Fortunato did his best to look enthusiastic as he strode through the musty smoke of La Gloria to meet with the Chief. Bianco had just gotten a haircut that day and his white hair had been razored into fine clean edges. Fortunato could smell the barber’s lilac water as he leaned in to kiss him. To Fortunato’s relief Bianco had left the monkeys at home.
“Tanguero!”
“Sit down, Miguel. Sit down!”
A whiskey and a small steel tray indented with peanuts and olives had already been laid on the table next to a liter of beer, and Fortunato noticed two cigarette butts bent into the ashtray. Julio Sosa was crooning his operatic rendition of “Verdemar” over the radio, and the Chief tuned into it for a moment after they sat down as if listening for something he’d missed before. At last he frowned.
“I’ve never liked Julio Sosa,” the Chief said. “He’s too sweet.”
Fortunato grimaced. “He’s for the women,” he said, then thought, better said, he was for the women. The elegant voice that boomed around the dark bar had been recorded thirty-five years ago. Marcela had been an admirer of Julio Sosa. He used to pretend to be jealous of Sosa, of the fine suit and debonair hairstyle that Sosa wore on the covers of his record albums. Julio! Julio! Marcela would tease him. I’m going to leave you for Julio.
The Chief continued. “Take someone else, say El Polaco, to sing this song, and given the same song, it’s going to have that tang of whiskey, with a more complex feeling. This,” he motioned around the dim ether that hung in the decrepit interior of the bar, “this is just a lullaby.” Fortunato said nothing, still thinking of Marcela. “And,” the Chief began, “how are we going with this matter of the gringa?”
It relieved Miguel to get on the theme, because he was on the theme already by himself, wondering again about Waterbury’s missing friend Pablo who Athena kept mentioning. Pablo. AmiBank. And that note in the papers about AmiBank and Carlo Pelegrini.
But they were talking now about the gringa. “Look, Leon, the matter is thus: we have to give her something.”
Elena came with another steel dish, this one filled with tiny bread sticks and little pink rounds of sausage. “Bring me a whiskey, amor,” Fortunato said quickly.
“Why?” the Chief continued when she’d left. “Why can’t you just put on your idiot face for a couple of weeks and let her go home?”
“She’s not so retarded, Leon. We went over to see Duarte a few days ago. She was asking things like,” imitating her ingenuous voice: “‘Why didn’t anyone talk to the wife? Why didn’t anyone talk to his contacts at AmiBank?’”
“And Duarte?”
“He defended himself! All that verse about la justicia, the scarce resources, the usual,” Fortunato said sourly. “But the chica wasn’t buying that merchandise.” Fortunato worked a cigarette out of the box and picked up the Chief’s lighter.
“So you went back to the theme of the narcos?”
Fortunato finished pulling the flame into the tube before answering. “Of course! But then she says, again, “I still don’t understand how drug dealers would kill him for drugs and leave six chalks of pure cocaine in the car!””
“But I told her—”
“Yes, you told her, and I told her too, but don’t be so sure that we’re the only ones making cara de gil here.”
The Chief twisted his mouth downward, knocked his knuckles absently on the table a few times as if to clear his head.
“Yes,” Fortunato said acidly. “I think we can say that she senses a certain lack of professionalism in the management of the Caso Waterbury.”
“You were supposed to manage it, Miguel!”
“I was managing it! Domingo’s merquero was shot with his own gun, did you forget that? Did you want him turning up at the hospital with a bullet wound? I took him over to one of our clinics. I managed it!” The Chief frowned, and Fortunato felt himself looking once more at Waterbury’s shuddering corpse, felt Domingo’s smug baby face invading his mind again. You calmed the hijo de puta, Comi. He pushed it away, tasted the sour fizz of the beer. “Look, Leon, something, we have to give.”
The Chief nodded. “You’re right, Miguel. As always. She’s been talking to the Instituto Contra La Represión Policial. She also met with Ricardo Berenski.”
Fortunato said nothing, but the feeling of betrayal burned at his ears. Everybody knew Berenski. His book had created a surge of literary activity in the Buenos Aires police as the entire force had rushed to see whose name appeared in it. For a while they’d had a picture of Berenski taped into one of the urinals. Other photos made their way to the shooting range. “When did she meet with Berenski?”
“Two days ago, at the Losadas, on Corrientes.”
Fortunato nodded silently. He’d seen Athena yesterday, had even asked her What have you done in Buenos Aires? Where have you gone? and recommended her a music store with a good tango collection. She hadn’t said a word about Berenski.
The Chief went on softly, comprehending. “Don’t take it so seriously, Miguel. That’s how they are. They talk, they exchange their little complaints . . .” He threw a limp hand, clicked his tongue. “Nothing happens. But I want to close this and get her back to her land before Berenski starts trying to sell newspapers with it. What it means is that you’re going to have to tell her a story. I think we need to deepen the drug theme. Maybe it was a clumsy play, but that’s what we have right now and the chalks have already been introduced as a prop.”
Fortunato made an effort to calm the unpleasantness in his head.
They had an investigation to conduct, a case to solve. He turned the details over in his mind. “Fine,” he said after a pause. “But if we’re going to tell a story, we need characters.”
The Chief smiled, back to his old self. “Che! I’ve got just the man!”