A CORPSE IN RECOLETA
As Marta drove she could smell the streets, the asphalt and iron smell of Buenos Aires, the dank smell of the city on a hot rainy late summer night.
It was one o'clock in the morning, traffic was light, something she didn't expect. This should be the height of the night rush hour, the busiest time at the late-night bars and nightclubs. But being a day person she had little knowledge of that.
She drove fast along streets slick from the early evening shower, passed block after block of shabby apartment houses, raced through puddles that reflected street lamps and the facades of buildings, distorting them like funhouse mirrors. Everyone seemed to be driving fast. Headlight beams of approaching cars widened then broke on her windshield. Shiny black plastic trash bags were piled by the curbs. Through the open car window she could hear garbage trucks chewing their way through the back streets.
Entering Recoleta she noticed a difference, the smell sweeter here, sweetened by the aromas of night-blooming plants, and, on the corners, beside the closed flower stands, discarded bundles of decaying flowers. She drove past chic little restaurants still serving late-night customers, antique stores where beautiful objects glittered behind grilled windows. She passed handsome apartment buildings that people said resembled buildings in Paris, and the deluxe Alvear Palace Hotel which catered to movie stars, pop singers, oil sheiks and the King and Queen of Spain.
The outdoor tables at La Biela were empty. The huge Gomera tree that arched overhead was still dripping rain. As she passed, she spotted a few people inside, probably sipping what was said to be the most expensive cup of coffee in Buenos Aires.
The white wall of Recoleta Cemetery came into view. Then she saw a cluster of police motorcycles, patrol cars, homicide bureau and medical examiner's vans parked at odd angles along the little park between the cemetery and the cafés and restaurants on Junin.
She pulled up to the barricade. Getting out she heard the growl of the generator that powered the harsh crime-scene lights. A patrolman, about to gesture her away, saw the badge clipped to her jacket and waved her through.
Entering the restricted zone, heading toward the lights set up on stands near the cemetery wall, she spotted the shaven head of Héctor Ricardi. The Homicide Chief was speaking into his cell phone. Marta approached, stood near him until he noticed her and nodded.
"Fucking idiots!" Ricardi hissed into his phone. From the contempt in his voice, she guessed he was speaking to the night duty commander at Federal Police Headquarters. "They cut the ropes off the victim before we got here. Does that make them idiots, or what?"
Ricardi was a big man, perhaps double Marta's weight, with a manner people called commanding. For all that, Marta had never heard him shout. Most of the time he spoke in a taut gruff whisper.
"What do I want you to do?" he asked his caller. "Discipline the assholes. Demote them. Assign them to shit duty." He caught Marta's eye, shook his head. "Thank you. Yes, of course I'll keep you informed."
Ricardi snapped his phone shut, turned to Marta. "Wide awake now?" he asked.
"I was having a dream when you called. It's vague, but I think I was swimming with a flock of swans."
"Sounds nice. Things aren't so nice around here."
Marta peered ahead. "There must be thirty cops standing around."
Ricardi nodded. "They just finished screwing up our crime-scene. Like they were called here especially to do that. Then, when they were just about done, their dyke commander got the bright idea she should inform us she had a body."
Marta knew the precinct commander slightly, a strapping woman named Liliana Méndez, daughter of a retired police officer from Buenos Aires province, father and daughter reputed to be equally mean and corrupt. Méndez was a boxer, Federal Police female heavyweight champ. Marta has seen her working out at the gym, hitting the heavy bag, sparring with male colleagues, laying into them hard. Marta, who weighed just 110 lbs., didn't box. She was a marksman who could shoot consistently good patterns right-handed, left-handed, two-handed. Whichever hand she used in competitions, her groupings were nearly always the best.
"Who's the victim?"
Ricardi grunted. "Beautiful young woman. Don't have her name yet. The way she was left here is bizarre." He motioned Marta forward. "Come, take a look."
As they walked toward the cemetery wall, Marta caught sight of Liliana Méndez, hands on her hips, barking out orders. Liliana grinned when she recognized Marta, started toward them. They intersected by a puddle beneath the police lights.
"I hear you got complaints," Liliana said to Ricardi.
"This is a major fuck-up. Don't you supervise your people?"
"We don't see many bodies this side of the cemetery wall. If they'd called me in early I wouldn't have let anyone touch her."
"Why didn't they call you in early?"
"Couldn't find me. I was staying over at my girlfriend's." She moved closer, aggressive. "You don't have a problem with that, do you, Ricardi?"
"I don't give a shit about your personal life, Méndez. When precinct cops turn up a homicide, they're to secure the area and call us."
"So this time we didn't do it right. Bring me up on charges. I don't give a shit."
"Why don't you?" Marta asked.
Liliana stared at her like she was a speck of dirt. Marta was used to that. Her work on the Casares case had brought her fame, and also the disdain of regular cops. They hated her for the very reason the press had dubbed her La Incorrupta. By brushing aside threats, refusing bribes, then single-handedly bringing in a Senator's son for date-rape and murder, she'd shown that the criminal justice system didn't always have to be corrupt.
"I'll tell you why," Liliana said. She reeked of cheap perfume, something like violets, Marta thought, but artificial and cloying. "Because of who your victim was, that's why. One of my guys recognized her. Silvia something, call girl. Works the fancy hotels. Risky trade. Anyhow...does anybody care?"
"I'm sure her mother cares," Marta said.
Liliana guffawed, then walked away. Her scent lingered where she'd stood. Like an unpleasant fog, Marta thought.
"Staying over at her girlfriend's," Ricardi hissed. "They knew how to reach her. She's got a phone."
Marta moved forward to look at the victim, lying face-up on a yellow police poncho. An assistant medical examiner Marta knew was on his knees examining the body with a flashlight.
"Hi, Jorge," Marta said.
The assistant looked up. "Hi, Inspector. Nice to see you."
Marta studied the girl. She was young, small, and, as Ricardi had said, beautiful, with pale porcelain-like skin and delicately modeled features. She was also, Marta noted, expensively dressed, her hair well coifed, her nails professionally manicured.
"What's the story?" Marta asked.
Jorge turned to her again. "They found her seated against the cemetery wall. Her hands were tied behind her back attached to a noose around her neck. The precinct cops cut off the ropes and laid her out." Jorge rolled his eyes. "Said they were worried she was strangling herself. But she was dead a while before she was placed here. Looks like she was tortured too. There're little stab wounds all over her — thighs, stomach, breasts. Something else. The front page of a newspaper was stuffed into her mouth. I took it out, showed it to the chief." Jorge pointed to a plastic evidence bag, then turned to Ricardi. "I'm ready to take her now if that's okay with you."
Ricardi nodded, picked up the evidence bag. "I'll keep this for now," he said.
They stood back while two more assistants lifted the body, placed it in a polyurethane body bag, zipped the bag shut, then carried it off.
"There's nothing more to do here," Ricardi said. "Let's get some coffee and talk."
He led her to a mall on Vincente Lopez where there was an all-night food court on the mezzanine. Most of the tables were uncleared, covered with crumpled napkins and leftover pizza crusts on paper plates. They finally found a clean table near the window with a good view of the crime scene below. Marta could see the roofs of the mausoleums over the top of the cemetery wall.
She knew this necropolis well. Most porteños did. It was the most famous cemetery in the city. All the so-called great families owned mausoleums here, miniature architectural wonders built to house their deceased. Lean white-faced feral cats ruled the alleyways, cats with the shrewd eyes of tango dancers stalking partners. Marta's mother used to bring her here. She said she found it "restful" to walk among the tombs. Marta remembered seeing women weeping before the Duarte family vault, still shedding tears over the early death of their self-styled "saint," Eva Perón, buried among the rich of the Barrio Norte whom she had despised and who had loathed her even more. There was an inscription beneath Evita's name: "I shall return and be millions." There were many in Argentina who still believed she would.
"You know why I called you?" Ricardi said.
"Actually, Chief, I don't. This looks like a sex crime. Not my specialty."
"It's bigger than that."
"How do you know? Because Liliana had her boys mess up the scene?"
"That...and the newspaper." Ricardi laid the evidence bag on the table. "Front page of El Faro. Why that paper? It's a message. Someone killed her so she wouldn't squawk."
Ricardi had a point. El Faro was a left-wing independent newspaper with the best investigative staff in Argentina, the one that exposed official lies and lying officials, the one people turned to first when they had a gripe. During Marta's investigation of Casares, Raúl Vargas, its sharpest investigative reporter, had befriended her, traded information with her, saluted her in print when she refused to be bought off, celebrated her when she stood up to Senator Casares, lionized her when she nailed his son. El Faro had turned her into a national heroine.
"The scene's screwed up. There's no evidence to work with."
Ricardi shrugged. "You're not an evidence type, Marta. You're a prober. Plus you're not working on anything important now. You can find out who this girl was, who she knew, why someone went to so much trouble to place her in a public place with a page from a paper specializing in exposés stuffed into her mouth. Why'd they torture her? What were they after? If it was just a sex murder, why make a spectacle out of it?" Ricardi sat back, smiled. "You can uncover all that. No one will mess with you. You're too well-known."
He was trying hard to sell her, and she wondered why. She looked out the window again. The precinct cops were dismantling the lights, cleaning up.
"You've got a hunch?"
"Liliana went all out to screw up the scene. Why'd she do that? This has a political smell to it."
He was staring at her. Marta met his eyes. She liked Ricardi, was pleased she had his confidence, appreciated the fact that he didn't simply assign her the case. That told her she had his respect, and maybe something else, that he might know more than he was saying, had more than a policeman's hunch this call girl torture-homicide would turn out to be a lot bigger than it seemed.
"Casares was straight forward," she reminded him. "All I had to do was break through the fear. This one's feels opaque. If I'm going to work it I'll need help."
"Of course. Who do you want?"
"No one in Homicide. Our guys are good, but if this turns out to be political, I won't be able to trust any of them."
"Who then?"
"My cousin, Rolo Tejada. He works narcotics. If you can get him detailed to me, I'll take it on."
Ricardi studied her. She knew what he was thinking: the narcotics division was notoriously corrupt, perhaps more than any division in the Federal Police.
"Your cousin?"
"My mother's sister's boy."
"So he's not from the Jewish side?"
Marta smiled. "Would that make a difference?"
Ricardi shook his head. "To me it doesn't make a shit's worth of difference. But I won't put two Jews on the same case. Not because a pair of you wouldn't do a decent job, but because of how it'd look if tentacles start reaching into higher-than-expected places. Then for sure the Jewish issue'll come up. There'll be talk of a conspiracy. Christ! I shouldn't have to explain this to you!"
"Christ! You don't have to!" Marta said, making Ricardi laugh. "Just so you know, Rolo's a good Catholic boy, he knows the streets, he doesn't take bribes, he's a fine investigator, and, best of all, totally loyal to me."
"Then you got him," Ricardi said.
It was nearly three a.m. when she reached home, just blocks from the huge National Congress building. She loved her neighborhood, its mix of architecture, broken-down houses, some occupied by squatters, beside once-elegant buildings from the 1920s when Buenos Aires was rich, the destination of choice for European immigrants. There was a special quality to the Congreso barrio, its medley of arches, gates, broken balustrades, second and third floor balconies cluttered with pots of carefully tended plants. Behind many of the houses there were little overgrown gardens. It was a dusty neighborhood, a neighborhood that showed lots of use with a quality she found haunting.
She found a parking space, walked to her building catching a whiff of the Río de la Plata on the way, the slightly sour smell of the river that often pervaded the city at night.
She climbed the old worn stairs, let herself into her apartment, went straight to Marina's bedroom door, entered quietly, then stared down in wonder at her beautiful daughter basking in an eleven-year-old's contented sleep.
She bent to kiss Marina's forehead, then made her way to her own bedroom where she found Leon asleep in approximately the same position as when she'd left. He was a big burly man with wild dark hair and large brown eyes so soft and loving she would sometimes, in the midst of work, pull out his photo, stare into his eyes and tear up at the sight of them.
She stowed her pistol, peeled off her clothes, took a quick shower, then got into bed nestling against him. He turned slightly, placed his hand on her flank as if to assure himself she was home. She smiled, shut her eyes, then tried to recover the dream she'd been having when she'd been awakened hours before by Ricardi's call, the dream in which she was swimming with swans.
In the morning she and Leon made love tenderly and quietly so as not to disturb Marina. Afterwards he left her side to make coffee, prepare breakfast for Marina, make sure she was properly dressed for school. Then he brought her into the bedroom so Marta could kiss her goodbye.
"Have a great day, darling," she told Marina. She loved her daughter's large eyes, the innocence in them, and the halo of light brown curls that framed her head the way Leon's was framed by his dark unruly locks.
When Leon leaned down for his kiss, she whispered, "Thank you. You're my champion."
"And you're mine," he whispered back, tenderly touching her cheek.
Leon would drop Marina at school on the way to work. He was half of a contractor-carpenter team specializing in apartment renovations. Most of his work was performed in the Barrio Norte, home to the city's upper-middle class. He and his partner had a small crew, paid them fairly, made a decent profit on their jobs. Between his business and Marta's salary, they were sufficiently well-off to own a second-hand Toyota pickup truck (his), a five year old Ford (hers) and to send Marina to tango class, her current passion.
After Leon and Marina left for the day, Marta phoned her cousin, Rolo, to tell him he would be assigned to work with her on a homicide investigation.
"Go to the morgue," she instructed him, "take Polaroids of the victim, start showing them around Recoleta. We need her full name, address and anything else you can dig up."
She tried to go back to sleep. Failing that, she got up, ate, then headed over to the morgue herself.
Lately Leon had been urging her to quit the police and enter politics. "We're at the start of a new century. People are desperate now to vote for someone honest. You're just what they're looking for. The country's a disaster."
But Marta knew she wasn't ready for politics...and probably never would be. She wasn't comfortable with fame, didn't like being recognized. Also, she loved being an investigator. The experience of working a case, burrowing in deep until she found the truth— there was nothing sweeter than that, she thought. The moments of illumination when everything came together were so pleasureful they made all the tedious legwork worthwhile. Also, she wanted to show people, not just the public but also her fellow cops, that police work could be an honorable occupation, not just another form of criminality.
At the morgue she got her first close look at her victim, laid out naked beneath surgery lamps on a stainless steel dissection table.
Staring down at the young woman, she tried to imagine her alive. Did she laugh a lot? light up a room when she walked into it? love someone? care at all for her clients even when she made love with them for money? The woman's delicate porcelain-like features still radiated beauty. The stab wounds on her body and the strangulation marks around her neck were hideous.
Jorge told her there was no question the victim has been tortured. The stab wounds weren't deep enough to affect vital organs.
"See how well-spaced they are, Inspector? This woman was expertly worked over. Also she was bound." Jorge showed Marta rope burns on the wrists and ankles. "Cause of death was slow strangulation. She was tied so the harder she struggled the worse things got for her. They tied her up, then stuck her all over, forcing her to wriggle until she cut off her own air."
"How do you know since the cops cut off the ropes?"
"Because I've seen this pattern before. Not in twenty or so years. In fact, only in textbooks. It's an old military interrogation technique." Jorge gave her a meaningful look. "Torturers used it during the time of The Proceso."
El Proceso de Reorganización Nacional: the mere mention of that time filled most Argentines with grief and shame. From 1976 to 1983, the country had been ruled by a military regime under whose authority thousands of innocent citizens were arrested, tortured and killed. It was this period, when Marta was in middle school, that the verb "to be disappeared" found currency. She remembered the day her math teacher, Señor Gontero, was arrested. Four men in a grey car took him away. He was never seen at school again. "The bastards disappeared him," older students muttered in the halls. Now it was 2002, eighteen years since the end of the Proceso, and yet the memory of that time was still vivid, the agony of it still deeply felt and unresolved.
"I want to see those photos in your textbooks, Jorge."
"I'll photocopy them for you."
"So the body's speaking to us?"
Jorge nodded. "She's telling us the kind of person who did this."
"A military or police person?"
"That's what she's saying."
"What about sex?"
"No semen. No trace of recent activity. She ate a decent lunch yesterday, a small steak and salad."
"Dinner?"
"No sign. She was killed early in the evening. I estimate between eight and nine p.m."
"She was very beautiful, don't you think?"
Jorge agreed the woman had been beautiful.
"How old?"
"I'd guess twenty-two or three."
"Commander Méndez says her first name's Silvia, that she was a fancy call girl in Recoleta."
"Commander Méndez may be right. I also believe the commander is an extremely poor officer."
Marta nodded, then gestured toward the victim. "Why does she seem to be smiling?"
"That's the way people's features set sometimes."
"She must have been terrified."
"For sure, Inspector. For sure."
Marta was crossing the morgue lobby when her cell phone rang. It was Rolo.
"Her name's Silvia Santini. I've got a promising lead. Meet me for lunch. I know a little place off Plaza Recedo. It's good, and it's near the house of her pimp."
The little lunch place turned out to be a handsome new restaurant with a huge painting on one wall: a naked woman reclining on a couch with Freud seated behind as if he were her psychoanalyst.
Rolo was waiting for her. Seeing him, she smiled. She always thought of him as her adorable cousin—tall, lean, and, with his fine features and dark slicked-back hair, movie-star handsome. He was the first boy she'd ever kissed. At age twelve, at his suggestion, they'd "experimented" on one another. "It won't mean anything," he'd assured her, "but we should learn how to do it so when the time comes we don't make fools of ourselves."
Of course she knew what he was up to, didn't care. Looking back she believed they were equally sex-starved. Kissing, of course, had not been the end of it. They took to sneaking off at family functions to carry on with their "experiments." Soon they were seriously making out. They'd joke about it afterwards. "We mustn't transgress," Marta would warn, "we must observe the taboo." To which Rolo would reply: "Huh? What's that?" She'd pinch him, they'd laugh, then rejoin the family.
"The corn soup's great," he told her. "Also the empanadas."
Marta ordered both, then pointed at the wall. "What's the painting about?"
"The owner used to be a shrink. She's a friend of Isabel's," Rolo said, referring to his wife, a child psychotherapist. "When she opened this place she wanted to bring in Freud as a memento of her old profession."
The soup was spicy, the empanadas filling. Marta could barely get them down.
"I hit the major hotels in Recoleta," Rolo told her. "All the concierges but one denied knowing our victim. Then I spoke to a couple of bellboys. They opened up when I offered tips. Seems Silvia was high-end, what they call a gata, a fancy cat. They say she worked for a Yugoslav guy, an immigrant named Ivo Granic. Apparently he's got a short string of gatas, three beautiful girls and a pretty boy. He runs a service—expensive, deluxe, very discreet. He also hosts sex parties. You can't just phone him up. You have to be introduced."
"He lives near?"
"Two blocks away. I already checked the place out. Hard to see much from the street. High walls, imbedded broken glass on top. The neighbors say he gives lots of parties. When he does there're fancy cars, including official cars with government chauffeurs, double parked around the corner. The next door neighbor said she saw a couple of movie stars come out one night. Juan Sabino and Juanita Courcelles. You can't get much fancier than that."
Marta was pleased. "Good job, Rolo."
"I'm working hard to impress my new boss."
"Sometimes, you know, I just want to wrap you in my arms. But on this job there'll be none of that."
"Alas!"
She asked after Isabel and their son, Manuel.
"Isabel's doing great, but with the economy so bad she's had to cut her fees. Manuel's doing well in school. By the way, he's crazy about Marina. Says she's his favorite partner in tango class."
"We better keep an eye on them. Don't want them to get too friendly."
Rolo grinned.
After lunch, when they stood, Marta smiled at him. "Hell! I'm going to hug you anyway,"...and she did.
They walked to Granic's house. The neighborhood, Palermo Viejo, was starting to look smartly upscale. She noticed new boutiques, galleries, nice looking little bars and restaurants, and construction fix-up crews working on old sausage houses and cottages. She saw attractive young women pushing baby strollers and a young man walking a group of pedigreed dogs.
With the economy in ruins, unemployment at a peak, she was surprised by this surge of renovation. But then she remembered something her father used to say: "Even in the worst of times there will always be people in Buenos Aires making money."
Granic's house was bigger than any other in the neighborhood. It even had a yard surrounded by a high wall with TV security cameras mounted at the corners. There was another camera over the exterior door, and still another above the garage.
"This is a vault," she said. "Whoever's inside already knows we're here."
Rolo rang the bell. They could hear its echo through the door. He rang again, then, after half a minute, cautiously turned the doorknob. The door swung open. He called out "Hello! Anybody home?"
No response. He looked at Marta and shrugged.
"Yeah, let's go in," she said.
She had a bad feeling as soon as she stepped into the front hall. She saw a sunken living room ahead, moved cautiously toward it, then stopped and looked at Rolo who'd pulled back the front of his jacket exposing his pistol. When she nodded at him, he pulled the gun, then came beside her holding it out in a classic narcotics cop two-handed stance.
The living room was furnished with expensive contemporary pieces. There were abstract paintings, facing black leather couches and a chrome-legged glass coffee table with art books neatly displayed on top. The place looked, she thought, like one of those expensive soulless rooms she was used to seeing in decorating magazines—everything pristine, perfectly arranged, without a clue to the personality of the owner.
"Heavy-duty security system, unlocked front door and no one home. I don't get it," Rolo whispered.
"Maybe someone is home. Maybe he's taking a shower. Where'd you think all those cameras are monitored from?"
"The kitchen maybe."
"Let's take a look."
They passed through a dining room decorated in the same expensive style, then into a kitchen with stainless steel counters and appliances, everything in place and perfectly clean as if never used.
Rolo opened the refrigerator. "No food," he said. Inside were neat rows of bottles: white wine, champagne, vodka and gin.
"Looks like an oversized hotel mini-bar," Marta said. "This whole place feels like a hotel, freshly cleaned too. You can still smell the cleansers."
Continuing to search the ground floor, they discovered two side-by-side restrooms and a library, shelves full of what looked to be unopened books. There was a desk in front of a window overlooking the garden with nothing on top except a sleek brushed metal phone.
She paused at the foot of the carpeted stairs. "I don't hear a shower going. I think we're going to find something up there."
"Yeah, something unpleasant."
She drew her own pistol and started up, Rolo just behind. At the top of the stairs there was a carpeted hallway, with four doors, all closed, leading off. Three led to empty bedrooms with empty closets and baths, all as anonymous, luxurious and sterile as the rest of the house. The fourth door revealed a narrow flight of stairs with another closed door at its top.
They moved cautiously, Marta certain that if there was anything to be found, it would be at the top end of these back stairs. At the door she paused, listened. She could hear faint buzzing on the other side.
She thrust the door open. A man, sitting naked in a pool of dried blood, faced her from the far wall of the room. Though he was dead, his arms were raised, stretched out on either side. Flies were buzzing around his body and the smell in the room was starting to turn bad. The man's entire torso was punctured, like Silvia's, by little knife wounds, but he wasn't smiling the way Silvia had seemed to be. As Marta approached she brought out a handkerchief and held it to her nose. Then to her horror she saw what was holding up his arms. His palms were nailed to the wall behind.
This time, Marta was determined, no precinct cops would mess up the scene. She and Rolo withdrew to the first floor where she called Homicide, then waited until the forensic squad arrived.
It was twenty minutes before the first van showed up. Marta and Rolo led the crew upstairs. The murder room turned out to be one of a suite of small servants rooms, seemingly the only inhabited rooms in the house. There were clothes in the closets, papers strewn on the desk, a three-line phone, a Republic of Argentina passport in a bureau drawer.
From the passport photo Marta identified the dead man as Ivo Granic, alleged to have been Silvia Santini's pimp. But, she noted, certain important items were missing: there was no cell phone, no computer, no personal address book or agenda book showing appointments or bookings for Granic's gatas. And there was still no sign of the screens on which the security cameras could be monitored.
"Let's find the monitoring station," Marta told Rolo. "The forensic squad can handle things up here."
They searched the house again top to bottom, then the garage. It was two cars deep, but there was only one car inside, a new American SUV. The garden was well-kept with outdoor furniture and a gas-lit barbecue-rotisserie as immaculate as the kitchen stove.
"He must have a full-time maid and gardener to keep the place so nice," Rolo said. "I've never seen a cleaner garage."
"We're missing something," Marta said.
She made two circuits around the house, went back inside, walked slowly again through all the ground floor rooms, came out and circled the house once more.
"There's more space showing outside than fits the floor plan," she told Rolo. "Let's check the first floor again."
They started in the library, rapping on the walls, looking for a bookcase that might disguise a door. They knocked on the walls of the bare-shelved pantry off the kitchen and checked the mirrors in the downstairs baths. Rolo finally produced a hollow sound when he hit the back wall of a coat closet off the front hall.
"There's something behind," he told Marta. "I can break in by kicking through the wall."
Marta didn't want to do it that way. She insisted they find the entrance.
It took them another ten minutes. At several points, she noted, Rolo became impatient. Like most narcotics cops, he liked to bust down doors. She did her best to calm him. She was fascinated by the problem and excited by the prospect of what they might discover. If the comings and goings in the house had been recorded they might be able to solve their case that afternoon.
Entry to the space behind the wall was not, as it turned out, through the coat closet itself. The back wall didn't pivot, there was no trick lock or secret spring. Access came from above, a trap door hidden beneath a throw rug in one of the roomy bedroom closets on the second floor.
The monitoring room contained a desk and above it a wall of shelves housing forty small TV monitors that revealed far more than exterior views. In fact, each of the bedrooms was covered by four separate monitors. She sent Rolo back upstairs to test the system out. Sitting in the little room she could see and hear everything he did and said in the bedrooms and baths through tiny cameras and microphones they hadn't noticed, concealed in the ceilings and walls.
"This isn't just a security monitoring station," she told him when he rejoined her. "This is a spy's nest. Suppose fancy visitors like Sabino and Courcelles come here for a party. Granic introduces Sabino to one of his gatas. Maybe he introduces Courcelles to his pretty boy too. Each couple talks, maybe smokes some grass, then goes up to one of the bedrooms for sex. From down here Granic, or someone who works for him, records it all. Depending on the vulnerability of his victims, he can practically name his price when he offers to sell back the recording."
"I'd certainly think about killing a guy who tried a stunt like that on me."
"Yeah, a guy who did that would have a lot of enemies. But where's the computer that ties everything together and records everything on hard disc?"
"Granic was tortured. He told them about this room, they came down here and cleaned it out."
"They cleaned it very well. It's as immaculate as the rest of the house. The crew upstairs'll fingerprint everything, but something tells me they won't find anything down here."
The forensic squad worked late into the night. By the following day, certain conclusions had been reached:
Granic had been killed in the room where Marta and Rolo had found him. Estimated time of death: six p.m. the previous evening, just a few hours before the estimated time of death of Silvia Santini.
There was no trace of Silvia's blood in the room, which meant she'd been tortured and killed somewhere else.
The house was completely clean no prints, fibers or signs of intruders.
Two sets of neighbors told Rolo they saw a dark van enter the garage the evening before, and that they'd seen lights burning in the windows through the night. Another neighbor, walking her dog around six a.m., saw a dark van quickly departing the garage. As this van was the type with black windows, she couldn't tell how many people were inside.
"That was the cleanup crew," Rolo said.
Marta agreed. "That there was a cleanup crew tells us a lot."
They were sipping coffee in a student café off Plazoleta Olazábal, two blocks from the Homicide Division building. Most of kids sitting at nearby tables were puffing on cigarettes, several were immersed in textbooks, others were arguing politics, and still others working studiously at their laptops. Sunlight glinted off a nearby public sculpture, an assemblage of bronze nudes called "Canto al Trabajo." Across the Plazoleta was a row of imposing columns, the facade of the Engineering School, formerly headquarters of the Eva Perón Foundation, huge and monolithic, built in the bombastic Italian fascist style so beloved by the Perónistas.
The sky was grey, the air hot and sticky. Marta longed for the balmy days of a Buenos Aires autumn.
"Time to split up the work," she said. "You track Granic and Silvia. Find out everything you can about them, Granic's immigration records, ownership of his house, all that, and, most important, where Silvia lived... because that's probably where she was killed. Who were her friends? Where did she eat that little steak she had for lunch? Meantime, I'm going to try a shortcut. We have the names of a pair of movie stars. I'm going to drop in on them cold this afternoon, see what they have to say about Señor Granic and his wild late night parties."
The estate was in Pilar, a suburb twenty miles from the center of the city. There was an exclusive polo club there, an excellent private school and a small mall with branches of high-end city shops and boutiques.
The estate, which bore the name "Casa de la Felicidad," was guarded by a set of high iron gates. There were two security cameras mounted behind, and a loudspeaker through which Marta was greeted by a stern female voice.
"State your business."
"Federal Police, Homicide Division. I'm here to see Señor Sabino and Señora Courcelles."
"Display your ID."
Marta did as she was told. The lenses on both cameras started to move, one zooming in on her face, the other on her ID. Then a long pause.
"Entry approved. Drive to the house and park in the circle in front. You'll be met by an escort."
The gate slid open. Marta drove in. The entry procedure, especially the no-nonsense disembodied voice, was closer to what she'd expect at a military base than at a private residence.
The road, lined with perfectly spaced eucalyptus trees, wound its way up a slope. Though it was early autumn, the mowed meadows on either were still brown from the intense summer heat.
When she first spotted the house, it struck her as less than grand. But as she drew closer she began to comprehend its subtle beauty. This wasn't a fairy-tale castle like some of the great estancias in the pampas, but a contemporary one-story stone and glass structure that embraced the surrounding land. A perfect house for a perfect modern movie star couple, she thought, whose faces were sufficient to impress. The old cattle ranch millionaires imported castles stone by stone from Europe because they could only impress by showing off their wealth.
Her escort turned out to be Juanita Courcelles. The actress, smaller than expected, didn't much resemble the super-glamorous figure Marta had seen so often on the screen. She wore no makeup and was dressed very simply in running shoes, black T-shirt and black nylon shorts. But even with a gloss of sweat on her forehead, her beauty was apparent—the high cheekbones and famous large dark almond-shaped eyes that drew one's sympathy no matter what sort of role she played.
"Hi, I'm Juanita," she said, offering her hand. "I know who you are. We followed your work on Casares. What a treat to meet you in person."
Marta couldn't help but feel flattered. Not only had Juanita Courcelles gone to the trouble of introducing herself, she was behaving as if Marta were the celebrity instead of the other way around.
"You caught us playing basketball with our kids. Juan's still at it. Come out back and meet the gang."
Juanita led her into the house, then through a vast living room toward a wall of sliding glass doors. Even though they were moving fast, Marta caught a glimpse of a large painting by Botero above a couch.
The doors gave out onto a wide stone terrace with spectacular views of the surrounding land. There was a large rectangular pool and pool house just below, a tennis court on one side, a half basketball court on the other. Here Juan Sabino, in shorts and tank top, sweat marks on chest and back, was running around with four middle-school age kids. Marta had read about these kids, all adopted, each from a different country: a girl from China, another from Mexico, a handsome black boy from the Sudan and a boy of pure Indian extraction from Peru.
"Lemonade?" Juanita asked.
Marta stood at the terrace railing watching the action on the court. Everyone looked to be having a good time. Sabino was dribbling, dodging and weaving among his kids, making faces, faking moves, finally shooting, and, when he missed the basket, mock-shaking his fist at the kids as they cheered. Marta would have thought he was grandstanding if he'd shown any awareness she was there. But he seemed totally involved with the children. She couldn't help but smile as their laughter bubbled up from the court.
This is like a well-staged scene, she thought. Active loving family at play.
Later, after herding the kids into the pool, Sabino climbed onto the terrace. With his hairy arms, craggy face, flashing eyes and unkept mustache, he certainly wasn't pretty. It was his dashing ultra-masculine manner that caused the fan magazines to dub him "our own Clark Gable." He had a way of squinting when he grinned, and an ironic expression that suggested he knew he was a cad, and, moreover, that he knew women adored him for being one.
Like Juanita, he spoke of the admiration with which they'd followed Marta's work on Casares. There seemed nothing artificial about him, nothing Marta could identify as insincere. And yet, she reminded herself, she was in the presence of a pair of highly skilled actors famous for their ability to make people like them and sympathize.
"We know why you're here," Sabino said. He was lying back on a chaise longue, sipping his lemonade through a straw. "It's poor Ivo, isn't it?"
"How well did you know him?" Marta asked.
"Pretty well. He was our personal bodyguard for two years. Handled all our security. Lovely guy. The kids adored him. But after a while we realized he wasn't right for us, the kind of lives we lead. Not that he wasn't a total pro. We couldn't fault him. He took the job seriously and performed it well."
"Which was just the problem," Juanita added.
"Not sure I understand."
"We have an informal lifestyle. Yeah, we're well off and well known, but we try not to let that affect our lives. Ivo was too strict about security. He always acted as if we were being stalked, that anyone who approached us was a threat. His attitude frightened fans. As much as we liked him, it wasn't relaxing to have him around. He made everyone too...tense."
"We finally decided to let him go," Sabino said. "It was, I'm happy to say, a friendly parting of the ways. A bodyguard relationship is pretty intimate. Ivo knew all our flaws and eccentricities. When he left, he could have peddled our little secrets to the tabloids. But he never talked about us to anyone, never sold us out. It was sad around here the day he left. Even sadder this morning when we read he'd been killed. We still haven't told the kids."
"How did you happen to hire him?"
"We found him through an agency. He had excellent references. He'd worked presidential security in Yugoslavia. He told us he didn't like what was happening in his country. When his marriage broke up, he decided to move here and start a new life."
"He said it was here or Australia, didn't he, darling?"
"I think so. Something like that."
Marta studied them. Were they lying? There was no way to know. But instinct told her there was something too quick and familiar about the way they'd opened up to her.
"What did he do after he stopped working for you?" she asked.
"He started some kind of tourist business, I think," Sabino said. "We really haven't seen him in a year and a half. Not that we didn't want to, you understand. But we're busy people and we couldn't very well see him socially. It would have been embarrassing for him and for us."
Since the couple had been seen leaving Granic's house, Marta knew that they were lying. Annoyed, she decided to trap them in even more specific lies.
"Because he knew your family secrets?"
Sabino gave Marta a sharp look. "Because he'd been an employee. Normally one doesn't socialize with former servants. It's not comfortable."
"This tourist business he went into you didn't know it was a call girl/ call boy service?"
Juan and Juanita exchanged a look. "You're serious?"
Marta nodded. Their performance was faltering now. She was disgusted by them, but decided not to show it.
"Your old bodyguard became a whoremaster." She deliberately used the vulgar term. "From what we hear, he also organized sex parties at his house. Prominent people were seen coming and going. Politicians, opera singers, people like that. There're rumors he videoed sexual encounters, then used the videos to blackmail participants."
"That's horrible!" Juanita said.
"Truly hard to believe," Sabino added.
"I'm afraid it's true. Where do you suppose he found the money to buy that very nice house?"
She caught a quick look of complicity between them. But they were too bright to fall into her trap.
"We never saw his house," Sabino said. He pulled off his shoes and socks. "Excuse me. I'm going to cool off in the pool. Got to keep an eye on the kids."
He stood, peeled off his shirt exposing the etched muscles of his abdomen. Then he made a running dive into the pool. The kids cheered when he hit the water, then the five of them engaged in a screaming water fight.
"I think I upset your husband," Marta said.
"We didn't know any of this." Juanita paused. "Are you sure that's what Ivo did?"
"I'm sure," Marta glanced at her watch. "Time for me to go."
They both stood, then there was an awkward moment between them as if Juanita was going to say something then thought better of it. She insisted on escorting Marta back to her car.
"Do you come into the city much?" Marta asked as they retraced their way through the house.
"Not often. When we aren't working on a film, we spend most of our time out here. To break the rhythm, I'll go in one day a week to see friends. We'll meet up at our gym, work out together, have lunch, then I'll drive back. Juan and I rarely go out at night. Unlike a lot of people in our business, we're old-fashioned family types. We like the simple things best." She smiled at Marta. "Do you have kids?"
"A daughter," Marta said.
"How old?"
"Eleven."
"Great age! Having a child of your own, I'm sure you know what I mean."
Marta nodded, but didn't reply. Driving back down the road, she thought: Family types! Liars!
Three days later her investigation was stalled.
Rolo had discovered that Granic paid two hundred thousand dollars cash for his house and plenty more for its renovation. But his real estate attorney shrugged when asked where Granic obtained the money.
The two other girls and the boy who worked for Granic's service were not to be found. The same with his domestics. It was as if everyone connected to him was scared, and had either left town or was hiding out.
Rolo did locate Silvia Santini's apartment, but it was as clean as Granic's: no prints, cell phone, address book or computer. Moreover, there was nothing to suggest Silvia had been killed there. It was as if the cleanup crew in the dark van had cleaned out her place too.
"Who are these people?" Marta asked.
"Nobody's talking," Rolo said.
"Basically all we've got so far is a couple of lying movie stars."
They were in Marta's car, Marta driving, Rolo by her side, on their way to San Telmo where their kids took tango class together. It had been raining all afternoon, so hard at times that Marta's windshield wipers could barely keep up.
As she rounded a corner, she was nearly run off the road by a bus.
Rolo rolled down the window. "Asshole!" he yelled.
To defuse his anger, Marta flicked on the car radio. There was a program they both liked, Radio La Colifata, in which a deadpan interviewer asked inmates at the Borda Psychiatric Hospital their opinions on current events.
"...we live in a banana republic," one female inmate was saying. "But where are the bananas. See, that's the great Argentine mystery. The bananas! Where are the bananas?"
Rolo laughed. "She makes as much sense as the politicians."
Which was true, Marta thought. At least that was one thing they could laugh about.
"There're two ways we can handle this," she told him. "Haul everyone's ass down to headquarters, stick them in little putrid interrogation rooms, then intimidate them till someone talks. Or we can find someone who's wavering, appeal to his better instincts, convince him to help us solve a couple of horrible torture-homicides."
"In Narcotics we always use the first method."
"I prefer the second," Marta said. "Who do you think's likely to help?"
Rolo thought about it. "Only one guy, the day concierge at the Royal. He was the hotel link to Granic. Struck me as fairly decent. He gave me the first names of the other call girls and told me about the sex parties. If approached right, he might have more to say."
"I'll see him in the morning. Meantime, interview Granic's neighbors again. I want to know what other celebrities people saw coming and going from that house. Government types especially. People who can't afford a scandal."
The tango class, conducted in what had been a furniture showroom, was just finishing when they arrived. Proud parents, they stood watching from the wall as their kids completed the short uninterrupted tanda that traditionally signaled the end of class. When the teachers, a male/female couple, dismissed the children, Marina and Manuel ran to them, eyes bright, faces flushed.
"Cousin Manuel stepped on my foot," Marina reported.
"Teacher said Cousin Marina was dancing too sexy," Manuel tattled in turn.
Everyone laughed, then piled into Marta's car. Marta dropped Rolo and Manuel at their building, then drove Marina home. The rain had stopped by the time she parked in a large puddle on Bartolomé Mitre. She and Marina went into a neighborhood grocery, picked up apples, carrots, potatoes and a pre-roasted chicken for dinner, then walked the three flights to the apartment door. As Marta was turning the key, Marina pointed at the floor. "Look, Mommy. Someone left a package." Marta picked it up. It was a folio size envelope with the words La Incorrupta written in block letters on the front. She opened the door, sent Marina to her room to clean up, took the groceries into the kitchen, then sat down to see what was inside.
She found five large, extremely lewd, highly graphic color photographs of two attractive women making love. In four of the shots the women's heads were cut off at the frame-line, but in the fifth there was a clear image of Silvia Santini. There was also a small snapshot of a couple in swimsuits sitting on a beach.
The accompanying note was written in block capitals:
DEAR LA INCORRUPTA:
THE ENCLOSED SHOULD INTEREST YOU. THE FIRST WOMAN YOU ALREADY KNOW. HER BODY WAS FOUND FOUR NIGHTS AGO BY THE CEMETERY WALL IN RECOLETA. THE WOMAN IN HER EMBRACE IS GRACIELA VIERA, SPOUSE OF OUR HIGHLY AMBITIOUS FINANCE MINISTER. A SMALL SNAPSHOT FOR VERIFICATION IS ENCLOSED. IT WAS TAKEN LAST MONTH ON THE BEACH AT PUNTA DEL ESTE. WITH THE HOPE YOU WILL FIND THESE DOCUMENTS USEFUL. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
AN ADMIRER
If it weren't for the enclosed snapshot, Marta would have regarded this offering as trash. But the beach photo, which showed Viera and his wife in swimsuits, revealed a small tattoo on Señora Viera's right shoulder blade that matched a tattoo on the second woman in the lesbian love-making photos. The tattoo consisted of a small heart pierced by an arrow containing the entwined initials of the Vieras: G and J. Moreover, the background in the large photographs matched Marta's memory of one of the bedrooms at Granic's house.
That night, after Marina completed her homework and was put to bed, Marta and Leon made love. Then, lying side by side beneath their slowly revolving ceiling fan, Marta showed Leon the pictures.
"Jesus!" He sat up. "Looks like someone caught Graciela just as she was getting off!" He turned to her. "These are political dynamite."
"Tell me why?"
"Because, as the note says, José Viera is ambitious. A lot of people think he's going to make a run for the presidency. He's been positioning himself for months."
"With the economy like it is, how can the Finance Minister run for President?"
"He'll claim he's not responsible. He's just part of a caretaker government doing his patriotic duty. He'll say he decided to run because he wasn't allowed to take 'necessary measures.' He'll separate himself soon. you'll see. The campaign'll get nasty. The columnists are predicting we're in for 'the politics of violence.'"
"But what's his running got to do with his wife? Who cares if she's bisexual or lesbian?"
"Marta darling, you're such a pure soul!" He kissed her, stroked her cheek. "Presidential politics are about machismo. A thing like this would be ruinous for Viera, especially in the provinces. A Minister of State whose wife is a lesbian—that's bad enough. But involved with a call girl! That tells the world she had to pay to be satisfied. If Viera runs for high office and this gets out, it'll put the worst possible set of horns on him. He'll be a public laughingstock."
In the morning, wanting to be sure of her ground, she drove over to Granic's house, had the police guard let her in, then checked out the bedrooms.
As she suspected, the decor of one bedroom matched perfectly with the background in the five large photographs. Satisfied that the pictures were taken there, she drove to her office, made a set of color copies of the large photos, then two copies of the beach snapshot, one as received, the other with the Vieras' faces blocked out.
She walked the originals and the cropped beach photo copy over to Irma Mariani, a photoanalyst in the Scientific Branch. Then she called the Finance Ministry to request a same-day appointment with Hugo Charbonneau, José Viera's confidential assistant and chief of staff.
When Charbonneau's secretary asked what the proposed meeting would be about, Marta told her it concerned "a highly sensitive matter pertaining to a homicide investigation."
She could hear the secretary intake her breath. "Very good, Inspector. Señor Charbonneau will see you at four p.m."
The day concierge at the Hotel Royal was Antonio Beltrán, a short, friendly, balding young man with a pencil-line mustache. He didn't have much to say, just that he knew the call boy who worked for Granic, a kid named "Eduardo," who hung out at a Recoleta dance club called Contramano.
"How do you know he hangs out there?" Marta asked.
"I've seen him there quite a few times."
"You're gay?"
"Yes."
"You've danced with him?"
"Yes."
"A good dancer?"
"Wonderful dancer. Far better than me. Which is why I've had only a few opportunities to dance with him. It's a cruel world in the clubs, Señora Inspector."
"I can imagine," she said. "What was Granic's service called?"
"He called it 'Las Bellezas'."
"You told Detective Tejada that Granic held sex parties. Did you attend?"
"No. But I heard about them."
"From Eduardo?"
"Yes."
"This Eduardo—did he service both men and women?"
"He was versatile, yes."
"Eduardo is a pretty common first name. Is that all you can tell me about him?"
Beltrán closed his eyes, held them closed for several seconds. "He's tall, very lean, very pretty with very beautiful eyes," he said. When he looked again at Marta, he smiled softly. "And no matter who else is in the club, he will always be the best, prettiest boy-dancer on the floor."
Just as she was crossing Plaza de Mayo, the rain broke hard. There was a medium-sized demonstration in progress: telephone workers holding up banners, an unintelligible speech issuing from a sound truck, several dozen cops standing on guard behind what were possibly the most frequently employed set of barricades in South America.
A lot of history had been made on this square. Just months before thousands of angry men and women had assembled here to beat pots and pans through the night. The following night, when horse-mounted police attempted to clear the Plaza of rioters, six people were killed, two shot, four trampled to death. The day after that the government had fallen. But this afternoon, when the rain hit, everyone, cops included, broke for cover.
Marta, running toward the Finance Ministry, nearly collided with a pair of demonstrators seeking shelter beneath a bedraggled palm. Lightning flashed as she hurried toward the door. There was a plaque beside it referring to the aircraft strafing that had brought down the first Perón regime: "The scars on this marble were the harvest of confrontation and intolerance. Their imprint will help the nation achieve a great future."
Just as she entered the portal, a clap of thunder seemed to sweep her inside. For a moment the lights in the lobby dimmed. When they brightened again, she found herself, hair and jacket soaked, standing before a high desk. A male receptionist stared down at her with scorn.
"It is not permitted to use this Ministry as a shelter, Señora."
Marta flashed her badge. "Kindly inform Señor Charbonneau's office that Inspector Abecasis of the Federal Police is here for her interview."
Several minutes later a young woman in a smart-looking suit approached to escort Marta upstairs. This was her first visit to the Ministry. She'd always imagined it as a dull grey place where thousands of equally dull grey bureaucrats stared at endless rows of figures scrolling down computer screens.
Hugo Charbonneau's hair was grey, cut very short like a soldier's, but there was nothing dull about him, Marta thought. He had, she thought, perhaps the sharpest pair of ice-blue eyes she'd ever seen. He sat behind his desk peering at her through a set of thin gold wire-rimmed spectacles. He looked to be in his mid fifties with something hard about him, an aura that spoke of intense self-discipline. She thought: He looks like one smart, slick and very tough middle-aged priest.
"Speak up, Inspector." He cracked his knuckles, then rapped both forefingers simultaneously on his desk. "We're busy here. You asked to see me on an urgent basis. Kindly get to the point."
Okay, you asked for it.
"A murdered woman was found five nights ago against the Recoleta Cemetery wall. She was what they call a gata, an expensive call girl. We found her pimp killed that same night in his house. Both victims had been tortured first by someone using Proceso-era interrogation technique. There was a surveillance system in the house, cameras and microphones set up in bedrooms so whatever occurred there could be recorded. Yesterday I received a set of photographs from an anonymous source of two women making love in one of those bedrooms. I can identify one of the women as the murder victim. Perhaps you can identify the other."
Even when she passed the envelope across the desk, Charbonneau continued to stare at her.
"What makes you think I'd know this person?"
"Why don't you take a look and see?"
"Is this some sort of trap, Inspector?"
"This is a homicide investigation. I expect you to cooperate."
Charbonneau looked down at the envelope. "Perhaps I should call in our legal adviser."
"You can do that, and then we can all drive over to the Palace of Justice and conduct this interview before a judge."
Charbonneau showed her a very tight smile. "I've heard of you, Inspector. I suppose some people are scared of you."
"Oh, I'm really a sweetheart," Marta said.
This time, when Charbonneau smiled, he showed a little more lip. "Yeah, a real police softy, I'm sure." He glanced again at the envelope, picked it up. "Let's see what you've got."
He pulled out the photos, looked at them, chuckled and tossed them onto his desk.
"I don't know how anyone could identify the second woman as it's not possible to see her face."
"Did you notice the entwined initials tattooed on her shoulder blade?"
Charbonneau picked up the photos again, squinted at them. "Looks like a 'G' and a 'J'."
"Now please look at this." She passed him the uncropped copy of the beach snapshot. "Recognize the woman here?"
Charbonneau sat back abruptly. "Of course!" Just then another thunder clap caused the lights in the office to dim.
"And the tattoo on her shoulder blade—isn't it the same?"
Charbonneau, fully alert now, was staring at Marta, eyes filled with anger.
"This is an outrage!"
Marta nodded. "I agree. It is an outrage. Two people were tortured and murdered. One of them was a blackmailer. I've just shown you blackmail material involving the wife of a high government official. What conclusions can we draw from that?"
"You speak to me of 'conclusions!' You've shown me trash!" He was now so furious, it seemed to Marta, that his aura of intense self-discipline was about to crack. "These photos, which purport to show...."
Through the window Marta saw a lightning bolt tear the sky. Charbonneau, she noted, didn't quiver. He was too enraged.
"These are fakes! I don't know who sent them to you, but whoever did is attempting to use the police. Also trying to mock the Minister by vilifying his wife with a scandal that never took place. And that, Inspector, is intolerable!"
"If these pictures are fakes, I completely agree. Which is why I brought them to you. Only one other person, a photo analyst, has seen them. And only a copy of the snapshot with the faces cropped out. If she determines they're fakes, no one else will see them. On the other hand...."
"Be very careful, Inspector, before you make any 'on the other hand' threats."
"I'm simply pointing out—"
"I know what you're pointing out. Listen carefully. As they say in the Law, everyone has his or her 'secret garden' his/her personal peccadilloes, private sexual life, and all that. Unless a man or woman opens the gates to his/her garden, his/her privacy must be respected. The personal activities of the Minister's spouse are nobody's business but her own. Still, knowing her as I do, I can assure you these pictures were altered. So the question is why? Why would someone try to use such shabby material to involve an innocent person in a murder case? Your guess is as good as mine. But, you see, even when these pictures are proven to be fakes, there'll still be a residue, the taint of a high official's spouse seeking satisfaction outside the marriage. And it's that residue that can be most damaging. The obvious question is: Who would gain from spreading such vicious rumors? If I were you, I'd look to Minister Viera's political enemies for the answer to that." He sat back, once again the grim tightly controlled priest. "And now, Inspector, this interview is over."
Ricardi laughed. "But, Marta, Hugo Charbonneau is a priest," he hissed.
"Or was. He had to give up his military priest's posting when he took the job with Viera."
Marta had been summoned to Ricardi's office to explain her visit to the Finance Ministry. Word had come down from the Chief of the Federal Police that perhaps Ricardi should rein in his star detective. Marta wasn't surprised; she'd expected Charbonneau to complain. But when she showed the Chief the Silvia Santini photographs, Ricardi agreed she'd handled the matter properly.
"If you'd taken these directly to Señora Viera or to the Minister they'd have a legitimate complaint. Going to his confidential assistant was the proper course. But..." Ricardi shook his head, "there's still a problem."
"What?"
"Have you seen this?" He passed her an open copy of that morning's edition of El Faro. He'd circled a blind item in the political gossip column on the second page:
Rumors about a curious set of photographs are making the rounds in political circles. The photos purport to show the wife of a potential presidential candidate in compromising poses with a second woman. Probably no one would take notice except for the connection of the unnamed second woman to a recent unsolved homicide....
Marta knew this leak couldn't have come from Irma since the photo-analyst had only seen the cropped beach photograph of the Vieras. Which told her that her anonymous admirer had also sent the photos to El Faro.
"Charbonneau said we were being used, that these pictures were forged by Viera's enemies."
"A political 'dirty trick'—yeah, possible, though whoever did it would have to have had access to Granic's surveillance videos. Better find out for sure whether these photos were doctored."
"I just got word the analysis is finished. I was heading to forensics when you called." She paused. "Did you look at the material Jorge sent over from the Medical Examiner's Office?"
Ricardi nodded. "You were right, your victims were tortured by someone using Proceso era technique."
"Proceso era Army technique, right? And now you tell me Charbonneau was a military priest. I find that interesting."
Ricardi nodded. "As I've always told you, Marta, when you have a hunch, follow up."
She went directly to the photo analysis room. As soon as she entered, Irma Mariani closed the door, pulled the blinds, set up a screen and turned on a pair of side by side projectors.
"I made slides of your pictures. Take a look at this birthmark." Using a laser pointer, Irma pointed out an area several inches below the tattoo. "Now look at the same area on the copy snapshot." She projected the image from the swimsuit photograph. "You don't see the birthmark on this one."
Marta agreed.
"One explanation is that the woman on the beach was wearing sunscreen and the sun was shining very brightly. Or, since this is a copy, the birthmark simply didn't register. But now look at the tattoo." She used the pointer again. "In this bedroom shot it's in the same position. But in this one..." She showed a different slide from the series. "...it's angled somewhat differently. In the third and fourth pictures, the tattoos match up again. But here, in the fifth, again the tattoo's not in the same place."
"What does all this mean?" Marta asked. She had counted on the photos being legitimate. It was clear now that they weren't.
"It means a cyber-photographic specialist, using a software program, inserted the tattoos. In general he did a good job. But because of the way the bodies were writhing when the pictures were taken, it was difficult in every case to insert the tattoo exactly right. He'd have done better if he'd just sent you the three that matched up. For me the lack of the birthmark in the snapshot confirms the bedroom series pictures were altered."
Irma gazed at her. "I can see you're disappointed. But there's a good lead to who did this work, a company monogram imbedded in the printing paper." Irma handed her a blow-up of the initials. "I believe if you show this to people in the business, you'll quickly find the person who manipulated these images."
It wasn't disappointment that Marta felt as she walked back to her office. It was anger.
Someone's using me! I'm being played!