Barcelona Shadows (4 page)

“Because if he weren’t, I don’t suppose the police would be waking me up at this hour of the night.”

“We came to bring you a glass of warm milk, so you can have sweet dreams,” growls Corvo. “But you must not be very thirsty. What’s the name of the boy who comes with One Eye?”

“I only know his nickname. He always called him Blackmouth.”

“You see, how it’s all coming back to you?… Where can I find him?”

“It was always One Eye who came to see me.”

“We would have liked to invite him, but he had a small problem of… how would you say it… death.”

Now I would be smiling. I liked Moisès Corvo, with his sense of humour that was so dark, so dear to me.

“Gentlemen, it is late and I can’t be of any more help to you. Please forgive me, but I am going back to bed.”

Moisès Corvo slaps on his hat and buttons his coat. That was enough for the first round, but this bloke knows more than he’s saying, we’ll meet again.

“Farewell, Inspectors…”

“Corvo and Malsano,” answers Juan on their way out of the door.

They walk towards Ferran Street, where there is more foot traffic. It’s the weekend, and sailors hungry for nightlife have left their boats docked in the port.

Let’s go to the Napoleón, says Moisès Corvo out loud. The cinema on the Rambla Santa Mònica, closed hours ago, is the roof under which Sebastián, the projectionist, sleeps as well as
works. When the screenings are over and the audience has gone home or to bed (which aren’t always the same place), he opens the doors of the booth to the policeman and lets him in. They chat while he puts on one of those Italian movies that are all the rage now, he brings him up to date on the latest gossip which, in the long run, is often significant, and they smoke like chimneys until the projection moves from the screen to the wall of smoke they’ve created in the seating area. Sebastián has known the inspector since the war, they were in the same levy, and a few years back he found peace at the Napoleón. It was Corvo who arrested him at the start of the century when he stole, from a train in the North Station, a shipment of paintings that had been forged in Belgium, and it was also Corvo who found him the job at the cinema when he got out of prison. No grudges held, you do your job and when you nabbed me it was nothing personal. Now Sebastián, with his blue eyes, hooked nose and two daughters he hardly ever sees, has mellowed but he still lusts mightily after women. And that makes Moisès, womanizer that he is, feel comfortable.

Today both the inspectors will go and wake him up, put on a film and sit to chat for a while. It is starting to be time for the wall of secrets closing in on them to be hammered down.

They can’t even begin to imagine the horror hidden behind it.

I
T’S A FROZEN WINTER MORNING,
Christmas is drawing near and the street is filled with youngsters playing. Near them, in the shadow of doorways, hand over hand on laps and attentive gazes, circles of women watch over them while the men are at work. Corvo sleeps, far from the racket, in his flat on Balmes Street, but his wife is nearby, watching over him as well, in her way, searching through the pockets of his jacket, sniffing his shirt collar and checking the starched feel of his underwear. Luckily for the detective, the smell of rotting corpse is so strong it drowns out the scent of shady intentions and sex for money, and Conxita is left to think that her husband has only been seeing cadavers and criminals. Conxita is a bit thick, but she doesn’t know it, so she’s happy.

Blackmouth went down to the street with the four coins León Domènech gave him for breakfast. He would rather not have left his den, because he has the feeling they’re looking for him. He doesn’t know what he’s more afraid of: the coppers or her, the Bloodsucker. If the flatfoots link him to One Eye, they could accuse him of having killed him (there’s no motive, there’s no evidence, but since when do coppers need that?). If One Eye,
may he rest in peace, said anything about him before passing… he doesn’t even want to think about it. He buys some curd cheese from a vendor who carries the cheeses in a cart covered by a rag, and he smiles in appreciation. When she sees his teeth she makes a repulsed face and gives him the change as rudely as she can. Shorting him, obviously. Blackmouth puts the coins away in two different pockets: one for León—that curd cheese gets pricier every day, he’ll claim—and the other for him. When the cheese-seller isn’t looking, he filches a bit of cheese from the cart and licks his finger.

“Good day, ma’am,” he says in parting.

“Piss off, wretch.”

It will be a bad day for Blackmouth, which isn’t terribly surprising if you take into account the fact that his life is a long series of frustrations and fears. He can’t complain, in the end; someone with no idea of what it is to live well can’t compare it with his own lot. And everything he has he gets from those who can afford to lose it. It’s nature’s law, he says to himself, in a world where the law is written on the wind.

He can hear León’s guitar from the street. Today his student is Isabel, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the milkmaid of Xuclà Street, hideously ugly and with as much musical talent as the cockroaches just crushed under Blackmouth’s boots. Maybe a bit less, even. Isabel is under the mistaken impression that if she learns to play the guitar she can join an orchestra, perform on Paral·lel (which is truly a pretty futile ambition to begin with), meet a good man who will sing her to sleep every night and never have to work again. In the end, it’s León Domènech who does most of the “playing”, and just then Blackmouth spies in silence from the entryway. León plays at coming very close to the girl, stroking and
sniffing. He’s blind, but he’s plenty well equipped with the other senses. Blackmouth grows stiff as he watches and says to himself, how clever is this bloke, the whole neighbourhood hears him scratching out chords and he still pretends he’s a teacher. If he’s lucky, he’ll corner Isabel and suggest, who knows, that she suck his willy (that’s how Blackmouth refers to his knob: deep down he’s still a boy), because today he feels lucky. He is very wrong.

Once the girl has paid León and said goodbye with a kiss on each cheek, the old blind man has him come in. I know you were watching, pig, and I haven’t forgotten, about the coins, you can hand over that change. Someone’s knocking at the door, it must be Isabel, probably left her book of sheet music.

“Go and open up,” orders León, and Blackmouth, accepting his role as a servant, is there in two strides.

It is Salvador Vaquer on the other side of the door. He had come looking for him.

“Enriqueta wants to see you, now.”

Blackmouth and Salvador head over to Ponent Street, and the boy lowers his head when they pass a couple of municipal policemen running to some emergency on Peu de la Creu. Salvador Vaquer notices and says they’re not looking for you, not yet, and Blackmouth feels a shiver.

The most merciful way to define Salvador Vaquer is to lie. There are certain people whose absence, if they disappeared without a trace from one day to the next, nobody would notice. Salvador Vaquer is so insignificant that it’s not worth the trouble even including him on such a deplorable list. Fat, lame and lowly, he hides his baldness beneath a hat that’s too big for him and a substantial moustache that leans over the abyss of lips that don’t speak so they won’t be answered. He lives in the shadow of Enriqueta, with an
inferiority complex over the notable influence of her former husband (another piece of work) and her father. I’ll tell you more about them all later, and you will see how they talk, how they think and how they lie. Salvador Vaquer gets it from all sides, but he never has the pluck to rebel. It could be said that he’s doing fine, that he doesn’t need to be a person, that someone has to fill the role of fall guy. He’s not ambitious, he’s not sly and he never raises his voice. But he’s not a good man, either. The flat on Ponent is at number twenty-nine, and it is one of the three that Enriqueta uses to carry out her activities (the other two are on Picalquers and Tallers, but she doesn’t usually live in them). Light manages to sneak in through the balcony, until it ignites into sparks the scrolls of fine dust that dance in the air. Yet Enriqueta remains in shadow.

Blackmouth grows pale, as if the blood were fleeing his body out of fear of the woman. She savours it, because she knows she has that effect on people. She knows she is feared.

She says nothing, merely studies him from the darkness. Blackmouth can make out small eyes, fallen, as if sad. He shivers when he realizes that Enriqueta’s gaze is no more dynamic than the dust that floats before her. You called for me, ma’am, he states, to hear his voice, since he can no longer hear his heart beating. She doesn’t respond, not yet.

A girl cries behind a door and then Enriqueta, placid and inscrutable as a caryatid, has him sit down and she sits beside him. Blackmouth is a bag of nerves, shrinking like a mouse into a corner when the lights are turned on.

The screams and wails have become scratching on the wood. The black metal key is in the lock and it trembles.

“You’re handsome,” she says, with a cracked voice. “And very young, but I think you’re not getting enough to eat.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You want to eat?” And with a hand gesture Salvador disappears and returns with a tray filled with biscuits. Some are butter biscuits and others have fruit.

Blackmouth grabs three at once and brings them all to his gob. He chews greedily and is about to choke, while Enriqueta watches him and smiles for the first time. He is surprised, because it is a sweet, friendly smile. Another hand movement makes Salvador appear with a glass of beer, warm, but beer. Blackmouth swallows the lump.

“You want to eat more?” she repeats.

“No, ma’am, I’m full.”

“You didn’t understand me: do you want to eat more often?”

“I don’t work for nobody, ma’am.” Blackmouth doesn’t yet know if he is doing the right thing by refusing Enriqueta’s invitation.

“I’m not asking you to work for me. I’m suggesting you help me. One Eye did me a real service, yes, but now, the poor bloke… has died on us.”

There couldn’t be more cynicism in her words, but she doesn’t bother to conceal it. Blackmouth looks her up and down. The fearless face, the nostrils widening as her eyes close, as if trying to smell his fear. Enriqueta bites a lip, Blackmouth feels tired. Talking to her is exhausting because he has to show his strength at all times, that he’s tough and won’t cave. She is a bloodsucker, he thinks, but then blushes, believing she has read his thoughts.

“What would I have to do, ma’am?”

Enriqueta is about forty years old, but when she draws close to Blackmouth she resembles a sculpture thousands of years old,
a marble body without a soul. He sees her small, sharp teeth, which emit a barely perceptible whistle.

“One Eye never told you what he did?”

“Never.”

He didn’t need to. After every visit to Enriqueta, One Eye seemed more hypnotized, stuck in a spider’s web he didn’t want to extricate himself from. She is captivating and horrifying all at the same time. Salvador Vaquer, standing in a corner of the dining room, is just a slave, a zombie.

Enriqueta gets up and smoothes her skirt with twisted, malformed hands, like claws. She opens the drawer of an old side table that creaks and pulls out a machete. Here, she offers it to the boy, and he accepts it. He fears what will come next, but he can do nothing to avoid it. Salvador opens the door and Blackmouth sees a dark girl, little more than four years old, with clean but knotted hair, her face covered in snot and clothes that look new. She stops screaming and only whines, and Enriqueta takes her hand.

Blackmouth kneels, but he cannot look the girl in the eye. He caresses the machete handle just as he smells something delicious coming from the kitchen. The bubbling of the pot works its way into his brain. Enriqueta closes the window and the blinds so the screams won’t be heard out on the street.

The next day, Moisès Corvo and Juan Malsano find Blackmouth on the roof where he lives, and Corvo fractures his incisor before saying good evening. His fist hurts, the lad is all dried-out skin and rock-hard muscle, but over the years the policeman has learnt that a little pain in the knuckles right at the start saves him saliva in the end.

“One Eye is dead and you are the last one he worked with.” Malsano reveals his intentions before Blackmouth gets up off the floor, his chops bleeding.

“Who are you?”

Since he knows full well, but is playing dumb, he earns himself a blow to the nape of the neck. This time with the back of the hand and without damaging any teeth, but with a warm, foul taste of blood on his palate that he doesn’t entirely dislike.

“I don’t know nothing.”

The third blow is like a very full glass of beer, thinks Corvo, it always loosens the tongue of the person you bought it for.

“One Eye worked for a foreign doctor on Raurich Street. He’ll know what happened to him.”

“He’s the one who told us you were with him on the very night he was killed,” says Malsano, calling the shots.

“No, no, no. We had an argument. I wasn’t working with him any more.”

“And the body you stole from the cemetery?”

“What body?”

Corvo grabs him by his nape with one hand, like an eagle hunting a rabbit, but a pathetic, emaciated rabbit, and drags him over to the railing.

“You decide. You learn to fly in less than thirty seconds or you can start talking.” Corvo’s not joking.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! One Eye was mixed up in some very strange business, and it scared me too much.”

Corvo leans him over the street. The boy’s torso is suspended over the edge, he flails his arms, searching for something to grab onto.

“You guys steal a headless corpse and One Eye shows up dead and bled dry. It’s not so much that I find your tomb-sacking
reprehensible, it’s that I don’t like you randomly scattering the city with dead bodies. It’s a bother, and it makes a stink almost as bad as your crotch right now.”

“Black magic!” It’s the first thing that comes into Blackmouth’s head. The reply must not convince Corvo, because he lets him fall a bit further, making his balance increasingly difficult.

“You think I’m an idiot. Remember that idiots have bad memories and sometimes they forget they’re holding somebody up over a four-storey drop.”

“No, no. I’m not lying,” he lies. “One Eye wanted the corpse for black magic, for witchcraft.”

“One Eye couldn’t tell the difference between electric light and a pile of horseshit. You want me to believe he was a necromancer?”

“A what?”

Corvo is about to let him go. But he is the only means he has for resolving a crap murder with a crap victim. Who cares who killed One Eye? They should build whoever it was a monument. Normally he would have made a toast to the son of a bitch who’d taken him out of circulation, one less lowlife on the streets. A wretch and wastrel, a grave defiler and a war amputee. Definitely a lowlife. But it could be that something different is hiding behind that death, one of so many that happen every day in this city of masks and lies. It could be an open door that leads to the monster, or that man that passes as one.

“One Eye dealt with strange people. Healers, charlatans, people like that.”

“Have you ever seen an execution by hanging, Blackmouth?”

Corvo pulls him away from the drop and throws him against the terrace tiles. Some pigeons wake up and coo, but the city keeps pretending nothing’s going on.

“No.” Blackmouth is no longer afraid. It seems the danger has passed.

“Of course not. Because it’s been a while since the executioner has been working his trade around here. And you know why? Because when I ask questions, people tend to talk. And if they don’t talk, then I make sure they never do again. I’m the jealous type.”

“I’m talking, I’m talking. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“You should know more.” Blackmouth hastens to invent a good story. The two policemen look at him, expectant.

“Some Negroes…” he says, but he knows he has to be more specific. “I don’t know their names, but they’re two big Negroes, from Africa, who came to Barcelona a few months ago. They knew what One Eye did for a living and they asked him for bodies.”

Corvo pulls out his revolver and opens the cylinder. He has six bullets, perfect. He closes it and points it at Blackmouth.

“With this shit you won’t even make it to the gallows.”

“It’s true. They are two huge Negroes, from the area around the Santa Madrona gate. Ask whoever you want, you’ll see I’m not lying. They have the Cubans and the Filipinos scared out of their wits. They threaten to keep their souls and things like that. One Eye got mixed up with them, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, that kind of stuff gives me the jitters.”