Twenty-Seven

Stepping out of the street and into Café Tortoni was like moving from one world to another. There was a long bar on one side of the room, marble pillars running down the center, and café tables everywhere with three or four chairs tucked in intimate groupings around each table. Even from the doorway, Hollis could see that it stretched far back, in multiple rooms, with small stained-glass panels separating areas. Art nouveau decorations and dark wood on the walls made the café look, not just plucked from Paris, but Paris circa 1900.

“She is beautiful,” the elegant man said. “Gorgeous.” He seemed pleased.

“I’m Tim McCabe,” Finn said, putting out his hand.

“Carlos Gardel.” He bowed a little before shaking Finn’s hand, then Hollis’s. “You have honored me with your presence.”

“Is this yours?” Hollis asked.

“Oh, no.” He blushed. “This is simply my favorite place in the city. Once a year I throw a party for some friends and rent out the whole restaurant.”

Hollis looked around. Bryan and Eduardo were at a table near one of the walls. There was a short, bald man in black, wearing a long white apron, holding a tray. But that was it.

“Are we early? We were told to be ready at eight.”

Carlos shook his head. “You are my party,” he said. “I did not wish to share you with too many others.”

At least they wouldn’t have to worry about being recognized, Hollis thought. She saw Finn let out a breath. Maybe they could do this.

Carlos signaled the waiter, who nodded and disappeared, only to return moments later with a bottle of champagne wedged into an ice bucket, and four champagne glasses.

“There’s at least a fourth person coming,” Hollis said as the waiter poured the champagne.

“My wife. She takes too much time to ready herself, I’m afraid.” His eyes moved up and down Hollis’s figure. “You look exquisite and manage to be on time.”

“The job demands it,” she said without thinking. She almost added that students won’t wait for a late professor but caught herself.

“That’s good to hear.” Carlos poured them each a glass of champagne. “I am of course interested in the property more than the man. But that is not my decision, you understand.”

“We appreciate the gift you sent,” Finn said. “It was an odd extrac-
tion from the US and left us no opportunity to gather our … belongings.”

Carlos looked, for the first time, unhappy. “This is my fault, entirely. But I’m grateful you’ll be able to end one headache for me, and I assure you I will end the other.”

Hollis sipped her champagne, unwilling to push the point further. Peter would want as much information as they could give him, but there was all evening. After a second sip, she felt a little lightheaded. She put her hand on a chair’s back to steady herself.

“I’m afraid we haven’t eaten much today,” she explained.

Carlos signaled the waiter again. “That I can fix.” He walked Hollis a few steps from Finn and put his hand on her back. “Your work is so interesting to me. And you seem, if you’ll forgive me, so unlike what I was expecting.”

“Ordinary?”

He smiled. “Yes, in a way.”

“Better to blend in.”

“Of course. You came highly recommended. How long have you known our mutual friend?”

She paused. “Long enough to earn his trust.” It had sounded like the perfect answer in her head, but as she spoke, she realized the friend could be a woman. There was no backtracking, so she hoped for the best.

“What I’m asking won’t trouble you? To have asked his help in finding you then to use it against him, you understand this is not my normal way of doing things, but the item is too valuable, the reward too tempting.”

“I understand. Business is business.”

He nodded. He seemed relieved by the answer. She was just happy to stop talking about their “friend.”

“It’s quite a beautiful place.” She glanced around the room. “Almost from another time.”

“Timeless.” Carlos breathed in the place. “It has been opened since 1858. Everyone has come here, and still comes here, to talk politics and life, to have a coffee … to be seen. Jorge Luis Borges had a regular table.”

Hollis nodded toward Finn. “He’s one of my husband’s favorite writers.”

Carlos’s face lit up. He turned to Finn, still standing near the champagne. “‘Any life is made up of a single moment …’”

“ ‘The moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is,’ ” Finn responded.

Carlos laughed. “One of my favorite sayings of Borges.”

“Mine too.”

“Let me find out who you are,” Carlos said.

“I’m just a man who likes to read,” Finn said.

“We have that in common.” Carlos abandoned her for Finn. The men sat at one of the small tables and Hollis could hear them talk about books.

Hollis looked to Finn, waiting for a sign of distress, but he seemed relaxed. He was wrong. Not only could he be in a room with killers, pretending to be one of them, he was good at it.

While the men talked about books, Hollis explored the place on her own. There were paintings and sketches on the walls from different time periods and in different styles, like might be collected over generations, and likely were, she imagined. There were also photos on the walls from more than a century of visitors and events. Waiters from the turn of the twentieth century stared out at her from one large photograph, looking quite ready to take her order. In another Albert Einstein leaned against the bar. And in a picture hanging toward the back, Robert Duvall smiled from a table.

In the corner of one of the many rooms, there were three figures in wax, a man and a woman seated, and a man standing next to their table.

“Borges,” a voice behind her said.

Hollis turned. It was Tomas Silva, looking sober and unhappy.

“Did you know that Borges was blind?” he said. “Not his entire life, but by his late thirties the light began to fade for him. It did not stop him from becoming a great writer.”

“Very inspiring.”

“Do you know the other figures at the table with Borges?”

“No.”

“The poet Alfonsina Storni,” Silva said. “And the tango legend Carlos Gardel.”

Hollis stared at the figure of the man who was standing, younger than the two others, wearing a gray double-breasted suit with a white pocket square and a light blue carnation in his lapel. Carlos Gardel. She leaned in and saw a small plaque. Her eyes went immediately to Gardel’s name, and the inscription 1890–1935. Of course the elegant man chatting with Finn hadn’t given his real name. Why should anything be that simple?

“He was the best tango singer in the country’s history,” Silva continued, with the melancholy tone of a man who was in mourning. “He died in a plane crash. Too young.”

“Very sad.”

Hollis was unsure what to make of Silva. He seemed exhausted and unhappy. It was unlikely that he would be able to do anything to help them, but perhaps he didn’t need the help. He was at this very exclusive party. He clearly had a connection to the man calling himself Carlos Gardel, so that had to be worth something.

“It’s a shame that someone with so much to offer is taken suddenly.”

“A sacrifice stays hidden only so long,” Silva said. “Once it is on display, the world can judge its worth. Remember this.”

Hollis was a life-long solver of crosswords, but even she was growing tired of the endless puzzles. If he was on their side, she longed for him to say it.

Instead he said, “I need a drink.”

“There’s champagne,” Hollis said. Based on their experience on the plane, Silva was easier to handle when he was drunk. He seemed to agree. He moved away from her toward the front room and the bar, leaving her with wax versions of three Argentinian legends and a very real problem of what to do next.