17 Stone Angels (33 page)

Fortunato didn't answer the Chief's understatement. The scratchy minor chords of bygone violins singed the dark air of the worn café.

The Chief continued in a lighter tone. “The good news is I read a transcript of Boguso's new story. He mentions an Uruguayan and Santamarina, but there's not a word about police. It appears that whoever is behind this mess is only after Pelegrini. It only remains for Santamarina to keep his mouth shut.”

“And if they offer him a deal?”

“He won't take it! He's not that type. He'll wait tranquilly until Pelegrini can get him loose.”

“And Renssaelaer?”

The Chief pulled back, and Fortunato thought his perplexity looked real. “What Renssaelaer?”

“He's the head of security for all Pelegrini's organization. Waterbury mentioned his name before he died. Something of “Renssaelaer sent you,” that we should tell Renssaelaer he had nothing to fear.”

Now Bianco looked genuinely disconcerted. “I know nothing of this.”

Fortunato reflected on the increasingly bloated list of people whose silence he depended on. “I should go and talk to Boguso alone.”

Bianco plastered on an embarrassed little grin. “That's another thing. The investigation has now changed from a simple homicide to
organización ilicita
, which means it is under the jurisdiction of the Federales. They moved him to a federal comisaria. It doesn't mean we can't speak with him, of course, but there are certain inconveniences. Moreover, now he insists he won't talk without his lawyer.”

Fortunato absorbed this with a slow nod. “Who's paying the lawyer?”

The Chief shook his head. “Now we're arriving, Miguel. His lawyer is with the firm of Ernesto Campara, the brother of German Campara, the Chief of Intelligence. He took it without charge. From what you've told me, I suspect that your Inspector Diaz belongs to that group.”

Fortunato squinted. Federales. Campara. The case was slipping out of their control. The waitress appeared and inserted two beers and a saucer of green olives into the silence. Bianco indicated the glasses. “Drink! Relax a little.” He pinched one of the olives and began working it in his jaws while Fortunato rested his fingertips on the cool surface of his schooner without lifting it to his mouth.

“It's political, hombre,” Bianco went on, extracting the olive pit. “Ovejo, the Minister of Economy, wants to run for president, but the President isn't so eager to give up his job. The more filth they throw at Pelegrini, the dirtier the President gets, even if it never goes to trial. It's a round business, because Ovejo represents the interests of the IMF and foreign capital against the local interests. You can be sure he's getting it back on the other side. That's how it is, and, disgracefully, we're in the middle of the two whores.”

Fortunato felt anger surging up out of his chest. “I wasn't in the middle of anything. You put me in the middle—”

Bianco cut into his sentence sharply. “Don't start whining now! The Institution has done well for you. You want to say that you can't return the favor once in a while?” The Chief lowered his voice but continued with a stiff face. “Some operations go well and others go badly. You have to face up to them. A policeman must be hard! Resolved!”

“I want the truth about this, Leon. All of it. You owe me that.”

The Chief curled his mouth and looked down at the little mound of olive pits on the table. He exhaled and settled back into his chair. “Pelegrini wanted to squeeze Waterbury. The why isn't clear: something of the wife, as
your Diaz suggested. Pelegrini arranged it through Santamarina, the one you met here a few weeks ago. You know the rest.”

“The man was completely innocent!”

Fortunato's reference to the crime seemed to puzzle Bianco. “What does that have to do with anything? The
puta
was up to
something
, or he wouldn't be dead right now. He was going around with Pelegrini's wife.”

“You told me he was blackmailing him!”

The Chief shifted under Fortunato's glare. “One or the other. What does that matter?”

Fortunato recognized in his mentor's face the same blank disregard he'd seen twenty-five years ago when they'd raided the family of the Union representative and carried away every trace of them. He swallowed. “To me, it matters.”

“Then you shouldn't have fucked the whole thing up!” Bianco wrinkled his nose. “What's going on with you? Eh? What's going on? This isn't time to be mounting little colored mirrors!” He caricatured Fortunato's heavy manner: “Poor writer! He was going around with a rich man's woman and ended up dead!” Are you crazy? People die every day. You, me, we all die! You're drowning in a glass of water, Miguel!” The Chief stopped arguing abruptly and looked anew at Fortunato for a second, as if assessing him. “Forgive me, Miguel. I get mad, and . . . There's much frustration.” He shrugged the rest, then looked to the side for a moment. “Don't worry. I'll cover you, like always. Everything will be arranged. In two weeks, no one will remember who Robert Waterbury was.”

Fortunato didn't answer, but he knew that certain things could never be arranged. Waterbury was dead, his wife a widow and his daughter an orphan. And he, Fortunato, had fired the final shot.

Bianco shouted a greeting across the room and another officer came over and began discussing the Berenski murder with great relish. Fortunato gave a numb greeting when the Chief presented him, absently shaking the man's hand then letting his gaze drift off to the Argentine selection of 1978, the fiercest year of the Dictatorship, when they had hosted the World Cup and won and the crowds had gone dancing in the streets while dead bodies washed up on the shore of the Rio de la Plata. Alone again with Bianco, the Chief's glossy confidence: “Relax, Miguel. Everything will solve itself.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY

T
he final erasure of Berenski's infinite laugh affected Athena more than she would have expected. After the meeting with Fabian she had left a message on Berenski's machine, then flung herself on the bed to try to figure out how she would package a one-week extension of her stay to the people back in Washington. She'd turned on the television without sound, and as she placed a call to the embassy the afternoon news program began to roll out a series of photos and news clips of Berenski, contrasting them with a strange blackened mannequin lying at the feet of a half-dozen detectives. She gasped, turned up the volume, and when the worst hit her she sat on the bed and began to sob with horror and grief. One had to cry over Berenski, who laughed at all the lies yet never forgot who they really hurt. In his comical way he was a thousand times the fighter of Argentina's medal-plated generals or scowling commandos.

She wanted to talk to someone—Carmen de los Santos, Berenski's family—but she was peripheral to all these lives, a tourist in other people's misery. She switched channels until she found another version of the murder, watched the sober face of the Federal Comisario as he spoke of
la investigación
. After an hour she lay on her back, considering the strange lunch with Fabian and his story of Robert Waterbury. To her surprise, the telephone rang. Wilbert Small, from the embassy.

“How's our star investigator?”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard they've got Robert Waterbury's killer in custody.”

She considered the dubious claim, then wondered who had called the embassy. Probably not Miguel Fortunato. “News travels fast.”

“They know we're interested. I'm impressed, Athena.”

She tried to fight off the compliment but it got to her anyway. “I wouldn't say it's completely settled yet, Bert.”

“Not settled? I heard they've got a signed confession.”

“You mean
two
signed confessions. That's something we need to talk about. I need to extend my stay here.”

“That, Athena, is exactly what I called you about. But I've got some other news: the FBI wants to meet with you tomorrow at noon.”

The announcement surprised her. She'd been trying to get in with the FBI since she'd arrived two weeks ago, and they'd always been too busy. “What's it about?”

“Oh, I prefer to let the FBI do their own talking, but I know they've heard about your work and they probably want to debrief you before they take it on.”

A surge of pleasure filled her. The FBI! Once the FBI came into the investigation they'd start pulling so many strings that Fabian's head would pop off. “That's great!”

“Hey, you came down here and kicked some fanny and word gets around. Why don't I swing by tomorrow at eight-thirty and we can walk over together. That'll give me time to tell you about the job offer.”

“Job offer?”

“You may be doing a lot more investigating. See you tomorrow!” he said coyly, and hung up.

“Wow,” she said quietly, then opened up one of the tiny bottles of liquor on the shelf and poured it into a glass. She leaned her arm on the small table near the window and looked out at the rooftops and balconies around her. The cityscape looked dreamy and mythical in the saffron light of late afternoon, like a day from 1920 that had been kept in a hat box and now spilled across the TV antennas and clotheslines. She didn't know exactly what to think except that everything she could have hoped for or imagined was coming to pass. The thought of Ricardo Berenski merged with the alcohol and
bathed everything in a golden sadness. At least, she thought as she opened another little flask of liquor, he would have approved of the results.

The offer Wilbert Small made
the next morning in the Sheraton's coffee shop was so perfect that it felt unreal. Over two hundred American citizens were languishing in Latin American jails, Small told her, on everything from drug charges to traffic accidents. She would be part of a team that investigated them case-by-case and made a recommendation about repatriating the prisoners.

“Are these people innocent?”

Small chuckled. “Frankly, most of them are guilty, and the best they can hope for is a nice clean cell in the States. But some of them committed minor infractions and didn't know how to work the system. They don't belong in prison. They need an advocate and you'd be that advocate. You'd travel all over Latin America investigating in much the same way you did here. Does that interest you?”

She laughed. “Does it interest me?” She laughed again. “Of course it interests me!” She took the smile off her face. “What are my chances of getting the job?”

“I'd say . . . ” he reached for her breakfast check and signed it for her, “you've practically got it already. Especially with a recommendation from the FBI.” He looked at his watch. “We'd better roll!”

She'd been too enthralled by the job to bring up the matter of extending her stay in Buenos Aires, but if the FBI was calling her in to consult, it went without saying that she'd be staying on. She couldn't help but enjoy being squired through embassy security. Everything first rate: clipped Marines, bulletproof glass, intercoms. And outside, a line of visa seekers winding off around the block. The FBI agent met her in a nondescript conference room with a big wooden table and Old Glory hanging in the corner. Athena put his age at mid-fifties, with the thinning gray hair and staid blue suit of a successful insurance executive. Her new colleague. She caught the trace of an accent as he introduced himself as Frank Castro.

“Cuban?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “No relation.” Castro brought out a yellow legal pad and an expensive-looking fountain pen. After ordering coffee from an Argentine
assistant he closed the door and opened up a slim dossier. His manner of speaking was short and dry, and seemed to demand short, dry answers.

“So tell me about your investigation,” he began. “Has local law enforcement been cooperative?”

“Fairly cooperative,” she answered. She was excited but she wanted to keep up a professional front. “I've been working with Comisario Fortunato of the Buenos Aires Department of Investigations.”

“The
Bonaerense
,” Castro affirmed. “Tell me what you've done.”

“We started out by reviewing the
expediente
, then we visited the crime scene. A week after I arrived, Officer Fortunato heard through an informant that someone had bragged about killing a foreigner, and that led us to Enrique Boguso, who was already in jail for an unrelated double homicide.”

“Who was the informant?”

“Fortunato didn't say.”

Castro nodded.

Athena went on. “Anyway, Boguso confessed to the murder, which he said he committed with another man, an Uruguayan.”

“And his name is . . . ?”

“Marco. It's in his
declaración
. According to them, it had something to do with cocaine, and there were several chalks of cocaine at the scene. A day after Boguso confessed, he changed his story. He said he'd been paid by someone named Santamarina, who manages security for Carlo Pelegrini, who's a big—”

“I know who Carlo Pelegrini is,” Castro interrupted. “Why'd Boguso change his story? His conscience bothering him?” Wilbert Small laughed.