“The character of the desperate novelist is a cliché, is it not? All that well-worn despair and tiresome financial difficulty. And yet, from time to time we have no choice but to find ourselves living those clichés. Like you, Doctora, as the crusading guardian of human rights, or the Comisario here, as the hardened policeman trying to solve his most difficult case. The image of things overwhelms us and turns us to its will. That, it seems, is what happened to our Señor Waterbury.
“The boludo had enjoyed some success in the publishing business. His first book, The Black Market, emerged in twelve countries and won various prizes. He’d sat on literary panels, given interviews, seen his words in foreign alphabets.
“But success was cruel to Robert Waterbury in a strange way; it made him lose all fear. He had been flattered and greeted with that tone of reverence that seduces all writers: Ah, Robert Waterbury! You wrote The Black Market! A fatal voice, one that washes away the foundations of the real world. He heard the call to take his place among the Great Ones of Literature. A quick look at the accounts of his predecessors would have warned that the odds were against him, but in the world of Destiny there are no statistics. He left his position at the bank and moved, with his family, to South Hampton to struggle with his next book. He was a novelist now. He would say that when he met people, feeling slightly embarrassed by the grandeur of that word: novelista.
“With time, though, that mythical life began to call in its loans. The wife was injured in a car accident and could not work for six months. His house needed a new roof. His car gave up and he bought a new one, banking on the income from his next book. He began to borrow from his retirement savings.”
“None of this intruded on Indigo Down. He regarded it as his masterwork, structured around the idea of the world as a vast sacred text, a landscape of nouns and verbs whose secret prophecies hung just beyond reach of the characters that stumbled through them. After four years and eight drafts he sent his agent the new novel. But by that time the world had not only ceased waiting for the next work of Robert Waterbury, it had forgotten who he was. And disgracefully, the market for mystical illumination turned out to be rather disappointing. After seventeen submissions his agent got him a modest advance.
“‘Ten thousand dollars!’ he told his agent. ‘I could wipe my ass with that!’
‘“Maybe you’ll make it back on royalties,’ his agent said, without much belief, and then, ‘Hold on, I’ve got another call.’
“To console himself Waterbury read about the tribulations of great writers in the encyclopedia. Dostoyevsky, who began his career by being condemned to a firing squad. Cervantes, in and out of jail, passing his last years as a guest of a rich friend. Kerouac, the most tragic, whose first book had been his masterpiece. Most great writers’ biographies ended ‘died poor,’ ‘died a drunk,’ or ‘committed suicide.’ Even this was of little consolation, because a simple trip to the bookstore reminded him that the majority of writers never became great, simply died in unread obscurity, failed commercial ventures without a myth to hold on to. The possibility that he belonged to this final sad category terrified him. The silver-plated tones with which people had once addressed the distinguished author had worn away, leaving only the dull base metal in which was stamped ‘Failed Writer.’
“So our Señor Waterbury arrives in Buenos Aires with a pair of sports jackets and a suitcase full of good clothes he’d worn ten years ago when he used to work for AmiBank. The plan was simple: to write something formulaic, without a hint of literary or moral ambition. ‘Commercial,’ as the publishers put it. Keep the language simple. Populate it with beautiful women and handsome men. Start out with a murder and leave a trail of bodies all the way to the finale. It would be a thriller of international finance and larceny, set against the background of a country struggling in the wake of a murderous military dictatorship.
“Of that world, as we know, Waterbury had a particular knowledge. A specialist in finance, he had been sent to Buenos Aires for two years by AmiBank to help tidy up the unfortunate loans of the Seventies and Eighties. In those years, the bank had loaned billions to dictators and thieves and had taken the whole country as collateral. Waterbury arrived in the second phase, where the bank was trading its bad debts for our state-owned enterprises. Telephone companies, copper mines, the national airlines, dams, highways, electric utilities: all were up for sale on the kind of easy terms negotiated by officials who kept numbered accounts at AmiBank’s offshore subsidiaries. It was a good system, a system that worked, endorsed by American economists and the International Monetary Fund. Waterbury had taken part in this fiesta by helping arrange juicy packages for AmiBank’s investors.”
“Fabian,” Fortunato interrupted, “wait a minute. Where did you get this information?”
“All writers keep a diary, no? In the case of Waterbury, a very meticulous record of his time in our beautiful Buenos Aires. And, working from these, my cousin and I—”
“Enough of the cousin! Do you have this diary?”
“And how did you get it?” Athena added.
Fabian raised his hand. “Afterwards, I’ll tell you. But can I offer you another coffee, Comiso? Doctora?” He shouted across the near empty café. “Lucho! Three cortados more.” The waiter nodded, and Fortunato noticed that even downtown, which was Federal Police jurisdiction, he didn’t bring Fabian a bill.
“Bien,” Fabian said, putting down a glass of soda. “We see Waterbury arrive in Buenos Aires and take a room at the Hotel San Antonio on Calle Paraguay, a downtown office district that at night turns into a haven for prostitutes. The San Antonio dates from the Thirties and, though it is small, the marble stairways and gleaming brass rails of the Reception still retain a certain discreet elegance. Waterbury considers his room: a small wood-paneled cube with a bit of gilding around the mirror and the smell of old lacquer. He tries with some difficulty to imagine himself working within the waxy pool of light cast by the desk lamp. He pulls several books from his suitcase and begins to look them over. ‘Write a Bestseller!’ proclaims one cover. ‘Seven Steps to Mystery’ offers another.”
“Those were the books you showed me!” Athena threw in.
“But of course! How could I make up titles like those? But I continue. As he looks at these books, Waterbury feels a sense of great insignificance come over him, and the room begins to squeeze him. He has no plot, no victim, no main character, only the idea of an Argentine detective on an implacable search for the truth. But what kind of detective? What hidden truth? Maybe he would be an older man, weary, fatigued, near retirement, like Comisario Fortunato. A man for whom the lifelong pursuit of justice has come up short. Stop!—”
Fabian raised his hand and gave a low-lidded smile. “I know what you’re thinking! You are thinking that my story is one of those literary confections that ends up being about itself. That I’ll put in a Fortunato and an Inspector Fabian and then, ‘My God, here we all are, in a story written by Waterbury himself! How brilliant!’ That’s the classic, no? Like Roberto Altman did in that film The Player, you saw it? Or that other movie, with Travolta? No, chica, that old trick goes all the way back to Cervantes, in the second half of Don Quixote.” He reached for one of the coin-sized cookies on a saucer in front of him and popped it into his mouth. “No, señoritas and caballeros, don’t worry yourselves: I have too much pride for that, and so did Waterbury, who at this moment is preparing for a bad night in Room 306 of the Hotel San Antonio.
“Our author pulls out his first novel, stares at the picture of himself six years younger, when he still had that easy smile of success. He can only bear a quick glance at his second novel, with its portrait of him in that overly dramatic ‘Please-take-me-seriously!’ style that overpopulates the bookstore liquidation racks like prisoners who, in the face of irrefutable guilt, endlessly proclaim their innocence. He flops on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. He needs background. He needs contacts. Atmosphere. And though he doesn’t want to admit it, he needs someone to take him seriously.
“His only connection is an old friend from the bank, a certain Pablo, with whom he had worked ten years ago. At that time they’d both been bachelors, cutting elegantly through the crowded sidewalks of the financial district, trading looks with beautiful women and polishing the understories of loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You can see their type still, walking down Calle Florida or at the Plaza de Congresso—this year’s selection of handsome young men who’ll make a good catch for the right woman: a ticket to security, the upper class, vacations in Europe and Punta del Este. They’re enchanters, easy to smile, but also wearing well the look of gravity that befits a man of responsibility. A life of gold, amores, that by definition can only be temporary but that has a deceptive sense of permanence to those who are living it.
“Ten years ago Pablo had the kind of Latin looks associated with actors or singers. Straight black hair, long lashes, an even face with pale skin. As a rising executive with a bright future in finance, he’d attracted both eligible young women and influential men, as Waterbury himself had been attracted to him. And not just to Pablo’s looks but his voice, an intimate, smooth baritone like polished copper, full of humor and a certain philosophical tinge that gave even simple statements an aura of carefree comprehension. Pablo stood out as a person going somewhere, and people wanted to be remembered by him when he got there.
“Waterbury also hopes to be remembered. He has not spoken to Pablo in four years and waits nervously as the secretary at Grupo AmiBank relays his name. In a moment, Pablo’s welcoming voice cuts through all the years of separation.
“‘Ché, Roberto! My famous novelist friend! Are you really here in Buenos Aires?’
“The phrase ‘famous novelist’ sends a twist through Waterbury’s chest, but his old friend’s warmth reassures him. He explains that indeed he has taken up residence at the Hotel San Antonio with the idea of researching and writing a detective thriller set in Buenos Aires. The two give brief recountings of their marriages and children, then Pablo interrupts the conversation.
“‘Don’t tell me anything more, Roberto! Let’s meet as soon as possible! This very evening, if you can! Come to my office at five and we’ll go for drinks.’
“Waterbury cuts the line, content. Pablo sounds exactly equal as in the days when they’d conspired on massive financial packages during the day and more delicate, more sensual packages in the evening hours. He hoped Pablo wouldn’t notice he was still wearing the same suit.
“As Waterbury arrives at the Grupo AmiBank headquarters the river of secretaries and businessmen is flooding into the streets at the close of the day. The crystal windows of the cafés are full of elegant encounters and the walking street of Florida has a sense of busy ease. Grupo AmiBank’s lobby is a jewel of marble and steel, set off by a naked colossus squeezing a globe. Waterbury asks for Pablo with his gringo accent, and the guards become respectful. Pablo is one of those from the tenth floor, for whom a driver is always waiting after work.
“An old man in a red jacket drives the elevator, croaks out its arrival at the penthouse. There is paneling of rich tropical wood, and a secretary out of a fashion magazine, with her long blond hair and her robust breasts. She greets Waterbury like an old friend, Señor Waterbury, and leads him through a glass door into a hallway with a carpet as deep and white and soundless as snow.
“‘Robert!’ Pablo says his name in English, with only a trace of an accent. He comes to his feet, still very much the Latin playboy, his jet-black hair untouched by gray. As they clasp hands he embraces Waterbury and kisses him on the cheek. Even in his elevated position Pablo’s voice has retained that ability to make one instantly feel intimate and welcome. Waterbury feels privileged to be in his presence.
“The office itself is dignified without being too ornate. The paneling, the flat cloud of carpet, wide immaculate windows that look out towards the muddy gray Río de la Plata. On the big wooden desk Waterbury sees a gold pen and the backs of picture frames. Against the wall a glass cart holds a dozen liquors and a seltzer bottle.
“‘I’ll prepare you a drink! Scotch, no? I’m sorry I don’t have your Glen-bangie, but I hope you’ll sacrifice yourself and drink Señor Walker as a favor to me.’ Pablo speaks in the English he perfected in a year in the AmiBank office in New York, and Waterbury answers the same way.
“‘What a memory you have!’
“Pablo takes a few cylinders of ice from the silver bucket and snaps them into the glass. “How would I forget your favorite? You, the great Scotch snob, who forced me from bar to bar insulting the selection? Eh? You ruined me! And then in your book you said it all tasted like poison, hijo de puta!”
“Waterbury laughs. “That was the character speaking, not me!”
“‘Ah! Look how he denies it! As if you were working for the government! Soda?’
“‘If it’s only Johnny, you’d better add some soda.’
“Pablo shakes his head in mock despair and splashes soda into the carved crystal. He pours one for himself and sits across from Waterbury on the thick brown leather couch. He takes a moment without saying anything, overcome with the simple pleasure of seeing his old friend. “You look good, Robert. It seems the years have treated you well.”
“Waterbury dodges the urge to deliver a long recounting, instead puts a pleasant face on things. “I can’t complain. I was lucky in finding my wife, I have a wonderful daughter. I won’t say it’s been the easiest ten years of my life, but I guess having an easy life wasn’t my priority. Meanwhile, here we are drinking whiskey. Life is kind!”
“‘Thus it is, hombre. I’ve also been fortunate. But tell me about your wife. What is your daughter’s name? Did you bring a photo, I hope?’
“Waterbury has left the photo in his room. His wife is a pretty woman, but the picture he’s brought was taken in bad light from a bad angle, and though the child looks luminous his wife’s face came out bloated and fat, a false image that gives him little pleasure. Pablo’s wife, on the other hand, shows up marvelously in the photo on his desk. Named Coco, she poses on Ipanema beach in a bikini and long gleaming brown hair.
“They talk a bit more about family and then Pablo takes on a serious look. “And the writing. It goes well for you?”
“Waterbury, while a poor liar, has a certain capacity for half-truths. ‘You know, Pablo, for a writer, it’s only going as well as the next book, but I think Buenos Aires will render up something good.’
“‘I read The Black Market. It was excellent. I wanted Coco to read it but she doesn’t read English.’
“‘It came out in Spanish!’
“The financier looks embarrassed. ‘I must have been in New York at that time,’ he says doubtfully. ‘I don’t remember seeing it.’
“Waterbury feels that twinge of failure again. The Spanish rights had been sold for a modest amount to a publisher in Madrid, and he doubted the distribution had been extensive.
“‘And what about your second book? I never heard from you about it.’
“His stomach tightens. ‘It wasn’t very commercial. It was called Indigo Down.’
“‘What an unusual title! What was it about?’
“‘It was about these strange prophetic messages that start appearing in the newspaper. A kind of advertising campaign. And my idea for promoting the book was to actually place those ads in real newspapers, to make the whole thing play out as it did in the book, in the real world.’ Waterbury shrugs.
“Pablo stares at him, uncertain of whether his friend’s idea is genius or absurdity. ‘And what were the messages about?’
“Waterbury feels his face going a bit pink. ‘Corruption. Good and evil. The ads are attacking the wealthiest citizen in the city, exposing him level by level, promising justice.’ He takes a sip of his whiskey. ‘But the editor left for a better job and the company backed out on the promotion agreement . . .’ He shrugs. ‘It’s a fucking endurance test, Pablo. It’s about how much disappointment you can take and still keep trying.’
“Pablo chuckles, then shakes his head. One might think that Waterbury’s book about an international capitalist who takes on a conscience about the half-dirty nature of his work might cause some inquietude on the part of the director of the Grupo AmiBank, but the financier gives that theme little importance. ‘The truth is, I admire you, Robert. You threw off your position at the bank like an old pair of shoes and made yourself brand new. There are very few who have that capacity of renunciation. The rest of us hide in our shells like turtles, peering out.’ He hunched his head in towards his shoulders. ‘Perhaps this, oh, maybe some day that.’ Letting up again: ‘I see you as a sort of guerrilla of the spirit, like those misguided leftists of the Seventies.’
“‘Didn’t most of those guys die miserably?’
“‘Bueno! You don’t have to take the metaphor that far! The point is that you have the courage to challenge the status quo.’ Laughing again, that exhilarating, intimate laugh that wraps itself around Waterbury like an embrace. ‘And now you are here! Tell me about this Buenos Aires book. What is it about? Can I help you with it in some way.’
“‘It’s not all clear yet.’ Waterbury isn’t sure how much he should really tell his friend, sitting, as they are, on the top floor of the Grupo Capital AmiBank offices. “‘I’m imagining it as a murder mystery, involving finance, corruption . . . That sort of thing.’
“Waterbury watches Pablo’s face for any sign of displeasure, but the financier looks pleased and attentive. He asks: ‘And who is the victim?’
Fabian, on posing the last question, leaned back and rubbed his chin. “It’s ironic, no? That Robert Waterbury was writing his own future in his journal, without even realizing it. But in a sense we’re all thus, writing the book of our own lives, where we are, infallibly, the principal character and whose ending we never know. Our fantasies become our destinies. For that reason I imagine that death must have come as a great surprise to Waterbury. And one from which he had difficulty maintaining an editorial distance.”
Fortunato felt a haze of anguish rising from Fabian’s last remark. He remembered Waterbury’s look of near-irritation that he’d been pressed into something so ridiculous as a kidnapping. Later, when fear had stripped away everything else, the look he’d given him over the seat. Protect me.
Athena interrupted his musings. “Fabian, I missed my flight for this. If you have Robert Waterbury’s journals then why don’t you just give me a photocopy?” She sweetened the pot with an inviting smile. “Then we could discuss something more pleasant over dinner.”
The Inspector laughed, shaking his finger at her. He turned to Fortunato. “She’s half-piola, the girl, eh? I think Buenos Aires is infiltrating her soul!”
Fortunato moved only his eyebrows. “Let’s make her an Inspector.” He knew Athena would never trick anything out of Fabian, but by listening he could already make the first deduction. First, Fabian had Waterbury’s diary, or a copy. Though a youth of great verses, the story and philosophy seemed borrowed, maybe even studied for future use in his conquests. These were the observations of a mature and thoughtful man, who had already lived his share of corruption and failure. A man like Robert Waterbury.
Fortunato mustered his most dignified face, sensing at least a momentary safety in his traditional role. “Speaking seriously, Fabian: if you have the diary, better that you produce it. I don’t know what the judge will say about these irregularities.”
“And with good reason, Comiso, with good reason. But that is for afterwards. For now, I continue with my little story.”
“So Waterbury is in the office of Grupo AmiBank, no? And his friend Pablo invites him for dinner. “I have cleared my schedule,” he says, “but unfortunately our two-year-old is sick and my wife cannot join us. So it is just you and I. Like before!” With dinner still three hours away, they have no hurry. Waterbury asks his friend about his career.
“‘Me? You know how it is, Robert. One goes on working for the company, but if one is industrious, various opportunities arise to manage a few things for one’s own account. I have a partnership in an importer of electric appliances. Also, a few acciones in a real estate venture near Punta del Este.’
“Waterbury hears in the name of the Uruguayan resort the tell-tale shuffle of laundered money. A river of underground silver from Argentina has surfaced as luxurious chalets and tennis clubs up and down the Atlantic coast of that beautiful country, the fruit of unpaid taxes, secret percentages on government contracts, and assorted ‘commissions.’ But this is his friend Pablo, and he should be happy for his good fortune. Now Pablo gets a mischievous look on his face, almost like the old days, when they’d talked about their conquests. He glances at his watch. ‘I have an idea. I’ll take you to one of my little ventures. You’ll be surprised. But you have to keep it private. Okay?’
“He picks up the telephone and speaks a few words, and then they are stepping into his car, a gray Mercedes sedan with polarized windows, driven by a silent, middle-aged man who, between his words of courtesy and his opening of doors, radiates a quiet malevolence. The locks click shut, and they slide through the grand commotion of Avenida Corrientes with the windows closed to all sound. Waterbury can see the huge white granite obelisk of the Plaza de la Republica growing larger in front of them, and then all twenty-eight lanes of the massive 9 de Julio spread out like a vast agriculture of metal and glass, the widest boulevard in the world, washing through the marvelous city as if for some great purpose. The balconies of the apartments have gone green with potted plants, the blocks of buildings seem endless and permissive, and the feeling of Buenos Aires comes back to him again. A city of lives infused with intense sadness and equally intense beauty, where generosity, love and corruption never stray far from each other, and where one can always trace the mark left by the edge of the knife. In that nostalgia for a fantastical Buenos Aires floats Waterbury.
They get on to the autopista 25 de Julio and the city flows past beneath them. Streets and avenues bear the dates of famous events of the revolution. They’ve passed from the 9 de Julio 1816, when General San Martin defeated the Spaniards at the Battle of Ayacucho, to the 25 de Julio in 18o6, when Cordoba had risen up in arms against the Viceroy in the first abortive stirrings of independence. The plazas bear all our greatest hopes: the Plaza de la Republica, the Plaza Libertad, the Plaza del Congreso. But also, leading to these plazas or inextricably connected to them by other names, are the streets honoring our dictators and murderers: Julio Argentino Roca, president and famous exterminator of Indians. General Domingo Fausto Sarmiento, who had said that the blood of the savages would be good fertilizer for the soil. Along with those, the streets named for famous oligarchs, corrupt politicians, soldiers in dubious wars, composers, artists, authors, tango singers, the countries of the world. The jumbled city plan condenses all human aspirations and failure into an address book of times and events. Huge and shimmering, real and more than real, all of Buenos Aires has become a vast tale unrolling before him.
“After half an hour they are reaching the limits of the Capital, that imaginary ring where Buenos Aires gives way to Provincia. At that line the Federal Police cede to the Provincial, civic governments become parochial and informal. The buildings are smaller and less grandiose, the rents are lower. The driver follows the railroad line for a while and then pulls over at a plain brick building with a furniture store at the bottom.
“‘Here we are,’ Pablo smiles, still secretive. He keeps talking as they approach a wrought iron door that covers a second door. ‘I got into this about one and a half years ago, and it is my most profitable venture. I keep it quiet for obvious reasons, but I know you’ll find it amusing, so I’m showing you. This is the business of the future, here. It’s high-tech.’
“He unlocks the second door and they climb a stairway between clean white walls. At the top, Pablo enters a code into a stainless steel keypad and the door beeps twice. He pushes it open and motions for Waterbury to enter.
“The room is some seventy feet long, painted crisp and clean.
The windows are covered with black doth. Half of the room is a series of metal racks burdened with computers and electrical cords. In the room’s center a man in his twenties is sitting at a console of computer monitors with a thermos and a cold wet mate. He has an open book in front of him.
“‘How’s it going, chico. Everything fine?’
“‘No drama whatsoever, Señor.’
“Waterbury looks around the white room and the clean polished wooden floor, unclear what the place is. Pablo motions him over towards the monitors. ‘I’m proud to say that we have one of the few websites in Argentina that is actually making money.’
“Waterbury comes over and when he sees the first monitor he looks away for a moment, embarrassed, then looks back at it. Two naked men are kneeling at either end of a naked woman. On another screen he spots the words ‘Sexo Ardiente!’ and ‘Chicas Argentinas Calentadas al Rojo!’ Below the words, a woman in leather chaps bends over a saddle.
“‘We get most of the content from Los Angeles, but our big attraction is the Argentine girls. We do theme pictures, like the gaucha there. Or holding a mate. It’s our market niche.’
“‘How much do you pay them?’ Waterbury asks, looking at the willing smile of the woman in the chaps.
“The businessman tips his head as he thinks. ‘Five hundred pesos per session. Sometimes more. Sometimes a little less. I don’t have anything to do with that part. There’s a photographer and all that. Most of the girls are prostitutes, so for them it’s easy work at a better price than they can get on the street.’
“He has the technician pull up the screen that shows the hits per hour. ‘There’s a calculus for relating the hits per hour to gross sales. All we need to do is keep increasing traffic, and the money increases in step. Right now we’re only selling subscriptions and a few special pay per views, but next month we’re going to expand to shipping hard goods: videos, magazines, sexual aids. That area over there will be the warehouse and shipping department. We’re also negotiating a strategic partnership with a company in Los Angeles to expand into the entire Latin American market. It’s crazy, no?’
“Pablo goes on explaining as they descend the stairs again. ‘Three hundred thousand pesos per month, and growing every day. It’s a caramelo! Modest capital investment, low overhead. I financed it through the World Bank!’ He laughs, clapping Waterbury on the shoulder. ‘It’s business, my friend! Don’t look so shocked. I thought you would find it amusing.’
“They are back in the protective capsule of polarized glass, heading to the center again. They go to a restaurant in La Recoleta very new and very de moda, called La Rosa Blanca. A place where famous musicians and artists mingle with the blessed rich of our capital. Helena de Schutte owns it in partnership with two others. Maybe you’ve seen her name in the magazines lately: the Helena de Schutte that people say is the mistress of Carlo Pelegrini. Since all this scandal with poor Señor Pelegrini, I’m sure it has affected her business. That is to say, there has been a considerable increase.”
/ / /
“But let us return to Waterbury, who crosses the gleaming threshold with the unpleasant anxiety that he might have to pick up the check. Dining out is a privilege he and his family have long since abandoned, and the obligation of paying for a meal that could easily run, he can see from the orchids on each table, to three hundred pesos worries him. Maybe he betrays himself, because Pablo touches his back and says, ‘I invite you to everything tonight, Robert. This is a special night. We are celebrating that we are whole, that we are on our paths and that we are together.’
“As the warmth and affection in Pablo’s words wash over Waterbury he has trouble understanding what Pablo sees in him. They were friends and colleagues for two years, and maintained a lazy correspondence for six years after that. But they had never shared any near-death experiences, had not been thrown in jail together or even made a long trip. He imagines that in Pablo’s eyes he is a successful author, the man who quit the bank and made good, and thus is exempt from the conventional measurements of material success. And yet, he doesn’t doubt Pablo’s sincerity. He knows that we Porteños are a sentimental people, for whom the obligations of a friendship are a privilege and not a burden.
“La Rosa Blanca is in an old carriage house, now stripped down to the brick and expanded with vast panels of uninterrupted glass. A waterfall courses down a rock wall at one end, then flows through the restaurant to the pond that lies just outside the open end of the place. Crystal glitters everywhere against the rough brick background, ornamented by pretty young hostesses in silk who merely stand around and glow.
“Waterbury sees them and thinks pretty girls glowing like incandescent lamps, hears the cascade slapping along its course and thinks the water slapping on the rocks. He is working again, beginning the venture which he hopes will save him. With that thought and the presence of his friend, he starts to swell. His best books are ahead of him. Yes. When they write the legend, this will be viewed as his down and out time, the desperate period so many great writers go through on their way to immortality. And he could use this restaurant, with its elegant princesses and its swans, could even use Pablo somehow. He has the sensation not of making up a story as he goes along, but of making up his life as he goes along, as if through his will he has produced this elegant scene and his own presence there.
“‘They say this belongs to the mistress of one of Argentina’s richest men. A man named Carlo Pelegrini.’
“This is before Don Carlo’s name became a regular entertainment in the local editions, so Waterbury only raises his eyebrows, without feeling much impact. He doesn’t know that soon his life will become very much involved with Don Carlo. That strange doors will open.
“They are given the formidable menu. Waterbury is washed from one island of beautiful script to the next, dizzied by the descriptions of the foods on offer. He wavers between the rack of Patagonian lamb and the thick filet mignon in a sauce of mushrooms and champagne. Pablo orders Margaritas made from a rare Mexican tequila and fresh crab legs flown in from Tierra del Fuego.
“What do friends talk about after so much absence? Always three things: what they are doing now, what they have done, and after that, to dust off the fates of friends and colleagues that they have carried as mental curios across the years. The talk moves to their former work together at the bank.
“The deal Waterbury closed with Pablo involved the national airline. You remember, Athena, the airline whose ex-employees were beating drums on the Avenida Santa Fé the day you arrived? It was a perfect circle of business: AmiBank sold a half-billion of their uncollectable Argentine government debt to a Spanish group for a fraction of its value. The Spaniards in turn used that half-billion in debt to pay the government for the people’s airline. How content everyone was! AmiBank got cash for its uncollectable loans, the Spanish got the national airline at a great discount, and the government of Argentina got a pat on the back from the International Monetary Fund for reducing its debt. Of course, certain government functionaries negotiating for the Argentine side quietly received ‘commissions.’
“‘I always wondered about those terms. They were a little too good to us. They were way too good, as a matter of fact.’
“Pablo opens his mouth and laughs without making a sound. ‘Don’t tell me you have forgotten so soon, Robert! Free Trade for all countries! No more government industries! That was the war cry of the ones who held the notes. And if you don’t, well, we send your currency to hell and you have twelve thousand percent inflation! Besides, the airline was inefficient. It was giving only a tiny bit of the profit it should have made.’
“‘But the Spanish have basically shut it down, haven’t they? I read that they absorbed all the best international routes and sold off the assets. They plundered it.’ The writer goes quiet for a moment. “We fucked them, Pablo. We fucked the entire country.”
“Pablo looks defensive for a moment, then shrugs. ‘We guessed wrong! How were we to know?’
/ / /
Fabian leaned back, smiling. “So easy, no? To calmly throw one’s hands in the air, Ah! What misfortune! But it wasn’t my fault! How many times have we heard that, eh, Comiso? It went out of control! The victim acted badly! Easier still when the men providing the excuses are dressed in such elegant suits and bear the credentials of the finest global institutions. One compiles an expediente that always points to one’s innocence, because the benefits of finding in one’s favor are riches, status, a pretty wife, while to find on the other side, well, one may end up like Robert Waterbury.
“But such thoughts do not trouble Waterbury now; he is lost in his Destiny. The night has become a series of places separated by the interior of Pablo’s German automobile. At the Jockey Club they sip their drinks beside a tray of caviar, surrounded by pictures of horses. At the Millionaire’s House they play snooker in the billiards room of a classic mansion. Pablo’s tastes have changed in the last ten years: the bars are now elegant and tranquil, the acquaintances that greet him have grown older, more petrified with dignity. Before, Pablo had always been deferential and solicitous of such men, addressing them with a winning obsequiousness. Now, in a way Waterbury can’t quite quantify, he speaks to them as an equal. Suave and masterly in all currents of life, Pablo has become the fulfilled promise of every promising young man, a personage that Waterbury finds every bit as mythical as his own role of the desperate novelist.
“In this atmosphere any confession is possible. In the back seat of the moving auto, gray shadows slide over them like the fronds of a primitive jungle: ‘The truth is, Pablo, that it’s been very difficult. My financial position is tenuous. The first book did well but the second was a flop, and in this business, one flop is all it takes to go back to the bottom of the pile. After that you’re a known quantity, and that quantity is failure. I’m making my last play, Pablo. That’s the truth. This is my last play. Maybe I should have just gotten a job or something, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t surrender.’
“He watches Pablo’s face and is seized by the sudden fear that having heard this, his friend will lose faith and extinguish the magical force that animates this night. Pablo is completely in his own thoughts, his eyes gleaming in the street lights and then falling again into darkness as they pass. ‘It’s a strange search, Robert. One that I will never make, because it is not my character. But I understand it. I will bank you, amigo. Thus are friends.’ And for Robert Waterbury, the globe continues spinning.
“In the last hours they arrive at the tiny Bar Azul, in San Telmo. It is one of those theme bars, where instead of a simple drink one is thought to need entertainment. The theme is that everything in the bar is blue, even the lights, which render everyone ghostly and mysterious. At other times they change the lights to red, or to white. It fits the clientele, a confetti of marginal theater people, filmmakers reeling out experimental films that no one will ever see, supposed writers, painters aspiring or already failed and musicians without work. All know each other and thus buttress each other’s fierce pretensions about their world of Art. It’s a place of pierced noses and tongues, where those with light hair dye it black, those with black hair dye it purple and those with purple hair shave it off entirely. It won’t last long; but for the moment it is very de moda, and Pablo finds it amusing.
“On Thursday nights they play tangos in between sets of rock, a half-ironic return to the past which amuses the denizens of the place. It is strange to see them with their tattoos and their metal, listening to the scratchy orchestras of Carlos di Sarli and Oswaldo Pugliese, artists whose bandoneons have been silent for fifty years. What tango is playing? It must be “Por Una Cabeza,” because in American movies when they want tango in capital letters they always use that one. In Schindler’s List, that scene when Schindler meets the Nazis? “Por Una Cabeza.” And that movie with Al Pacino where the blind man dances with the beautiful woman? “Por Una Cabeza.” Always ‘Por Una Cabeza,’ or ‘El Choclo,’ because gringos know nothing about tango.”
“‘Por Una Cabeza’ is a pretty tango,” Fortunato defends. “You can’t argue with Carlitos Gardel.”
“Fine.” Fabian threw out his hands. “I concede that point, Comiso. Every day the boludo sings better! So, when Pablo and Waterbury arrive, we’ll say that the immortal Carlos Gardel is winding through the tragicomic verses of ‘Por Una Cabeza,’ lamenting once again the failed romance that lost the horse race of love by only a head. Okay? At that point perhaps Pablo is overcome by that voice of the 1930s, he says, ‘Enough whiskey. Let’s drink champagne.’
“Waterbury will wonder later whether the champagne somehow attracted the girl to the table like the bubbles in a magic cauldron. She is passing by and happens to glance at them and come over. She has light hair, which in the Bar Azul is blue hair, cut short and sharp, and pale skin that glows aqua along the slim length of her naked arms and legs. Her one-piece dress sparkles with sequins and ends at the middle of her thigh. She’s a pretty woman, with delicate features and a slim, small-boned body that nonetheless has a certain ampleness that attracted his attention. Strangest is that Waterbury feels he recognizes her. She glances at them, then looks a second time more intently, before continuing on her way. Waterbury next sees her standing beside Pablo, bending down to him and speaking above the music. “Aren’t you going to invite me to join you, shameless one?”
“Pablo laughs. ‘Forgive me, Señorita. Please . . .’ He stands up and pulls a chair out for her, sliding it in beneath her as she seats herself like a bird settling in to a nest. She gives Waterbury an ancient smile, Waterbury quivers slightly inside as he returns it. The feeling of familiarity won’t leave him.
“‘Pau1é,’” she says.
“‘Is your accent German or French?’ he asks.
“‘French!’ she answers. ‘I’m insulted that you even ask me that! The Germans have an overbearing accent in their Spanish, as if every word is a heavy object and they are beating you with it. The French always capture the correct meter.’ In truth, she speaks rather badly, a careless salad of genders and tenses, but she doesn’t seem to know it and laces it all together with a spoiled coquetry. She signals a passing waiter. ‘Che mozo! Another little glass, please.’
“Pablo is making one of our gestures at Waterbury, gathering his fingers together and shaking his hand up and down, as if to say, Que loca! She turns to him in the midst of it, but isn’t bothered. ‘And you, Pablo. It’s Pablo, no? I remember because I am Paulé, which is the French version. Pablo!’
“‘Yes.’
“‘How’s life?’
“‘Life is a river in the Amazon, Paulé. Rich and tranquil and sensual, and always leading to someplace mysterious at the next turn.’
“‘Perhaps for you, my love, life is a river. For others life is a sewer, filthy and mean and always going down a hole.’ She touches Waterbury on the arm. ‘And for you? How is life?’
“The champagne must have affected him. He considers his books and his flight to Buenos Aires. ‘Life is a quest.’
“She gives his answer a weary arch of her eyebrows. “A quest for what?”
“Waterbury thinks for a short time. “To unite the world of the imagination with the world of the senses,” he says at last.
“She nods. ‘Fine. I see we have an intellectual at the table. Thank you, Messieur Rimbaud.’
“‘And what is it for you?’
“She looks at the bottom of the champagne that Pablo has just poured for her. ‘It’s a quest . . . to get at the place where all these bubbles come from. Salud!’ She takes a sip, frowns at the bottle in disappointment. ‘The Cordon Rouge always has too much taste of lanolin!’
“At this Pablo throws his hand to his forehead. ‘She’s impossible, this woman!’
“‘Not impossible,’ she corrects him. ‘Just improbable.’
“Waterbury watches the improbable woman who has improbably invited herself to their table. She seems to know Pablo and he can’t escape the feeling that he knows her.
“‘And what do you do?’ he asks her.
“‘I’m a dancer. I dance the tango. I’m also an actress, and I do some modeling.’
“At this last Pablo seems doubly amused.
“‘How did you end up in Buenos Aires?’ Waterbury asks.
“‘You’ve heard of Virulazo, haven’t you?’
“‘He was one of the great dancers of tango,’ Pablo explains. ‘Very famous.’
“‘Virulazo and his wife were dancing in Paris, and I met them there. I was a student of dramatic arts at the Sorbonne at that time. From them I learned the tango, and I returned to Buenos Aires to continue my studies. For a time, I danced at the Teatro Colon. I also maintain a studio of psychiatric dance pedagogy.’
“Waterbury asks what that is.
“‘It’s my own creation to help people learn about their inner psyche through theater and dance.’
“Pablo pretends to take it very seriously, but Waterbury can see the arch expression lurking behind his ‘How interesting!’ Paulé says to him, ‘You’re a businessman, I know. What about your friend from the United States? Is he a businessman too?’
“‘No,’ Pablo says with real pride. ‘He’s a novelist. He’s here making investigations for his next novel.’
“‘How pretty. And have you published anything?’
“The writer sums up the languages and the prizes in a slightly bored tone of voice.
“‘Oh!’ She turns and looks at Waterbury, her face suddenly losing its disdain and seeming genuinely impressed, like a student of literature at the Sorbonne. At that moment Waterbury recognizes her with a shock that makes him feel faint. She is the woman he’d seen on all fours with a man at each end on the computer monitor at Pablo’s internet site. The dissonance between the burning image from the website and the real person in front of him blanks his mind. Beneath those clothes is that body, with the same mouth, the same buttocks. One could say that Waterbury had finally succeeded in unifying the world of the imagination with the world of the senses, only to find himself astounded at the unexpected result.
“Having entered into the dominion of the imagination, though, Waterbury is pulled still further inside. A man comes over and asks Paulé to dance. She accepts, and as Waterbury watches her follow him to the floor he cannot resist seeking the woman in the photo beneath the glittering one-piece dress and the high-heels. The man has curly black hair and a small mustache, a cinematic tanguero in a button-down gray shirt and pleated black pants. Waterbury imagines him fucking her in a picture. He clutches her to him, and to the tune of ‘El Choclo’ they begin to spin and lean through the complex steps of the dance. Their faces are severe. They look past each other, a thousand kilometers apart. Each of them do completely different steps, out of the hundreds of tango steps, and yet they match perfectly. They lean together, they pivot, he slides his foot in a crescent while she turns her knee. The man leads and the woman follows, and yet so tightly are they bound together that no one can say that he truly dominates her.
“‘The girl dances!’ Pablo says, and Waterbury nods, astonished behind his glass of champagne.
“She returns to the table when the music ends and she begins to ask him about his books. Waterbury is still cowed by the photo of her with the men, but her face becomes that of the young student at the Sorbonne. “And what were your books about?”
“‘The Black Market was about an international banker who goes on a business trip with his wife. The wife disappears and he starts to look for her, but then he starts running into all these dead people. What it turns out is that he’s in the Underworld, and only when he confronts the lies about his life and his work can he get out again.’
“‘It was excellent!’ Pablo adds.
“‘The second, Indigo Down . . .’ He feels almost embarrassed at the memory. ‘It’s about an advertising campaign. It was tied in with the Bible, prophecy, things like that.’ He discards the book. ‘Now I want to write one about Buenos Aires, a thriller type. Something they can fit into one of their little niches.’
“She has heard the bitterness in his last statement, nods thoughtfully, and to his surprise he feels she understands his life. ‘It’s difficult, no? To aspire? It brings one a world of problems.’
“Pablo offers her a ride home. She lives in the center, not far from the Hotel San Antonio, where the tight walls of Robert Waterbury’s room are waiting for him. Pablo drops them off together at the hotel, says goodnight as discreetly as a banker, then dissolves his night-colored car into the ashes of the evening. Waterbury contemplates this piece of woman in front of him, this student at the Sorbonne, this tanguera, this whore that fucks two men in front of a camera. The memory of his family insinuates itself, and besides, she might ask him for money and it would be strange. He walks her to her tiny apartment on Calle Suipacha. She shivers in her silver dress, in the silver dawn, and ducks into the door looking like the girl in all the tangos who grew up in the barrio and then became a toy of playboys and the dollars that they throw to the passing crowd. La Francesa. They exchange a kiss on the cheek, perfume mixed with smoke, and he floats back between the weary faces of the buildings. Thus ends his first night in Buenos Aires.”
/ / /
Fabian leaned back in his chair and gave a little toss of his head, seeming to tire momentarily of his role of entertainer. The other two said nothing. The Waterbury case had spiraled irremediably into a kaleidoscope of brilliant facades, and they could only stagger unsteadily among its images.
Athena looked around the room. The café had begun to clutter up for lunch, and white-jacketed waiters were threading the busy air with steel platters and siphons of soda water. Gazing at the mahogany paneling and heavy wooden refrigerated cases, Athena felt as if they could all be far in the past, debating the Caso Waterbury in a timeless noir atmosphere of cynicism and lies. No use to ask questions; even the Comisario, slumping in his worn sports jacket and staring out the window, had withdrawn into a cigarette. She couldn’t blame him. Fabian was turning his investigation upside down and laughing at all his own jokes while he did it, but the unspoken object of his laughter was the Comisario himself.
Fabian spoke first, lighting up again. “Are you getting hungry?” he asked them. “Because I, yes. Why don’t we order something? I invite you both. I suggest the puré de papas and grilled beefsteak.” Looking at Fortunato. “You can even get it Uruguayan style, with a fried egg on top, in honor of Boguso’s mysterious accomplice!”
The Comisario gave him a deadpan look. “Gracias, Romeo. I woke up this morning thinking that I needed more irony in my life.”
Fabian reached above the crowd and called out “Lucho! Lucho!” and summoned him with a wiggle of his fingers. “Three menus, amigo, the bifé with a fried egg and ham on top, al Uruguayo. Also a tomato salad and a bottle of the house tinto with soda. Bien?” The waiter hurried off and Fabian settled back contentedly. “I continue:
“The next day Waterbury devotes to wandering, the simple gorgeous pleasure of being in a foreign city that offers up its coffee and its elegance like a bouquet. October has come over Buenos Aires, injecting a fresh promise in the branches that comb the air with new leaves. For Waterbury, coming from an October of autumnal decay in the higher latitudes, the spring feels miraculous, infusing him with hopes that the new book will save him at a single stroke. He wanders the city that he remembers, past Retiro station to the elegant apartments of La Recoleta. He sits in parks and plazas, he stops for an espresso or a triple sandwich with the crusts cut off. At all sides he’s assaulted by our famous beauties, now using the excuse of the spring sunshine to turn loose their sensuality. As he sits in the cafés and dreams of the book he’ll write, he waits for the plot. Something set in the atmosphere of the wealthy upper-class, whose nineteenth century mansions rise behind iron fences in the splendid little barrio of Palermo Chico. He dreams of gleaming North American four-by-fours and private jets, of the dignified facade of massive riches built upon decades of fraudulent business deals and mafia tactics. In fact, he is dreaming Carlo Pelegrini without even knowing it, dreaming the future that will soon be chasing him like a train chasing its tracks. He is certainly dreaming of Paulé.”
“Fabian, por favor!” Fortunato broke in. “Stop swelling my balls with your verses! If there is a connection between Waterbury and Pelegrini, tell me plainly and let’s go on! I have things to do!”
Fabian slapped himself gently on the forehead. “You’re right, Comiso. My cousin in Los Angeles keeps telling me the same thing. This is where the literary types always go wrong. They can’t understand that the world doesn’t care about their themes or their graceful little phrases. But now I see why they keep doing it—there’s a certain pleasure in saying this has meaning or that has meaning, when the truth is that none of it has any meaning.” He rolled on over Athena’s protest. “No, chica. You can read a thousand masterpieces with a thousand philosophies, and when it’s all over you eat your pizza and drink your beer and do whatever you would have done anyway. The Comisario here isn’t going to strip off his clothes and give away all his worldly possessions because of a sudden illumination he buys from the bookstore. A conscience like that, yes, is fantasy.”
Fortunato had tired of being used as an example. “Mira, Fabian,” he began coldly, “I’m fed up with . . . ” The chirping of his cell phone interrupted him and he held up his hand for silence. “Fortunato.”
One of his inspectors had found a youth who had broken his leg in a soccer game and he and a lawyer wanted to write it up as a traffic accident to collect the insurance money. There was the question of shares. “Do I have to wrap you in a blanket and give you a baby bottle?” Fortunato growled at him. “Manage it yourself!” He hung up the phone, and Fabian started talking before he could resume.
“I was only making the point, Comisario, that metaphor, hidden significance, it’s all verso.” Cocking his eyebrow with a smile. “Better to stay with the formula.” He turned to Athena. “But we are discussing Robert Waterbury, no?
“Bien. The novelist spends a week taking in atmosphere, reading the local magazines and following the scandals in the newspapers. He tries to outline a story in his journal, but all he has are a selection of characters that seem to him rather stereotypical and uninteresting, but which he imagines are the kind of characters that will make him money. This not-so-noble goal empties him of inspiration.
“But Pablo has promised to be helpful and Pablo is a friend of iron! He introduces Waterbury and he makes phone calls on his behalf, always presenting him as ‘the novelist from the United States,’ and Waterbury in turn carries a copy of his first novel to all his appointments, flashing his jacket photograph like a carnet. He’s getting background on contemporary politics, he says, or he’s getting background on the Dirty War. He works his way from friend to friend, each of them gracious and ready with their version of the world.
“At his home, though, things are going badly, and troubling advisories flood into his brain in the worrisome telephone calls of his wife. His daughter falls from the swing set and needs two thousand dollars’ worth of bone setting. A dozen checks have been returned by the bank, and his wife has borrowed money from her brother to meet the latest mortgage payment. Worst of all, his agent, who has grown more and more elusive since the failure of his second book, informs him that he’ll now be handled by a new young face at the agency. ‘You need someone passionate about your career, Bob, and I think that in this respect you would be better served by an agent with a fresh outlook.’ The rejection devastates Waterbury, a professional judgment on his ability even to write something cheap and commercial. For some days he is too depressed to continue his research.
“And just at that moment when it seems most impossible, when he has come to see himself through his agent’s eyes and realize that the dream that made him abandon his prosperous career has finally abandoned him, Paulé appears at the desk of the Hotel San Antonio. It is evening. She is wearing a slim one-piece black dress that is slit from the knee to the thigh. ‘Why didn’t you pass by my apartment?’ she scolds him.
“The truth is, he hasn’t been able to get her off his mind. At night, he fantasizes about her pornographic performance and in the day she comes back to him in fugitive glimpses of dance or of that deep comprehension reflected in her simple phrase, ‘It’s difficult to aspire, isn’t it?’ He has walked past her apartment several times, imagining the scorn she would feel for him if he appeared. Moreover, he loves his wife, who supports him, and his child, for whom he is the world. For those reasons, he has not called her. But now she is before him in all the crooked luxury that the city can offer.
“‘I’ve come to take you for tango lessons. It’s essential for your investigations!’
“He surrenders to the dream. It whirls him away in a taxi and by the time they reach the Confiteria Ideal, he is a writer again, in the embrace of the tango that directs his steps, smelling always of tobacco and perfume, erotic, over-warm, his hand feeling slightly sweaty against hers. ‘Boludo, you’re stepping on me!’
“‘Forgive me!’ he says. ‘I have two 1eft feet.’
“Paulé laughs. ‘Don’t worry. Now enter again. First, to the side, then together, yes, now three steps—you’re knocking me over, you idiot!’
“Everyone at the Confiteria Ideal already knows Paulé. The Ideal is one of those ancient pastry shops from the Year Zero, all dark wood and marble tables and stained glass panels in the ceiling. Only a few survive now: the Tortoni, el Aguila. The old 1920s typescripts and the cast-iron cash registers always bring on a cloud of nostalgia, like something from a childhood you never had. In a ballroom upstairs they give tango lessons six days per week, and thus Paulé gathers a few pesos. Waterbury can see in the longing glances of many men that Paulé has a following. Lonely old widowers with gray hair and threadbare suit jackets, shy public servants with two left feet. Waterbury feels awkward in front of their anguish, regrets it, but he leaves it behind for the intensity of the woman in his arms. He keeps his hand on her back, feeling her skin shift beneath the cotton fabric, imagining her sandwiched between two men, a woman eager to do anything and completely available. And yet: how can that image be this woman in front of him? He makes a misstep and she shoves him backwards. “Stop flattening my toes!” She sees Waterbury’s stricken look, the angry glances of her fellow teachers, and she slides back into his arms, her breasts and stomach close to him as she puts one hand on his shoulder and the other out to the side, waiting for his grasp. Half hopelessly: ‘I’m the worst teacher. I know. Let’s try again.’
“He invites her for a snack downstairs. It’s only seven in the evening: too early for a real dinner. Paulé orders a campari and soda with crescents, and Waterbury an empanada. As soon as the waiter turns his back Paulé starts in.
“‘You’re here because you’re desperate, aren’t you? Don’t be embarrassed: I have a nose for it. I am the Patron Saint of Desperation. Like the Virgin of Lujan . . . ’ she tilts her head ironically, ‘but not a virgin.’
“Waterbury plays it off. ‘What makes you think I’m desperate?’
“‘Your family is at home. You’re staying at a cheap hotel. Your books are out of print—I checked it on the Internet.’
“And I checked you on the Internet! Waterbury feels like answering, annoyed at her presumption.
“‘Maybe you have other money,’ she goes on, ‘but I don’t believe so. No, I can see you are living out that tired myth of the desperate artist. What is your book in Buenos Aires about?’
“Waterbury trusts nothing about her, resents her disagreeable nature and her rapid, accurate observations. A woman like this deserves a vague answer. ‘It’s a sort of thriller.’
“‘Come on. A thriller about what? Who are the characters? What is the plot?’
“‘I’m still deciding that. That’s why I’m here.’
“The Frenchwoman indulges herself in a smug little nod. ‘And what are the themes? Is it once again about the imagination and the world of the senses, like your last book? Some important moral issue?’
“His irritation at the woman before him becomes his anger about the book. ‘This book will have no themes! It’s going to be an empty stupid thriller that does nothing but make me money! I’m killing everybody this time, and when the smoke disappears I expect to be sitting on a mountain of silver! Period! I’m a content provider now: I fill shelves for media corporations.’
“Paulé doesn’t flinch. “So you are telling me that your first book didn’t sell well and your last book was a failure, and that’s the fault of the readers, because they only want easy things, cheap things, with violence and romance and sex. And this has embittered you, no? Because you thought you deserved better.’ The dancer goes on coldly in the face of Waterbury’s silence. ‘But perhaps you didn’t deserve better! Perhaps the one thing you refuse to consider is that your books simply weren’t that good! That they were mediocre as literature and mediocre as entertainment?’
“The author is dizzied by her insults. ‘Don’t you think I consider that every single day?’
“‘Yes, perhaps that’s it. They were not quite good enough for literature, and not shallow enough for cheap entertainment, and while this world may reward the great and disabuse the truly bad of their illusions, the merely adequate who are silly enough to aspire, it will punish them, and drag them through the mud by their own dreams. And you get tired of trying to do something great, and finally . . . ’ her eyes flicker to the side as she goes on, ‘you accommodate yourself to whatever meaningless pornography will pay your apartment. These are things that I know, Robert, because I am the Patron Saint of Desperation, of the visions that assassinate your life.’
“The Frenchwoman leans her elbow on the table and rests her chin on her palm, staring at him with her gray eyes across the eighteen inches of marble between them. Her flat finish gives no clue to whatever emotion lies behind it. ‘I will be your muse.’
“And through Paulé, Waterbury begins to meet another group of friends. Bohemians ten to twenty years younger than him. Jugglers and mimes who pass a tin can at Palermo Park, surly musicians with bangles hanging off their faces, film directors with rich parents, actresses, intellectuals, angry painters, resentful writers who have yet to publish a book. They meet at the Bar Azul, go to theater productions in basements or apartments, drink bad wine, snort merca, fuck each other on filthy sheets in old high-ceilinged apartments whose windows let in dirty traffic noise. Waterbury is too old for them, but his cachet as a foreign novelist gets him in, and Paulé never fails to polish his reputation. He has books in translation and an agent in New York, while they are primping themselves behind ‘underground’ productions and little books published ‘for a select audience.’ And though he doesn’t want to admit it, his acceptance by this tedious circle bolsters him.
“In this flock of crows Waterbury sits and listens, fills his journals with their smoke and shallow dramas while he drinks espresso and takes up tobacco in his neighborhood café. Now Waterbury, who never failed to read his daughter to sleep, wakes up at noon, eats dinner at eleven and crosses the night on a regimen of coffee and cocaine. He is loading up his credit card, giving his wife half-truths about his research in weekly conversations that have become a bit uncomfortable. She tells about the little girl and the lovable things she does. He stays silent about the parties that flow from bar to apartment to dance hall, about the cocaine. But the book is taking shape, he assures her. A very vague shape.
“Paulé, to his surprise, asks nothing of him. She annoys him with her pompousness, but the flashes of jaded tenderness beneath her impersonation of La Francesa intrigue him. He guesses her age between twenty-eight and forty, depending on the time of night, but like everything else about her, he doesn’t inquire. The picture on Pablo’s internet pornography site haunts him. He walks her to her apartment with an ache in his groin but refuses to go inside, knowing it would be impossible not to fall. And what diseases might she have? he asks himself. And what might he be getting into? And most of all, when his mind isn’t fogged by her erotic image, he thinks of the effect on his wife and child, who would forever have this strange unwholesome danseuse in the room with them.”
/ / /
Fabian abruptly clicked his tongue, mugged a sardonic little expression of shame. “I’m sorry! Perhaps you are tired of hearing about Paulé. Maybe she is just a diversion, to keep things entertaining. But I see Lucho is coming.”
The waiter appeared with three steaming plates, the beefsteaks concealed beneath a heap of ham, fried egg, red pepper, and melted cheese. “Al Boguso,” Fabian joked. Lucho set the wine bottle and siphon on the table while Fabian busied himself adding corn oil and vinegar to sliced tomato salad. They started eating as Fabian told Athena about Montevideo, the fabled ‘gray city’ that had stopped in time some fifty years ago and lingered across the Rio de la Plata as the sleepy alter-ego of Buenos Aires. ‘Provider of discreet financial services and elusive fugitives.’ He mentioned his Hollywood cousin’s brushes with various stars, and how he had a connection to a famous director, and this led him again to the matter of his screenplay, inextricable, in its turn, from the story of Robert Waterbury. He held a tomato on his fork and gestured with it. “Now, as I warned you at the hotel, the next part is inevitable, because every thriller must have some fabulously wealthy man. He should have a questionable past, and, as the book is set here in Buenos Aires, he must have contacts with vicious milicos related to the anti-subversive war. With this in mind, we consider again el Señor Waterbury.”
“Waterbury is working the chain of contacts that he has made through Pablo. Because Waterbury, though yes, a bit desperate, is not so stupid. He’s knowledgeable about economics and contemporary Argentine politics. He has traveled widely. He begins to show up at dinner tables and asados even without Pablo, and always with questions. ‘And what was your experience of the Seventies? And what is your opinion of Peron?’ He is Waterbury, the erudite foreign novelist, and if no one has actually read his novels, he still has his copy of The Black Market to flash.
“One night he is drinking whiskey with a retired naval officer and another man who was briefly the Minister of Economy during the last days of the dictatorship. The name of Pelegrini comes up. ‘He should meet Pelegrini,’ the ex-minister says.
“‘Pelegrini!’ The idea strikes the old officer as ridiculous at first, then he considers it, looking at the bowl of his pipe. They are sitting in the oak-paneled library of a townhouse in Palermo. ‘It would be interesting, no? Pelegrini is a phenomenon.’ He shakes his head. ‘No! Pelegrini hates journalists. One of these days he’s going to put a bullet in one and set loose a shitstorm.’
“‘But Roberto is not a journalist,’ says the former politician. ‘He’s a novelist. He’s irrelevant. What difference would it make to Carlo to spend a half-hour with him?’
“‘It would be interesting for you,’ the admiral agrees to Waterbury. ‘But the issue is that Carlo is half-paranoid about journalists. They persecute him, and there were already some incidents.’
“‘What kind of incidents?’ Waterbury asks.
“The ex-minister frowns. ‘They were exaggerated things! Such and such journalist gets assaulted and he tries to blame it on Don Carlo. Or an apartment is vandalized, and it must be the fault of Don Carlo. The problem is that there are many journalists with bad intentions, and they’ll say any lie to call attention to themselves.’
“‘Like all these lies about the anti-subversive war,’ the admiral continues. ‘We save the country from the subversives, and then the leftists spend the next twenty years making us the villains and the terrorists the heroes.’ He finishes with a reprise Waterbury has heard many times among the discredited rightists of the old days: ‘We won the war but we lost the peace.’
“‘What does Pelegrini do?’
“The two older men look at each other. ‘He has a range of businesses,’ the former minister says slowly. ‘For example, he owns a courier service, like your private services in the United States. Also, he has an interest in the Customs warehouses at the airports and ports in Argentina, where people importing goods must put them until they clear customs. In partnership with some officers of the navy, like Juancito here.’
“‘Aldo!’
“Aldo ducks his tongue. ‘It’s public information, Juan! It already passed through the newspapers.’ To Waterbury: ‘It’s a completely legitimate deal. I presided over it, so I know. It’s a heap of contracts this high, and every one of them with the appropriate signatures of the Ministry of Interior and the Armed Forces. But it has become fashion to attack Pelegrini, especially these days, while he’s trying to make an arrangement with the national postal service.’
“Waterbury can feel a chill coming from the naval officer’s corner, and he tries to reassure him. ‘Juan, the reality doesn’t matter to me. I fabricate my own reality. I’m only looking for atmosphere. The sound of a voice, what kind of clothes a person wears; things like that.’
“The ex-minister takes up the idea. ‘What I would suggest, then—’
“‘No, Aldo,’ the other interrupts. ‘Better that no! What is he going to find out in a half-hour? Carlo’s not going to talk.’
“‘Not to talk, Juan. To observe.’ He turns to Waterbury. ‘You can go and see. He has a beautiful house in Palermo Chico, mansion type, of the old style. He has very pretty things. Moreover, he’s a very interesting man to talk to. A philosophical type. He reads Borges to put himself to sleep.’
“‘Aldo!’ The admiral shakes his head. ‘Pelegrini is a man of great weight! And with this mess of Grupo AmiBank . . . Better that no!’
“‘Let’s help the boy,’ the economist says. ‘It’s our contribution to Art! Will you call him, or should I?’
“The admiral takes a sour look. ‘You call him! And make it well-clear that he’s not a journalist.’ He looks at Waterbury and his tone mellows back to the luxurious hospitality he’d displayed before Pelegrini entered the conversation. ‘Roberto, I wish you much luck with your novel. But when you publish it,’ the old face tries to put some humor behind the request, ‘please don’t put my name in the acknowledgments.’
“Palermo Chico, as you may know, is a little slice of wrought iron and mansions lying among the wide green parks near Retiro station. These palaces were built when a peso was a peso, so fresh that you could practically smell the cattle and the wheat that gave them birth. The mansions loom up three stories in cut stone, not regular stories, but the old style that rise five meters into elegant moldings and frescos painted by artists imported from France. Oval windows peek out from among artfully cut tiles, and immaculate gardens set off the proud colonnades of the front steps. They are houses that invite grand entrances, and many have been turned into embassies. The rest belong to the tiny circle of people who can pay to maintain them. Carlo Pelegrini has a mansion there, on Calle Castex, which is, by coincidence, the name of his wife: Teresa Castex de Pelegrini.
“Waterbury has been advised of all this by the ex-minister, and advised simply to look and listen and not bring up the subject of Don Carlo’s business dealings. Above all, he should try not to appear as a journalist.
“The mansion stands on almost an entire city block, with a high brick wall maintaining the privacy of the lower floors. A guard buzzes the visitor through the wrought iron gate and accompanies him silently to a small stone guardhouse near the front entrance. The mansion itself looks like one he saw on a documentary about Napoleon, a massive construction of graceful beige stone under a cap of black slate.
“Waterbury is nervous. An unexpected rainstorm soaked him as he strolled from the subway stop and water is dripping down the back of his neck. He thinks of canceling the interview, but he knows he’ll never get another chance. Poor Waterbury’s heart is fluttering as he enters the guardhouse.
“The hut contains two men with walkie-talkies and a pair of lthakas leaning in the corner. Both wear large black sunglasses, one of them moves forward to confront him. He is about Waterbury’s own age but has obviously taken a very different path in life. He seems a man of little philosophy, with a cool face that has never expressed doubt. Waterbury doesn’t know it, but this man is Abel Santamarina, the chief of MovilSegur, one of Señor Pelegrini’s several private security companies. Santamarina was processed in 1984 for twelve incidences of torture and extra-judicial execution at the Banfield Pit, the clandestine detention center of the Federal Police during the anti-subversive war. Pardoned in the general amnesty of 1985, he now offers private security to Don Carlo and his many businesses.”
Fortunato spoke up. “What does he look like, this Santamarina?”
“As it turns out, Waterbury described him with great care afterwards. He said he was well-developed in the shoulders and chest, very intimidating, with short colorless hair and eyes caught in that uncomfortable mix of brown and green, so that when you look into them they refuse to become one or the other.”
Fortunato thought about the man he’d met a few weeks ago with the Chief. “A good description,” Fortunato said. “Very artistic.”
“So the man looks at his clipboard, and he says with some distaste, ‘Robert Waterbury. Journalist.’
“‘I’m not a journalist,’ Waterbury corrects him. ‘I’m a novelist.’
“The guard ignores him. ‘Journalist. Do you have any recording devices?’
“‘No.’
“‘Wireless devices? Cellular telephone?’
“‘No.’
“Santamarina looks directly into his eyes, as if he can spy the thoughts whirling around Waterbury’s brain. Whatever he sees, it is insufficient. ‘Lift up your arms.’
“Waterbury complies and Santamarina begins to run his hands along his ribs. By now a third man has come in with a Doberman on a chain. Waterbury looks the dog in the eyes, the dog growls at him, and Waterbury takes a tiny but critical step backwards. He stumbles against the desk, where the little spike that holds message papers stabs him in his behind. He cries out and lurches forward again into Santamarina, who is at that moment running a metal detector along his legs. It happens at once: Waterbury cries out, Santamarina curses, the dog leaps up and grasps Waterbury’s wrist between his teeth.
“In five seconds the guard has choked the dog away, but a stain of red has sprouted along Waterbury’s torn sleeve. ‘What’s happening with you, loco?’ Santamarina berates him. ‘What’s your problem?’
“The blood drips onto Waterbury’s jacket and his eyes are tearing up. Santamarina looks at him with distaste and gives him his own handkerchief. He seems to remember that Waterbury is a guest. ‘Be more careful, che,’ he says in a tone not quite apologetic. ‘We get all kinds here, you know. There are many interests who would like to harm Señor Pelegrini.’ He brushes off the writer’s shoulders, claps him on the back. ‘Go ahead, boss. Keep the handkerchief.’
“The other guard walks him silently to the side entrance. The glass doors are gleaming behind a floral grille of exquisite wrought iron. The doorknob is a swirl of brass. Inside, the rich maroon carpet of the foyer leads to a quarter-acre of gleaming black and white squares. At four-thirty in the afternoon, with the sky overcast and the curtains half-drawn, the dimness is dispersed by glowing chandeliers and art nouveau floor lamps shaped like lilies. A butler in a white evening jacket looks at Waterbury’s bloodied handkerchief. ‘Señor Waterbury. What happened? Is there something I can get you. A towel perhaps?’
“Waterbury catches the spectacle of his soaking hair and ruined suit in the mirror, seeing himself from the outside, as an impostor and a failure. He wrestles against the urge to turn around and leave. ‘A towel and a comb, thank you. I’ll wait here.’
“In a few minutes he is more composed and the bleeding has stopped. The butler takes him across the expanse of chess-like marble past the grand entryway, with its oversized double doors leading out and its helix of marble stairs ascending into the inner reaches of the house. Above him a fresco depicts a sky bordered by pink clouds, on which Phoebus guides the chariot of the sun. The furniture dates from the Twenties and Thirties, is impeccably upholstered in rich floral brocades and gleaming striped silks as if waiting patiently for the entrance of Carlos Gardel and his orchestra in black tuxedos. From the wall smiles an insouciant young peasant man lounging in a Dutch afternoon of several hundred years ago. They pass through this large room into a smaller room that appears to be for smoking, with leather chairs and pictures of racehorses and hunting dogs. At the far door, the butler knocks and then opens it, announcing, ‘Señor Waterbury is here, Don Carlo.’
“Over the butler’s shoulder Waterbury can see a formal dining room, with gilded molding and a magnificent chandelier on which every prism glitters. The butler steps aside and Waterbury sees a man and woman seated at a long gleaming table. The man is wearing a blue sweatshirt which goes well with his head of thick silver hair, while the woman, in a white silk blouse with a gold brooch, imposes a slight formality on the scene. It seems to Waterbury almost as if she’s dressed for his arrival. Waterbury places her in her late forties, with tightly drawn hair dyed to a timeless chestnut. Her pleasing features seem slightly nervous—or perhaps eager. This will be Teresa Castex de Pelegrini.
“The man rises and smiles at him, shaking his hand. His sharp blue eyes make immediate and deep contact with Waterbury, who is awed by the magnate. ‘I’m Carlo Pelegrini,’ he says warmly, ‘it’s a pleasure. And I present you my wife, Teresa Castex.’ The friendly expression changes to one of concern. ‘Your hand is bleeding! What happened?’
“The writer remembers Don Carlo’s hatred of journalists and decides not to complain. ‘The dog was a bit nervous. It’s nothing.’
“‘No, amigo, it’s not nothing! How can it be nothing?’ He turns to the butler, who is waiting at the door. ‘Nestor! Tell Abel to wait after his shift is over. I want to know why my guest is arriving with blood on his hand.’
“‘It’s already stopped, Señor Pelegrini. Don’t worry.’
“He raises his hand. ‘This can’t pass here! We will need a doctor to look at it. And your jacket . . . Afterwards we’ll arrange it. Nestor, bring the Señor another handkerchief. And what else? A coffee? A drink? Perhaps a sandwich?’ He dispatches Nestor to fetch coffee and sandwiches, signaling him also to wheel in a cart covered with liquor bottles. Waterbury notes that Don Carlo’s accent is slightly drier than the traditional Porteño voice, giving him a masterly patrician air despite his informal attire. ‘So, you’ve come to Buenos Aires doing some journalism?’
“‘No. I’m not a journalist. I’m a novelist.’
“‘Of course! You are Robert Waterbury.’
“Waterbury smiles accommodatingly, unsure whether Pelegrini is mocking him, but the billionaire goes on. ‘The Black Market!’ he says, waving his hand. ‘Genius! It’s genius! That moment when the dead friend finally confronts him.’ Don Carlo looks distantly into space and recites the key line in Spanish with the perfect blend of comprehension and sadness: You are an expert on debt, but no one ever told you about memory, which is the same. They are both things that linger from the past, and they both arrive at a point where they can no longer be negotiated. He shakes his head in admiration. ‘Excelente! I wanted to stand up and applaud! That mix of business and psychology and metaphysics . . . Genius! I read it two times!’
“Waterbury listens in complete astonishment. Any writer would feel gratified to have his work resuscitated in such vivid colors, but coming from one of the wealthiest and most mysterious men of an entire country, the effect is as exhilarating as an unexpected inhalation of chemical solvents. Amidst the spectacular strangeness of the moment, Robert Waterbury feels shame at abandoning his literary scruples for something base and mediocre. He has the brief sickening feeling that perhaps when he came to Buenos Aires he left the best part of himself behind.
“Don Carlo continues with his critique. ‘You hit the international banks perfectly: they’re a pack of jackals! But Indigo Down,’ he grimaces, ‘it was very . . . heavy. All that about justice and corruption . . . ’ He grimaces again. ‘A bit swollen.’
“‘Indigo Down was different,’ Waterbury protests. ‘I wanted to write a sacred text.’
“Don Carlo gives Waterbury one of those deep smiles. ‘With yourself as God, no?’
“Waterbury laughs. ‘Perhaps, Señor Pelegrini, but with the knowledge that, as with all gods, the majority of the people would not take me very seriously.’
“Now Teresa Castex speaks up, a bit stridently. ‘I preferred Indigo Down. You didn’t run away from difficult themes.’
“There is something vaguely sardonic in Pelegrini’s voice. ‘Of course, Teresa! Teresa is the one who discovered you. We were vacationing in Barcelona when she picked up your book, and something about it captured her—’
“‘It was the image of the lost wife,’ Teresa says.
“‘For me it was those metaphysical themes,’ Don Carlo continues. ‘Borges, too, swims in those matters of memory and existence, though yours is more sensual and his is more on the side of the ascetic.’
“Waterbury, who normally hates to be compared with anyone, takes the compliment to heart. ‘So you two are great readers?’
“‘I, a little. It’s very difficult to find time. But Teresa, yes,’ he waves lightly in the air, as if at a mosquito, “she goes around a lot in the arts.’
“‘People who can write a novel amaze me,’ she says. ‘You have to imagine a whole world. It seems like something impossible.’
“‘No, Señora Castex. What is impossible is to stop imagining the world.’
“Don Carlo laughs as Nestor arrives with a warm washcloth and a towel, followed by a maid with a silver coffee service. At Don Carlo’s request Nestor removes Waterbury’s torn and soaking jacket and returns with a fresh white polo shirt with a famous brand name on the label. Waterbury slips it on in the smoking room then returns to his coffee.
“They talk some more about literature, with Don Carlo guiding the conversation and his wife inserting the occasional opinion. She takes advantage of a brief silence to inquire, ‘And what are you doing in Buenos Aires, Robert? Are you writing a new work?’
“‘Yes. I’m doing the initial research.’
“‘And can you say what it is about?’
“Waterbury has good reason to be shy. Pelegrini was even then making the occasional appearance in the newspaper linked to matters of contraband and money-laundering, and Waterbury doesn’t want to display any interest in such things. ‘This one is going to be a thriller type, set here in Buenos Aires. Something more commercial.’
“‘Of course, Robert. Even artists need to eat!’
“As in a work of theater the butler enters with a tray of little cakes, which they eat as they discuss the themes of literature and art. As Teresa Castex is telling of Rodin’s stay in Buenos Aires, Don Carlo’s cell phone distracts him and he excuses himself to the next room. The acrid conversation curls out like smoke beneath the door, and Waterbury hears the words ‘Grupo AmiBank,’ slapped harshly alongside the phrase hijos de puta. When Don Carlo returns his mood has changed. His pleasantries seem like a crust floating on a pool of lava, and Waterbury knows that it’s time to go.
“‘But look,’ Don Carlo says, mustering one last show of warmth. ‘Your jacket is ruined. Why don’t you go with Teresa and she can help you buy a new one. No, amigo . . . ’ Waterbury feels Don Carlo’s arm around his shoulder, can feel with equal intensity the force of his smile. ‘I insist.’
/ / /
Fabian looked down at his steak, of which he had only taken a few bites in his rush to tell the story. “Look at this! I’m talking, and this poor Uruguayo is getting colder and colder.” Fortunato felt that he gave him a particularly smug grin. “We can’t let him go to waste, no?” The young detective began ostentatiously to cut and eat the steak, conscious that his companions were watching him. “Skinny!’ he called across the room to Lucho. “Another beer!”
Athena rose abruptly. “Don’t start again until I get back,” she warned. Fortunato watched her recede towards the bathroom and then lit a cigarette. Fabian went on eating as if he were alone.
“Why, Fabian? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
The young man held up his hand until he finished chewing. “Until now I’ve been checking out the information. I needed to be sure. A matter like this, you don’t want to throw it all to the four winds without being completely right. Besides, you said you didn’t want me on this case.” He cut off another piece of steak and popped it into his mouth.
Fortunato kept his cara de gil, his idiot face, firmly in place, just as Fabian was wearing his. That Fabian was revealing all this, after Boguso’s confession had effectively settled the matter, meant that he had heavy people behind him. Fortunato spoke as casually as he could. “But Fabian, with all due respect for your literary abilities, let’s skip to the end of your story. Do you have evidence that it is someone other than Boguso?”
Fabian refused to tip his hand. “We will talk of Boguso when we reach that part of the script. My cousin in Los Angeles . . . ”
Fortunato cut him off, raising his voice slightly as he would speak to an officer of lower rank. “Stop swelling my balls about the cousin! What I want from you—”
“You want the truth! I know!” He shrugged, took another bite. “But do you really, Comiso? Truth is such a brute. Like King Kong, it doesn’t notice who it crushes. Lies, on the other hand . . . ” He cocked a smile at him. “They’re a little more humanitarian.”
Fortunato felt as if a cannonball had gone through his stomach. Fabian knew something, and the fear that had started at the Sheraton Hotel had been intensifying with every mention of Pelegrini’s name. Along with the fear though, something equally cutting: Fabian could answer him in his own time, or not answer him at all, because in the space of two hours Fabian had gone from a subordinate to a superior, a member of the fashionable set, while Fortunato had become a lonely old widower living in a shabby little house in the suburbs, trailing off towards an undistinguished retirement. He, who’d risen cautiously through the ranks of the Buenos Aires police without ever arousing a shred of suspicion. Who’d earned public citations from the mayor, and private respect from the Chief and all the others who had benefited from his thirty years of orderly business. Now, to be dictated to by this low-level inspector!
The thought whipped through his mind of killing Fabian, and the silent image of Fabian crumbling to the floor transited his brain like the flapping of a bird’s wings.
As if in answer Fabian wiped his mouth with a napkin, said quickly as he looked over Fortunato’s shoulder, “Stay tranquil, Comi, and the storm will pass over your head.” Speaking across him, “Ah, here she is!”
Athena sat down and took a drink of water. “Okay. I’m ready for the next installment of your . . . ” she swirled her hands in the air, “whatever this is.”
“Very well, Doctora. But before I continue with the next part, do you know much about Carlo Pelegrini?”
“Only what I read in the newspapers.”
“Ah, the newspapers!” The inspector turned his face to the Comisario, seeking agreement on the old gripe. “There’s no limit to the malice of those journalists, no? Pointing out that Pelegrini has a private postal system and a part ownership of the Customs warehouses, and claiming that he maintains a force of private security operatives estimated at nearly two thousand armed men. For this reason journalists such as Ricardo Berenski like to use the term ‘A State within the State,’ as in that headline in Pagina/12 last week.”
He turned to Athena. “And Berenski is the worst of all, isn’t he? With those insinuations about money laundering, and his exposition of Don Carlo’s attempt to take over the National Postal System? If I were Berenski, I think I’d walk in the shade for a while. He already makes much of his exile during the Dictatorship: these boys working for Carlo Pelegrini are the type who he was fleeing from. Raul Huaina Gomez, also called The Peruvian, ex-integrant of the Allianza Anticomunista Argentina that assassinated more than three hundred people before the military took over for them in 1976. Pardoned in the Amnesty of 1989. Hugo Gonzalez, called The Tiger, denounced by human rights investigators for twenty-six incidents of torture during his military service at the Escuela de Mechanica, and also child theft, extortion, robbery and rape, pardoned by the Law of Due Obedience in 1992. Abimael Zante—you remember him, Comiso, he was in one of your task groups at the Brigada of Quilmes for a while.”
Fortunato nodded, the unpleasant recollections of Zante returning to him. “I had him transferred to Vicente Lopez to get rid of him.”
“Thus the security apparatus of the esteemed Carlo Pelegrini. Very wholesome, no?”
Fortunato kept his eyes trained on Fabian and his perfect blond ringlets. He’d never seemed so dedicated to wholesomeness in all the juicy squeezes he’d armed at the racetrack and in the discos. “So, returning to the theme of the victim . . . ”
“Of course, Comiso. Forgive me.”
“La Señora de Pelegrini arranges to meet Waterbury at a brilliant café in La Recoleta, where Waterbury groans over the price of a coffee. The little silver trays and tableware make perfect accessories for the well-wrapped clientele. Teresa Castex strides in and kisses him in a mist of perfume and sits down for a coffee. ‘I hate this café,’ she says. ‘It’s quite pretentious, but it’s an easy place to find and my driver can wait outside with the car.’
“Without the jewelry of the massive Mansion Castex, she seems much like any upper-class woman in the room. As Waterbury will observe in his journal that night, she’s a woman on the unkinder half of the forties, with stiff brown hair and a thin voice that seems always on the verge of a complaint. She had once been beautiful in a delicate way, but over the years her slight body seems to have dried and hardened like an Inca mummy, with sharp rigid shoulders that thrust out of the top of her blouse and hands like spiders. Her skin has stayed youthful, well-cared for by spas and surgery, but her bright silk scarf and Tiffany jewelry cannot alleviate the permanent frown that pulls at her mouth. She gives the impression of perfectly dressed unhappiness.
“‘And Robert; what do you think of Buenos Aires?’
“Waterbury expresses his awe that so much beauty has been blended with so much corruption and horror.
“‘Oh, that,’ she shrugs. ‘It is no longer news to us.’ They chat about literature for a while. Teresa Castex is partial to the French Symbolists, who she reads in the French. ‘But Carlo is crazy for Borges,’ she adds. ‘It’s a bit incongruous, because he’s so much in the commercial world and Borges is so abstract.’
“‘Those of Borges are more puzzles than stories.’
“‘Exactly. I think for him it’s like a game: if he can solve the story, he has equaled Borges. He’s very competitive, Carlo.’
“‘It seems he’s done well. Your house is beautiful.’
“‘The house is mine,’ she says with a trace of venom. ‘It’s the Castex Mansion and I am Teresa Castex. Perhaps those two words, de Pelegrini, make me his property, but the house still belongs to me.’
“The intrigues within other people’s marriages never make for light conversation, and Waterbury retreats from the subject. They return to literature.
“‘It’s very special to write a novel,’ Teresa says. ‘’I’ve always wanted to write one, but I lack discipline. I sit down, but it all feels futile. Who am I to contend with the masters? Am I a great spirit?’ Her face is a little bouquet of admiration. ‘Perhaps you are, Robert. I could sense you were different from reading your book, and then from your visit at our house. Maybe, in some small way, it is destiny that we meet. We’ll see.’
“Waterbury isn’t sure how to react. Destiny is a surface that has proved rather slippery for him. Her coffee arrives with the perfect pat of tobacco-colored foam lingering against the white china. To his relief, she pays the bill.
“They stroll down the Calle Santa Fé, past gleaming shops with famous names. In an Italian clothing store they examine the light weight suit coats of spring, looking for a replacement for his old one.
“‘Linen, no!’ Teresa protests with indignation. ‘The only place to wear linen is if you happen to be in a Renoir painting. Otherwise, it wrinkles.’ He tries another in navy blue. ‘Oh, Robert, you look very handsome in that. Perfect for author appearances. Why don’t you get that one, and try on this other one made of silk and cotton.’
“‘Teresa! You can’t buy me two!’ But then he feels the cool slippery weight of the jacket, notes the sheen and the little universe of sage and tan within the intricate weave and a little rat-voice tells him that he may not get another chance. She insists on buying neckties, a belt and a pair of khaki pants. He stops her at the shoes.
“‘But Robert, you can’t go around in those dead dogs you’re wearing! Don’t be ridiculous!’
“He looks down at the polished-over scuff marks of his old wing-tips and accedes to the shoes. By the time they walk out she has spent five thousand dollars.
“She suggests that they lunch while the store completes the appropriate alterations, and Waterbury is surprised to see her lead them into the same restaurant he had visited with Pablo a few weeks before, La Rosa Blanca. Again Waterbury is besieged by that fear of having to pay the bill. After all, she’s just spent several thousand dollars on making him look rich; he should try to act the part. He looks fearfully at the menu larded with French words and ingredients from far-flung places.
“‘They take your head off here!’ Teresa grimaces. She leans towards him. ‘I’ll just put it on my husband’s account. He’s an investor in this restaurant; he bought it for his mistress.’ She sees that Waterbury is uncomfortable. ‘Don’t worry, Robert; there will be no drama. She’s only here at night.’ She finishes with a poisonous little twist, ‘That’s when she does her best work.’
“Waterbury again is reluctant to become the confidant of Teresa Castex and wonders, as they order, what spirit of auto-immolation would bring her to her rival’s dinner table. He tries to leave the thought behind as they chatter about clothes and their favorite places of Europe.
“‘So, Robert, excuse me if I intrude.’ Teresa is looking at him over a glass of white wine. ‘Of the artistic part, no doubt remains: you’re an excellent writer with the chance at becoming a master, which very few have. But let’s speak about the part, shall we say, less romantic. The economic element. Did it go well for you?’
“Waterbury too has drunk a glass of wine. Now the slightly brittle aura of Teresa Castex has softened, and Waterbury feels an allure that he will stereotype as the ‘jaded patrician.’ Maybe it is because she admires his books, or perhaps it is the presents she has bought him, but the moment becomes suddenly intimate and private, as if the little table is at the center of a whirlpool. ‘The truth is, Teresa, that the economic part has been very difficult.’
“La Señora Castex begins to question him as to the specifics of his situation: whether he has savings, debts, what advance he expects to get for his next book. The level of detail surprises Waterbury but he doesn’t feel he can refuse her. Finally she leans forward and smiles like a teenager. ‘I say all this because I have a proposition!’
“Waterbury goes cold, but at the same time feels a thrill.
“‘It’s thus: I have always wanted to write a book, but I have no talent. All the same, year after year, I keep perfecting it in my mind. It has much passion, and intrigue. Much corruption and even murder. It’s the perfect story of Buenos Aires that you are looking for. I have always wanted to write this novel . . . ’
“‘But you only need write it!’ Waterbury gushes, not really believing himself. ‘A pencil and piece of—’
“‘Robert. Let’s talk seriously. I told you I have no talent in novels, and if I write it no one will publish it. It would just be a waste of time. But if you write it,’ she arches her eyebrows, ‘that would be another story, no? If you write it, it will travel all over the world, it will be an important work. And moreover, I tell you it is just the story you are looking for. Very commercial.’ She smiles with her eyes half-closed. ‘And you can put in as much sex as you want to.’
“It takes Waterbury a few moments to dissipate the laughing gas in his head. She is proposing something illicit and slightly dangerous, so very in tune with Buenos Aires that some ironic part of him wants to laugh at the perfection of it. He hesitates to ask her to clarify the scheme, because maybe this is the best part right now, when it is all fresh possibilities. Waterbury has heard a thousand times the phrase ‘I’ve been writing a book in my head for years,’ and a whole industry of ghost writers gorges itself on the egos of politicians and businessmen who want to garnish their accomplishments with the elusive tide of Author. So perhaps now Teresa Castex wants to see her musings enshrined.
“‘What’s the book about?’
“‘Afterwards I’ll tell you. First, don’t you want to know more about the arrangement?’
“The ‘arrangement.’ Waterbury recognizes well that dignified word Porteños use for bribes or kickbacks. Arrangement. ‘Okay.’
Beneath the business tone, her blue eyes are gleaming with something that makes Waterbury slightly uncomfortable. She rests her elbows on the table and lowers her voice as she speaks. ‘I will pay you two hundred thousand dollars to write a complete manuscript of this book for me. Deposited in the bank of your choice, of course. There are good ones in Uruguay, where the banking secrecy laws are very good. Two hundred thousand, eh? It’s not so bad. And you won’t have to pay taxes.’
“Their arrangement would be the following: They will meet every three days and discuss the plot and the characters. Between their meetings, Waterbury will write another section of the manuscript. Perhaps twenty pages. In approximately six weeks, they will have the first redaction and he will receive the first third of his fee. After that, he can stay in Buenos Aires or return to his home to polish the further redactions. On its acceptance by his publisher, he will receive the greater part of his fee. Teresa Castex de Pelegrini would have her name on the cover as a co-author.
“‘It can be in small print,’ she says. ‘Or even a with. Robert Waterbury with Teresa Castex.’
“Two hundred thousand dollars, plus whatever he got from the publisher!
“‘Have you talked this over with Carlo?’
“‘Of course!’ she answers. ‘He thinks it is a marvelous idea. Why don’t you come to the house tomorrow for lunch, and we can begin! I’ll have a contract ready for you when you get there.’ La Señora senses his hesitation. ‘And of course, an advance of ten thousand dollars.’
Athena put her cup down. “Wait a minute, Fabian. What is Robert’s wife doing all this time? She never told me anything about Teresa Castex or two hundred thousand dollars. If Waterbury’s wife was so desperate for money, you would think he would send her part of the ten thousand, or at least mention it to her.”
Fabian conceded the point lazily. “Of that matter I can only speculate. It’s a weak point in the script, we might say. Perhaps Señor Waterbury was ashamed about the new phase of his career. Or perhaps he didn’t want to mention his relationship with la Señora Castex, with its not-so-respectable implications. Without wanting to presume, Athena, many married men prefer to keep their relationships with other women secret, even ones that are completely appropriate.” Fabian smiled saucily. “Thus they reserve the opportunity for the relationship to become inappropriate later on.”
Fortunato put his hand to his temple and growled in his low voice. “Enough, Romeo. You’re giving her a bad impression of the Institution.”
Fabian sighed, said to Athena, “Comisario Fortunato is a man of very strict moral sensibilities. When Fortunato entered the force, it was all orderly. There was a sense of mission. Now, I fear, we’re a little more lax.”
Athena was losing her patience. “Fabian, I’m here about a murder. I need something a little more concrete than this . . . this verso.”
Fabian slouched backwards. “The telephone records, querida. Afterwards I will show you the exact details of all the calls made to the Castex Mansion from the Hotel San Antonio. We’ve had them for some time—”
She leaned forward and cut him off in a voice of barely suppressed fury. “We?” She glanced angrily at the Comisario as she spoke. “You’re saying this was discovered during the investigation and no one told me?”
“Don’t blame Comisario Fortunato. We felt it better to create the appearance that his investigation was going nowhere, and thus to be able to penetrate more profoundly into the matter. In fact, the Comisario’s diligence of the last week has forced us to move more quickly than we intended.”
“What we? Is this you and the Comisario? You and your cousin? You and some imaginary Hollywood producer?”
“I can only tell you that there was a parallel investigation by another branch of the forces of Security. Someone of Pelegrini’s stature attracts interest at the highest levels. Lamentably, I am not authorized to reveal more than that.”
Athena’s eyes gleamed angrily and Fortunato shifted away from her gaze, trying to hide his own confusion. He felt the blood drain from his head as he considered Fabian’s latest claim. If the Servicios de Inteligencia were investigating the link between Pelegrini and the Bonaerense, it went far beyond Bianco’s ability to protect anyone. In that case, it became a question of who Inteligencia was backing: Pelegrini or his enemies in the government. On the other hand perhaps Fabian was working for the Federales. In that situation, Bianco might have enough influence to make Boguso remain as the murderer, if the matter stayed quiet. He thought of Fabian’s reassurance: Stay tranquil Comi, and the storm will pass over your head. Sí, amigo, just as it passed over Waterbury’s head.
Athena had sat back in her chair and turned her sullen mask of a face towards the other side of the room. Finally she seemed to master her frustration. “Go on,” she commanded. The Inspector gave a little hitch of his shoulders and arched his eyebrows at the Comisario as if to say thus are women, no?
“And so our Señor Waterbury becomes a regular visitor to the Castex mansion, wearing his brilliant new clothes. The master of the house can rarely be found during the day. The two authors meet in a private upstairs study and La Señora de Pelegrini tells him the heroic tale which she has decided will be Waterbury’s redemption.
“It seems there was once a woman, a very wealthy and cultured woman who grew up in fine French boarding schools and a big mansion in Buenos Aires. The woman was happy. She loved France, loved drinking a pastis at a sidewalk café and discussing art and literature with the intellectuals and artists of the city, who gave much weight to her opinions. She lived the excitement of the May 1968 uprising in the arms of a young Socialist. ‘At this part,’ Teresa says, ‘I think we should put in some scenes of the woman and the Socialist making love. As a way to symbolize the sense of liberation of all sorts in those days. I would see them in an iron-framed bed, with a picture of Che Guevara in the background.’ Her face begins to soften, and she shifts her legs. ‘The woman is on top of him and he is caressing her . . .’
“Waterbury interrupts her. ‘Let’s fill in the details later, Teresa.’
“She continues: But this affaire du coeur was not to be. Her father did not approve and cruelly cut off her allowance. Rather than create discord in her family, the brave young woman left her lover to his exalted Workers and returned home to Buenos Aires. Her penitent father regretted his overbearing manner and rented her an apartment next to the exclusive cemetery of La Recoleta where, from her window, she could see the flagrant angels of the family tomb.
“That was the year 1970. Argentina danced between civil and military governments like a person standing on a hot griddle. The dream of the Left in Argentina lacked the joie de vivre of its French counterpart. The subversives had begun robbing and kidnapping, and the young woman made an attractive prize. Even so, she became involved with a member of the Revolutionary Workers Party, a handsome young engineer from an excellent family who straddled the border between the legal world and his compañeros of the People’s Revolutionary Army. ‘If you want to, you can put in more sex here,’ Teresa says, ‘to show the fires of youth as a metaphor for the passion of politics.’ She smiles and lowers her voice. ‘For example, they are in an elevator, and in a moment of inspiration she opens his zipper and takes out his penis. He reaches under her blouse and puts his warm delicate fingers around her breasts . . . ’
“La Señora stares fully in Waterbury’s eyes as she describes the scene in the elevator and the writer feels his face flushing. If yes, a bit brittle, Teresa Castex is not without a certain sensual appeal, and they are practically alone in the huge house, with all its closed doors and vast quiet spaces. Waterbury’s mind skitters through the possibilities as he jabs the pen back and forth in his notebook. The elevator scene ends with a simultaneous explosion of pleasure and Teresa Castex subsides for a moment into a nostalgic bliss. After, she touches Waterbury’s arm and says, ‘I hope I did not give you a shock, Robert. We are both adults, no?’
“Fine. One day the boy stopped coming, and the woman never found out why. Perhaps he’d gone over into the clandestine life, or been forced into exile. He never answered his phone or came to call again. The woman was very sad. Later, when all the unpleasantness of the dictatorship came out, she saw his name among the lists of the Disappeared. ‘That’s the tragic part,” La Señora clarifies.
“‘The woman mourned him, but at a lovely party she met a young man from Cordova. Young and handsome, with cutting blue eyes and a confident voice, he attracted her from the start. ‘You can name him Mario.’
“Mario sold expensive computer systems for an American company and had the salesman’s gift for being liked. He spoke earnestly and knew when to laugh and when to listen. Aware that the conquest of this very desirable woman could not proceed without the conquest of her father, Mario captured the old man with his charisma and unfailing courtesy. Mario had risen quickly within the company, a man with a great future. Everyone fell in love with each other and a magnificent marriage was celebrated in the ballroom of the Alvear Palace.
“At that point Don Carlo knocks on the door, and Waterbury closes his journal.
“‘Here are the writers!’ Don Carlo greets them, then exchanges kisses with Waterbury and with his wife. He leans his weight on the corner of the desk and shines on Waterbury the radiance of those blue eyes. ‘And what is this work about?’
“Waterbury feels uncomfortable, wondering what his patron really knows about their arrangement. ‘We’re still deciding,’ Waterbury answers. ‘But it seems to be a kind of love story.’
“‘Ah! Beautiful! I am already in a hurry to read it!’
“Having turned on him the fierce warmth of his gaze and voice, Carlo Pelegrini goes back to his business.
“It takes several days for Waterbury to tell the news to Paulé. He uses some of his advance to take her to a French restaurant in Palermo to celebrate his new possibilities. ‘Two hundred thousand dollars?’ she says. The huge sum of money seems to undo her, as if her mind is clicking frantically to determine how she might also get hold of a fortune so easily. ‘She won’t pay you.’
“‘She’ll pay me. That’s not what worries me. What worries me is that it’s a bit complicated.’
“‘She wants to fuck you, right?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he lies.
“‘How ‘ridiculous?’ You’re a handsome man. A distinguished author, looking pretty in the new clothes she’s bought you. It is ridiculous to think that she does not want you in bed.’ Paulé half closes her gray eyes. ‘I would want you.’
“Her trick with the eyes, even if it’s a joke, brings back the picture of Paulé that he can’t get out of his mind. He puts it aside and recounts the tired narrative that Teresa Castex has burdened him with. The dancer doesn’t answer at first, devoting herself instead to a round critique of the food. At last she says in a business-like way, ‘Bien. As your patron saint I advise you to take the money. Do whatever she wants. Whatever, eh?’
“‘And write this shit?’
“She wrinkles her nose. ‘That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? To write shit?’ He notices the bitterness in her voice. ‘Listen well, Robert: You left your position at the bank because you wanted to live it all out—’
“‘I left the bank because I was tired of being part of a criminal enterprise!’
“‘You are not that Good! You left because you had that fantasy in your head of the great artist, or the ruined artist, and now you’ve reached the part of the fantasy you hadn’t foreseen, the part where you make some money and save your silly hide. Don’t boot it out of reach while you’re bending over to pick it up!’ Her stern face is full of disdain. ‘Be like your friend Pablo: he never worries about where his silver comes from!’ Waterbury is not prepared for her anger, cannot know if her goading is sarcastic or sincere. He guesses only that the struggling Paulé resents the huge sum of easy money. In spite of her tango lessons and her references to psychiatric dance pedagogy, he wonders exactly how she maintains herself. Before now he had always been careful to avoid the subject. ‘How do you know Pablo anyway?’
“‘He owns an adult website and I posed for pictures. He came to watch.’
“Waterbury hadn’t expected her to admit it so boldly, and her complete casualness silences him even as it sends a dose of blood coursing between his legs. Pablo had denied being part of the pornography itself, and though the little lie disturbs Waterbury, he also feels a bit of envy. ‘So, do you . . . Are you a prostitute?’
“‘I’m a model!’ she says with fire. ‘And an actress! And a dancer!” She pauses, raising her eyebrows. ‘Exactly as you are a writer.’
“The last comment fells him. Paulé’s irony is usually quite direct, but in this case he can’t tell. He seeks the refuge of a cigarette, but the little tube doesn’t do him much good. He asks two coffees from the waiter and leans back from the square of white tablecloth. ‘What are you doing in Buenos Aires, Paulé? You’ve been here four years. Why do you stay?’
“She blows out a little puff of scorn then hangs a bitter smile on it.
“‘That’s your arrogance, Robert. You think you’re the only one with an imagination.’
“‘Why do you stay in Buenos Aires?’ he asks her again.
“‘Here, there is tango.’
“Waterbury understands. In France she is merely Paulé, a pretty woman with mouse-colored hair and a magical capacity in a dance that departed from fashion fifty years ago. Here in Buenos Aires Paulé is La Francesa, the dancer of tango, just as he, Waterbury, is still Robert Waterbury, the North American writer. Here, in this place of memory and illusion, they can still close their fingers around the last rags of their fantastic dreams.
“Again, Waterbury walks her to her door, and again he lingers at the entrance. ‘Do you want to have a last drink of the night?’ she asks him.
“They say that a good marriage takes one out of the fire. One has someone to make love to, who knows what one wants, without the need for the rituals and the wondering. During his eight years with his wife Waterbury has been glad to escape the fire, but with his family ten thousand kilometers away, the flames have come for him in the form of this glittering Francesa, who burns without being consumed.
“She is waiting now for his answer, the china skin of her face tinged gray with shadows. He envisions the drink and all that would follow, says yes, but no, and they look at each other with a smile that shows that all is known between them. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll let you go.’