No One Loves a Policeman (12 page)

Incredible as it may seem, I was already reproaching myself for
almost beating the life out of those two young thugs who, as soon as they left hospital and were released by the magistrate because they were minors, would find somebody else to shoot sooner than I would find Isabel or Edmundo's killers.

Wolf straightened up and poured himself another whisky. I called the real police to come and take care of things. When I hung up, Wolf and I stared at each other like two police frogmen at the bottom of a sewer.

“The country is on the skids, Martelli,” he said. “Buy dollars.”

La Tarde
was a free sheet published by Argentina's biggest-selling daily. It was handed out at rail and underground stations throughout Buenos Aires. Thousands of worker bees read this and similar publications while they clung on for dear life to the straps in the crowded carriages transporting them back home every evening. The fortunate few who managed to find a seat probably fell asleep by page two or three; those who had to stand perhaps got as far as page eleven, where Wolf had published under a banner headline:

BLOND MODEL IS COASTAL KILLER'S THIRD VICTIM. BODY FOUND IN IMPERIO HOTEL BAHÍA BLANCA
.

Beneath, in smaller type:

DOUBLE KIDNAPPING IN SAME REGION: MOTHER RELEASED; DAUGHTER STILL MISSING
.

Wolf had taken a chance linking the two events. I called the paper to thank him. Distorted by a cheap synthesizer, Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” kept me entertained while the operator searched for their chief crime correspondent. Without success.

“Parrondo isn't in,” I eventually heard a woman's voice say.

“Is he sick?”

“Who's asking?”

“A friend.”

This time she hesitated before replying.

“You can probably find him at home.”

It took some persuading to convince her that although I was Parrondo's friend I did not have his home number. I explained who I was, and what had happened the day before. All the ambulances and patrol cars must have caught the attention of everyone working at the paper: they even took photographs, I said, although none of them were published.

“Did you like the splash I gave your story, Martelli?” Wolf said, when finally I tracked him down. “Instead of congratulating me, they sent me on gardening leave. When they fire me and pay me compensation, I'm going to buy myself some love. So far, they've only given me a warning and a suspension, so I'm all alone.”

He was in a good mood, which was rare for somebody whose job consisted of interviewing police informers, eating with drug traffickers and talking to victims' relatives demanding justice. More often than not their loved ones had been murdered by the same police whose bosses he was trying to bribe over the meals he bought them.

“It's like one of Dante's circles in Hell,” he used to say when he tired of the comedy and was ordering another whisky with no ice in the bar where we had been attacked. “The people giving the orders to steal and
kill, who sometimes even carry out the killings themselves, are the very ones protesting at the upsurge of violence here.”

That was nothing new in Argentina, I would remind him on the afternoons we used to spend together after he called me—like someone calling a doctor in an emergency. I recalled Perón saying that violence up above creates violence down below.

“That's nonsense, empty words for the young idiots in that antediluvian era you managed to escape from. Just look what happened when they were in power back in '73—a complete disaster. Don't talk to me about politics, Martelli: all politicians care about is power, they grow fat like leeches on other people's blood.”

But this afternoon he was almost happy, or at least relieved, and excited too, because he thought he had got hold of one of the threads of the skein I was trying to disentangle.

I picked him up at his place in Almagro. As he climbed into Isabel's car he looked refreshed and triumphant, as if the assault and being suspended from the paper had been a tonic for him.

“There's always a price to pay,” he said, once he had settled in the passenger seat and stroked the dashboard as if he were caressing a woman's body. “I published the story not because I believed you but because I found out a couple of things about your dead friend which didn't match the memories you seem to have of him.”

“We don't choose our friends for their good behavior,” I said.

“Alright, but we shouldn't believe myths about them either. Let his widow cry for him if she likes. Talking of which, this car isn't yours.”

I pulled up at a corner simply to eye him with astonishment.

“How do you know that?”

Drivers behind me began to sound their horns.

“The light's green,” Wolf said. “You'd better move or we'll be lynched.”

He waited until we had set off again to talk about his sixth sense, his experienced journalist's nose for seeking precise information rather than letting himself be taken in by appearances.

“You don't earn a lot selling toilets.”

“Bathroom furniture.”

“Let's face it, not even with your ex-policeman's pension on top would you be able to buy and run a car like this.”

“I was thrown out of the force, so I don't get a pension.”

“Which only goes to show how right I am. The car must belong to some widow or other, and the only one you've been dealing with recently is your friend's.”

“Why does it have to be a widow? It could be a rich heiress, a businesswoman—a princess.”

“Sure, Cinderella.”

Wolf lounged back in his seat, and would have put his feet on the dashboard if his arthritis had let him.

“So what have you found out, apart from the fact that the car could belong to the widow?”

“Let's go to the National Library,” he said, to my surprise, when he saw the outline of the massive building by the park off Avenida Figueroa Alcorta.

The National Library is a futuristic palace that grew old before its time because they never finished building it. Now it has computers but no programs, and employees paid next to nothing. Wolf asked for a book by William Faulkner, and we went to sit in a corner of the reading room.

“This Yankee revived literature and won the Nobel Prize, back in the days when it was still a prize they gave to outstanding writers and not those in a particular clique. Nowadays the only people who read Faulkner are students like my son, Martelli.”

“We didn't come here to read
Light in August
,” I said, whispering the words as Wolf had done to avoid us being thrown out. “Tell me once
and for all what on earth you found out about Edmundo Cárcano's secret life.”

“Don't you realize you'll never understand anything about the complexities of the human soul if you haven't read writers like Faulkner? What do you read, Martelli?”

“When I was in the force I read forensic reports. Now the brochures from bathroom-furniture makers are wonderful, they're full of color photographs. I take one to bed with me and fall asleep peacefully.”

“That's a lie. Nobody who was a police officer during the dictatorship sleeps peacefully.”

Our whispers had grown gradually louder, and threatened to end in a slanging match. Other readers started shushing us, and an assistant came over to tell us to be quiet or leave. We promised to behave. I took a deep breath, sat in silence for a full minute, then stood up to go. Wolf caught up with me in the corridor.

“I didn't mean to offend you,” he said, panting. He still had the book in his hand.

“I sleep peacefully, Parrondo.”

“My friends call me Wolf,” he said, trying to smooth things over.

“And mine call me Gotán. But for now, it's Martelli and Parrondo. And it's time we got a few things straight. I wasn't thrown out of the force because I was a rotten policeman, and nor did I win promotion by killing guerrillas.”

“O.K., Martelli, I'm not interested in your past. It was a stupid thing to say, but I didn't really bring you in here to read Faulkner either. He bores the pants off me, just as he does my son. I brought you here because we were being followed.”

I studied Wolf for a moment, then turned to have a good look round. We were halfway down a long, wide corridor that ended in a flight of stairs. There was no-one else there apart from a scattering of people in the reading room, and a few bored library assistants waiting for their shift to end. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Not a muscle of Wolf's face moved. Either he was telling the truth or he was a very good liar. He asked me to wait while he returned the book, then came straight back, feeling his pockets for a pack of cigarettes.

“A red car,” he said, lighting up as we left the library.

“Buenos Aires is full of red cars.”

“But this one was following us. I always make sure I adjust the wing mirror so I can see behind.”

“Paranoia.”

“Or an instinct for self-preservation, Martelli. Apart from getting me suspended, what I wrote has obviously upset some big fish, and they're rude enough to want to remind me I'm not immortal.”

We went out into the park. The spring night was cool and heavy with scents. There were a few couples promising each other heaven on earth or explaining why it would never work. No different from any other evening in the squares of Buenos Aires.

Wolf told me not to get back in the car.

“Unlock it and leave one door not shut properly,” he said. “Then let's sit for a while and have a smoke.”

“If you're going to propose, you've got the wrong man.”

Wolf came to a halt, looked up at the sky as if to make sure it was not clouding over, then stepped over the low wire round the edge of the grass and started to pee behind one of the bushes.

While he was thus engaged, I went over to the car. I sensed there was something wrong about this perfect spring evening, that I should not be doing what I was doing. It was not my car. It did not even belong to the widow or to Cinderella, but to a dead friend's daughter. She had been kidnapped, and I was doing nothing to discover where she was, assuming they were no longer holding her in the countryside outside Tres Arroyos.

I followed Wolf's instructions. He came over, pointing toward a nearby bench. Instead of asking him what the fuck he thought he was playing at, I accepted a strong, rough cigarette and we sat down.

“From here we can see without being seen,” he said, between drags.

I am no angler, but I have been on fishing expeditions with friends addicted to the sport. They can spend an entire day and night just waiting for their float to bob. There is nothing more boring than to watch them waiting: they look like cows chewing their cud. There is no glimmer of human life in their eyes, the hope of catching a fish turns them into fossils—you could find them in exactly the same position in a hundred, a thousand, or a million years.

We did not have to wait that long. Every big city is like a bazaar for car thieves. Although most people do not notice them, you just have to sit still and you soon enough see them at work.

This one was young, wearing a thin blue jacket and tie, with light-colored trousers. He was carrying a briefcase like a salesman or health visitor. He kept shifting it from hand to hand as though it were heavy. He was walking along slowly, looking for an address, his eyes darting along both sides of the street. As he went past the parked cars he shot a glance inside each of them, then tried the doors of all those where there was no flashing red alarm.

The not-quite-shut door was the apple for our innocent Adam. He crossed the street diagonally from in front of an apartment block, and leapt straight into Isabel's car as if he owned it.

By now it was completely dark. All Wolf and I could make out were the glowing red tips of our cigarettes. The explosion caught us exchanging puzzled looks, but that lasted only a split second, because before we knew what had happened we were flat on our backs on the grass, right next to the bush where Wolf had emptied his bladder.