Far South

by David Enrique Spellman

  Witness Deposition:

  Clara Luz Weissman

  I first met Gerardo Fischer in New York City in 1995. This was when Gerardo was close to fifty years old. Very charismatic. Head shaved, dark eyes behind rimless glasses, curved nose, square jaw. He wasn’t a tall man but he was in great shape. I was twenty-six and doing a masters in Theater Arts at Columbia. Gerardo was going to give a series of workshops on site-specific theater. And the places that Gerardo Fischer chose for his theater performances, I mean, no one else would have gone to.

  I’d heard about Gerardo from Angela Farini, one of the professors who’d worked with him in Rome. Gerardo had done plays at the Fosse Ardeatine caves; and another performance he’d done in the catacombs down on the Via Appia Antica.

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when Gerardo decided that we Columbia students should put on a performance under the arches below the Riverside Drive viaduct, above 125th Street. Surprised? No. But terrified? Yes. We all were. We had four student actors, Nora Jane Wills, Betsy Carrington, Paolo Cassini, Hank Adamson, and a lighting tech, Gary Bounds. Imagine this, six students and Gerardo, we came out of Dodge Hall on 115th Street and walked up Broadway toward Harlem. The four actors, two men and two women, were dressed in early twentieth century formal suits, tailcoats and top hats. Gerardo had written a play based on Fernando Pessoa’s A Little Larger than the Entire Universe, and the four actors had the parts of Pessoa’s heteronyms, four invented personalities each of whom wrote in a completely different style. All the actors stayed in character. Gary carried the portable lighting rig. He had the battery in a kind of canvas satchel slung over his shoulder.

  At 125th Street, we turned left under the elevated rail tracks and made our way toward the river. It was late, about eleven p.m. Across the river, the lights of Jersey twinkled in the darkness. We turned right onto 12th Avenue going north.

  Back then we had to step over pools of blood on sidewalks outside the wholesale meat warehouses. There were a couple of music clubs up there but I would have been afraid to go into them. We kept on, past the Fairway Store, toward 138th Street. In a couple of blocks we were in a kind of no man’s land under the Henry Hudson Parkway: steel and stone arches, human shapes in the shadows, behind the walls, in stone niches. Eyes turned up to look at us out of hunched bodies wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags, the sudden flare of a lighter illuminating two faces, one gaunt and unshaven, the other puffy with a kind of unhealthy sheen, both bent over a homemade crack pipe.

  A tall stooped black guy with thick curly gray hair and strangely well-trimmed beard waited for us at the first of the derelict warehouses.

  ‘Hola, Virgil,’ Gerardo called.

  I thought that was a joke. But no. He was our guide.

  ‘Gerardo, que pasa?’ Virgil said.

  Gerardo had already been down there. Virgil had set up Gerardo making a performance for his friends and acquaintances, for the lonesome, the loose and the mad. He’d guaranteed Gerardo safe conduct for us. And Gerardo trusted him. I trusted Virgil. But here, beneath the arches, what were we going to find?

  The iron door to the back of the warehouse had long since been forced. Old newspaper pages stuck to the damp stones in front of it, Styrofoam boxes and dead coffee cups, a scattering of crack vials.

  Virgil pushed against the rusty metal and motioned for us to pass him.

  Gary struggled with the portable lamp. He turned sideways to get the battery satchel through the gap between metal and stone. I followed him in. He turned on the lamp. The dank inner walls were a tumble of tags and obscene scrawls, magical symbols like some shadow world voodoo signs.

  Virgil eased past us into the brightness cast by Gary’s lamp.

  Then he reached up to help me keep my balance on the trash underfoot.

  Gerardo turned on a big black Mag light. The arches above us lit up.

  The beam of Gerardo’s flashlight held me like a shaky stage spot. Nora Jane came up behind me, her face pale in the lamplight, her narrow chin framed by the white wing collar of her shirt and the black lapels of her frock coat.

  ‘Jesus, Clara,’ she said. ‘What are we doing here?’

  I didn’t answer.

  Gary arrived next, also lit by the beam of Gerardo’s flashlight.

  Then Gary turned the big lamp on again to illuminate the cavernous brickwork. We were in an etching by Piranesi. Curved stone arches, rusted metal walkways. Muffled human forms emerged from black doorways at the back of the warehouse space.

  ‘Hey, the play guy’s here!’ Virgil called out.

  Framed by rickety jambs, backlit by dim lamplight, the people of this dark disused-warehouse world stared out at us, thin and ragged. Behind them, the interiors of their underground lean-tos were furnished with chairs and cabinets that must have been scavenged from the roll-off dumpsters on the street.

  ‘Hey, Virgil!’

  I couldn’t tell if the voice was a man’s or a woman’s.

  Beneath the gleam of our flashlights, dogs barked. Tethered in makeshift pens, they bared their teeth. They snapped at us. I was terrified. Could they be rabid? They lived here among the rats and bats and vermin of this hidden village within the city. The dogs strained against the cords that held them.

  Here we all were, the privileged from the mansions on Riverside Drive and these feral creatures, desperate homesteaders, with their dogs to protect them from the deranged and the predatory and the ever present rats that would scratch at whatever food chests they must have in here, competition for the scraps these warehouse people salvaged from the day’s garbage in the outer world. Then flame. A roar. A blue flickering light played over piled firewood: chopped up palette boxes, the crackle of dry leaves on sparking branches. The reek of the smoke was abominable. But it rolled upward and seemed to be sucked away by some bizarre microclimate managed by unseen ventilation shafts.

  Nora, Betsy, Paolo, and Hank stumbled into a row of white, upended, joint compound buckets that the lean-to villagers, far more men than women, used as seating for our theater space. Gary set the lamp on a tripod.

  I slid my arm into Gerardo’s.

  The stunned faces of Virgil’s people stared at the four actors lit up by the fire and Gary’s lamp.

  ‘Sit down here,’ Virgil said. And the six of us, puzzled, sat down on the six joint compound buckets in the front row, aware of the eyes of the dark-dwellers just behind our shoulders. We were in the seats of honor in the front row. Gerardo had turned us into the audience but we were still on the stage for the warehouse people.

  ‘This is our space,’ Virgil said. ‘We do the performing in here.’

  Virgil stepped aside and a tall black man with a shaved head and dark goatee stepped forward into the brightness of Gary’s lamp.

  ‘Okay,’ Gerardo said. ‘Now we begin.’

  Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez

  January 13th 2006

  Hours: 11:30 to 16:00

  ‘Gerardo’s performances were attracting interest in the press,’ Clara said. ‘After the late night show below the bridge arches of Riverside Drive, we did another on Randall Island, under the expressway, right next to the mental hospital. Gerardo became a name in a fringe, cult kind of way. Village Voice did an interview with him, the New York Observer. In Manhattan, Gerardo got to meet people who recognized a good news story. He knew how to work the press for himself, for the company, and for his private projects. He dropped hints that, back in Argentina, he might be able to identify the hiding places of former Nazi war criminals who were on the run. He knew that in New York, he’d have sympathetic listeners to that story. Somehow, word of Priebke’s presence in Bariloche got to ABC television’s Primetime current affairs program.’

  ‘Through Isabel?’ I said. ‘She was with an American in Bariloche some time in the early nineties.’

  ‘Anything’s possible with Isabel,’ Clara said. ‘What we do know for sure is that Sam Donaldson, ABC’s news anchor, actually went to Argentina. He m
anaged to get an interview with Erich Priebke, himself. Maybe Priebke thought he was immune by then, nearly fifty years after the massacre at the Fosse Ardeatine. But when that interview aired on American television, the program put the wheels in motion for Priebke’s eventual extradition in 1995.’

  ‘But what did this have to do with the bombings in Buenos Aires?’

  ‘Isabel, in Israel, was convinced that the same political groups responsible for keeping Priebke safe had a hand in the organization of the bombings of Jewish targets in Buenos Aires,’ Clara said.

  ‘But I thought she put the blame for the bombings on Hizbullah.’

  ‘They had to have had some help from inside Argentina.’

  ‘And you think Gerardo helped finger Priebke in Bariloche?’

  ‘I can’t be sure, of course, but everything about the extradition, the bombings, and who was involved in what, is still very murky and convoluted. Even now, local involvement in the bombing is still being investigated through the Buenos Aires courts; and you know that in Italy Priebke still isn’t in jail. He’s under some kind of house arrest.’

  ‘Okay. But why should anyone have wanted Gerardo out of the way now?’

  ‘Something is going on with Isabel, I’m sure, but they’re all very secretive about it. Isabel comes and goes between Israel and Buenos Aires. She has some kind of position working for the Israeli government, a trade envoy…’

  ‘I thought she was a peace activist.’

  ‘Sure. But she’s been in Israel for years. I don’t know how that might have affected her politics over fourteen years. You’d have to ask her.’

  ‘And Carlos and Ramón are in Buenos Aires.’

  ‘That’s right. Gerardo and Isabel have always been very close. The boys have been spending a lot of time with him, too…’

  ‘I spoke with Carlos.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Two nights ago, by telephone.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I don’t know. I spoke with Damien Kennedy, too.’

  ‘He was with Gerardo in Italy.’

  ‘And this Francesca?’

  Clara blushed for some reason. ‘Yeah, she’s there, too, in Buenos Aires.’

  ‘Could she be involved in some way?’

  ‘In the disappearance?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘She’s… well… I’d say a little unstable,’ Clara said. ‘But I haven’t seen her together with Gerardo lately.’

  I opened the folder and took out the packet of postcards and photographs. ‘There’s a card here from Bariloche and some more from Iguazu. Do you recognize either of these names: Araujo or Sadiq?’

  Clara shook her head.

  ‘How about this guy?’

  I brought out the photograph of the gray-haired man in fatigues that Isabel had written that she’d met at the lake. Clara shook her head.

  ‘I’d like to scan all these things,’ Clara said. ‘May I?’

  I looked into her deep brown eyes. I’m trying to find the guy who’s disappeared and she wants to archive his collection of photographs.

  ‘I’d like to keep all this for now. I’ll turn it over to you, later. Or to Gerardo when I find him… and you can ask him directly, okay?’

  ‘Do you know who that man is?’ Clara said.

  ‘Which man?’

  ‘The one in the picture by the lake.’

  ‘No, I don’t. On the back of the card from Bariloche, Isabel mentions a well-connected gentleman. I thought maybe it was this guy…’

  ‘Isabel might know,’ Sara said.

  ‘She’s back from Israel tonight, right?’ I said.

  ‘You could call her tomorrow.’ Sara wrote down Isabel’s number for me.

  ‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘Damien Kennedy told me that Gerardo and Francesca pulled a disappearing act one time in Rome. Do you think he’s done the same thing now? Because we’re wasting a lot of people’s time if he has.’

  Clara and Sara looked at each other. It had obviously crossed their minds.

  ‘Not this time,’ Clara said. ‘I don’t think so. Gerardo can be very unpredictable, I know. But he’s been missing four days without anyone hearing from him. He would have turned up by now, or called us, I’m sure, if he’d been able.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘maybe that’s enough for now. Keep me posted how the flyers work out, okay?’

  ‘I will,’ Clara said.

  ‘Call me if you hear anything at all. You’ve been really helpful.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  My hand brushed against my pants pocket where my wallet lay in safety. I kissed Clara, Sara and then Ana on the cheek. I made for the door, my car.

  Had Ana told Sara that she’d slept with me? I didn’t think so.

  I waved to them when I opened the car door. I dropped the folder on the passenger seat. When Rangel and I had first gone to Arenas’s house, Rangel had recognized Priebke’s photograph right away. This other character in the photograph was connected with Priebke and Fischer and Sara’s sister, Isabel. What were the chances that Rangel would recognize this white-haired guy with the shades and fatigues, too? Slim to none. But it was close to lunchtime. I figured Rangel would be in the office. I could catch him before he left to eat. Slim isn’t none.

  I called Rangel. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Not about that case.’

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘You remember what that goon looked like on Arenas’s porch?’ Rangel said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I don’t want to meet him again.’

  ‘I want you to look at a photograph. That’s all.’

  ‘A photograph?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’m at the office.’

  ‘See you there,’ I said.

  He hung up.

  I was at the office in thirty-five minutes, just past noon and the dry heat must have been close to forty degrees. I parked on the street. Looked around at all the tourists and locals on the sidewalks and I didn’t see anybody hanging out on the corner who looked as if they wanted to beat me with a baseball bat. I went up the stairway on the shady south side of the building. Rangel was at his desk. A pall of smoke hung in layers above his head, an ashtray full of crushed butts next to his cola can. His jacket hung over the back of his chair and his considerable bulk was draped in a white cotton shirt with sweat marks under his armpits. His tie was loose.

  ‘You hungry?’ I said.

  ‘Show me the picture,’ he said.

  I showed him the picture.

  The wry twist of his lips and the tilt of his head showed me that he recognized the image. ‘Man, you should forget these people.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Sandro Casares,’ Rangel said. ‘This guy is international. Much bigger than Arenas. Major Triple A. And a friend to very big fish. Used to be close to Lopez Vega after Perón’s death. He’s a legal fixer for ex-generals who don’t want to be brought to trial for crimes against humanity.’

  ‘How the fuck do you know all this? And I don’t.’

  ‘You worked for the Feds back in the day. On a need to know basis. You didn’t need to know what this guy was doing, did you?’

  ‘And you did need to know what he was doing?’

  ‘This guy ran everything in Ciudad Azul from high-class whores to high-class drugs for industrialists, bent government people and suspicious militaries. I’ve always been in private work. You need to know these people to stay out of their way.’

  ‘Where do I find him?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Juanma, you don’t find him.’

  ‘Is he still here?’

  ‘He comes and goes. Regularly. But listen, he’s retired. Forget him. He has a house in Mendoza. I hear he has a vineyard that produces fine wines. Leave the man in peace.’

  ‘Bariloche connections?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Rangel said.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why would Fi
scher have a photograph of this guy?’

  ‘Fischer had a photograph of this guy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No wonder the son of a bitch disappeared.’

  ‘It might be connected, you think.’

  ‘How’s your math?’

  ‘Where’s that storefront?’

  ‘What storefront?’

  ‘The textile store that Pedrito the Hook Matas rents to some Arab who maybe has the name Sadiq.’

  ‘Don’t be going there,’ Rangel said. ‘Definitely don’t be going there and asking questions about this guy.’

  ‘I won’t, I promise. Where is it?’

  ‘You’re a stubborn son of a bitch.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Opposite the Adidas Sports Store.’

  I pocketed the photograph.

  ‘How was your father?’ Rangel said.

  ‘He told me to lay off this case.’

  ‘He’s taking care of his beloved son.’

  ‘I’m going for a drive,’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t you take a vacation?’ Rangel said.

  I parked the Ford Executive on the street beside the sports supply store. All the stores on the main drag were closing for lunch. I went into a café and got a window seat in the air-conditioned interior. Two middle-aged men sat at an outside table on the other side of the plate glass from mine and blocked any view of my table from the street. I ordered a coffee and a Milanesa steak sandwich. The waiter brought the sandwich just as a tall Arab guy came out of Pedrito’s textile store and started pulling down the steel roller blinds. I bit into the sandwich and let bits of tomato fall into my plate. I chewed quickly. A dark blue Volkswagen Passat pulled up outside the store and Pedrito the Hook Matas emerged from the driver’s side door. He went into his textile store. Maybe Pedrito and the Arab guy were going to have lunch together. Still, I’d finished my sandwich before Pedrito and the Arab came out of the store again.

  The Arab pulled down the steel blinds over the doorway and locked them with a padlock at sidewalk level. Pedrito walked away from the store, west, toward the bridge over one of the rivers that feeds the lake. The Arab came around to the driver’s side of the Volkswagen Passat. Why was the Arab taking Pedrito’s car? And where was he taking it? Was there something in it? I gulped down my coffee, waved a ten-peso bill at the waiter, dropped it next to my plate and made for my car. The Arab had the Passat in gear and was trying to pull into the lunchtime traffic but nobody was giving him much room to move from the curb. I got into the black Ford and started it up. I edged onto the street, blocked the moving traffic on my side of the street which caused a lot of car horns to blast but I forced my way into the flow on the other side about five cars behind the Arab in the Passat who was now headed toward 60.