The Barcelona Brothers (22 page)

“Everything’s quiet, but it feels like the calm—”

Before the storm
, Pep thinks, mentally finishing Rubén’s sentence. Like many of Rubén’s idiosyncrasies, this one gives Pep no help in penetrating the mystery of the real in the artificial and the false in reality.

“—before the storm.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t trust it. The captain was a nervous wreck, what with burning Dumpsters and rumors and … The thing is, all these …”

Pep’s not sure who or what “these” are. It could be that Rubén’s referring to all the people in the barrio who don’t root for Barça, for example. But Pep’s done more than one shift with him, so he knows the most advisable tactic is to close subjects as they come up over the course of the hours, to seal them off, one by one, like so many blind tunnels. In the end, Rubén gets bored and shuts up for a few glorious minutes.

“The boss is always nervous. And he’ll get worse if he finds out his orders haven’t been followed.”

“It’s not our fault, Rubén.”

“I know, I know, but we’ll sure be the ones who get chewed out.”

They’re driving around the barrio. It does indeed seem quiet, but Pep couldn’t say whether or not there’s anything abnormal in so much tranquillity. They’ve already had one corpse this morning. He hopes and believes that nothing more will happen, at least not this afternoon. If the city goes up in flames, let it happen on the night shift.

“Look, if they mess with me, I’m going to tell them the truth: we never got the orders, not us. We were in the locker room.”

“Pep, you know the regulation says that if you receive an order during a shift change …”

He knows. But in this particular case, he considers the regulation unfair. If worse comes to worst, he intends to defend his
position all the way to the last resort. The captain’s orders were to follow the clean Dalmau, the one who was still in the station, and to find the suspect Dalmau, known as Epi. Javier and Magda received the order, but they were going off duty, so they diligently designated it as a matter of urgency for the next pair, that is, for Pep and Rubén. When these two appeared, dressed in impeccable uniforms, armed with pistols properly holstered, but ten minutes late, the brother of the suspect in the van case had been gone long enough to disappear from view. Now Pep and Rubén are trying to avert their fate. They went to the Dalmau family apartment, where they found no one home, and so ever since, like a shark more desperate than lethal, the
mossos
’ squad car has been going around in circles, and they’ve been trying their luck at calculating the barrio’s infinite probabilities.

“What do you say we go to Mari’s for a while? I’m sick of driving around,” Rubén proposes.

“All right.”

“Besides, there’s always some bad guys in there. We might get a lead.”

Pep hates to go looking for informers, as if they were in some 1970s detective movie. But Rubén is Rubén. Pep gives him a sidelong glance. It’s always hard to believe that such handsome containers can hold so little substance. Dark-haired, muscular, not very tall but fine-looking, with firm, serene features, he would be a hit in any of the night spots that Pep frequents, at least until he opened his mouth. Rubén, of course, doesn’t know that Pep’s a homosexual. Maybe he imagines it, but they’ve never talked about that. Rubén’s so preoccupied at
the moment with the invasion of Spain by blacks,
Moros
, and the goddamned South Americans that he has little time to worry about fags.

“The thing with the
Moro
—it doesn’t seem so bad to me.”

“Or to anybody else.”

“Will they investigate?”

“Routinely. They say it was a Paki. In other words, good luck finding him.”

“Trash killing trash. I have no interest in wasting the taxpayers’ money,” Rubén answers, imitating the tone and accent of a former president of the country.

“The only crimes we’re interested in are the ones connected with the van.”

“Do you know what they did to those poor sluts?”

“More or less, but I don’t want details.”

They enter the barroom and greet Mari. Then they lean on the bar and wait for her to come over and take their order.

“So now you get here. We needed you half an hour ago.”

“Shoulda whistled,” Rubén says stupidly.

“Right, look, why don’t you go play with yourself?”

“What happened, Mari?”

The woman’s eyes mist up. She wants to speak, but she seems not to know where to begin.

“What’s wrong, Mari? Is it because of the trouble this—”

“It’s everything, it’s everything. It’s what happened this morning, last night, a little while ago … I’ve been shut up in this crummy bar for fifteen years, and I don’t see any
way out. All I do is work and work. Doing what? Waiting on crooks, drunks, and thugs who don’t even know how to ask politely for a glass of water. Anyway, it’s nothing, nothing’s wrong. I’m getting old. I guess I’m just really tired. What can I get you?”

“Two Coca-Colas … please,” Pep says with a smile Mari’s grateful for.

Just then, Salva comes back from the storeroom. When he sees Mari talking to the two cops, his expression changes. He hurries over to the bar as fast as he can and favors them with his yellow ex-smoker’s smile.

“What are you having, boys?”

“I’m waiting on them, Salvador.”

“What’s with all this attitude, woman? You’re mad about Helio? I already told him not to come in here again. I told him it was over, he’d have to do his little payrolls in some other bar. I said there wasn’t much in this barrio, but one thing we’ve got a lot of is bars.”

“You didn’t say anything to him.”

“That’s not true.”

“What happened with Helio?” Pep inquires.

“The usual. He gets all overheated while he’s paying his people and starts making obnoxious jokes, and sure, everything has a limit. Some men need the money so bad they’ll take any insult. Others get their balls in an uproar.”

“He’ll wind up like the
Moro
,” says Salva’s wife, interrupting him. “I’ll get you two some tapas. Salva, you pour two Coca-Colas.”

“We ate just a little while ago,” Pep protests, without success.

Salva opens the cooler under the bar and takes out two cans. Without asking, he serves the soft drinks with ice and lemon, a practice that never fails to annoy Pep.

“Poor girl. The thing with Tanveer really affected her. Not because of him, but because of all the violence going on everywhere you look. Nobody likes cleaning blood off the floor of their house. By the time she came down, I had already straightened things up a little, but it was still pretty bad.”

“Tell me about it. I’m a cop, remember? Fuck! You’ve never seen
CSI
?”

“You know what I mean.”

They all remain silent for a little while, and then Mari comes in from the kitchen with a plate of marinated anchovies.

“On the house,” the woman says.

“What’s this? An appetizer? A meal? A snack?”

“Marinated anchovies.”

Mari goes back to the kitchen. When they’re alone again with Salva, Pep decides to try his luck: “I’m looking for one of the Dalmaus.”

“For Epi?”

“Whichever. But actually, at the moment we’d like to find the older one.”

“Alex left here a little while ago. I think he was going to the police station.”

“Yeah, he was there before, but the captain wants to talk to him again,” Pep lies.

Salva tenses up. It can’t be a good sign that they want more information from him. That idiot Alex—he must have contradicted himself, he must have stuck his foot right in it. Wouldn’t it be better, Salva thinks, to tell the whole truth, to describe what really happened? Because when all’s said and done, it never does anyone any good to cover up for anyone else. He can tell the cops Alex threatened him if he didn’t keep his mouth shut. And it would be better to do it now than to get himself caught later.

“Do you know where I might be able to locate him? We tried where he lives, but no one was home.”

“No, I don’t know. Listen, I’d like to talk to you in private—”

“It’s for you, Salva.” Mari hands him the cordless telephone, making it crystal clear that she’s not about to handle the umpteenth call from the gas company.

“Just a minute,” Salva says, tapping the receiver with one hand and heading for the storeroom. “I have to take this, it’s important, but then we’ll talk, all right?”

Rubén, back at Pep’s side, knocks back some of his drink and vigorously sticks a toothpick into one of the anchovies. With a touch of mystery, he announces his intention to try to get something out of Professor Malick. Then he swallows the anchovy. Pep smiles. For no apparent reason, he’s feeling pretty good. And all of a sudden, he’s got the distance he needs if he’s going to have a little fun with his partner. He asks, “What do you want that psycho to tell us?”

“What we want to know.”

“Tell me something, Rubén. If the guy wasn’t black, if he
didn’t look like some kind of
freak
, would you question him? The logical people to talk to are Mari and Salva …”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m saying you’re going over to talk to him because he looks like an informer in a movie.”

“Why do you say that? Because he’s colored?”

“Christ almighty, Rubén! That guy’s not colored. He’s black, he’s an African, period.”

“I don’t care about your shitty mood, Pep. You’re not going to ruin my day.”

No, no, that’s not true; he’s not feeling bad-tempered at all. In fact, he’d even be willing to spend the rest of the day in here. He knows he’s got the soul of a shopkeeper. He’d spend the time observing Rubén progress from gaffe to blunder, listening to Mari, or watching the sports news on television. Nothing in the barrio appears to justify the paranoia about riots that’s fermenting down at the police station. The local people seem the same as always: active, bored, minding their own business. If they set a few trash containers on fire, they’ll do it to cause a ruckus and get attention, not to avenge the death of someone who didn’t matter to anybody. It looks as though even Rubén has relaxed. He’s gone from pumping the Professor for leads to letting his black informer read his cards. Although Pep would very much like some coffee, he thinks it’s a better idea to get back to work and try to find the older Dalmau brother. He leaves a five-euro bill on the bar and makes a sign to Rubén, who asks for another minute. As
he does so, Salva returns from the depths of the storeroom, prepared to spill the beans before it’s too late. And at the same time, Pep’s cell phone rings: there’s an emergency ten minutes from where they are.

“Rubén, let’s go. It’s a seven-eight.”

“All right. We were finished. Thanks, Prof.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Land and freedom,” Pep jokes.

“Si la bossa sona
,” Professor Malick answers in Catalan. If your purse jingles, if you’ve got money.

When they’re going through the door, Salva catches up with Pep and asks to speak to him a moment.

“Later, Salva. We’re in a hurry now.”

But later will be too late
, Salva thinks, suddenly dispirited. If it weren’t for the inertia developed from years of listening to customers, serving them, and collecting from them later for what they’re ordering now, Salva wouldn’t have the heart to remain upright.

“Officer, remember I wanted to talk to you.”

“I’ll remember, Salva.” As he speaks, Pep gets into the police vehicle; so does Rubén. They decide to switch on the emergency lights and make a dash for the place where a woman in an upstairs window is calling for help.

“Don’t be so mysterious. What did Kunta Kinte tell you? Where should we start looking?”

“He didn’t say anything about that.”

“Fuck, what were you talking about?”

“Me.”

“Well, don’t give whatever he told you a second thought. Colored—uh, black men are like that.”

Rubén doesn’t get the irony. Pep thinks he should maybe let up a little. Give the guy a break. The seven-eight will probably offer enough distraction.

THE RAGE HE WAS IN WHEN HE SHOOK TIFFANY HASN’T
yet abandoned him. The girl’s arm bone cracked so loudly Epi’s afraid he’s dislocated something. She’s lying at the foot of the wall, on the other side of the entrance hall. The child, too, is on the floor, stretched out next to the door, lethargic, heedless of all the commotion.

After pulling Tiffany inside and throwing her against the wall, Epi went toward her. She tried to outstare him but couldn’t. Epi began to shout at her with all the bitterness he could find inside him. He didn’t want to repress or modulate his rage. It didn’t matter that its object was Tiffany. It didn’t matter who it was. The injustice of the whole thing, in his opinion, exempted him from so much as thinking about restraining himself. Not even when the girl lowered her head and hid her face behind her hair did Epi stop yelling at her or spitting out insults and reproaches.

Adrenaline flooded his mouth. She said nothing. What could she say? After all he’d done for her. The wasted time, the love poured out even in her absence, in the shadows, making the best of a bad deal, looking the other way, always excusing her. And what about him? Like a worthless piece of shit, he’d put up with her rudeness, her contempt, her half-truths, her deceit. He would have bought the whole world for her if he could. He’d defied the opposition of his family, his friends, and everyone else for her sake. And what had he received in exchange? Nothing. Less than nothing.

And now that he’d sacrificed himself for their common future, what did she do? She ran off, she betrayed him, she showed him what a fool he’d been to believe her lies. She couldn’t get away with denying so much untruthfulness, all those words and details, those gestures and silences, those mendacious goddamn signals she’d been sending him ever since they broke up, ever since Tanveer took her away from him. No, she couldn’t, she couldn’t. She had to own up to them. Defend them. Take responsibility for them. At bottom, Epi was only crying out for a just god to descend to earth at once and pass judgment on the outrage committed against him. But failing that, in the absence of such a god, he insisted on a reply that would offer at least the appearance of hope. He wanted a clear definition of the margins and limits of the game, of the masquerade. A lie would have sufficed, but Tiffany couldn’t or wouldn’t speak it. She remained silent, she who always had a quick comeback, who always knew the answer. Epi shook her so hard that her head was like an empty
cardboard box, ready to come loose from her body. The frightened girl began to cry; Epi found the sensation that he had her entirely at his mercy immense, powerful, and intoxicating.