Athena glanced around the waiting room of the Instituto Contra la Represion Policial. In the dispiriting yellow light of a cheap floor lamp, ponderous leather volumes of the Revista Juridica Argentina traced the law back to 1936, along with somber gold-embossed walls of Derecho Constitucional, Ley de la Republica Argentina and other hopeful compendia of legal redress. A magazine on a coffee table featured a cover photo of two mostly nude women laughing with a handsome man. “The Summer in Punta,” it proclaimed. “Sand, Sex and Silver.” Several people sat alongside Athena, dressed in clean, cheap button-down shirts and with the rounder Andean features that typically belonged to the lower class. From their hushed sentences she gathered that they had enlisted the services of the Instituto in suing the policemen who had murdered their brother.
She’d heard about the Anti-Police Repression Institute from her mentor, a professor of Latin American studies at Georgetown. “It’s a setup,” he told her cheerfully when she’d called him with the news of her assignment. “The local police will give you the runaround and the embassy will brush you off as politely as possible. Once you go down there and fail, everyone’s done their duty and Senator Braden has to shut up about it and move the Free Trade package.” He relented from the cynical discourse. “Go, listen, observe. When you get your feet on the ground, call these people. They’re a group of lawyers that prosecute the police for civil rights violations. If you can interest them in the case, they might be able to get something going.”
His assessment had irritated her, but it seemed to be playing out just as he’d predicted. The FBI had been elusive, canceling her appointment and promising to call back when they had “a break in the schedule.” Her contact with the Argentine Ministry of Justice was an assistant to an assistant, and there was the insubstantial Wilbert Small, from the embassy. She’d be an idiot to think they took her seriously. Anger rose to her throat, then dissipated as she thought of the family sitting across from her. These were people with a real grievance. Naomi Waterbury had a real grievance.
The current edition of the newspaper lay on the table and she noticed that Carlo Pelegrini had again staked out a place in the headlines. Pelegrini says I’m a Simple Mailman. Pelegrini seemed to be a wealthy businessman who operated a private courier system. The previous winter, he’d been caught paying a bribe of more than twelve million dollars to government officials in exchange for an exclusive right to carry the national mails. Now, other businesses were coming to light. The article alluded to a network of ventures, worth billions of dollars, held by dummy corporations and off-shore investment groups. Pelegrini denied owning these businesses, denied that he received income from them, denied exerting an unsavory influence over politicians in the intimate circles of the President of the Republic. He was a simple mailman.
She scanned further down the page to a sidebar, headlined The Gringos get in Line. RapidMail, the American colossus of worldwide package delivery, was also said to be summoning its allies for their own move on the Argentine postal service, fronted by the Grupo Capital AmiBank.
The receptionist guided Athena to the office of Carmen Amado de los Santos. A tight little clutter of office furniture was stamped with the usual diplomas and an award from Amnesty International for service in the protection of human rights. Carmen Amado herself had long black hair and little round glasses, a slim woman of perhaps forty who, despite her professional gravity, could not resist wearing a skirt cut above the knees. She adorned her rich brown skin with a sliver of blue eye shadow and a tinge of rouge but, despite these feminine touches, all sense of coquetry dropped away when she began to speak.
“Doctor Fowler,” she said in a perfect, steely English, “you’ve come to Buenos Aires to investigate the murder of a United States citizen.”
“Yes.”
“And the United States State Department has sent you here?”
“Yes. The family requested that the murder be investigated.”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s interesting! We have never found the State Department to be so sentimental. What is your official job with them?”
The question flustered her a bit. “I don’t work for the government. I teach political science at Georgetown University, in Washington.”
“A full professor? At your age? You are what: twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-eight.” She tried to say it nonchalantly but it sounded petulant. “I’m an assistant professor, actually.”
“Ah! An assistant professor. Of course.” The lawyer leaned back in her chair. “And what have they done for you here? They’ve given you the assistance of the FBI? Introduced you to the Minister of Justice?”
Athena swallowed. “I’m mostly working with the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.”
“The police.”
“Yes. With a Comisario Fortunato, of the Brigada de Investigaciones in San Justo. That was where the murder took place.”
The long-haired woman burst into a brief withering laugh. “And has Comisario Fortunato been very helpful?”
She felt hemmed in. “I think he’s trying.”
“Then why are you coming to me?”
“Well . . .” Her professor had warned her that INCORP had an ideological bias, but she hadn’t been prepared for this hostility. “I do have some confidence in the Comisario, but I think even the police have limits.”
“I’m not sure what you are trying to tell me, Doctor Fowler,” Carmen said with a faint smile. “Here we see the Buenos Aires police as tireless crusaders for Justice and Truth. Like the United States government itself.”
“Well . . .” Athena felt her face going red as she struggled for an answer. In her confusion she ended up mouthing something she knew was a lie even before she had finished saying it. “I don’t think they would send me here if they weren’t serious about getting an answer to this murder.”
Carmen Amado gave her a friendly smile. “Here is my advice, Señorita. I suggest you take a few cafés, do some shopping on Calle Florida and then, please, go home. Just go home. Go and write your report and get a citation from the State Department because here, we don’t have time to entertain you. We are four lawyers against security forces that kill hundreds each year and abuse and extort money from tens of thousands. We are not interested in a phony investigation sponsored by the United States Department of State for the purpose of convincing their own people of how virtuous they are.”
“But—”
“Go on. You don’t need our services to please your employers.” She looked at her watch, then again at Athena. “Please . . .”
Athena took a long breath but didn’t move. She was close to bursting into tears, wavering between anger at the attack and the shame at having her motives stripped so bare. Carmen Amado had hit that one part of the truth so perfectly square that it momentarily eclipsed everything else. But it was only part of the truth, and if she couldn’t get past it now then she might as well fold up the investigation and go home just as the lawyer had suggested.
“I think I need to make something clear to you,” she began quietly. “I don’t represent the United States government. I represent a five-year-old girl and a widow whose father and husband died a horrible death on a trip to Buenos Aires and came back as ashes in a plastic jar. That’s who I represent.” She took a breath. “And I assure you that woman has made every phone call and written every letter and begged favors from every stranger who would listen, all so that someone would come down here and find out why her husband was tortured and murdered in a country she’s never even been to.” Athena felt a tear at the corner of her eye and brushed it away angrily. She could hear her voice fluttering up and down. “And you’re right! They deserve somebody better than me! I know that! Everybody knows it!” She stopped to compose herself again. “But I’m the one who’s here!” She wiped away another tear and then her voice was dead calm. “So you tell me: should I go back and explain that you wouldn’t help them because you don’t like the United States government?”
The lawyer stared silently at her, shifted backwards in her chair. She considered a while, then took a packet of tissues from her desk and pushed them across to Athena. “I’m sorry.” Her voice warmed up a little. “Why don’t you tell me about the crime. What was the victim’s name?”
Athena felt relieved as she reached for the tissues. “Robert Waterbury.”
She nodded. “I remember that one.” She took out a cigarette and paused just before lighting it. “It’s okay?”
Blowing a fog of blue smoke towards the open window: “They found him in the car in San Justo, no? Shot several times, then finished with a nine millimeter. That was the detail that captured me, the nine millimeter. That’s the standard police bullet. Also, he was wearing handcuffs, which made me suspicious. You read the expediente, no? Do you remember the brand of handcuffs they used?” When Athena hesitated, Carmen said, “Was it Eagle Security?”
“I think so.”
Carmen nodded. “That’s the brand the police use. Exported to them by one of your hardworking companies in New Jersey. The same company also sells them pepper spray, teargas, and metal detectors, also anti-riot gear, up to water cannons and armored trucks.” She smiled. “But not the picana electrica, for torture. That is still industria nacional. In that respect, at least, we are resisting globalization.”
She waved the hand with the cigarette. “But I’m sure your Comisario Fortunato told you this.”
Athena resisted the impulse to defend him. “No, he didn’t mention that.”
“All the same,” she said cheerfully, “with fifty thousand nine millimeter pistols running around Buenos Aires province, there must be a few that don’t belong to the police. What did the Comisario say?”
“The theory right now is that it was a settling of accounts between drug dealers. Or a drug deal that went bad.”
“Ah! The old “settling of accounts!” That’s almost as popular as the “shot due to mistaken identity” line, and the classic “shot while attempting to escape!” They’re very traditional in their literature, the police. They don’t like New Fiction.” Her voice took on a girl-to-girl intimacy. “Chica, let me tell you about our defenders of the public well-being.”
She went down the list with the insistent cadence of a well-used speech: illegal imprisonment, torture, trigger-happy officers, and extra-judicial executions committed in cold blood. “Eighty-eight percent of the population has a negative image of the police, and fifty percent fear them outright. Of every hundred robberies denounced, only one results in a conviction. Of every ten murders, three are solved. One quarter of all killings in Buenos Aires province are committed by the police themselves.”
“A quarter?” She tried to match that statistic with the half-dozen police she’d met in her day at the comisaria, and the face she came up with was the officer who had run over the dog and then shot it in the middle of the street.
The police, Carmen went on, had become a corporation, with an organized hierarchy and a sophisticated system of collection and distribution. Their loyalty was to the corporation, and officers suspected of disloyalty would end up marginalized, or even dead. “In the last week, three policeman have been killed, all of them victims of “attempted robbery,” while they were off-duty. That, chica, is a settling of accounts.”
Athena thought of the Comisario, with his kind face and his weary sigh. “Well,” she tendered, “don’t you think there can be some good police?”
“No.” She could tell that the flat answer hadn’t satisfied Athena. “I tell you simply: no. Exemplary husbands, there might be. Loyal friends, gentle fathers. There must be. But not good policemen. And San Justo? Where your friend Fortunato is a Comisario? It’s one of the most corrupt districts there are.”
Athena shook her head. “But this man has investigated corrupt police himself. I think he wants to do good things. Maybe he’s constrained by the system.” The lawyer didn’t answer, and Athena went on hesitantly. “But there are a few elements that make me uncomfortable.” She described the dues left unexplored, including the missing friend named Pablo at AmiBank and the phone number found in Waterbury’s pocket: Teresa. “It’s frustrating, but since I’m here basically at their indulgence I’m not in a position to make any demands. I’m just hoping something will happen.”
The lawyer deliberated for a moment. “Okay. Athena, no?”
“Athena.”
“Fine. Here is what I can offer you, Athena. If you will get the widow to retain INCORP as her representative, I can get a copy of the expediente and we can begin an investigation. But the papers take time. Perhaps you will have to return to Buenos Aires in a month.”
Athena’s hopes spiraled downward again, and Carmen must have seen it. “Or,” she added slowly, “I have a friend who can perhaps help. He’s a journalist who has written much about the police. A case like this might interest him.” She took out her address book and looked up a number, then dialed it: Con Ricardo Berenski, por favor? De parte de Carmen Amado. As she waited, “Ricardo is half-famous here. Now he’s working on an investigation of a businessman named Carlo Pelegrini.”
Athena recognized the name. “I saw a couple of his articles.”
Ricardo had come to the phone and Carmen’s voice became playful. “Amor, I wanted to find you before Pelegrini’s men do. Sí, querido. Every time I open the newspaper you’re putting your foot in his ass. Sí. Look, Rici, I have a girl here from the United States investigating a murder of one of her countrymen. About four months ago. Yes, Robert Waterbury.” A pause. “Me too. It had that odor . . .”
She made the arrangements to meet for a drink the following evening, then hung up and turned back to Athena. “Bien,” Carmen concluded, “talk to the widow and we’ll see.” She stood up and Athena stood up with her. “And, ojo,” she said, tapping beneath her eye, “be discreet.” She pointed to the phone, and Athena shuddered at her next words. “They’re listening.”