Needle in a Haystack (4 page)

Two days ago, Manuel, her partner, her friend, her companion, ran into an army ambush. She thinks of him and Silvio, lying in a street in Tigre like discarded objects, in puddles of blood. Manuel’s death pains her in the head but not in the heart, because her love for him died the last time they saw each other, the last time they would ever have each other, when she told him and he wouldn’t listen. Because Manuel barely ever listened to her, obsessed as he was with a cruel determination to change the world, whatever it took.

Something alerts her. Voices from the stairwell, approaching. She stands up. She looks for a place to hide, the voices getting ever closer. Like a mouse, she scurries under the make-up table and pulls a chair in front of her. From her hiding place she sees the legs of two women who come through the door talking loudly.

Another woman comes in and sits down on the seat in front of Eva, who has to press herself right up against the wall to avoid the woman’s legs. They change out of their simple street clothes, putting on provocative sequined dresses and make-up. A very young-sounding girl bursts in.

Eva turns towards the sound of approaching footsteps. A man enters, dressed in red trousers, socks and shoes.

The man hurries them out of the room, then shouts something Eva can’t make out. He comes back immediately with another man.

Tony goes over to the wall in front of Eva and crouches down. Her heart stops as she thinks she’s been discovered,
but the man is struggling with a socket, which he pulls away to reveal a safe deposit box. He opens the box and puts two wads of cash inside, fixes the socket back in place, gets up and leaves. Eva is on the point of choking, she can’t tell how long she’s been holding her breath.

Lascano strolls across Vicente López square, where rich families’ dogs are brought to shit by maids in aprons. The maids earn a tenth of what gets spent on these fine specimens, the more exotic the better. Smoking a cigarette in the shade of a giant rubber tree, Lascano is pleased to see that his men are at the ready. He has been tailing Tony Ventura for eight months. Now he has him. He walks calmly and smokes a cigarette while his men take up their final positions on the corner of Gaspar Campos and Arredondo. Ventura runs his business right here in a plush mansion he’s managed to get hold of through some shady dealing. Mortgaged to the hilt, it’s perfect for the high-class brothel he’s set up, at least until they get evicted. Tony’s convinced that having powerful people as clients covers him against police raids and judicial intervention. Carried away with his sense of impunity, he expanded operations into the traffic of cocaine, high-stakes poker tables and, for his sins, underage prostitution. The last development finally convinced the judge to sign the search warrant.

The previous summer, at Punta del Este, Justice Marraco watched as Mariana, his thirteen-year-old daughter, blossomed. At La Brava beach, she wore a bikini, which struggled to contain her adolescent tits. Her little bum filled out and an incipient fuzz of straight hairs began to poke out of the sides of her tiny panties. He had never seen a woman with straight hair down there before. Her mouth became ripe, her eyes suggestive and
one morning he found her knickers stained with blood. She was a young woman now. It started to send Marraco crazy when he caught men staring at her; even his best friends ogled his little girl’s body. Jealousy stuck its teeth in and wouldn’t let go. He tried to force his daughter to wear a more discreet bathing suit, but all this achieved was to send her, with increasing regularity, to another beach, another stage on which to play out this drama, far away from prying paternal eyes. One night, arriving home from the San Rafael casino, Marraco looked through the window and saw one of the Pertinetti boys groping her on the living room couch. She, happy as can be; her mother, complicit; Marraco, furious.

Ventura picked up three fifteen-year-old girls in Asunción, bought for the price of two. Of Guarani Indian and German stock, these dark-skinned girls, with their smooth, jet-black hair and green eyes, could easily pass for Thai. In some form or other, Tony was continuing a tradition established in the Twenties and Thirties by
Zwi Migdal,
the Jewish mafia, who smuggled in blond Poles who could pose as French maids in Buenos Aires.

Lascano has a search warrant in his pocket, signed by Marraco and his paranoia. Even if such documents had fallen into disuse, it protected Perro should he end up in front of some government heavyweight or a member of the armed forces.

The uniformed policemen grow impatient, lying in wait a few yards from the house where Eva hides. Lascano waves to them and some salute him, but he’s not really paying attention. He heads over to the deputy superintendent.

The officer’s expression is a mixture of amazement and resignation at the words of his superior: he’s not used to a judge being present on a raid. For him, judges are the men who usually just show up in the newspapers taking the credit for everything once the dirty work’s been done. He feels no particular inclination to ask questions. He prefers the quiet life and so he limits himself to responding with courtesy and subordination:

In the back seat of a Falcon, driven by a policeman Lascano has seen once or twice before, Marraco arrives with Arrechea, one of his clerks. As Lascano heads over to the car, the judge lowers the window.

Marraco puts his window up and signals to the chauffeur to get going. He wants to be home fast, to monitor his daughter’s activities. The car pulls away and melts into the shadows, periodically reappearing in the glow of the traffic lights at every junction, shrinking each time until it disappears. Arrechea doesn’t like the way he is being treated like a child.

With a gesture of the hand, Perro orders two men with a battering ram to smash down the door.

Eva leaves her hiding place to peek down the stairwell and hears voices of men and women down below. There’s a sudden explosion, the crash of the door as it’s bashed in. Running and yelling.

The party’s over. Lascano blocks the exit, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and enjoys watching his operation unfold, designed to perfection. In a matter of minutes, whores and clients are identified and Ventura is handcuffed and brought out to Perro, who can’t help but smile: dressed all in red, Ventura looks like a toy devil. Lascano covers his mouth, coughs and orders his men to let those they’ve arrested put their clothes back on. An officer whispers something in the superintendent’s ear.

Lascano pretends not to notice as two men, heads bowed, hurry out the door and disappear into the street.

Although a tall man, Ventura seems to have shrunk in defeat.

On the top floor, Eva hears footsteps coming up the stairs. She quietly shuts the door. She goes back to her
hiding place under the table. She pulls the chair back in front of her. She sits on the floor and waits with her hands clasped together, as if praying, although she doesn’t pray. A policeman enters, walks around the room, then leaves and Eva sighs in relief.

Down below, the policemen herd whores, pimps and clients away. The officer, back from upstairs, heads over to Lascano.

Arrechea, who has been as still and silent as if at mass, adopts a sudden authoritative pose when Lascano approaches.

Lascano smiles to himself. Having quickly rid himself of the clerk, he can now give free rein to his talents as a detective. He examines the house room by room. It’s luxurious: the furniture, the pictures on the walls, the upholstery; everything speaks of a wealth accumulated over generations, of studies in Europe, of good breeding. He climbs the grandiloquent marble staircase. He walks around slowly, taking everything in. Eva, still sitting on the floor, hidden under the table, sees his legs come into view and hopes she won’t be discovered. He’s just a few inches above her head, looking over the objects on the dressing table. He moves away, tapping a small black notebook against his leg. It drops to the floor. As he bends down to pick it up, her whole body involuntarily spasms and her foot moves the seat. Lascano’s hand is on
his holster in a flash. He approaches and kicks the chair away, revealing a young woman with her face turned to the floor. Eva looks up and meets the policeman’s eyes. Perro’s heart stops. It’s Marisa, his dead wife. The face, the hair, the shoulders, the hands, the complexion. That slightly defiant, slightly melancholic air, but above all else, the eyes: it’s Marisa.

The spell is suddenly broken by the voice of Sergeant Molinari, who, from where he stands, can’t see what has stunned Lascano. He has come to inform his superintendent that the prisoners have all been taken away. Lascano, without taking his eyes off the girl, tells them to get going,
I’ll catch you up
. Alone once more in silence, he looks at the woman in amazement.

Here, hidden under the table of a high-class brothel, is Marisa, staring right back at him. Lascano realizes he’s lost control of the situation, doesn’t know what to do. He reaches out and touches her hair, just to be sure she’s real. He can’t arrest her, he can’t set her free, he can’t pretend not to have seen her. When she tries to speak, he raises a finger to his lips. He takes her by the hand and helps her up, wraps her in his overcoat and leads her out of the house, without saying a word. Outside rages the stupidity of men, running around, killing each other over money.

The girl puts up no protest. She occasionally aims a furtive glance at Lascano, trying to guess his intentions. Scared, she considers trying to escape, but decides the odds are against her. It’s impossible to decipher this man, who’s old enough to be her father, smokes incessantly and treats her like a lady in waiting. When they pull on to Libertador, she fears he’s taking her to be interrogated at the torture chambers of E.S.M.A, the
Navy Mechanics School, but they drive straight past. Then she thinks they must be going to the dreaded military intelligence unit at Batallón 601 headquarters at the intersection of Viamonte and Callao, but they pull on to Avenida Juan B. Justo. He eventually parks up in La Paternal. In this neighbourhood there is no secret military prison she knows of,
but who knows how many there are?
Once out on the street, he walks five paces in front of her, she thinks of running,
but where to?
She stops. He walks straight ahead, not once turning round. Frightened, intrigued and trembling with cold, she follows Perro all the way into his apartment.

Lascano looks at the bird in the cage. The animal jumps around nervously, then lets out a
tweet
of recognition. Lascano shakes his head and goes into the kitchen. He feels dizzy. He puts a pot of water on the stove. He lights the gas and a cigarette with the same match, allows his mind to rest, lulled by the hiss of the flame. As the water comes to the boil, he turns off the gas, the flame burning out in a tiny explosion. He prepares the
mate
, a methodical ritual.