Comisario Fortunato, meanwhile, was settling in to what promised to be a very bad day. He had told Fabian by telephone to come to his office at nine in the morning, but the Inspector hadn’t shown. When he’d picked up the morning paper Pelegrini’s name appeared across the front page in large letters across from a photo of Berenski’s grieving widow. Below it, in a sidebar, the phrase “Pelegrini also implicated in murder of North American.” After that came the FBI.
Agents Castro and Foshee coursed across the threshold like two blocks of fabric topped with wooden faces. A federal comisario from Central accompanied them. The Federales had sold it as an inter-agency liaison session, but Fortunato knew at the first handshake that it was an interrogation. He ordered the requisite coffees and forced himself into his expression of solicitous calm.
“You’re ahead of us on this investigation, Comisario Fortunato, so I want to ask you some questions that you probably know the answers to.”
“At your orders,” Fortunato answered.
They started out with the usual simple queries: how long had he been a police officer, what divisions had he worked in? Stupidities about the case they could know from reading the expediente. They were casual about it, but he knew the method. They wanted to see what gestures and vocal inflections he used when he told the truth. After they established that, they began to heat it up a bit.
“The victim was found with handcuffs of the same sort used by the Buenos Aires police,” the older agent, Castro, said in his Caribbean-tinged Spanish. “Moreover, the fatal bullet, according to the coroner, was a nine millimeter round, a round which is used by the police. Did you ever investigate the possibility that there might have been police involvement in this case?”
“Bien,” Fortunato began. He knew not to raise his hands to his face, or to look sideways as he spoke. But to interject a little word like bien to buy time, that was a mistake. Better to answer directly, without evidence of thinking too much. “That of the handcuffs and the bullet certainly raised our suspicions, but at the same time there are other sets of handcuffs and other nine millimeter pistols in the hands of non-police. We did a survey of private security companies in the capital and found eight firms that use this variety of handcuffs.”
“I didn’t see that survey in the diligencias,” Castro said.
Fortunato made a puzzled expression. “It should be there. If not, I’ll get you a copy.”
The federal comisario came to his aid. “Sometimes that happens,” he explained to the Northamericans.
They didn’t seem convinced but they didn’t press it, so Fortunato continued. “One also can’t ignore that these cuffs also end up in the hands of people who have nothing to do with law enforcement. I don’t think that the presence of the cuffs necessarily indicates the police.” He swallowed. “It’s a similar case with the nine millimeter shell. The victim had been wounded four times with a .32 caliber round, a cheap pistol used very much by common delinquents here in Buenos Aires, and as you pointed out, finished with the nine millimeter, which also circulates among the criminal element. The Astra nine millimeter used by Enrique Boguso is in wide circulation, as well as those of the marks Llama, Smith and Wesson, Ruger, Beretta, Browning and many others.” The men were listening without expression, and Fortunato grew more confident in his story. This was the one piece of evidence he had sealed perfectly. “For the doubts, we did a ballistics test and, as it turned out, the bullet matched the Astra nine millimeter that the suspect Boguso indicated to us as the murder weapon.
“I saw those tests,” Castro said, “but there was a problem with them. Some of the pictures of the bullet don’t match the bullet that’s in evidence now.”
Fortunato wrinkled his brows. Had they found a set of the original pictures in a file somewhere, or were they bluffing him? “You don’t say! I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“Haven’t you been leading this investigation?”
The two hard-cop faces stared back at him, men who had a lifetime of experience separating lies from truth. “Of course, but one has to assume that the expediente is intact. If the evidence has been compromised, I’ll look into it immediately. But I can assure you that when the evidence left my office, everything was completely in order.”
The FBI men didn’t answer, merely stared at him. Finally Agent Castro spoke. “The coroner’s report showed a piece of paper in the victim’s pocket with a phone number registered to Carlo Pelegrini. And yet your investigation made no effort to trace that number. Why not?”
Fortunato reached up and scratched his forehead. A bad move. Very bad. “Of course we traced it. But as you well know, surrounding any murder are a mountain of clues, many of which have nothing to do with the murder itself. We knew about the Pelegrini phone number -”
“It’s not in the expediente,” the younger gringo said.
“You are correct, Agent Foshee, and the reason is thus: the police must follow the instructions of the judge in mounting an investigation. Sometimes, though, to save time, we do things outside of the judge’s strict orders, and these results may be found in our files, though perhaps not in the expediente itself. In the case of the phone number, we had reliable information that Enrique Boguso committed the crime, and during the course of questioning, Boguso confessed. Now, he has changed his story, and thus the matter of the telephone number assumes new importance. As we go on deepening the investigation—”
The senior agent interrupted with his annoying rudeness. “Can you think of a reason why Boguso would change his story so suddenly?”
“None. This was a very recent and surprising turn and I have not yet had the chance to question the suspect about his change. As you know, San Justo has no scarcity of crimes to investigate, and the Waterbury murder, being already more than four months old, must take its place behind those that are a bit fresher.” He decided to poke back. “To be honest, Señor Castro, it’s only recently that the Federales and the FBI have taken an interest in the case, for reasons that remain a bit mysterious to me.”
Castro didn’t answer. The session dragged on for a few more questions, then died out in a round of cardboard handshakes. They were lying, so was he, and everyone knew it but said nothing. It was a matter of respecting each other’s professionalism.
Alone in his office again, Fortunato’s mind swarmed with a dozen strat egies for fending them off. He would need to conduct a survey of private security companies in Buenos Aires and forge a trace of Pelegrini’s phone number as if it had been done months ago. He would need to check the photos of the bullet in all copies of the expediente that he could locate. But couldn’t the Federales find out easily that the surveys and the traces had been ordered that very day? Didn’t they have their own copies of the expediente? No, he thought, sinking into his chair and running his hands along his scalp to soothe his brain. No, it was impossible. Once the journalists got involved, and the inevitable beatings by the police, Boguso’s story would crumble, and the investigation would begin again with a new ferocity. And someone would talk, because people like Vasquez or Domingo always had to brag, and youngsters like that hippy driver, Onda, to confess their wonderment. No, only Bianco could save him now. Or Pelegrini.
He picked up the newspaper and leafed through to the crime section, where he found the last disagreeable surprise of the morning. There in the small print, among items of little importance: Two robbers . . . shot by police in Quilmes last night . . . He sensed it even before he read the rest of the brief paragraph and could envision the entirety of the event from the sketchy resume. While fleeing the Kiosko Malvinas . . . Probably a clandestine lottery office, or some other repository of cash. The door would have been jimmied open by previous arrangement with the police for the usual 70/30 split. Two robbers stuffing money into a bag, disordering the office for the sake of appearance. To their surprise, three policemen and a burst of thunder behind the building. The dull points of lead cutting through the body, and then a finishing shot to the chest. Someone pressing a pistol into a dead man’s hand, pulling the trigger. By the time Fortunato reached the names he could have filled them in himself. Of the deceased: Rodrigo “Onda” Williams. Among the responding officers: Domingo Fausto.
The first reporter called his office an hour later. He didn’t take the call, of course, but he recognized it as the first raindrop of the coming storm and it sent a new twist of anxiety into his stomach. When the receptionist told him that the Doctora Fowler was on the line, he couldn’t help but feel that a reprieve of some sort had been granted. The feminine warmth of Athena’s voice comforted him. Since Marcela’s death he’d had no antidote to this world of men and their stratagems. If she wanted to meet with him, he would for once allow himself the fool’s pleasure of taking it at face value.
He listened to Athena make her pitch in the coffee shop of the Sheraton. It was a good story about Teresa Castex: leave it to a gringa to come up with something so cinematic. Nothing crucial had come out of it—that Pelegrini’s wife would suspect the police rather than her husband was a common deception of human nature. What it might reveal, though, was the thinking in the Pelegrini camp that Pelegrini’s enemies were behind the new investigation, and that someone in the police might be a convenient suspect. For that reason, the news did not comfort him.
“I think I’ve got a way to find the Frenchwoman,” Athena went on, “and I’ve already located Pablo Moya at AmiBank, as Fabian claimed.”
“Then what do you need me for?”
She sighed. “I don’t feel comfortable trying to get up to Pablo Moya’s office. I think I’d do a lot better if someone with authority came with me, like you.” She softened him a little with a hint of the admiring female. “You can show the badge, give them that routine of ‘Don’t fuck with me, I’m the police!’”
Fortunato had to smile. “Don’t give me that verso of the little girl in distress. I already know you.”
“See, you’re a thousand times more piola than me.” She shrugged. “I don’t see any problem with you helping me, Miguel. It’s your job to investigate the crime. And, besides, I’m not sure the FBI has the authority to take me off this case. I answer to Senator Braden.” She changed tack, her face settling. “Do you really want to leave this case with Fabian and the FBI?”
He considered it as he sipped at the weak Café Americana she’d poured him from the thermos on the table. Athena was right, there was a certain advantage in pursuing the case with her. He might find out something useful, something the Chief or Pelegrini might be able to defend themselves with, and defend him at the same time.
“And you know something, Miguel?” she continued. “The FBI, Fabian, the Federales: they don’t really care about Robert Waterbury. They have their own agenda.” Her voice became sharper. “I want the people who killed Waterbury to pay! You saw what they did to him! I want all of them, not just Boguso or whoever couldn’t make a deal. I want all of them! All the way to the top! And forgive me for my presumption, Miguel, but I know that underneath all the lies surrounding this investigation, from both my government and yours, and underneath all the . . . the . . . shit surrounding what it takes to be a comisario in the Police of Buenos Aires, you do, too. Don’t you?”
Fortunato swallowed, unable to answer, and something of disappointment and hurt flickered through her eyes. He could tell by the strangely childlike plaintiveness with which she said her next words that there was more at stake for her than solving the case. “I need you, Miguel. Now, I really need you.”
He looked at her smooth young face, perhaps not even thirty. He should have said that to make everything right by Robert Waterbury was an impossibility, and that even if it wasn’t, he could never be the person to do it. Unless he was the one person who could. He leaned back in the booth and took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and watched the smoke stream out from the extinguished match head. He looked up at her. “What’s your plan?”