SMOKE SCREEN
Marta Abecasis met Rolo Tejada outside the Galería Güemes, a downtown arcade of cheap clothing and tourist trinket shops, discount camera stores and a defunct cybercafé. She remembered the arcade from her childhood, an Aladdin's Cave of alcoves filled with glittering treasures. Middle-class people didn't come here anymore. In recent years, it had become the haunt of strung-out teenagers, prostitutes and drug dealers.
She and Rolo took the elevator up to the third floor, walked down a long corridor past the offices of cut-rate dentists, podiatrists, masseurs and a doctor who, according to his sign, specialized in treating VD with "great discretion."
"Rents here must be pretty cheap," Rolo said.
Near the end of the corridor, they came to the office of CYBERFOTOGRAFÍA/REINALDO COSTAS, whose "RC" monogram had been imbedded in the printing paper of the five Silvia Santini/Graciela Viera sex photos.
The office was dark, blinds drawn, the only source of light the screens of computers arranged in a line on a long table. Rolo gestured toward a tall clean-shaven man in his twenties in front of one of the computers.
"That's Costas." Hearing his name, the man stood up and approached. Rolo introduced him to Marta. "Please believe me, Inspector," Costas said to her, "I had no idea this would become a police matter." Marta studied him. His expression struck her as a little too earnest. "You didn't do all that good a job," she said.
Costas smiled. "The way I angled the tattoo?"
"You knew?"
"Of course! And I left out the woman's birthmark."
"Why?"
"I didn't much like the guys who hired me. They said they wanted me to fake up some lesbian photos to play a joke on a friend. I figured if the pictures were going to be a joke, I shouldn't make them a hundred percent convincing. I didn't want to be responsible for somebody getting hurt or become involved in a matrimonial dispute."
"Now you're involved in a homicide investigation," Rolo said.
"I know, and I'm very sorry...."
It had taken Rolo just an hour to track down the maker of the fake photos. If it hadn't been for the monogram he would never have managed it since hundreds of thousands of people possessed the proper software and knew how to use it on a home computer.
"Never mind how sorry you are," Marta said. "Tell us about these men. Who were they?"
Costas, chastened, shook his head. "Tough looking. They didn't give their names and they paid in cash. They brought the original photos with them and took them back when I was done."
"Tough looking – what does that mean?"
"If you don't mind my saying so, Inspector, they seemed like cops or military types. Please, I hope you're not offended." Costas started to describe them, then stopped. "I have a better way. I've got excellent ID software. Give me a few minutes and I'll put together sketches."
He went to one of the computers, loaded in a CD-ROM, and set to work. In twenty minutes he produced sketches of two thuggish looking men. Marta wasn't impressed—the men looked generic.
"I'm sorry," Costas said weakly. "This is the best I can do."
On the way back to the elevator Marta turned to Rolo.
"Costas has a decent excuse for doing a sloppy job, but I wonder whether he didn't want anyone to get hurt or whether he was paid to do it sloppy."
She arranged to meet with Raúl Vargas, the young investigative journalist on El Faro with whom she'd worked on the Casares Case, the one who'd first dubbed her "La Incorrupta."
Raúl was brilliant and also paranoid, extremely careful about where he met people, even people he trusted. He had a unique way of setting up meetings: "Take a walk at three o'clock down the east side of Corrientes; I'll catch up with you," he'd tell Marta. Or: "Circulate at noon among the market sellers in front of Retiro Station; I'll find you." Then he'd swoop by on his Kawasaki, call out her name, she'd hop on the back, he'd hand her a helmet, then take off at high speed, usually to a café connected to a gas station in an obscure neighborhood where he'd always choose a corner table. There they'd exchange information over a quick cup of coffee.
Marta called him on his cell phone, the only way she knew to reach him.
"I need to talk to you about that blind political item," she said.
"Which one? Yesterday we ran six." From the loud traffic noises in the background, she could tell he was on his motorcycle darting around the city.
"The one about lesbian pictures of the wife of a potential presidential candidate."
"Oh, That one! Been meaning to call you about that."
He asked her to meet him at four p.m. by the north wall of Recoleta Cemetery. "It seems an appropriate place, Marta, don't you think? Wear a black sweater if you've got one."
What a wise-ass!
"Start around Calle Guido, walk on the wall side toward Plaza Francia. I'll..."
"Yeah, Raúl, I know—you'll pick me up."
As always he came upon her from behind, swerved to the curb in front of her, then waited for her to hop on without looking back. He was wearing his usual uniform: black helmet, black leather jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans, black boots, an all-black camera hanging around his neck.
What a lovely self-romanticizing boy, Marta thought, as she mounted the seat behind him. He handed her a helmet. She'd barely pulled it on and grabbed the rear handlebar when he took off.
"Do you really meet me like this for security reasons?" she yelled in his ear. "Or is this how you think an investigative reporter's supposed to act?"
"I had two death threats last month," he yelled back. "Hold tight, I'm going to weave."
He was probably telling the truth about death threats. Investigative journalism was a dangerous profession in Argentina. Over the past twelve months, two reporters and a photojournalist had been murdered.
Five minutes later he entered an alley near the Botanical Gardens, screeched to a stop, used a control module to open a garage door, revved his engine, then drove inside.
"This doesn't look like the usual gas station, Raúl."
He pulled off his helmet. "My parents live upstairs. They're in the States. I'm apartment sitting." He pointed toward a door. "It leads to the service elevator."
When she asked why he'd brought her to this upper-middle class apartment house, he explained that his parents had acquired a new espresso machine, affording him the opportunity to offer her a decent cup of coffee for a change.
"You're about the only person I'd think of bringing here," he said.
"Why's that?"
"We've been through a lot together, you and I."
Which was true. The Casares Affair had been a huge scandal. Raúl had broken the story and she had solved the case.
She followed him past a maze of storage rooms. There was a mop and bucket inside the service elevator. He pushed the button for the penthouse floor.
As they ascended she turned to him. "So your folks live in Villa Freud." She used the vernacular name for the neighborhood, so-called because of the concentration of psychoanalysts who lived there and saw patients in their apartments.
"Yeah, they're both shrinks. I guess I am too in my way. Not that I exactly get what they do." He shook his head. "Their explanations for everything are so...convoluted."
They entered the apartment through the kitchen. He tossed his jacket on to the counter, then set to work making coffee. Watching him she noticed the thinness of his arms. He was a good-looking young man, she observed, with long boyish-cut hair and a wiry underfed body. He was so thin she found herself feeling maternal towards him, wishing he'd eat more and build himself up. Though they'd worked together, she knew virtually nothing about his personal life. It was a revelation that his parents were shrinks.
After preparing two cups of espresso, he ushered her into a sunny living room. The windows looked out over Las Heras Park.
"So, tell me about these lesbo photos you've got," he said, flinging himself into a chair.
"Why don't you tell me?" she countered, taking a seat on the couch.
This was the way they always began, feigning caginess, then trading information.
"I got a voice message," Raúl said. "Male voice which sounded electronically disguised. No follow-up, no confirmation. That's why we ran the item blind."
Marta described the photos, how she'd showed them to Charbonneau, then the revelation that they'd been professionally yet imperfectly faked.
"I'm thinking," she told him, "that the people who stuck them under my door were probably the same people who killed Granic and the girl, that they wanted me to wrongly conclude the murders had to do with stopping the circulation of compromising pictures. That fits with the front page of your paper stuffed into Silvia Santini's mouth. But why send me fake pictures and plant a story with you if the pictures can be proven to be fakes? The guy who faked them says he deliberately did a sloppy job. I'm wondering if he was paid to do it sloppy. I'm also wondering whether Charbonneau was right, that this is some kind of inept dirty trick being played by Viera's political enemies."
"Hugo Charbonneau's one slimy ex-military priest," Raúl said. "He's also one slimy political operative. Suppose he, or someone else in Viera's camp, made sure the fakery could be detected so they could pin the pictures on Viera's enemies and thus evoke a sympathy reaction. People would see that Viera's enemies were so low they'd stoop to trying to sully the reputation of his pretty and innocent young wife. Not a dirty trick, but a phony dirty-trick, engineered by the very people it was supposedly meant to harm."
This was vintage Raúl, Marta thought, consistent with his paranoid world-view. In his head everything was part of a multi-dimensional political conspiracy or else a smoke screen concealing something else.
He had viewed the Casares Case that way, while Marta had seen it as a straight-forward homicide. A spoiled young man, son of a Senator, had forcibly drugged and raped a girl from a poor family, then killed her when she threatened to file charges with the police. To Marta the only complication was the cover-up: the autopsy had been deliberately bungled, cops had been bribed, potential witnesses had been threatened or bought off. She'd believed persistence would unlock the case, and she'd been very persistent, appealing to the sense of justice of the witnesses, finally persuading several to come forward.
Raúl, on the other hand, had viewed the case in stark political terms. To him the rape-and-murder was simply an example of class struggle, while the cover-up was an example of what he called "vigilante injustice." Approaching the case from these opposite directions, they'd managed to work together. Now Marta wondered if they could work together again, or whether this time Raúl's overheated paranoia would divide them.
"Is that really what you think this is?" she asked. "A phony dirty trick?"
Raúl shrugged. "Don't know, but I'll tell you this: according to my sources, Silvia Santini was a high-priced call girl specializing in politicians, and there was a lot more to Granic than met the eye."
"He was a whore-master and a blackmailer. You should see the elaborate video set-up in his house."
"He was definitely both. But from what I hear he was also some kind of foreign agent. My source says his house was what they call a 'honey-trap.' He was recording people doing embarrassing sexual things, then offering to exchange the videos for information."
Not for money but for information: Marta hadn't thought of that. "What kind of information?" she asked.
"Depends on who he was working for. He had a Yugoslav background. If he was a Croatian agent, he may have been putting together an illegal arms deal. If he was a Brazilian agent, maybe information on narcotics. If he was working for the gringos, he may have been after political intelligence."
Listening to him, she felt her head begin to reel. "If Granic was an agent, Raúl, I need to know for whom."
"I have a source who'd probably know. I'm willing to go into debt to her if you promise to keep me updated."
"Sure, just like before." She smiled at him. "Just out of curiosity, who's this 'her' you're talking about?"
He grinned. "I shouldn't tell you, Marta, but I will...only because I love you. Her name's Caroline Black. She's a CIA case officer at the U.S. Embassy. Nice lady, though a little inept. Word is she pays too much and gets too little in return. Typical North American, right? With me it's different—she doesn't pay me anything and I give her plenty, so she and I get along. She won't tell me, of course, if Granic was on her payroll...but in that case her silence will say it all."
Marta shook her head. "How do you do it, Raúl? Does she help you because you're so good-looking? Do make love to her?"
He laughed. "Marta! Such implications! We're getting into too-deep waters here."
He showed her out by the front door of the apartment, told her to take the main elevator down and exit past the doorman. After they embraced, she kissed him on his forehead.
"Be careful, Raúl. I worry about you."
"And I about you. Life expectancy for an honest cop is six months to a year. So take good care of yourself, Marta...and I'll do the same."
She went to see Ricardi. The Chief's office was of a size appropriate to his position, but Ricardi was such a big man he seemed to fill it up.
He sat behind his desk in front of windows overlooking the old Port of Buenos Aires. The water there was red, colored by the red clay bed of the Río de la Plata. She could smell the river through the open windows. To her it was the smell of home.
Ricardi was a jazz enthusiast. He kept a radio in his office tuned to an all-jazz station, which he played at low volume through the day. Standing before him, she presented her theories including her notion that the faked photos were meant to be exposed as fakes. When she was finished, the Chief sat back in his swivel chair. The sun, bouncing off his shaven head, made it glow like brass.
"What you've got, Marta, is a lot of smoke but no fire."
"What I've got is a smoke screen," she said.
"So what're you going to do about it?"
"Try and clear away the smoke."
"How?"
"I'm going to be provocative."
"What can I do to help?"
She handed him copies of Costas's computer ID sketches. "See if anyone in personnel can match these guys up with cops."
Ricardi squinted at the drawings. "They do look a little like cops. Or goons." He looked closely at her. "I'm under some pressure to assign Granic/Santini to someone else."
"Pressure from whom? Charbonneau?"
"I'm not sure yet, but the pressure's there. Whenever there's a homicide, there're always two kinds of pressure: 'solve it' and 'don't solve it.' This is the second kind. I assigned this case to you and I'm not taking it away. But be careful whom you provoke, Marta. There're times to bully and times to ease off."
Marta was pleased when Rolo assured her Juanita Courcelles was at her fancy woman's health club in Recoleta.
"Excellent!" she said. "Today we stir the pot."
As they were driving to the gym, listening to Radio La Colifata, Rolo pointed out activity on the sidewalk. A middle-aged man in a jogging suit, holding an Afghan by a leash, was running from a group of a dozen or so people in pursuit.
Marta rolled down her window.
"Torturer! Murderer!" the chasers chanted at the fleeing man.
"It's an escrache." Rolo was excited. "They're outing the bastard. I've seen his picture in magazines."
Escraches, shaming confrontations, were rare enough to attract Marta's interest. The year before she'd witnessed one on a bus. A kindly looking old man, who'd turned out to be a former naval officer, was confronted by an elderly lady sitting across the aisle. She stared at him, then suddenly stood up, pointed her finger at him and accused him of murdering her son. He took her abuse by staring straight ahead, even elevating his chin. By the time he got off at the next stop, everyone in the bus had taken up the chant. "Killer! Assassin! Shame! Shame!" Observing him, taking in his arrogance, Marta had felt her stomach turn.
She flicked off the car radio. "He looks old enough. Which one is he?"
"The one they used to call 'The Lover,'" Rolo said, "on account of the way he'd whisper sweet nothings to his victims before he'd go to work on them. They say he'd kiss them and caress them, tell them how sorry he was about what he had to do. Then he'd go at them with a blowtorch or pair of pliers. His name's Chamarra or Chamorra, something like that. God, I hope they corner him!"
Marta hoped so too, though she also hoped no one would get hurt. Sometimes, when a Proceso era military murderer was cornered by a crowd, he'd pull out a pistol and wave it around. A retired torturer in a jogging suit exercising his Afghan—he deserved a public outing, she thought. But what a pity he didn't get what he really deserved, a life sentence in a military prison.
The muscular T-shirted man at the health club reception desk stood up to block their way.
"You can't go upstairs," he told Rolo. "This is a Women-Only gym."
"She's a woman and we're both Federal Police officers, so stand aside," Rolo told him.
They found Juanita Courcelles in a white ribbed tank top and pair of skimpy gym shorts working out on a resistance apparatus. She was perched on a seat, legs spread, using her forearms to push apart mechanical arms.
Marta walked right up to her. "Stand up!" she ordered.
"What is this? What're you doing here?"
"Handcuff her!" Marta instructed Rolo.
Women working out on other machines stopped to watch.
"How dare you!" Juanita yelled, her face twisted with anger.
"It's a crime to lie to a Federal Police Officer."
"I want my lawyer!"
"You can call him from jail. Get a move on!"
"I can't go out like this."
"Don't worry," Rolo told her. "They'll issue you a smock when we get downtown."
It was likely mention of the jail smock that did it, Marta thought, conjuring a picture of what Juanita was in for: a crowded, smelly communal lock-up with prostitutes and addicts, not a nice place for a famous movie star, even if only for a couple hours. Then the photographers who'd be waiting for her outside when her lawyer finally arranged her release, crowding in on her, flashing their strobes in her face. Everyone would want to see her expression, her outrage and her shame, how this famous rich woman, with a husband most other women would kill for, reacted to her ordeal. Even her fondest fans, she knew, would enjoy seeing her like that, finding proof in her distress that life was but a soap opera and even the rich could be made to cry. Yes, it was probably the image of the jail smock, Marta thought, that caused Juanita to change her tune.
"Could we please go somewhere private and talk?" she asked, her tone suddenly humble.
"Talk about what?"
"You say I lied."
"You did!"
"Please, let me explain. Please!"
After feigning reluctance, Marta agreed. There was a little glass-walled office off the gym. She suggested they retire there. Juanita protested. There were tears in her eyes. "But everyone will see."
"They won't hear. Or would you rather go downtown? We have lovely interrogation rooms."
Once inside the gym office, Juanita stood meekly, holding her arms tight to her sides.
"You told me you never saw Granic after you and your husband let him go. In fact, you were seen several times late at night entering and leaving his house. What were you doing there and why did you lie to me about it?"
"We went to a few parties, that's all."
"Sex parties?"
"I guess you could call them that."
"What's a sex party? What happens there?"
Juanita constrained her arms even more tightly. "People get together, flirt. Then if they feel like it, they go upstairs and have sex."
"In bedrooms where there're hidden cameras and microphones?"
"We didn't know about that."
"Did you and your husband participate?"
"He did. I didn't."
"What did you do?"
"I just observed."
"Research for a part?" Juanita looked away. "Were there prostitutes there, gatas who worked for Granic?"
Juanita shook her head.
"Who were the other guests?"
Juanita hesitated. "I don't think I can tell you that."
"Because you don't want to?"
"There were strangers. Some wore masks."
"Rubber horror masks?"
"Simple domino masks, the kind you'd wear to a masked ball."
"Who were these people?"
"We assumed they were well-known."
"Politicians?"
"Could've been."
"You and Juan wore masks?"
Juanita nodded. "It wouldn't have done our reputations any good to be seen at a party like that."
"Two people were murdered. Why didn't you tell me this at the house?"
"It's too embarrassing." She looked away again. "And we didn't know anything about the murders."
"Did Granic try to blackmail you?"
"Absolutely not! We were friends!"
"Your husband said you two didn't think it appropriate to socialize with former help. He was lying when he said that?"
"Yes."
"Stupid to lie to me."
"Very stupid," Juanita agreed.
Having extracted this much, Marta thought it time to ease up. She motioned Juanita to a chair, then asked Rolo to fetch her a bottle of water. After Rolo left the room, Marta turned more kindly.
"Don't be stupid again, Juanita. I'm going to give you a second chance. I won't charge you with lying if you tell me everything. I want to hear all about Granic's blackmail schemes. Everything—who, what, when and how."
From the look of terror on Juanita's face, Marta expected her to spill. Instead the actress began to cry. "I don't know anything. Please believe me neither of us knew anything about that. Later we heard he made videos and was using them to blackmail. There was a man who helped him with this. He was at both the parties we attended. We heard rumors he was Granic's bagman, the guy who handled the taping and the follow-up."
"What's his name?"
"People called him 'the Window Dresser'."
"Window Dresser?"
"He decorates store windows, like a set dresser on a movie set. He works at some of the better shops, ones in Retiro and on Avenida Santa Fe. He's supposed to be a genius at it. He sets up little scenes with mannequins to attract people in."
"What kind of little scenes?"
"I saw one. Can't remember the name of the shop. They sold imported bedding. There was a squeegee and tool belt left by the window, as if a window-cleaner had been working there. Then a trail of clothes, including a pair of funky men's undershorts, leading to a bed. Mixed with his simple workmen's clothes were very expensive women's lingerie. The bedding was rumpled and there were stains on the sheets as if he and the lady of the house had just had a go. There was an ashtray on the side table filled with lipstick stained cigarette butts. The idea was..."
"Yeah, I get the idea," Marta said.
Juanita said she'd swear before a judge she didn't know anything else, and that she was sure Juan would do the same. She said they were naive about Granic, that they'd trusted him with their lives and the lives of their children, but as soon as they heard he was a blackmailer they cut off contact. She said that when they heard he'd been killed, they were certain it had to do with blackmail. She said that when Marta announced herself at their gate, they decided to deny knowing anything for fear of involvement in a scandal.
"We owe you a big apology," she said. "We knew your reputation. We have a great deal of respect for you, Marta. I'm truly sorry we tried to deceive you."
Marta barely nodded. She didn't feel like accepting Juanita's apology. If Juanita and Juan Sabino were "truly sorry" it was only because she'd caught them telling lies.
On the way out of the gym, she instructed Rolo to find the Window Dresser.
"Shouldn't be hard if he exists. Just ask around at fancy bedding stores about a lady/window-washer scene."
After work, she drove home, parked her car, then stopped at her neighborhood grocery. This was Leon's night to fetch Marina from tango class. Marta would have dinner ready for them when they reached home.
She'd completed her shopping, was walking toward her building, had just passed the small hotel across the street that catered to foreign tango dancers, when she was approached by a middle-aged man with a kindly face, wearing a grey felt fedora.
He tipped his hat to her the way gentlemen used to do in Buenos Aires twenty years before. "Inspector Abecasis?" he inquired in a gentle voice.
She met his eyes. He looked harmless. "Do we know one another?" she asked.
He smiled. "I'm sorry...we don't."
He came a little closer, which made her nervous since she was using both her hands to hold her parcels.
"I have something for you," he said, holding out a folded copy of that morning's edition of El Faro.
For a moment she thought: This is it. He's got a gun in there. I'm going to be assassinated.
The man was so close she could see the dental work in his mouth. Her pistol was in her purse. She had no time to draw it now. She watched as he gently placed the folded newspaper into one of her grocery bags, then stepped back.
"What's that?" she asked.
"A newspaper," he said. "When you get home, please take a look inside."
She shook her head. "Show me what's in there."
He nodded, extracted the newspaper, then opened it discreetly exposing a thick stack of US hundred dollar bills.
"What's this for?"
"To encourage you to dead-end your investigation."
"Which investigation?"
"I think you know which one, Inspector," he said, very softly. "All you need do is let it die for lack of leads, as so many cases do these days."
"Do you know the penalty for attempting to bribe a Federal Police Officer?"
"Excuse me, Señora!"
"Ten years," she said. "Please take hold of my grocery bags, so I can get out my handcuffs and arrest you."
He stared at her as if she were crazy. She stared straight back to show him she was serious. Finally he nodded, folded up his newspaper, placed it back under his arm.
"Have it your way, Señora," he said, tipping his hat again, then turning and striding rapidly away.
"Come take a look at Viera," Leon said later that evening, beckoning Marta over to the TV.
José Viera, Minister of Finance, was being interviewed about the economic collapse. Marta spotted Charbonneau, eyeglasses glinting, sitting behind him and to the side like a classic éminence grise.
Viera struck Marta as a typical charismatic politician: charming, slick, radiating power, a man with evenly proportioned features, thick iron-grey hair, and a strong profile that would look good on campaign posters.
The interviewer was aggressive, trying to force Viera to assume blame for the rotten economy.
Viera smiled. "I've never claimed to be courageous. Still, someone had to take over the Ministry of Finance. Yes, a thankless job, but I've never been afraid of taking on thankless jobs."
"There're rumors you're planning to run for President. Any comment on that?"
"When and if I make that decision, there will be an official announcement. For now I can only do my best to serve the people of Argentina."
"You've been associated with extreme elements in the political spectrum. Do you view yourself as an extremist?"
"If being a patriot is considered an extremist these days, then, yes, that's what I am. I'll say one more thing: matters cannot continue as they are; the nation requires a great cleansing. If we're to surmount our difficulties, and, let there be no mistake, this crisis is grave, then we need strong, decisive leadership. The only alternative is to sink further into the morass."
The interview was over. Leon flicked off the TV.
"What do you think of him?" Marta asked.
Leon shook his head of floppy curls. "I think he wants the presidency so much he can taste it."
The apartment phone rang in the middle of the night. Marta reached across Leon to pick it up. No one spoke, but she could hear heavy breathing at the other end.
"What a pathetic soul you are," she whispered and hung up.
Seconds later her cell phone rang. She got up to answer it. She heard the same heavy breathing. The message was clear: whoever-was-calling knew her private number, knew how to reach her in numerous ways.
"Who was it?" Leon asked.
"Just some jerk," she said, getting back into bed.
"I heard you call him pathetic."
"I was being nice," she said. "It's two in the morning, darling. Let's go back to sleep."
She was driving Marina to school when her cell phone rang. It was Raúl Vargas.
"I met with my North American friend last night. She promised to look into the matter. She just called back. I was pretty surprised by what she said. I think you will be too. Your victim, Señor Granic—seems he definitely was a foreign agent, but not for any of the countries we talked about."
"Damnit, Raúl!"
"Forgive me, but this is so good I have to string it out. Granic worked for the Israelis. And get this, he wasn't just one of their intelligence assets. He was a fullftime staffer here on a deep penetration assignment. You know what that means?"
"Mossad," she said.
She could hear a roar as he accelerated his Kawasaki, then silence when he clicked off.
She spent a good part of the day trying to make contact with the Israeli Embassy. Twice she was put on hold, then disconnected. On her third try, she was put through to a man who identified himself as a public affairs officer but refused to give his name. He told her that any contact between an Argentine official and the Israeli Mission would have to be made through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also told her that all Israeli diplomats had diplomatic immunity, and that it was Israeli government policy not to respond to questions about diplomatic personnel.
She phoned the Foreign Ministry, finally made contact with the Israeli desk. A clerk told her she would have to file a written request through the Federal Police Liaison Office. When she told him that she couldn't do that due to the confidential nature of her inquiry, he told her she was wasting his time and hung up.
She phoned the Israeli Mission again, asked to speak to someone in public affairs. The same man came on, repeated even more abruptly what he'd told her before, adding "we're very busy here. If you can't work through normal channels we'd prefer you not call us again."
She phoned Rolo, told him what Raúl had said, and that she now believed that the people who'd spent the night at Granic's house then left at dawn in the blacked-out van, were an Israeli undercover clean-up squad.
"Find out who claimed Granic's body," she told him. "While you're at it, find out who claimed Silvia's."
A little past four o'clock, she received a call on her cell. A woman whose voice she didn't recognize asked if she was speaking to Inspector Abecasis.
"Who are you?" Marta asked, since few people had her cell number.
"You've been bothering a lot of people today, Inspector, asking a lot of questions. Meet me in twenty minutes at the corner of Arroyo and Suipacha, and maybe you'll get some answers."
Marta rushed to her car, drove directly to the specified corner knowing exactly where it was and fully understanding its significance. It was the Memorial Plaza that marked the site of the March, 1992 car bombing of the Israeli Embassy, an explosion that destroyed the building, killed twenty-nine people, and which her father, then still alive, called the worst anti-Jewish act ever perpetrated in Argentina.
Nico Abecasis did not live to see the results of an even more destructive attack, the bombing in July, 1994 of the AMIA, the center of Jewish-Argentine cultural life, in which eighty-six people were murdered. Marta was a young detective at the time, called in with many others to divert traffic while specialized units conducted rescue. It was a morning she would never forget, a turning point in her identity as an Argentine Jew. Before the attack, she had thought of herself as a totally secular person whose mother happened to be Catholic and whose father happened to be Jewish. Afterwards, she would make a point of letting people know her background. She wanted there to be no mistake about who she was, and that she would not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form including jokes.
She parked in a police zone on Pellegrini, walked a block to the Memorial Plaza on Arroyo where a lone policeman stood watch from a guard cabin.
The memorial was austere. The outline of the old Embassy was depicted on the wall behind, along with stonework, protected by bulletproof glass, on which a description of the events of March 17, 1992 was carved in Spanish, English and Hebrew. Twenty-nine trees to commemorate the victims had been planted in two parallel rows. As she waited in front of the steel rope barrier, she noticed how pedestrians tended to speed up and look away as they passed. Such a powerful memorial evidently was not something most porteños cared to confront.
She waited fifteen minutes, was about to leave, when a taxi pulled up to the curb.
A woman rolled down the window. "Inspector Abecasis?" Marta nodded. "Please get in."
The woman, in her forties with close-cropped dark hair and an intense manner, didn't introduce herself, nor did she tell the driver where to go. He drove a few blocks in silence, parked in an empty spot on Libertad, then got out and stood with his back to the car as if to guard it while they talked.
"Doesn't seem like your typical taxi driver?" Marta said.
"He isn't," the woman replied, peering directly into Marta's eyes. "I'm meeting with you to tell you straight out that Señor Ivo Granic was an Argentine citizen who immigrated from Yugoslavia some years back, and that he had no connection whatsoever with the Israeli Mission."
"That's not what I hear," Marta said. "I have it from an excellent source that Granic was a deep-cover Mossad agent."
"You've been misinformed. I suggest you find a more reliable source before you bother busy people with your crazy questions."
The woman was coming on very strong, eyes never wavering from Marta's.
Much too stern and pitiless, Marta thought. As if she's trying to convey one thing while telling me the opposite.
"It would have been easy to tell me this over the phone," Marta said. "I was hung up on several times. Some of your people are pretty rude."
"Please don't make any assumptions about who my people might be. And please remember that Israelis aren't especially fond of the Buenos Aires Federal Police. I'm sure you know the reasons."
Marta nodded. Though the two anti-Jewish bombings were believed to have been the work of Hezbollah agents operating out of the Arab immigrant community in the three borders area of Northern Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, there had been local police involvement as well.
"I know about the van, of course. That it was from a cop's brother-in-law's garage."
"And the radio warning?"
Marta nodded again. She knew that just two minutes before the car bomb went off, cops guarding the street in front of the Embassy were called away by police radio. The origin of that radio call had never been traced.
"There's been no justice in the matter of the two bombings," the woman reminded her.
Marta found her manner annoying. "Don't lecture me," she said. "My father was Jewish. I identify as an Argentine Jew."
"I know. That's the only reason I'm talking to you. I also know of your reputation. Please listen to me carefully, Inspector Abecasis. The Israeli Government knows nothing of this man, Ivo Granic. Furthermore, there's no such thing as 'the Mossad.'"
"Excuse me!"
"'The Mossad' doesn't exist. It's a spy story writer's fantasy."
Marta scoffed. "You're telling me Israel does not have a foreign intelligence service?"
The woman nodded. "I hope I've answered all your questions." She rapped on the window, the driver got back inside, then drove them back to the Memorial Plaza.
"I suggest you spend some time here," the woman told her, pointing at the plaque on the wall. "Think about what happened here and the criminals who did it. They should be rooted out and punished."
Marta paused before she got out. "That's it?" she asked.
"That's it," the nameless woman said.
Marta stared at her. "I don't like being patronized. Still, I appreciate your help."
For a moment the woman met her stare, then quickly turned her head.
As soon as Marta stepped out of the taxi, it sped away. Marta turned to the plaque, read the inscription again, then bowed her head in memory of those who had died there.
Back at the Homicide Division, Rolo was waiting with his report on the disposition of the victims' bodies.
"Silvia Santini was claimed by her mother, who took her back to Mendoza Province for burial. Ivo Granic was claimed by his former wife, Sofia Granic, through the Yugoslav Consular Office. The body was shipped to New York for forwarding to Belgrade."
Rolo was grinning.
"What?"
"Working narcotics, Marta, I learned to never take a customs manifest at face value. The Granic crate was delivered to New York, then something unusual happened. A new airwaybill was created, the crate was turned over to El Al, then shipped out on the next plane to Tel Aviv."
Driving home, it struck her that the Israelis had an odd way of doing things:
One of their agents is killed. They go to his house, clean it out, but leave his body for us. When I ask if he's Israeli, they not only deny it, they even deny their foreign intelligence service exists. Which apparently is their way of saying that, yes, he was their agent, and no, they have no interest in assisting me. Which probably means they intend to take care of the matter themselves, and that, far as they're concerned, I'm irrelevant.
She found that notion infuriating.
She parked, was walking through the shadows toward her building, when she heard her name called out.
"Señora! Señora Inspector!"
She turned, recognized the caller. He operated a little locksmith shop on the corner. He was running to catch up.
"Please, Señora, come back to the shop with me. My wife has something important to tell you."
Marta followed him back. The locksmithing business, she knew, was good these days, one of the few businesses that thrived with the economy in shambles and the city suffering an epidemic of break-ins.
The locksmith's wife, grinding a key for a customer, finished the job, took payment, then, before facing Marta, waited for her customer to leave.
"I feel you should know this, Señora Inspector," She said. "Two men were here yesterday morning asking about you. Tough guys. At first I thought they could be cops."
"What'd they want?"
"They asked all sorts of questions about your habits—comings, goings, where you shop, where you park, your husband's job, where your daughter goes to school. Of course I didn't tell them anything. You and your husband have always been kind with us. But I must tell you that we were not the only ones they questioned. They were up and down the street a good part of the morning asking about you at all the stores."
The woman paused. It was clear to Marta she had more to say, perhaps something difficult that made her hesitate.
Marta gazed at her. "Please go on," she said gently.
"There was another question they asked." The woman glanced at her husband.
Marta turned to him. "What?"
The locksmith glanced at her shyly, then lowered his voice.
"They asked if you were Jewish, Señora," he whispered. "My wife told them she didn't know."
Yes, they would want to know that...of course!
Marta showed the woman a copy of Costas's computer sketch.
"Did they look like these guys?"
The woman squinted at the sketch. "Perhaps a little. But one of them had a mustache and the other had a big scar on his face." She paused. "I hope we did right, Señora?"
"Of course you did. Thank you for telling me."
Marta leaned forward so she and the locksmith's wife could kiss one another's cheeks.