The Foreign Girls

by Sergio Olguin

  “The police story has political aspects that my writers would struggle to explain. Or, if you prefer: I sent my best writer, and that’s me. And when I was in Tucumán, your boss had the brilliant idea of turning the murder of two hippie chicks into a cover story. And who was the muggins who happened to be on the spot? Who’s going to save Nuestro Tiempo’s bacon again? Me.”

  Álex Vilna had one undeniable talent: he could raise the blood pressure of the most hypotensive person on the planet. If Verónica had thought for a moment she might be about to faint, she now felt more likely to explode. And Álex would take the full force of the blast.

  “Don’t tell me your boss cut your vacation short and sent you here because she doesn’t trust me,” said Vilna. “Or did you volunteer your services so you could protect your patch?”

  “I’m not covering it.”

  “Just as well, because I’m all over this. I’ve already got the title and everything: ‘Macumba comes for two Europeans’. The subtitle could be something like ‘Sex, tourism and black magic. How a ritual orgy ended in the deaths of a Swedish and an Italian woman’.”

  “Álex, you’re a machine for spouting shit.”

  “I may not have your way with words, but I get exclusives. Guess what exclusive I’ve landed? Photos of the girls.”

  “What photos?”

  “Photos of the corpses, sweetheart. The little girlies, lying in the grass half naked. And they’re hot, too. Well, they were. We’re going to sell a hundred thousand copies.”

  And she exploded. Something came out of her that was neither a scream nor a wail. It was something she had never done before and, seeing how it left her hand, it was very likely she would never do it again: Verónica closed her right fist and threw it hard straight into the face of Álex Vilna, who didn’t see it coming and had no time to put up his guard. Vilna fell back on his ass, his face bleeding while Verónica howled from the pain of the blow. Everyone stopped what they were doing to see what was going on and to try and figure out how a flyweight girl had managed to floor a super middleweight man.

  “You mad bitch! You’re fucking psychotic!” yelled Álex, still on the ground and trying to staunch the bleeding from his nose and lip.

  “And you’re a fucking vulture!” By now Luca was trying to move Verónica away while she kept on screaming: “Get up, you fucker, and I’ll smash your face in!”

  Luca managed to get her into the car, start the engine and drive quickly away. Verónica got out her mobile and immediately sent a text message to Patricia Beltrán: “Publish Vilna’s photos and you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “As soon as we get home you need to put ice on that hand. It’s going to swell up. I didn’t realize you knew how to box.”

  “Me neither.”

  Her editor’s response appeared on the mobile screen: “I have the photos already. I’m a journalist, not a muckraker. Don’t worry. How did you find out? Where are you?”

  “I’m in Yacanto del Valle. On vacation.”

  “Do you want to write the piece?”

  “No.”

  “OK.”

  “Keep Vilna in line. He’ll do anything for a story.”

  “I know when to crack the whip.”

  They arrived at the hotel. As he parked the car, Luca asked her, “Who was that guy?”

  “Nobody. A man of no importance.”

  II

  “She reminds me of Lucía.”

  Mariano was already in bed, watching Luca get undressed. He enjoyed this show which Luca put on with feigned indifference every night. And, despite the passing years, Luca’s body was still lean, firm, commanding, with an elasticity that came from hours of rowing. He liked the way he slept naked both in winter and summer, how he folded and put away his clothes as he removed them, prolonging the striptease. If there was a place in paradise reserved for him it must be this: the contemplation of Luca’s body as he took off his clothes. But paradises didn’t exist. Or, as he had read once, only if they were paradises lost.

  “She has attitude,” said Luca and, coming from him, that was the highest honour to which a woman could aspire.

  Lucía was Mariano’s older sister. She had been disappeared in 1976, when a military gang had arrived at their house in the middle of the night. Mariano constantly relived the episode. The brutality of the soldiers, their parents’ bewilderment, Lucía’s terrified face, his own fear. His sister saying goodbye first to their father, then their mother and lastly to him (a kiss on the cheek, a squeeze of the shoulder, two words: “Keep studying.”). Nor could he forget the face of the soldier who, wanting to seem polite, had said to his mother, “Don’t worry, señora, if she hasn’t done anything you’ll have her back home in a few hours.”

  Lucía never appeared again. Their father’s heart broke from grief and their mother never stopped hoping her daughter would come home. Mariano had also grown up waiting for that return. And when he started studying architecture – the same degree she had been working towards when she was seized – he tried to find some similarity to his sister in the girls studying alongside him. The memory that stayed with him was of a passionate young woman, a fighter who could not stand injustice.

  It was hard for Mariano to accept that architecture had been her vocation, not his. That he had chosen the profession to be close to Lucía, to her world. And perhaps inspired by her (in spite of being an atheist, he was convinced Lucía still had influence over his life), he had done very well in his chosen career. He would have entered old age as a successful architect if he hadn’t met Luca.

  “What are you thinking about?” Luca asked as he got between the sheets.

  “About Verónica, and about the conversation with Federico this morning.”

  “That guy’s in love with her.”

  “But I got the impression she had something going on with our art dealer.”

  “A love triangle. I like it. I’d love to see Federico and Ramiro in some Greco-Roman wrestling contest to win her love.”

  “You know what I think? That we should get that girl out of this town, at least for a few hours. Imagine having to be here all the time, with the memory of what happened still so fresh.”

  “Taking her on a day trip won’t make her feel any better.”

  “I know, but getting away from Yacanto would at least give her a break from so much suffering. Why don’t you invite her to Club Náutico? It’s far away, a different atmosphere. It’s not the perfect solution, but it’s better than hanging out in the town square…”

  “Maybe. Ramiro’s a member too. I don’t think they’ll want to go and, to be honest, I don’t either.”

  “A change of scene will be good for us.”

  III

  Federico had managed to find Verónica before Danilo Peratta, but that was no guarantee he could prevent an attack. He felt confused, uncertain how to proceed. Perhaps that was what prompted him to share his concern about Verónica with the owners of the hotel. So when she told him she was going to the place where the bodies had been found and that Luca was accompanying her, he didn’t offer to go too. Peratta was professional enough not to try killing someone with so many police around.

  He called Nicolás Menéndez Berti and introduced himself. Nicolás suggested coming to pick him up later so they could talk more freely at his country house. When he arrived at the hotel it was in a 4 x 4 similar to Ramiro’s, and to many others Federico had seen around town. It seemed a plague worse than locusts.

  They settled in a spot on the enormous veranda from which they could watch a spectacular sunset over the fields. A uniformed maid offered them drinks. Federico accepted a coffee and Nicolás asked the maid to prepare him a maté. A few minutes later she reappeared and Federico feared she would stay with them, replenishing the maté gourd with hot water as necessary, but she left a thermos and utensils and went away.

  Federico had been closely observing Nicolás. It was something he always did the first time he met a potential client. He had lea
rned how to discern the truth from gestures and movements rather than words. Everybody lied, including those who came to confess a crime or some terrible wrongdoing. At some point they would not tell the truth and, in order to defend them correctly, he needed to know what they were hiding, albeit unconsciously. It was clear to him that Nicolás’s apparently calm facade, his disinclination to talk about what had happened, concealed a volcano.

  “I don’t understand why my father has to go bothering Rosenthal and getting you to come here.”

  “I’m just here in an informal capacity. I haven’t come to offer you the services of the firm because I’m sure you don’t need them. But I want you to know you can count on us.”

  “It’s incredible that Rosenthal’s daughter was also at the party and was the one who brought the foreign girls.”

  “Have the police been here? Did they take a statement from you?”

  “They took one from me and from a few employees who were working that night. Like the person in charge of security.”

  “Did they gather any evidence?”

  “They took the recordings from the security cameras at the entrance and from another one at the main door into the house.”

  “Are there any cameras inside? In one of the rooms, or another part of the estate?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how the girls left that night – were they on their own, or with someone else?”

  “No, I didn’t even know they were here. I don’t really understand why everyone is so sure this was the last place they were seen alive.”

  “That could change at any moment if we get a new lead. What I do know is that they left the hotel to come to a party here and never returned. We need to find out more about where they may have gone, if they were alone or with other people, if they went willingly or were tricked or threatened.”

  “And you think that’s something they can find out?”

  “Going on the legal, police and political activity I’ve witnessed in the last few hours, I’d say there’s a lot of interest in resolving this quickly.”

  Back at the hotel, Federico thought of something he had overlooked through inexperience. He called the lawyer, Mateo.

  “My dear Doctor Córdova, this is beginning to feel like harassment. Are you about to ask me out?”

  “I need to speak to Nick again. I want to know if Peratta has a mobile phone and what his number is.”

  “They’ll want another five thousand for that information.”

  “If there’s a number, I’ll send you the money tomorrow through someone at the firm. But I need to know right away.”

  Mateo called him ten minutes later. “Here’s the number – write it down. I make life so easy for you.”

  Federico often worked with the IT specialist who did all the intelligence work required by the Rosenthal practice. He was fat, affable, well into his fifties. Not the typical geek who lived inside computers, he had learned his stuff before the explosion in all things digital. And yet in the 1990s he had been a fearsome hacker, using the nickname La Sombra or Shadow, before he became a consultant in communications and systems. When a multinational company tried to sue him for industrial espionage, he took on Aarón Rosenthal as a lawyer. La Sombra was found not guilty on all charges and started working for the law firm.

  “I’ve got the phone number. Can you trace it?”

  “If it’s a phone with GPS that’ll be a cinch. If not, then it could take some time.”

  Federico gave him the number, and a few minutes later La Sombra had the information.

  “I took the liberty of tracing you, too. Luckily you’re both using phones with GPS, so it was easy. You’re in Yacanto del Valle and the other guy’s in Los Cercos, a town nearby. Not much more than two miles.”

  “Can you follow his movements? I need someone to let me know if he comes closer. If necessary, get someone to track him round the clock.”

  “Don’t worry. There’ll be someone monitoring him twenty-four hours a day. If he gets close, we’ll call you. Bear in mind that if he turns his phone off, or it runs out of battery, we’ll lose him. The same applies if he leaves it somewhere.”

  He saw Verónica arrive at the hotel and go straight to the restaurant kitchen. She came out with her hand buried in an ice bucket.

  “Don’t ask,” she said to him.

  “Just one question: shall we have dinner?”

  “I’m not hungry, Fede.”

  “Have you eaten anything today?”

  “A bit.”

  “We’re having dinner, then. I’ll meet you here at nine.”

  IV

  They went to an Italian restaurant called Mamma Giuliana, which looked on to the square. Initially, Federico seemed anxious and distracted by his phone. He took several calls and was careful not to let her hear any of them. Could he be talking to her father? Whatever the case, if he didn’t want her listening, she would respect that. Verónica turned her attention to the menu. She wasn’t hungry, but she should eat. She ordered gnocchi in salsa rosa. All this – the restaurant, sitting at this table, the menu – seemed distant and impersonal to her. This wasn’t her, she wasn’t here.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” Federico asked her.

  “No. I don’t trust the DA, or the judge, or the police.”

  They finished dinner and returned to the hotel. He stayed at the bar for a while, talking to Mariano. Verónica went to bed. She was tired, but it was the kind of tiredness that gave her insomnia. She lay on the bed with her eyes open.

  Identifying an urgent need for whisky, she got dressed again and went downstairs. The restaurant was closed. She asked the man who was on night duty at reception if he could get her a glass, but he had no access to the bar. Without thinking it over, she rang Ramiro.

  Ten minutes later he arrived to pick her up from the hotel. Back at his place, in his living room, he offered her a choice of whiskies.

  “Bourbon, anything. And bring the bottle.”

  “Are you planning to get drunk?”

  “No.”

  Verónica and her friends, in their regular sessions dissecting the male species, had arrived at the undeniable fact that all men hid something: either a wife, or their homosexuality, their impotence, their misogyny, their Oedipal love for their mothers, or their complete absence of adulthood. They concluded that the first thing a woman should ask herself when she met a man was “So what’s this one hiding from me?” In Ramiro’s case the question was hard to answer. He was one of those people who can be read like an open book, whose lives are predictable: they are born with a silver spoon in their mouths and their lives end in ripe old age, perhaps after playing a round of golf and surrounded by grandchildren. Between beginning and end is a journey that, with some variations and nuances, encompasses a lot of fooling around with girls, marriage to someone with a good surname, a family, lovers, a career or some kind of commercial enterprise, professional triumph, travel to world capitals, relaxing on beaches with all-inclusive hotels, having children and grandchildren who are sure to continue on the same successful path. At that moment, when she felt as though she were walking through the wreckage of her own life (how many loved ones had died in less than a year? How many had suffered through her actions?), Ramiro’s story induced a certain envy or admiration, or a combination of both. She felt good there, in his living room, drinking bourbon, listening to the steady voice of Ramiro, the ideal boyfriend, the perfect husband.

  “Ramiro, I’m going to need your help.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I won’t rest until I find out who did this to the girls. There’s so much apathy and bureaucracy involved, and the system is so fucked, it could be years before they find anything.”

  “Whatever happens, you can count on me.”

  “I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I’d stayed at the party with them.” Verónica pondered this for a moment, Ramiro watching in silence. “Would they have killed a
ll three of us? Did people at the party do it? Or someone else? Where did they find them? Did they take them by force or did the girls leave of their own free will?”

  “Nobody knew the girls apart from us, so it’s going to be difficult to find someone who remembers seeing them leave. The police have taken away the security cameras from Nicolás’s house. Let’s see what their investigations turn up.”

  Verónica yawned. Ramiro suggested she stay the night and she politely turned down the invitation.

  On the way back to the hotel, Ramiro told her he wanted to organize a lunch at the Club Náutico restaurant. He and Luca were both members and they thought it would do her good to get out of Yacanto del Valle for a while – the club was a good way out of town. Verónica refused. She had a lot of things to do the next day. Ramiro didn’t press the point but told her to think it over and call him if she needed anything.

  Verónica barely slept that night. She kept waking up, seized by an anxiety that she ought to be doing something, although she didn’t know what she could need to do at that very early hour except think, remember and reproach herself. She got up and sat in the armchair as though waiting for someone to come in and provide the answer, or at least some peace of mind. She slept for a couple of hours sitting there.

  When she went down to breakfast, Federico was already in the dining room. Verónica asked him to get her the telephone numbers of the district attorney and the judge, because she needed to speak to them. Since DA Decaux seemed more amenable, she called him first and asked for a copy of the autopsy results. The DA hesitated. Finally he agreed to send her a summary with the most relevant details, but he wouldn’t have them until that afternoon. Decaux asked her if she knew any of Petra’s next of kin. They had tried in vain to locate relatives through the Italian embassy. Verónica told him that Petra had been in a relationship with an Argentinian man but that she didn’t know his name, and that they had split up a few years ago. The DA informed her that the next day the Herlovsens, Frida’s mother and father, would be arriving. Verónica felt a lump in her throat. For the first time she thought of Frida as someone’s daughter.