The Argentina Rhodochrosite (30 page)

62

It was almost eleven in the
morning, and the room was filled with round wooden tables, surrounded by rattan scoop chairs. Pools of light shot down from recessed lights in the ceiling. An empty bar ran along one side of the carpeted room.

Beyond the tables, the entire far wall was made of glass, through which guests could see the expanse of green lawn.

Tico had been right about the fancy ladies. The tables were filled with women. Each and every one was made up as if they were ready to step out to a show: pantsuits, dresses, blouses, skirts, gaudy jewelry, bracelets, heavy makeup. Two-thirds of the hair in the room was lemon yellow blonde, the type that came from a bottle.

Her eyes scanned the room. There was one table, nearest to the window, around which five well-manicured older women were sitting. Tall highball glasses of clear soda with lemon wedges sat on the table before them.

One of the women had an especially big nimbus of blonde hair, sprayed and laquered. Her frame, however, was frail, and she slumped forward in her seat. Even from across the room, Ainsley recognized her.

Maria Libertad Ortiz.

“Welcome,” said a voice.

Ainsley turned. She was startled to see a fortyish woman with a no-nonsense black bob approaching. Possibly she was a manager. She had the brisk walk of a person in charge.

“I’d like to have a drink,” said Ainsley.

“But are you a member?”

“No.”

The woman betrayed no emotion. “This room is for members only.”

“Is there an exception? I’m waiting for my husband to arrive.”

“Is he an officer?”

“No,” said Ainsley, “but he’s the manager of a polo team.”

That was a pretty big whopper, but it worked. The woman grew more interested. “From where?”

“The United States. He’s here taking a meeting with members of your team.”

The woman tilted her head. “I didn’t know there were meetings with Americans today.”

“It wasn’t announced. The men said I should wait here until they were finished. They always have business to do.”

That comment struck a chord. “Of course,” the woman said, then picked up a menu from behind the empty podium. “Follow me.”

Ainsley trailed her through the room. She could feel the women’s eyes upon her. She was the stranger in town. These women were probably tired of looking at the same faces every morning.

The manager led her to the only available table, next to Maria Libertad.

Ainsley tried to appear as cool and glamorous as possible. She asked for a gin and tonic without looking at the menu. It seemed like the perfect drink to have at a polo club, even if it was ten-thirty in the morning.

Then she angled her seat so she could study Maria Libertad. The lieutenant colonel’s wife was dressed, as before, in a cream-colored pantsuit, trimmed in gold jewelry. A white pearl necklace lay draped upon her bony chest. Lipstick had been applied as carefully to her lips as an undertaker would to a corpse’s.

The wives sat in silence, wet rings soaking the tablecloth beneath their highball glasses. They were staring out the window blankly. Ainsley followed their stares.

The polo game was visible from here. At either end of the field was a pair of tall red-and-white striped wicker cones. Between them, Ainsley could see the riders streaking around on their brown horses, their saddle blankets all featuring the same military pattern. They were swinging their mallets in wide, looping arcs. There was a rhythm to the play that she could feel but not quite understand.

The wives couldn’t have cared less. It was a weekday morning. From her lifetime of reading fashion magazines, Ainsley sensed that the majority of polo fans were there for the scene, drinking splits of Moet & Chandon, yanking up Manolos that had sunk into the grass, scheming ways to seduce the newest player on the squad.

“We like your choices,” said a woman’s voice.

Ainsley looked over. One of the women at Maria Libertad’s table was leaning towards her and pointing towards her boots.

“Thank you,” said Ainsley, “they’re my favorite.”

“My daughter has some just like them,” the woman said.

“It’s funny, I was admiring your friend’s pearls,” said Ainsley, nodding towards Maria Libertad. “They’re really nice.”

“We all have pearls,” said the woman, “but hers are the biggest.”

“There’s nothing as classy as a pearl necklace.”

The other woman had been listening now and jumped in. “Are you alone?”

“No, my husband is meeting with some of the managers of this naval polo team today,” said Ainsley. “We’re putting together a team ourselves.”

The women grew quite interested. “What is your husband’s name?”

Ainsley scrambled for an answer. “Oh, he doesn’t want to be known.”

“There are only twenty-five people in the United States who can mount a team,” said another woman.

“I wish I could go to the United States,” said another. “I would go to Hollywood.”

“Why bother?” Ainsley said. “Just go to Buenos Aires instead. It’s better than Hollywood.”

The navy wife laughed. “Ricardo would never allow it. Me? The wife of an admiral? Out alone?”

Ainsley smiled. “I was out in Buenos Aires recently. I had an
amazing
time.”

The women oohed. “Come and tell us what you did,” said one.

That was exactly the invitation Ainsley had been hoping for. She pulled her chair up to their table and began describing her night at Malevos, dancing tango with Simón Fe.

The women listened, enraptured. “Nobody here dances anymore,” said a woman. “Our husbands don’t like it.”

“You don’t need your husbands,” said Ainsley. “Just go by yourselves. Or with each other.”

While the women chewed over this, Ainsley turned to her right. There sat Maria Libertad Ortiz.

She wore the waxen expression of the severely medicated. Ainsley touched her hand gently. Maria’s face swung around a second or two later. Her eyes were dilated. Ainsley wasn’t worried about her being recognized from La Bombonera. This poor creature was barely sentient.

“You look tired,” said Ainsley.

“I’m always tired,” she responded.

Maria reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette case. She lit a cigarette with shaky fingers.

“I’ve tried to quit many times,” she said.

“Me too,” Maria replied. “I’m not strong enough.”

“Have you tried Nicorette?”

“No,” she said, “the drug store here doesn’t carry it.”

Ainsley realized how small the woman’s world truly was. If the local drug store on the base didn’t carry it, then Maria Libertad couldn’t have it.

The other woman were lighting up now too. Orange flames flicked out of from expensive lighters. Another woman piped up from behind a freshly-lit cigarette: “She’s an addict. We all are.”

Clouds of smoke soon curled in the beams of light. Someone handed Ainsley one of the devil’s sticks. She found herself joining in, and hated herself for it.

“Tell us about the United States,” said the woman. “How are the men?”

“Assholes,” said Ainsley, puffing away.

That got some chuckles. “Not like the assholes we grow here,” said one.

“They’re double-sized,” said another.

“Especially my husband,” said a third. “I call him the fourteenth.”

“Why?” said Ainsley.

“His name is Louis.”

Maria Libertad puffed silently, contributing nothing to the conversation. Ainsley sensed that these women were her support group, her nurses, her counselors. They didn’t expect much from her. She was the village reclamation project.

“So where is your man?” said one woman. She’d finished her drink and was slurring a little.

Ainsley shrugged. “He said he would be finished soon.”

“Oh,” said another, “these Argentine meetings go on forever. He probably won’t be back before one in the morning.”

“Then I guess I’d better get some lunch,” said Ainsley. She reached for a menu.

“No,” said a wife, “put that away.”

“Why?”

“This club makes terrible food. We only come here for the drinks.”

“We always eat lunch at home,” added another.

“Where are we today?” said the third. “At Maria’s house?”

“Yes,” said the first, “her maid is making chicken divan.”

“You should come along,” one said to Ainsley. “Otherwise you’ll be sitting here alone all day, eating bad sausage.”

Ainsley was thrilled, but she had one very important concern. “Is her husband home?”

Everybody looked to Maria, who shrugged. She clearly had no idea of her husband’s whereabouts.

“It’s not an imposition?” said Ainsley.

“No, it’s nothing,” said the women.

Standing up, Ainsley tossed her coat over her shoulders and followed the navy wives out of the polo club.

She was driving further into the belly of the beast.

63

Ainsley pushed the chicken, rice, and
sauce around her plate, pretending to eat, but she couldn’t jam anything down her throat.

The reason: The five-foot-high oil portrait of Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz on the wall.

She was in his living room.

It was the home of a Francophile. There were gilded edges on the furniture, Impressionist canvases of lily ponds. The floor was made of limestone that looked as if it had been pulled from an old chateau. And there was a delicious Burgundy wine in Ainsley’s glass.

But she swallowed the liquid without tasting it. Every nerve in her body was tensed. She didn’t think that a busy navy officer would stop home at midday, but more surprising things had happened.

The maid silently moved around the table, collecting the women’s porcelain dishes. The wives began to light up again. Ainsley took another cigarette and joined in.

The women asked Ainsley many more questions about America, mostly about Laura Bush, whom they were all very interested in. Ainsley hadn’t ever thought much about Laura Bush. The former first lady had seemed like an addendum to her militant husband.

And that, of course, was exactly why the navy wives related to her.

Then there were a few inane questions about Hollywood celebrity culture. Ainsley managed a few weak comments on the latest starlets before silence had swallowed the table again. She began to understand that these women just didn’t have very much in their mental tanks.

And that, of course, was exactly why they were navy wives.

Now Ainsley was left with nothing but her Burgundy and her thoughts. Most of which were centered upon the differences between American military wives and Argentine military wives. In America, the officers’ women were strong. They could and did carry entire households on their backs during their husbands’ deployments.

These women, however, didn’t seem like they could carry a loaf of bread.

Ainsley forced herself back to the task at hand. Through cunning and luck, she’d managed to penetrate all the way into this man’s living room. Now she had one thing left to do.

Get proof that Maria Libertad was Ovidio’s mother.

The direct, bullheaded way was obvious: ask her. The problem was that this would very likely get Ainsley ejected from the home, probably arrested on base, and likely turned into fish food. And Maria Libertad didn’t appear capable of answering anything at the moment. She had the look of a lobotomy patient.

Ainsley racked her brains for another way. Nothing came to her. So she would adjourn to one place where she would be guaranteed a moment of privacy.

“I need to use the bathroom,” said Ainsley.

“Down the hall on the left,” said one of the wives.

Ainsley pushed up from the table and walked across the carpeted living room. She could feel the women’s eyes watching her. They seemed so bored. Her presence, humble as it was, was probably a feast for them.

She walked down a long, darkened hallway lined with sconces and portraits of landscapes in Provence. The lieutenant colonel had exquisite taste for a sociopath.

On her left, Ainsley passed a door. It didn’t feel like a bathroom. Ainsley turned the doorknob and slowly opened it.

Her eyes scoped the room. She was in a man’s office. Rich leather chairs. A cowhide stretched across the floor. Naval artifacts were placed everywhere: an antique steering wheel, a rudder, thick ropes. An enormous desk, four solid slabs of mahoghany, anchored the opposite side of the room. Everything smelled of pipe tobacco.

This wasn’t the bathroom. This was Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz’s study.

Ainsley’s breath came out in short rasps. She really shouldn’t be here, for a multitude of reasons.

She walked through the room in wonder, touching the fabrics, admiring the artifacts mounted on the walls. Her hand spun a globe on its nautical stand. The small scratch of its axle sounded like the squeak of an intrusive mouse.

Ainsley happened upon the bookshelf. She admired the neat rows of serious tomes, many in Spanish, others in French, German, a few in English. The lieutenant colonel was well-read. That made her feel sad. Well-read people acting barbarous wasn’t a very good advertisment for reading.

Ainsley sat down in the high-backed chair behind the desk. She drummed her fingers upon its edge, feeling its heaviness, its power. She fingered the heavy ballpoint pens that were perched at forty-five-degree angles in their holders. She studied the small battleship paperweight. She noticed the image of the Virgin Mary embossed in the wood.

For the first time, Ainsley was feeling like an honest-to-God intruder here. Of course, she had good motive, but an intruder nonetheless.

And if she was going to break the law, she may as well go all the way.

She yanked open a desk drawer and began to rummage. In one she found an exquisite antique pistol, with a hand-tailored ball-and-hammer. Ainsley hated weapons, but she always admired artistry.

In another drawer she found a sheaf of old pictures, black and white, of military commanders from other eras. Several looked Argentine, serious men with gelled hair and cold pebbles for eyes. Some were of French officers, standing in exotic north African rooms. One was of a Brazilian officer in full regalia aboard a gleaming white frigate. There were even a few SS officers with grim looks on their faces.

She shut that drawer. She should really be moving along to the bathroom before someone noticed her.

But there was one more drawer, at the very bottom. She tugged on the handle. It was locked. Ainsley had never liked being denied entry to anything. Cabinets, doors, rooms—she’d always had a lifelong need for access.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic credit card. This was the easiest trick in the book, one she’d learned from an ex-boyfriend of dubious morality.

Ainsley slipped the card into the crack, felt around for the top of the mechanism, and wiggled the card back and forth.

It didn’t work. Ainsley guessed that the trick only worked on doors. Then an even simpler solution occurred to her.

She pulled out the drawer above—the one with the photos—and removed it from its track.

It was true. Sometimes designers could really be that stupid.

Ainsley looked down into the supposedly locked drawer. And what she saw at the bottom came was both surprising and entirely expected.

It was a Zorro rhodochrosite necklace.