Athena sat back in the conference room and thought about the morning. It wasn’t easy getting her bearings after a day like this: first the glad-handing introduction by Wilbert Small, then the graphic photos that had showed her up as an amateur. The bizarre incident with the dog had capped everything. Even the Comisario seemed shaken up by that one: after the little boy’s screaming exit he’d left her to examine the expediente alone, under the sacred gazes of General San Martin and the Blessed Virgin of Lujan.
From the time she’d gotten off the plane she’d been trying to focus on the inquiry, bur the buzz of arrival kept sweeping her away. It was cool to have a delegation of cops pick her up at the airport, to have the clerks at a big fancy American hotel call her Doctor Fowler and charge it all to Uncle Sam. Just to be in Buenos Aires investigating felt spy-like and thrilling. Despite the murder at the center of this inquiry and the vertigo of potential failure, some small dirty part of her kept patting herself on the back. Now, though, she had to produce some results. She began leafing through the stack of documents before her.
She had seen plenty of pompous Latin American documents before, but the expediente had the surreal feel of a story by Cortazar. The initial pages had to do with the crime scene and the evidence found there, but after that the paperwork began to multiply in number and complexity. Declarations were made by ambulance attendants and tow-truck drivers. Forensics tests were ordered and carried out. The police dragged the hapless owner of the stolen car in for questioning and, as a final irony, processed him for an unpaid traffic ticket. Several declaraciónes attested to the trajectory of the body’s paper-strewn final tour, with receipts signed by the responding police officer, the ambulance driver, the clerk at the morgue, the forensic surgeon, the mortuary, and a bill of 198 pesos accepted by the United States Consulate for cremation. Despite the copious information, the scene yielded surprisingly few clues. Waterbury’s body had been stripped of identification and had lain in the morgue for two weeks before the missing persons reports plucked him out. Somewhere beneath all the cold, objective description, the man who had been Robert Waterbury had endured his last brutal minutes of fear and pain.
One document emerged from the blur to claim her attention. The coroner had inventoried the victim’s clothing, analyzing the blood stains and the entry and exit holes of the various bullets. There, in that long list, One pair of pants, type Khaki, with a label that says “Allesandro Bernini, Industria Italia, Pura Cotone” stained with a redbrown substance consistent with human blood, with a hole in the right thigh, front part. Then, in a detail that seemed to have been overlooked by the responding officers, In the watch pocket of the pants, a blue piece of paper inscribed 4586I92I—Teresa.
Teresa. What did it mean to find a woman’s phone number in a dead man’s pocket? Athena copied it into her notebook, resolving to keep it to herself for the time being. Teresa. Maybe nothing: the telephone of a woman who did clothing alterations, an employee at a photocopy shop. The real problem with the number was the fact that no one had yet bothered to call it.
The investigation up to that point had been almost willfully torpid, and Comisario Fortunato had as much as admitted it. Nothing shocking about that. The Bonaerense had a damning resume in the files of the various human rights organizations she had contacted, and she had known that their methods wouldn’t conform to the strictures of the police handbooks she’d read as preparation for this assignment. What made things weirder was the knowledge that all policemen older than their early forties had been active during the time of the Dictatorship. Who were these middle-aged men that greeted her, these Sub-Comisarios and Sargentos that shook her hand with such formal courtesy in the hallways? Nightmare panoramas kept ghosting through her imagination: a Sub-Co standing above a hooded prisoner or hustling someone into an unmarked car. On the other hand, Comisario Fortunato seemed all the opposite. His exhausted dignity had something comforting about it. He’d admitted the mistakes of the previous investigation and taken responsibility for them. As the single person in the Bonaerense on whom her success depended, she had no choice but to get along with him, but it went deeper than that. At a level she hated to admit to herself, Fortunato’s weary face and quiet manner reminded her of her father.
She put her pen down on the expediente and slumped into her chair. Her father had always been a man to play along, an Insurance Adjuster given to describing things in measured and reasonable terms even when a situation was patently obscene. It had infuriated her growing up; she’d preferred the fearless combative style of her mother, whom she had once seen slap a clerk for insulting a black woman. In the end, though, she had learned from her father. At dozens of State Department cocktail parties and conferences she had played the bright young technocrat, discussing American training of torturers or aid to fascist regimes with the cheerful detachment of one who had no political bias. She learned to discuss those horrors the way the remote language of the expediente described Robert Waterbury’s murder, speaking of devastated Latin American economies as if they were simply imperfect markets, stressing that human rights had to be viewed “in context.” She sent a hundred follow-up letters and placed a thousand business cards with all her father’s insurance-man thoroughness. All in the hope that when it came time to send someone to El Salvador to observe an election, or to author a report on the effect of crop substitution in the Bolivian Chapari, they might remember her name and face, the authentic sound of the Spanish words dropped into conversation. At last her acting paid off in a phone call from Senator Braden’s office. There was a matter in Argentina to investigate, a question about a human rights violation of an American citizen. Might she be available?
After that the interview with Waterbury’s wife, still oppressed by the murder and its clumsy inquiry. Naomi Waterbury had met her at the door with a grievous, distrustful stare, her handsome features spoiled by the loose crescents under her eyes and the bitter turn of her mouth. She described her husband’s life carefully, struggling to keep a distance from her grief. The State Department’s sudden flourish of goodwill had not appeased her, and as they talked her manner seemed to churn slowly through resentment, nostalgia and a mutilated sort of hope.
Her husband, she said, was a writer. He had freelanced for various magazines and had written two novels. The first novel had gone well, and the second had gone badly. He’d gone to Buenos Aires to research a third, a detective thriller, which he’d hoped would resuscitate his career. “He wanted to write something commercial,” she said. “His first two books were literary, and after the second one failed, he thought he should just try to write whatever the market wanted. I hated to see him setting out to write something mediocre, just for the money.” She sighed. “I supported him in it because he was desperate. We were all desperate.”
“Mrs Waterbury, did your husband give any indication that he was involved in anything dangerous? Did he show any sort of alarm?”
She hesitated as she braced herself against the memories. “At first he talked about the people he’d met, how good it was to be back in Buenos Aires. He used to see one of his old banking friends, I think his name was Pablo. Then, he started to sound a little . . . evasive. He said he was on to something that would take care of us, but he wouldn’t say what. He seemed a little ashamed of it. I think something was going on, but he didn’t want me to worry about it, which of course worried me more. The last time he called he sounded tired and upset. He said he’d had enough, he was coming home.” Her face suddenly seemed to lose its internal structure and to twist into something child-like and hurt. “That was the day before they found his body!”
It was devastating to watch, and it made Athena say something she never should have, an unkeepable promise uttered in a low voice as she reached out and touched the widow’s shoulder: “I’ll find out what happened to your husband, Naomi.”
The fastidious details of the expediente had become impenetrable now. She sighed and picked up yesterday’s newspaper from the Comisario’s desk. A certain Carlo Pelegrini was decorating the headlines in a scandal which she’d arrived too late to make sense of. Something complicated about bribery and the Argentine postal service. She saw the name of the president and various Air Force officers. Someone knocked on the door. A cloud of green wavered in the frosted glass.
“Ah, Doctora Fowler! I see you’re already on the march.”
Fabian was lighting up the gray confines of the police station with a parrot green sports jacket and a pink shirt, an outfit he could carry off by virtue of his handsome face and thick blond ringlets. Gold roosters crowed on his silk tie.
“Inspector Diaz!”
“Please,” he said in English, giving her one of those handsome-man smiles, full of laughter and warmth. “I am Fabian!” He came into the room without an invitation, and she caught his eyes traveling quickly down her body to her waist with a brief, almost professional scrutiny. As he bent down to kiss her on the cheek she smelled his cologne: a pleasant, spicy aroma, slightly intoxicating.
“Fabian. I didn’t realize you speak English.”
He stumbled on, his smile becoming slightly more labored. “Of course . . . I can speak!” He shrugged. “Of course!”
“That should serve you well in Hollywood.”
The grin hung on to his open mouth as he struggled to decide whether she was mocking him or not. “Actually,” he retreated, “I read English better than speak. Look . . .” He pulled an American paperback from his briefcase and continued in Spanish. “I’m studying the formula. Formula is everything.” He passed it to her and she glanced at the back cover.
Ever read a popular mystery and thought to yourself “I can write better than that!” Now you can! We will teach you:
• How to use clues to keep the reader guessing and the pages turning!
• Twelve secret techniques writers use to hook the reader from the start.
• How to structure your novel for a big Hollywood sale! It’s easy!
She handed it back to him.
“My cousin in Los Angeles sent it to me,” he said as he returned it to the case, then he shook his head in misty wonderment. “They stuff themselves with silver there!” The face of the literary enthusiast fell away, leaving that of the cool professional. “I’m familiar with the case you’re working on.”
“The Waterbury case?”
“Sí, Doctora. I work principally with Narcotics and Vice, but in a case like this, where a commercial quantity of drugs is found at a murder scene, Narcotics will often work with Homicide, to try to combine forces, so to speak.”
“You were one of the investigators?”
“Yes, Doctora.”
“I didn’t see your name on the expediente.”
“I was working more as an intellectual author of the investigation. Others filled out the papers.”
“Ah.” She frowned thoughtfully. “The intellectual author.” She couldn’t help but be amused by his pompousness. “Do you have some sort of theory?”
“Yes.” He sat down across from her. “You’ve read the expediente.”
“Part of it. It’s very long.”
“They all are. But you saw from the surgeon’s report that Waterbury seems to have been beaten, then shot several times with the same gun, and then executed with a mercy shot to the head with a second gun.”
The brutal sentence washed over her. “Yes.”
He continued in a monotone, his face taut. “The theory is thus: Señor Waterbury was killed in a settling of accounts.”
“That’s what Comisario Fortunato said.”
“And with good reason. But I have a way of seeing this murder that perhaps the Comisario doesn’t have, another perspective, one might say.” He leaned forward, and she could feel a strange intimacy come over the room, the first whiff of intrigue that she had always associated with Buenos Aires, with rainy streets and trench coats and German submarines. Fabian narrowed his eyes. “We must look at this investigation from the point of view of a detective novel.”
She didn’t have time to register her disbelief before he continued, his face transfixed by a dramatic squint.
“Our story begins at the theater of the crime. We can imagine Comisario Fortunato before the smoking automobile. A man is dead. The fabric of society has been torn, and only the Comisario can repair this damage by bringing the killer to justice. He examines the clues and tries to re-enact the crime in his head. In the case of Waterbury we have a body containing three .32 caliber bullets. All are haphazard: the thigh, the hand—a defensive wound, probably—the thorax and the groin. All at extremely close range, what we call “clothes-burning” range, undoubtedly fired by someone sitting beside the victim. Then, the final authoritative shot of the 9mm, perhaps a disposition of the case by whoever was in charge. I see a chaotic situation. A struggle. Unexpected, because it’s very dangerous to go shooting a gun in the back seat of a car. If you want to execute someone, the classic way is to take them out of the car and put them on their knees, or lay them on the ground. That way, you’re shooting down, and the bullet won’t go flying off and hit someone else. No, this was something more panicked. Unplanned. Maybe it was a deal that went bad. Or maybe the intent was to intimidate him, and somehow it got out of control.”
He cocked his head. “If I was writing this particular detective story, that would be my theory. Waterbury was killed without intention.” He flipped his hands to the side as if he’d stumbled across a brilliant solution. “You should come out with me! I can tell you many interesting things! I can show you a bit of Buenos Aires. For example, have you been to San Telmo? It’s a very special barrio, with many night clubs and a lot of music.”
“Fabian—”
He lowered his voice, his rooster grin turning secretive. “And when we get to know each other better, perhaps I can tell you what my police story is about.”
She let a touch of annoyance into her voice. “Forget it. It’s not going to happen, Fabian.”
He dropped his head, his fingers to his brow. “What a beast I am!” Looking up at her, his smile shining out from his cloud of contrition. “I’m sorry, Doctora. You’re exotic here, and it made me step out of my routine. It’s not every day that a beautiful police woman from the United States shows up here in the provinces of Buenos Aires. Please forget what I said.”
“It’s fine, Fabian.”
Fortunato came in without knocking, and Fabian looked embarrassed. “Ah! Inspector Diaz!”
“Yes.” Fabian reached nervously for the knot of his tie. “We were just going over the expediente. I was telling her that the crime looks chaotic. Not like a calculated execution. Because of the pattern of the wounds from the .32.”
Fortunato didn’t move or speak, merely pursed his lips and looked absently at Fabian, before turning to Athena. “That was something I wanted to go into tomorrow. First, you should review the expediente without any preconceptions and then we can start considering theories.” He looked disapprovingly at Fabian. “But I see that Romeo has run ahead of us.”
The young officer crumpled like a napkin, and Athena felt sorry for him. Fortunato said, “If you are finished for the day, Doctora, I can drive you to your hotel.”
“Why did you call him Romeo?” she asked in his car.
Fortunato spoke diplomatically, in that reassuringly calm way that she’d grown to like. “Inspector Diaz has a certain taste for women. He has a pretty face and dresses well, as you can see. That’s why we call him Romeo. It’s okay. But, from time to time, Fabian confuses his role of policeman with his role of conquistador.”
“Don’t worry; it’s nothing I can’t handle. Do you think he’s really working on a police story to sell to Hollywood?”
Now Fortunato’s worn face turned to a grandfatherly smile. “I’m surprised he didn’t tell you he’s training to be the first Argentine astronaut.” He shrugged. “It could be. If he wrote a story about the hippodrome, or the football stadium, now there he has a great deal of expertise!” She laughed and Fortunato went on. “One thing you have to understand about the Porteño, the man of Buenos Aires. He’s an actor. And to be a good policeman, you have to be a good actor. Because people want to see that policeman face.” They were stopped at a light and Fortunato turned to her to show her his cara de policia. He raised his chin and frowned, transforming himself into a picture of implacable authority as he beckoned with his fingers. “You! Come here!” He glared behind the cold Fascist mask for a moment, and then broke into a smile. “Thus it is, youngster.”
The eerie flicker of identities hung in the car before dissipating in the sunny autumn afternoon. “So did Fabian work as an investigator on the case before?”
“Perhaps a little. Investigations are fluid. One works, one shares information. The truth is that the Waterbury investigation didn’t go far because of the lack of an initial clue. This isn’t the United States. Here, lamentably, there is a great lack of resources. We concentrate on the cases we have the best chance to solve. We can go to the judge’s office and you’ll see a heap of expedientes higher than Aconcagua.”
“I understand.”
“The muchachos tried. The vehicle was a stolen car with false papers. When they found the owner he had nothing to do with it.”
“But that didn’t stop you from processing him for a traffic infraction.”
A sleepy irony came across the Comisario’s face. “Thus is justice. We’re all guilty. Even Jesus Christ was processed for disorderly conduct.”
She couldn’t help laughing and a rare smile opened up below his mustache. When they arrived at the Sheraton he turned to her.
“Look, Doctora Fowler. Perhaps you are tired, but often on the weekends I go to listen to tango at a particular place in La Boca. It’s very typical of Buenos Aires. Not for tourists. It’s called 17 Stone Angels. If you like, I can look for you tonight at your hotel.”
She beamed at him. “It would be a pleasure.” She started to walk away from the car then turned back and bent toward the driver’s window. “One last little favor, Comisario.” He looked up at her attentively. “I’d like to meet the judge who is directing this investigation.”
Fortunato’s agreeable nod seemed to approve of her stratagem. “At your orders, Doctora.”
She stood back and waited for him to disappear into traffic, paused another minute to be sure, and then summoned a taxi from the afternoon crush. She gave a reflexive glance behind her before getting in. Her next appointment was not on the official agenda.