The Buenos Aires Quintet (8 page)

‘There you go with the tango again. You refuse to accept it, you want to get away from it, and yet you always come back to it.’

‘The whole country’s a tango. The city’s a tango. I remember a phrase of Malraux’s, which sounds like the words of a famous tango: “Buenos Aires is the capital of an empire that never existed.” I used to hate the tango. I’m from the rock generation – people who followed the Rolling Stones, people like Pignatari, who had the balls actually to become a rocker. We thought we’d be young for ever, but now I’m forty I find myself blushing to admit I like rock music. It’s as if I liked polkas or something. But what comes after rock ’n’ roll, eh? What d’you like?’

‘Boleros most of the time, Mexican corridos, tangos sometimes.’

‘That’s because you prefer words to bodies. Rock is music for the body, the sorts you like all have words you have to listen to.’

Carvalho stares her up and down. Alma smiles and shakes her head.

‘No chance. Pignatari – grey ponytail and all – is still singing rock music, in some of the poorest neighbourhoods down by the river here. In Barracas or La Boca, but not the Boca for tourists we’re in now, all the painted housefronts of Caminito. Perhaps Raúl’s gone to ask him for help. Another loser. Norman. Pignatari.’

‘Are you a loser too?’

‘He doesn’t want to see me, and I don’t want to see him.’

‘Will you take me to the tango place where Norman performs?’

‘I’ll take you when you’re ready’

‘Ready for what?’

‘Just ready, that’s all, my little Masked Galician.’

Walking aimlessly has its limits and its cost. Carvalho is suddenly surrounded by a mass of bodies, and in all the confusion thinks he spots a police badge. A voice confirms this, shouting: ‘Police!’ Then things get even more confused because he’s being shoved around, then pushed up against a wall and forced to spread his arms and legs. He’s searched by knowing hands he only notices when they feel his balls. Then they go through his pockets. A long switch blade and a plastic bag full of a white powder fall to the ground. Cocaine, Carvalho says to himself with a grimace. Rough hands turn him around. Carvalho finds himself faced by Oscar Pascuali and two plainclothes policemen, one of them the excitable Vladimiro. Pascuali stares down at the ground, where the knife and the plastic bag look as if they’re drawing attention to themselves. Pascuali’s voice is cold; his breath is warm.

‘Weapons and drugs.’

‘How d’you know they’re drugs? It could be detergent. I live alone, I have to do my own washing. I use Surf.’

Pascuali’s hand grabs the bag, opens it. He pokes a finger inside, sniffs it, thrusts it under Carvalho’s nose.

‘Surf? Omo?’

‘I don’t know the names of brands in Argentina.’

‘Detergents are the same the world over.’

Carvalho feels it’s time to show his impatience. ‘You’ve been reading too many cheap thrillers. Any doctor, even a police one, could tell you I haven’t sniffed a thing since my first communion. The knife is mine, the drugs are yours.’

Pascuali hands him back the blade, and puts the plastic bag in his own jacket pocket. ‘We’ll leave it there for now. But it would be easy enough for you to turn up one day with your nose full of cocaine and snot, and your apartment stuffed with bags like this. Did you tell your friend I’d paid you a visit?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It was men’s business. The less we tell women about our affairs, the better.’

‘Ask her about me.’

‘Are you a dirty war veteran?’

‘Yes, from a really dirty war: the Malvinas War.’

‘So we’re all losers. When I was a boy, I lost the Spanish Civil War. Alma lost the dirty war, and you lost in the Falklands. Why don’t we get together and form a veterans’ association?’

Someone behind Pascuali spits an insult at Carvalho. But it’s not Vladimiro, who is staring at the detective with something like respect. It’s the other cop, an inexperienced-looking youth. Pascuali shakes his head disapprovingly.

‘Don’t let him get to you. He’s a wise-guy. Look at Vladimiro. He knows how to take people like him.’

‘A cop called Vladimiro! Was your old man a follower of Lenin?’

Pascuali is not interested in idle chat.

‘I’ll be clear and concise. The sooner we find your cousin, the better for him, for us, and for you. We’re not the only ones looking for him. Your cousin saw too much, and escaped by the back door. Fifty years will have to go by before all those involved in that nightmare have vanished. Someone wants him, and if they get him, he’s a dead man. And you’re too old to be playing Philip Marlowe.’

‘You’re right, I used to imitate Marlowe. Now I’m too old. My model is Maigret – he’s timeless.’

‘What were you after in the Grandmothers’ Association?’

‘A little girl.’

‘And in The Spirit of New Argentina?’

‘Information about cows.’

‘And what were you talking about with that Jewish clown?’

‘About theatre and suicidal Siamese cats.’

‘If you feel someone breathing down your neck, don’t worry, it’ll be me. But if you get a bullet in the back of your head, it won’t be me, and you’ll be the only one to blame.’

The three men turn into dark shadows beyond the glare of their headlights.

Not since killing Kennedy has Carvalho been so close to power. He has never set foot inside a ministry: the nearest he’s got is a security headquarters, when he was investigating the murder of the general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party But perhaps in some other life he had even been in power himself, because there’s something very familiar about all the comings and goings of officials, clients, victims and pests in a building that would look obsolete if it were empty, and full, seems somehow unbelievable. Simply mentioning Güelmes’ name has opened all the doors for him, until he reaches his waiting-room, where the secretary tells him she’s Spanish as well.

‘But from Galicia, not Catalonia. Here all Spaniards are Galicians, even those from Andalusia. My parents came after the Civil War.’

‘Were they Republicans?’

‘No, just dirt poor.’

Güelmes tells him to come in. Carvalho is confronted by a still young, aristocratic-looking man, who almost dances round his desk as if reluctant to sit down again. As the secretary opened the door for him, Carvalho had time to see the deputy minister snorting a line of coke and then wipe up the remains and rub them quickly on his gums. No sooner has Carvalho entered the room than he’s on his feet, shaking his hand, asking after Alma and Norman. Carvalho can’t take his eyes off a framed poster on the wall: The Spirit of New Argentina, with the inevitable cow.

‘Everybody here wants to get out to Spain, and yet you Spaniards seem to keep on coming to Buenos Aires.’

‘It’s cheaper that way’

‘Not any more. Thanks to Menem and his policies, Argentina isn’t bankrupt now. Every day I see a hundred projects from people wanting to invest in Argentina. People feel confident about our future. Alma called, and her wish is my command, but I don’t know much more about it. What is it you want?’

‘Were you one of the guerrillas?’

‘Thanks to Menem, those who were and those who weren’t are all Perónists again now. Anyone who wasn’t a revolutionary at twenty had no heart, but anyone who still thinks he is at forty, hasn’t got a brain.’

‘Power.’

Güelmes immediately understands that Carvalho’s brief remark is the result of taking in this magnificent office compared to the rest of the shabby building.

‘Someone has to wield it, and it’s much better that it’s someone who answers Alma’s calls.’

‘Has Raúl Tourón been here?’

‘No. Is he in Argentina? I thought he was in Spain. I spent some time in exile in Spain, then in Germany, the United States – it was a long journey out and back. A lot of us Argentines, Chileans, and Uruguayans went to Spain hoping we’d get a warm welcome in the motherland. But you Spaniards find it easier to go into exile yourselves than to receive others.’

‘It’s an old historical tendency’

‘Raúl was a different case. He never lost his Spanish nationality. Now there’s a crazy Spanish judge who wants to put all our military officers on trial for the people who disappeared. Raúl, who’s just as crazy, managed to escape, but now he’s back and out to get himself hanged, apparently’

‘Apparently, the whole world is after him: me, because his father sent me, then there’s the police, and some strange people who won’t come out of the shadows, but who aren’t exactly well-wishers.’

‘Why did Tourón come back?’

‘Some say to get revenge; others say not even he knows why he’s here.’

Güelmes laughs politely, and Carvalho concludes this is the way deputy ministers usually laugh.

‘To get revenge? In alphabetical order?’

‘Perhaps he’s looking for his daughter.’

Güelmes doesn’t seem convinced.

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘You could ask the police to help me.’

‘I have influence in social and economic spheres. I can’t get involved in police or military matters. They have a memory too.’

‘Perhaps you could find out who’s out to get him. They’re something to do with that poster, it seems.’

Güelmes turns to look at it.

‘The Spirit of New Argentina? We’ve high hopes in that project, there’s talk of Japanese investment right away. Raúl’s colleague Roberto is in charge of it.’

‘But there are people involved who don’t like Raúl.’

‘Did they tell you that?’

‘It was the impression I got. Could you find out why?’

‘That would be difficult, but not impossible.’

‘And if he shows up here, perhaps you could tell us.’

‘Tell who exactly?’

‘Alma, or me, or Norman Silverstein, or...’

‘Silverstein! D’you know what his
nom de guerre
was? Camilo Cienfuegos. What a great actor! Some nights I go to Tango Amigo to relax, it’s a wonderful place, the penultimate bastion of tango. No, that’s not true. You’re a tourist. You can go to the Viejo Almacén or the Café Homero in the Calle Cabrera.’

‘I don’t want to be just a tourist. I’d like to be a traveller. Even though I don’t have enough time to fully get to grips with this city’

‘Ah, if you’re a traveller rather than a tourist, then you must go to Tango Amigo. Silverstein introduces the show. Sometimes it’s fantastic. The more hysterical it gets, the better it is. Haven’t you been there yet?’

‘No, Alma says I’m not grown-up enough yet to see the show. Were you a rock ’n’ roll fan too?’

‘Anyone who wasn’t a rock ’n’ roll fan at twenty had no heart; anyone who still is one at forty has no brain. There was a famous rock’n’roller in our group: Pignatari. Have you met him? We were more like brothers than comrades. We loved each other. Pignatari adapted one of his songs for a music box he gave to Eva María, Berta and Raúl’s daughter.’

He falls silent. Stares at Carvalho openly. Eventually, after the detective has written down the name Pignatari in his notebook, he asks him: ‘But tell me, if it isn’t asking too much...why are you so keen on finding Raúl?’

‘His father hired me for the job. My uncle, that is. My American uncle.’

‘Want to know something? Anyone who twenty years ago didn’t have an American uncle was someone with no past. But anyone who still has one has no future. Now it’s much better to have a European uncle.’

He guffaws with laughter, but Carvalho can only raise a faint smile. The detective gets up. As he turns away from Güelmes, the politician’s laughter quickly subsides. Carvalho hears his voice behind him.

‘D’you know the only thing that compensates me for this damned power game?’

Carvalho shrugs. Güelmes invites him out on to the balcony. He points down at a couple making love on the grass.

‘To be able to look at life from the perspective of history. At sex from a position of power. I remember that one of our slogans was “to change history in the way Marx and Eva wanted, and to change life like Rimbaud wanted”.’

The couple are writhing around passionately.

‘Look how beautiful it is!’

Güelmes shows him to the door, but doesn’t have time to open it. The bulk of the man Carvalho met on the plane fills the doorway. The fat man’s face shows consternation; Güelmes’ is a picture of controlled indignation.

‘I’m sorry, nobody told me...’

Carvalho holds out his hand to the newcomer.

‘How are the lupins doing?’

The other man feigns surprise.

‘Are you talking to me?’

‘The lupins. On the plane, remember?’

The fat man continues to plead ignorance, increasingly irritated: ‘What lupins are you talking about?’

A long but fleshy face, its length accentuated by a heavily receding hairline, and a grey rug of hair that ends in a greasy-looking ponytail. Deep creases round the eyes. One ear-ring. The grease on the tuft of hair over his ear seems to have spread to the telephone. ‘Yes, this is Pignatari.’

He listens, then covers the mobile phone with one hand and turns to his right. Raúl Tourón is playing solitaire at a metal table, inside a shack. Beyond the window, reedbeds and swarms of mosquitoes on a riverbank. Pignatari tells him in a loud whisper: ‘It’s the Spaniard! Your cousin!’

Raúl dismisses his cousin with an airy wave of the hand. He goes on with his game, but with the eye on the same side as Pignatari’s ear pressed to the phone, seems to be following his half of the conversation.

‘I might be able to help you. I’m playing tonight in Barracas. Pignatari Rock. I’ll see you after the show.’

After he finishes on the phone, Pignatari considers what he’s heard and what he should say. ‘You ought to talk to him.’

‘I don’t trust him.’

‘You don’t really think your father would send him as bait for you to swallow, do you?’

‘How do I know it was my father who sent him? Anyway, even if it was, that’s no guarantee.’

‘Alma got in touch with your old man. Don’t you trust her either?’

Raúl pauses in his game to decide whether or not he does trust Alma and his father. But can’t decide. Pignatari has filled a bowl with water from a barrel; he takes off his shirt, soaps his hands, face, his armpits, then rinses himself with water from the bowl and dries himself on a dirty towel after lifting it to his nose and resisting the impulse to throw it away. Raúl has been watching all this, and their eyes meet.