They spent the afternoon stopping here and there in Barracas, Parque Patricios, Berisso, wherever they saw a small group gathered on the streets or in the plazas on that muggy, overcast Sunday afternoon.
Between stops, Evita thought about the suffering of that woman who looked twice her age and read Perón’s letter over and over again and convinced herself that, despite what he’d said, he would prefer her to be doing this. He had to. For the sake of that woman and her baby and the little child playing with the broom in the putrid water.
All day she listened to the workers tell of their outrage over Perón’s having been deposed. The same scene replayed at each stop. When she told the poor laborers that Perón had been jailed, they cursed and excused themselves for taking the Lord’s name in vain in front of a lady. When they asked her what to do, she told them to make sure that their co-workers knew about their hero’s incarceration.
Inside the car, Perón’s letter told her he wanted peace, not responsibility. Each time she got out of the car, she reminded herself of his open letter to the president. Somewhere in all this was her future. She wanted it to be one in which she had his full confidence. Then she would fly like a hawk, swoop at the people who blocked Perón from helping the poor. She pictured a bird tearing out the throats of those disgusting oligarchs who looked down on her.
“These are dangerous days,” one poor worker’s wife told her. “People are already dying in the streets in the center.” The practically toothless woman had only one son and was terrified of losing him to a stray bullet from a speeding car.
Without thinking twice, Evita put her hand on the woman’s shoulder and said, “More people may die. Many could die, but it is more painful to die of hunger than of bullets or the knife.” She kept her face determined, but her heart trembled with the thought that she could die in such a way herself. As Luz had.
* * *
In the city center, a tenuous order was maintained by the mounted police clattering along the side streets with World War I vintage Mauser rifles slung over their shoulders. The weapons were out-of-date and some citizens laughed at them, but others reminded their companions that shots from passé guns could still tear holes in people.
The clouds broke in midafternoon, but the mood of Buenos Aires did not brighten. On the broad avenues, carabineers by the truckload rolled up and down past tense citizens who looked the other way and prayed they could make it to wherever they were going without being wounded. Or worse. Sentries marched before the major government buildings as if they were doing guard duty in a war zone.
Roberto Leary entered the offices of the National Shoe Workers Union, where the officials of several syndicates had eschewed observing the day of rest in order to meet and plan their strategy.
Leaving the blinding spring sunlight in the empty street outside, the detective found a room as dark as a movie theater. The windows were covered over with black cloth, as if they were in London during the Blitz. Gooseneck lamps shone pools of light on a dozen or so gray metal desks lined up in three rows. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over the green glass shades. Leary found Tulio Puglisi banging his hand on the headline that said Perón was no longer a danger to the nation and haranguing three other union officials gathered around him.
The man was obviously a hothead.
Leary approached and told Puglisi he needed to ask him a few questions. Puglisi grabbed his hat and jacket and led the detective to the deserted café on the corner. “It’s a dump,” he said, “but the coffee is first rate.”
On the way, Puglisi ranted about the actress and the stupidity of the other unionists. “Mine and the Textile Workers are the only unions that get it. How can real union leaders support a fascist? I know Perón has bought off his loyalists with good jobs for their brothers and cousins. But I don’t see what the rest of the labor men can be thinking. Perón is importing the butchers of Europe. Don’t those jerks who stick with him read the papers? Do they even look at the pictures? Or the newsreels? Do they see what the fascist war did to Europe? Have they looked at the eyes in those photographs of starved wraiths who survived the death camps? People over there are walking around in bombed-out cities, surrounded by rubble, desperate for something to eat. Even the winners. Do they want that to happen here?”
Leary did not respond. He let Puglisi rage on. But he had to admit that a lot of what he said made sense. Then again, even a murderer could make sense and still be guilty.
The café where Tulio brought him had certainly seen better days. Paneling of scratched and battered dark wood and a floor of cracked and broken terra-cotta tiles had once had pretenses toward class, but they had seen too much rough treatment to retain any of their initial beauty. Once Puglisi and Leary were standing at the beat-up zinc-topped bar, Leary tried to think of the best opening gambit for what he wanted to ask. He sipped his coffee. It was really good, great even. “I wasn’t at Perón’s farewell rally on Wednesday, but I heard you were there.”
“What a lot a bullshit that was,” Puglisi said and drained his cup.
Leary turned his back on the barista who had lowered the radio broadcast of a Boca Juniors soccer game and was taking too much of an interest in the conversation. “There was a girl at the rally, in a green dress, who looked like Eva Duarte,” he said quietly. “I was wondering if you saw her.”
Puglisi answered immediately, without moderating his usually loud tone. “Yeah, I saw her. I thought it was kind of funny that the actress was in the middle of the crowd and not with the bigwigs near the platform. I followed her for a block or two before I saw that the girl wasn’t the colonel’s lady friend.”
“What did you do when you realized that?” Leary asked.
“I went home and consoled myself by making love to my wife. Why are you asking me this?”
Leary decided not to say. “Why did you follow the girl? Why would you follow Eva Duarte?”
“I was curious about her.”
“Curious? What did you mean to do to her?”
“Nothing,” Puglisi protested in that trumpet voice of his. “I wanted to see if Evita would start rabble-rousing among the workers. Trying to get them to march on the Casa Rosada to restore Perón. Something like that.” He looked insulted but also unsure that Leary would believe him.
“Look, Tulio, I heard what you said about Eva Duarte last week. I want to know if you followed the girl because you meant Eva Duarte harm.”
Puglisi laughed out loud. “Me? Harm her? You ought to be following her to see what harm she is likely to do to Argentina.” He looked at Leary’s eyes, and the smile disappeared from his face. “Why exactly are you so interested in all of this?” he asked in all seriousness.
Leary handed a few coins to the nosy barista to pay for the coffees and walked toward the door. When they were out of earshot, he told Puglisi the truth. “The girl you mistook for Eva Duarte was stabbed to death that night. I am investigating her murder.”
Puglisi’s blue eyes widened. He raised his shoulders and turned up his palms, making a very good show of being shocked and confused by the news.
* * *
Alone in her shop at six o’clock that evening, Claudia stubbed out her cigarette and threw down her sketch pad and pencil. She had been struggling all afternoon to turn her mind to something, anything but Luz’s murder.
Hernán was busy at home smashing his index fingers on the keys of his Olivetti portable and muttering things like, “Bastards.” And every once in a while, out of the blue, demanding her opinion of things like, “Why did they lift the state of siege only to reimpose it after less than two months?” It drove her crazy when he treated her as if she were nothing but a sponge to soak up his anger at the political situation. Her father was out playing dominoes with his cronies at their social club in the church basement.
Though it was Sunday, she had finally left home, telling Hernán she wanted to work on entering her receipts in the store ledger. He grunted and went on typing, and she took the Subte to the s
hop. She was already on the train when it occurred to her that she was on her way to the scene of the murder. She staved off a shudder. If Leary was right that Luz had died because she looked like Evita, Claudia was in no danger. She was three inches taller than and twenty years older than the actress. No one would mistake her for Evita.
Guilt still haunted her. She carried it with her to work and let it prevent her from ever touching her ledger book. Instead, she sat sketching dresses and let regret drip into her heart. How could a serious woman try to think up new evening gowns under such circumstances? Did she think such trivialities could hold off her remorse? Each sketched idea brought thoughts of customers who might wear the dress, customers who were nowhere to be found in these trying times. Who might never return now that an innocent girl had been stabbed to death at the front door of Chez Claudia. The lack of their custom could mean the end of her business. That outcome seemed only just, considering that she had set in motion a course of events that led to a murder.
Around and around went her thoughts until she had no choice but to give up and go home.
She went into the little bathroom and thought again of throwing up the morning after Luz was slain. Not understanding why, she ran a powder puff over her face and daubed on a little lipstick. She put on her hat and jacket. She would rather listen to Hernán type and complain. She dialed their number to tell him she was coming home, but got no answer.
She reached him at the paper. “I came in to the office to see if there was anything happening that we might actually report,” he said.
She told him she would meet him at their apartment, locked up the store, and made for the C-line toward Constitución. The Subte was slow in coming and nearly empty on a Sunday. The rattan was unraveling on the seat beside hers. The ride was boring, and she had nothing to do but brood and wish she had brought along her sketch pad.
Dusk was falling as she turned into the path leading to her building’s front door. In the gloom under a thick magnolia tree, Lázaro Torres stepped in front of her with a knife in his hand.
Shock forced a gasp from her, and fear shook her knees. She burst into tears.
He flashed her a malevolent grin. “What are you crying for, bitch?” He pulled her into the alley beside the building, then pushed her through a low door into the basement. “Luz is dead,” he said. “You better tell me what you know about it or else.”
* * *
Hernán Mantell left the paper after eight that evening. He had wasted the day. Some union members had staged brief strikes. The union leadership was not supporting them, so the whole picture remained confused. He had spent the entire afternoon working on a piece, concluding that with Perón in jail, the Nazi–Fascist tendencies of the government would fade and now Argentina would enter an era of democracy. It might have been an exercise in wishful thinking on his part, but he hoped that putting it in print might help make it come true. And he was sure the generals would let them print something optimistic about the country’s future.
His editor had scuttled the story anyway. The government was not letting them print anything that confirmed Perón was in jail. And his editor supported the president’s order to keep a lid on that news. “If word gets around,” he said, “the pro-Perón forces will have a field day. No, Hernán, if we want Colonel Juancito Perón to stay in the pokey, we have to keep his whereabouts a mystery to his descamisados.”
Hernán bit his lip in front of his boss and grumbled to himself all the way home. When he parked his car and walked exhausted and disappointed to his apartment, he found the place dark. He threw his tie and jacket on a chair in the foyer and dialed the shop. There was no answer. He went down to old Gregorio’s flat, where he expected Claudia had gone for company. He found her father sitting alone, reading the paper and eating scrambled eggs.
“She is not here,” the old man said. “I looked for her upstairs earlier, but she wasn’t there.”
Of course you did, Hernán thought. She always made the old man’s dinner, and if she had been at home, he would have been with her upstairs, eating something much tastier than those eggs. Hernán was worried and pissed off, but he did not want to alarm her father.
“I thought maybe the two of you had gone out to eat and forgotten to tell me,” Gregorio said.
“She’s probably upstairs already. She could have been going up in the elevator while I was coming down the steps.” Hernán tried to keep his tone light, but now he was really concerned. Claudia had said she was on her way home over two hours ago. She never went places by herself at night, especially in times like these. And she always made sure her father knew where she was. He had given her a lot of freedom when she was a child, and as a teenager she had made sure he continued to do so by never causing him any worry. She had gone on with that habit all her life. “Don’t worry,” Hernán said to the old man. “I will send her down as soon as she gets home.”
He went to the lobby and asked the elevator operator if he had seen her. The man hardly looked up from his sports page. “Not since she went out around noon.”
Hernán sped up the three flights and found their apartment still empty. He phoned the shop again but still got no answer. He wished he had the telephone number of the seamstress, just in case she knew what was going on. But he didn’t even know her last name.
When a knock came on the door an hour later, he jumped out of his chair, scared he was going to see the police outside his door. But it was her father. “I waited as long as I could,” he said. “I thought if the two of you were having an argument, I should not come up. But I listened to the silence from the hall. It frightened me more than if you had been shouting threats at one another.”
“I am sure she is okay,” Hernán said, totally unconvincingly.
They sat together without exchanging more than a few words until ten minutes to eleven. Hernán thought the old man would fall asleep, but he did not. They tuned in the radio, but neither of them seemed to be listening to the mournful tango music. When her key turned in the door, they both jumped up instantly, their terror shaking them.
She looked exhausted. She hardly took two steps into the room before she started unbuckling her platform shoes. Hernán remembered that she had not slept much since the girl Luz was murdered.
“I am sorry,” she said, as if that were enough. As if all she had done was trod on their toes.
Hernán wanted to scream at her, but he could not do that in front of Gregorio, who just sighed and walked to her. He kissed her on the forehead and said, “I love you.”
Hernán could not manage such patience. “I was scared to death. Why didn’t you call?” His voice was trembling with anger and residual adrenaline.
Gregorio walked to the door. “I love you, my darling,” he said and went out, closing the door without making a sound.
When the old man was out of earshot, Hernán exploded. “Answer me. Why didn’t you call?”
“I couldn’t.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he screamed. “There are pay phones all over the city. Your father and I were sitting here terrified, while you couldn’t be bothered to tell us where you were.”
She jumped up and ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.
He ran and tried to stop her, but the door was closed and locked by the time he got there. He pounded on it.
“Go away,” she shouted. “Just go away.”
“Claudia, stop it.” He turned the knob and banged on the door some more.
He shouted for a minute and then began to plead and then scold again. On the other side of the door, Claudia put her fingers in her ears and ran the bath water to drown him out.
When he got no response from her, he shouted, “The hell with this,” went into the bedroom, and slammed the door. He waited for her to come in, thinking of the things he planned to say to her: to tell her she had frightened her poor old father. How if she didn’t care for him, she should at least be courteous to the man who had devoted his life to raising her.
To tell her how difficult it had been to sit there with her father, knowing that both of them had imagined her stabbed to death as Luz had been. He stripped to his boxers and threw himself on the bed, rehearsing a vicious scolding in his mind. He fell asleep before he got a chance to deliver it.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 15
In the blue light of early dawn, Hernán found Claudia wearing only her slip, asleep on the couch. As soon as he opened the door, she sat up.
“Please forgive me,” he said. “Please. I am sorry I got mad at you. But I had been so worried.”
Her thick, dark brown hair, which she always wore in a chignon, had tumbled down around her shoulders. Bobby pins were scattered on the floor. There were black circles under her eyes.
She did not want to forgive him, but she could not find her anger from the night before.
He sat beside her. “Tell me what happened, exactly,” he said softly.
“Lázaro Torres.”
“The gardener?” Alarm turned the skin of his back to ice.
She nodded. “He pulled a knife on me.”
“What?” Hernán shouted at the top of his voice.
“I was on the path coming to the downstairs door. He took a switchblade out of his pocket and dragged me into the basement—that room where he keeps his rakes and wheelbarrow.”
Hernán leaped to his feet. “Good God! Why didn’t you tell me this last night?” He did not wait for an answer. He ran into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of trousers and shoved his feet into his loafers. He went to the apartment door like a streak.
She ran and tried to block him. “No! He will hurt you.”
“You are crazy for not telling me this before.” He pushed past her and ran down the stairs, jumping down the last three steps to each landing. When he got to the basement door, it was open. It was still dark in the narrow alley. His heart pounding, he reached in and groped for the light switch. Why hadn’t he brought a kitchen knife with him?
His fingers found the switch on the right wall beside the doorjamb. When the light came on, the room was empty. He ran out to the street. There was no sign of the son of bitch out on the block.
Blood Tango Page 12
