Miguel Fortunato’s comisaria sat in a three-story building in Ramos Mejia. Though fifteen miles distant from Buenos Aires proper, Ramos enjoyed a relative degree of prosperity, supporting a bustling five-block commercial zone and spreading out into the small neat concentrations of houses of the middle class. Further out the houses got smaller and crouched behind walls topped with broken glass. Here transpired the modest lives of the working class, for the last decade focused on the continual belt-tightening as their wages sank and their factories closed. In the ten years since the ascension of the down-thief President Menem, all except the wealthy were struggling to hold their places.
The Ramos Mejia Brigada de Investiciónes had a reputation for yielding a good haul. It was wealthy in stolen cars, drug distribution, clandestine lottery outlets and a rich network of protection rackets that took weekly payments from ambulant vendors, small businesses and the few remaining factories. These were the classics, but a good comisario could multiply his profits by making files disappear, freeing criminals, neglecting to arrest fugitives, or arresting those fugitives who could be squeezed for extra pesos. Fortunato kept a list of such unfortunates to be arrested and squeezed on a rotating basis. In a good month, the Brigada might bring in $100,000, and Fortunato parceled out the income according to a precise formula: a quarter for himself, a quarter for the patotas who made the collections, and half to be sent upstairs to the Chief.
Despite its robust income, the comisaria was innocent of the gleaming technology Fortunato saw on the North American police shows. Its communications room held a simple radio and several maps with colored pins to mark various crimes—red for robbery, blue for theft, black for assault. Typewriters hammered out denuncias on violet carbon paper. There was no fingerprint lab or interview room, and the evidence locker consisted of an old strongbox at the sole disposal of the one man most certain to compromise it: the Comisario.
Nonetheless, in the week before the gringa’s arrival Fortunato had tried to polish the fiction of crisp professionalism. The prisoners had been ordered to put a new coat of paint in the waiting room and to scrub the floor tiles with stiff brushes. Desks were neatened and the calabozos that housed the delinquents rinsed with antiseptic. They even dusted off the picture of the Virgin of Lujan that hung above the dispatch radio. He was telling a story now, a story of a hardworking detective eager to crack a case. A bit weary perhaps, a bit cynical, but nonetheless trustworthy and capable of wringing from the Buenos Aires underworld any justice that could be had.
The morning of La Doctora’s first visit seemed blessed by good omens. The night before they had arrested a pair of delinquents suspected in a series of auto thefts that had been allocating many red pins to the crime map in the Sala de Situaciones. He’d instructed the Sub-Comisario to leave their filed-down knives and key blanks on display to show the gringa when she arrived. As a bonus, one of the patotas had called in after tracking down a load of hijacked merchandise to a grocery store.
“Five thousand,” Fortunato told the Inspector over his cell phone.
“I tried five thousand, Comiso, but he says for five thousand he’ll take it up directly with the judge.”
“Tell him five thousand and if he doesn’t pay put him in cuffs right there and bring him in for processing. Tell him you’re seizing all the questionable merchandise and closing the store until the investigation is complete. When you get him in the car, tell him seven thousand, and that if you have to bring him here, it’s ten thousand. If not, he can try his luck with the laws of the Republic.”
“Fine, Comiso.”
He turned off the cell phone and heard a low chanting at his open door: “Bo-ca! Bo-ca! Bo-ca!”
It was Fabian, crowing about Boca’s victory over River in last night’s SuperClassic. River had lost it on a last-minute goal, enabled by a questionable hold by a Boca wing. Fortunato had bet on River.
“It was a foul, hijo de puta. The referee was in on it.”
Fabian strode in, one hand extended like an orator. “Comi! The SuperClassic is sacred! Even that jackal Morelo has to try to be honest for an hour and a half! Though the effort costs him.” Fabian was dressed today in a lime green jacket and a flamboyant tie plastered with little gold roosters.
Fortunato looked at the handsome, ridiculous man, with his curly blond hair and his clownish garb. “You would know,” he said, picking up his pen. “You’re the one who spends all his time at the stadium and the hippodrome.”
Fabian nodded at the Comisario’s freshly tidied office. “The place is looking good. Even the calabozos smell like a pine forest. La Doctora Fowler will be very impressed. What a piece of woman, no?” His superior’s annoyance at being stuck with the investigation returned all at once. “She’s here to investigate a homicide, Fabian, not to hear your verses. You made us look like idiots last night with your little story about being a writer.”
Fabian couldn’t seem to lose his smile. “But it’s true, Comiso!”
He held up his hand. “I know. You’re going to fill yourself with silver at any moment, and now is the chance for a smart woman to hook you and ride you to Hollywood.”
“Comi,” he gave an intimate little shrug, “I don’t have a monopoly on verses here.”
Fortunato leveled a long dusty gaze at his subordinate that, over the course of five seconds, dried up Fabian’s grin and sent his left hand fidgeting at the inside of his pocket. “Listen, Romeo, while the Doctora is here I want you to stay busy with your own investigations. If she asks you something about the Waterbury case, direct her to me.”
“That was a strange case, no? Six chalks of milonga and a dead foreigner. Domingo was telling me about it. Somebody was settling accounts.”
Fortunato’s stomach tightened at Domingo’s name. He didn’t welcome Fabian’s interest in the case. “Thus the theory.”
Fabian nodded. “I looked over the expediente a few months ago. Nothing’s going to come out of that mess.” Fortunato didn’t answer and Fabian dropped it. “Whatever, it should be interesting to work with a police from the United States,” he said.
“She’s not a police. She’s a professor. A specialist in Human Rights.”
Fabian raised his eyebrows and shook his head, laughing as he turned to leave the office. “This is a thing of gringos!”
She arrived promptly at eleven o’clock, accompanied by a young weightless attaché from the United States embassy. The embassy man, a Mr Wilbert Small, introduced himself with an accent that tried hard to accommodate the Italianate cadences of Buenos Aires. Fortunato could tell he was a man of little rank. If the embassy was serious, they would have sent over someone from the FBI. Fortunato offered them a coffee and ceremoniously took a few coins from a wooden box. He handed them to a sub-inspector and asked for him to bring three cortados, the thick spicy coffee with a dollop of milk.
They sat down and the embassy man started in with his embassy verses: the United States was grateful that the Bonaerense had agreed to indulge the family in one last attempt to put the case to rest.
“It’s a tragedy,” the Comisario said. “I’ll do everything possible.”
He and Wilbert Small chatted lightly about Argentina and the United States for a few minutes until the diplomat left them to attend an important reunion of the Anglo-Argentine Cultural Society. Fortunato shut the door after him and sat down alone with La Doctora. He wanted to find out what suspicions she entertained about the case.
“Doctora Fowler,” he began, “something I want to say from the start. I know that your training is in human rights, and, while I know that those issues are extremely important, especially with our recent history here in Argentina, I don’t feel that we’re dealing here with a human rights violation. Our indications are that this is a simple criminal case. Is there something that makes you think otherwise?”
“I think it’s always better to begin without preconceptions,” she said a little too crisply. She seemed to regret her brusqueness and flashed an apologetic smile, then opened a notebook and glanced quickly at a few pages of notes. “I’d like to go over briefly some of the details of the case, Comisario Fortunato. When the family was contacted by the US consulate it was told that Waterbury’s death was considered a suicide.”
“I think that was a confusion, perhaps because the cause of death was identified by the mortuary as a shot to the head. I remind you that it happened on a weekend, when I have my days off, and I think that Sub-Comisario Alper, who was on duty at that time, unfortunately didn’t communicate clearly.”
She pursued the theme. “I was told the body had several other bullet wounds and was discovered in a burning car. It seems a little bit demanding of Sub-Comisario Alper to expect a man to shoot himself several times, get out of his car, set it on fire, then get back in, put on handcuffs and shoot himself in the head with a second gun.” She softened the implications with a little shrug. “Wouldn’t you say so?”
Her attack on the most obvious flaw in the investigation unsettled Fortunato a bit, but could not disturb his tranquil exterior. “Doctora Fowler, of course the confusion of suicide was an error in communication either on the part of Sub-Comisario Alper or by the embassy staff, and I apologize for the anguish that must have added for the family.”
She reached absently for her gold necklace and twined it between her fingers for a moment. “After that, at the family’s request, the embassy made some inquiries and was told that it was a suspected drug-related homicide. Even though the family informed them that Robert Waterbury had no criminal record and no history of drug use.” Her voice became at once accusatory and tentative. “Why did the investigation stop with that conclusion?”
Fortunato cleared his throat. He meant to say that it would be logical for a man to conceal drug use from his family, but the inquisition of La Doctora’s silence sent him off track. He remembered Domingo sprinkling the chalks in the back seat and Vasquez, with his goatee and his earrings, cursing at Waterbury’s twitching body. The victim’s last silent plea for help. “It seems . . .” A few seconds passed, but the room—usually so fertile with such answers—was still empty. “Forgive me, Doctora Fowler. At the time of this investigation my wife was dying of cancer and perhaps I delegated more than I should have. I am to blame.” Fortunato hadn’t expected to use that excuse; it had floated up by itself, out of character, but its effect wrote itself instantly on Athena Fowler’s face. Her features softened and she seemed lost for a moment. “I’m very sorry, Comisario Fortunato. When did she pass away?”
“Three weeks ago.” He looked away from her. So strange to confess it to her like this. He barely mentioned Marcela’s death to anyone else. Her next words caught him off guard.
“I know how difficult it is. My father died six weeks ago of cancer.” She pulled the chain from beneath her blouse and showed him a gold wedding band. “This was his.”
They sat in the altered silence for a moment. Fortunato felt off balance, resisting the urge to talk with her about watching Marcela wither away before the ferocious onslaught of the cancer. The sub-inspector knocked on the door with the coffees and a few slender paper tubes filled with sugar. He distributed them and left, and they uttered a few nonsense phrases while they put sugar in the cups. Wilbert Small’s abandoned cortado sat cooling on the tray.
He cleared his throat, returning to the task at hand. “As to the matter of drugs: you’re aware that several chalks of chlorhydrate of cocaine were discovered in the automobile?”
He could tell the news surprised her. “No.” She hesitated, embarrassed. “What do you mean by a “chalk” of cocaine?”
Fortunato grimaced, reluctant at having to deliver such inauspicious details. “A chalk is a little cylinder that the traffickers compress the cocaine into for smuggling. One of the traffickers” methods is to stuff the drug into a rubber balloon and have the accomplice swallow many of these balloons. When we find a chalk, it’s almost always in a concentrated form and involves someone who is distributing the drug as a business.”
“That doesn’t match anything I was told about Robert Waterbury.”
“This is how I hoped you could help me, Doctora Fowler. It’s very difficult to investigate a case like this solely on the forensic evidence. To understand it better, I need to know more about the victim. Why did Señor Waterbury come to Buenos Aires? What was he doing here?”
“As I told you, Robert Waterbury was a writer, and he came here to research a book he hoped to write. His wife said it was supposed to be some kind of detective novel set here, a thriller.”
“And why Buenos Aires?”
“I believe he thought it would make an exotic setting for his book. He lived down here for several years about ten years ago. He was working for AmiBank.”
Fortunato smiled and indulged himself, guessing that his words would resonate with a woman involved with human rights. “AmiBank!” he said brightly. “The famous money launderers! If he worked for them ten years ago, he had a front row seat to the most predatory of the privatizations and debt re-financing.”
He’d hit it right on. The gringa couldn’t suppress the trace of enthusiasm that broke through her gray professionalism. “You know about AmiBank?”
“Señorita,” he cocked his eyebrows slyly, “here I apprehend those miserable chorros that grab a moto or rob a house. Of the experts, I can only read in the newspaper!” He held up his finger. “If I remember well, AmiBank was involved in the Aerolíneas privatization. Of the demonstration we saw yesterday?”
She was conspiratorial now. “In the United States all you see are commercials with friendly employees helping young couples buy a house.”
“Thus the machine,” Fortunato said.
Fortunato knew that in a real investigation he would exhume Waterbury’s former contacts at AmiBank, search through his address book, subpoena his hotel’s telephone records and try to trace every movement he’d made since landing at Ezeiza. Instead, he crunched his brows together. “But you were telling me about Robert Waterbury. You said he was a writer. Writers are famous for their problems with money. What was Señor Waterbury’s economic situation before he came here?”
He could see La Doctora considering the possibility. “It was a bit difficult, according to his wife.”
“Did he have many debts?” Fortunato asked gently.
“I think he did. Yes. His wife said he wanted to write something more commercial, that he could do quickly.”
“So,” Fortunato nodded, allowing just a trace of self-righteousness to enter his voice, “he did have money problems. And so we could say that the Homicide investigators who worked on the case, Inspectors Velez and Braun, were not completely unjustified in thinking that the presence of the chlorhydrate of cocaine might indicate some sort of settling of accounts by colleagues within the drug business, or perhaps a deal that went bad. When people have large debts, Doctora, they are inclined to do things they wouldn’t normally do.”
Her protest sounded hopelessly innocent. “But it seems completely out of character!”
He put on his Good Cop face. “Doctora Fowler, we live in a world of appearances. It’s quite logical that Robert Waterbury might want to conceal some aspects of his character, or even that his wife might prefer not to cloud his memory. We all want others to believe in the image that we create for them, because it helps us to believe it ourselves. But me, after thirty-seven years as a policeman,” shaking his head gently, “I have lost interest in appearances.” A strange shudder passed over him as he said it, a sensation of detachment from himself. He didn’t know why things were going so far off course. “Perhaps this is a good time to examine the expediente,” he suggested, indicating the judicial archives of the case. “In an investigation like this, one should always begin with the facts.”
He felt his cell phone chirping in his pocket and held up his hand toward Doctora Fowler as he answered it. His investigator had just taken the cuffs off the grocery store owner and turned him out of the car. They’d gotten six thousand from him.
The expediente of a crime in Buenos Aires is as baroque and ostentatious as the city itself. The investigation is directed by a lawyer working for the judicial system and called an On-Duty judge. The judge decides what steps to take and the police carry them out. As evidence and testimonies are gathered, the judge issues new directives and the police diligently respond. This vast inquiry unfolds across hundreds of pages contributed by the Departmento of this, the Ministerio of that, by police stations and laboratories and morgues. Judge’s orders go out lathered with seals and signatures and are answered with the dignified medallions of the comisarios and their clerks. Dozens of declaraciónes unwind in a tone of cool detachment, and a parade of photographs bolsters these testaments with shots of bullet-riddled cars and sequestered evidence. At last come the portraits of the unfortunate dead, sheathed with blood, shirttails untucked, captured at the most inopportune moment of their lives. An aura of absolute fact prevails—the perfect setting for absolute fiction.
Fortunato drew the folder out of a scratched metal filing cabinet.
The packet had the thickness of a small-town telephone book, cluttered with papers that shimmied out at the top and sides. He led Athena into a conference room with a scarred wooden table and motioned to a seat opposite himself.
“I can only show you the photocopies,” he said. “The original is at the Judicial Deposit.”
The first declaration described the arrival on the scene. Fortunato could imagine the clerk’s disinterested typing as the officer related his name, parents’ names, rank, age and civil status. After a half page of such preamble, the story began:
At approximately 01:38 the declarant was directed by radio dispatch of Comisaria #35 of San Justo to report to the 1400 block of Avenida Santana, district of La Matanza, at the crossing of Calle Avellaneda.
A narrow lot between two abandoned factories, their long empty walls closing off the view. Broken glass and a few burnt-out cars left by dismantlers, lit only by the pink glow of the city lights against the thick mist. Fortunato had known the place because his brigada used to provide “security” for the factories until Chinese imports had driven them out of business. He had chosen it with the same care with which he’d conducted the surveillance and planned the abduction.
He and Domingo had watched Waterbury for five days, noting his movements and his habitual places. Waterbury went around with a pretty woman who frequented the Bar Azul, some sort of tango dancer. He had a friend who worked at Grupo AmiBank in the financial district, someone high enough in the hierarchy to have a car waiting for him after work each day. Another day Waterbury was visited by a woman who arrived in a limousine and carried a cardboard portfolio, returning twenty minutes later without it. A curious assortment. With more time and more men he would have found out everything about the target and his associates, but this was only a squeeze, so they did the minimum and marked out the night.
Waterbury had gone to dinner at his habitual restaurant and Onda, the lookout, advised them on the radio when he paid the bill. He came strolling toward the entrance to his pension seventeen minutes after midnight. The building on the corner was getting a new facade, and Fortunato approached him behind a large container full of construction debris.
“Señor Waterbury,” he’d said, addressing him like an acquaintance.
Waterbury stopped short. Maybe he’d already been jumpy, or perhaps he sensed Domingo and Vasquez approaching ten meters behind him. Maybe he realized that the scaffolding and debris concealed him from the street.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Fortunato had said, appealing to his ego. “May I chat with you for a few minutes?”
“About what?”
He shrugged. “Not about big things. Just to chat.”
“Who are you?”
By then Domingo and Vasquez had caught up with Waterbury, and as he heard their brisk footsteps among the crumpled papers he turned. Domingo had the stun gun out. “Excuse me,” Domingo said in a friendly voice. “Is there a problem here?” This confused Waterbury for just the amount of time necessary for Domingo to close in and hit him with fifty thousand volts. Waterbury went down and in less than ten seconds they had him cuffed and in the car. Domingo pushed him to the floor. “Tell Onda to follow us closely,” Fortunato told Vasquez. When they drove off Waterbury was still disoriented, indignantly demanding answers from below. Domingo said admiringly “They’re very good, these little machines, no? In the old days, you’d have to split their heads open to be sure they were down.” Only thirty, Domingo referred to the days of the Dictatorship like a golden era. That puffy dark smile in the rear-view mirror. Fortunato said nothing.
There the declarant found an auto Ford Falcon, sedan, color metalized gray, interior color light brown, serial #A287-56682-306-1986, with the front doors closed and the rear doors open. The auto was burning, with most of the damage being in the front section, around the motor. Both rear doors were open, and the deceased could be seen on the rear seat, stained with a substance that resembled human blood, apparently dead. The firemen of Cuartel de Bomberos de San Justo arrived at approximately 01:40 and rapidly controlled the fire.
Waterbury’s voice came up from below the seat. “What is this about?” Domingo had his foot on Waterbury’s head so that he couldn’t rise, and Fortunato saw Domingo shift positions as he shoved the gringo’s face into the thin carpet. “Don’t be clever,” Domingo snarled at him. “You know why you’re here.”
“If you move I’ll blow your balls off!” Vasquez added. His nose was running and his greasy auburn hair flopped across his forehead as he looked down at the gringo. The gold hoops glinted in his ear.
“Is this Carlo?” the writer had asked in a muffled voice. “Did Carlo send you? Tell him he’s made a mistake!”
None of them answered. Carlo who? They let the silence work on Waterbury as they crossed into the exurbs of La Matanza.
“Tell Don Carlo that he has nothing to worry about,” Waterbury said from the floor and then yelped, which told Fortunato that Domingo had kicked him in the head again.
“Tranquilo,” Fortunato said in his calmest voice.
Waterbury spoke again after a few minutes, sounding more frustrated than fearful. “I didn’t do anything! You understand? You have to tell him that. Or better, I’ll tell him. Take me to him right now and I’ll explain the whole thing myself.”
“Of course,” Domingo laughed. “But no one needs your explanation.”
Fortunato sensed that even now Waterbury retained a certain amount of composure. Still banking on his passport. He probably thought that things like this didn’t happen to people like him.
“Listen, tell Señor Pelegrini that all I want to do is go home to my wife and daughter and forget all about this. I know nothing and I care about nothing. Understand?”
Carlo Pelegrini. The vaguely familiar name made Fortunato uneasy, but then Domingo kicked another yelp out of the gringo. “Shut up, faggot! Nobody wants to hear your lies!” Fortunato took a breath and reassured himself. Waterbury was a blackmailer and he had to learn the hard way. It was a necessary part of the operation.
They’d reached the poorer streets where the houses became scabbed with tar paper and corrugated tin. Weedy lawns languished beside vacant lots. Onda’s headlights in the rear view mirror. The Northamerican couldn’t see anything, but maybe he sensed that he had reached his ultimate destination. Fortunato could hear a new timbre in his voice. Now he was truly afraid. “This is Renssaelaer, isn’t it? Renssaelaer sent you.”
The sound of the gringo name puzzled the Comisario. Renssaelaer . . . and Pelegrini . . . What was this?
“Tell Señor Renssaelaer he has nothing to fear from me. I’m going home and I won’t tell anyone. I’ll go home tomorrow!”
The fire extinguished, the declarant examined the body and found it without signs of life. The cadaver was of masculine sex, in a fetal position with his dorsal side to the back of the car and his head towards the passenger side. The cadaver’s hands were cuffed in front of him, with handcuffs of make Eagle Security.
Idiot Domingo! To leave the cuffs at the scene! Eagle Security was the police brand. Why didn’t he just write down his badge number on the dashboard! The gringa was scribbling something in her notebook, something about the handcuffs, and he felt his stomach tighten.
The cadaver presented five wounds, presumably from firearms, one in the left hand through the palm, one in the left thorax, frontal zone, one in the frontal zone of the right thigh, one in the testicles and rectum, one in the right temple apparently exiting through the left socket.
“They tortured him!” La Doctora said, shuddering. Her sharp green eyes flickered into Fortunato’s.
Fortunato didn’t answer, hiding in the dispassionate typescript of the declaration. Finally he croaked, “The one in the hand is a defensive wound.”
The night was going off again, like an alarm. Domingo and Vasquez in the back seat, Vasquez with his swastika tattoos and his papelitos of merca one after the other. Vasquez, an addled coil of blue-tinted muscles, a guapo of the new style, always ready for a fight, but preferring a few bullets pumped from behind to a head-on contest with knives. Bad news from the start, and now coked up so high that his eyes were blazing. They’d pulled Waterbury upright in the seat so they could hit him in the face more easily, Domingo shouting, “You think yourself clever!” A blow. Waterbury’s nose bleeding, his eye swelling up. “You think yourself clever, eh?” Waterbury no longer protesting about Carlo Pelegrini. He kept looking at Fortunato because Fortunato was older, the orderly one with the comprehending face and the voice of a kind uncle. Fortunato tried to tell him with his eyes, Bear up, hombre. Nothing’s going to happen.
“I have a wife and daughter,” the gringo said to him. “You know that?”
Vasquez spitting at his victim, “We’ll fuck your wife in front of the daughter, and then we’ll kill everybody.” Waterbury still looking at him over the seat as if they were in this together, because, after all, he was the Good Cop. And Domingo was supposed to scare him. He was the Bad Cop.
The following items were collected from the floor of the car. Rear seat section: one bullet, apparently 9mm. Five shell casings, four .32 caliber, make: Remington. One 9mm, make: Federal.
La Doctora scribbled another flurry of words in her notebook.
Three pieces of blue metalized paper, each containing traces of a white substance, similar to that known as chlorhydrate of cocaine . . .
Vasquez’ ten-peso folders. Domingo, getting out to piss and making that long loud snuffing sound and turning to the car again with the white crust of merca hanging from his nose.
“Son of a bitch, what are you doing? You can’t do that on a job!”
Domingo with shining eyes now: “Don’t fuck with me, Comi.”
Even Waterbury sensing that things were getting out of control. “Look—” the gringo began. Domingo grabbed his jaw and pulled his face close. “No, you look, faggot! You think you’re a clever gringo! More rapid than anyone else—”
Vasquez suddenly with his gun out, a little silver .32 automatic, putting it to Waterbury’s temple. “Is this clever, hijo de puta? Is this clever?”
Waterbury was starting to panic and Fortunato felt it spreading. “Put the gun away!” Command words, trying to stifle the hysteria that had invaded Vasquez” burning eyes. But Vasquez didn’t hear him. He was in it already, his little fantasy of power, owner of life and death. As Fortunato watched he took the gun and pointed it down again, grinding the barrel into the writer’s thigh and then, with a twitch that came from the drugs, or maybe from the writer’s involuntary flinch, the gun exploded.
The rest happened before Fortunato could move. Waterbury thrust his manacled hands towards the gun, wrestling it sideways, and it went off again.
Vasquez screamed. “Aaaah! My foot! You son of a bitch!” and in the dirty light Fortunato saw the gun come up again. Domingo shouting, “No, idiot, you’ll hit me!” and grabbing at the little packet of dull silver, and for a moment four hands contested. It went off again, blasting through Waterbury’s hand and into his chest, and at this Domingo managed to wrestle the pistol free. Vasquez was howling and swearing, Waterbury instinctively putting his hands up for protection.
“Puta!” Domingo screamed, and he lowered the gun and shot directly into Waterbury’s groin. In five seconds, everything had gone out of control. Vasquez was cursing and Waterbury was screaming and twisting on the bloody vinyl. “Give me that, Domingo.” Fortunato reached for the barrel of the gun and peeled it down and sideways out of Domingo’s hand. Waterbury was still writhing.
Domingo was cursing at him. The gunshots had roused Onda from the second car and he was staring into the window with his mouth open. Onda, Vibe, only twenty-one, just a hippy thief hired to drive a car, not to witness a murder.
Fortunato ordered Domingo out of the car and then went around and pulled the wounded Vasquez out, throwing him into the mud. The dome light cast a dirty gray film over the seat and the bloody victim. Waterbury was rolling on the seat in torment. Fortunato knew the Northamerican was screaming, but as he looked at him he was conscious only of a deep sense of silence that seemed to engulf the car and the arid vacant lot. The wound in Waterbury’s inner thigh was bleeding heavily and his groin was worse. He had another wound in his chest, and Fortunato could see blood bubbling in with his saliva. His eyes looked like those of a deep-sea fish pulled suddenly to the surface. Fortunato took out his Browning. He could feel Onda watching him.
People said that the first person you killed was always the worst. “Look, hombre,” the Chief had told him at a barbecue the following week. “There are unpleasant things to be done and one has to have the balls to do them. That’s how it was during the war and that’s how it is now. This Waterbury was mixed up in something.” He’d spotted Fortunato’s discomfort. “Besides, the truth is that it was the other two morons that killed him. You just put him out of his misery. Should you have let him suffer for a few more hours?”
La Doctora reached the end of the first declaration and hurried through photocopies of various receipts and credentials. The first photos of the crime scene stiffened her.
Even in black and white, they were horrific. The first was an exterior of the car with the back door hanging open. The front of the car was blackened from the fire, its hood flung open. The windshield was shattered by the heat. Through the dark opening in the door projected a shoe, and a leg in light-colored trousers.
The next photo was closer, through the open window. Waterbury lay on the seat with his mouth half-open, his skin laced by rivulets of black blood. The next photo was a closeup.
Athena gasped, turning away and dosing her eyes.
Fortunato stared dumbly at the photo, remembering how it had looked the night of the operativo, the haze of gun smoke in the auto, Waterbury’s last twitches as he settled into the seat. Behind him Domingo: “You calmed the hijo de puta, Comi.” Yes, everything was calm. And then the next day, at the clinic, when the doctor told Marcela why she was losing so much weight, it had just kept getting calmer and calmer. She’d given up and dissolved away, leaving only that calm empty house that found him every evening. Perhaps like the house of Robert Waterbury.
A clerk knocked at the door and thrust his head in. “Comisario, forgive the interruption. Something has happened outside.”
Fortunato came to his feet and hurried out, followed by the Doctora.
A dog lay bloody and yelping in the road beside an unmarked police car while the driver, Inspector Domingo Fausto, was fending off the furious attack of an eight-year-old boy. Fortunato recognized the dog and the little boy as residents of the house across the street. He always kept a few pieces of candy in his pocket to give him when he passed by.
“Chico!” He grasped the little boy’s shoulders from behind and pulled him away from Domingo. The boy’s face was flushed and shining with tears.
“It wasn’t my fault, Comiso,” Domingo began, flustered. “The dog jumped out from between the cars.” He turned to the boy. “Why didn’t you hold onto him, retard!”
The child’s anger collapsed into a whimper and he bent down close to the dog and stroked his head. “Tiger!” he cried. “Tiger!” The dog’s front legs waggled uselessly before its crushed body, and Fortunato could assess the hopelessness at a glance. He looked back at Domingo, who dismissed it all with a click of his tongue and a toss of his head. Beyond them, La Doctora was watching.
“Take care of it,” Fortunato told him under his breath, then he crouched down to the boy’s level and turned on him the full sympathy of his weary face. “Chico, come with me over to the kiosk. Let’s get a soda. I want to explain something to you.”
“But what about Tiger?”
“Tiger is badly off, but we’re going to help him. Come on. What kind of soda do you like?” Fortunato put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and began leading him across the street to the kiosk. The dog was still yelping, now with a gasping labored chortle in it.
The boy hesitated. “But Tiger—”
“I’m going to get you a new dog.” Fortunato steered the skinny shoulder blades away from the street. The harsh report of Domingo’s .25 automatic leapt off the pavement behind them, and the boy broke free and spun around. Domingo was standing over the shuddering animal in a little cloud of gun smoke, and the boy put his hands on his ears and began screaming, his eyes wide open, screaming. He took a step towards Domingo and the dog, looked at it, then turned towards Fortunato with an expression of misery and disbelief. He shook free and ran off down the street with his hands waving above his head, slicing the leafy air with his high-pitched shrieks. Fortunato watched him disappear behind the parked cars of the shady lane.
He walked slowly back to Domingo. The officer’s corpulent features reflected the satisfaction of a job well done, the trace of a grin humping up his oily cheeks. “It wasn’t my fault. He has to learn to take care of his pets.” He knelt down to put the small automatic back into his ankle holster, oblivious to the intensity of Fortunato’s stare. “What a mess,” Domingo said, as he glanced at the ruined corpse. He stood up and gave a tiny shrug. “I did him a favor by killing him.”