Far South

by David Enrique Spellman

  Maybe that wasn’t strictly true.

  ‘Did he hurt you, Ma?’

  ‘No, no, he didn’t lay a finger on me. I swear. He came to talk about you.’

  ‘Why’s he talking to you about me?’

  ‘He said he talked to you already and you wouldn’t listen. And he wasn’t going to talk to you again. He told me to make you see sense, Juanma. Or we’d all be sorry…’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Ma,’ I said. ‘I’ll be okay.’

  ‘Juanma, I beg of you. Do as he says, or something awful is going to happen, I know this. Believe your mother. I love you.’

  ‘Okay, Ma,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going away for a couple of days. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.’

  That was an obvious lie, the last part anyway.

  ‘I’ll see you as soon as I get back,’ I said.

  ‘Please, Juanma, I beg of you.’

  ‘Okay, Ma, okay, I’m going to hang up, now. I’ll see you when I get back, okay? Bye now.’

  She didn’t say anything. I hung up.

  I went back up to my room. I jumped when the telephone rang. It was the receptionist. He’d called to say that he had my air ticket for Buenos Aires.

  Extract from the casebook of Juan Manuel Pérez

  January 15th 2006

  Hours: 09:30 to 21:00

  My flight from Córdoba to Buenos Aires was at 10:30 am. From the way that the clouds had started to build up I feared that a thunderstorm would keep the plane on the ground. Air chaos in the summer is so normal that I almost wished that I’d taken the overnight sleeper bus. I had no wish to drive. I also had to worry about the weather over Aereoparque in Buenos Aires. Maybe I was in a worrying mood. I was particularly worried that Casares, Matas and Arenas might appear and want to force me into the back of a car and make my life not worth living… or simply end it after a short ride; something that might have happened to Fischer. But maybe Fischer had done what I was doing: close down all communication by cell phone or computer and get out of town. Except that I had to talk to people whereas Fischer did not. In the departure lounge, I checked in for my flight and walked over to the locutorio. I got a phone booth. I called Isabel’s number. She picked up.

  ‘My name’s Pérez. Your sister, Sara, hired me to help her locate Gerardo Fischer. I got your number from her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Isabel said. ‘What can I do to help you?’

  ‘I’m on my way to Buenos Aires. I’d like to talk to you… this evening if possible.’

  ‘This evening?’

  Surprise in her voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for the short notice.’

  ‘Do you have my address?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How about seven o’clock?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  I hung up. I called a cab company in Buenos Aires, told them my arrival time and gave them a false name to write on a card for me.

  The call for my flight came over the public address system. I made for security. I had no gun. I dangled a hold-all with a few changes of clothes. I threw it onto the conveyor belt to be X-rayed. I went through the metal detector and on to the departure lounge. The flight was delayed for forty minutes. I had a coffee and tried to read La Nación but it was difficult to concentrate on the news stories. I thought I might call my mother to see if she was okay but it was too early and I knew that she’d only be nursing a hangover. They called my flight for boarding.

  I went through the ticket check and out through the glass doors onto the tarmac. After a short ride across the tarmac on an air-conditioned bus, I climbed up the stairs of the plane. The middle-aged woman in the window seat next to me was a bottle-blond with a bright red, sharply cut business suit. She had good legs in sheer nylons and black patent leather shoes. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to a wild-eyed, disheveled private dick.

  I opened La Nación again. I turned to the sports pages. I read the build up to the big game: Boca Juniors versus River. I had a feeling that Boca would just about edge it. The report kept me distracted for a while but my mind kept straying back to the file that Matas had said Casares was willing to show me. Or was using as bait to get me into their hands. I still didn’t want to talk to him. But a file missing from the police archives? Fischer’s? How had Casares got a hold of it? What other file could it be? Well, if Arenas had managed to steal cases of weapons from a high security military base in Córdoba, what should be difficult about a big-time fixer like Casares getting one little file from friends among the cops? I couldn’t imagine that Casares’ willingness to share any information with me was a positive turn of events. ‘He’d talked to my father.’ That was Casares way of showing me that he could just about own me, if he wanted to.

  Aereoparque close to 1:30 pm. I steered my way through the chaos of the arrivals area and the taxi ranks. This is a busy time of year: people taking summer vacations, flying in or out to see their families. Just before I left the terminal building, I went into another locutorio and called Andrés, an old friend of Rangel. I always stay at an apartment he owns in the Federal Capital when it’s available. I arranged to meet him to pick up the keys.

  Outside the terminal building, a balding man waited for me. What gray hair he had was slicked back with oil. The mustache was sparse. His little pot-belly pushed his white shirt out over the belt of his gray suit pants. He held a card with the word Llamas written on it. I nodded to him and he led me to his battered red Datsun. He eased the car out onto the coast road and we headed downtown. The River Plate, gray under the low thunderclouds, glinted metallic where the sun’s rays slanted through the threatening sky. Container ships at anchor on the horizon waited for their turn to come into dock. A squall of rain hit the windshield as the taxi reached the port. We rode between canyons of stacked truck containers, and under gigantic cranes, their gears and cables enclosed in spread-legged gantries: urban sculpture, beautiful. Just beyond the port, the cab driver maneuvered through the snarl of traffic around Retiro station and the English Clock and down past the embarkation point for the Buquebus ferry that took passengers to Montevideo, Gerardo Fischer’s natal city. I don’t like beaches, I’m from the mountains, but I do love the sea and ships and docks. Maybe it would be smart to get on that big Buquebus catamaran and power across the water to Uruguay. What would I do over there? Maybe I’d find Gerardo Fischer.

  Just before the renovated warehouses of the Dique, we swung west onto Avenida Córdoba, crossed Nueve de Julio and made a left onto Talcahuano. We crossed Corrientes and pulled up on the corner with Bartolemé Mitre. Andrés was already there, a youngish-looking forty-year-old with neatly cut brown hair, a stylish blue windcheater over a yellow polo shirt and dark blue, sharply pressed cotton slacks. I paid the cab driver.

  ‘Come on up,’ Andrés said. ‘You can get a shower in the flat.’

  I guess I looked rough.

  He handed me the keys. I opened the main door with its steel scrolled bars and we took the elevator to the top floor. Andrés showed me the usual things in the kitchen that I was welcome to use, the bucket under the leaky pipe in the bathroom ceiling, and the new double bed.

  ‘If you bring any girls up here,’ he said, ‘try not to stain the mattress. It’s new.’

  ‘Where’s the iron?’ I said. ‘My clothes are all rumpled.’

  He showed me and then he left.

  I took a shower, trimmed my goatee, shaved and flopped out on the clean sheets of the new bed. For the first time in about a week, I felt safe. It felt good. I fell asleep to the grating noise of a horrible Cumbia Villera tune that sawed out of the apartments opposite.

  At six thirty in the evening, I walked down Talcahuano to Rivadavia, crossed the road and took the subway, Line A, west. I was on one of those old cars with the polished wooden seats and panels and the mirrors beside the doors. The train passed through the tunnels below Rivadavia: Congress and Miserere and Loria, and I came out at Medrano. I crossed back over to the north side of th
e street again.

  Facing me like a vision from a film set was Las Violetas, the pastry shop and restaurant where Ana had said she’d met Gerardo Fischer for the first time. Fischer must have brought Ana here and gone on to Isabel’s house, which was very close by. Through its big plate glass windows, the café was resplendent with pillars and mirrors and gold leaf and crystal, even if it was pretty much empty at this time of the evening. I wished that Ana were here now so we could have a coffee together. I looked at the empty tables half expecting to see her and Fischer appear from the ethers as if in a dream. But the café stayed empty.

  I walked on up Medrano on the other side of the street from Las Violetas. Angel Peluffo was a small side street just off Medrano. Isabel’s house was halfway up the street on the right, white stucco and an imposing armored door with elaborate paneling. I rang the bell. It took a while for all the locks to be opened.

  Carlos Brescia stood framed in the doorway.

  ‘Good to see you again,’ he said.

  His being at Isabel’s didn’t completely surprise me. He had that clean-shaven, well-oiled build of a gym rat, body taut under a tight white t-shirt and black jeans. His dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. I was glad that I’d ironed my shirt and pants up at Andrés’s apartment. I didn’t want to be looked down on by a strutting muscle freak.

  We shook hands and leaned in to kiss on the cheek. Behind him, Ramón waited to greet me; big-boned blond German stock with a trimmed goatee. He’d put on weight since I’d last seen him, mostly on his pecs and shoulders. His Hawaiian shirt hung loose over linen pants. Carlos and Ramón had the air of a pair of rugby players at the peak of their fitness. I was sure that they’d enjoy hard physical contact.

  Two women were in the back of the living room, a raised area close to the kitchen off to my right. They stood in front of the plate glass doors that opened out onto a paved terrace and a small garden that was framed by fig trees and latticed red brick walls. They were both in their late fifties. One was short and dark, the other blond and slim, and a little taller. They both used a good hairdresser. Isabel – I was sure that the smaller and darker one was Isabel – wore a finely tailored black blouse and skirt. A touch of eye shadow and blush brought out the high cheekbones. The blond woman had a few crow’s feet near the corners of her eyes and those spidery lines at the corners of her mouth that some women get when they smoke all their lives. She was smoking now. The skin on her neck had lost a little tone, as if her cheeks had been fuller once and she’d recently lost weight. She stared into the space above my head.

  ‘Juan Manuel, welcome,’ the dark woman said. ‘I’m Isabel.’

  ‘A pleasure,’ I said.

  I detected a faint hint of tobacco under her expensive perfume as I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. The blackest, sharpest eyes looked into mine as she drew back from me. She waved a hand back toward the blond woman.

  ‘This is Francesca,’ Isabel said.

  ‘Francesca?’

  ‘Yes,’ Isabel said. ‘Francesca Damiani.’

  Francesca came toward me and kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ I said.

  Her head pulled back, her eyes wide for an instant.

  ‘How come?’ Francesca said.

  ‘Your colleague in the theater, Damien Kennedy.’

  ‘How is Damien?’ The tone was a sudden deadpan.

  ‘Last I saw him he was fine.’

  Then Isabel eased between us.

  ‘Please. Sit down.’ Isabel waved toward the burgundy velvet sofa up against the wall and the two matching easy chairs. Francesca’s birdlike head shifted with quick movements, glancing here and there in the room as if my knowing about her caused her neurons to jerk. I sat down in an armchair that kept the walled garden in front of me. Francesca sat in the armchair opposite me. Her blond head swiveled right, left, right again. Isabel sat on the sofa flanked by Carlos and Ramón. She reminded me of Ava Gardner in Night of the Iguana.

  ‘You’re looking for Gerardo,’ Isabel said.

  ‘I am. I still have no idea where he might be. He might be in hiding. I do know he came to the attention of some individuals who have reputations for operating outside the law. I’ve talked to some of them. They are definitely aware of Gerardo. And Carlos and Ramón, as I’m sure you know.’

  Isabel nodded. Francesca’s face was agitated. On the sofa, Carlos clasped his hands between his knees. Ramón slid his hands under his thighs.

  ‘I found a folder with a notebook, and some postcards from the time when Gerardo Fischer was in Italy and you were in Israel, and then later back in Argentina,’ I said. ‘Among the photographs and postcards from you are some from Bariloche and Iguazu…’

  I pulled out the photograph of Casares.

  ‘You mentioned a helpful German,’ I said, ‘but it seems that you were referring to this photograph. This man’s name is Sandro Casares. He’s Argentine. How come you said he was German?’

  Francesca lifted her cigarette to her lips, drew on it, her eyes on Isabel.

  ‘Our amateur attempt at secrecy,’ Isabel said. ‘We tried to send messages that were ambiguous in case we were under surveillance because we were part of a Jewish legal organization trying to get information about the bombings of AMIA and the Israeli embassy.’

  ‘Casares was part of the bombings?’ I said.

  ‘Casares is a fixer for a number of far right groups,’ Isabel said. ‘He coordinated legal immunity deals for military personnel who were implicated in the Dirty War. He was in Bariloche to help Priebke avoid extradition after his discovery. We don’t think he had any direct contact, but he may have helped those who provided some support for the bombers. Like Pablo Arenas.’

  ‘Why Arenas?’ I said.

  ‘Look, after the restoration of democracy, Arenas was out of work. Here in Buenos Aires, Arenas did what he knew best: armed robberies, gun supplies, dope deals and kidnappings for ransom. He had connections with Nazis, ex-Nazis, neo-Nazis, anti-Zionists. He could set up safe houses, organize routes into and out of the country, and supply materials and weapons. He had all the expertise to help set up the team that bombed AMIA and the Israeli Embassy. He’s also done a lot of footwork… and enforcement for Sandro Casares in Bariloche, in Buenos Aires and around Córdoba,’

  ‘And you found this out…’ I said.

  ‘Through a Jewish legal group that tracks these things,’ Isabel said.

  Francesca leaned forward to stub out her cigarette in the glass ashtray on the coffee table. She sat back and let her hands flop into her lap.

  ‘I saw Arenas’s police file when I got him put away,’ I said. ‘There was no mention that he might have had anything to do with these bombings.’

  ‘If there was nothing in your police file about AMIA and the embassy bombings, it was kept out for a reason. Our legal group got information from the Israeli government. I don’t know how they came by it. I’m sure they have their means. Especially in the wake of the bombings.’

  ‘You were involved with the peace movement in Israel,’ I said.

  ‘That doesn’t mean I support Nazis or Hizbullah,’ Isabel said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘After the second bombing in Buenos Aires,’ Isabel said, ‘things got hot for Arenas. The police were rounding up suspects of far right groups. Casares got Arenas out of Buenos Aires. Arenas had family connections in the Sierras…’

  ‘A cousin of his ran the Artemisia Adoption Agency,’ Carlos said.

  ‘So Casares set Arenas up in Ciudad Azul. Arenas began supplying narcotics to the club scene around the lake,’ Isabel said. ‘He kept a low profile for years. But maybe he missed the excitement of armed robbery.’

  ‘And that’s how he met you two guys,’ I said to Carlos and Ramón.

  ‘We all fit the kind of profile he would be happy to target. Maybe he needed a little spending money, or just a little perverse fun,’ Ramón said.

  ‘And you took off a finger and piece
of his ear,’ I said to Carlos.

  ‘I didn’t have any choice,’ Carlos said.

  ‘And the reason that Arenas might have to wanted to get at Gerardo is because you two guys had been snooping around looking for dirt?’ I said.

  ‘Carlos told you about Artemisia,’ Ramón said. ‘Arenas was serving his time for the robbery but he was due out. Arenas’s cousin ran Artemisia. We thought that if we could find the agency’s records there might be something concrete to implicate Arenas with supplying children to the agency whose parents had died in custody, and that Artemisia sold on to other adoption agencies… sometimes in other countries.’

  ‘We found out where the records were kept and had a lawyer serve an injunction to the current owners of the agency to give up the records,’ Carlos said. ‘The records are still in existence. They’re being held in a storage facility. We’ve had them sealed and impounded while the adoption agency… with Casares’s help… fights a legal battle against the human rights group to stop the files being used in an investigation. The agency claims it’s a client privacy issue. We’re afraid that some of the more incriminating records might have been destroyed already.’

  ‘In the meantime, Carlos and I kept on asking around about Arenas,’ Ramón said.

  ‘Which is when Maria Dos Santos spoke to you, Carlos and Gerardo,’ I said, ‘and you decided to make yourselves scarce.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Carlos said,

  ‘We wanted Gerardo to come to Buenos Aires with us,’ Ramón said.

  ‘When we asked all those questions around town and we know it upset a few people,’ Carlos said.

  ‘You have to be careful who you upset,’ I said.

  ‘We weren’t,’ Ramón said.

  I guess I hadn’t been that careful myself.

  ‘We found out a lot about Arenas,’ Carlos said. ‘He’s got a hand in everything: drugs, guns and women. But he’s just a foot soldier. Those trades are all controlled by bigger business interests.’

  ‘Casares?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ Carlos said, ‘then again, Arenas and a local hood called Pedrito Matas made a connection in Ciudad Azul with a Lebanese guy who has Shia connections. It opened up a new line of supply of specialist goods from the Middle East. We thought Arenas might have been introduced to him through previous connections…’