Mapuche (10 page)

The sun was going down over the old Retiro rail station when Paula came rushing into the workshop, frantic: the choreographer had just called, and he wanted to see her again at 10
P.M.
, before the Niceto opened, about the revue she'd auditioned for, that very evening! The transvestite was in a tizzy; he'd just left his mother's, dressed as a man, obviously; a good makeup job took two hours, and, flopping about like a moth around a lamp, he didn't know what to do.

“Ten o'clock! I'll never be ready!”

“Calm down, sweetie,” his friend said. “The sun has just begun to set.”

“Crash, you mean!”

Jana smiled. It was odd to see Miguel with his slick short hair, his natural eyes, and the shapeless pants that concealed his figure.

“Oh, Jana!” the tranny said passionately, gripping his friend's hands. “Just imagine—Gelman is taking me for the revue! With everything that's happening right now, it's . . . so crazy!”

Confusion reigned: the docks, Luz, the Niceto, the good all mixed up with the bad. Should they laugh or weep?

“By the way,” Jana asked, “do you know the detective in Peru Street?”

Paula stopped short a moment amid the sculptures and searched the tumultuous river in which her memories swam.

“Calderón? Yeah, we meet from time to time in the market. Why?” she went on, “Are you thinking about him for Luz's case?”

“Him or somebody else.”

“He's better.”

“Why?”

“When he walks he looks like a puma rolling his shoulders!” Paula said with enthusiasm.

Jana shook her mop of hair, which was full of dust—whatever.

“Who is he,” she asked, “a former cop?”

“I don't know, I think he looks for
desaparecidos.
I've never dared to talk to him, but I've been told that he was connected with the Grandmothers.”

“Aha.”

“He might be the solution,” Paula said. “You'll see his eyes!”

“The relationship escapes me.”

“That's because you haven't seen them! I don't know how old he is,” she went on, “but he doesn't look it!” She saw the time on her plastic watch. “O.K., I've got to hurry or I'm going to miss everything! But the detective is a good idea!”

The transvestite swayed toward the sliding door, then suddenly drew back.

“There's a problem, Jana,” she said, turning around.

“O.K., what?”

“How are we going to pay him? We don't have any money.”

Jana shrugged. “I'll figure it out. Go make yourself beautiful.”

“I'm on my way!”

Paula took off toward the yard without seeing the Mapuche's somber look.

 

*

 

Vega 5510, Palermo Hollywood. The Niceto Club's sign flashed on and off behind the Ford's greasy windshield. Paula adjusted her brown wig, checked her face powder for the fifth time in her mirror with a picture of Marilyn Monroe, finally put her makeup kit back in her striped sheepskin bag and turned toward her friend at the wheel.

“Apart from the broken tooth, how do I look?” she asked with a smile.

Jana pulled an appropriate face.

“It looks a little too perfect, otherwise it's okay.”

It was 10
P.M.
, Paula's face scintillated under the streetlights, the night owls were laughing on the rain-washed sidewalks of Palermo, cruising the neighborhood's bars and restaurants before the nightclubs opened.

“Go on, get in there or you're going to melt on the seat,” Jana said.

“You're right. Full steam ahead!”

Paula got out of the car carefully, holding her knees together, gave Jana a last friendly wave through the broken window, and slalomed around the puddles, using her plush bag as an umbrella. The sculptress waited until she had disappeared into the artists' entrance before heading back to San Telmo.

 

1030 Peru Street. The rain was beating on the sidewalk when she pushed the intercom button.

The obelisk, immaculately white, rose proudly over the Avenida 9 de Julio. For a few centavos, barefoot boys were juggling in front of the cars stopped at the red light: one of them, who was not even four years old, dropped one of the two circus balls in front of the hood. His big brother, six years old, had practiced longer: three balls flew through air loaded with exhaust gas. Rubén gave the two scruffy kids a couple of coins before the light turned green and made them shoot off like sparrows.

Two million poor families, one child out of five suffering from malnutrition. Rubén saluted the statue of Don Quixote around which traffic turned at the intersection with the major artery, and headed back toward downtown and its apartment buildings with fenced terraces—looting, burglary, the memories of the economic crisis had left their mark. A shower was whipping the storefronts, driving guys in suits toward the commercial banks that were springing up again like mushrooms. Rubén opened the window to smoke, casting a venomous eye on the jerks in white collars who had bankrupted the country. Not far away, a handful of protesters carrying flags and signs with left-wing slogans were blocking Sarmiento Avenue, which was covered with flyers. They were surrounded by helmeted policemen: anti-riot water cannons, armored vehicles, Torres's elite cops were not shy about intimidation. The approach of the elections, probably. Rubén drove around the parade and continued as far as Malba, the contemporary art center.

La Recoleta was the quarter of foreign embassies, private properties, old money not subject to the hazards of the virtual, republican gilding. The avenues were broad, clean, and gave off a perfume of private homes in a very European style, with cracked Milanese facades and age-old architecture. Rubén parked the car in a side street and walked under the big mangrove trees whose roots cracked the asphalt: the Campallo family lived a little farther on, in a building barely visible behind tall foliage. It had been constructed in the early nineteenth century and was partly covered with ivy.

A peaceful place after the turbulence of the city center, in any case for people who were not much inclined to mix with others. Access to the property was controlled by a black grill with sharp points and a state-of-the-art surveillance camera. Rubén rang on the intercom, the panoptic eye targeting him.

Finally someone answered. A woman.

“Yes?”

“Hello,” he said, moving closer to the intercom. “Are you Mrs. Campallo?”

“Yes,” the metallic voice replied. “What do you want?”

“To talk to you about your daughter María Victoria. I'm a friend.”

“She's not here. What's it about?”

“Well, that's just it,” he said in an affable voice. “No one has heard from her for days, and I'm looking for her.”

A brief silence.

“What do you mean, no one's heard from her?”

“Have you?”

“Well, no. Who are you?”

“Rubén, a friend.”

“I don't know you.”

He crushed out his cigarette on the sidewalk.

“Mrs. Campallo, if I were you I'd open the gate . . . ”

The intercom went quiet for a moment, the distant echo of a doubt that seemed to last two or three eternities, and then the click of the gate opening.

A white gravel walkway wound among the giant plants in the garden. The businessman's main residence was a large, beautiful white house, a veritable little manor in the middle of a shady park. Rubén breathed in the aroma of the flowers and followed the spiral of insects that were coming out as the weather cleared. María Victoria's mother was waiting on the front porch, her arms crossed under a deep red cashmere shawl, dark glasses with a garish frame covering half her face.

A very attractive woman, Isabel De Angelis could have had a career as a beauty queen had her aristocratic name not prevented her from working. Eduardo Campallo had plucked her to decorate his buttonhole at the age of twenty, when she had just begun to bloom, and he kept her as a talisman of a perfect success story. Isabel Campallo had dyed hair put up in a bun, a designer dress over prominent kneecaps, and a severe look for someone who had just returned from a vacation. From afar, the businessman's wife could pass for one of those old tanned beauties on tranquilizers fighting anorexia one sees at the American Express, but close up you saw two pinched lips covered with too much orange lipstick and a vertical posture intended to keep the world at a distance.

A chubby man in his thirties wearing a suit waddled alongside her.

“Who are you?” he asked the visitor.

“I imagine you're María Victoria's brother?” Ruben replied.

His belly bulging under a white shirt without a tie, Ray-Ban glasses perched on a bald head, a Porsche watch and gleaming loafers, Rodolfo Campallo flaunted the plump figure of a complacent success.

“Rubén Calderón,” he said, showing his detective's badge.

“I thought you were a friend of María Victoria,” his mother said, astonished.

Rodolfo sized up the private eye: brown hair that was too long, falsely calm elegance under a black suede jacket, athletic and arrogant despite the veneer of class, his provocative air, his grayish-blue dark eyes, everything about him was annoying.

“What are you doing here?”

“It's about your sister,” Rubén replied from the foot of the stairs. “She isn't at home and hasn't answered her cell phone in three days. I thought that might interest you.”

The younger brother, put in his place, frowned. There was a teak table in the shade of a great willow trembling in the wind, the echo of a gardener trimming the roses at the back of the garden; Rubén turned toward Isabel Campallo, bundled up in her shawl.

“Do you prefer to remain standing?” he asked thoughtfully.

“No.”

Walking mechanically, the woman moved toward the nearby patio furniture and, ignoring the look her son gave her, sat herself down on a chair as carefully as if she were a faded bouquet.

“What do you know about my daughter?” she asked, peering through her tinted glasses.

“Not much,” the detective replied, reassuringly. “Have you seen María Victoria recently?”

“Well, no, not very recently. My husband and I were on vacation at Mar del Plata,” the ex-star of high-society balls said: “I was there all month, my husband for two weeks, and María Victoria isn't a great fan of the telephone. You say that she hasn't been in contact with anyone?” she said, sounding worried.

A gold crucifix hung in the cleavage between her old breasts.

“Let's say that she can't be reached. When did you talk to her for the last time?”

“Let's see . . . I left her a message about ten days ago, but you know how kids are, they call back when they have time. All I know is that she was hoping to use the vacation to work on her photography. That was what she usually does at this time of year.”

A sigh half emptied her. Rodolfo had joined them under the willow.

“Who are you working for?” he asked.

“That doesn't matter,” Rubén answered, concentrating on the mother of the family. “Do you have any explanation for your daughter's silence?”

Isabel shook her lacquered hair and drew her shawl around her against the gusts that were singing in the trees.

“No,” she said, disconcerted. “No . . . ”

“No trip, rendezvous, or particular event?”

“No.” Her memory was skating on a river with horses caught in the ice. “Why? What's going on?”

“María Victoria is expecting a child,” Rubén announced.

For the first time, the mother and her son wore the same expression on their faces.

“She's in her third month,” he went on. “Obviously you didn't know.”

Isabel pulled herself together on the garden chair.

“No.”

“Where did you get this information?” Rodolfo interjected.

“Why do you think your daughter didn't say anything to you about it?” Rubén continued.

“I don't know,” Isabel stammered. She was shaken. “We're a very Catholic family, María Victoria knows that having a child outside the bonds of marriage would make us terribly sad, but . . . I just don't understand.”

“Any idea who the father might be?”

“Heavens no!”

“María Victoria hadn't introduced you to anyone? Never?”

“No . . . Unfortunately, getting married isn't one of her priorities.”

“The prospect of having a baby could have turned her life upside down,” Rubén suggested. “It might explain her silence or her flight.”

Rodolfo was pacing up and down underneath the willow, exasperated.

“You don't answer the questions you're asked,” he said, changing the subject. “Who are you working for?”

Rubén ignored him. “It appears that María Victoria went through some difficult times during her adolescence and afterward,” he said. “Did she rebel against her social milieu?”

“What are you implying, Mr. Calderón?” Isabel replied coldly.

He lit a cigarette—something about these people annoyed him, something that didn't have to do with the money, luxury, or the ostentation.

“Did María Victoria ever take a political position?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Against your husband and his powerful friends, for instance.”

“That's outrageous!” Roldolfo said angrily. “My sister's not a communist!”

Rubén smiled wryly—funny how some people can go to extremes to justify their point of view. Porky was beginning to irritate him.

“Your husband amassed his fortune during the National Reorganization Process, and then profited from the economic crisis,” he said, looking at Isabel. “María Victoria might have wondered about how that wealth was acquired.”

“Why are you here, Mr. Calderón,” Rodolfo burst out. “To dig up filth?”

“Is that how you see your sister's life?”