. So, to appease the Führer, Ford Ibérica had been told it was suddenly in the market for large stocks of automotive parts coming from Dagenham and Köln. This, in turn, had kept the London office happy, which had kept the American office happy, which was doing everything it could to keep the German office happy. So much happiness churning out of so few moving parts. It seemed to bode well for the future of international détente.

As it happened, this particular Modelo 10 had belonged to a rather successful dentist who had had the very good sense to send his wife, two small children, household staff, dental assistant, and mistress ahead to northern Italy on the night before all the trouble began. He had gotten wind that something was brewing from his brother-in-law, who was married to an older sister living in Morocco, and who was involved with something to do with the export of large metal tubing (he had been in Granada before that, but there had been talk of an incident with a woman connected to the postmaster). The brother-in-law had sent a cable saying he had heard something from someone (no names written down), and that certain events and certain “expediencies” (this was, in fact, the very word he had used, although slightly incorrectly) were “in the works” and might mean a change for the better in Barcelona—the brother-in-law being a staunch fascist and assuming only the best, which is what someone who has never been to Barcelona will always assume. The dentist, knowing better, had acted accordingly.

He had been pulled from his car on the nineteenth while trying to find the coast road. His driver had abandoned him at the first sound of shots, and the dentist, always at sixes and sevens when it came to navigating the roads in and around the city, had gotten lost. Two women and a rough man had beaten and then shot him. The dentist had lain very still for nearly an hour before the loss of blood had finally killed him. One of the women had given the car to Gardenyes in exchange for five completely useless Russian rifles, while the other had cursed her friend for being so stupid. In the meantime, both wife and mistress continued to wait patiently, certain that they would soon be resuming their previously well-balanced lives, albeit with a vaguely Venetian flair.

Hoffner was examining a stack of rubber-banded wooden tongue depressors he had found in the pocket next to the backseat when Gabriel turned on the engine. Aurelio was in the seat next to Gabriel, Gardenyes still in the toilet.

Hoffner said, “He doesn’t use any of these, does he, when things go south? I’m thinking he’s more of a bullet-to-the-head sort of man.”

Mueller tossed his cigarette to the street and leaned in as two spears of smoke streamed from his nose. “That’d be my guess, but you never know. I wouldn’t be all that eager to find out.” Mueller leaned in closer and spoke quietly. “Nothing stupid, Nikolai. You don’t know these boys. I don’t know them, and I’ve spent time with them. I’d like to be at each of their funerals.”

Gardenyes appeared at the café door and quickly made his way over to the car.

Mueller said, “They’ll know where to find me.” He stood upright as Gardenyes got in the other side and settled in next to Hoffner. “Three days,” said Mueller.

He was saying something else, but the car was already in gear.

*   *   *

The third-floor corridor of the Hospital Clinic was like any other—stark, white-walled, and overly sanitized. Hoffner had always found something incongruous in the heavy silence of such places: life-and-death decisions behind each door, and yet never more than a whisper from those making them. Even the air moved hesitantly, peering slowly around each corner, as if coming face to face with a forgotten gurney or a figure slumped listlessly across a chair might be too much. Gardenyes walked with purpose, but it was a false bravura that led the way. He, too, was doing his best to keep the healing stench from his lungs.

The double doors at the end of the corridor were fitted with two square windows, level with the eye and large enough to give a hint of the vast ward that lay beyond them. The word
RECUPERACIÓN
was set above the doors in thick black tile, though the letters seemed to be mocking themselves, saying, “You won’t find it in here, and you know it.” Gardenyes pushed through and Hoffner followed.

The smell was at once sweeter, and the air seemed to widen as if it were reaching for the corners of the ceiling high above. Eight rows of cots, perhaps twenty in each, stretched to the back wall, where three enormous windows—each a collection of iron-rimmed square panes—tinted the sun a gray-yellow. There were pockets of hushed exchanges between the four or five nurses scattered about, none in white, but what else would they be? The door swung closed behind Aurelio, and the squeak of the hinge echoed before it vanished into the dust.

A woman was sitting behind a desk. She had a rifle propped up against it, but there was little chance she knew how to use it. She wore a green short-sleeved shirt, and when she stood, a pair of brown trousers appeared that hugged her narrow waist. They were held in place by a thin leather belt that ran too long through the loops. Her arms were equally slender, everything long and fine, although the hair was short and too carelessly held to just above the shoulders. Hoffner would have expected the jet black from the coast road this morning, but this had a lighter tint to it and seemed a much better fit for the pale, suntanned face and blue eyes. She might have been thirty, but the eyes had her older.

“
Salud
,”
Gardenyes said indifferently. “We need to see a doctor.”

The woman looked at all four men. “Is someone injured?”

“No,” Gardenyes said, scanning the room behind her impatiently. He looked at her. “Does this hospital employ doctors?”

“It does.”

“Then I imagine you can go and get us one.” When she continued to look at him, Gardenyes said, “My name is Josep Gardenyes. When and if you find a doctor, he’ll know the name. Tell him I’m waiting to talk to him.” When he saw her still standing there, he drew up his shoulders. “Well?”

Again she looked at the others. “Of course.” She saw Gardenyes reaching for his cigarettes and added, “We don’t permit smoking in here. Not with all the open wounds.” She moved smoothly past them and out the swinging doors.

Gardenyes pulled the cigarettes from his shirt pocket, put one to his lips, and lit up.

Gabriel—who had been complaining about hospitals and the sick and the stink of formaldehyde since the drive over—shivered with too much drama and said, “Someone’s dying in here. You can smell it. It was worse two weeks ago, I can tell you that. Now it’s just the old dead, not the fresh kind.”

Aurelio said, “She’s from León.” He was at the desk, sliding his fingers along the few papers that were spread across it. “The hair and the eyes. People always think I’m Castilian. I’m not, but they always think it. She was pretty.” Finding nothing of interest, he began to open the drawers.

“Leave it,” said Gardenyes. He seemed unable to smoke the cigarette fast enough. He was at the door, staring out, then not. Gabriel might have put a voice to it, but it was Gardenyes who truly hated this place. “What takes so long?” he said, as he dropped the cigarette to the floor. He lit another, and Hoffner stepped over and picked up the stub.

Hoffner said, “So where is it you’re from?”

All three looked over as if he had asked the most idiotic question imaginable. Aurelio shut the drawer, Gardenyes looked back out through the window of the door, and Gabriel simply shook his head in disbelief. Hoffner had no idea why.

Gardenyes suddenly stepped back and moved to the desk. He dropped the half-smoked cigarette to the floor and hid it under his boot as the door squeaked open. Gabriel and Aurelio quickly moved into line. It was like watching three schoolboys waiting for a caning. The woman reappeared, holding several small vials in her hands.

“I’ve found you a doctor,” she said, as she moved back to her chair and sat. She placed the vials on the desk. “Unfortunately, she has no idea who Josep Gardenyes is.” She looked at Hoffner and pointed to his hand. “I told you not to smoke in here.”

Hoffner realized he was still holding the butt. He nodded apologetically. “No, of course not,” and dropped it into the can at the side of the desk. “My mistake.”

She looked up at Gardenyes. “What is it I can do for you?”

Gardenyes was still trying to digest the last few moments. “You’re a doctor?” he said.

“It would seem so, yes.”

“You’re a woman.”

She nodded. “That would also be right.”

Gardenyes was still struggling. “We’re—we’re looking for Germans.”

She said, “Well, that’s two out of three. I know a little Dutch, if that helps?”

Hoffner couldn’t help but smile, and she looked over at him. He thought she might return it, but that would have done neither of them any good. Instead, she looked at Gardenyes and said, “By the way, I’ve saved fascists. The first day, the day after that, yesterday. We all did. We all have. We make no distinctions. So if you’re here to round up—”

“You misunderstand,” said Hoffner. She looked at him, and he explained. “Not Germans.
A
German. I was hoping you might have records from the last week or two.”

She seemed remarkably at ease with the three bandit anarchists standing over her. It was the strange one at the end—with his even stranger valise and satchel—that was causing the hesitation. Had Hoffner been looking for it, he might have seen something of the familiar in the gaze. Deep and abiding loss was so readily apparent to those who shared it, but Hoffner had long ago given up looking for such things. It was enough for her to blink it away.

She said, “And I would hand over these records to you because you happen to be in the company of Josep Gardenyes, onetime leader of the anarchist
patrullas
to whom half of Barcelona owes its safety and undying gratitude.” She looked at Gardenyes. “Yes, I know who you are. I can’t speak for the other half.”

Gardenyes was rather too pleased with himself at this. To his credit, he indulged it only a moment.

She looked again at Hoffner. “It wouldn’t make any difference even if you had Buenaventura Durruti himself standing here. This is Barcelona. We’re led by anarchists. We have no records.”

Gardenyes had fully recovered; he was once again on solid ground. “So you’ll help my friend, then?”

She was still looking at Hoffner. “You call Gardenyes a friend?”

Hoffner recognized the toying disdain in the eyes. Men like Gardenyes were a necessary irritation to a woman like this—a woman who could sit perfectly straight in a ward filled with the dying. It gave her an uncommon strength.

“He calls me one,” said Hoffner. “You can take that as you like.”

Half a minute later the three Spaniards were on their way back to the car. Gardenyes assured Hoffner that he would look into the names and locations Wilson had provided—“Yes, yes, of course, no worries, we’ll be in touch.” It was a flurry of empty promises, leaving Hoffner alone with the desk and the woman behind it.

*   *   *

She called herself Mila, and he had been right to think her older. Not that much older, but enough distance from thirty to make sense of the steadying compassion she showed as they walked along one of the rows. It was one thing to reassure with a well-schooled, naïve precision. It was another to understand the terror that a bleach-soaked sheet and a paper-thin blanket could bring to a man staring hopelessly up at an endless ceiling.

One of the men propped himself on his elbows as she came closer. His face was full with color, healthy even, and held a look of unbridled hatred. His right hand was thickly wrapped. He glanced at Hoffner and, for a moment, seemed uncertain whether he would say anything. Mila came to the end of his cot, and the hatred got the better of him.

“Did you decide on it?” the man said. “Was it you?”

She stood there, allowing him to stare through her. “Yes,” she said, “it was. It’s a terrible thing. I’m sorry.”

There was a silence, and the man again looked unsure. He had expected more, a reason—the details for why his leg was no longer his. A man would have comforted with such things and forced the hatred to run its course.

“The other will be fine,” she said. “And the hand. But it doesn’t make any more sense of it, I know.”

The man continued to stare up at her; then he turned his head, and his eyes seemed to search for something. Finally, he began to shake his head slowly. “You’re sorry,” he said, but the hatred was already draining from him.

“I am. It’s a terrible, terrible thing.”

Hoffner saw it at once: she knew this one would never give in to self-pity. It was why she could console. She began to walk and Hoffner followed.