An hour later she returned to her building, her cart full. As she walked to the elevator she said to Roberto: “I got that liqueur, and you wouldn’t believe the avocados I found.”
The doorman couldn’t have imagined that, a few minutes later, Marina would be back, face contorted in horror, screaming: “Call an ambulance, Roberto! Guillermo is on the floor. He’s in trouble! Please help me!”
Immediately, Roberto started to shake; he opened a drawer in his desk and shuffled some papers around. He tossed aside a few cards as he took out his cell phone and started dialing. “I’m calling the paramedics.”
A moment later he explained to someone on the phone that there was a man in trouble, and then gave the address of the building. Marina heard him responding to a few brief questions. After he hung up, the two of them rode the elevator to the sixth floor. Marina stayed in the hallway, up against one of the walls. Roberto went into the apartment; seconds later he came back out, a serious look on his face.
“Let’s go back downstairs,” he said. “It will be better to wait there.”
They rode back to the main floor. Soon, the ambulance pulled up and parked out front. Two men got out of the cab as Roberto opened the front door of the apartment building.
“I’m the doctor,” the first man to walk into the building said. He wore a green smock and had a stethoscope hanging from his neck. The other man wore a blue smock and black plastic clogs on his feet.
“Are you the wife?” asked the man in green.
“Yes,” Marina responded, “the wife.”
“Let’s hurry upstairs,” he said.
The four of them got in the elevator together, nobody saying a word until the doors opened on the sixth floor. The apartment door was open; Guillermo was lying in the same spot she had left him in when she went to the market. The two men looked at each other, and then the doctor kneeled down. Without a word, he felt for Guillermo’s pulse. The doctor checked his pupils, and then pressed the stethoscope to his chest for nearly a minute. Then he took Guillermo’s hand and moved his fingers and wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “He’s probably been dead for about an hour, given the rigidity of his hand.”
Marina turned away, burying her face in her hands. She murmured that he must have died just after she’d left to go shopping. She explained that he had heart problems, and just that morning he was feeling bad and had gone to the hospital. But, she went on, she couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t seemed so terrible before she left.
The doctor and his assistant told her that you can’t always see a heart attack coming, even with serious cases, and then they suggested that they move her husband onto the bed. Later, they assured her, people from the funeral home would come and take his body away.
Marina said that would be fine, and as the three men lifted Guillermo and took him to the bedroom, she went to the bathroom. Locked inside, she dried her face. Then she looked down at her toenails. She had missed a spot of polish on her big toe. She was annoyed, and felt like breaking something. She took out the bottle of orange polish and touched up her toes.
When she came out of the bathroom, the three men were waiting for her in the kitchen. They had her sign some paperwork. It started raining; the floor was getting wet in the living room, and she walked over to the window to close it.
When the three men went back downstairs, Marina reconnected the telephone cable. The cat watched her, but didn’t meow. Marina opened the white envelope to read the results of the electrocardiogram. The report warned of severe arrhythmia, and confirmed a follow-up appointment for Monday. It was signed by Dr. Lamotte. She put the papers back in the envelope and, in a brusque motion, tossed the envelope onto the table. It would be important that Chichita and Nacho knew about Guillermo’s latest medical news. She had to call them, as well as the people at the bank, to tell them what had happened. Everybody would want to go to his wake. She could wear her black dress with the little green dots, or maybe something else. On Monday she’d get the death certificate and plan for the burial, and then on Tuesday she could go to Ramón. She’d ask him to dye her hair, though she wouldn’t tell him about Guillermo. Not yet. There’d be time for that later.
Chameleon and the Lions
by Alejandro Soifer
Palermo
Translated by M. Cristina Lambert
1
He buried his hands in the bucket of raw meat, and smelled a rotten steam rising from the bottom, which made him slightly dizzy. He touched the material: there were recently hardened pieces with brown bruises and crudely cut bones with splintered edges. He lifted the bucket, ten kilos of raw meat, and dragged it to the reinforced door. He placed the load on the ground, turned the handle that activated the gate catch, and opened it. The warm rays of an early spring morning sun crept into the bunker-like building.
He picked up the bucket with the animal food again and took some cautious steps toward the interior of the artificial habitat. It was one of the most spacious and best-cared-for cages in the Buenos Aires Zoo: a grass plateau with a small rectangular, shallow artificial lake that emulated the African savanna, with everything surrounded by a moat. It ended in a high wall from which visitors could see the beasts.
At a corner with exposed earth, where the grass covering had disappeared from so much traffic, he threw the food, and cautiously went to fetch the second, and then the third bucket of meat. He waited a moment, standing next to the small mound he had made, but none of the animals showed up to get their lunch.
He looked for the lions; two of them were sleeping in the shade of the acacia that rose near the cage’s center, and next to them, the oldest one was licking some bones with its coarse tongue.
He was hot. The implacable midday sun bore down on him, through his security uniform. He wiped his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, sharpened his gaze, and saw it clearly: the old lion was consuming the remains of what looked like a human leg.
2
The blades of the ceiling fan moved the thick air in the small room where four men crowded together.
Rogelio Negrete, the lion keeper, couldn’t stop sweating, and felt his arms shaking uncontrollably. His uniform reeked of vomit.
Detective Ernesto Camargo impatiently paced the small room surrounding an old dust-covered desk. He knew that the zoo director, that little bald guy with a head like a bowling ball and a carefully smoothed mustache, had brought them there to remove them from the center of attention.
“So, you came in, prepared to feed the lions, and discovered one of the animals eating the remains of a human being for breakfast?”
“Goldwyn, yes.”
The detective arched his eyebrows.
“Goldwyn’s the animal’s name, sir,” explained Inspector Mario Quiroz, who was observing the questioning while the forensic team collected evidence.
“And you didn’t notice anything unusual when you arrived?”
“Nothing.”
“Mr. Negrete has probably said all he has to say, don’t you think, detective?” interrupted the director. “If you’ll allow me, I’d like to give this man the rest of the day off.”
“Of course—after he makes a statement at the precinct. By the way, who was in charge of grounds security last night?”
“I’ll have to check on that.”
Quiroz did not like the director. He seemed anxious to get rid of them.
There were three knocks, and a policeman appeared at the half-open door. “We found something else,” he announced.
The four men inside the room looked at each other.
“What’re you waiting for, Quiroz? Go with Corporal Almirón and see what your men found,” said the detective, visibly annoyed.
Quiroz followed the policeman, who led him through the lions’ enclosure, where the animals had been locked up and drugged while the investigation was going on, to the open-air cage.
“Any idea who the poor devil was resting in the lion’s stomach?”
&n
bsp; “Not yet, sir.”
The two men did not exchange another word. The corporal led Quiroz down a stone staircase from the plateau toward the moat, and then a few more steps to where the other investigators were gathered. Several camera flashes went off, and Quiroz made his way along until he stood before what had been discovered: surrounded by yellowish bovine bones was a human torso, its head showing lacerations from the animal bites. Faded black ink covered the upper part of what was left of an arm.
Quiroz crouched, covered his hand with the tip of his shirtsleeve, and moved the remains until the tattoo was completely visible. “Kmaleon,” Quiroz read the inscription out loud. “What the hell is this?”
3
“Do we know anything about the victim?”
“Only that he was alive when they threw him to the lions. He’s still a John Doe. We didn’t find any papers at the site, but he had a tattoo. It’s only a matter of time until we find out who he was.”
“What about the night watchman?”
“The guy on duty last night is named Vladimiro Olaya. He doesn’t know anything.”
“Are we sure, Quiroz?”
“I grabbed his balls with pliers and squeezed. I’m telling you, he didn’t see anything. He must have been asleep when the crime took place.”
Detective Camargo glared angrily at the inspector. Quiroz was known to be tough, a jerk, and Camargo had heard about his reputation as a son of a bitch in his youth with the Federal Police during the dictatorship; he wondered if Quiroz had indeed put pliers to the testicles of a witness and squeezed to make him talk. He could believe it. Quiroz could be sitting calmly at his desk talking to him, and five minutes later electroshocking someone in the precinct cellar. He was as changeable as a chameleon. That had been his nickname in the seventies: Chameleon Quiroz.
“I hope that poor bastard of a witness doesn’t file a complaint against you.”
The inspector hesitated a second before replying, and then said sarcastically: “A complaint? Against Mario ‘the Iguana’ Quiroz? Go back to your district attorney’s office and get a statement from Olaya. I softened him up for you.”
He hadn’t been misinformed: Quiroz was a son of a bitch. But clearly he was also smart. At least smart enough to force everybody to call him Iguana instead of Chameleon when the Dirty War was over. That way, they would forget his past. He probably believed that.
“I’m assuming I can count on the good will of you and your people to solve this matter as soon as possible,” said Camargo as he rose, and the two men walked to the front door of the precinct. “The election’s in a month and . . .”
“Federal Homicide’s at the service of your investigation, sir.” And with that, Quiroz said goodbye and headed back to his office.
* * *
At the reception desk, a small, dark-skinned woman with long mahogany-colored hair was imploring an annoyed-looking officer with monotonous insistence and pompous hand gestures while she held out a photograph. Quiroz continued to his office, and was about to go in when he sensed there might be something in the photo the woman was showing the cop that he should check out. He retraced his steps to the reception desk.
“What’s going on, miss?” Quiroz inquired. The officer at the reception desk could not disguise the relief on his face.
“I was explaining to the gentleman that I’m worried because my boyfriend disappeared last night.”
“And I was explaining to her, sir, that we can’t file a missing person report just because somebody was away from home for a few hours.”
“Let me see that photo,” Quiroz said, extending his hand.
The picture showed the woman herself with her arm around the waist of a guy much taller than her, with long hair down past his shoulders, wearing a frayed denim tank top and a word tattooed on his upper right arm; only the letters Kma could be seen. They were leaning against a red-and-white motorcycle with a River Plate sticker above the front light; they were at a park on a sunny day. The two lovers were smiling, happy and carefree.
“Miss, I have good news and bad news,” said Quiroz drily. “The good news is I know where your boyfriend is. The bad news is he’s in the morgue.”
4
In the morgue, Gladys Ponce identified the remains recovered from the lions’ moat as Daniel “Keys” Basualdo, keyboard player with the cumbia band Kmaleon.
Head almost severed, torso with the thoracic cavity exposed, with both arms (although the left one had been bitten off at the humerus) and the right leg. That was all there was, along with patches of skin, nerves, and muscles. The rest was a set of loose bones with torn, bloody tissue. It was all arranged as if it were a puzzle on Morgagni’s metal table, under a white sheet that barely preserved whatever modesty remained of the gloomy find.
The woman burst into tears and Quiroz was tempted to embrace her, but quickly decided against it.
“It was my fault,” she said between sobs while the policeman showed her the way out of the morgue. “I provoked him.”
Quiroz searched his jacket pocket for the small black notebook he always carried, and as they walked down the cheerless corridor he casually asked the woman: “What do you do, Miss Ponce?”
“I’m from the province of Salta, sir. I’ve been living in Buenos Aires just a few months.
“That’s fine, but please answer my question.”
“I clean a house in Palermo,” she sniffled, still crying.
“Why do you say it was your fault?”
“Oh, officer, Kmaleon played last night at the Metropolis Dance Club and I went to see them, as I do whenever I can. When the concert was over I met Daniel alone in the VIP room. He was acting strange, he was angry; he didn’t like anything I said. He’d been really nervous for the past few weeks.”
“Do you know what he was worried about?”
“No sir. I just wanted us to spend the rest of the night together, but he told me not to piss him off, and then we argued. I told him he no longer treated me like a queen, and he got mad and slapped me. I went home feeling awful. I waited for him all night; he’d sometimes show up after we fought. I thought after what he’d done to me he’d come by. But he never showed up. Today I went looking for him at his house, and didn’t find him. None of his friends knew where he was; I got worried, had a bad feeling, and went to the police station. You saw the rest.”
They left the building.
“You’ll have to come back to the station with me,” the inspector said. “I need you to make a formal statement.”
5
Quiroz got out of the car and stepped onto the dirt road. There was a Peronist party banner stretched across the width of the block. The cop passed beneath it with indifference. He had never voted, and never would. Democracy is a perverted system for the weak-hearted.
Cyan, the record label that Kmaleon recorded for, was located in the only two-story house in the area, with a flower bed in front and an electric gate. The rest were small, modest properties packed with families; many of the structures were bare brick or had whitewashed walls.
He rang the bell and waited at the gate. A woman in an apron opened the door, Quiroz announced himself, and the woman disappeared inside again. He waited until the electric gate opened and continued up the short flagstone pathway. The front door opened again, and the maid led him inside, through a corridor, and down a staircase to the garage.
The space was divided by a glass cubicle surrounded by cement walls, and on the other side seven musicians were playing, crowded together. The song ended and everyone relaxed, laid their instruments on the floor, and cracked open cans of beer. A guy in a jacket, dress pants, and a tieless white shirt came out of the recording booth. He wore his hair flattened back with gel; it looked wet.
“Alberto Montero. How can I help you, Officer Quiroz? Is it about Keys? We already gave a statement to the detective.”
“We’d better go to your office, if you don’t mind.”
The guy, displaying his hairy chest behind a g
old chain with a huge cross through his unbuttoned shirt, led the way into the booth.
The space was larger than it appeared, and beyond the recording console was a table that served as a desk with two chairs. To one side, against a wall plastered with cumbia band posters, a gawky kid was copying CDs on a computer. A cardboard box next to him already held a pile of pirated discs. A photocopier on his right kept spitting out record jackets, with the original label’s logo crudely erased—Unstoppable, by the band The New Cream.
“Don’t stop, Jonathan. I’ll be talking with the gentleman, but you keep on copying and packing, as we have to distribute the merchandise.”
The two men silently sized each other up for a moment.
“Now, how can I help you?” Montero said.
“As you figured, I came about Keys.”
Montero closed his eyes and nodded. “A terrible thing. The other band members happen to be here, and I’d like to introduce you to Braian Ayala, the leader.” He picked up a microphone from his desk and called, “Chimp, come here, a policeman wants to talk to you.”
Moments later a young man entered.
“You’re the leader of Kmaleon?”
“Yes sir.”
“You know what happened to Daniel Basualdo?”
“Yes sir; Alberto here told me about it. We already spoke to the detective and told him everything that happened Sunday night.”
The musician couldn’t have been more than twenty-seven, and he wore his long, curly hair down to his waist. A medal of the Virgin Mary hung from his neck, and he had on worn-out jeans and a denim tank top, identical to the one Quiroz had seen on the victim in Gladys Ponce’s photo. In fact, he too had Kmaleon tattooed on his arm. They could have been brothers, but in fact it was the band look that Montero had designed. The rest of the band dressed and looked the same as well.
Buenos Aires Noir Page 8
