The city had at least a thousand monuments and all were covered in pigeon shit and marked with graffiti. They were back in the heart of downtown and the financial district, had taken the road from La Boca to the edges of Puerto Madero, had taken a fifteen-minute ride from poverty back toward prosperity. Frank Sinatra was crooning “Last Night When We Were Young.”
They drove more than twice the posted speed limit, zigzagged from lane to lane, didn’t leave much distance between cars, rode bumper to bumper and door handle to door handle, hit curves like they were in the final lap of the Indy 500.
Medianoche drove like the rest of the drivers.
He was driving the man who had saved him.
He was loyal.
The woman he had married on the island of Montserrat didn’t understand loyalty.
Not even when the contract read “until death do we part.”
That had been the agreement.
One day, one way or the other, it would have to be honored.
Capítulo 15
el diablo y los malvados
Medianoche sped
down Libertador toward Recoleta. To his right, hidden beyond trees and the train tracks in Retiro, were the slums of Villa 31. On his left, in plain sight, were the French Embassy, Four Seasons Hotel, Patio Bullrich.
Paradise and Hell no more than a mile apart.
Medianoche’s cellular rang. It was Señor Rodríguez.
Medianoche answered, “Speak, soldier.”
“Sir, we took out five hostiles. Stun and flash. There is a lot of equipment. Satellite phones. Computers. They were hackers. They brought knives to a gunfight, sir.”
“Señorita Raven?”
“A bit ambitious. Don’t think we had to take all of them out. But she did.”
“How many left?”
“Four. The one who made contact and three more. Everything is under control.”
“Text me the address. You have two hours. Have them ready when we return.”
Medianoche hung up.
The Beast said, “Problem?”
“Nothing those young fucks can’t handle. We can run this errand first.”
The Beast’s phone vibrated. It was his servant, Draco Calamite Ganymedes. Medianoche didn’t listen in. Wasn’t his business. The conversation was between God and servant.
There were dozens of
paseaperros
out walking dozens of dogs at a time, all sizes, all pedigrees of shit droppers. Every bus stop filled with people waiting in impatient silence. Medianoche was always amazed by how the Argentineans waited in line at bus stops, how everyone went single file to get on board, but underground boarding the subte, it was sheer madness.
Medianoche turned around at the Buenos Aires Zoo, satisfied they hadn’t been followed from La Boca into the edge of Palermo, then drove around the roundabout and its Spanish Monument, Monumento de los Españoles, doubled back toward Recoleta, passed embassy row and Audi’s Rond Point Restaurant, parked in underground parking at Recoleta Plaza. The fair in the plaza and on the streets was busy, tourists all over, live performances, miles of local artists and tents, art, crafts, everything for sale, even with clouds in the skies and a chill in the air.
Medianoche followed The Beast as he headed underneath the REQUIESCANT IN PACE engraved at the crown of the Greek Doric-style entry to the Recoleta Cemetery, a tourist attraction, thirteen acres that was like a city made of narrow streets and lined with trees, more than six thousand vaults, some larger than an average-sized condo or apartment.
A city of the dead.
Instead of homes and apartments, tombs and mausoleums stood side by side, domes higher than the twelve-foot concrete walls, elaborate and ostentatious, some pristine and surrounded by statues, most with broken glass and cobwebs, their marble and stone dingy and unkempt. Both the remembered and the forgotten dead slept inside the sprawling necropolis.
Medianoche walked with his hands behind his back, like an older Italian, as they mixed with the curious, passed by dozens of feral cats that lived on the grounds, saw a dozen more cats lounging in the aisles and eating hamburger meat, as they walked by the final resting places of politicians, poets, soldiers, explorers, priests, and the plain old filthy rich of Argentina.
They made their way to the section on the Calle Vicente Lopez side of the cemetery.
The Beast said, “I’ll be in front of Brigadier General Juan Manuel de Rosas.”
Medianoche nodded.
Row 114. Black marble front for Familia Duarte. Where Eva Perón was entombed with her husband, Presidente Juan Domingo Perón. Not what tourists expected. In a cemetery where some had final resting places the size of cathedrals, Eva Perón’s tomb was tucked down a narrow row, a row barely big enough for two people to stand side by side, not off to itself but sandwiched between other tombs, on a row filled with resting places for the long-ago dead. That alley was crammed, filled with a long line of tourists snapping photos. Leaving flowers. Kneeling. Crying. Some were disappointed by the simple site. They had expected grandiosity. Thousands of miles traveled and thousands of dollars spent just to take a picture and frown.
Thousands walked that narrow aisle every day, no matter what the weather was like, and today was no exception. This was where Medianoche could see the client and make a decision to green light or walk away.
Medianoche saw her. Smoky skin. Dark hair underneath a dark scarf. A beautiful woman who looked like Isabel Sarli in the movie
El trueno entre las hojas
. Eyebrows dark, arched and thick. Not in need in the breast department. Large earrings. She stood at the end of the row, waited closer to the wall that separated the cemetery from Village Recoleta. The woman saw him. She was nervous. He nodded, then motioned to his right.
She nodded in return.
He exited the row, walked over one aisle. The woman did the same, met him halfway.
She was dressed in skinny jeans like most Argentine women wore, the style of Buenos Aires, jeans that molded to her curves from her hips to her ankles. She wore high heels that had jewels on the heel that sparkled underneath a dull sky. She had on a dark blouse made of silk, all of that topped with a ten-thousand-dollar fur coat and expensive sunglasses. She hid behind those glasses like the movie stars hid themselves in Hollywood. She carried an expensive leather duffel bag.
She stopped in front of him. He saw her watch. Cartier.
He nodded. “Eva Perón died of cancer in 1952, was only thirty-three years old.”
She swallowed. Lips moved but no words came out of her mouth.
Medianoche frowned. “Talk. Or end up inside one of these tombs.”
In broken English she stammered, “It was . . . really an insult . . . that that allowed . . . that
puta
Madonna to play Eva Perón in that horrible movie. It was . . . disgraceful to our nation.”
Close enough. Now they could begin.
She stammered, “My English is no good. When I am nervous I forget my English.”
“You were supposed to dress casual. And be discreet.”
“This is my causal. Jeans. I bought nice jeans to wear. I am not wearing a dress.”
He said, “You’re in a cemetery in a fur coat and holding a Louis Vuitton duffel bag.”
“Being here . . . in this sacred place . . . this is disrespectful to all Argentineans.”
“Paying for death at a cemetery seems appropriate.”
“I did not think of it that way.”
“Did you bring what you were supposed to bring?”
She nodded. “
Sí
. Yes. I bring the money in the bag like you ask.”
“You were supposed to use a simple bag.”
“The bag . . . this is my sample bag.”
“Simple. Simple. Not sample.”
“See-emp-pale?” She paused. “No. The word . . . I do not know that word.”
He said, “Go to Brigadier General Juan Manuel de Rosas.”
“
Dónde es
—I mean where—”
“Walk out, turn left, first right, walk to the other side. Two rows before the wall. Number seventeen. There will be a man. He will take you where you can talk in private.”
She left in a hurry, holding her fur coat as her heels sparkled.
Medianoche picked up the bag, headed toward the front of the cemetery.
Forty minutes later, the woman who looked like Isabel Sarli hurried out of the cemetery, more nervous now than she was before. After the deal was done, they always became nervous. She hurried down Calle Junín, moved around
paseaperros,
artists, and sidewalk vendors, hurried by tattered women holding dirty babies as they begged for pesos, rushed toward the restaurants in front of the Sahara, hugging her fur coat, her heels catching attention until she vanished.
Five minutes after that, The Beast walked out behind her.
Red lipstick was on his pants, around his zipper.
Medianoche asked, “Where did you take her?”
“There is a mini castle inside the cemetery.”
Then Medianoche saw her for the third time. The woman who looked like Thelma.
She walked through the plaza facing the cemetery, still with her crowd of French tourists. Cafés and hotels were thirty yards away. The woman who spoke French stopped closer to the large ombú tree, a massive tree that had roots wider than a house, branches that extended for forty or fifty yards and had an umbrella-like canopy over a bricked roundabout lined with benches. Medianoche held the bag of money and walked by the young French woman and her friends as they stood in front of green wooden benches and took photographs. He passed by the woman who engaged that negative memory, moved through the crowd of sidewalk tango dancers, clowns playing accordions, kissing couples, beggars with dirty babies on their hips, and beautiful women offering free hugs. That memory faded as he entered underground parking.
Medianoche asked The Beast, “When does she want this done?”
“Tonight. You can handle it.”
“Before the job for Caprica Ortiz?”
“We’ll work that one in a few days. This is a simple job.”
“Simple woman.”
“And has more money than God.”
“How does an idiot get rich?”
“Married well.”
“Guess she’s good in bed.”
“She gives a good blow job, if nothing else. I almost asked her to marry me back there.”
Medianoche nodded. “What about Señor Rodríguez and Señorita Raven?”
“You should sample Señorita Raven.”
“Not even with your dick.”
“Indian women are the best lovers on the planet. Not Brazilian women. Not African. Not Spanish. Not Italian. Not Asian. Not American. Not European. The best of the best is Indian. Bollywood. Bangladesh. Calcutta. Those beautiful women are the best of the best.”
“Is that right?”
“Few years ago. Atheneum Hotel. Her name was Nina. Long black hair. Took her to eat at Fishbone’s, then to Greektown Casino, spent some time playing slots, then strolled back to my presidential suite. She saw the sunken tub and took off her clothes. I didn’t say a word. It was the sunken tub that closed the deal. I made love to her in the sunken tub, jets streaming. Then we did the same on the two sofas in the suite, and when the sun took away the mystery and the moods brought on by darkness, I paid her what she asked for a night of wicked sex.”
“Mystery and moods brought on by darkness?”
“Was trying to be poetic.”
“Just say you fucked her, paid her, and sent her home.”
“That’s not poetic.”
“Mystery and mood and darkness. Geesh.”
Medianoche laughed. The Beast laughed too.
The Beast pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch. A silver Montblanc with a big round face. “Señor Rodríguez and Señorita Raven have been torturing the hackers for close to two hours.”
“The prisoners should be singing a sweet Spanish song by now.”
“Singing a song we want to hear.”
Medianoche drove while The Beast opened the duffel, counted the piles of money, British pounds and U.S. dollars.
The Beast said, “We should’ve left the business five years ago. Before the U.S. crumbled and entered its second Depression and dragged the whole fucking world with them.”
Medianoche nodded.
The Beast smiled. “When we get the second half of Hopkins’s package, we can retire.”
“Señor Rodríguez and Señorita Raven?”
“Expendable.”
“When?”
“After they have served their purpose.”
They shook hands.
Gentlemen’s agreement.
Just like on that wretched day in South Carolina.
Capítulo 16
tortura
Warehouse area on the edge of La Boca.
Broken-down ships docked in the filthy bay, some leaning to their sides. One hundred yards away, droves of buses and taxis collected and dropped off tourists anxious to buy souvenirs at marked-up prices. Most of the tourists arrived in taxis, the way the hotels recommended.
But for some reason, the holders of the package had set up an operation here, where their activity would go unnoticed.
Medianoche drove through gloom and the rising stench wafting from the filthy waters beyond Avenida Don Pedro de Mendoza and the ugly sign for Barrio Bonito. Beyond where the tourist zone ended and beyond the Coca-Cola signs over La Esquina Café in Puerto Viejo. Beyond Astilleros Mestrina, its truck delivery door faded and ten shades of chipping and worn blue. The entire area fit the same description of neglect.
Medianoche eased down the cobbled road toward the warehouses. Señor Rodríguez waited out front. The only tourist that would stray this far from the safety and security of Caminito was a tourist who was about to lose his camera, his wallet, maybe his life.
Medianoche parked. Graffiti marked every wall, vulgarities and threats sprayed in juvenile handwriting. He went to the trunk of the car. Took out blue booties and surgeon gloves.