I got in the car, started the engine. I’d go to sleep in a cold bed.
It would be weird asking Ana for money after going to bed with her. I could keep the two things separate in my mind, the money and the sex. But anyway, it had been Sara I’d negotiated with for the money. I’d have to ask Sara for the cash. I would do that. But first thing in the morning, I wanted to visit Pablo Arenas again. According to Carlos Brescia, Arenas had a real motive for seeing Gerardo Fischer gone. I wanted to see Arenas’s reaction when I brought that up.
Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez
January 12th 2006
Hours: 09:30 to 11:00
Rangel was at the computer when I arrived at the office. The sun slanted through the blinds of the window on the sunny side of the building and laid a grid of shadow and light on our tiled floor. Next to Rangel’s mouse pad, the crumbled and flaky remnants of the pastries that he’d had for breakfast lay in a small cardboard box. In his left hand, he held a Styrofoam cup filled with milky coffee.
‘Let’s go see Arenas,’ I said.
‘We’ve already seen Arenas,’ Rangel said.
‘New information. From Carlos Brescia, the boy who shot him.’
‘About Fischer?’
‘Fischer was with Carlos and Ramón when Maria Dos Santos delivered a threat to them to stop nosing around a family business.’
‘Maria Dos Santos? That girl?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So?’
‘I want to talk to Arenas again.’
‘You driving?’ Rangel said.
‘Yeah.’
‘You have a weapon?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay,’ Rangel said. ‘Let’s go.’
When I pulled up at Arenas’s house, with Rangel in the passenger seat, my car was the fifth in the driveway. Four guys in black suits and dark shirts stood smoking on the porch. I hadn’t expected to see four guys in black suits and dark shirts. I’d expected to find Arenas alone.
‘This wasn’t such a good idea, was it?’
Rangel shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t.’
I turned off the engine. My legs and back didn’t want to separate from the driver’s seat. My whole body felt heavy: some survival instinct that was preventing me from getting out of the car and going to meet the four men on the porch. It was as if they were in a different league of potential violence even than Arenas. To get out of the car had something of a suicidal air about it. I was conscious that to turn the car around and drive away would have been just as suicidal. It would have been to show fear. I had to lift the weight of body and get out of the safety of the car. The porch crew had seen who we were, and what car I was driving, and they could track me down and find me, and I would probably suffer if I turned around now and didn’t brazen out some kind of communication with them. They might make Rangel suffer, too. Rangel said nothing. His breathing was shallow.
I opened the car door and got out. The passenger side door banged shut. Rangel shifted the shoulders of his jacket. He was sweating and he rolled his head around on his shoulders as if to ease some tension in his neck. I could have hugged him: maybe later if we weren’t too battered and bruised.
When Rangel stood at my shoulder I walked along the dusty driveway toward those four flat expressions that did not change at all – not a twitch of a facial muscle, hardly the blink of an eyelid. Rangel and I stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, which put us in a distinctly disadvantageous psychological position, vis-à-vis the four hard-faced men in suits standing on the porch about a meter and a half above us.
‘Is Arenas around?’ I asked. ‘We were hoping to speak with him.’
‘You’re Pérez.’
It was the tallest and broadest of the four men who spoke. His face had a narrow roughness to it, like a piece of sheared-off limestone. You look at some people and you realize that they are capable of murder, that they feel a sense of impunity about this; that your own life is worthless to them. This was the face of a man who would probably enjoy inflicting pain. I was aware that there are many people like that in the world. Too many.
‘You’re the guy who hit on my woman,’ the tall man said.
A prickly chill crawled across my shoulder blades and whatever had been solid in my stomach turned into some kind of dark slurry. Maybe my complexion got just that bit lighter, too. I was aware of a very deep and permanent black hole that I could easily tumble into.
‘Who would that be?’ I said.
‘Maria Dos Santos.’
‘That’s not the way I see it.’
‘How do you see it?’ the boyfriend asked.
‘I offered a lady a ride to town. She accepted. That’s it.’
‘She said you hit on her.’
‘She must have misunderstood.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘We’re looking for Arenas,’ Rangel said.
The boyfriend turned his head toward Rangel.
‘He doesn’t want to see you,’ the boyfriend said.
A scuffling sound came from inside the house.
‘I do want to see him. Where’s that son of a bitch?’ Arenas appeared framed by the porch door. He rested his left hand on the doorjamb with the right hand leveled at me, pointing his finger. It was a little shaky. One of the dark-suited goons tried to ease him back inside the house. Arenas shook him off… despite being bent over almost double… as if he’d taken a few kicks to the ribs… and from the livid bruises around his eyes and jaw line, a few to the face, too. Who’d been beating on him? These guys? Some rival crew? Did someone else want to get hold of Fischer and think that Arenas might be able to help with some information? No one here was likely to enlighten me. I didn’t want to look or feel like Arenas did.
‘You know why you’re still alive?’ Arenas said. ‘Because of the respect I have for your father. That’s why. Now get the fuck out of here before I lose my memory. And do not fucking bother one second more asking me about anyone, okay?’
I assumed he meant Gerardo Fischer. He did not want me asking about Gerardo Fischer. But Fischer was not here. Of this I was certain. I was glad that Arenas had distracted the attention of Maria’s boyfriend. I was glad that he told me in front of these men that he didn’t want to kill me out of respect for my father. This meant that I could walk away alive and unhurt from the front of Arenas’s house if I just kept my mouth shut. I glanced at Rangel. He needed no more prompting than that brief eye contact. We turned around. We walked back to the car. We got into the car without a word. I turned the ignition. The car started up right away. Through the windscreen I saw that Arenas had already gone back inside the house. Maria’s boyfriend and all his dark-suited friends simply kept the hard stare on us: no, not on us, on me. Rangel might just as well not have existed.
I turned my head to look out the rear window: the welcome sight of the road, the dusty soccer field with its spindly white goalposts, and the red-tiled buildings of San Sebastian behind it. I laid an arm across my seat back. I reversed down the driveway. On the passenger seat, Rangel let out a long held breath.
‘Who the fuck are those guys?’ I said.
Rangel said nothing.
‘Arenas is crazy,’ I said. ‘I can handle him and his psychotic family, but these guys are in a different class.’
Rangel said nothing. He stared straight out through the windshield up the drive toward Arenas’s house. Back on the little side street, I got the car into forward gear and we moved off toward the town of San Sebastian. Rangel was having a difficult job of controlling the shakes as he plucked a cigarette from a fresh pack and place the orange tip between his lips.
‘You want one?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
He pulled one from the pack and handed it to me. I put it between my lips and pressed the control to lower my window. Rangel leaned over with a lighter. I took in smoke.
As I pulled onto the main street it seemed that all the little old ladies doing their shoppin
g, the kiddies on their bicycles, the taxi drivers lounging in front of their storefront office, and the young kids in replica soccer shirts, all stared into the car as I eased it toward Route 60. The sun blazed down. The paintwork on the hood was a blinding glare. The sweat that soaked my shirt was cold despite the late morning heat that prickled my skin through the auto glass. Nausea in the pit of my stomach. Rangel lowered the passenger side window. He blew out a heavy lungful of smoke that was whipped away in the hot wind.
‘I didn’t think we’d be getting out of there so easily,’ Rangel said.
‘Right.’
Whatever it was that my father had done, for or with Arenas, that debt that Arenas felt he owed to my father had saved me and Rangel from the hands of those ghouls in dark suits. Those men were capable of appalling violence. I knew this. That my father’s link with Arenas – and what they had been involved in together – was the cause of my immediate salvation might well turn out to be a burden that I would have to carry for the rest of my life. But right this second I just felt a sense of relief.
Rangel took a long drag on his cigarette.
‘We’re going back to the office,’ Rangel said.
‘I’d like to talk to Maria,’ I said.
‘You fucking what?’
‘Maria.’
‘Not with me you don’t.’
‘I’ll take you back to the office.’
‘Listen, we need a little divorce work,’ Rangel said. ‘We’ve upset a lot of people looking for this Fischer guy.’
‘You recognize the goon?’
‘Maria’s beloved?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Pedrito “the Hook” Matas,’ Rangel said.
‘The Hook?’
Rangel nodded. ‘You don’t want to know.’
‘I do.’
‘I’m not saying. It’s ugly and nasty and connected with butcher shops, you understand?’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘He imports a lot of coke from the north. Also marijuana. Maybe heroin. He has a storefront in Ciudad Azul. Textile store run by some Lebanese guy: Ali, Mohammed… who the fuck knows what the guy’s name is? Something Arab.’
‘Sadiq?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Are you sure his name’s Sadiq?’
‘You said that… not me …’
‘What about weapons? Bombs?’
‘I don’t know shit about bombs… I do know they got a sideline in currency exchange. Maybe more. I’m sure Matas pays off the right people. You don’t want to fuck with this guy.’
‘Kidnapping? Murder?’
‘Not beyond the bounds of possibility.’
I drove in silence for a while.
‘You want I drop you off at the office?’
‘I guess I do,’ Rangel said. ‘I don’t like to interfere in family business; other than the kind where a woman wants me to find out what her husband has been doing… or vice versa. That’s easy money. The hurt is all emotional… or financial… and it’s between them not me… I can deal with that.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
My father. Arenas had brought up my father again. I hadn’t heard from him about the files yet. Maria Dos Santos. I couldn’t just go knocking on her door.
Arenas was relying on me to give up the investigation. He’d assume that I wouldn’t want to offend my father; that I would appreciate that he, Arenas, hadn’t caused me death, or severe pain. I would appreciate that he had done me a big favor because of my father. I had put Arenas away for a few years but that had been an unavoidable part of my life as a cop. Arenas could forgive me that. I was doing my job for the force. It was within his rules. Now I was not a cop. I had no right to be causing him difficulties over someone he might, or might not, have been holding for ransom. Or had killed and buried. This was interfering in his private business without my having any pressing reason. I had to keep my business out of his business. It was as simple as that. Arenas assumed I would agree with him… that I didn’t need that kind of money.
Who had beaten up Arenas? Did it have any connection with Fischer? The boyfriend and his dark-suited goons were family friends of Arenas. They hadn’t beaten him up… probably… unless they were taking over his business. So did some rival gang beat up Arenas to get a hold of Fischer? No one had asked for a ransom yet – as far as I knew – so how much could Fischer possibly be worth that one gang of Mafiosi would risk a war with a rival group? This didn’t make sense. I thought my father might know. This was the second time that Arenas had mentioned my father. Continuing with this case meant that I might very well find out a lot more about my father that I didn’t really want to know. This much I knew.
I also didn’t want to have Pedrito the Hook Matas breathing heavily in my face. Nor did Rangel. I knew this. Back at the office, Rangel could take care of the easy work, the divorce work. It would probably pay more in the long run. I could talk as smart as I liked but I was too close to the business interests of people whose methods included extreme cruelty and violence – often against innocent people – and that wasn’t likely to be at all entertaining or funny. And my own father might know a lot more about this than so far he’d let on. For me, this whole affair was getting to be something personal, very personal, extra personal. But I couldn’t abandon this case. I couldn’t just go away and forget about the whole thing. I had no right to do that, whatever it might reveal. I owed it to those people up there to find this Gerardo Fischer. Did I? I think I did.
‘I’ll take you to Ciudad Azul,’ I said to Rangel. ‘Then I’m going to look for Maria.’
‘You are one crazy motherfucker,’ Rangel said.
‘I guess,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’
Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez
January 12th 2006
Hours: 11:30 to 13:30
I dropped off Rangel at the office and cruised the main drag of Ciudad Azul to calm myself down a little. I turned off the main drag and into the streets around the lakeside: the small cafés, the boutiques, the souvenir stores, the alfajores cookie stores, the closed-up nightclubs. Pure blue sky over the Lago Gran Paraíso, late morning sun glinted on the ripples stirred by the mountain breeze. The sails of windsurfers ballooned in whites and yellows and oranges. Why couldn’t I take a vacation like all these people down here on the lakeshore? Rangel was right. What was the point of talking to Maria?
Because she was the one who’d carried the threat to Carlos and Ramón and Fischer to lay off their digging the dirt on the Artemisia Adoption Agency.
What could I do? I could drive back to San Sebastian and look for her up there but I really didn’t want to run the risk of being seen again by Matas or Arenas quite so soon after this morning’s face-off. Maybe it was this sense of closeness to possible death that was conjuring up images of pure desire: last night’s lovemaking with Ana mixed up with the comic book drawings of Damien Kennedy’s Francesca. I wanted to see Ana again. Rangel would approve of that. Lie low. I couldn’t just go knocking on the door of Maria’s apartment in San Sebastian, could I? What would it get me… talking to her… really? Would it bring me any closer to finding Fischer? Gerardo’s body might already be in one of those concrete struts that were being erected to carry the new overpass across town. Or neither Arenas nor Matas nor Maria had anything to do with Fischer’s disappearance. There was no body and it was still just the third day he’d been gone and it was still possible that maybe Fischer had skipped out of his own accord just like he skipped out on Damien Kennedy all those years ago in Rome with some Houdini trick through a magic door because it had all got too hot for him.
I pulled over in the parking lot of a lakeside supermarket. I flipped open my cell phone and called Ana.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Can I come by?’ I said.
‘We’re having a meeting,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Temenos: the people of the colony.’
‘What about?’
‘Gerardo. What we should do next. I think you should come. I should have called you. The meeting’s at half past twelve.’
‘I’ll be there. I can just about make it.’
‘Good.’
‘You been thinking about me?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Maybe a little.’
‘I been thinking about you.’
‘So you should.’
‘I’ll see you soon.’
I hung up.
I was just about to start the car when I saw Maria in the rearview mirror. I stared at her reflection. She was walking with a slight limp. Even at this distance, the dark glasses didn’t hide the redness and bruising on her face. Her hips moved awkwardly under her loose fitting white cotton smock. Maybe whoever had done Arenas had done her the same way. Matas? I opened the car door and got out. I went around the back of the car. When Maria saw me step onto the sidewalk, she glanced around in a panic, the straw basket in her hand swung around against her knee.
‘Maria,’ I called.
She couldn’t just run across the road because of the traffic. She looked back the way she’d come and then she gave up trying to avoid me. I walked toward her.
‘Please, I don’t need to talk to you,’ she said.
‘Who did this to you?’
‘None of your business,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to take this. Maybe I can help you.’
I couldn’t see her eyes but her mouth twisted in a wry smile of utter contempt.
‘You can’t even help yourself,’ she said.
‘Did Matas do this to you?’
‘You’ve caused enough trouble in my life, you and your kind, now leave me alone or I’ll tell Pedrito you tried to hit on me again.’
‘Is that why he did this?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Is that why he did this?’
‘He saw me get out of your fucking car and he didn’t like it. You’re lucky to be alive. Now go away and leave me alone.’
She held a hand up toward me. My knees felt a little shaky. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to be gallant and take her to a café to buy her a drink and offer to help her deal with Matas but I knew that was stupid and would very likely get her another beating and me maybe worse. Cop instinct. The words ‘domestic violence’ came to mind; but for a man like Matas those words were wholly inadequate, and I knew that any interference from me would make things worse for her. I knew the way her family connections would operate to keep her from permanent damage, but her life, if it hadn’t become so already, would be colored by seven shades of hell. I wasn’t helping her at all by stopping her in the middle of a busy street in Ciudad Azul. Maybe Arenas had done something gallant for once in his life and tried to protect her and he’d got that beating for his troubles. But who am I to speculate about family business?
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