Mapuche (18 page)

Somebody was watching him from behind the neighboring hedge: a puny, balding little man about sixty-five, with small, pale, deep-set blue eyes with bags under them. He looked worried.

“Are you looking for something?” he asked.

Rubén pointed to the former paparazzo's house.

“Jose Ossario,” he said. “This is where he lives, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

The neighbor wore discreet glasses, a polo shirt, and shorts that allowed his white, hairless legs to be seen. Rubén approached the hedge.

“Do you know how long he's been gone?”

The little man shrugged.

“Several days, I think.” He examined Rubén with curiosity. “You're Argentine, aren't you?”

Rubén's accent left no doubt about that.

“Martin Sanchez,” Rubén said. “Yes, I come from Buenos Aires.”

“Franco Díaz,” the neighbor replied, smiling behind the wire fencing. “Retired botanist. Are you looking for Mr. Ossario?” he asked in a friendly way.

“Yes, I work for a collection agency,” Ruben lied. “It's a rather complicated matter and it's . . . well, urgent.”

“Ah?” Díaz hesitated. He was holding his pruning shears in his hand, and a glimmer of interest appeared in his close-set eyes. “But you must be hot in this sun,” he said as if just remembering his manners. “Come have an orangeade,” he added considerately, “we can discuss this more comfortably. Do you like flowers?”

Poppies.

The old man opened the gate, going on about the return of the sun after the strong winds of the preceding days. Franco Díaz lived alone in a house by the sea where he seemed to be enjoying the most peaceful of retirements: an eminent botanist—his garden was splendid, unlike that of his neighbor—he had put in a water lily pond on the roof terrace of the former
posada
, from which one could contemplate Río de la Plata. A little creek ran below the house, in the shade of a weeping willow, its muddy banks littered with plastic bottles. Rubén sipped a cold drink as he listened to the retiree talk about the rarity of his flowers before turning the conversation to the subject that interested him.

Sensing that Díaz had reservations about his neighbor, Rubén wholeheartedly confirmed them—Jose Ossario owed money, an old debt concerning an insurance policy that he had just cashed in. Díaz listened to him, his face pale, almost melancholic. He acknowledged that his relationship with his neighbor was not so good, and as the conversation went on, he became voluble: litigious in the extreme, the preceding year Ossario had filed a suit against him over a complicated matter involving the water table, which Franco was supposedly polluting with his herbicides. Was it his fault if his neighbor didn't have a green thumb, that everything died on his land while his own paradise was in full flower?

“The kind of people who attack manufacturers of microwave ovens because their cat got fried inside!” the old man summed up with a dose of youthful humor.

“The shutters are closed,” Rubén noted. “Have you seen him recently?”

“Not since Friday or Saturday. In any case, his car's no longer there.”

“Do you know if someone visited him?”

“No, I don't think so. To tell the truth, no one ever visits my neighbor.” Díaz's bald head was sweating despite the coolness of the pond. “Another orangeade?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Rubén took advantage of the friendly retiree's absence to have a look at Ossario's house. It was a rather common building whose balcony looked down on the river; a little farther on, the dike at the marina could be seen, with its motorboats and sailboats bobbing in the current. The shutters on the upper story were closed as well. Franco Díaz returned to the terrace, carrying cool drinks.

“Do you think my neighbor has left?” he asked, without hiding his curiosity. “I mean, for good?”

“I hope not,” laughed the temporary insurance man. “Why? Do you have reasons to think that he might take off?”

“No, why would he do that? Because of his debts?”

“You know how people are with money,” Rubén insinuated.

Díaz agreed and took a sip of his orangeade. He also had a slight Argentine accent. Then his affable face froze. Rubén turned toward Ossario's house: a car had just stopped in the street. A single car door slammed, then a gate creaked. The detective said good-bye.

A white Honda was parked at the curb. A recent model, like that of the former paparazzo. Rubén put his hand on the hood: the motor was hot. He rang at No. 69 and stood under the surveillance camera waiting for a response. Finally a voice crackled over the intercom.

“Who are you?”

“Calderón. I'm a detective and I've come from Buenos Aires. You're Jose Ossario, I assume.”

Rubén showed his badge to the video camera trained on him.

“How did you know I'd come back today?”

“I didn't know. I was talking with your neighbor when I heard the car,” Rubén explained. “I have to talk with you, it's important.”

“Talk about what?”

“María Victoria Campallo. I'm looking for her. Let me in, Mr. Ossario.”

The crackling went on for several seconds. Rubén put out his cigarette on the sidewalk softened by the afternoon heat. A click finally opened the gate. A garden full of weeds led to the half-open door. He went up to the porch.

“Are you armed?” Ossario asked from behind the security door.

He had left the chain on. One kick and it was gone.

“No,” Rubén replied.

“I am.”

“Don't hurt yourself.”

The man took off the chain and let the detective come into his cave. The contrast with the light outside left Rubén completely blind for two or three seconds, long enough for Ossario to size up the intruder. Rubén raised his hands as a sign of passivity, and realized that the man was behind him.

“Who are you working for?” the man said, closing the door.

“Myself.”

“Don't move,” the man said, walking around him.

Rubén saw the glint of a gun barrel in the semidarkness. The ground floor contained a photo lab and an editing unit.

“Open your jacket,” Ossario ordered.

Rubén obeyed.

“O.K., you go first.”

The stairway led to the living room, whose half-open shutters filtered the daylight. Rubén saw Ossario's pale face: he was looking at him stubbornly, a revolver in his hand. Thirty-two caliber. He was wearing a khaki jumpsuit, a shirt, a safari vest, and leather ranger boots. Muscular, with a shaved head, a goatee, and the jowls of a beer-guzzling metalhead, Jose Ossario seemed better prepared for self-attack than self-defense.

“Can I smoke or will the detectors make us pay a fine?”

Ossario didn't much care for the detective's humor.

“How did you find me?”

“Your address was scribbled on a piece of paper in the pocket of a pair of jeans that María Victoria didn't have time to wash. Put your artillery away, please.”

Ossario thought it over, stroking his goatee. There was a sofa bed and photo gear near French door. Rubén took a quick look at the bookshelf while Ossario was ruminating—Meyssan, Roswell, Faurisson, UFO stories, the Bermuda Tri­angle . . .

“What do you know about María Campallo?” Ossario asked without putting down his gun.

“That she came to see you two days before she disappeared,” Rubén answered.

The man paled a little more.

“Go on.”

“María was trying to contact a newspaper hostile to her father, Eduardo, and nothing has been heard from her since. I've been looking for her for almost a week now. You'd be better off putting up your little popgun if you don't want me to take it away from you.”

Rubén lit a cigarette while observing his reaction, but Ossario remained silent for a long time. A tripod with a digital video camera stood in front of a window that gave on the neighbor's garden.

“The idiot,” the former paparazzo finally whispered.

Rubén gave him an interrogative glance.

“I told her to keep quiet,” Ossario mumbled, clearly torn between the shock of the revelation and anger. “I told her to let me handle it . . . the idiot!”

He put the gun in its holster, his eyes distracted, shaken.

“To keep quiet about what?” Rubén asked. “Her father Eduardo's activities?”

“Her father Eduardo? Ha!” he laughed with malicious pleasure. “He's not her father! Oh, no!”

“What do you mean?”

Ossario clamped his protruding eyes on Rubén, delighted by the effect he'd produced.

“You didn't know?”

“What?”

“María Victoria was adopted. She and her brother! Ha!” he said triumphantly. “You didn't know that?”

Rubén paled in turn.

“Are you saying that María was adopted during the dictatorship?”

“Obviously!”

The sound of the surf below the terrace rose to their ears. The news changed everything—that's why María had tried to contact Carlos at the newspaper, why she'd been kidnapped: she was one of the babies stolen by the soldiers.

“Do you have proof of that?”

“Proof!” the former paparazzo exulted.

Rubén felt like he was talking to a madman, but the madman wasn't lying.

“You're the one who told María the truth about her adoption, right?”

“Yes. I wanted her to testify for me in the Grand Trial.”

“You were planning to sue Eduardo Campallo?”

“Oh! Not only Campallo! The rest of them, too! All those monopolists, those so-called elites and professional neoliberals who sealed my lips to keep me from talking! The Grand Trial: that's my response! Of course, Campallo's press killed me,” he laughed, “I'm a thorn in their sides! A critic of their ideology! I've chosen that as my standard!”

He was jubilant, a prisoner of his resentments.

“Do you know what has happened to María Victoria?” Rubén asked.

“No,” he said with a frown. “No, but I can guess! The idiot wanted to find her brother! You see where that got her!”

Rubén felt the atmosphere change around him. Suddenly he was sweating.

“María Victoria has another brother? A brother other than Rodolfo?”

“Rodolfo was born at the ESMA, but he's not her brother,” Ossario blurted out, almost frighteningly. “Her real brother was exchanged with him at birth! The poor kid was sick, or they'd cut up his mother too much in the clandestine maternity ward: Campallo exchanged him for another baby born in detention, the infamous Rodolfo, the one in perfect health! But he isn't her brother! Not at all!”

The ESMA, the Navy Engineering School. For Rubén as well, history stammered.

“A man was murdered the night María disappeared,” he said, trying to retain a neutral tone, “a transvestite witnesses saw with her that evening. Do you think he's her brother?”

Ossario was becoming more and more agitated.

“The little idiot!” he grumbled in his delirium. “I told her not to move, that I'd take care of everything. She disobeyed me! And this is what happened!”

Rubén heard a noise outside, on the terrace, a slight creaking. He moved away from the bookcase in front of which he'd been standing and pushed aside the blind on the window that gave on the street: a white van with tinted windows was parked in front of the Honda.

“The idiot,” Ossario mumbled.

Rubén leaned over and saw the broken garden gate, then shadows on the balcony dancing behind the blinds.

“Look out!”

The frame of the French door yielded in a brief explosion of wood: two hooded men broke in before Ossario's eyes; for a second, he remained petrified. A red laser beam was fixed on his chest. Surging forward from the wall against which he had flattened himself, Rubén struck the shooter in the throat, a violent direct hit that made him drop his Taser. The man groaned, and stumbled over the debris. Seeing his partner in difficulty, the other man pulled the trigger on his Taser. But Rubén was using the partner as a shield, and the man took the full force of the shock. The detective didn't leave the shooter time to reload: he cast aside the shocked puppet in front of him, leapt on the other man, and gave him a wicked kick in the testicles.

“Get out of here!” he shouted to Ossario.

The assailant remained immobile in the half-light of the room, a dull pain radiating through his crotch. Ossario finally reacted: he grabbed the pistol in his holster, ran toward the stairway and found himself face to face with the second team, who had just come through the ground-floor window. He fired on them. The Taser beams hit him point-blank in the chest, a shock of fifty thousand volts that threw off his aim: the first bullet hit the stairway ceiling, and the second blew off his forehead as he collapsed, shaken by spasms.

Rubén had no weapon: he was making his way toward the balcony over bits of window blind and glass when he gave a cry of pain. A fifth man was on the terrace. Rubén retched when the piano wire dug into his throat, and immediately understood that he would die as soon as the man tightened his grip and destroyed his windpipe. With his head, he struck three furious backward blows and hit his target, while he crushed the man's instep with his heel. The killer was shaken, but held on. Rubén was suffocating. Ossario was lying at the top of the stairs, the upper part of his skull pulverized, and the two other guys were running up. Rubén reached back and grabbed the killer's testicles and twisted them with all his strength. The man fell back against the guardrail. Rubén felt the man's body; blood was running onto his shirt, more and more as the lethal wire cut into the skin; he was crushing the man's testicles but the brute refused to let go. Rubén put an arm over his shoulder and, pulling him along with all his weight, fell over backward.

Two laser beams grazed him as they went over the guardrail.

There was a twenty-foot drop to the river: the two men fell head over heels into the muddy water that was flowing under the terrace. The current immediately carried them away. Rubén couldn't see anything in this dark water, the waves and the killer clinging to him were dragging him down. He struggled furiously, his lungs burning. He threw his elbows around wildly but it was no use. They were drifting along in the dark, pulled down by the current. Rubén twisted around in the molasses, out of breath. He saw his aggressor's head among the bubbles and stuck his thumbs in his eyes. He was swallowing a first gulp of water when the man let go. Rubén gave a final kick to get back to the surface, saw the light, and sucked in the air like it was a piece of eternity. He was no longer thinking about the killer, his bleeding throat, or Ossario, he was just thinking about breathing. About surviving, escaping the trap they'd set for him in the house. He swam blindly, pulled along by the waves; the marina was two or three hundred yards away. He came up in the eddies and algae, a taste of mud in his mouth, and looked behind him. The former paparazzo's house was no longer visible, hidden by the trees on the corniche, and there was no trace of the killer who had fallen from the balcony with him. There was nothing but the white dock of the little harbor in front of him, and the rays of the sun that was sinking into the water.