No One Loves a Policeman (35 page)

As we left Buenos Aires and headed south again on Route 3, Toto switched on the car radio. The provisional president was declaring an end to all historic injustices, the arrival of a new era, a veritable cornucopia of jobs and riches for everyone. The eternal hope that dawned with this “new era” was to last four or five days; the new president managed only a week.

We headed south. I knew I would find you.

Once upon a time, the south was inhabited by dignified, tough, religious men and women. Afterward, others arrived, with more religions and symbols: first the cross, then, in its wake, capitalist accumulation. And the fate of what these others called Patagonia was sealed.

I did not get far in my crazy drive to nowhere with Lorena, and yet, without realizing it, I had been close to the place we were on our way to now.

Piedranegra is a ghost town, a one-horse place once swarming with adventurers and seasonal workers who stopped off there on the way to the apple harvest in Rio Negro, to try their luck for a few weeks as gold prospectors.

Somebody had discovered a secret, or invented a legend—it is all the same today: buried beneath the barren land was gold. Just by dipping a pan into the waters of a tributary of the Rio Colorado you could find precious golden flakes. Back in Liverpool, an English company had
loaded a boat with all the machinery needed to open a mine. The miners traveled on another huge cargo boat with an indistinct flag: two hundred blond bears with watery eyes who only spoke their own dialect, humanoid beasts who could drill stone with their fingernails, or if need be smash it with their fists.

There was no time to lose. As in the Malvinas in 1982, when the British arrived the party would be over. But the party never even started. It simply faded away when the would-be prospectors left the area, covered in nothing but mud. The British boat never arrived, and in less than a year the deserted town had all but dissolved back into the harsh Patagonian uplands.

We reached what was left of Piedranegra at nightfall. It was nothing more than a street two hundred meters long, lined by at most a dozen derelict wooden buildings. The wind whipped up a dust storm.

Toto Lecuona stopped the 4×4 before we got to the street that gave shape to this mirage that would otherwise go unnoticed a good many kilometers off Route 3. When he switched off the engine, the wind ran the whole gamut of howls and groans.

I sat up in the back seat and looked around. We were here because Piedranegra had appeared on one of the sheets of paper Ayala and Burgos had found in the roofless ranch near Tres Arroyos. Although isolated, that place was far more exposed than this ghost town. We were soon to discover though that until only a few hours before its ramshackle walls had harbored all the life and ambitions normally found in trade union headquarters, political activists' offices, or barracks where conspirators encourage one another to take to the field in that other Argentine national sport: the search for absolute power.

Toto and Ayala got out, opened the boot, and came back with two rifles each.

“They're Yugoslav,” Toto said.

“But be careful, they might be Argentine,” Ayala warned. “During their war we sold the Croats shiploads of old scrap with their serial
numbers changed. If they
are
Argentine, they could easily backfire on you.”

Burgos had never been interested in any weapon other than the scalpel, and he only dared to use that on the dead. Still, he took his rifle and examined it with great curiosity. Ayala tried to make sure he was not pointing it anywhere inside the vehicle, then showed him how to slip off the safety catch. Burgos followed his instructions like a diligent pupil.

“What are we facing? Death. But who? How many of them? Why here?”

“If they have hostages, they must be here,” Toto said. “I didn't ask for money up front because I was a supporter of the cause. But they cheated me.”

Once they had seized power, the plan had been for them to keep their V.I.P. prisoners in Piedranegra. Not the president: “We knew we could leave him free, because he doesn't have the slightest idea where he is anyway,” Toto had explained during the journey. “The party bosses, the heads of the intelligence services, gang leaders from around Buenos Aires who, because of the control they have over the masses of unemployed, are as powerful as generals in the regular army.”

But now their only captive, if she was still alive, was Isabel.

“Why did they take Isabel?”

“They thought they could put pressure on Edmundo's wife, or Isabel herself if she knew, to tell them where Edmundo had hidden the money. Money that belonged to the organization.”

“As far as I know, nobody has asked Mónica for anything. All they asked her to do when they called was to warn me not to stick my nose in their affairs. They couldn't pin Lorena's death on me, and they failed to blow me up in Isabel's car. But what has C.P.F. got to do with all this?”

“For fuck's sake, this is no time for an interview, Martelli,” Ayala said.

“The C.P.F. supplied the finances,” Toto said anyway. (He had never liked the Bahía Blanca inspector: he could not stand provincial cops:
“They're even more stupid and bloodthirsty than the National Shame,” he had said more than once.) “C.P.F. gives food to the poor, pays for literacy campaigns, helps overthrow weak presidents. Big oil companies are even more efficient than the F.A.R.C. in Colombia, plus they're welcome on stock exchanges round the world.”

“Of course they are, they extract our oil for next to nothing, then sell it in the First World at O.P.E.C. prices.”

“The struggle for power is an expensive business, Gotán. When we were young, we thought all we needed were a couple of kidnappings and a bank robbery. Look where that got us.”

“If Mónica said nothing, why did they put a quarter of a million dollars into a Spanish account for her?”

“Ask the G.R.O. treasurer. He's one of the guys hiding out in Piedranegra. I just want my money.”

During the twelve-hour journey down an interminable, dead-straight road through the pampas and then the Patagonian desert, none of us had said much. Toto did not like to talk when he was driving; Ayala wanted nothing to do with the National Shame; Burgos was snoring; and I was floating in the sargassos of all the drugs I had been given. But now, as we stood outside a ghost town peopled by phantoms, we realized we could not just wade in shooting. We needed to make some kind of reconnaissance.

When I volunteered, the others laughed behind their hands.

“Forty-eight hours ago you were skewered like a piece of meat, and now you want to play the hero,” Toto said dismissively.

“Somebody can come with me then,” I suggested. “I'm not waiting here. You lot are capable of killing La Negra before I even get the chance to talk to her.”

“The only one we should spare is the treasurer, at least until he signs my check,” Toto said.

Burgos was still gazing at his rifle as if it were the newborn child of a pregnant corpse. He seemed more inclined to slit it open than to pat
it on the backside to help it breathe. Ayala seemed equally reluctant to share with me the privilege of being the first to die. There was nothing to discuss. Toto and I would cut the ribbon for the official inauguration of the battle, or whatever came next.

My excuse was wanting to find Isabel. My wager in the void, my suicidal dream, was to be alone with you again.

The town, or what was left of it, was in a dip, a crater hidden in the desert wastes as if a meteorite had fallen to earth there, the fragment of a comet which as it smashed into pieces left these wooden houses as a memento. Among them was what once must have been a chapel, with a sloping roof and a iron cross at the top. It was still erect because the Holy Spirit was holding it up by a thread from the sky. But it swayed alarmingly from side to side, threatening to fall across the entrance and throwing a shadow that from the fear it cast must have been the fear of God.

There had been, or was, a bar, a chemist's—with its own kind of cross outside—and the remains of several houses. Probably they had no roofs either: it seemed as though the members of the G.R.O. liked to choose hiding places in which they were still in touch with the universe.

Toto and I each took one side of the street—he was on the left, I was on the right. At the first shot we could unite our forces, if we had any left. We also had a walkie-talkie (part of the equipment meant to have been used to overthrow the president) that we could use to alert our companions if we needed reinforcement.

The wind roared down the street, driving us back. The first block we came to had two houses on my side, and only one on the other. Typical, whenever there's work to be done, I get double. The houses were not as delapidated as they appeared from a distance, although some of the rooms were missing roofs, and elsewhere there were no walls, only doors. Like an idiot, I opened one or two of them, going from emptiness to emptiness.

When I saw Toto still standing on his street corner I cursed him under my breath, then out loud. The wind whirled my words away. Toto could read my lips though: he gave me the finger with his right hand and waved his rifle in the air, looking for all the world like Gregory Peck in
Only The Valiant
(Cinema Eden, Villa Urquiza, 1957, the last film in the matinee) where a U.S. army colonel surrounded by hundreds of Apaches shoots them one by one until he has nobody left to talk to.

We crossed the side road that was no more than a patch of sandy earth, and reached the second block.

This time there were three buildings on the left and four on the right, although Toto had to deal with a two-story construction, of which only one and a half were still standing. It looked like a Wild West saloon, with swing doors that strangely enough still banged together, and a wooden sign which read
B R G LD N CH M R
, as if someone had stolen all the vowels. The bar had two large windows with their panes smashed, either due to the ravages of time or because the last rowdy drunks of Piedranegra had been thrown through them.

Toto appeared and disappeared in the swirling sand, but I could tell he was signaling for backup. I pointed to the radio he had stuffed into his belt. Why were those other two still in the 4×4 if we needed them here? Perhaps we did not have time to wait for them to arrive. Toto must have seen something to arouse his suspicions, because he went on gesturing at me like an excitable monkey.

I jumped down into the street, but the wind immediately knocked me off my feet. I rolled in the dust still clinging to my rifle. In an instant,
twenty-five years' experience of selling toilets vanished, and I could feel the controlled adrenalin of a professional killer taking over. Rifle in front of me, I crawled toward the far side of the street, feeling the ground tremble as the bullets slammed all round me. They came closer and closer, and would eventually have hit me had I not managed to reach a small, life-saving cement wall. It was only about half a meter high, but I could take cover and return fire.

From my vantage point I could see what had happened. Toto had been caught by surprise. Several guns were trained on him from inside the bar, and while one was aimed straight at his head, others were firing heavy-caliber stuff at me through the broken window. I could hear voices, probably telling me to throw down my weapon and surrender, but the howling wind was too strong for me to make out the words. I saw Toto throw down his rifle and raise his arms, signaling to me to do the same. I pressed the radio button to tell Ayala and Burgos we needed them (if they too had not been captured). A well-aimed shot blew it out of my hands and smashed it.

It was logical they would be good shots: after all, they were the leaders of a coup that never happened. It was equally logical that they would not ask for or give any mercy, as Mireya's loving embrace had eloquently shown.

I flattened myself behind the wall. I could have been shot in the legs, but there are two situations in which I need to feel comfortable: when I am making love, and when I am killing. I took careful aim, squeezed the trigger, and behind Toto there was a cry of pain. He flung himself to the ground and started turning somersaults into the middle of the street. But he was not as young as he would have claimed, and the bullets from the bar with no vowels put a stop to his gymnastics.

I should have killed him that night back in 1978, when I had stepped in to save him before his planned abduction. I would have cut short a life that ended with one final pirouette, while he was still stubbornly dreaming of some kind of revolution, only to be defeated without glory,
cut down by a bunch of clowns who—to add insult to injury—had promised him money he would never receive.

I stood up and fired again, offering such an easy target to Toto's killer he must have been licking his lips in anticipation. When I saw him stand up too behind the window, I gave him no time to aim, but sprayed the bar with bullets. I was shooting from a long way off, but I heard his body crash to the floor, passing from life to death. I ran toward the bar and crashed through the swing doors. If there had been any more armed men inside, that would have been the moment to shoot me.