Mapuche (53 page)

“Dirty little whore!” he hissed into her hot face.

He used his knees to immobilize her, but the Indian was still fighting like a wildcat: she scratched his eyes, ripped the skin off his eyelids, short of breath, her muscles without oxygen. Jana resisted the killer's pressure with all her strength but she was caught in the trap. Parise got up on his knees, brandished his enormous fist, and brought it crashing down on her broken nose. A stream of blood spurted out. The killer was breathing heavily, lying on his prey, expelling the adrenaline that was flowing through his veins. Held down by his weight, the Mapuche no longer moved. His fist was still balled as he looked at the girl with the painted face stretched out under him: he hadn't missed her. Parise looked around him nervously, long enough to adapt to the situation, which was finally turning to his advantage. The girl seemed to be alone, with her nose pissing blood.

Ardiles was moaning two paces away, stuck between the wall and the thornbushes.

“Help me . . . Parise, for the love of God, help me!”

Jana saw stars in the sad sky, and the brute over her who was crushing her. Tears clouded her eyes. She had her knife in its scabbard, all the way down there, stuck in her Doc Martens. She bent her legs while he was holding her, his knees pressed on her torso. Her hand felt the damp soil, desperately sought a handhold, and gripped the handle of the knife at her fingertips. She pulled out the blade and with her last strength, planted it between the giant's ribs.

Hector Parise froze for a second, electrified by the sting. His grimace of surprise changed to anger when he realized the treachery. Jana had failed to pierce the liver, or to hit any vital organ: the blade had slipped between the giant's ribs without sinking in deeply. He seized the hand that was still holding the handle, twisted it to make her let go, and furiously threw her ancestor's knife away.

“You wanted to do me in, huh?” he belched, beside himself with rage. “You wanted to do me in!”

She moved her head, incapable of freeing herself. His knuckles white, Parise stared at his prey. An icy breeze was blowing over the mission heights. Jana tried to protect her face with a last defensive movement, but it was useless: he massacred her with blows of his fist.

Rubén had abandoned Torres amid the sun-drenched vines and left the Solente vineyards that afternoon. An undulating road through the desert ran alongside the mountain range. 250 miles. Rubén gritted his teeth until dusk; with each rise in the road his stomach tightened more and more the butcher's hooks sunk into his guts. He came out on the crests, his body feeling as if it were soaking in formaldehyde inside the car. He was thinking feverishly about Jana, the emptiness of her absence, and the men holed up in that remote monastery. The sun was going down behind the snowy peaks when he reached the first foothills of the mountain range.

The Los Alerces National Park extends over more than 700,000 acres. Ancient forests cover the hills, bordering rivers and clear lakes. Rubén followed the paved road that ran through the preserve, drove past closed campgrounds, a few small farms without tractors where a hog sometimes snorted, potato fields, isolated cattle, a schoolhouse . . . As a result of the painkillers' side-effects, hyperthermia, and a convalescence that resembled suicide, he arrived at the Los Cipreses monastery in a state of confusion close to intoxication.

Night had fallen over the mountain village. Rubén finished off the bottle of water lying on the seat of the car, checked to see that the Glock was loaded, and walked slowly up to the bells hanging at the entrance to the building. The medications and the dust had ended up drying out his throat, and the water he drank by the quart didn't help; his body was begging him to lie down, to close his eyes, or to change his skin.

“Yes?”

The monk who opened the door was almost as wan as he was. The guy they'd talked to on the phone, to judge by his faint voice. Rubén apologized for disturbing him at such a late hour, introduced himself as a friend of Mr. Torres, and asked to see the cardinal. The young man with tattered sandals frowned at him with annoyance.

“It's just that . . . they haven't come back,” he said. “Neither His Eminence nor his friends. We are still waiting for them.”

“It's 11:30
P.M.
,” Ruben noted.

“Yes, I know. I'll admit that we're worried.”

It was difficult to tell whether he was lying or not; he could hardly be seen by the pale light of the lantern. Rubén pulled the monk outside, and with his right hand slammed him against the wooden door.

“Listen, Friar Tuck,” he said angrily, “I'm tired and I don't have time to lose with your nonsense. Is Ardiles there, with the others?”

The monk's Adam's apple bounced up and down under the detective's burning eyes.

“As God is my witness,” he said, “someone called the monastery this afternoon and asked to speak to the cardinal. They left shortly afterward for the meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“I don't know, the cardinal didn't tell me. Not very far away, I think: they were supposed to be back before nightfall.”

“Who called the monastery?”

“Somebody named Díaz.”

The botanist who had fled Colonia, the ex-agent of the SIDE.

“The cardinal left with Ardiles and his men?” Rubén growled.

“Uh . . . yes.”

“What kind of vehicle?”

“A 4x4.”

“What kind?”

“A black Land Rover,” the monk replied, his eyes rolling with fear, “with tinted windows.”

Díaz. He must be trying to sell the original document. That didn't explain where they had gone, or why they were so late. The monk obviously didn't know anything more.

“Did an Indian woman come here in the past few days?” Rubén asked. “A tall brunette around thirty, a Mapuche?”

“No.” He shook his shaved head. “No.”

Rubén scowled at the friar's pale face. They were getting away from him, once again. He went back to the car while the monk locked his door, and left the parking lot. It was a dark night. He parked a little way down the road, on the edge of a forest. He waited for more than an hour in the shadows of the car, watching for movements at the entrance to the monastery, but no vehicle showed up. The wind outside was rustling the trees, full of water. Exhausted by fatigue and the effects of the drugs, Rubén reclined the seat and plunged headfirst into a sleep without memory.

Jana's ghost didn't visit him that night, but he had the same evil foreboding when he woke up. He had slept like a stone for six or seven hours and his cold body was now like one long moan. The sun was coming up over the ridge and the monastery's empty parking lot. Rubén wasn't hungry but he wouldn't last long in this condition.

A cat who'd lost an ear was guarding the overturned garbage can at a restaurant with drawn curtains; it was still closed at this hour. Rubén drove on to the neighboring farm, looking for an open bar, when he spotted a jalopy with faded paint. The backyard of a farm. He stopped short: an old Ford was sitting in the puddles, its passenger-side window missing. It was Jana's car, he would have recognized it anywhere. His heart beat faster. Rubén got out and walked toward the building, miserable under the drizzle that had started to fall. In the shelter of a lean-to covered with corrugated metal, someone was working on the axles of a 4x4: a Land Cruiser. Rubén looked feverishly around him, his hand on the butt of his gun, but detected no movement behind the flaking window frames. The farm seemed to be deserted, except for the guy under the lean-to that served as a garage.

“Hey!”

A teenager slipped out from under the car and sized up the stranger approaching him. He was a half-breed about twenty years old, and he was wary of
winkas
.

“I'm looking for the woman who drives the Ford,” Rubén said, pointing to the old banger behind him. “Is she here?”

“No.”

“Where did it come from then, this pile of junk?”

“It belongs to my father,” the young man stammered.

“Registered in Buenos Aires,” Rubén commented. “Are you playing games with me?”

“No . . . ”

Felipe blushed all the way to his ears.

“Listen,” Rubén said more gently, “I'm a friend of the woman the Ford belongs to. Tell me where she is!”

“I don't know. I wait tables in the restaurant, that's all.”

“Sure. And this 4x4?” he said, pointing to the Land Cruiser, that was shot through with bullet holes. “Are you going to tell me that it fell out of the sky, right here in your lousy courtyard?

The
winka
's eyes went right through him.

“My father and my brother went to town. They're the ones who brought it back, I . . . ”

“I don't give a damn about the 4x4,” Rubén interrupted. “All I care about is the guys who were in it. Them and the woman who was driving the Ford. This concerns a murder. Tell me what you know before you get yourself in a world of trouble.”

Felipe hesitated, but ended up admitting that the two vehicles had been abandoned the day before in the forest. The 4x4 was damaged; he'd had to pull it out of the ditch with his father and his brother, who had gone to get parts, but the Ford was in running condition. They'd brought the cars back to the farm to repair them.

“Who told you that these vehicles had been abandoned?” Rubén asked.

“The Mapuche. Jana . . . ”

Rubén stuck some hundred-peso bills in the adolescent's pocket. “Show me where.”

 

Stones on the road were ricocheting off the bottom of the car. Felipe remained silent in the front seat of the car. He'd seen the butt of the pistol that was poking out of the stranger's jacket, his face dripping with sweat despite the open window, and the pain in his eyes. They drove through the forest, at top speed in third gear on a road that had become slippery. The young man was worried, looking with a melancholy eye at the rain on the hills. He wondered if this guy was lying to him, if they would be accused of theft, and what murder he was talking about. They climbed a switchback and entered a long curve through the forest. Felipe signaled to Rubén to slow down: it was nearby.

A remote place among lakes and hills, in the midst of araucarias and impenetrable thickets. The next farm was miles away. Rubén looked at the tracks along the edge of the road. It had rained, but a tree was leaning over near the ditch. A pine tree, with paint marks on its trunk. He bent over and saw fragments of a windshield in the grass, bits of plastic, cartridge casings. There were at least a dozen casings, of several calibers, scattered around the area of the accident. Rubén stood up, his blood tingling. The half-breed kept his distance, worried about the idea of earning so much money so easily.

“Jana's the one who told you to pick up the 4x4? And her Ford too, you're sure?”

Felipe nodded. The preceding evening. Rubén cautiously turned toward the forest. The vegetation was dense under the branches, the sky a chemical white beyond the hills.

“Is there a path through the forest?” he asked.

“Yes. A little higher up, in the village. But it goes nowhere. There's nothing around here, only the ruins of a monastery, one or two hours' hike from here.”

 

Due north, that was the direction. Rubén went up the trail on foot, following the half-breed's instructions. The pain-killers were making him feverish, the pain radiating from his left side, from an inflamed point just over his heart. He moaned as he walked along the path, almost invisible under the trees. Roots and brambles slowed his advance, and rain was falling in large, scattered drops filtered by the branches, increasing the smell of humus. He found another cartridge casing on the ground; it came from a rifle. 7.62 caliber. The same as his Remington. Jana. She had hunted them in the forest. Rubén followed the path that climbed slowly through the forest, his lungs hurting, hearing nothing but his pulse pounding in his temples like a call for help. He stopped a moment to drink a little water, threw away the empty bottle, and walked on, the pockets of his coat heavy with cartridge clips, listening for noises in the forest. The rain had soaked him without cooling him off. Jana was out there somewhere in that ocean of greenery, hunting or hunted. He stopped again, lost, exhausted by this race like a fall into the void. The mud was sticking to his shoes when croaking sounds led him to a nearby clearing.

A sullen wind was sweeping over the little mire. A man was hanging underneath a tree, a naked and grotesque puppet, with his twisted head resting on the ground and his stinking foot still attached to the branch. The fractured tibia had poked through the flesh; the skin was a purplish-black, as if gangrene were already attacking it. Rubén had to chase away the crows to see that it was the torturer from the delta. The crows had been eating away his eyes and he no longer had ears: a clean wound that hadn't been made by the birds.

Rubén vomited at the foot of the tree. He stood up but the sky was spinning. He saw the shovel abandoned near the pile of turned earth a few paces away. A grave, freshly dug. Nausea gave way to dry heaves. He found a few full bottles of water in the ferns, a gas lamp, plastic wrappings: the remains of a campsite. Of a massacre. Rubén was splashing through the puddles when a sort of squealing on his left pulled him out of his torpor: Díaz was hiding behind a tree trunk, chained up, his eyes half mad.

“Help me,” he yelped hesitantly. “Help me, please!”

The botanist had dreamed of dying amid his flowers, not of starving to death in this hole, shitting his pants with fear, and begging. He was crying like a puppy, unable to control his trembling. Did he recognize the detective? Rubén came up to the tree to which he had been chained, his heart sinking. Jana: it was no longer vengeance but suicide.

“Where is she?” he asked. “Where is the Indian woman?”