The problem now, Athena thought as she waited for the Comisario in the conference room, was how to tell Miguel that she wanted to bring Ricardo Berenski into the investigation. Elements of the Buenos Aires police had thought highly enough of Berenski to threaten to kill him, and she hadn’t yet sculpted a good excuse for why she had sought him out behind Miguel’s back. Nonetheless, Berenski had turned up a stunning bit of information: the number in Waterbury’s pocket had belonged to Teresa Castex de Pelegrini, the rich woman who Berenski had met with Waterbury that night six months ago, and the wife of Carlo Pelegrini. Fortunato’s authority and experience could help now, and she’d decided to bank on her gut feeling about him. On some unquantifiable level, he wanted to see this through and, as if in confirmation of this, he had announced over the telephone that he’d finally come up with something “of great significance.” When he’d summoned her here for a briefing she’d felt like calling up Carmen Amado to tell her that yes, there was an honest cop in Buenos Aires.
A familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Athena, the Goddess of Love!”
Fabian filled the doorway with his smile, his ash-blond curls as perfect as if he’d just come from the beauty salon. He wore a sports jacket of eggplant-colored suede, matched by a maroon shirt and an olive tie with gold and purple stripes. The combination so surprised Athena that she didn’t bother to correct his mythological error. “Interesting jacket.”
“It’s unique, no? With this color? At first I thought No, Fabian. No. But after . . . ” He made a discerning little frown, like a chef adding ingredients. “I calm it a little with the shirt and balance it with the green . . . It remains half-dignified, no?”
“No.”
“Ah!” he said, easing into the room and bending down to give her a patchouli-scented kiss. “You are bitter chocolate!” He put his hand over his heart and broke into an old song, looking deeply into her eyes: “El dia que me quieras . . .” stopping after the first line. “This is by the immortal Carlos Gardel, who died tragically in an accident of aviation in 1935. I, personally, hate tango, but you can’t argue with Carlos. Every day he sings better!” He slid into the seat across from her. “I can’t stop thinking about your case. That one of Robert Waterbury.”
“You’re very much the thinker!”
He accepted the ironic compliment with a wave of the hand. “I was reading in my screenplay book last night and I found something that might be useful.” His face became nearly mystical with the power of his insight. “At this point, I think you must consider the Chief. Have you thought about that?”
She wasn’t sure how to react, and Fabian plowed on. “Because in the movies, it’s always the chief that did it. The hero’s partner is killed, and then three quarters of the way into the plot it’s always “My God, it was the chief all along!” Don’t tell me you haven’t seen that a thousand times.”
Athena looked at the clownish policeman, unsure of his intent. “Are you talking about a particular person, Fabian?”
“Of course not!” he answered, with a fatuousness that incited suspicion rather than allaying it. “That would be inconceivable! I’m talking of concepts, of plot mechanisms. But if you have no other ideas and you’re here, why not? Moreover, the idea that some sinister chief committed the crime is much more interesting than this tired hypothesis of drugs, of the settling of scores. At least, from the cinematic point of view.”
“Your joke is in very bad taste, Fabian.”
He dropped his smile. “You’re right. The truth is, I feel sorry for you. It’s difficult to come to a foreign country and try to solve a crime like this. There’s much frustration. But I would like to help you. What I suggest is this: after work, privately, without telling the Comisario, you and I should go and make some inquiries. To survey once again the crime scene, see if some clue has been missed. Then there is dinner, with one of our excellent red wines, and we should visit some interesting bars in Palermo and San Telmo, to familiarize you with the ambiance of the events. There is one that is very interesting called—”
“Fabian—”
“El Gaucho Maricon—”
“Fabian! I don’t think that would be appropriate—”
“Doctora,” he interrupted her, leaning close and speaking in an urgent near-whisper, “you are in Buenos Aires! The city where love and death never stop changing their thousand beautiful masks!” He suddenly let go of the poetic approach. “Am I too transparent?”
“I knew boys in high school who were less transparent than you.”
“Ow!” He winced. “Now, you hit me hard, Athena! My ego has shrunk to the size of a coffee bean.” He stood up and broke into a smile. “Thus is life. No? I give you the number of my cell phone.” Extracting a card from his pocket. “If you need help at any moment you can call your friend Fabian. Until then . . .” She felt his curls tickle her skin as he kissed her cheek. He stopped in the doorway, shaking his finger at her. “You’re going to like my police story. You don’t know it yet, but you’re going to like it.”
The sight of Comisario Fortunato’s weary face pasted in his drab office dispersed the queer cologne of Fabian’s games. He gave an officer a few pesos for coffee and inquired about her previous days in Buenos Aires. Had she passed them well? How was she occupying her time? She answered blandly as he stacked some papers on his desk, something about meeting with a few people, enjoying the cafés. She was eager to find out what he’d uncovered.
“Bien.” He put the papers to the side. “I have good news for you. After we spoke I asked all in the brigada to inquire among their sources for information about Waterbury. This was not so simple; many times the buchones, for reasons of their own, are not eager to chat. As this is priority one, we did it, and thankfully it rendered quite a bit. It seems that one of our informants heard another criminal boasting about killing a German and, following that line, it turned out that it was not a German after all, but a North American. It’s not sure yet, but it seems that we already have the killer in custody.”
Athena felt her heart beat faster but she said nothing.
“It seems that one of the material authors of the crime is a delinquent named Enrique Boguso, who has already been processed on a different murder that he committed after that of Robert Waterbury. We think he is dose to a confession.”
“Why did he do it?”
“The motive still isn’t clear, but, as we suspected, it had something to do with drugs. Waterbury wanted to buy a small amount, and then they decided to get clever: It’s not known yet. Let’s see if it gets clearer in the next few days.”
As glad as the news made her, she felt cheated that it didn’t involve a connection to Teresa and Carlo Pelegrini. Chiding herself: she was complaining because the murder was too mundane? And yet . . . “There’s something I need to tell you, Miguel. Something of interest to the case.”
“What, young one?”
She felt timid before Fortunato’s kind eyes. “I went and talked with Ricardo Berenski. He’s a journalist, perhaps you’ve heard of him.”
Fortunato rubbed his chin. “He writes about sports, no? About futbol.”
She almost laughed with relief. The Comisario’s features had never seemed so endearing. “No. He’s an investigative journalist. I went to him just to get another view on the case.”
Fortunato looked open and expectant. “And . . . ?”
“We traced a phone number in Robert Waterbury’s pocket on the night he was murdered. I wrote it down from the expediente, but I forgot to mention it to you.” She blushed as she lied, ignoring at the same time the fluttering question of why the Comisario hadn’t traced the number himself. “It seems to be the personal number of Teresa Castex de Pelegrini. The wife of Carlo Pelegrini.”
Fortunato cocked his eyebrows a little. “Pelegrini? The magnate?” He’d already traced the number to Pelegrini’s house, but had left it at that in the hopes that everything would die down. Now, though, with Berenski involved, he couldn’t ignore it. The investigation had just broached a new barrier, and he had no choice but to go with it and improvise. “Interesting. What did your friend the journalist say?”
“Nothing, yet. We tried to call her but we didn’t get anywhere. I thought perhaps the authority of the police could open things a bit. If we need to listen to the line, or something like that.”
Fortunato took his time in replying. Berenski knew much about Pelegrini, maybe more than anyone outside Pelegrini’s own circle. It would be helpful to know what Berenski knew. And there was still the matter of the name Renssaelaer, the last little god whom Waterbury had invoked as the possible cause of his suffering. Besides, better to manage Berenski than to let him go around loose. “Let’s do this, Athena. Telephone the Señor Berenski so that we can combine for a little chat. Not in the station; something informal. Tell him it could be of interest to everyone.”
They met at the Café Losadas again. At mid-morning the big room was quiet except for a half-dozen people browsing among the books. Berenski greeted Athena with a kiss and the two men shook hands, then there was a little impasse at the booth as neither man wanted to sit with his back to the door. Berenski won out and she slid in next to Fortunato.
The Comisario gave Berenski a quizzical look. “You wrote that piece about the corruption among the futbol referees, no?”
“That was I.”
“You did well, chico. But tell me, did you see the last SuperClassic? Where Morelo refused to call that foul in the last minute? In your opinion, was that dirty, or no?”
“Morelo is dirty,” he said in his croaking voice. “But in that instance, the call was correct.”
“No! You’re for Boca!”
Ricardo shrugged. “River should have paid Morelo more. Then he would have seen that foul with microscopic clarity. But Comisario!” He hunched his shoulders comically, his palms upturned as he burst out enthusiastically, “It’s Argentina! What are you drinking, amigo? I invite you with the money I won on the SuperClassic.”
Fortunato took an espresso, bitter, while Athena took hers with a dollop of whipped cream. Berenski accompanied his with a shot of scotch. Fortunato admired his whiskey-in-the-morning style: he played it all, the muchacho. The journalist took out a palm-sized notebook and a black fountain pen gleaming with gold.
“What an elegant pen!” Fortunato said admiringly. “They pay you well.”
Berenski held up the instrument, examining it with satisfaction. “It’s fake! Made in China. The watch, too. I’m fanatic about fake things! One can be ironic without saying a word!” He leaned in, croaking confidentially to the policeman, “There’s a little store on Bolivar called Todo Falso. All of the best names, but fake! Now I’m trying to get one of those autos with duplicated papers that are circulating everywhere. Maybe you know someone . . .”
Fortunato laughed. “You’re an hijo de puta!”
“What can I say?” the journalist grinned as he rocked back in the booth. “I am! But there’s much to discuss. Athena already told you about the telephone number?”
“Yes. It was interesting.”
“The number was registered to one of Pelegrini’s corporations, but it was listed as being at his residence in Palermo Chico. When I called it a woman answered to the name Teresa, but then she marked me as a stranger and cut the line.”
“Even being Castex, that doesn’t mean it has something to do with the murder.”
“Of course. But I think it would be interesting to have a chat with the señora, no?”
Fortunato rubbed the stubble along his jaw, nodding. “It’s a good idea. But such people are not so eager to talk. I would have to get an order from the judge to compel her, and I’m not certain the evidence justifies that sort of measure. The judge is Emilio Duarte. He’s very strict about matters of the Constitution.”
“Ah, Duarte,” the journalist said casually. “He has a good reputation.”
Fortunato couldn’t tell if Berenski was just flashing another fake accessory with his remark about Duarte. He chose not to agree or disagree. “I should tell you that we’ve found information that leads in another direction. It could be that we already have the killer.”
“Yes? Who?”
“Perhaps you remember him: Enrique Boguso. He was the one that killed the bricklayer and his wife in front of their children in Quilmes three months ago.”
Berenski wrinkled his nose with disgust. “I remember it. They used electric shocks. 1970s style.” He touched the pen to the notebook. “Enrique Boguso, no? And who was the informant?”
Fortunato put his hand over the pad. “Amigo Ricardo, we’re a bit premature here. We’re still mounting the case. I’m speaking to you confidentially, as a friend of La Doctora.”
“It’s fine, Miguel.” He capped the pen with a counterfeit click and put it away. “But tell me: how would it happen that someone like Boguso, a brute of the outer barrios, crosses with a foreigner like Robert Waterbury who was staying in the center and mixing with rich people like Teresa Castex de Pelegrini?”
Fortunato explained patiently the theories of the drug motive and Waterbury’s gathering of atmosphere for his book. “Neither is certain yet.”
“This book,” Berenski answered back, “that’s another thing. It seems that Waterbury was a very lazy writer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most writers have a journal, or some manuscript that they’re torturing. Especially if they are gathering atmosphere. Athena says that there was nothing like that mentioned in the expediente.”
That detail had bothered Fortunato also. He turned his hands upward sympathetically. “Perhaps that was the problem: he had no notes because he had no ideas, no hopes. For that, he turned to drugs.”
Berenski sat back. “Still, it’s curious.”
“Yes. But let’s return to the matter of Pelegrini. I read some of your articles before I came, but it’s a turbid business. It escapes me. What’s going on with Pelegrini?”
The waiter materialized and clacked the order onto the table, slapping the bill onto the spike, which Berenski drew towards himself as he looked into the thick glass tumbler. To Fortunato he seemed to be using the liquor to stall, uncertain as to whether he should enter deeply into the theme of Pelegrini. Finally, he looked up with a new air of sobriety. “I’ll tell you now, because this is coming out now anyway. It’s thus: Pelegrini is involved in a war right now. On one side, you have Pelegrini, the President, and various military who are tied into the vast network of businesses that Pelegrini says he doesn’t own. On the other, you have the Minister of Economy and the Governor of Buenos Aires, acting for the gringos.”
“What do you mean?” Athena asked. “What does the United States have to do with it?”
“Because RapidMail wants the Argentine Postal System.”
Athena wrinkled her brow. “RapidMail? They’re just a courier service.”
Berenski laughed. “Chica, you see the little striped box and you think they’re like a McDonald’s of the sky. But RapidMail has origins that are half-obscure. It was started by Joseph Carver, ex-agent of the CIA. Carver began his transport career in the Vietnam War, where he ran questionable cargos in and out of the Golden Triangle, estilo Iran-Contra, but before they had to go to all the trouble of convicting someone and then pardoning them. He made some very good friends there, including other CIA agents and your ex-president. All the muchachos returned home with money to invest, and thus began RapidMail.”
Ricardo hesitated as he watched someone who’d come in the door. “Fine. Twenty-five years later, they notice a fat fish called Argentina. The country is for sale, and they decide they want to buy the Post Office. Think of it: a discount price, guaranteed profits written into the contract by force of law, rate increases without end. They can take it all over, or just take over the profitable parts and leave the rest to the people. Who’s not going to be interested in that business? So they start to arrange it, using Grupo AmiBank as their front because the Grupo has all those golden connections that smooth the course. Except Carlo Pelegrini already has the same idea, and he also has very good connections, and six months advance. When RapidMail’s men show up to begin negotiations three of Pelegrini’s pistoleros pull them over on the way in from the airport. They take out their weapons and they courteously dis-invite them from the party. An embarrassing lack of hospitality on the part of the patria, no?”
Fortunato opened his hands. “It’s a disgrace!”
“So Joseph Carver makes some phone calls. He calls his friend the ex-president and he calls an acquaintance at the United States Chamber of Commerce. He starts to talk and talk about this corrupt Pelegrini, and about the Argentines who will not open their markets. It’s a violation of the sacredness of Free Trade! Suddenly Pelegrini is under investigation by the DEA, by the FBI. There are complaints before the World Trade Organization and very serious chats between Ovejo, our minister of Economy, and the United States ambassador. Ovejo travels to Washington to talk with the vice-president. Suddenly, Ovejo is attacking Pelegrini at all sides. On television, in the newspapers, in his private offices. “We must open the country to more foreign investment!” he says. “We must stop this corrupt man and cancel his extortionate government contracts!” He turned to Fortunato. “He’s like Morelo of the SuperClassic: The gringos paid him enough that he would start calling the foul.”
“What does Pelegrini do to defend himself?” Fortunato asked.
“That scandal of Ovejo’s brother-in-law? That was investigated and mounted by Pelegrini. With the help of the Buenos Aires police, eh? When that failed, he tried to use his inside men to design bid specifications that would make it impossible for anyone but himself to win the contract. The same thing he has done for years. But this time it’s not certain he will win because the Grupo is also at work there.”
“How do you get all this information?” Athena asked in amazement.
Ricardo laughed. “Everyone believes in a free press when it comes to airing the misdeeds of their enemies. You would be surprised at my sources.”
Fortunato rubbed his mustache thoughtfully. “And tell me, Ricardo: have you heard the name Renssaelaer?”
The journalist leaned back in his chair. He looked slightly distressed, and it took him some time to answer. “William Renssaelaer. He’s the chief of all Pelegrini’s security operations. He came here as an attaché to the American embassy during the Dictatorship and stayed. He directs everything that constitutes security for Pelegrini, from his bodyguards to whatever intelligence Pelegrini is gathering from the government or from his corporate rivals. Why do you mention Renssaelaer?”
“It’s a name that I saw floating in the newspapers, nothing more.”
The Comisario frowned down into his coffee cup, weighing Berenski’s strange reaction to the name Renssaelaer. “All this is very interesting, Ricardo, but still I don’t hear anything that would connect Pelegrini to Waterbury. Not enough to issue a summons to Teresa Castex.”
“Waterbury worked for AmiBank, which is the parent of Grupo AmiBank, on his first stay in Argentina. No, Athena?”
“That’s what his wife said.”
Fortunato shook his head. “But Waterbury worked there long before all this between the Grupo AmiBank and Pelegrini.”
“Yes, but perhaps his friend is still there. And then, we have the phone number in Waterbury’s pocket, connecting him to the intimate circle of Pelegrini.”
Fortunato covered his anxiety with a thoughtful silence, glancing down for a time at the sludge in his coffee cup. Berenski was very piola, very crafty, and he probably had other contacts who might become interested in the case. He had ended the careers of a lot of police. He, Fortunato, would have to move much faster to stay ahead of Berenski. “If the Boguso lead ends up dead, I’ll make my best case with Duarte to revise Teresa Castex’s telephone records and summon her to the station.”
“Excelente, Miguel. But one little thing more . . . ”
Berenski now began to ask him, in a nonchalant way, about the goings-on in the barrios north of Buenos Aires. Fortunato spotted his game immediately: being of the south, Fortunato might not mind tipping a few cards on his northern rivals. The journalist teased out the details with a comic bravado that made it enjoyable, like being shaved by an expert barber, and Fortunato dropped him little clues about car theft and the sale of expedientes that he hoped would cripple the aggressive actions of the brigadas of the north. Berenski laughed as if the deceits were stunts in a screwball comedy, laughed and made notes with his fake fountain pen. Fortunato gave him a few broad clues and then mentioned his next appointment. When they got up to leave the journalist snapped the cap on his pen and offered it to the policeman. “Amigo Fortunato, take this little souvenir, as you were admiring it.”
“Ricardo, no!”
“It’s nothing, querido! I have twenty just like it at home! Por favor!” Berenski clasped the policeman’s shoulder and looked him in the eye, grinning. “You can use it to write up the Waterbury report.”
They parted company in the pounding traffic of Corrientes, and Fortunato walked silently at Athena’s side, looking weary in his tan sports jacket and drooping gray mustache. The amiable chat with Berenski had raised her confidence in the detective and she felt a wave of affection for the man as she glanced at his large ungraceful figure. “Miguel,” she said, “I want to ask you a slightly delicate question.”
He looked over at her earnestly. “Whatever you want, daughter.” “You were telling Ricardo about corruption in other parts of the police. But what’s happening in your own jurisdiction?”
He stopped walking, startled by the question, and she was afraid from his silence that she had offended him. He looked at her silently and thoughtfully, and she sensed that he was preparing to reveal a private shame. “Athena. Corruption, there always is. Like that one over there . . .” pointing at a young Federal at the corner. “His salary is six hundred pesos monthly, and yet he must continually confront the worst of society. There arrives a time when he starts to feel that he deserves something extra. Bites of ten pesos, twenty pesos. Picoteando.” He made pecking motions with his fingers. “I don’t condone it, but thus it is. It’s very difficult to stop.”
“What about at higher levels?”
He looked at her without speaking for a moment. “This is a strange line of questions. Why do you ask?”
“I’m trying to understand all this. People keep telling me how corrupt the police are, how they fear them. But when I look at you, I don’t see that. I see someone very dignified, very sincere. And I just can’t reconcile it.”
The Comisario faced her without saying anything, and though his features didn’t move a strange tremor seemed to work beneath the surface. He put his hand gently on her back and steered her forward, and she felt as if he were scolding her until he said, “The truth is, I’ve seen some things.” He glanced towards the young Federal and stopped talking until the light changed and they’d crossed the street. “Once I remember we assaulted a lottery stand. A narco was using it to parcel out cocaine and we sequestered some three kilos. Except when I read the sumario later, it was only one kilo.”
“What did you do?”
“That’s always the question, no? These are people you work with every day. Sometimes your life depends on them.” They’d reached the temporary wooden wall of a construction site. Someone had scribbled the words Ovejo–Asesino Gringo! “I went to one of the other men in the assault and I said “Che, we grabbed three kilos, no? The sumario says one.” And I knew I’d hit it right on, because he put himself a little fierce and he says, “What’s happening with you, Fortunato? Are you going around with a scale now?”
“And what happened?”
Fortunato answered without looking up from the ground. “I acted the boludo and didn’t say anything else, then they transferred me out of Narcotics and into Homicide. And now here I am, at your service!” They stopped at the corner in a clutter of businessmen and legal functionaries. Only two blocks from the Palacio de Justicia, the narrow street was lined by bookstores filled with legal primers. There were volumes on forensics and constitutional law, divorce and custody, civil suits, product liability: everything to make a just society. The presence of so many books about law in such a corrupt city struck Athena as ironic at first, but then, people never stopped hoping. Just like the scandals that Berenski and others continually turned up: there were always new ones, but always people willing to risk it all to expose them.
The Comisario must have been basking in the same line of thought as they silently traversed the city. “Look, corrupt ones—there’s always a few. But you can’t see everything divided in two: good and evil, honest and dishonest. It’s artificial. Because also in the mix there’s loyalty, there’s friendship. There’s the obligation one has to the family. And so evil gets mixed with good. In reality, there are very few men who are truly evil.”
“It’s not the evil people that do most of the damage in this world,” Athena said. “It’s all the good ones who help them. I read about these corporations that cook up trade and finance laws that destroy Third World countries. I read these human rights reports, filled with the most horrific kinds of abuse. And I ask myself”—glancing over at him—“what makes a decent person become an accomplice? Because if that sort of evil could be stopped, that helpful evil, there would be no Hitlers, no Stalins, no biological and nuclear weapons designed to kill indiscriminately.” She became bolder as they stepped into the Plaza de la Justicia. “At a certain point, you have to say that those who help are evil, too.”
The policeman remained silent as they continued to his car, and again she feared that she’d gone too far. “I’ll drop you off at the Sheraton,” he said at last. “I have another meeting in an hour.”
Fortunato left her at her hotel and headed through the grandiose canyons of the center toward the familiar province where he lived and worked. Without intending to, he found himself steering toward the vacant lot where Waterbury had died. His eyes moved along the wall of the factory up to the single window in the corner where the caretaker lived. The window had been opened and the flowered curtain ruffled over the sill in the autumn wind. What did the caretaker know? What other witnesses might be waiting to come forward? Some late-night pedestrian, or a homeless person living in one of the empty buildings nearby? Even with no witnesses, he could feel the abstract presence of a spectator: the universe, Athena, himself, viewing it again and again in his memory. Waterbury looking at him over the seat, grabbing onto him with his eyes as if at the last shred of kindness in the world. I have a wife and daughter . . . Fortunato rolled on through increasingly desolate streets, adrift not in the hard white light of the afternoon but in the two dark hours last spring when he had made the brief and terminal acquaintance of Robert Waterbury.