Mapuche (49 page)

A grave.

Jana was toiling away, completely absorbed by her work, in order not to think.

Among the Mapuches, there are no prison sentences, only reparations.

The old docks in the port of Buenos Aires had been replaced by the Waterfront, an ultramodern complex designed by famous foreign architects. Relatively small boats still tied up alongside the brick warehouses, but the other buildings had been bought and converted into luxury lofts, with Jacuzzis and views of the artificial port.

Rubén knew that he couldn't get far in his condition: coughing made him weep, his pain surged up in furious spikes, and his brain transmitted only sordid images. Joggers with streamlined glasses were trotting down the promenade. He followed the sycamore-lined lane that led to the Costanera Sur dike, walking slowly, his mind sluggish under the effect of the painkillers. It was 2
P.M.
, a few English tourists in their checkered shorts were sitting idly on the terraces of the restaurants, mellowed by the local Malbec wine. He stopped near the frigate Sarmiento, the old training ship that had been made into a museum: Isabel Campallo was drinking a Perrier on the terrace of the bar where they were to meet.

Rubén had called her at home before leaving his office, and he had left her the choice. Either she agreed to see him in a public place, alone, or he would tell Rodolfo what he knew regarding the theft of children, with DNA tests to back up what he said. Looking distractedly at the tarped sailboats bobbing in the port, and incognito behind her large sunglasses, the widow was brooding on her misfortunes in the fog produced by the antianxiety medicine she was taking. Not until the detective sat down at her table did she notice his presence. Her bun carelessly made, looking a hundred years old in a black dress, her right arm in a sling, the sign of a recent fall.

“My daughter and my husband are dead, Calderón,” she said as a greeting. “What more do you want? Don't you think I've suffered enough?”

Women pushing strollers were gossiping as they walked past the terrace. Rubén ordered an espresso from the waitress, lit a cigarette while she moved away, and then turned to the
apropriadora
.

“First, thanks for agreeing to this meeting,” he said, changing the subject. “As I explained, everything you say to me will remain between us. I will not speak about it at the trial, to the cops, or to anyone. I am going to tell you what I know and I ask you to do the same.”

María's mother did not flinch; she was on the defensive. Ever since Calderón's first appearance at their house things had gone from bad to worse: she had lost her daughter under tragic circumstances, then her husband. She now had only a son who was virtually catatonic since the revelations at the cemetery, and her beautiful eyes to weep with.

“I found the bodies of María's parents,” Rubén continued without animosity. “Samuel and Gabriella Verón, a young Chilean-Argentine couple who were murdered in September 1976. The Center for Forensic Anthropology has confirmed that their DNA matches that of María Victoria and Miguel Michellini. Your children's birth certificates are forged, as you know.”

Isabel Campallo shook her head.

“No.”

Rubén's espresso arrived.

“Listen, Mrs. Campallo. For the moment, the press doesn't know about this, nor do the judges, but the Grandmothers have a file of charges against you, and whether you are in mourning or not, you're still subject to punishment as an
apropriadora
. You could get seven years in prison. It's up to you whether you want to stain your name and that of your husband.”

There was a silence along the promenade where couples were entwining to the clacking of halyards. Isabel Campallo hunched a little more over her bandaged arm.

“Well?”

“One day Eduardo spoke to me about children,” she finally said. “Two young children. He told me they had been abandoned in front of a hospital, that we could adopt them. I believed him.”

“Sure, Rodolfo was found under a cabbage leaf and María in a flower . . . Summer '76, you know what was going on then, don't you?” he snapped at her.

“Yes, the military was in power. But the dictatorship didn't prevent people from abandoning their children.”

“Before they were liquidated.
Desaparecidos
whose children were stolen from them.”

“When two babies are put in the arms of a sterile woman, she is ready to believe anything at all,” Isabel Campallo retorted. “And then, however it happened, these children didn't have parents,” she said in her defense. “We gave them the opportunity to have the best possible education. That's what we did. Always.”

Rubén blew his cigarette smoke in the widow's face.

“You claim that you knew nothing about the conditions under which your children were adopted, or about the people who allowed it?”

“No. I believed Eduardo's version. Perhaps because I wanted to believe,” she conceded. “I lived with it.”

“But you never told your children they had been adopted.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It was convenient.”

“And cowardly: you must have suspected that they had been taken away from their parents.”

“No, I wanted to love them, that's all. You aren't capable of understanding that, Calderón?”

Silent tears were running down the
apropriadora
's cheeks.

“Love them while hiding the truth about their origins,” Rubén said. “A fine little neurosis you've got going there.”

“That doesn't make us monsters,” Isabel said, gaining control of herself. “My husband and I have always loved Rodolfo and María Victoria as though they were our own children.”

“I'd hardly expect you to detest them because they came from murdered parents,” he replied angrily.

Piqued, Isabel rebelled.

“Your memory is short or selective, Mr. Calderón. At that time the country was threatened with anarchy. There were murders every day, in the open street: police officers, judges, soldiers, CEOs—the terrorists were killing everybody! Montoneros, communists, or followers of Che Guevara, it didn't make much difference: they all wanted to change the world without asking whether the world wanted to pay the price—in blood! Why do you think Argentines welcomed the military putsch? Mistakes may have been made, but those who were secretly interned were interned for good reasons: it was them or us!”

Rubén could have put his cigarette out on her face; he threw it away instead.

“You have strong arguments for someone who doesn't ask questions,” he observed cynically. “Why didn't you say anything to me when I came to tell you about your daughter's disappearance? We might still have had a chance to save her. Did you think of that, or had your ideology consumed your heart?”

A disquieting veil passed over the detective's waxen face.

“Rodolfo was present,” she said, embarrassed. “I . . . I couldn't talk about the subject in front of him.”

“Maintaining your lie was more important than saving your daughter's life, huh? You disgust me,” he said between his teeth.

Isabel held back her tears. People were strolling past the terrace, deaf to the drama that was being played out there.

“Do you know why your husband committed suicide?” Rubén asked.

The widow shrugged her thin shoulders.

“Out of sorrow . . . Obviously.”

“He didn't leave anything behind him?”

“No.”

“Don't force me to break your other arm,” he said in an icy tone. “If your husband had killed himself out of love for his daughter, he would have left a note to explain. So?”

“It's at the notary's,” she said.

“What's at the notary's?”

“Eduardo left a letter, dated the morning he died.”

“What does this letter say?”

“That he was leaving his fortune to Rodolfo,” Isabel replied. “I retain only the house, plus the property from my family.”

Rubén grimaced.

“Your husband disinherited you?”

“No. Eduardo knew that I didn't need money. My family is very rich, that's not it.” Isabel sighed under the black corset of her dress. “It was rather a last act of love for our son,” she explained. “My husband suspected that Rodolfo would someday find out the truth about the adoption. I think he wanted to prove to him that despite our silence, we loved them, him and his sister, as our own children. That we wanted to protect them.”

This piety did nothing to sway Calderón.

“No,” Rubén rasped. “No, something else happened. Something that pushed your husband to kill himself.”

The bubbles in Isabel's Perrier were beginning to evaporate in the warm air of the terrace. She looked up, surprised.

“What could have led Eduardo to commit suicide?”

“The truth,” he said. “The truth about the death of his daughter.”

Isabel was pale on the other side of the table, and soon became transparent.

“Explain yourself,” she said.

“Your husband seemed alarmed the other day when I told him about the circumstances of María's murder. Think what you want of me, Mrs. Campallo, but I wouldn't have come to disturb your mourning if I hadn't been sure that she was killed. I believe your husband understood that too, at that moment: and that it was a shock for him.”

Isabel's forehead furrowed.

“Between the burial and his suicide, who did your husband see, aside from his family? The forensic police? Luque?”

“No . . . No.”

“The mayor? Torres was his friend, wasn't he? He's the one who set up the elite police force: your husband might have asked him for an explanation regarding the falsified autopsy report and the murder that was being concealed from him. They must have seen each other, or talked on the telephone.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Eduardo went to see him on the morning of the day when . . . ”

Isabel didn't finish her sentence.

“The day he committed suicide,” Rubén went on. “Think about it. Your husband met his friend Francisco Torres, then dictated his last wishes at the notary's office before putting a bullet in his head. Why did he do that, in your opinion?”

Isabel Campallo stared at him, disconcerted.

“Because Eduardo had understood that his friends were hiding the truth from him,” Rubén said, driving the point home. “That they were themselves involved in the murder.”

“No.” She shook her head, incredulous. “No, Francisco is an old friend. He would never have done such a thing. He has nothing to do with the dictatorship. He was barely twenty years old at the time. It's impossible.”

“Torres could have given in to the pressure. Lots of people are involved, an old general and others, perhaps people close to him.”

“No,” Isabel repeated. “I tell you that Francisco is a family friend: he knows María Victoria, Rodolfo . . . I refuse to believe you.”

“Nonetheless, your husband committed suicide after they talked.”

“I'm telling you that's impossible. Francisco is an honorable man.”

“Precisely, he might have admitted to Eduardo that he was implicated in the affair, how the murder was hushed up by Luque and his clique.”

“Why in the world would Francisco do such a thing?” she countered.

“Maybe in order to protect someone. Someone whose name is on the internment form proving the adoption of your children.”

“That was more than thirty years ago. Francisco hadn't even done his military service: how can you suggest that there was a relation with your old oppressors?”

Rubén lit a cigarette, which didn't make him feel any better. Then the answer came to him like a lightning bolt—why hadn't he seen this connection earlier? Isabel Campallo was right about Torres. It wasn't himself or one of his friends that the mayor of Buenos Aires was trying to protect: it was his father. Ignacio Torres, the man who had gotten rich in the wine trade before launching his son's political career. Gabriella Verón had owned land in the Mendoza region . . . Ignacio Torres was the man of the
estancia
.

 

*

 

His head was throbbing, accompanied by the jolting of the apparatus. Too many events all at once—the hospital, Cam­pallo, Torres's betrayal—and he could hardly stand up. A sequence of blows that he received right in the face, like a boxer on the ropes. Jana. Rubén had turned the equation around in his head hundreds of times, and had found only one answer to her silence: if she had taken the weapons from his cache without notifying the Grandmothers, it was because she thought he was dead. There was no other explanation. Rubén trembled when he thought of what she might do. He had no way of contacting her, the Ford was no longer in Peru Street, where Miguel had left it: Jana had left the city without contacting anyone, with his weapons. Did she have a lead, a lead he didn't have? The fear of losing her was still with him. What did she think, that she was going to liquidate them, all by herself? Had she gone mad?

Rubén was slumped in the rear seat of a light plane, suffering from the turbulence and his pain, using his bruised flesh as a cushion. A tubby walrus was at the controls of the Cessna, Valdés, the head pilot at the El Tigre airfield. The detective had found him in his tumbledown shack, playing endless games of solitaire on his computer, as if nothing had changed since the preceding week. Valdés hadn't heard from Del Piro but he'd bared his big, nicotine-stained teeth when he saw the stack of bills Rubén laid on the counter.

“We're almost there!” he finally brayed from the cockpit.

Sweat was running down Rubén's face.

Mendoza, ten in the evening. He needed a bed, a hotel where he could rest. The detective walked slowly across the tarmac, his left arm glued to his side as if he'd broken his shoulder. Rubén was gritting his teeth, he was tough: the Glock was in his bag, and he shot with his right hand.