11

What is a clairvoyant? Someone who foresees the future, or someone who determines it by suggesting what is going to happen?

I put my foot down. I was keen to get away as swiftly as possible from Burgos and his going on about my sleeping with whichever women I might bump into. I had not had much luck in that area. The last woman in my bed had been murdered, and I had not so much as touched her, apart from our hug at Edmundo’s place when she had turned up in such apparent distress.

So she was not Lorena. Then again, Mireya was not Mireya, although with her I did get a bit further than a filling station lost in the desert.

“What else could you call me but Mireya like the tango, Gotán?”

I had laughed that night as we were leaving the Dos Por Cuatro tango bar half a block up from Boedo on the way to Puente Alsina, a dark, cobbled street from bygone days lit by old-fashioned street lamps you would expect to see in a warehouse or in a San Telmo antique shop window. Dos Por Cuatro was once owned by a Basque dairyman but had now been converted by his grandchildren into a tango bar. It still had its carriage entrance, and there was an old milk cart in the yard, shafts pointing to the sky. Nobody uses horses in Buenos Aires nowadays, but at weekends they harness some old nag to it and take Yankee and European tourists out for a ride. They cannot go far because they do not want to get into the busy avenues, but the driver and his attendants are glad of the tips in dollars.

“But you’re not blond, like Mireya was.”

I was not very keen on calling her Mireya, which made me wonder if it was because I did not really want to name her at all. We lose what we put a name to. It’s like shining a bright light on a flower so we can examine it more closely. Love fades, for this and many other reasons, but always, always too soon.

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I left Bahía Blanca and sped along the highway at 140. I paid more attention to my rearview mirror than to the road ahead. I am always afraid that the shot will come from behind, or the push into the ravine when we are standing at the top admiring the view.

It may no fun being a policeman, but it is worse to have been one. The memories weigh too heavily: there is too much past you cannot return to. And yet nothing is dead and buried. Not even the corpses.

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Isabel and Mónica were not waiting for me at the Cabildo Hotel in Tres Arroyos. In fact, they had not checked in.

For a brief moment I tried to convince myself they must have headed straight for Buenos Aires. It made sense: what would they have gained by waiting for me? It simply meant they were caught up in an affair that had nothing to do with them, only hours after Edmundo’s death.

I called the hotel in Bahía Blanca. According to the receptionist, the two women had left early that morning, in the midst of all the turmoil over the discovery of the dead body. He obviously fancied his chances as an informer for the yellow press. “They took a taxi to the bus station,” he said.

When I called the bus station they told me there was no morning bus to Buenos Aires, but one to Tres Arroyos. I had told Mónica and Isabel to rent a car, but they must have preferred the bus: Isabel could console her mother while keeping quiet about the mess they were in that was not of their making, and did not really seem to have anything very much to do with Edmundo either.

I went to Tres Arroyos bus station. The bus from Bahía Blanca had arrived on time. “Not many people got off,” the driver told me. He was a lanky, pallid individual who looked as though he had either slept very badly or had just been dumped by a consumptive girlfriend. I found him at the bar of a fast-food stall, tucking into a hotdog with a glass of white table wine.

“Let’s see if I can remember,” he said when I asked him if he had seen an older woman and a tall, pretty young woman with good breasts, a nice backside and long dark hair. “Let’s see if I can remember,” he repeated, digging into a decayed tooth with a toothpick and gently belching the smell of hotdog and cheap wine all over me. His memory improved when I slipped a ten-dollar bill into his open left hand, resting as if by coincidence on the counter in front of me.

“Yes, they got off here, with a gentleman.”

“A gentleman?”

He shifted uneasily on his stool. The surprise in my voice must have made him realize his information was worth more than I had paid him.

“What was he like?”

“Let’s see if I can remember.”

I took out another ten-dollar bill, but this time laid it on top of the paper napkin where the half-eaten hotdog was.

“Either you remember or you don’t.”

As I slammed down the banknote, the half-eaten hotdog rolled onto the floor. I ordered another one and more white wine, but something drinkable this time.

“I have to leave for Tandil in fifteen minutes.”

“The wine’s for me. What did this ‘gentleman’ look like?”

He licked his lips as though cleaning the rim of a glass, ready to try the chilled Torrontes wine the barman was busy opening.

“There were two of them,” he said, as though he had just remembered.

“Two gentlemen?”

“Yes, and two ladies. What’s so strange about that? Are you a policeman?”

I filled his glass and poured a half for myself. He tossed the wine down in one gulp and held out the empty glass for more.

“It’s nice and cool.”

I refilled it. This time he drank only half of it. The wine seemed to refresh his memory.

“Those two were policemen as well. I can smell them,” he said, wrinkling his hooked sommelier’s nose. “Built like tanks. Not very tall, about my height. But built like tanks. Lots of gym and steroids.”

He sat there staring at the counter, pretending to be lost in thought. I knew that if I seemed anxious, he would want more money. I said I was leaving.

“They all got into a car that was waiting for them,” he said in a rush.

“What kind of car?”

“One of those 4×4s they have in the country. Tires as fat as airplane wheels. Red. A Chevrolet, I reckon.”

“Did you see anything unusual or threatening? Did they push the women into the vehicle for example?”

He fixed his cloudy eyes on me. They were as cold as the wine.

“Gentlemen, I said. Not killers. All muscle, but polite.”

I paid for the wine and the second hotdog, which he had not touched. I commended him to get a relief driver for the Tandil run.

“I like people who try to help,” he said, patting me on the back. “Tandil is just up the road. It’s all dead straight, and there isn’t much traffic. Thanks, though.”

With that he swallowed another glass of wine, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and winked at me as he left.

All muscle but polite, two gentlemen had kidnapped Isabel and Mónica.

Some time later I heard on the radio that a bus on its way to Tandil had left the road on one of the few bends on the highway from Tres Arroyos, had sailed over the roadside ditch and come to a halt in a soya field.