The Convert's Song (2 page)

“Tell you what,” he said quietly. “I’m gonna walk away.”

Raymond made an
umph
noise, absorbing the impact.

“If you were in trouble, I’d step up,” Valentín continued. “But this ain’t that kind of situation. My advice is, tell Wolf it fell through. Make up something. Drive away. Me, I’m gone.”

Raymond checked the clock. He swept his hair back, then looked at the windshield, at Valentín. He cocked his head, as if examining the problem from a new angle. His eyes shone.

Switching to Spanish, Raymond asked, “That’s as far as we go, then?”

In Spanish, Valentín answered, “That’s right.”

Valentín opened the door. A cold breeze swept the lot. His legs ached with accumulated tension. He closed the door behind him.

The window lowered. Raymond leaned toward him, grinning weakly.

“Look, man, it’s cool. You made your move. Bad move, but still. I likes that in you.”

“Don’t do anything crazy, Raymond. Please.”

Raymond hesitated. “Sorry about Dolores.”

Valentín could not tell if it was an apology or a taunt. Did he mean: Sorry I mentioned Dolores? Sorry you’re having problems with Dolores? Sorry I’m fucking Dolores behind your back and you’re just now finding out?

He walked fast. Clusters of broken glass glittered on the asphalt. A long low shape scuttled out from under a car into the weeds.

For years, the park had been the spot for soccer, football, hanging out, getting high, talking to girls. People had picnics, walked dogs, sat on the rocks. They looked at the skyline rising from the lake like a science-fiction citadel.

But at night, the park was full of rats. Big bloated galloping rats. You didn’t want to look too close or get too comfortable.

He hurried into a dank, graffiti-smeared pedestrian tunnel. The wind wailed around him.

At the end of the tunnel, he stopped. He listened for an echo in his wake: slamming doors, angry shouts, gunshots.

He heard nothing. He kept going. He did not turn back because he wasn’t sure if he would end up helping Raymond or beating the shit out of him.

T
he whole mess started ten years later on a sunny fall day when Valentine Pescatore was feeling at home in Buenos Aires.

He got up and put on a warm-up suit. He took a quick cab ride on Libertador Avenue to the sports club in Palermo Park. At eight a.m., he had the red rubber track to himself. His breath steamed in the morning chill; May was November in Argentina. He was not as fast or strong as he had been while serving as a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Yet he was healthier than during those crazy days at the Line. He had lost the weight he’d acquired eating home-cooked Cuban meals while living in San Diego with Isabel Puente.
Arroz con pollo, ropa vieja,
fried plantains. Washed down with drama and heartbreak.

Leaving the club, he caught a whiff of horse smell on the river wind. A nearby compound of the Argentine federal police housed the stables of the mounted division. Facundo had told him the compound was also the headquarters of the police antiterrorism unit.

Pescatore reclined in the cab, invigorated by the run. The driver was a grandfatherly gent with well-tended white hair encircling his bald spot. His shoulders in the blue sweater-vest moved to the tango classic on the radio, “Cafetín de Buenos Aires” (“Little Café of Buenos Aires”). The cab stopped in front of Pescatore’s building on a side street as the song ended in a flourish of bandoneon and violins. It was an homage to a neighborhood café—the best thing in the singer’s life except his mother.

“That was great,” Pescatore said. “What was that last line? ‘In the café I learned philosophy, dice and…’?”

The cabbie studied him over his spectacles. He recited crisply: “‘The cruel poetry of thinking of myself no more.’”

Pescatore took the elevator to the tenth floor. He had found the furnished rooftop apartment through Facundo Hyman Bassat, his boss. The landlord had described it as a penthouse. It was cobbled together from a converted maid’s quarters and a storage attic. The front door opened into the middle of a narrow hallway that led left to a galley kitchen and l
iving
-d
ining
area. A bookshelf held his old collection of compact discs and his new collection of books. At the other end of the hall, a skylight in the low slanted ceiling made the bedroom less claustrophobic. Glass sliding doors opened onto a little balcony-patio.

Rain tended to flood the patio. The sun took no prisoners. The wind was noisy. There were bats. But the apartment was cozy. It got plenty of light. From the railing, you could see the river. Bottom line: he was living in a penthouse in La Recoleta, the swankest neighborhood in town.

Forty minutes later, he hit the street showered and shaved. He wore his Beretta in a shoulder holster under a brown leather jacket. He had let his curly hair grow longer than when he was in the Border Patrol, though he drew the line at slicking it back like the locals. If he didn’t talk much, people took him for a local. He preferred it that way.

He turned onto a tree-lined street where a hotel faced a shopping center. Ragged kids from the riverfront slum worked the taxi stand in front of the shopping center, jostling and begging and carrying bags. The high-pitched melodic whistle of a mouth harp echoed among high-rises: the call of the
afilador,
an itinerant Galician knife sharpener in a brimmed cap and blue smock who looked as if he had been pushing his cart for a century.

In the middle of the street, a paunchy police officer stopped traffic so a couple of lean ladies in short fur jackets could jaywalk. Two cops in boots and helmets stood smoking cigarettes near their motorcycle. They were in an anticrime tactical team. Pescatore had seen them zooming the wrong way down Callao Avenue with siren and lights blasting, the driver hunched like a human rocket, the rider with his shotgun at the ready.

The hotel and shopping center had security guards. The doormen of apartment buildings kept watch even on Sundays, which they spent in vertical trances listening to soccer games on earphones. But no one had seen anything on a recent night when a gang robbed the ritzy Italian restaurant next to the shopping center. The robbers were fit, efficient, their hair close-cropped; they barked commands as they relieved diners of valuables. The word on the street: the stickup artists were off-duty cops from the Bonaerense, the police force that patrolled the province of Buenos Aires, an expanse the size of France surrounding the capital. A wave of robberies downtown was part of an ancestral feud between the provincial police and the federal police, who patrolled the city.

The federal beat cop strode to the curb, his cap at a low jaunty angle. He and the motor cops exchanged greetings and kisses on the cheek. Pescatore made his way around them. He was an armed U.S. civilian on foreign soil. Despite the investigator credentials that Facundo had provided for him, despite the rule-breaking he saw at every turn, carrying a gun made him a bit nervous. And he wasn’t comfortable with all the kissing. Argentine men kissed each other with alarming frequency. It wasn’t some sissified European thing confined to actors and fashion designers. Kissing was a common form of greeting among waiters, garbagemen, bank tellers, soccer players, airport baggage handlers, and, yes, cops.

The hotel had marble columns, plush rugs, and a musty air. Pescatore went up to the suite of the American client. Dr. Block greeted him wearing a suit and tie. They sat in armchairs. Pescatore leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs, fingers interwoven. This was the most delicate assignment that Facundo had given him.

“You doing okay, Dr. Block? Jet-lagged? Want some coffee?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Pescatore,” Block responded in a weary monotone. “Just anxious to get this thing done with and go home.”

“Please, Doctor, call me Valentine.”

Block was a pediatrician from Miami. He had a shiny bald head, a white mustache, a gentleness that came from decades treating little kids. But his blue eyes behind his glasses seemed drained of light. He was the saddest man Pescatore had met in a long time. Block’s son had been an engineer married to a Brazilian woman. A public-works project took him to the Triple Border region where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet. He got into a dispute with an Argentine investment partner: a lawsuit, allegations of embezzlement, death threats. During a visit to Paraguay, the younger Block was shot dead at the wheel in a car-to-car ambush.

The Paraguayans hadn’t done much of anything about it. Dr. Block hired Facundo, who ran a private investigation agency operating in the tri-border area and Buenos Aires. Facundo helped the FBI identify a hit man and track him to Buenos Aires, where the Argentine police arrested him. The evidence pointed at the former business partner as the shot-caller, but the investigation had stalled. Facundo had warned the U.S. embassy that the killer was likely to be released. Official options had been exhausted.

As Facundo’s operative in the capital, Pescatore had been instructed to carry out the unofficial option.

“Doctor, this is the situation,” he said. “Bottom line: The judge is gonna cut this guy loose. Unless he gets paid. The figure they named is forty thousand dollars. We recommend paying. It should keep the suspect in jail and get the investigation moving again.”

The doctor stared with his defeated eyes. “If I may ask: How did they arrive at that particular price?”

“We think he got thirty thousand from the other side.”

“An auction.”

“Exactly. I feel terrible about it, but that’s the deal. We have an appointment with the judge this morning. If you approve.”

“I expected something like this. My in-laws and I agreed to spend what it takes. But Valentine, I don’t have forty thousand dollars on me.”

“Don’t you worry about that, Doctor,” Pescatore said. “Long as you got your checkbook, we’re fine.”

The hired Renault sedan took them down Nueve de Julio Avenue, the pulsing heart of the capital. A dozen lanes, a jam-packed river of traffic. They were en route to a
cueva,
a cave. A clandestine cash house.

“I come here every month to get dollars for my rent,” Pescatore said. “It’s illegal to use U.S. dollars, but I’m contractually obligated. I give my landlady an envelope full of bills, like a drug deal or something.”

The driver, Fabián, negotiated the traffic circle around the Obelisk at the intersection of Nueve de Julio and Corrientes. Fabián was one of Facundo’s regulars. He chewed a toothpick and wore the blue and yellow scarf of the Boca Juniors soccer team. Pescatore directed him through the narrow, congested streets of the old business district, the Microcentro, with its faded, 1970s air.

Pescatore and Block got out. Pescatore stayed close behind the client as he walked him across the street. His eyes swept the sidewalk, storefronts, parked and passing cars.

They entered a travel agency. Pescatore went up to a receptionist by a closed door and said the password: “Facundo’s American friend.”

The receptionist pushed a buzzer. A narrow flight of stairs led to a space enclosed by curtained cubicles. There was a table in the middle of the old brown carpet. The master of ceremonies, a mix of clerk and sergeant with rolled-up sleeves, stood behind the table. Pescatore had privately nicknamed him Mr. Guita, a slang term for money.

“Pescatore,” Mr. Guita said.

The establishment prided itself on discretion. Mr. Guita dispensed black-market cash in an atmosphere reminiscent of a church or a hospital. Pescatore wrote down numbers. Mr. Guita gestured at a cubicle. Pescatore held the curtain for Dr. Block, then told him to write a check and leave the payee blank. Mr. Guita entered and put a large reinforced manila envelope on a table. He examined the check. He removed stacks of bills from the envelope, counted them, and put them back. Guita and Pescatore exchanged receipts. The moneyman nodded and disappeared through the curtain.

Before he and the doctor left the cubicle, Pescatore drew his gun. The doctor’s eyes widened. Pescatore put the Beretta in the side pocket of his jacket.

“Don’t be alarmed, Doctor,” he said. “I’m just taking appropriate precautions.”

Pescatore carried the envelope in his left hand. He kept the gun gripped in his pocket until they were speeding away. Replacing the gun in the holster, he hefted the envelope. The money made him nervous; he couldn’t wait to deliver it. Turning in his seat, he gave Block a reassuring grin.

“Gotta stay alert, Doctor. This city, it feels like Europe or something, right? People are sophisticated, educated, nice clothes and restaurants, beautiful women. But they’ll rob you at noon in front of City Hall.”

The courthouse was on the other side of the line between the city and the province of Buenos Aires. It was in an uneasy suburb where walled subdivisions, known as “countries,” (from the English term “country clubs”) abutted feral shantytowns, known as “villas.” The courthouse was a modern box that clashed with the cobblestones of the municipal plaza.

On the way up the front steps, Pescatore told Dr. Block that the judge did not speak much English. There was a prearranged signal. If the judge displayed a purple handkerchief, they would hand over the bribe. If he showed a white handkerchief, a problem had arisen that would require further parley.

“Either way, I’ll have us outta there as fast as I can,” Pescatore whispered. “Apparently this thing with the handkerchief is like the judge’s little trademark. The scumbag.”

They were received by a middle-aged woman in designer glasses who introduced herself with self-important severity as the judge’s secretary. She led them at a hip-swinging, forced-march pace through high-ceilinged hallways. In a busy room with fluorescent lights, they passed two officers in berets—penitentiary police—flanking a prisoner who was being questioned by a civilian at a computer. Personnel talked loudly to one another and into phones. A uniformed waiter went by carrying a tray of steaming coffee cups one-handed. Yellowing file folders bulged on shelves, overflowed a cart, covered desks, and climbed in stacks along the walls.

The atmosphere changed in the judge’s office. Muted lighting bathed paneled wood. Tall windows showed greenery. The decorations consisted of crucifixes, religious art—writhing Saint Sebastians riddled with arrows—and photos of the judge with big shots.

The judge was close to fifty, small and trim, a sandy goatee on a boyish face. His ears stuck out from the obligatory gelled and combed-back hair. His suit was double-breasted and snug. He talked through his nose in a sustained whine that blurred words together. He patted Dr. Block on the shoulder, addressing him across the chasm that separates people who speak different languages.

The judge’s desk faced three chairs. Pescatore nudged Block into the chair on the left and sat in the middle. He made a slow-motion show of putting the envelope on the chair to his right. The judge saw the envelope but kept talking. Pescatore struggled to translate for Block the verbal salvo about the size of the judge’s caseload, his sorrow for the doctor’s loss. The judge paused, appraising Pescatore.

“I’ve seen you before, young man,” he said, surprising Pescatore with the informal
vos
appellation. “In the courthouse. You are Argentine, no?”

“No, sir, I—”

“I don’t remember the case. Were you an investigator? Or a defendant?” The smile displayed symmetrical, shimmering teeth. “You aren’t a crook, are you?”

Pescatore stiffened. “I was a federal police officer in the United States. An agent of the Border Patrol. It’s like the Gendarmería here—”

“It was a joke, friend, a joke,” the judge said with a chuckle. Then he launched into an explanation of how the calamitous disorder of the legal system was impeding his valiant efforts to keep the accused killer of the doctor’s son locked up.

A phone rang on the desk. The judge answered, engaged in animated conversation, laughed, and hung up. He turned to his computer screen and typed, no doubt answering e-mails, while he complained about the do-gooders and human rights activists who had teamed up to install revolving doors for hoodlums in courtrooms across the nation.