Blood Tango

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Evita embraced her colonel again. “They cannot defeat us. All you have to do is decide,” she said with more passion than she had ever put into a mere performance on the radio.

  Perón shook hands with Mercante. “This is not necessarily a bad thing, Domingo, to be out of the thick of the fray and to be seen as coming from outside.”

  Mercante grasped his friend’s shoulder and nodded, but his face was grave, as if he wanted to but could not quite believe they could win.

  When Evita walked out with Perón to the dock, she was shocked to see an enormous gunboat. ARA INDEPENDENCIA, it said in white on its black bow. Did they think they needed such a monstrosity to take one compliant man to prison? A crew of seven stood at the ready on the deck. Obviously, those vipers in the military knew as well as she how strong Perón still was. Otherwise, they would have sent a little police launch, not this warship.

  Perón was not so impressed. “Oh,” he said, “my opponents have sent a ship of their own vintage—from the last century and ripe to go out of service.”

  In the pale light of the setting moon and the bright pools created by flashlights in the hands of the crew, Evita watched Perón board. He stood under an awning on the deck where he could see her waving from the dock. Though he affected his usual military carriage, she detected a tension in the way he held his head. Her fearless warrior was fighting hard for calm.

  She stayed on, gazing at him until his beautiful smile disappeared into the predawn gloom.

  When the great boat had departed, Evita, Mercante, and Jorge Webber returned to the house, and Webber closed the door against the chilly night. Mercante touched Evita’s shoulder so tenderly that she thought he was going to tell her Perón was being taken away to be shot. “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Yesterday I spoke to a detective of the Buenos Aires police force,” Mercante said. “A girl was murdered this past Wednesday. Her name was Luz. She worked for your dressmaker.”

  Evita screamed so loud that Webber feared they would hear her on the departing gunboat. She wrung her hands until they turned red, threw herself into a chair, and beat her fists on the thick upholstery of its arms. “What? Why? Who could have done such a thing to the poor, powerless child?”

  Webber grabbed Mercante by the elbow. “Are you crazy, telling her such news at a moment like this?” He wanted to hit Mercante, who was not only taller but infinitely more powerful in station.

  Mercante peeled Webber’s fingers off his arm. “You are forgetting yourself,” he said, with the look of a man who has been pooped on by a pigeon. He went and knelt in front of the chair where Evita continued to bang her fists and weep. “Listen to me, Evita,” he said. “The police think the girl could have been murdered because she was mistaken for you.”

  She looked at him with those intense dark eyes, now fearful behind the tears. “Why would anyone want to kill an actress?” she asked, but he could see that she already knew the answer.

  He fingered his lapel pin, the flag of Argentina. “We must leave right away. I’ll tell our boatman. I am going to take you back to the Calle Posadas. At the first possible moment, though, you must call your actress friend and arrange to go to her. You have to stay in a place where a possible assailant can’t find you.”

  * * *

  Aboard the ARA Independencia, Peron’s captors took him to a military prison on the island of Martín Garcia, in the middle of the broad, brown Rio La Plata. When they asked Perón why he flashed his famous smile on seeing that damp and forbidding place, he said, “The irony of being taken to jail on a boat called Independence is not wasted on me.” But that was not the only reason. It also occurred to him that use could be made of their choice of a prison, given that the man being jailed had just turned fifty, an age when a man was considered to be losing his strength. His captors had left themselves open to a creditable claim that he was too infirm to withstand hardship conditions.

  Perón considered various ways in which he might escape his jail, and Evita, once she had settled in her temporary home with her friend Pierina Dealessi, focused her enormous energy on the same question. Taking advice from Domingo Mercante and Oscar Nicolini, she made an appointment with Attilio Bramuglia, a labor lawyer and Perón supporter.

  Jorge Webber drove her to the attorney’s office in the Packard, but the chauffeur warned her that the government would very likely take away the car, since it was not Perón’s but went with a station he no longer occupied. Strangely, this detail, like the death of that poor young modista’s assistant, more than any of the momentous events of the past week, overwhelmed her and brought her to tears. Far worse things were happening in her life; they made her angry, but they had not made her weep. Her father had had a wonderful car, and she had lost that one when he left her family and went back to his real wife and legitimate children. Right now, she longed to have Perón back just as she had longed to have her papa back all those years ago out on the dusty, unforgiving plains of the Pampas. No one, no one was allowed to know this. She was glad no one but the chauffeur saw her fall apart at the very idea of losing the Packard.

  She looked out the car window as they passed the palatial buildings of the capital city—the land of her childhood dreams. She thought of Luz, killed when she was less than a year older than Evita had been when she arrived here. That child had died before she had even dreamed a dream of her own.

  Another strange thought fell into her head, like something out of a radio novella—that the murderer had killed the girl not because he mistook her for Evita but to warn Evita that her life was on the line if she did not stand down in her support of Perón. If she did what so many of his supporters had been urging her to do, to stir up the descamisados, she could be the next to die.

  She did not even know if Perón knew that the girl Luz had existed. She could not remember mentioning her, a nonentity, to him. Why had Mercante told her the news as soon as Perón was taken away? He had seemed to be warning her to be careful. She wanted to trust Mercante as much as Perón did. But how could she be sure of him, or anyone? The wisest man she knew was locked away from her. Her heart twisted with the loneliness of not being able to seek her colonel’s advice, of being robbed of his protection.

  * * *

  Roberto Leary went to work that morning with more energy than he had brought with him in years, intent on pursuing the murder case even though no one besides himself and Luz Garmendia’s friends cared about the girl’s death. Everything Leary had heard from Puglisi’s own mouth made Tulio a prime suspect. But Mercante had given up Puglisi’s name too readily. And he had mentioned no one else. Why? There must be others who despised the actress, might have meant her harm. Leary decided to go back to Mercante—this time in person. He wanted to look the man in the eyes.

  They met for coffee in the swanky bar of the Claridge Hotel.

  Once they had ordered, Mercante got right down to business. “I promised Perón I would take care of Evita while he is in custody.” He smoothed his Errol Flynn mustache and leaned toward Leary conspiratorially. “There is, it turns out, an army officer whose opinions are a big red flag. His name is Ramón Ybarra; he is a lieutenant, aide-de-camp to General Avalos.”

  Leary raised his eyebrows. “He’s got a big job.”

  Mercante nodded. “Yes, especially now that Avalos has taken over as minister of war.” He hiked his chair closer to the table and paused while the waiter put down the coffees. When the smiling man in the starched white jacket was gone, he continued. “We have known about Ybarra’s animosity to the lady for some months, but now that he is in such a powerful position, we are quite concerned. And I want you to know that he attended the farewell rally, and out of uniform.”

  It occurred to Leary that Mercante’s two main suspects were people that he and Perón would want out of the way under any circumstances. Was Mercante using Leary’s investigation as a way to put a couple of powerful anti-Perónists out of action? The detective shook off the distracting thought and focused on the man
across the little black-lacquered table. “Do you really think these two men who have been mouthing off about Señora Duarte mean her physical harm?”

  Mercante drained his cup. “How can I say? But I think we have to assume that if one of them stabbed the girl to death, meaning to kill Evita, by now he has realized his mistake and will very likely try again. To be safe, we should get them both into custody.”

  “What is Evita doing in the meantime?”

  “She is trying to get a writ of habeas corpus.”

  “So she will try to get Perón free?” Leary had started out to make a statement, but it had come out a question. “Does she think getting him out of jail will restore him to power?”

  Mercante tugged on his French cuffs. He was a colonel in the army, but he had dressed as a dapper executive for this meeting. “I don’t think Evita understands the implications of such things. How could she? But I must keep her safe.” He took one of the little cookies they had served with the coffee and popped it into his mouth. He moved aside his fancy, starched white cuff and looked at his gold watch. “I have to go now. Please keep me abreast of your progress. I won’t rest easy until both Puglisi and Ybarra are off the streets.”

  Leary shook Mercante’s hand and went to retrieve his hat. He scratched his head before he put it on. Not much of what he had just learned made sense. On his way back to his desk, he tried to figure out what the colonel in the pin-striped suit was playing at. If Mercante and Perón had wanted to get Puglisi out of the way while Perón was still in office, they could have done it with one phone call. Why hadn’t they? Even if Perón was under arrest now, Leary could not believe he was so suddenly and totally stripped of power that he couldn’t call in a favor and get a recalcitrant union official spirited away. Ybarra would be a different ball of wax. Even before Avalos’s recent elevation, the general had been commandant of the garrison at Campo de Mayo. It was well known that the army was split into factions. Not even Perón could have done away with a fellow officer with impunity. Now, he couldn’t harm Ybarra in any way that Leary knew about. It was time to find out more about the lieutenant who went to political rallies in civvies.

  With his boss’s elevation, Lieutenant Ybarra would no longer be stationed thirty miles from the city. Most likely, he now worked in the Casa Rosada. Just last night, the Palacio Paz, the army’s Buenos Aires headquarters, had been the scene of a debacle with students. There was an excuse in that. Leary could pay the lieutenant a visit on the pretext of investigating the death of the student Alberto Ara, whose brother he had interviewed the day Luz Garmendia was stabbed. The file for that case had been collecting dust on his desk, relegated to a stack of impossible crimes that he could neither solve nor throw in the trash. A bumbling policeman trying to solve an insolvable murder, spurred by the political clout of some weepy old grandpa, might be able to elicit information Ybarra would otherwise withhold.

  When Leary got to police headquarters he looked for and found a photo of Ybarra in the files. Then he picked up the Ara folder, turned right around, and headed for the Casa Rosada.

  * * *

  At ten that overcast morning, Ramón Ybarra saluted smartly as he as took his leave of President Fárrell and General Avalos. Things were going exactly as he’d hoped, for a change. The disarray of the various factions striving to form a new government meant that no group but the army was strong enough to take over the country. The bumbling of Fárrell and Avalos would make doubly sure this would be the case. With one Byzantine scheme weaker than the next, they went on trying to put together a new cabinet, drawing up blueprints for little piggy houses of straw and sticks. Only the army’s house was built of stuff strong enough to prevail against the wolves of the left and the army’s own loose canon, Perón. But Juancito was now in jail. At last. And if he could be kept there and if Fárrell and Avalos’s old-man attempts to restore order failed, as they certainly would, younger officers were ready to use the army’s weapons to do so. When they did, they would return Argentina to the glory days of the twenties, the decade of Ybarra’s birth, when riches had flowed into the country and, thanks to the army, order had reigned.

  As he exited the Casa Rosada, Ybarra took his military cap from under his arm and was in the act of placing it on his head when a nicely dressed man of about his own age approached him on the steps. He wore a brown fedora that was too warm for the day; he carried a file folder. Another huge mob of students shouted and stamped in the road in front of the government palace.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the man said. “Are you Lieutenant Ramón Ybarra, the aide-de-camp to General Avalos?”

  Ybarra could barely make out the man’s words over the roar of the crowd chanting in the plaza behind him. “May I know who wants to know?” Ybarra had to shout to be heard, so his voice came out appropriately commanding.

  The man tipped his hat. “Roberto Leary from the Federal Police.” He held up the manila folder in his fist. He pointed over his shoulder at the demonstrators. “I am investigating crimes among the student protestors.”

  “Students, you say? Is this about the gun battle at the Palacio Paz last night?”

  Leary stepped forward. “Perhaps we could stand inside the lobby for a minute to get away from this noise?”

  Ybarra checked Leary’s identification before he took him past a row of soldiers dressed in khaki and holding rifles that stood guard between the seat of the government and the mob in the street.

  The three-story-high square entrance hall was dim, lit only by ornamental sconces; the skylight offered only weak gray illumination on this cloudy day.

  “Thank you,” Leary said over the now-muffled chanting. “This is much better. I am so sorry to bother you with this matter.”

  “Get on with it,” Ybarra said.

  Leary regarded the man. Without his military cap he looked like an aristocratic portrait from the last century, with bushy dark eyebrows and the leonine forehead of a man who was too smart for his own good. “I’ll try to be brief,” Leary said. “A young student named Alberto Ara was shot from a speeding car during a student demonstration last week. It seems the shooter had a machine gun, and since the army owns all the machine guns that we know about—”

  Ybarra interrupted him. “Of all the things that are going on this country at this moment, you have time for this? That’s absurd. I myself don’t have a moment for such trivialities.” Ybarra started to move away, but the detective blocked his path.

  “I know. I know. Just give me a couple of minutes.”

  Something sincere and apologetic in Leary’s dark eyes made Ybarra want to take pity on the fellow. If he hadn’t been in such a good mood when the cop approached him, he would not have given him ten seconds. “Get to the point.”

  Leary brushed his sand-colored hair off his forehead and smiled. “Thank you. I know it’s stupid to think this can be solved, but the dead kid’s grandfather has some pull with my boss, and I have to at least make a show of trying. I just got promoted to detective. I waited two years to get here. I don’t want to get busted for not asking you.”

  Ybarra knew what it was like to have to wait too long for a promotion in rank. Sympathy overwhelmed his irritation at this intrusion. “Ask your question then,” he said.

  Leary took out a notebook and asked a couple of innocuous questions about machine guns and who had them. He wrote down some notes with a stub of pencil that looked as if it had been run over by a tank. “This is great. I can write a report that will make the poor old abuelo think we’ve tried to find out who killed his grandson.” He looked up with real gratitude in his eyes. He gestured toward the door and the milling, chanting mob outside. “What do you think is going to become of all that?”

  “The army will put down the chaos,” Ybarra answered. “We are the only ones who can.” When his plans came to fruition, it would be with tanks and more of those machine guns Leary had described.

  Leary nodded. “The unions are stirring. If they come out on the other side of the question f
rom that crowd out there, we could see a lot of trouble. Do you think they will? I hope they don’t. I have a buddy on the force who says that now that Perón is jail, his actress lady friend will stir up the workers by talking on the radio.”

  “Not on the radio,” Ybarra said. “That is no longer a possibility for her. We have seen to that.” He put his hat on and started for the door. “Be prepared,” he said to Leary. “It is going to take a lot of work to maintain law and order in the next couple of weeks, especially with those cabecitas negras from down south of the city. Those little brown people are dangerous. Some people think they’ll stay in their villas miserias down in the suburbs. We have to make sure they do.”

  Leary hurried after him. He knew from Mercante’s description what Ybarra’s opinions supposedly were. But that was all second- and third-hand stuff. Having failed by stealth to engage Ybarra on the subject of the actress, he felt he had no choice but to tell the lieutenant about the murder case and see how he reacted. “A girl who could have been mistaken for Eva Duarte was stabbed to death a few days ago.”

  It stunned Leary when Ybarra said, “Oh, yes, I heard about that from General Avalos.”

  “How come the minister of war is taking an interest in the murder of a little nobody like Luz Garmendia?” The question was out of Leary’s mouth before he considered whether it was politic to ask such a thing.

  “As you can imagine,” Ybarra said, “the general is keeping tabs on anything that can contribute to the uproar in the country. We heard there was a theory that the girl was murdered because she was mistaken for Perón’s actress. That made it of interest.” Now that Ybarra had his hat on, Leary could no longer see his eyes to tell his mood.

  “Do you think that could be?” Leary asked, and waited. The yelling in the plaza was louder here near the door. “Constitución. Constitución,” they were calling outside.

  When Ybarra didn’t answer him, Leary pressed his point: “The dead girl was last seen alive at Perón’s farewell speech. I understand you were there.”