The Buenos Aires Quintet (17 page)

Pascuali’s face is also wrinkled up with disgust, so the two of them cross the road to a bar that has some character to it – billiard players in the back, the inevitable wood panelling, and male customers who look as if they are from sometime between the wars: shiny heads, well-dressed and talking business or seeming to do so. Pascuali orders a milk shake, Carvalho a glass of port.

‘Are you allowed to drink milk shakes on duty then?’

‘Don’t try to get smart with me. Don’t push your luck. I said I wanted you out of Buenos Aires, and here you are with a detective agency’

‘All I do is assist my boss, Vito Altofini.’

‘Another bigmouth. A smartass who is as much of a private detective as I am a classical ballet dancer. Have you given up looking for your cousin?’

‘He seems to be well-hidden. D’you know if the Captain is still looking for him?’

Pascuali leans over Carvalho in a menacing fashion. ‘I am a public servant. I don’t believe in private detectives like you. Nor in parallel networks like the Captain’s.’

‘Then you’ve picked the wrong world in this century. In the future, all the police will be privatized, and every state will be a mafia, full of parallel networks, plumbers digging in the shit, specializing in sewers.’

‘Who got you on to the case of the topless girl and her Latin teacher? Her boyfriend? That other fugitive? A kid from a good family who’s probably hiding under the skirts of some maiden aunt of his mother’s.’

‘Why would a topless girl study Latin?’

‘Perhaps she wanted to become a nun.’

‘That’s a reply not worthy of you, Inspector.’

Pascuali looks as if he’s about to launch himself at Carvalho, but he quickly calms down.

‘Let’s get back to the other hidden man, your cousin. Or not so hidden. Are you interested in Alma?’

‘In what way?’

‘A man and a woman.’

‘I’ve got a steady girlfriend back in Spain.’

‘Is she a private detective too?’

‘No. She used to be a whore, one of those call girls. But she got depressed, because AIDS took all her clients. Her stable lovers were growing old, and I was too. So she left. I’m looking for her as well. That’s my reason for living: to look for people.’

‘I’m not the least bit surprised your girlfriend is a whore. But Alma isn’t driven snow either. She pays you regular visits, has dinner with you, you go to listen to tangos and Silverstein, and then she gets a visit from her brother-in-law, Raúl Tourón, who spends the night with her.’

‘Were you the third one in the triangle?’

‘I heard it from a reliable source.’

‘How come you let him escape then? No one’s more vulnerable than a naked man in bed.’

This time, Pascuali can’t control himself, and he flings a punch across the table which lands squarely on Carvalho’s nose. Then he looks all round to see if anyone has seen him do it.

‘That punch came from the man, not the policeman.’

Carvalho punches him back, smack on the nose. Pascuali puts his hand up to it, as blood starts to pour. Both of them sit with bloody noses.

‘D’you know I could put you away for ten years for that?’

‘I was returning the man’s punch, not the policeman’s.’

But Pascuali’s blow had been the solider of the two, and so, pride assuaged, the policeman allows the detective to leave.

Carvalho’s nose and his soul ache, thanks to the secret passages that link the two. Back in his apartment, his fingers stray towards the phone, and dial his office number in Barcelona.

‘Biscuter? Yes, it’s me. Is everything all right? Did my uncle give you the money? Tell him everything is going well, that I’ve almost laid my hands on my cousin, but there are a few technical hitches to sort out. Tell him Raúl is fine. Yes, I’ve had dinner...squid in their sauce. Yes, in Buenos Aires. Yes, they do have squid here; squid and depressed Argies. Yes, the city’s still full of depressed Argies and paranoid cops. And psychiatrists. Not all of them left for Barcelona. Has Charo phoned? Did she say she loved me madly? What did you make for dinner? A tortilla with
fredolics
!
So Charo didn’t phone? How’s Barcelona? And the Ramblas?’

Feeling sorry for himself, Carvalho clings to the phone as if suddenly everything around him has grown bigger. He is left with an imprecise feeling of loneliness, and a very precise sensation that Pascuali has broken his nose.

The mock English-style house rises from lawns straight out of an Eden catalogue, with a barbecue range worthy of Norman Foster, guests dressed as though they are Giorgio Armani gauchos posing for a photoshoot of an
asado
in the open air, the smell of roasting meat engaged in a subtle contest with the women’s Cartier ‘Must’ and the men’s ‘Opium’. Carvalho descends the grassy bank and walks over to people sipping at cocktails and picking at canapés served by waiters dressed up as rich gaucho waiters, until the barbecue is ready.

‘If they find us or our children with a hundred grammes of cocaine, we’re paraded on television like criminals. But they discover Diego out of his head on the stuff and he becomes a national martyr. That’s Perónist demagoguery for you. Don’t you agree?’ Carvalho hears these words from a well-preserved blonde, busy haranguing two distinguished-looking gentlemen. One of them is the Captain, who’s also dressed up for a luxury barbecue.

He replies smoothly: ‘Politics is always demagoguery’

‘And you were always a man of action and one of the most intelligent defenders of the state.’ This time the speaker is a senator who looks as though he were born to the role.

‘He was? Who’s to say he isn’t still? Once a warrior, always a warrior,’ the lady says.

‘You’re too kind.’

‘Well, you, as a man of action who’s also had a lot to do with our intelligence services, you know better than anyone what politics is about. Can it ever be anything but demagoguery?’

‘If I say no, I’ll be arrested.’

They all laugh. The Captain excuses himself, and comes towards Carvalho, who turns his back on him and heads off in the opposite direction, as if he wanted to catch up with another rich-looking man dressed up as a field-marshal from Rosas’ nineteenth-century army, who is spouting forth to another varied group of canapé browsers.

‘The Radicals have always robbed with their left hand, but the Perónists with all four hands at once.’

‘Four hands, Brucker?’ asks one of the guests.

‘Ha, don’t you know they’re all apes? Only just down from the trees?’

‘Have you said as much to your son-in-law, who was more Perónist than Perón?’

‘But he went to the best schools, and he’s from an excellent family,’ Brucker replies.

‘Are you looking for someone?’ a waiter asks Carvalho, blowing his cover as an invisible onlooker.

This threatening personage, backed up by two other equally inhospitable figures, blocks Carvalho’s path. Two or three other groups of guests raise their heads to see if something interesting is going to happen.

‘We don’t want any journalists or people who haven’t been invited.’

‘But I told you, it was Señor Honrubia who invited me.’

‘I’ve got someone called...’ the waiter is now speaking into his walkie-talkie.

Carvalho hands him his business card. It reads ‘Altofini and Carvalho. Partners in Crime.’

‘...someone called Altofini-Carvalho.’

He is given the all clear, so he quickly frisks Carvalho, then says: ‘Follow that path down to the lake, and Señor Honrubia will be waiting for you at the landing stage.’

The Captain is observing all that has gone on from a distance. He sees Carvalho go down the path to the artificial lake and the small pier. A bulky man is sitting there, staring down at the waters as if they were gently calling him to a gentle suicide, or were concealing a drowned man that only he can see. As Carvalho draws closer, the sheer bulk of the man and his sad bloodhound look impress themselves on him.

‘Señor Honrubia?’

Honrubia looks him up and down. His melancholy turns into suspicion.

‘Don’t you like
asados?
Why are you all on your own down here? Are you from
Gourmet
magazine?’

Carvalho hands him his card.

‘Yes, Alma already told me about you. How is she?’

‘The other day we went to our own
asado –
Girmenich, Silverstein, Güelmes, at the Baroja place.’

‘What a collection of dinosaurs! Do you know why the dinosaur became extinct? It’s a joke. A Russian joke. You don’t? The dinosaur became extinct because it was a dinosaur.’

‘Well, these dinosaurs were remembering the days when they used guns and plastic explosives. They talked a lot about you.’

‘All of it bad, I’m sure. I’m the traitor who married a young senorita from the oligarchy we were fighting against.’

‘It seemed more as if they were very jealous of you. You married the sister of someone you kidnapped when you were a revolutionary, and you’re about to be made general manager of your father-in-law’s businesses.’

Honrubia gets up. His arm moves out towards Carvalho in what at first might be a threatening gesture, but finally settles on his shoulder and steers him back towards the other guests.

‘I’ve been a guerrillero, an exile, a beggar in exile, a thief, a corrupt top official, unemployed, and now I’m an oligarch. But I’m still faithful to those lines by Pavese: “A man who has been in prison goes back there every time he takes a bite of bread”.’

He’s moved by his own eloquence, and raises a hand to his eyes. Then he points to the people waiting for their
asado.
‘Look, they’re all posing for
Caras,
our big fashion magazine. If that didn’t exist, neither would they. From here they look like monkeys, and when they talk it’s like chattering monkeys. But deep down inside, a revolutionary will always be a revolutionary. Anyone who fought on the side of history will never lose that identity’

‘Güelmes says the opposite.’

‘He was never a revolutionary. He was always a shit.’

A young and studiously attractive woman comes loping down to them.

‘Before my wife gets here, what is it you want from me?’

‘I’m looking for Raúl, Raúl Tourón.’

Mistrust quickly replaces all trace of melancholy in Honrubia’s eyes. The young woman drapes herself affectionately on his arm, and the three of them walk up to the barbecue. They arrive just as Brucker is holding forth on the science of a good
asado.
‘Roasting meat is for waiters. It’s one thing to plan it, quite another to do the cooking.’

‘But I just love putting on my asbestos gloves and doing the roasting.’

Señor Brucker shouts out: ‘The lambs are mine! Nobody knows how to give them the final touch like me!’

Several of the guests murmur their agreement.

‘Nobody can roast lambs like papa!’ Honrubia’s wife exclaims, and her husband nods, back with his bloodhound look. Carvalho, Honrubia and his wife follow the other guests to the spot where the lambs have been cooked. Five crucified Christs facing the glowing embers.

‘
Agnus Dei tolis pecata mundi!
’
Honrubia entones.

‘You even know Latin!’ his wife enthuses. ‘What did you say?’

‘Lamb of God who wipes clean the sins of this world,’ Honrubia translates, with his Old Testament prophet’s head.

‘
Ora pro nobis
,’
Carvalho completes the response.

The sunset seems put on especially for Honrubia and Carvalho as they sit in the library on sumptuously rich armchairs made from the best leather of the best Argentine cattle. In the hearth the best logs from the best forests of Misiones or Bariloche are burning. But Honrubia is drinking from a full glass of second-rate whisky. Carvalho the same.

‘What makes you think I might have hidden Raúl?’

‘You own half of Argentina.’

‘In fact, only zero point zero nine per cent of it.’

‘That’s still not bad, considering how little the rest of the Argentines have.’

‘Some day this house and all the others like it will burn. The revolution is bound to happen. The world can’t go on being divided between a tiny majority of people like us and millions of others dying of hunger.’

‘In the meantime...’

‘In the meantime,’ Honrubia butts in, ‘I thought this was an excellent whisky until you told me otherwise. You’re one of the few people who really appreciate a good malt, and this isn’t one.’

‘It’s not even a malt.’

‘Are you a revolutionary?’

‘I used to be. Now I simply drink and smoke as much as I can, and from time to time burn books.’

Honrubia points to the bookshelves with a sweeping gesture.

‘Burn away! They belong to my father-in-law, to his father or his grandfather. Who cares? They never read any of them.’

‘Do you mean it?’

Honrubia shows him he does by getting up, taking out an obviously very expensive book, and throwing it onto the fire. Carvalho does the same, then Honrubia again, and Carvalho a second time. Before long, the smoke from this incineration of a good part of Western culture billows from the fireplace. Some servants shepherded in by Señor Brucker and followed by a few remaining guests burst into the room. They find it empty, but for a pile of books still smouldering in the hearth.

‘Thank heavens. It’s only books,’ Brucker says.

The first to smile at this is the Captain.

Carvalho, meanwhile, is following Honrubia down stairs that lead to the wine cellar. When they get there, he’s astonished and moved at the spectacular collection of bottles.

‘We have some Bordeaux 1899. To look at, not to try’

Honrubia leads the way through a small door out into the garden. At the far end of a track stands an elegant summerhouse.

‘My study. A sacred place.’

They go in, and as soon as he crosses the threshold, Carvalho feels he’s entered another world. The walls are covered with posters of Evita, Che, Castro; there are revolutionary books and pamphlets everywhere, and a showcase full of weapons. Honrubia tells Carvalho to sit down, and disappears through an inner door. Carvalho casts a sceptical glance over the iconography. Then he spots a telescope pointing up at the stars through a glass canopy, which opens in the roof as he approaches. The starry night sky extends above him. He hears a noise at his back. When he turns round, Honrubia and Raúl are staring at him.