“Basualdo’s girlfriend says he seemed nervous Sunday night after the concert you played.”
“Keys was a little messed up. He rarely hung out with the boys and he missed lots of rehearsals.”
“Any idea why he was upset?”
“No sir.”
“What did you do after the concert?”
“We had a party with the band and some groupies in one of the Metropolis VIP rooms,” the manager explained.
“And Basualdo was there?”
“No, Keys left with Gladys,” the young musician replied, “and after that nobody else saw him. We asked him to come to the party, but he wanted nothing to do with it.”
Quiroz smelled lies in the air. And sensed that Montero was not totally trustworthy. “Very well, thank you for your time.”
“Was nothing, officer. By the way, you know who you’re voting for?” Montero asked, standing up at the same time as Quiroz.
“No.”
“Let me give you a ballot in case you vote in the city. My brother’s running for congress as a Peronist.”
Annoyed, Quiroz took the ballot and put it in his pants pocket.
6
“I know you’ve been making inquiries on your own in that kid’s case, the one in the cumbia band, Quiroz.”
“I just questioned a few witnesses.”
“I don’t like things happening outside of what this office dictates.”
“What’s the matter with you? Why so nervous?”
“You’re not going to screw me, Quiroz. Just do as you’ve been told,” said Detective Camargo before hanging up the phone.
Three knocks on the door caught Quiroz by surprise. It was Almirón; he always knocked the same way.
“Come in, asshole.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I think you should see what’s happening on TV right now,” said Almirón, and when his boss nodded he turned on the old TV with a worn-out cathode tube that displayed images in diluted colors with a purplish hue. He went quickly through the channels until he stopped on Report TV announcing in huge letters: CUMBIA BUSINESSMAN RIDDLED WITH BULLETS.
Quiroz settled uncomfortably in his chair and let out an annoyed sigh. Anselmo Ramírez, captain of the 42nd Precinct, appeared on the screen. They had been partners commissioned at the same time, but had not spoken in a while.
“After receiving a report at police headquarters from a neighbor about gunshots, we went to the victim’s home, where we found the front door had been forced open,” Ramírez intoned with a policeman’s cadence, while on screen they showed various images of the victim’s bloody body. “We went inside the residence, and on the living room floor found a lifeless male with ten large-caliber bullet holes. The victim has been identified as Romeo Portillo. According to statements from witnesses and next of kin, Portillo managed cumbia bands.”
“Turn that shit off, will you?”
“Another murder in the cumbia scene.”
“It makes no difference; the detective doesn’t want us to move our ass without his supervision. Leave, Almirón, just go.”
The corporal nodded and left the office.
Quiroz rose from the chair, grabbed his overcoat, and went out into the overcast afternoon.
He walked at a leisurely pace down Santa Fe Avenue toward Pacific Bridge and went inside Kentucky Pizzeria on Godoy Cruz Avenue. It was six thirty in the evening and there, in a back corner, was Héctor “Fats” Argañaraz, leaning on the table that had been specially reserved for him for decades, and where he carried out his dirty dealings to the pace of the fugazzeta pizza slices ceaselessly passing before his eyes. Quiroz wondered how a man could eat so much cheese pizza without his heart exploding. No matter the time, from five in the afternoon until well past dawn, anyone who went by could see Argañaraz wolfing down slice after slice. In any case, the black spots on his neck were a sign of pancreas failure: the policeman knew diabetes or a heart attack were not far off for the big ball of grease known as Fats.
“Fats.” The cop approached the obese man, who shoved a slice of pizza into his mouth, dried the oil from his hands on a paper napkin, and extended one in welcome.
“How can I help you, officer?” Fats pointed to a chair in front of him. His voluminous belly pressed against the edge of the table, so that there was always a bit of distance between him and his visitors. Quiroz was grateful: Fats’s onion breath could knock out a horse. A new cheese-and-onion slice seemed to drop from the sky in front of the man.
“There was a party in the VIP room at the Metropolis Club on Sunday.”
“Sunday?”
“Spare me, and don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Fats smiled. “You know I’d like to cooperate with the very noble institution you represent, but lately I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints from my girls. They tell me they’re being robbed in the neighborhood and harassed. The other day, a new little girl I have, top quality, her name’s Loli—she’s twenty, but looks sixteen—a degenerate roughed her up, beat the shit out of her actually, and left without paying. They laughed like hell at us in your precinct.”
“You want me to go after a guy who fucked one of your whores and didn’t pay?”
“And hit her,” replied Fats, running the edge of his hand over his shiny lips.
Quiroz thought it over for a second. “I’ll see what we can do,” he grumbled, “but you’ll have to help me.”
“Gladly. I love cooperating with my friends.” Fats signaled to the guy at the register to send him another slice.
“Yeah, right. Stop being such an ass.”
“I only heard what they’re saying in the neighborhood. They took transvestites to the party.”
“None of yours?”
Fats’s face turned into a twisted red grimace. “Officer, I thought you knew I don’t work with homosexuals. Go talk to those dimwits who’re stealing my clientele.”
Quiroz rose from the table.
“Listen, officer, what about my problem?”
“Come by the station tomorrow and we’ll see.” He left the pizzeria while Fats stuffed the last fugazzeta bite into his mouth.
7
Quiroz went up Godoy Cruz Avenue where he found some cross-dressers standing by their informal posts against the thick walls of the San Martín railroad station. He approached a group of two—one short, chubby-cheeked, and dark in a silver wig, the other a little taller, also dark but scrawny. Both wore very low-cut tops that emphasized their cheap breast implants and fishnet stockings that squeezed the flesh of the short, chubby one.
“This is the time when kids come home from school,” he addressed them harshly. “Couldn’t you at least cover up your pathetic show till nightfall?”
The tall cross-dresser responded with disgust: “And who are you to tell us how to dress? Get out of here, wanker.”
The short one elbowed her. “Candy, you jerk, he’s the fuzz.”
“Is what my friend Yoselin says true? You’re a pig? Don’t try screwing with us; we already paid for protection this week.”
“Calm down, darlings, I’m here on a strictly official matter.”
“You all say the same thing, and we end up having to service you behind a tree so you’ll leave us alone,” Candy said.
“Don’t worry; before I let you stick your cock in my ass I’ll rip it off and cram it down your throat.” Quiroz leaned back against the railroad station wall calmly, pulled a cigarette from his overcoat, and lit it.
“If you didn’t come to fuck, what did you come for?”
A black car with tinted windows accelerated when it passed in front of the trio.
“You’re ruining our business!” shouted Candy. “That guy always picks us up!”
“All the more reason for you to help me. You talk, I leave, and you continue working. What do you think of the deal?”
Candy sighed, exhausted. “Tired of the abuses from you people. TIRED. That’s what I think.”
Quiroz leaned
toward Yoselin: “Will this go better if I talk to you?”
The short, chubby transvestite nodded sadly. “What do you want from us?”
“Private party last Sunday at the Metropolis. Who was there?”
Yoselin turned pale.
“Why are you interested in that?” Candy asked.
“What the hell do you care why it interests me? Were you there or not?”
“We weren’t,” said Yoselin finally, “but we know someone who was. She’s been in hiding since Monday.”
Quiroz blew cigarette smoke into the short transvestite’s face. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You know what name the witness goes by and where she’s staying?”
“Giselle,” Candy said after a moment.
“They say she’s at the Old Man’s house.”
“See? Cooperating makes everything easier.”
* * *
The Old Man’s house was a hideout two blocks away. It was an old, half-finished building without glass in the windows and facing the street. Quiroz saw a dim light coming from the second floor. He went through the open, dented sheet-metal door, climbed the stairs, dodging a junkie lying on the steps halfway up, and kicked open the door where the light was coming from.
A transvestite with runny makeup was resting on a thin and filthy mattress, a wig next to her on the floor, reeking of cheap alcohol and dirt. “Who is it?” she whispered, barely opening her eyes.
“Santa Claus! Merry Christmas!” Quiroz replied and approached the transvestite, who sat up on the mattress with difficulty.
“Whatever you want, but don’t shout, love.”
“This’ll be short,” said the policeman, opening his overcoat to show the 9 mm Beretta 92FS at his waist. “What happened at the last party for Daniel ‘Keys’ Basualdo, a musician with Kmaleon?”
The cross-dresser took a furtive look at the glassless window on her right and tried to make a dash for it. Quiroz tackled her just as she was about to jump from the second-floor window. He grabbed her by the armpits, and dangling her body in space told her: “If I let you go, you’ll fall on your head and crack open your skull. I don’t think you want to die today.”
“It wasn’t me!” Giselle cried.
“So what happened?”
“They hired me and other girls,” she panted. “They told us it was a party with the whole band in the VIP room. And that it would go on until three in the morning. Then they grabbed me and took me to another private room, just the manager, the singer, and Keys. I was with the three of them, and when we finished they started to argue.”
“What did they argue about?”
“I don’t know!”
“Think, damnit!” Quiroz shook the transvestite while she hung over the void.
“Something about leaving the band, going to another label—Keys was tired of the piracy. He used that word.”
“Then?”
“The vibe got heavy, and they told me to leave. I went back home and found out the next day on the news what happened to him. I got real scared, and I’ve been hiding here ever since.”
Quiroz pulled her back inside and left the dump.
8
The recording room walls no longer shook with sonic vibrations, and only a few instruments lay on the floor. It was nearly midnight when Quiroz stormed in.
“Montero, I know you’re here, come out, damnit!” he shouted, brandishing the Beretta.
The manager peeked out from behind the glass booth, saw the cop, and smiled. He opened the door to the room and let Quiroz in. Against the wall, next to the PC that continued to burn pirated records, the front man and leader of Kmaleon, Braian “Chimp” Ayala, was smoking a joint very calmly, as if a policeman wasn’t pointing a gun at them.
“Officer, you know we welcome you here, no need for such a dramatic entrance.”
“Shut up, you piece of shit,” Quiroz snapped. Still aiming the pistol, he groped for the Nokia hooked to his belt. “Both of you, on your knees, hands behind your heads where I can see them.”
“What’s with this jerk?” Chimp said, as if just waking up from a nap.
“It’s a game. Come on, do as the officer says and we’ll laugh about it later.”
“Shut your mouth or I’ll blast you,” Quiroz said, while punching numbers into his Nokia and still pointing his weapon. Camargo finally answered.
“Detective Camargo, excuse me for bothering you at this late hour, but I’ve solved the Keys Basualdo case. I’ll wait here with the two suspects for you to make the collar. Hurry.” He gave him the address and hung up. He sat down in Montero’s office chair.
“So? Now what?”
“Now we wait for the detective.”
“This is gonna be fun,” said Montero.
The next twenty minutes were interminable for Quiroz, who nevertheless remained calm, silencing his suspects with his pointed gun whenever they tried to exchange a word. Detective Ernesto Camargo finally arrived at the recording studio. He wore a serious and tired expression; he seemed to have aged ten years in the past week, last time the cop had seen him.
“Here I am. Can you tell me why the hell you got me out of bed? And what are you doing with these men?”
“Ernesto Camargo, how are you, dear?” Montero greeted him, still on his knees.
“Shut up, Alberto, this isn’t the time.”
“I called you, detective, because here I have Daniel ‘Keys’ Basualdo’s killers, the ones who threw him in the lions’ cage. And I’m sure they’re also involved in the murder of Romeo Portillo, another impresario.”
“What nonsense is this, Quiroz? Alberto Montero’s an old acquaintance of mine, very respectable, and I won’t allow—”
“Early Sunday morning, after the Kmaleon concert, the band had a party at the Metropolis,” Quiroz began. “Keys Basualdo didn’t go right away; first he was with his girlfriend Gladys Ponce. They had a tense encounter, they argued. Basualdo, according to Ponce, had been very nervous the last few weeks. And that night the conflict blew up. After his girlfriend left, Keys joined the party in the VIP room with the rest of the band, and stayed until nearly three in the morning. Then Montero, Ayala, Basualdo, and a transvestite who goes by the name of Giselle went to a private room. The four of them continued partying there, but these two knew they had to get rid of Basualdo. Why? Because Keys was fed up with Kmaleon and their manager. Montero traffics in pirated CDs by other cumbia bands. He set up a series of fake recording labels to sell the pirated copies through newspaper and magazine kiosks. This eventually caused a problem for Basualdo, and he decided to get out—”
“Keys was a jerk,” Montero cut in. “He was part of the deal, but he was a pussy. He had too many scruples. He said we were screwing other bands by ripping them off, that a friend of his, the Trinidadian singer, had lost his job because of our business. All because of copying and distributing some pirated records.”
“So they killed him.”
“The imbecile was talking about joining another band led by Portillo. We was never a straight arrow, but at least his shady dealings didn’t affect the ‘cumbia family,’ as that idiot Keys used to say.”
“Sometime that night they started arguing again and threw out the transvestite. Basualdo must have been totally wasted by then. They suggested going for a walk, to get some fresh air. They knew the zoo guard always fell asleep. Maybe they even used to walk around the zoo every night after the concerts—an irresistible attraction. Keys, who was completely drunk, couldn’t offer much resistance. They threw him into the lions’ cage and you know the rest of the story. Am I wrong?”
“That’s more or less how it happened. Only that the business about the sleeping guard came as a surprise. We decided to go that way to get rid of him because as we walked through the Palermo Woods where we’d planned to put a bullet in his head, we saw the guard was asleep. Chimp’s idea,” Montero said, caressing the back of his neck.
The other one barely responded; he simply offered a look of stoned satisfactio
n.
Detective Camargo scratched the space between his eyebrows with his index finger. “Very cute little story, Quiroz. Now go home and stop busting my balls.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Get the hell out of here.”
“But aren’t you going to arrest them?”
The detective took two steps toward Quiroz. “Listen to me, you nincompoop. Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want you to go over my head? Now you’re going to listen to me, whether you want to or not. This guy you have on his knees is the brother of a big shot in the nightclub union who is also a future congressman. You really want to risk your miserable life for this? For some nobody who ended up as lion feed? Don’t be a jerk, Chameleon. Shed your skin once more as you do so well, and go home to your wife.”
Quiroz was still aiming his gun at the suspects. Montero smiled and slowly began to get up.
“You heard the detective, Chimp, let’s go, it’s over.”
The policeman slowly lowered the gun and put it in its holster. He felt outraged and stunned. Camargo slapped him on the back. “Go home.”
Quiroz began to retrace his steps. He left like a boxer who had just taken a tremendous beating.
“You see, officer,” Montero said behind him, “killing a guy in this country and getting away with it is a piece of cake. Cake eaten by lions.”
Then he heard peals of laughter, though nothing mattered to him anymore that night.
PART III
Imperfect Crimes
The Golden Eleventh
by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
Barrio Parque
Translated by John Washington
You look out the window at the flowing path of the highway, smooth like a river, the highway down below golden in the same light that falls on you, on the golden cars almost lost in the light of the highway, just there and yet still so far from the exhaust in your head, Ariel. You see it like a line twisting on itself, opening, splitting, beautiful in this light so far below your room, the highway silent at this distance, which isn’t really so far but as far as you’ve come for now. Soon you’re going to be gone, far away, so far, Ariel, that you might even miss this place, but really you won’t miss shit, you think, as you keep looking down. You better start planning on new heights after spending hours looking down from the eleventh floor you’ve risen to: you’ve climbed, Ariel, all the way up to here, all the way up to this table with its line of amber-white powder, clean, the line of amber as if floating on the designer glass table. You’re happy in your bubble, concentrating on your work under the light, you’ve been living two days illuminated on the eleventh floor, and the clean and crystal highway golden like the line of coke on the table, floating on your own reflection, you see it as if weightless and suspended over itself in its smooth amber white, as if you were tromping through and catching little glimpses of ghosts in the Arctic, where you might be heading soon, where you might want to visit. Why not? It’s got to be clean, Alaska, with its pines and its ferocious hairy dogs pulling sleds. You’re going to steer your sled from up so high, red and yellow shooting across the ice after the dogs; and you’ll marry a white girl and you’ll live with her in the woods close to a little village, and you’ll chop down beautiful pine trees for Christmas even though you live in a forest, and what would you need to cut down a tree for? You don’t want to kill anything, not a single other thing, not even a tree: you’ll hang ornaments on the tree closest to the house so the colored lights shine in the whiteness. Is it really white? Is snow actually white? White like a sheet of paper before writing or white like the amber-white powder floating on itself, levitating on the table, enjoying its moment of weightlessness until it’s snorted? Waiting for you like your new Victorinox knife you bought for the trip, red with its white cross, right next to the silver Zippo, everything dry and bright at this height, Ariel, dry and clean and in order. You’ve gotten yourself ready, it was hardly anything, just what you bought for the trip, your new clothes: underwear, shirts, jeans, all brand-name—everything from the Alcorta mall. They were a little nervous when they saw you walk in, they eyed you, but then you put on their clothes and you walked out of there like a gentleman and the thugs didn’t even recognize you. You weren’t from the barrio anymore, they asked you for some change to buy a beer and you gave it to them and then went to buy your own German beer in Malba. And you thought, Yes, like this, more or less, this place full of plazas and museums where they treat you like a king would treat you in some foreign country. Aaaah, yes, like this, like in a movie, strutting down the New York streets, you’re going to start going for morning runs in Central Park because that’s how you live a good life, waking up early before work to run, even if you’re the president. But no, no, not the president, he lives in Washington and he’s black and you’re not, which is why you get to leave, because you’re not black, not like the rest of them, you don’t belong, you’ve been wanting to leave since you were born, which is why you’re going to get up and run and drink coffee from a mug out on the street in the middle of winter. Even when it’s snowing you’re going to take off your gloves and warm your hands on your coffee mug while the steam billows out of your mouth; and you’re going to stroll around like you’re in the movies, and you’re going to stay away from the gangs. You’ll be alone in New York, you’re going to start over, this is the last job you’re going to do and they’re not going to catch you. You’re going to live easy now. What luck you never got tattooed like everyone else, just the Nazi cross that you have over your heart. You’re going to have to work someday, you explained to them, but you’ll always be one of them, those who saved you from the prison tomb where you almost became the wife of the black thug of thugs, but not you, you’re the white-collar hacker, which is what you studied so hard in prison for. The ace in the sleeve of the Aryan South Americans when the bullets or the knives don’t do the trick. You’ve always been primed for something better—you knew it, and they knew it, and now there is your little suitcase with everything you need, the clothes folded like your mom taught you, a photo with her and your sister, just one photo, because everyone else in your life disappeared with every phone you lost or broke or every computer that met the same fate and died; all the other photos gone now, and they’re gone too, your mother and sister, in a shoot-out with the Peruvian narcos, asshole sons of bitches. Those sorry motherfuckers will see now, but what a shame you won’t get to see their faces when the metal rains down. But what metal? There’s not going to be any metal, and you don’t want to think of this now, you just want to know that your mother and sister, wherever they are, are proud of you, that you’re here breathing in that purified air on the eleventh floor of that seven-star mega hotel doing your work, though they probably wouldn’t approve of the work you’re doing now. Your mom didn’t break her back so you could be a crook, poor lady, cleaning the houses of rich folk who live just around the corner from where you are now. They let her in because she was light-skinned, even though she was from the barrio and they sensed that she had lived a tragedy: an injustice, a fall from grace; white people aren’t born into the barrio, they fall into it and always know that they’re not from there just like you always knew it. Your mom who took you to school every morning of your life and sat with you and your sister every night to go over homework, you could almost cry, but you can’t work like this. You stop to go to the bathroom, that beautiful marble you’ve been living with for the last few days, you wash your face and look in the mirror and you like what you see, it fits you, the mirror and frame and marble and haircut and shave and soft cotton of the shirt that shines a little bit, it all bodes a bright future, all of it, Ariel. Stay calm, you’re going to be just one more foreigner so you have to concentrate now. Maybe it’s time to cool it with the lines of amber-white powder floating in that light like the sun that is already lowering over the shithole barrio, and you pause, you feel remorse, that you’ve left now, that you’re so far away though you can see it through the window all twisted in broke
n lines, one house on top of another without any foundation. It’s almost a miracle they don’t fall apart as if God wanted us to live all piled on top of each other, as if lines couldn’t be straight, as if nature itself were against a clean line. The sacks of shit who first built one on top of another for the families spilling out as if they were looking to actually live a life; those sad shits living and breathing exhaust billowing off that awful highway that when seen from down below isn’t clean and full of light like you see it from above: from below the highway is a dark sewer swirling with exhaust and oil and trash thrown by the sons of bitches driving cars, flying from one place to another, looking down at the barrio on the side of the road for two minutes at ninety miles an hour. From here the highway is beautiful, and the barrio too, and it makes you a little sad that you see its beauty only from afar, from another place, when you’re already gone, with the barrio about to fall to pieces because it’s going to crumble and people are going to die tonight because that beautiful highway is going to fall right on top of the barrio even though they told you it wouldn’t, that if anybody dies it will only be by accident, that they just wanted the people to move, to shake their twisted towers of trash. Maybe it’s true or maybe you’re just imagining this craziness because you’re leaving and in leaving you feel sympathy for the crooked houses and shit-stacks held together by a miracle. Looking down and now feeling shame again, thinking of Arno and Jennifer, who loved you even though you always told her she wasn’t going to be your wife because you were going to leave that place and you weren’t going to be able to bring her with you, because you didn’t want to be from the barrio so you couldn’t marry a black piece of shit like her even if she loved you. And she did love you, but you never told her this and you left her and left Arno, your little dog Arno who took care of you when that thing happened with your sister and your mom; Arno who licked you when you cried and who curled up next to you when you couldn’t sleep, turning over and over. Arno who accompanied you when you went for your runs or who barked at Jenny, Arno who understood and went out to rescue you in the rain even when the whole barrio outside was just a swamp of mud and shit. You’re going to shit, with the light from the window flashing on the line of powder. Get it off that floating mirror, stop it from flashing at you, and cut a line. Make it as beautiful as the highway now—yes, that’s better, cut it in two, good thing you bought the Victorinox, which cuts a line for you all the way to the north, to the river, to the delta, which keeps you straight and fills your head with that golden light that seems to pause there above, between the highway and heaven, in your head here on the eleventh floor. High-quality product you’re filling yourself with and cold light and once again you think of Alaska and the white woman, yes, what you’re in the mood for, a white woman, right now, you could just call one up and your cock stiffens looking at the book that was left for you in which a number of extremely pale blond chicks look back at you from the cover. They told you you could spend as much money as you wanted. You checked on your computer but you haven’t figured out where so much money was coming from—$250,000 to spend. All you have to do is finish the work now, so you make a call for a blonde like the one who’s making you as hard as a baseball bat, as you like to think; you’re ready to take her hard as a pole like a gringo on vacation to La Paz, you just need a little more time to put the circuits in order, to get ready to activate, ready for the command to make it fall naturally, at the exact moment they decide to press the button, whoever they are. It doesn’t matter to you. There’s a bunch of them there today. You were trying to see at breakfast if there were others like you new to this life, living in the most expensive hotel in Buenos Aires, with a view of the river and the tracks and the barrio that’s going to shit. You chop another little line for yourself but you better go slow, this powder is like a venom—the purest product, the whitest white, even though it’s amber white, as if they bathed it in the light of a jungle at dawn, and not in the miserable kitchens where they actually produce the powder. You keep working, looking up now and again at the computer screen and the reddening sun out the window, almost all the way fallen now on this day when so much else will fall. And now you’re done and you deserve a big line, and you make it into a trembling zigzag to resemble the piece-of-shit houses and you laugh and pour yourself a glass of eighteen-year-old Dalmore that was put in the room along with the coke and the book of blond girls. Yes, they know how to treat somebody, how gorgeous they are. You take a swig and think that it was all worth it; you’ve never drank anything so good and you ask yourself why not just go to Scotland? All there is to do now is wait for the Aryans to bring you a passport that will let you travel to the US and England, wherever your sweet ass feels like throwing down another line of coke and having another drink of that golden whiskey, as if you were drinking the sun, the glowing highway—you toast the sky. Look, Mom, I’m drinking the same drink your grandpa would drink. My dear mother, we’ve arrived. Look at me, Mom. One more line and you’re hard and as indestructible as the Tower of London. You’d like to stick it in a blonde, look at your Big Ben and she deep-throats and looks up at you with those eyes bugging out with so much cock in her mouth. You open the book of blondes and your dick keeps growing bigger and bigger than it’s ever been and you call the concierge of the hotel and you tell him to send Barbie up to you. He tells you that she’s busy and you tell him to stop fucking around and send up the blondest blonde he can find or he can come up and suck your dick himself or you’re going to come down and stick him like he’s a chicken over a fire. And the guy laughs and tells you to give him fifteen minutes and you prick up even more and you tell him to get on it or else, and you know you have to come down a little or you’re going to end up strung out and alone on the bed. But you cut yourself another line and open the computer to try to figure out where all the money is coming from or who’s making the devices. You look around and try to figure out what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into but you find nothing at all. You note that the devices, twenty of them, are all under the highway along the shithole barrio and you ask yourself if the high-frequency sound waves that are going to scream out will indeed activate one of those bombs that cause enormous explosions. They told you that it’s not, it’s just going to crack the columns holding up the highway, which would be enough to have to evacuate the shithole barrio and demolish the whole thing, which couldn’t be, but why not? If they’re going to pay you $250,000, you know they aren’t paying you for anything good and it’s certainly no good to knock over an entire highway and you serve yourself another whiskey and someone knocks on your door and you open it nervously and see this phenomenal woman and you think that with so much beauty nothing bad could happen in the world and you unzip your fly and her eyes widen and she tells you that she has never, never, nunca in her life seen anything like that big daddy. And then she asks if you’re a porn star and you tell her to cut it with the bullshit and you start ripping off her clothes and she tells you that it’s going to cost you, that you’ve just added a thousand bucks for tearing her blouse, and then she realizes that for someone like you a little extra money is a drop in the bucket and you have her there in front of you and you tell her to shut it and she takes you into her mouth and you’ve never before had a blonde kneeling in front of you and you look down at her hair, her white ears, and you choke her a little and fill her mouth with jizz and she swallows. And you know she’ll charge you for that too but you don’t care and you make her walk over naked and you cut a couple lines and you fuck her but you can’t concentrate anymore. You’re thinking of the noise you’re going to hear when the fuses blow; it’s not going to be slow. You think the whole shithole will go up in flames. They told you that where the barrio is now, they’re going to build a paradise and you think that, yes, this is it, you always knew that nobody was going to dupe you. That you couldn’t have kids with her because black genes are always passed down and you’re not going to raise little black babies, but what the fuck? You should have taken Jenny up h
ere, you could have at least fucked her here and you could have tied her tubes, the goddamn whore, You damn whore, get out of here! you yell at the blonde who tells you, Okay, no problem, very nice to meet you. But you have to pay her now so you throw down some bills and she has to squat to get them. She tells you you’re a drug addict son of a bitch and you can go to hell and you shove her nearly naked into the hallway, you throw her shirt out to her and you get dressed and cut another line and put a baggy in your pocket and you pocket the black credit card and think that you could take Arno to Alaska as well. You go downstairs and tell the concierge that if anybody is looking for you, you’ll be back in ten minutes, and you start running and realize that a car is following you and you’re scared and you call Jenny while still running and tell her to get out of the barrio, to run to Retiro and to take Arno with her. You tell her to go, to take the route she always takes, and the people in the car are slowly getting closer like they’re letting you get all the way to the barrio. It’s time now. They stop and you keep running and you know that if the sons of bitches are stopping it’s because it’s safer to stop because what you installed is about to blow, but you keep running away from the hotels, now you cross the next block into the barrio and you see Jenny coming toward you with Arno behind her, beelining directly to you, and he jumps up and licks your face as if he knew that you had almost left him for good and you run to Jenny and grab her by the hand and pull her and she doesn’t understand but follows you because that’s how Jenny is, and the alarm on your watch sounds and you run faster and you don’t stop, never again will you stop. You leave flying at five hundred kilometers an hour and you’re not able to see the orange of the explosion because it knocks the three of you against one of the columns supporting the highway. You’re only able to hug both of them and think that you saved them and remember the face of the gringo, the boss of the boss of the bosses of the Aryans from the prison tomb. He was a Nazi like you, but whiter, he worked as a mercenary to the best bidder, sure, sure, the money that you didn’t get a chance to spend was from the furniture shops that they built in other cities, razed to the earth, just like they razed the barrio. You hug them, Ariel, you melt, embraced in the orange light of the explosion. They are all dead, Ariel.
Buenos Aires Noir Page 9
