by Lewis Shiner
*
I was a wreck. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept through the night. I was emotionally and physically exhausted, my shoulder and neck muscles like steel hawsers, my headache like a sulphuric acid injection through the middle of my right eye. I swallowed two Valium and took a long, hot shower. I put on a pair of sweat pants and fell asleep in front of the TV. Sometime after dark, I woke up, ate some leftovers, took another Valium, and went to bed.
The next morning, Isabel came by my cube to check on me. I told her that I’d had a flashback, that it had happened before, that I was okay now. She seemed honestly solicitous.
I ate lunch there in front of my monitor and did as much work as I could. Bahadur checked in with me every hour or two via instant message. I longed to ask him if he’d gotten rid of the gun like he promised, and knew better than to put a question like that into the internal messaging system. As I was about to leave he typed, “You *are* going to your class tonight, yes?”
“Not sure,” I said.
“It will do you good.”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t suppose. Do it. If you stop dancing, I will have them put you in the loony bin.”
“OK,” I wrote. “OK.”
*
I was worthless in class, unable to concentrate.
«Beto, this is a waste of time,» Don Güicho said. «You're dancing like a zombie.»
«Some days are better than others,» I said. «This isn’t one of the good ones. I’m sorry.»
«Don’t be sorry,» Brisa said. «Just take care of yourself, okay?»
I stopped at Arte y Café on the way home to get a tarta de verduras. I was talking idly with the owner when my brain, after grinding away for hours, finally made the obvious leap.
«Can you make that to go?» I said. «And hurry, please.»
I walked home as fast as I could push my tired feet. I switched on C5N, the Argentine news channel, and collapsed at the table with my food still in the bag, my stomach now too twisted up to let me eat.
I sat through a full hour of news, slowly beginning to relax and hope I’d been wrong. My eyes gradually closed and I drifted into a hazy half-sleep. And then I heard Isabel’s name.
«Salcedo was the director of the local office of Universal Systems, the giant multinational computer company,» said a woman’s voice. I snapped to attention. The blonde news anchor was where she had been, sitting with her laptop open on a bare desk against the blue-lit background of the studio. A banner underneath read, MURDER ROCKS QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD and POLICE EXPAND SEARCH FOR MYSTERIOUS ASSAILANT. The time was 23:08. «As she walked home on a nearly deserted street shortly after eight o’clock this evening, a man approached Salcedo from behind. Apparently he said something to her, she turned, and he fired two or three shots at close range, then quickly walked away. Only a single witness has come forward, claiming the man may have been Jamaican and describing a knit Rasta cap and a bulky black jacket with the collar turned up. Salcedo was pronounced dead at the scene.»
The picture changed to a reporter on the street with Salcedo’s husband. The husband was heavy and balding, dressed in a sky-blue track suit, the color of the Argentine flag. He choked back tears as he said, «I can’t understand it. Everybody loved her. We’ve got three kids, the youngest is only twelve. How do I explain this to them?»
*
Four detectives arrived at the office at 9:00 the next morning. Three were regular investigators in bad suits and the fourth was Sublieutenant Bonaventura, the one who had confiscated Suarez’s computer. They got on the intercom to announce that they would talk to each of the 83 employees individually. Bonaventura arrived at my cubicle a few minutes later.
He sat me down in one of the empty offices and gave me a slow once-over. I didn’t necessarily look like I’d been tortured. I could have been mistaken for a terminal cancer patient or an escaped psychopath. Or the accident victim in Isabel’s cover story.
«I imagine you have an idea what this is about,» he said.
«I saw the news last night.»
«Bueno.» He had an expensive leather holder for his legal pad. He opened it, then didn’t bother to look at his notes. «We have information that you were making some ‘wild accusations’ against Sra. Salcedo.»
Only one person could have given him that information and that was James W. Watkins in New York. I didn’t bother to hide my surprise. «Really? What sort of accusations?»
He picked up the leather folder and read, «That she was out to get you, that she had it in for you in some way.»
It sounded like Watkins hadn’t mentioned the torture. It made no sense that he would, since there was no official record of it.
«Forgive me,» I said, «but that sounds a little crazy. Isabel was very generous toward me. I think everybody here will tell you the same. There must be some kind of misunderstanding.»
«Can you account for your whereabouts last night?»
«I was at a tango class from 8 to 9. Then at a restaurant.»
«So you’re a dancer, eh?» He didn’t seem to think much of the idea.
«That’s right.»
«You have witnesses?»
I gave him Don Güicho’s number, the number of Saverio’s studio, and the name of the restaurant, and he wrote them down in neat, architectural-style lettering.
«So what’s wrong with you?» he said.
«Excuse me?»
«Were you in an accident or something? You don’t look too good.»
«Food poisoning,» I said. «I had to leave work Wednesday. I’m still not a hundred percent.»
«But you were well enough to dance last night.»
«I didn’t dance very well. As Don Güicho will tell you.»
He watched me for a while, maybe to see if I would unravel. I tried to show him a man with nothing to hide. Finally he said, «You don’t have any plans to go back to the US anytime soon, do you?»
«No,» I said. «This is my home.»
That, finally, seemed to get his grudging approval. He sat back and said, «I grew up on a farm outside Salto. You know it?»
It was a town in Buenos Aires Province, west of the city. «I’ve heard it’s very beautiful,» I said.
«It was clean. This city is very dirty. But there’s something about it, no? It makes you a part of itself, like it or not.» He stood up. «Another detective will have some questions for you later. For now, you may go back to work.»
*
Watkins had to have thought that I killed her. I wondered if he’d been tempted for a second or two to let it go, to not stir up any more ghosts of la dictadura. In the end, though, he and Isabel had been friends. And it was not a good precedent to let a software developer get away with murdering a director. So, like the executive he was, he’d opted to delegate. Turn me in to the cops without mentioning the contabilidad CD or the CIA or the torture, and let things fall out as they might.
The detective who interviewed me in the late afternoon looked badly in need of a nap. He went through his photocopied list of questions in a monotone. Did Isabel have any enemies that I knew of? Did she use drugs? Had there been any changes in her behavior lately? Had she said anything to me or anyone else to indicate that she was worried about something?
I gave him the answers that I believed would arouse the least interest. Everybody liked Isabel. We were all in shock. I had no idea who might have done it.
I went to my cube and continued to stare at the lines of code on my screen, as I had all day, without touching the keyboard. I had seen that Bahadur was on line and had said nothing to him.
The police left at six. A few minutes later, word got around that one of the cops had admitted they were stumped, that it was going to be written off as a failed robbery. At six-thirty I sent Bahadur a message: “dinner @ los sabios?”
*
We walked the entire way. Bahadur looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. As we passed the big theaters on Corrientes, I said, very quietly, “What d
id you do with the gun? Afterward?”
“What gun?” he said, and gave me a bright, artificial smile.
The dinner conversation was awkward. We ended up talking about my headaches. I’d said that I had beaten them before and I would beat them again. I had an appointment with a massage therapist for the next morning.
“That deals with the physical part,” Bahadur said. “But what about the stress?”
I showed him the same false smile he’d given me in the street. “What stress?”
He leaned forward. “All right. Let’s make a deal. Tonight only, we talk about this, and then never again. Cards on the table, yes?”
“Deal,” I said.
“You have to forgive yourself, Rob. Nobody else can do it.”
“For betraying the montoneros?”
“For not killing La Reina. For not taking revenge. For not being a man of violence.”
“You think I need to forgive myself for that?”
“Yes. Because you know what I know. That without Osvaldo you would be dead. That if La Reina had not been killed, she might have come after both of us again. That peace is a worthy goal and we all have to work for it, but without the option of violence we are at the mercy of the violent.”
“My doctor in the States says violence is a disease.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe one day they will wipe it out like small pox, like polio. Right now, it’s an epidemic.”
“What do you want me to do? Watch more movies, get tougher, so next time I can pull the trigger?”
“No. No. That’s not what I want at all. I want to keep you as far away from this as I can, which is one of the reasons we will never talk about this again. You can’t treat this disease without catching the disease. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No.”
Bahadur sighed. “Okay. I will say this one thing. Before she died, I looked into La Reina’s eyes. She saw the gun, she recognized me, she knew that I knew. She understood everything. You know what I saw there?”
He seemed to need a response from me. “What?” I said.
“Relief.”
His eyes were very red. Nobody, I thought, got much sleep last night.
“I was prepared for her to attack me,” he said, “to fight until the end. Instead she…surrendered.”
He looked at his plate, stabbed a piece of broccoli, then changed his mind and put the fork down again.
“Two days ago,” he said, “I would not have understood that. Now I understand it very well.”
“I understand it,” I said.
“Yes,” Bahadur said. “Maybe you do.”
“Did you know she had a husband and kids?” I asked him.
“I doubt anybody in the office did. She kept everything in…” He made a box with his hands. “…containers.”
“And it doesn’t make any difference to you?”
“A snake can have babies.”
I considered that for a while. I didn’t want to put into words any of the responses that came to mind.
“Tell me,” I said at last. “Did you really wear a Rasta cap?”
“Clever, yes? A way to hide my hair and at the same time to throw them off the smell.”
“Off the scent,” I said.
We said goodbye at the Subte station near the restaurant. I felt a gulf had opened between us that I would never be able to cross. It made me wonder how much more I could stand to lose.
*
The massage on Saturday morning woke up the pain that my body had been hiding. The therapist was in her forties, half German and half Mexican, a large and serious woman with a firm touch that I liked. I made a month’s worth of appointments with her and then went to Parque Lezama to sit on a bench in the chilly afternoon.
Something had happened while I wasn’t paying attention. If being in that black and white tiled kitchen had changed me, now I felt like a different person yet again. I would never go back to being the man who had first seen Elena in the Universal lobby, but I was no longer the broken husk who had said goodbye to her at the British Hospital either.
The obvious answer was that for the first time in months I was out of immediate physical danger. I knew that was part of it. A bigger part was having had the chance to pull the trigger and not doing it. The thing that had seemed like weakness at the time now looked like something else.
I knew that I had started the chain of events that led to Isabel’s death when I got the gun from Mateo. I had as much as put it into Bahadur’s hands. I knew there would be long nights ahead when I would lie awake and think about that.
I hoped Bahadur was wrong when he said that without violence there could be no peace. I had no brilliant rejoinders or surefire solutions. All I had was hope.
I felt old and not unpleasantly fragile. The sun warmed my face. The ground was quiet beneath my feet. The pain in my back and neck had faded for the moment. I breathed in and breathed out. There was nothing left to be in a hurry for.
I sat for a long time and when I was ready I walked to the locutorio and sent two emails, one to Lauren and one to Sam, telling them that if they’d seen a news story about the shooting, they shouldn’t worry, that I was all right. I told them I would send more details later and then I walked home.
*
On Monday the new acting head of the office arrived from New York. He was 34, clean-cut, and his Spanish was substantially less than fluent. He immediately looked to me for help and I did my best impression of a grounded, competent company man.
At the end of the day it looked like I still had a job.
On Wednesday Bahadur dropped by my cubicle. “It seems La Reina was sitting on my transfer paperwork. The new boy found it on his desk and asked me why she hadn’t put it through. I said I thought she had. He asked me if I still wanted to go and I said yes. And—poof.”
“Poof?”
“I start the job in Bangalore in two weeks.” His smile was weak, but genuine.
“Congratulations,” I said. “I’m going to miss you.”
“It’s better this way,” he said. “You know?”
I didn’t know. I was feeling old again, not as much in the body as in the heart. I’d come to be afraid of change, had lost my belief that it was ever for the better.
*
All through Thursday night’s class with Don Güicho, I saw looks pass between him and Brisa. When we were done, Brisa said, «Don Güicho and I want you to come to supper with us.»
«I would be honored,» I said.
We shared a cab to La Paz, the famous hotbed of revolution in the sixties. It was a spacious room with two levels, far more elegant than its history would imply, furnished with wooden tables and chairs and linen tablecloths, noisy with clinking glasses and animated Spanish conversation.
After we’d ordered and Don Güicho had made his customary comments about my missing the delight that was Argentine beef, he said, «This woman who was killed last Thursday, she was your boss, no?»
«Yes.»
«The police asked me many questions. I didn’t tell them any more than I had to. They asked if you were sick and I said you weren’t feeling well. I said nothing about the torture.»
«Thank you.»
«Did you kill her?»
«Directly? No. I didn’t pull the trigger.»
«Was it Mateo?»
I held my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. «If my responsibility is this much, Mateo’s is this much.» I moved them half an inch closer.
Don Güicho held out his own hand, thumb and forefinger almost touching. «Which makes my responsibility this much, for telling Mateo to get in touch with you. Who was this woman?»
«She was CIA. She betrayed me to Cesarino. She had me tortured, and would have had me killed.»
Don Güicho sat back in his chair and nodded. «Bueno. Then I am content.»
«Is Mateo still here?»
«Venezuela,» Don Güicho said. «Times have changed so much. Who really believes in a Revolution anymore?
All those days have gone, and the old Buenos Aires with them.»
«The Buenos Aires of the tango is gone too,» Brisa said, «the big ballrooms, the big orquestas. I wish I could have seen all that.»
I nodded. «Elena used to say that all the time.» I was going to have to learn to think before I spoke. I swallowed and gave myself a couple of seconds. «Anyway. Where else is there to go? This is the Buenos Aires we have.»
Don Güicho lifted his glass and we drank to our Buenos Aires querido.
Brisa said, «Speaking of Elena…»
«There was another reason we asked you here,» Don Güicho said.
«We want you to come out dancing with us tonight,» Brisa said. «To El Beso.»
I’d been longing to go dancing, feeling myself going crazy in the tiny space of my apartment. So far, I hadn’t made it as far as getting dressed. «You’re very sweet,» I said, «and I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t think I’m ready yet. If Elena was there, I don’t think I could take it.»
Don Güicho said, «She’ll be there. She’s there every Thursday. You have to do this, Beto. It’s part of dancing tango. Relationships change, but you still see each other on the dance floor. It hurts, but you keep dancing. You can’t hide forever. The first time will be the worst, then it will get easier.»
«Let me think about it.»
«You think too much. You’ve been that way as long as I’ve known you and it’s done nothing but hold you back. You want the advanced tango class? This is your assignment.»
*
By the end of dinner I was sure that Don Güicho was right. Better to face her, get it over with, and move on.
It was a short walk from La Paz to El Beso and it was eleven when we arrived. The Thursday night milonga ended at 12:30. I wouldn’t have to endure more than an hour and a half.
I didn’t see Elena as we came in. Then again, I was not looking. The owner made a fuss over Don Güicho and seated us at a front row table in the couples’ section. I didn’t look at the dancers, just bent over and changed my shoes. Brisa strapped on impossibly high heels. Don Güicho had come empty-handed, ready to dance in his leather-soled street shoes.
