“I’m afraid you can’t come in. All the tickets have already been given out.”
“You fucking old bitch,” the man replied.
If he had just said “fucking bitch”, she would have laughed drily. But “old” was going too far. She grabbed the man by the neck, a response that surprised various onlookers, not least the pseudo journalist who couldn’t at first push her off. Big mistake. Paula took advantage of that second’s doubt to deliver two quick kicks in the style of a Boca Juniors centre back. The man yelped and managed to reach out and yank her hair. Which would prove stronger: the man’s neck or a hank of Paula’s hair? The answer would never be known because at that moment a couple of people intervened to separate them while Paula, beside herself with rage, started lashing out at the people who were trying to calm her down and shouting, “Let me go so I can kill him.” Only then did a policeman who had been standing outside the theatre appear, called in by one of the people present. The police officer took the man outside and called a patrol car, which arrived ten minutes later. The fake journalist was bundled in and driven away. The police officer asked Paula to go with him to the police station to report the incident.
“Will you cover for me at work then, officer? And afterwards will you give my son dinner?” she asked in a voice that may have struck some as on the loud side for addressing a law enforcement officer.
The extraordinary thing about all this was that the intellectual vibe of the successful French writer’s lecture had in no way been affected by the fracas. Such was the loftiness of the audience, comprising writers, journalists, readers who wanted to be writers, and maybe a few editors – though not many, because they don’t work on Saturdays. Afterwards Paula composed herself, but she didn’t go inside to listen to the French writer’s talk. She let her boss know she was leaving, as they had agreed, and took a taxi home. On arrival there she found her son, still alive, playing with the PlayStation in almost exactly the same position as she had left him. All that had changed was the state of the kitchen: a pot of dulce de leche had been opened and smeared everywhere, cookies were scattered around, the box of Cepita juice was open and out of the fridge. Nothing unusual there. She took a couple of hot dogs and buns out of the freezer – she always kept some frozen for situations like this – then heated everything up, adding mayonnaise and abundant fries, roughly equivalent to the guilt she felt about serving a Saturday night dinner that would have been more worthy of a Tuesday. She explained to him for the nth time that if he wanted to watch TV he could do it tucked up in bed. Juanfra chewed his hot dog with resignation.
Paula got ready to go out but didn’t change her clothes again. She tried to arrange her breasts so they sat higher. She still wasn’t too bad in that area. When she got to the bar, Luciano was already there having a beer.
Paula’s original plan had been to go a bit further than mere flirtation with this young journalism student who presented a literature programme on a radio station of uncertain audience. The boy used to come and pick up books directly from the publishing house where she worked and he seemed as nice as he was young. She had been very taken aback when it became clear that Luciano was coming on to her and not the receptionist, who was fifteen years younger than Paula. Grateful and emboldened, she had initiated a long campaign of seduction that picked up pace when the boy summoned up the courage to invite her for a drink after work. They were all over each other on that first outing and arranged to meet up the following Saturday to continue getting to know each other more intimately.
The problem was that he lived with his parents and she lived with her son. And her useless ex was incapable of looking after the boy on a weekend that was so crucial to her seduction strategy. She didn’t like the idea of going to one of the capital’s many love motels. She had a better solution in mind.
Verónica had left the keys of her apartment with Paula so she could water its sad collection of houseplants. There might have been four or five of them, and certainly Verónica had never taken much care of them. They were more dead than alive the first time Paula went to water them. That key was going to be useful to her, though.
After a few beers and snacks, Paula invited the boy to her friend’s apartment. Outside the bar they launched into a kissing spree that continued in the taxi. Up to the apartment they went, without encountering the gossipy doorman en route. Paula took her friend straight to the bedroom so as not to waste any time. They weren’t even going to have the night together because she had to get back and check on the continued survival of her son. She wanted to create as little mess as possible to avoid any subsequent tidying up: Verónica had left everything immaculate before going off on vacation. And she had done the cleaning herself because she refused to hire a cleaner, arguing, in a way that might strike some as demagogic, “We don’t liberate ourselves from domestic work by getting other women to do it for us. The day I find a man prepared to do my sweeping and dusting, I’ll give him the job.”
Things heated up in the bedroom. Luciano had grown more hands, running them over her body like a frenzied octopus. She unbuttoned his jeans and felt his generous package straining to be released. Without letting go of each other, they fell onto the bed. Her dress was pushed up around her waist; his trousers were round his knees and his boxers round his thighs when he said to her, “You’re so pretty, and you have such a great figure.” Luciano pressed down on her, his body tense. As their bodies rubbed together, it took Paula a few seconds to notice an unmistakable wetness on her underwear and thighs. Luciano’s body went limp and he looked questioningly at her. He was, in fact, mirroring her own expression. Paula moved her hand to her own crotch and encountered a sticky puddle.
“Did you come?” she asked, rhetorically.
The boy apologized, pleading too much excitement or something similar. She wasn’t listening any more. She smiled tenderly at him and went to the bathroom, where she dried herself with toilet paper and took off the multicoloured thong she had worn for the first time that day. It was full of semen. She threw it down beside the bidet and returned to the bedroom, where she still managed to have a reasonably good time. Not good enough to dispel the feeling that it had been a really shitty Saturday.
She also felt guilty about having left her thong on the floor in Verónica’s bathroom. She had left the bedroom and bathroom tidy but couldn’t be bothered to take away the sodden garment.
And now she was worried. She had gone back to the apartment to water the plants and, when she went to the bathroom to get her underwear, found nothing there. Her thong had vanished. She was absolutely sure she had left it on the floor beside the bidet. Somebody had taken it. She planned to write and tell Verónica once she got to the office, but when she checked her inbox she found her friend’s latest email. Its contents were so terrible and distressing that it seemed trivial to choose that moment to tell her friend what had happened to her underwear.
IV
Federico remembered very clearly the day he had first met Verónica. It was about a month after he first started working at the Rosenthal law practice. He used to wear oversized suits with too much shoulder padding to seem bigger than he was: a lad of twenty, a star law student. That day he had gone down to the newsagent to buy his lunch: a schnitzel sandwich with everything, one of his food staples along with Ugi’s pizza. He had got back to the office and was alone in the kitchen squeezing a sachet of mayonnaise onto the sandwich when she appeared, looking like she owned the place. Without even registering his presence, she searched for a can of Coca-Cola in the fridge. While Federico looked on, she had to move Tupperware boxes and bottles of dressing out of the way to reach the cans. Finally she found what she was looking for, leaned against the counter, opened the can and said:
“So you’re the new boy.”
“Depends what you mean by ‘new’.”
“If you can manage to sound that stupid in all your answers, my dad is going to love you.”
And she left as she had come, Coke in hand. That was ho
w Federico found out that this girl was one of Doctor Rosenthal’s three daughters. Later he learned that she was the youngest, that she wasn’t married like Leticia, nor in a steady relationship like Daniela, the other two daughters. As time went on he learned a few more things: that she was – or wanted to be – a journalist, that she lived with her parents in the lavish Recoleta apartment he had visited once in order to deliver some papers; that she had been dating someone, broken it off and was now with someone else. It was like following changes in the weather. Every so often she would appear, say hello to everyone, direct a few words at him and continue on to her father’s office. Meanwhile, Federico was consolidating his position in the firm and Aarón Rosenthal was beginning to feel affection, or something like it, for the young man. He got him involved in the important cases handled by the Rosenthal practice and, while he did not let him take decisions, he gradually introduced him into the less visible parts of the judicial apparatus. Once he made a mistake by not first consulting one of the judges of the Federal Appellate Court who was leading a case. Aarón called to reprimand him and he defended himself, claiming that he didn’t know he could go directly to the judge to resolve a problem.
“Ignorance is never an excuse. Never,” Aarón told him, and it was one of many lessons the veteran lawyer gave the student.
More than a year had passed after that first encounter before he met Verónica in the kitchen again.
“I’m not the new boy any more.”
“What?”
“Just that when we met the first time, you asked me if I was the new boy.”
“And what did you reply?”
“That it depended on what you meant by ‘new’. You said I’d go far in this firm if I kept saying stupid things.”
“And from what I hear you are going far, so I guess you’re elbowing your way to the top.”
“Not elbowing.”
“We should ask my dad’s other lawyers, see what they think.”
“If the subject interests you, we can go to a bar and discuss it over a Coca-Cola one of these days.”
“Now that’s some serious elbowing. You want to seduce the boss’s daughter.”
“Boss sounds more appropriate for a ranch than a law firm.”
“Look, Federico, I’d be delighted to go and have a Coca-Cola with you, or even a Fanta. But you should know that if my father gets wind of it, he’ll kick you out. He’s already fired two lawyers before you who tried the same thing.”
“I’d run the risk.”
“For me?”
And what hadn’t he done for her since then? It was a lie that her father had ever fired anyone for going after his daughters. Aarón wasn’t a very active participant in family life. There always seemed to be a kind of fog between him, his wife and his daughters. Verónica didn’t agree to go out with Federico that day, but the next time he asked, she did. And they drank white wine, not Coke.
Was there anything he wouldn’t do for her? It was the question he had been asking himself for almost a decade. They had passed through every stage of a relationship apart from engagement. They’d had a fling, been friends with benefits, friends with no benefits. And while Aarón stayed away from family decisions, sisters Leticia and Daniela had adopted him as a brother-in-law, despite Verónica. They invited him to all the Rosenthal events: births, baptisms, Daniela’s wedding, Jewish and Christian end-of-year parties. They were eternally grateful to him for looking after Verónica when their mother was dying. The Rosenthal girls longed to see their little sister married to him. And when Aarón gave him a partnership with a ten per cent share in the practice (something he had not done with any of the other lawyers), he realized that he too wanted Federico as part of the family.
Federico had seen Verónica in love with other men, had seen her crying or overjoyed. He had seen her ill with tonsillitis and had once taken her urgently to a clinic with gastroenteritis; he had seen her play with her nephews and nieces, go off to Europe and come back with presents for him: an Italian silk tie, a Swiss watch, a silly toy devil bought in a little Belgian town. Sometimes she gave him presents when there was nothing in particular to celebrate but simply because she had thought of him: a book, some cologne, a CD. It was Verónica’s way of showing her presence in his life among her many absences and periods of indifference.
When Verónica had started investigating the train mafia, Federico had been scared for the first time about what could happen. He had helped her on other occasions with journalistic pieces, but had never before had the feeling she was getting involved in something really dangerous and that there was more at stake than a magazine article. And the day she ran over the four criminals, then saw her lover die, Federico resolved that, whatever happened, he was going to protect her. However and against whomever necessary.
That March morning they rang him from the penitentiary service: Danilo Peratta, alias Three, had escaped during an appointment at the hospital they took him to every week. It was obvious there had been a total security breakdown. There must have been accomplices and prison authorities involved. Federico spoke to the acting judge and marvelled at the man’s attitude. Aarón Rosenthal had taught him to detest that innocence bordering on stupidity.
Federico had behaved stupidly too. It had always been a possibility Peratta might escape. He should have had someone watching the guy. It wasn’t that complicated.
What were Peratta’s plans now? Would he go back to working as a hired assassin or try to get revenge? Was Verónica’s life at risk? If he’d had an informant inside Villa Devoto he would have a better idea, but he didn’t know anyone in the prison. He wasted two days groping in the dark without advancing at all: he didn’t know where Peratta was, nor whom he was working for, because it had become clear that it wasn’t Juan García who had contracted him (and the other three) to bump off the witness Verónica had been hiding.
Juan García.
He remembered Rodolfo Corso, a journalist he had been helping as an anonymous source in an investigation into a money-laundering operation run by Juan García, the white-collar criminal who had also headed up the train mafia. Federico hadn’t liked Corso since hearing him talk lecherously about Verónica, but he decided to put that to one side. He called him, explaining that he needed to know what Peratta had been up to during his months in jail. Corso said he had some good contacts among the prisoners, that he would make some checks and ring him back. Federico worried he would take too long, but the next morning he got a call from Corso.
“I’m told he spent a lot of time with El Gallo Miranda, a nasty piece of work who coordinates a rich variety of crimes from inside. If anyone can tell you anything, he can.”
“Can you arrange for me to see him?”
“I can. And I don’t think he’ll refuse. These guys jump at any chance to socialize.”
Two hours later Rodolfo Corso called him again.
“Right then. Rosenthal and Associates obviously commands respect because El Gallo wants you to talk to his lawyer, Rodolfo Mateo, my namesake. I’ll give you his number.”
“No, that’s fine – I have his number. Thanks for all your help.”
Mateo was a famous media-friendly lawyer who specialized in getting wealthy criminals out of prison and in showing off his imported cars on TV gossip shows. The advantage of dealing with Mateo was that they spoke the same language. They arranged to meet at a bar on Rodríguez Peña and Lavalle close – but not too close – to the law courts. When Federico arrived, Mateo was sitting at a table at the back, in lively conversation with an older woman. The woman gave him a kiss on the cheek and left.
“If I got paid for every autograph I give, I’d earn more than I make defending idiots.”
“And you make a lot.”
“I’m not complaining. Your lot aren’t doing badly either.”
The waiter arrived and they ordered two coffees.
“Is old Pagnini still working for Rosenthal?”
“He retired.”
“
That bastard knew more tricks than Carlos Bilardo.”
Federico didn’t want to spend too much time on chit-chat. The person asking the questions controlled the conversation. He should cut to the chase.
“I was going to offer your client money in exchange for information, but I get the feeling he wants something else.”
“El Gallo has money to burn. I don’t think you’d want to pay him a million dollars for a little bit of info. I’d rather ask you for something that’s going to help us and give you the information that’s going to help you.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Among the cases against El Gallo there’s one that’s completely bananas. El Gallo has a little boat moored in Tigre. It seems the coastguard discovered a speedboat stuffed full of arms. Heavy weapons, military grade. The speedboat got away and docked at the nautical club where El Gallo had his little boat. One of the men in the speedboat jumped into El Gallo’s boat and hid inside with some of the arms he had managed to bring from the speedboat. And the coastguard found him there. So now El Gallo, who was already in the slammer at the time, is shitting a brick that they’re going to charge him for that too.”
“If they were military-grade weapons you know he’s fucked.”
“Look. The guy in the boat admitted El Gallo had nothing to do with it.”
“And does he?”
“They know each other. You know how it is – these guys all know each other. They have some kind of sixth sense for recognizing each other. But he swears and will keep swearing that El Gallo had nothing to do with this.”
The Foreign Girls Page 11
