The killing had been done in classic style: wrists wired together, a single shot to the back of the head and the body set on fire and left smoking at the dump among the stinking potpourri of garbage. Burying the body would have been easy, but the killers wanted not to conceal the mutilated corpse, but to expose it to the world. A throwback to the days of the white terror, when the Allianza Anticomunista Argentina had made showy murders the most effective sort of postcard: bodies would turn up at roadsides, dumps, sprawling face down or sunwards with that embarrassing tactlessness of the dead.
Berenski’s assassination hit the media with a noise few people could have predicted. After years of intimidation, beatings, and menacing phone calls, nearly every journalist in Argentina staked out Berenski’s charred body as a battleground in what they felt was a desperate struggle for survival. Berenski had gone after the police and the most powerful politicians in the country. He’d turned up the story of Carlo Pelegrini. If Berenski could be killed with impunity, any of them could be killed, and the last line of resistance to the perversion of what had once been a prosperous country would dissolve. Even in the general population it was understood that the battle over the dead journalist had become a struggle for the country itself, for with Berenski and his colleagues lay the last hopes of an honest government, and no matter how many times the dream was annihilated, that earnest longing remained stronger than all the futility that enveloped it, and it moved events before it.
The death topped the headlines of nearly every newspaper in the country, and special reports broke in on melodramas and variety shows. Berenski’s comic smile gazed from every tabloid and television screen, emphasized by the stunning picture of the blackened corpse curled up among sour vegetables and crumpled plastic bags.
The television and radio aired clips of Berenski interviewing famous villains of the past—the former Chief of Police protesting an accusation of murder for which he was later convicted, an indignant Minister of Justice denying the bribes he’d taken. These lies cast an aura of parody over the earnest statements of the police about their eagerness to solve the murder. The Governor of Buenos Aires called a press conference to name a special task force to solve the case. Athena noticed Comisario General Leon Bianco standing in the background wearing the same frown of resolve as when he’d sung “Mano a Mano” at the 17 Stone Angels.
The police started their investigation by smearing the victim. Berenski had bounced a check the week before so the question of financial difficulties was raised, and this was carefully expanded to insinuate that Berenski might have been murdered by someone he’d been trying to blackmail. A man stepped forward to insist that he had sold Berenski cocaine, and another, who claimed to be one of the journalist’s sources, said that Berenski boasted of mounting something “that would bring him much silver.” A real estate agent in Punta del Este testified that Berenski had come into his agency looking to buy an apartment at the beach, something in the range of $200–300,000, far beyond his modest salary.
The journalists fought back. They exposed the cocaine seller as a longstanding police informant, and placed Berenski in Buenos Aires the day that the realtor claimed to have spoken with him in Uruguay. Berenski’s picture began to appear everywhere, a silent indictment of the torpid investigation. Journalists on television held a photo to the camera, press conferences given by film stars or sports heroes included Berenski’s face in the background or pasted to the podium with the words “Remember Berenski.” The dead man’s image curved around telephone poles and mocked the powerful from train stations and magazine kiosks On the news programs or interviews where his picture didn’t appear, the quick phrases could be heard, “And on this day the 7th of April, let us remember Ricardo Berenski, assassinated two days ago and still without a solution.” “On this 8th day of April, let us remember Ricardo Berenski . . . ” By the 9th of April Carlo Pelegrini’s name began to appear in the press beside that of the murdered journalist as the prime suspect, followed, in the mutterings on the street, by the Buenos Aires Police.
By luck, the case fell during the turn of Judge Faviola Hocht. A steely woman in her fifties, descendant of Spaniards and Austrians, she had the reputation of being incorruptible and unappeasable. They called her La Gallega for her peasant-like brutishness in the pursuit of truth; she refused to make deals and spurned offers of “consultancies” from the companies and law firms who opposed her. She had her own investigators and her own arrangements with the police. Though she could not always get a conviction or, given a conviction, insure that the criminal would go to jail, everyone in Buenos Aires knew one thing for certain: La Gallega’s investigations left ruins in their wake.
Certain forces began to agitate to remove her from the case. It came out in the press that Judge Hocht had been a personal friend of Berenski’s and, according to the accusations of her enemies, one of his covert sources. Editorials attacked her as a political operative and questioned her competence. Even the President of the Republic, who shed a tear as he remembered the noble Berenski in an interview, privately directed his appointees in the Justice Department to scour the Constitution for a reason to move the case out of La Gallega’s jurisdiction. The soccer game of the Caso Berenski moved up and down the field, cheered by the crowd and misdirected by its corrupt referees. Berenski himself probably would have bet on Pelegrini.
Fortunato had found Berenski’s death waiting for him on the afternoon newsstand, a few hours after the long talk with Fabian. He’d stopped for cigarettes on his way to meet the Chief and there was Berenski’s face filling a quarter of the front page, with another photo of his carbonized body below. The shock of it left Fortunato floating on his feet. He drifted there in the first horrible novelty and then, as he walked slowly back to his car with the paper spread out below him, a physical sense of disgust came over him. He remembered Berenski’s laugh and the joy he took in his fake possessions. Berenski understood that they lived in a counterfeit world, where a counterfeit God forgave all fraud. Berenski with his comic appearance and his shamelessness. Now they’d turned him into burnt meat.
“Who was it?” Fortunato inserted quietly into the dusty gloom of La Gloria’s back room.
The Chief gave a little laugh. “Who wasn’t it? They could have held a raffle for the privilege!” He watched Fortunato carefully as he made the joke. “Why that face? What’s Berenski matter to you? It was inevitable that someone was going to cut the puta.” With a smirk: “Probably it was the directors of his newspaper. Look what business they’re going to do now!”
The Chief leaned to the side and signaled through the door at the barmaid. “Skinny! Two Eisenbachs!” He settled back down. “The problem is that even dead he’s making problems. All of this Who killed Berenski? Who killed Berenski?” He squinted with distaste, waving his hand across his nose to disperse the imaginary stench. “The problem is that when the journalists see Pelegrini’s name on Boguso’s new tale, it’s going to make our situation a bit more caliente.”
Fortunato didn’t answer the Chief’s understatement. The scratchy minor chords of bygone violins singed the dark air of the worn café.
The Chief continued in a lighter tone. “The good news is I read a transcript of Boguso’s new story. He mentions an Uruguayan and Santamarina, but there’s not a word about police. It appears that whoever is behind this mess is only after Pelegrini. It only remains for Santamarina to keep his mouth shut.”
“And if they offer him a deal?”
“He won’t take it! He’s not that type. He’ll wait tranquilly until Pelegrini can get him loose.”
“And Renssaelaer?”
The Chief pulled back, and Fortunato thought his perplexity looked real. “What Renssaelaer?”
“He’s the head of security for all Pelegrini’s organization. Waterbury mentioned his name before he died. Something of “Renssaelaer sent you,” that we should tell Renssaelaer he had nothing to fear.”
Now Bianco looked genuinely disconcerted. “I know nothing of this.”
Fortunato reflected on the increasingly bloated list of people whose silence he depended on. “I should go and talk to Boguso alone.”
Bianco plastered on an embarrassed little grin. “That’s another thing. The investigation has now changed from a simple homicide to organización ilicita, which means it is under the jurisdiction of the Federales. They moved him to a federal comisaria. It doesn’t mean we can’t speak with him, of course, but there are certain inconveniences. Moreover, now he insists he won’t talk without his lawyer.”
Fortunato absorbed this with a slow nod. “Who’s paying the lawyer?”
The Chief shook his head. “Now we’re arriving, Miguel. His lawyer is with the firm of Ernesto Campara, the brother of German Campara, the Chief of Intelligence. He took it without charge. From what you’ve told me, I suspect that your Inspector Diaz belongs to that group.”
Fortunato squinted. Federales. Campara. The case was slipping out of their control. The waitress appeared and inserted two beers and a saucer of green olives into the silence. Bianco indicated the glasses. “Drink! Relax a little.” He pinched one of the olives and began working it in his jaws while Fortunato rested his fingertips on the cool surface of his schooner without lifting it to his mouth.
“It’s political, hombre,” Bianco went on, extracting the olive pit. “Ovejo, the Minister of Economy, wants to run for president, but the President isn’t so eager to give up his job. The more filth they throw at Pelegrini, the dirtier the President gets, even if it never goes to trial. It’s a round business, because Ovejo represents the interests of the IMF and foreign capital against the local interests. You can be sure he’s getting it back on the other side. That’s how it is, and, disgracefully, we’re in the middle of the two whores.”
Fortunato felt anger surging up out of his chest. “I wasn’t in the middle of anything. You put me in the middle—”
Bianco cut into his sentence sharply. “Don’t start whining now! The Institution has done well for you. You want to say that you can’t return the favor once in a while?” The Chief lowered his voice but continued with a stiff face. “Some operations go well and others go badly. You have to face up to them. A policeman must be hard! Resolved!”
“I want the truth about this, Leon. All of it. You owe me that.”
The Chief curled his mouth and looked down at the little mound of olive pits on the table. He exhaled and settled back into his chair. “Pelegrini wanted to squeeze Waterbury. The why isn’t clear: something of the wife, as your Diaz suggested. Pelegrini arranged it through Santamarina, the one you met here a few weeks ago. You know the rest.”
“The man was completely innocent!”
Fortunato’s reference to the crime seemed to puzzle Bianco. “What does that have to do with anything? The puta was up to something, or he wouldn’t be dead right now. He was going around with Pelegrini’s wife.”
“You told me he was blackmailing him!”
The Chief shifted under Fortunato’s glare. “One or the other. What does that matter?”
Fortunato recognized in his mentor’s face the same blank disregard he’d seen twenty-five years ago when they’d raided the family of the Union representative and carried away every trace of them. He swallowed. “To me, it matters.”
“Then you shouldn’t have fucked the whole thing up!” Bianco wrinkled his nose. “What’s going on with you? Eh? What’s going on? This isn’t time to be mounting little colored mirrors!” He caricatured Fortunato’s heavy manner: “Poor writer! He was going around with a rich man’s woman and ended up dead!” Are you crazy? People die every day. You, me, we all die! You’re drowning in a glass of water, Miguel!” The Chief stopped arguing abruptly and looked anew at Fortunato for a second, as if assessing him. “Forgive me, Miguel. I get mad, and . . . There’s much frustration.” He shrugged the rest, then looked to the side for a moment. “Don’t worry. I’ll cover you, like always. Everything will be arranged. In two weeks, no one will remember who Robert Waterbury was.”
Fortunato didn’t answer, but he knew that certain things could never be arranged. Waterbury was dead, his wife a widow and his daughter an orphan. And he, Fortunato, had fired the final shot.
Bianco shouted a greeting across the room and another officer came over and began discussing the Berenski murder with great relish. Fortunato gave a numb greeting when the Chief presented him, absently shaking the man’s hand then letting his gaze drift off to the Argentine selection of 1978, the fiercest year of the Dictatorship, when they had hosted the World Cup and won and the crowds had gone dancing in the streets while dead bodies washed up on the shore of the Rio de la Plata. Alone again with Bianco, the Chief’s glossy confidence: “Relax, Miguel. Everything will solve itself.”