In spite of my being from the National Shame, Burgos seemed relieved I was a policeman. At first, his idea that we meet Inspector Ayala and Rodríguez in what he called “neutral territory” seemed crazy. It was like proposing that the Palefaces had something to offer besides pillaging and massacring the wretched natives. I was the Red Indian here, and normally I do not share a single puff of the pipes of peace I smoke locked in my bathroom.
“I’m innocent. I hope that you at least are convinced of that. Otherwise you’ll think I’m double-crossing you.”
“That’s part of any game between card-sharps,” he said. “I’d do it without a thought. Cheating on a Buenos Aires policeman wouldn’t ruffle my conscience for a second, but it wouldn’t help me achieve the one thing that made me agree to come here: to find the son of a bitch who’s getting a kick out of butchering the sweetest, most interesting young women on the coast.”
Burgos was driving back along the rustlers’ road, avoiding all the potholes by wrenching the steering wheel from side to side so violently that I was afraid we would find ourselves upside down in the ditch. He laughed at my terrified face. “You must have been a desk man, a bureaucrat who never ventured out onto the streets,” he decided, unable to otherwise explain why I was so alarmed by his driving. He was wrong, but I had no wish to correct his impression. Better that he feel in control, carry out his own investigation in the same carefree way as he drove.
“Ayala is an intelligent sort, though he does his best to hide it. He’s a Dr. Jekyll who in his more lucid moments is able to see why he turns into Mr. Hyde when faced with a suspect.”
“It goes with the job,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was analyze the personality of some dumb provincial policeman, but Burgos wanted to go on talking about him.
“He wants to retire. He has a family, God help us. A fine wife, and two kids. ‘I’m not going to let the criminal scum ruin my life,’ he tells anyone willing to listen. ‘Every thug I kill without the press kicking up a fuss is one more step toward my leaving the force with honor.’”
“He wants a medal,” I said, as innocent as a schoolboy.
“No, he wants money,” the chubby doctor corrected me, steering his way round a series of gaping holes in the broken asphalt. “What ‘leaving the force with honor’ means down here is to retire but keep the money coming in.”
By which he meant the shares in prostitution, illegal gambling, moonlight rustling, kidnaps for ransom, and all the other little sidelines that never show up in the abundant official statistics on economic activity and employment, but which are such an important part of the overall police product.
The doctor went on and on about Ayala’s virtues, while I felt increasingly stupid, thrown out of my job and now a fugitive, a Richard Kimble with no degree and none of the women the Yankee doctor managed to pick up in that old black-and-white T.V. series while he searched for the one-armed man who had killed his wife.
When I mentioned this existential anguish, my companion said I had picked up a real beauty myself when I answered my friend’s call.
“But you have to look after these sweeties,” he lectured me. “Soften them up a bit, then go for it. Did you really not fuck her?”
I had no wish to answer him, and no time either. We were approaching Bahía Blanca’s station again.
Ayala and Rodríguez’s silhouettes stood out against the bare brick arch of the station like characters from Cervantes. The inspector was tall and lanky like Don Quixote, and his sidekick was almost as round as Sancho Panza (though not as plump as the doctor). They went on smoking, oblivious to our presence while Burgos parked his exotic blue V.W. alongside the black Ford Falcon without number plates that the policemen had come in. Rodríguez was giving his version of the game between Rosario Central and Chacarita he had seen the previous evening before he went on duty. Ayala seemed far more interested in the details of the game than in our being there. Apparently the game had ended nil-nil as fixed beforehand by their managers, anxious to add another couple of games to a tournament designed to fleece summer holidaymakers.
“Look, the tin-opener’s arrived,” was Ayala’s greeting for the doctor, spat from the left-hand side of his mouth directly at Rodríguez, who finished the sentence for him:
“And he brought the sardine.”
I stayed in the car while Burgos got out and whispered in Ayala’s ear what he had learned about me being from the Federal police force. I heard Ayala growl “So why the fuck did they throw him out,” at which Burgos shrugged and looked back in my direction, winking at me as if we were on the same side, although I had no idea if he meant I should join in or carry on sitting there quietly without a word, like a penitent who has just left the confessional.
Ayala pushed him aside and came over to the car. I have not carried a gun for years, but no sooner had I instinctively felt under my arm for my revolver than I was squinting down the barrel of the .38 that this provincial Quixote had stuck right between my eyes.
“I’ve had it up to here with you, Martelli. What the fuck are you doing so far from home? At your age you should be wrapping up warm and going to bed early.”
“I’ve already told you why I came here.”
“I don’t like men who stick their noses into other people’s business, especially when it’s someone who’s been kicked out of the force, pushing his snout in where nobody’s asked him to.”
“The person who asked me was a friend. When I arrived, he had been murdered—something that doesn’t seem to bother you, but which explains why I’m pushing my snout in here.”
“Get out of the car,” he ordered, taking a couple of steps back but still aiming the revolver at me.
I did as I was told. I get hot under the collar when I have to deal with bureaucracy, and sometimes women drive me crazy, but I am never bothered by the sight of a gun. I have spent too long handling them, shooting and being shot at. Even though I no longer carry one, I accept my destiny. To be surprised that one day I might end up riddled with bullets would be as hypocritical as a habitual smoker who refuses to accept he has cancer because he gave up smoking at sixty.
“I could arrest you right now, and you’d spend the rest of your life on remand, waiting to be tried for the murder of three women.”
“But he didn’t do it!” shouted Burgos. Rodríguez was filling him in on the rest of the game now that Ayala was busy threatening me.
“You could,” I said to Ayala, “but there are a few things I need to know so that my friend’s widow can hate him in peace without feeling any remorse.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Ayala said, slowly lowering his gun. “Cárcano was a womanizer, but he wasn’t mixed up in any shady business.”
“So why did they kill him?”
“We had better talk in the waiting room of this magnificent Victorian-style railway station. It’s a pity it’s crawling with tramps and drunks, but I’ll get Rodríguez to clear it out for us.”
He did not have to insist. Rodríguez had already broken off his match report and disappeared inside the station. We heard him call out a couple of times and then, perhaps because one of the occupants was taking his time getting up, a bullet whistled through the glassless window. There followed shouts and the sound of running feet, and then I saw a pair of hobos leaping across the tracks in their socks and shredded underwear. One of them was whirling a pair of trousers round his head like a gaucho waving his poncho.
“They’ll be back,” Ayala said, with paternal concern. “Even if we get thrown out, we always return home.”