The Buenos Aires Quintet (23 page)

Carvalho explains to Don Vito.

‘Don Leonardo here is a leading manufacturer of fine ladies’ lingerie.’

Don Vito puts on a thoughtful, knowledgeable look.

‘Ah, a woman’s true skin! An important writer once said: a man’s most profound attribute is his skin. And I would add: a woman’s most profound attribute is her underwear.’

Carvalho invites Don Leonardo to continue.

‘Well, it was embezzlement. While I was away, my son used the powers I gave him in such cases to steal a million pesos from our accounts.’

‘A million before or after the 1984 devaluation?’

Don Leonardo looks offended by Altofini’s estimation of him.

‘Would you be worried by the theft of a million 1984 pesos? Good God, that was worth nothing – it was a single note.’

Don Leonardo ignores Don Vito’s appreciative whistle, and goes on with his story.

‘Now I think – what are a million pesos compared to my son’s life? I didn’t go to the police, but I asked the Davidson detective agency to find him.’

Altofini lifts a hand to his forehead, then tries to cover his mouth with it, but the words come out regardless: ‘A big mistake, if you don’t mind me saying so! The Davidsons are incompetent. Whenever they come to a dead end, they always ring me for advice.’

‘I only wanted them to find my son before the police, and they did. He was in the Bahamas with that slut, that bloodsucker. I didn’t want the money back, I only wanted my son. I swear to you. May I be struck down on the spot if I’m not telling the truth. I told the detectives to let them know they were being watched. That’s the worst thing I could have done. She got scared and left him. He felt abandoned, and perhaps thought I despised him. He fled. Nobody knows where he’s gone. I’m afraid I’ll never see him again.’

At that, he bursts into tears. Don Vito sheds a few tears of his own, and puts his hand on their client’s shoulder to comfort him. The distraught father soon recovers his composure.

‘Find the woman for me.’

Carvalho rummages among his thoughts and asks what seems most urgent to him: ‘What for?’

‘I want you to introduce me to her – under a false name, of course. I want to uncover her vicious soul and do her as much harm as possible.’

He is already well out of the office by the time Don Vito asks if it is ethical to find someone just so that a client can kill them.

‘That’s what he wants, isn’t it?’

Carvalho shows him the advance Don Leonardo has given them. Don Vito still looks doubtful, but picks the cheque up and looks at the amount.

‘And this is just the advance? Well then, let’s look at the case from a professional point of view.’

‘My point of view is very direct and simple. We do our duty by finding the woman, and introducing her one way or another to our client. What he does then is his business.’

Don Vito is amazed.

‘Why, you took the words right out of my mouth.’

‘Besides, I know who the woman is.’

‘Already?’

‘No, I knew her from before. I had a similar case in Barcelona. Exactly the same, in fact. A father trying to find the no-good woman who had led his son astray. The only difference was that the boy had killed himself. In that case, the woman was called Beatriz, Beatriz Maluendas. But I bet you it’s the same one.’

Alma, Carvalho and Silverstein are standing in silence, as if hypnotized by the waters of the river. Silverstein is skimming stones across it, like a child fascinated by the relation between depth and distance. Carvalho turns and surveys the mansion behind a wall smothered in ivy, honeysuckle and wistaria. It’s a French-style house that has kept some of its former splendour, and stands out prominently among the other houses of San Isidro, near the Yacht Club. There is a wrought-iron gate topped with Cesar Borgia’s slogan: ‘Either Caesar or Nothing’. They go over to the gate. Alma rings a bell, but there is no sound. Carvalho pushes the gate open and they step into a garden that had once been carefully tended and still boasts statues, footpaths and hedges that no one has taken the trouble to repair or cut back. But they are not unwelcome intruders – Friday is waiting for them at the front door.

‘We blacks open the door better than anyone else.’

‘You’re very pale for a black man.’

The other man does not respond to Carvalho’s sarcasm, but leads them in with mincing, effeminate steps. They follow his swaying backside through the neglected house, empty of furniture, and with marks on the walls where paintings have been saved from the general shipwreck. Other alabaster statues have not been so fortunate. They emerge into a large living-room that looks like a cushion warehouse. Dozens are heaped together so that Robinson can play his flute sitting on top of them, and the rest are scattered about and occupied by the full range of social outcasts: adolescents with AIDS, battered old women with drink-crazed eyes, ‘flycatching’ madmen. In what was once an elegant fireplace, something is cooking in a large copper pot. Every so often one or other of the beggars goes over and fills his or her bowl. Robinson pauses in his recital: ‘Friday, fetch them large, clean cushions will you?’

Friday throws three cushions in front of the new arrivals. Alma and Norman settle on them, but Carvalho remains standing.

‘Don’t you have a chair?’

‘The last one we had is being burnt in the fireplace. We ought to prune the trees in the garden, but who could do that?’

‘I don’t like sitting on cushions. I prefer to stand up.’

‘If you do that, you’ll block the flow of your spirit.’

‘Standing or seated, my spirit’s been blocked since I was born.’

Robinson stares at him, but also notices that Alma is studying the catalogue of human misery in the room and seems disappointed.

‘I was hoping – we were hoping – to find Raúl.’

‘Raúl knows you’re here. He’ll come if he wants to. I can give you his message anyway. It’s easy enough. He still doesn’t know what he wants to do, but he thinks I can help him find out. If I decide to help him find his soul, then he’ll find his soul. If I decide to help him find his daughter, then he’ll find his daughter. It’s all the same to him.’

Robinson gestures to them to follow him. He leads the way up a noble pink marble staircase, followed by Friday, then Alma, Silverstein and Carvalho in the rear. There are hardly any doors left on the first floor.

‘We’ve burnt all the doors. Doors shouldn’t exist – they’re a bourgeois invention. There were no doors in noble savages’ houses.’

A room used as a library. Alma is impressed by the number and quality of books lining the walls. Her words of praise amuse Robinson.

‘I bought them by the yard many years ago. It’s only now I’m reading them, bit by bit. This is Raúl’s favourite spot. Are you comfortable? You’ll see that although from the outside the house looks French, inside it’s pure English. I’m one of those anglophile Argentines for whom the Malvinas war came as such a wrench. I used to play cricket at the Hurlingham, with tea, toast and jam at five o’clock. The bars I frequented were the Dickens Pub, the John Bull, the Fox Hunt café; I was a subscriber to the
Buenos Aires Herald.
Well there you are, now I’ve told you my secret, and I’ve shown you my den, Robinson’s cabin. Perhaps it’ll help you understand my parable about the Malvinas. Parable or metaphor. Raúl says that really I’m a utopian
socialist, and that if I got the chance I’d fill the world with phalansteries.’

‘Aren’t you scared of being raided?’

Robinson bursts out laughing.

‘Alma, my past is my protection. I was so rich that the doors of this church inspire respect in every kind of police. The police respect wealth. I can help Raúl. I think we have common enemies. But what can I do for the three of you?’

Silverstein doesn’t wait for the other two.

‘Have you ever thought of investing in the theatre?’

‘No, it had never occurred to me.’

‘Well think about it while you’re helping us save Raúl. It’s an old story. Half of yesterday’s Argentina is after him, and half of today’s Argentina has joined in.’

‘What do you mean by save?’

Now it’s Carvalho’s turn to intervene.

‘Don’t go all metaphysical on us, friend. Saving means you don’t get killed before it’s your turn to die.’

‘Leonardo. Fine lingerie’. If Carvalho ran an underwear business, what would he call it? ‘Carvalho. Fine lingerie’. No: ‘fine lingerie’ was definitely out. He’d probably put an image, something that conjured up the female skin, his fascination with women’s petticoats, slips they were called in his childhood, by the women who came to his mother’s for fittings and whom he caught furtive glimpses of through a crack in the door of her tiny workshop.

Night falling in a nondescript street lined with stores and small industrial units, with the roar of traffic from the Panamerican highway nearby. Carvalho is waiting for the staff to leave, he glances at several and dismisses them, then concentrates on one slender woman about thirty years old; her legs are even more slender as they run comically after a bus that doesn’t want to wait. Carvalho makes sure she misses it.

‘Doña Esperanza Goñi?’

The woman takes a step back before eventually admitting that is her name, at the same time realizing she is not going to catch the bus. Carvalho flashes her a badge that seems to impress her.

‘Detective Carvalho. Don’t be frightened. I’m investigating the disappearance of Don Octavio. It’s quite routine, for the insurance companies – but I don’t need tell you, do I, you are such an efficient secretary’

Esperanza walks on sadly, allowing Carvalho to fall in beside her.

‘I used to be a secretary. But not any more. I used to work for Don Octavio, but now his father’s put me in the filing division. He’s downgraded me, because he thinks I knew about his son’s double life, and didn’t warn him.’

‘A boss is always a boss. But I’m sure you were just being loyal to your own boss, Don Octavio; that was your duty, after all.’

‘More than my duty, it’s what I believe in.’

‘As you should. You must know who your boss’s companion was. You’ll understand my situation too. My company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and there’s no filing division to send me to. Either I solve this case or...’

Carvalho makes a slicing gesture across his throat, and stares penetratingly at Esperanza, who is suddenly on his side.

‘Help me. I have to find that no-good woman.’

‘A no-good woman? But she was charming!’

‘Better still. But I have to talk to her. Perhaps you know how I can find her.’

The secret is too much for Esperanza to keep, and Carvalho is sure she’ll let it slip before they reach the stop to wait for the next bus.

‘We used to speak on the phone. Marta and I. Your no-good woman is called Marta, and has a married woman’s surname.’

‘Is she married then?’

‘She was. To an Aerolineas Argentinas pilot. I’m sorry, I must catch this bus.’

Esperanza’s thin legs scuttle off, while Carvalho recalls that Beatriz Maluendas was also married to an Aerolineas Argentinas pilot, and that it is either the same woman or the statistics very much favour Aerolineas Argentinas pilots.

‘Don Vito, get over to Ezeiza as quick as you can, and ask for a pilot by the name of Fanchelli. He’s our no-good woman’s husband.’

The least agile or most exhibitionist passengers have clambered wearily from the plane, wanting to be the last off so that the ones who preceded them will have to wait in the airport bus; the pilots and air hostesses make for the van reserved for the crew. As they get out in front of the main terminal building at Ezeiza, an employee whispers something into the ear of the pilot leading the way. He nods. He is a heavily built, athletic-looking man. He bounds along, bag in hand, to a small office where Don Vito is smiling broadly to welcome him. Taking the initiative, Don Vito grasps his hand and presents him with his card, while explaining out loud: ‘Altofini & Carvalho. Partners in Crime.’

The pilot drops his bag on the floor. He holds the card in his right hand, waiting for Don Vito to add something more.

‘Señor Fanchelli, it’s vitally important for us to find Señora Fanchelli as soon as possible.’

‘Who did you say?’

‘Your wife, Señora... ’

He does not have time to finish the name. The pilot lands him a left hook to the jaw that knocks Don Vito to the ground. Then he drops the business card on top of his prone body. Picks up his bag and leaves the office calmly, even smugly.

Back in the office of Altofini & Carvalho, Partners in Crime, Carvalho and Alma try to restore Don Vito’s aching chin.

‘He was left-handed.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he hit me with a left without letting go of the card in his right hand. What are you laughing at, Alma? I don’t understand why women always think it’s funny when a man is humiliated. Careful! Aagh, don’t grab it like that Carvalho, remember who it belongs to. I’ll look after it – it’s part of me, after all. But when you touch it, Alma, it does help.’

Carvalho gives up his attempts at being a medicine man, and apologizes for not having warned Don Vito that Marta, the no-good woman, sometimes calls herself Fanchelli, but has not been married to the pilot for several years now.

‘She is from Spain, but began her career in Argentina with Fanchelli and got married to him here. After Fanchelli, she married an importer of luxury shoes. She nibbled at a few other fortunes. Went back to Spain. She tried to make it in the film world, in Spain and Argentina.’

‘Did she succeed?’

‘No, only a few ermine capes, the odd mink stole, never a whole outfit.’

‘It must be her destiny. A no-good woman with an ermine coat. Life is tango. If you knew all that, why didn’t you tell me? Where can we find her?’

‘In the Bahamas, Santo Domingo, Miami, Las Vegas, New Orleans, always in the best hotels – in the Fontainebleau in Miami, for example. Her latest beau is Pacho Escámez. She’s in Buenos Aires, and this evening they’re having dinner at Chez Patron.’

‘Pacho Escámez? The one on the television?’

‘The very same.’

‘It’s unbelievable. In Spain she hooked a TV producer, now here she’s going out with a presenter. She’s incredible. She even repeats the same deal and the same situation.’