Money to Burn

by Ricardo Piglia

  The Gaucho had a slight tremor, electric and almost imperceptible, but he explained it away with his schema of aerated and corporal humours.

  'We are composed of air,' he declared. 'Skin and air. Beyond this, inside ourselves, everything is all wet, wetness covers everything between skin and air,' he was attempting to explain things scientifically this Blond Gaucho, 'and there are some little tubes ...'

  This vision of man as a balloon was confirmed to him when he saw the guy he'd pricked with a darning needle deflate and fall to the floor like clothes dropped there at the end of the day. The guy, on the floor, like so much dirty washing.

  'We're made of spunk, air and blood,' announced the Gaucho, one night when he was flying on coke and loquacity.

  'He was full of words,' recalled and recounted the Kid, 'he'd swallowed a load of first-class stuff we'd lifted from the car glove compartment of a deputy in the National Assembly.'

  'There are these little tubes,' went on Dorda, and here he pointed to his chest, 'going from here to there,' and he fingered his way around his ribcage. 'Like, made of plastic, they are, and they empty and refill, empty and refill. When they're filled, you think, and when they're empty, you sleep. If you remember something, like back when you were a kid, it's because those things, memories or whatever, happened to be out there in the air, they just came along, didn't they, those things you remember, blowing in the wind, right there for you to catch. Am I right, Kid?'.

  'Naturally,' Brignone said to him, letting him be right.

  Highly intelligent, that Dorda, if very locked in on himself, with that problem of his, aphasia, that dumbness which meant he didn't speak for a month on end, communicating simply with signs and gestures, rolling his eyes to the skies, or pursing his lips to make himself understood. Only the Kid could understand him, that loony Gaucho. But he was the most complete and courageous guy you could ever wish to see (according to Brignone). There was the time he confronted the police with a .9 and he held them at bay until the Kid could get there with a car jammed in reverse and pull him out, in Lanús. It was awesome. Stock still, firing with both hands, serenely - bang, bang - even elegantly, and the cops shitting themselves with fear. When they come across a character like that, decisive, who doesn't give a fart, they give him respect. 'If there'd been a war, let's just suppose, say he'd been born in the time of General San Martín,{8} that Gaucho,' or so the Kid proposed, 'they'd have erected a monument to him. He'd have been I dunno what, some kind of a hero, but he was born out of his time. He has this problem about expressing himself, which makes him very introverted. Perfect for carrying out special assignments. He'll go and kill off anyone, and do it in the blink of an eye. Once, during a robbery, the cashier wasn't prepared to play along with it, thought it was some sort of a game, and he acted like a fool, the cashier did, in that bank, 'cause he couldn't see a gun, 'cause the Gaucho wasn't showing his weapon.

  'So he said: "This is a raid."

  'And the prick of a cashier, when he saw him there, looking like a mental defective, thought it was all a joke, and that he was fooling. "Get out," he said. Or "Stop fucking with me, dumbo," he might have said. Dorda scarcely moved his hand, just slightly like this, inside the pocket of his white coat (because he'd put on a medic's, one he'd taken from the hospital) and he emptied the chamber into the guy's face.

  The bank staff themselves all rushed to fill his bag when they saw him smiling broadly after stiffing the guy, the cashier guy. A very, very heavy guy, Gaucho Dorda, a total loony. They don't beat him up either, the cops, don't put him through their paces. You might as well kill him, for all the talk you'll get out of him.'

  'You remind me of a fellow I picked up once in the Retiro station, in the toilet - did I tell you this one, Gaucho? - a fellow like you, I was peeing, the guy was circling me, staring at my thing, circling me again, so then I began making small talk and the fellow held out a sheet of paper which read: I'm deaf-and-mute. So I did it anyway. And he paid me 150 pesos. He breathed heavily while he was shafting me, 'cause of course he couldn't say anything, but he let out his breath, exhaled, enjoying it.'

  'I'm deaf-and-mute too,' the Kid went on and burst out laughing and the Gaucho gazed at him contentedly, before he too uttered a disturbed little cackle.

  Dorda remembered it, and he also loved the Kid. He couldn't say as much, but he was willing to give his life for Brignone. Right now he made an effort, and got up. It was hard work thinking, but he was doing it and his mind was running on like a translation machine (according to Dr Bunge), everything seemed directed personally to upset him (well, him or the Brignone Kid). They spoke to him and he translated. For example, when he was a boy, he used to attend the church cinema, since he, Dorda, was from the countryside, and in the country cinema is a religious devotion. 'If you went to Mass,' (recounted the Gaucho) 'the priest would give you, when you left, a ticket (and if you'd taken communion, the priest would give you two) which got you in free to the parish cinema, which was showing after morning mass.' Dorda could get to see even a whole series of films and translated every one, as if he were on screen, as if he'd lived it all himself. 'Once we had to take him out of the screening, because he pulled out his willy and began weeing: in the film he could see a child urinating, his back to the audience, urinating in the night, in the middle of the countryside ...': deposition from the sacristan to Dr Bunge, included in his psychiatric report.) A devout believer, Dorda, always wishing to remain in God's grace, and his mother went so far as to declare that he had wanted to become parish priest at Del Valle (a village some five kilometres away from his family home) where the Brothers of the Sacred Heart were based, but when he was on his way to visit, a hobo stopped and took advantage of him, and from that time stemmed all his many misfortunes.

  At that moment, Mereles came out of the room.

  'What are you up to, dickhead?' he asked the Gaucho, who seemed to be in a dream. 'Come on. We've got to go down and make a phone call.'

  They'd decided not to pay out and to stuff everyone else. That was why Malito had determined to change plans and get him to ring Twisty Bazán. It was six o'clock on the Thursday morning. He didn't let him tell Twisty where they were holed up, but he sent him along to meet Fontán Reyes in a bar on Carlos Pellegrini and Lavalle, so as to keep him occupied while they shifted themselves to the other safehouse. He gave the order to depart and regroup at Nando's house over in Barracas. That was where they intended to wait until the new network was in place to get them over to Uruguay.

  Tall, skinny, with his vulture's eyes and a superior smile on his lips, Twisty Bazán was arrested three hours after the call. To cover himself, Silva said Bazán had been detained in the vicinity of the square where the robbery had taken place. He had a weapon on him. He said he was carrying the gun 'to kill the stray dogs that have overrun Hurlingham'. The truth is he was a police informer. Silva had had him hooked for over a year as a nark, in return for leaving him free to circulate the Bajo among the drugs and the whores.

  4

  Next day the newspapers carried pictures of Police Commissioner Silva in the act of identifying the corpse of Twisty Bazán in a bar beside the harbour. His pronouncements were both sententious and contradictory (mutually incompatible, even), as befits a perfect example of police logic.

  'In this country criminals fall to killing one another in order to avoid coming to justice. We are on the trail of the gang of assassins who robbed the San Fernando bank and their hours are now numbered.'

  The commissioner wore a crumpled suit and had a bandage on one hand. He'd not slept for two nights and had fractured his hand hitting Mereles' harlot, who had refused to cooperate and spent the entire interrogation spitting and swearing. She was only a kid, a real brat set on playing the heroine, and in the end he'd had to hand her over to the judge with almost nothing to show for his efforts. He'd broken a bone in his knuckle in throwing the first punch and his hand was now swollen and painful. He asked for ice at the bar and tied the cubes into a white napki
n to hold against it. Then he turned to glower at the journalists.

  'You wouldn't happen to think...' began the lad who wrote up the police reports for El Mundo.

  'I don't think, I investigate,' Silva cut him short.

  'They say he was a police informer.' The lad was really only a curly-haired boy, wearing his press pass on the lapel of his corduroy jacket, which clearly read Emilio Renzi or Rienzi. 'And they also say that he'd been pulled in and detained ... Who gave the order to release him?'

  Silva glowered again, holding his wounded hand to his chest. Of course it was he who'd released Twisty to use him as bait.

  'He's a criminal with a police record. And he was never detained...'

  'What's happened to your hand, police commissioner?'

  Silva struggled to find a reply that would appear convincing to the lad in front of him.

  'I put it out when I was thumping fucking journalists in the balls.'

  Commissioner Silva was a fat fellow, with proletarian features, a white scar blazed across one cheek. The story of his scar returned to him every morning when he looked at his face in the mirror. A madman had cut him one evening, just because, as he was leaving his house. The bastard breathed down his neck and threatened him with a blade, without realizing that he was a cop. When he did realize it, matters only got worse. The problem is always the other party's fear, the delirium of some guy who reckons he's been cornered and that there's no way out for him. They went on out on to the street and, before taking his car, the fellow opened his face with a diagonal slit. It was as if he'd been burned, he felt an icy fire, something slashed his jaw and he was left with a permanent scar.

  These days he lived alone, his wife had left him years earlier and occasionally they'd meet up and he'd hardly recognize her when she sometimes brought the children over. He watched them grow up with indifference, as if they were strangers; alienated from anything that wasn't about work. Silva knew that in his job you couldn't beat about the bush. And this time he'd kept his hands free.

  'This time there needs to be a swift outcome,' his boss had told him. 'You've carte blanche not to worry about what the judges may have to add to the proceedings.'

  There was a lot of pressure to bring about an arrest.

  'I'm up to here with journalists, and I'll have to call a press conference.'

  'You got any clues?'

  Commissioner Silva set off by car for Entre Ríos Street via Moreno Street, outside working hours. It was nearly nine at night. He drove calmly. The city was quiet. Crime, robbery, adultery, everything taking place, so you go about your business, you hit the streets and it all looks normal, has that false air of tranquillity that the other passers-by themselves bestow.

  Silva would often stay up until dawn, at home, without being able to get to sleep, staring out at the city through the window, in the dark. Everyone tries to cover up evil. But evil lies in wait around every corner, and within every house. He now lived in a top floor flat on Boedo Street and the lights burned in houses and apartments through the dawn, reminding him of all the crimes that would be front-page news in the next morning's dailies.

  Twisty's execution was the last straw that signalled the gang's retreat. The lesson couldn't have been plainer: they were going to kill anyone who stood in their way, or whom they had the good fortune to pull in. Nando Heguilein had remained in the rearguard, covering their final moves and distributing the money to cover the crossing to Uruguay. Everything was going badly and smelt of danger; the police raiding and requisitioning the safehouse on Arenales Street and then Blanca's capture - she was there in the house - enraged Mereles, who went as far as to consider staying in Buenos Aires to confront Silva along with all the other stoolies who spied on behalf of the armed police. Malito imposed a degree of calm: now, more than ever, they had to use their intelligence and not allow themselves to be provoked.

  Silva had picked up Fontán Reyes in the Esmeralda, a bar on Carlos Pellegrini Street, much frequented by tango players. The bar was close to the SADAIC{9} and you could always spot the young rising stars and the old fading ones, now retired from the world of entertainment. When Silva came in with his own armed gang, everyone in the place froze, as if immobilized inside a bell jar. That was the sensation he produced every time he went into a dive like this. Silence, slow motion, expressions of fear.

  Fontán Reyes was an elegant sort, despite carrying a number of excess kilos and the lit-up look of a drug addict. Silva approached and sat down beside him.

  'You seem to be nervous. Thaťs logical. Everyone turns nervous when I approach to speak to them,' said the commissioner.

  This was the way (according to the papers) he could figure out how the robbery on the Town Hall was planned. The lead came from the Executive Committee, via Councillor Carlos A. Nocito, thirty-five years of age, married, the fraternal cousin of Atir Omar Nocito, alias Fontán Reyes, employed as a Public Works inspector in the San Fernando district. He was a man of influence, someone given to granting favours in the borough, a typical example of a local politician who flirted on the brink of illegal activity. In another situation, he would have been a mafioso, but here he dedicated himself to petty business deals: bribery and protection rackets; the illegal lottery; underworld brothels. He was a member of a gambling den in Olivos, servicing their interests along various points of the coast, and was himself the son of don Máximo Nocito, alias Nino, president of the San Fernando Council Executive Committee, voted in by the Popular Unity party. Detained and interrogated, Nocito ended up finally admitting that he'd met with the 'ranchers' introduced to him by his cousin Fontán Reyes, and that he'd spoken to them regarding the assault on the district's wages officers. Their meetings were held in a luxury apartment on Arenales Street.

  Blanquita Galeano, Mereles' little concubine, is (according to the papers) a young middle-class girl, raised in a decent home and with the respect of her neighbours in the district of Caseros. Until she was fifteen years old, her behaviour was normal, she went to local dances, occasionally to her friends' houses, but that summer she'd decided to take off alone to Mar del Plata. Blonde and lanky, pretty and well- dressed, her figure had apparently impressed the son of a landowner who was living it up in the happy city. His name was Carlos Alberto Mereles. Expensive colour photos bore witness to their burgeoning romance. Then to its reversals. How long did it take Bianca to realize that Mereles was a criminal? One month, maybe two? It was already too late when she did so. At the end of August they got married. Or at least, she believed they did. Now the police have discovered that their marriage certificate was falsified and the ceremony itself a farce. Blanquita, the little sixteen-year-old girl, is currently in the hands of the Martinez Bureau of Investigations.

  The Girl finally confessed that Mereles and three accomplices had abandoned the flat on Arenales Street a few hours before the police arrived, and took with them the larger part of the money from the raid along with the heavy weaponry, but she could (or would) not reveal the gunmen's present whereabouts. According to statements given by the youngster, the criminals had to be nearby, everyone went in fear of them, no one would offer them assistance and Malito, the gangsters' leader, had decided to chance it.

  'He headed off to Tigre,' said the Girl, badly beaten by now, wiping the blood away with a handkerchief. There's a Polish guy out there going to help him. That's all I know.'

  The Pole was Count Mitzky, who controlled the network of smugglers and petty thieves along the River Plate; he'd bought all the customs officers and those working for the Prefecture, now accustomed to turning a blind eye to the clandestine operations taking place between the two river- banks.

  Silva ordered the Delta to be searched, going upriver as far as the edge of Isla Muerta, and then returned to the harbour bar where they'd found Twisty Bazán's body. No traces remained: Malito was two hours ahead of him.

  When consulted by the press, the owners of the bistro at number 3300 Arenales Street{10} said it was a daily surprise to observe what t
he people opposite were purchasing at all hours of the day and night. Whole suckling pigs, rows of chickens on a spit, quantities of bottles of the finest wine. Thousands of pesos every day, and they always paid cash on the nail. The neighbour claimed that it was a matter of certain 'cattle owners' with business interests down in Patagonia and estates in the Venado Tuerto region. The proprietor of an important musical equipment store on Santa Fe Avenue likewise insisted as much. Two gentlemen who used to live at 3300 Arenales Street had made an extremely large purchase a few months earlier. Tape recorders, portable radios, stereo players, a complete discotheque. The sheer quantity and value of what they'd bought required the shopkeeper's personal attention. So he went along to supervise the installation of these valuables in 'the most luxurious apartment you ever saw', as he later confirmed to the journalists.

  'You could see they were people with money, highly educated, with refined habits, and it was my belief that they'd come from the capital specifically to attend the polo championships on the fields at Palermo.'

  Two days after the robbery the authorities had revealed details of the raid. Although those who had conducted it were now fugitives, the police had detained seven accomplices and informers, including a Town Hall employee, a well-known tango singer, the son and a nephew of the president in the local San Fernando Council, and a minor army officer, a middleman who had sold on the arms used by the criminals. This was the epilogue to an unheard-of occurrence, in which seemingly honest individuals hired assassins on to the payroll to commit a barbaric act of pillage.

  Within the best-informed circles, the impression was deliberately given that the police were convinced the Argentine criminals had already succeeded in crossing over to Uruguay.

  'Those who fled' (said Commissioner Silva, speaking off the record) 'are dangerous individuals, antisocial elements, homosexuals and drug addicts,' to which the Chief of Police added, 'They're not out of Tacuara, nor are they from the Peronist resistance, they're common criminals, psychopaths and murderers with extensive police records.'