No One Loves a Policeman (27 page)

Once inside the hospital I walked along with my eyes to the floor, like a blind man. They were refurbishing this part of the building so it smelled of fresh cement and paint, and my feet crunched on grains of sand. Halfway down the corridor I passed two laborers discussing Boca Juniors' victory over a Peruvian team the evening before. I was sure they had not gone out to buy dollars: they probably earned just enough to pay off some of the debts they owed the corner shop where they had a slate every month.

I walked along quite calmly. Everything in here seemed very relaxed, as though it were a different Argentina.

The two bear-like figures I came across, blocking access to the only room at the end of the corridor, were not policemen but ex-soldiers. Former commandos now in their fifties, they clearly kept in shape thanks to hours in the gym. They were of an age where more than one death during the last military dictatorship must have weighed on their consciences, if they had such a thing. When I was five meters away from them they gestured roughly for me to come to a halt. In a flash of inspiration, I asked them where the toilets were.

They looked inquiringly at each other, but since, as I said, the atmosphere inside the hospital was relaxed, they nodded toward a dark corridor to my left. Without pausing for a second, I plunged into the darkness. They could have followed and finished me off there and then, but how could they have guessed that someone who not only looked like a policeman but was in fact a policeman might be working on his own account, rowing against the current?

I had a pee as I would in any public urinal, staring up at the freshly painted ceiling. I was the only person there, and it was obvious this was a part of the hospital no member of the public was allowed into. I peered at the recently installed mirror, hoping to find in my reflected face some clue as to what to do when I left the toilet. I was convinced
the patient inside the room must be Quesada. I knew I had to get to him somehow, before I was killed or he died. I guessed if he was not in intensive care he must either be dead already or not half as badly injured as had been reported on the news. If that were the case, they must be keeping him in isolation: either because his life was in danger, or because whoever it was wanted to get rid of him on the quiet.

I left the toilet without much idea of what to do next. I set off in the opposite direction to the room the two guards sat outside, thinking I would have to find another way to get to the magistrate. Just then, one of the bears called me. There was no way I could make a run for it, so I decided to play along with them. I walked back toward the man, who was on his own now and seemed friendly, although of course you should never trust anyone's gestures or good intentions.

As I approached him, I was in two minds whether to pull out my .38 or smile. I decided a smile would be more effective.

“You're a policeman, aren't you?” he said. “Could you do me a favor? It's only for a minute. My mate's gone up to the café and left me on my own here. But I need to go as well,” he said, trying his best to sound friendly and squeezing his legs together to show how desperate he was.

“Go ahead,” I said, “I'll cover for you.” I made sure he saw my gun and badge, and tried to ignore the rush of adrenalin coursing through my body.

As soon as the bear rushed off to the toilet, the adrenalin took over. I slipped inside the room. Dressed in shirt and trousers, the magistrate was sitting in a visitor's chair reading
La Nación
. He peered at me coolly over his glasses.

“There's a public toilet halfway down the corridor,” he said. He was obviously annoyed at my intrusion, but remained polite.

“We're leaving.”

He stared at my .38 and blinked as if someone had blown powder in his face.

“You're not a policeman.”

“My contract has run out, that's all. Get up.”

The bear who had gone to the toilet or the one on his coffee break could reappear at any moment, and neither of them would have any compunction about shooting me. I could not rely on the slow, tortuous course of Argentine justice forcing the magistrate to obey my orders. I twisted his arm behind his back, shoved my gun against his neck, and pushed him out into the corridor. By some miracle, it was still deserted.

Quesada did not protest. Either he was resigned to whatever might happen to him, or he had been promised it was all a game, and that nothing would happen if he obeyed the rules. I frogmarched him toward the exit, though for most of the way I had to prop him up under his arms. As we walked past the toilet door, the strong smell of shit reassured me: the ex-commando was obviously giving me a couple of minutes' head start.

Our corridor led into another, then on to a poorly lit staircase and the closed door of a goods lift.

“Are you going to kill me?” the magistrate inquired, as if offering me a cigarette.

“It's not part of my plan,” I said. “I simply need to talk to you in private.”

“Lawyers always ask for an appointment.”

“I'm no lawyer. Keep walking or we're both done for.”

I decided it was better to go up than down, and we soon found ourselves in the gynecology and obstetrics waiting room. It was crowded with pregnant women of all ages. I had never seen so many in all my life: some with huge stomachs, others with small bumps, and still more without any visible signs of pregnancy except for their placid, bovine eyes, warm as the milk they would feed their young with. All of them were accustomed to waiting for hours to be seen: most of them were standing, or sitting on long, narrow wooden benches; others were stretched out on the floor, their stomachs spread on the tiles beside
them as they dozed. Those who had arrived later still kept up lively conversations, although they would probably not be seen that day and would have to get a number to come back another time.

“What a disaster,” the magistrate said. “What a disaster.”

He could have got away from me then, but either it did not occur to him or he had some vague notion that I was saving his skin, or perhaps it was because I was sticking so close to him I was almost his Siamese twin, and the butt of my revolver was pressed gently but convincingly against the rolls of his waist.

“The state has no money to spend on looking after the poor,” I said, to finish off Quesada's remark. I looked toward the door, where another inscrutable corridor awaited us.

“It spends a fortune,” the magistrate corrected me. “The health budget is enormous, but the money disappears along the way. Straight into the pockets of the mafia that governs us.”

So Patricio Quesada was critical of the system. That reassured me: it probably meant he was not on the same side as his guards or those who had put on the farce of his hospitalization. But my optimism was shortlived, because at the far end of the room I suddenly saw two huge figures who made the other guards look like stick insects.

The magistrate stopped in his tracks, forcing me to do the same.

“Put that toy away,” he said, meaning the .38 I had inherited from Isabel's car. “Have you got a mobile?”

I did as I was told with the gun, then started patting my pockets, until I realized I had never used a mobile in my life.

“Somebody here must have one,” the magistrate said.

“What you're likely to find are lots of merrily growing fetuses, but I don't think they use them …”

A ringtone nearby proved how wrong I was. But the call was not for one of the pregnant women, it was for the doctor striding toward us without so much as a glance at the crowd of waiting patients. The magistrate did not hesitate.

“I am a federal magistrate, and I have to make an urgent call.”

The doctor gave him a look he must have practiced on all his poor patients.

“And I'm a doctor from the Buenos Aires Faculty of Medicine. Can't you see I'm busy?”

With a strength I would never have suspected in him to judge by his slight frame, the magistrate grabbed the doctor's mobile. He spoke with the same sternness he must have used to hand down his sentences.

“I repeat, I am a federal magistrate. And this man here is a policeman who in the past has killed honest citizens, mistaking them for criminals. I'm sure he would have no qualms about doing the same now.”

The doctor went white. Although Quesada's comment seemed to me neither wise nor just, I glared at the trembling medic. Not that it mattered: the magistrate was already talking to his secretary.

“The orange file,” he said. “We're in the Fernández hospital, with the gynecological out-patients.”

With that, he handed the phone back to the doctor, patted him on the back, and thanked him for collaborating in the work of justice. The doctor wandered off in the opposite direction, utterly bewildered.

The thugs at the entrance seemed to be growing impatient. While one of them received instructions via a walkie-talkie, the others made crude gestures suggesting we were for it. I was afraid that if they got the go-ahead they would not hesitate to advance through this human seedbed, crushing anything in their path.

I suggested to the magistrate that we duck inside a cubicle. A pregnant woman wearing nothing but a hospital gown was sitting on a couch.

“Are you the doctor?” she asked timidly when we burst in.

“Yes, but not the kind you want,” the magistrate said to calm her. “The gynecologist is on his way.”

“I've been sitting here for half an hour already,” the mother-to-be said, who could not have been more than thirty, although she looked at least forty. “I live outside Buenos Aires in Morón. I got up at three this
morning to come for my appointment. I've been at the hospital since five. I was told I would be seen at seven, but now it's almost noon and I haven't even had breakfast.”

Even though she spoke in the faintest of voices, this torrent of words had rushed out unstoppably. Her tale was that of any poor, long-suffering woman of the Buenos Aires suburbs.

“What a disaster,” the magistrate said again. He seemed more concerned with the social situation than with his own safety. “An absolute disaster.”

The gynecologist came in without knocking, only to find my .38 under his nose.

“Put your gun away,” Quesada said sternly. “You're behaving just like them.”

He was right. Besides, the gynecologist was less courageous than the doctor we had met in the corridor. He collapsed to the floor before we could catch him. The pregnant woman on the couch began to scream as though she had gone into labor, so we decided it was best to beat a retreat. As soon as we emerged, we were surrounded by the orang-utans who had obviously decided to invade the waiting room.

The sight of my revolver and their rifles provoked pandemonium among the women. We were engulfed by a rushing flood of bellies of all sizes and consistencies. The orang-utans were swept to one side, but this did not stop them trying to aim at us above the torrent of female heads, even though they could not steady themselves sufficiently to get off a good shot.

We managed to reach the reception area, with the women still screaming and looking desperately for somewhere to hide. We heard a shout for us to stay where we were, and did not need to count to realize that at least a dozen thugs had their guns trained on us.

“Stay close to me,” barked the magistrate. “And keep calm, don't do anything rash.”

I promised myself that if I got out of this alive, I would go back to
selling bathroom appliances. In fact, I would devote myself exclusively to selling toilets: it's a growing market, and these days people with money want a bit of comfort so they can sit and read their Francis Bacon in peace.

“Walk slowly toward us, your Honor,” the leader of the group bawled through a megaphone. “And you, scumbag, throw your weapon on the floor and raise your little arms, there's a good boy.”

“Don't worry, I'm not going to move,” the magistrate said. I was not so much scared as resigned to the fact that I was going to die riddled with bullets. For a policeman, dying at the hands of sharpshooters is the same as receiving absolution
in extremis
for a Christian.

Quesada raised his voice to remind the goons threatening us that he was a federal magistrate.

“I order you to put your weapons down,” he said firmly but serenely.

The group broke ranks and surrounded the man with the megaphone. They may have been used to obeying outlandish orders, but even they balked at opening fire in a hospital reception area. Besides, Patricio Quesada was a well-known figure: he was often on T.V. making statements about drug trafficking cases, illegal arms sales, the white slave trade, child prostitution—all the usual.

They hesitated so long it was obvious that the man with the megaphone was awaiting instructions. By now a wall of patients, visitors and curious onlookers had surrounded us, as well as several smartly dressed medical salesmen, their briefcases stuffed with samples. The new arrivals asked those already there what was going on, and the old timers who had seen everything from the start told them what they thought they knew. “It's a kidnapping,” I heard one of them say, “that guy over there was trying to abduct a judge, but he didn't realize the hospital was full of police.” Another one, not two paces away from me, spat out defiantly: “All kidnappers deserve to be killed. Why don't they just shoot him?” A third onlooker asked why there were so many police in the hospital anyway. “Because the government's about to fall, and they're scared
of anarchy. All the doctors are being mobilized for when there's a massacre,” explained the one who had already condemned me to death.

At that point the goons must have received their instructions. Without so much as a word of warning the man with the megaphone ordered them to back off. A couple of uniformed policemen went over to break up the crowd. “Move along now, please,” they said impatiently, and to us: “You two go home.”