Holy City

by Guillermo Orsi

  An expert in survival techniques, Castro had managed to keep a mistress on the seventeenth floor of the same building. She was the widow of an air-force captain who had served with the United Nations in Afghanistan. He had died of fourteen stab wounds a year earlier while on patrol on the outskirts of Kabul—or more exactly, inside a whorehouse, where he was killed for the gold watch awarded him by the air force for his years of looping the loop.

  At 10 p.m., bored with staring at the silent television and of having to listen to all Rosamonte’s sentimental misadventures (and fearing that before midnight he might find himself obliged to reject her explicit invitation to have sex), Sergeant Capello calls Captain Castro’s apartment to tell him there is no news and ask if he can leave. He hears the sleepy voice of the captain’s wife answering, “Of course I’m asleep, it’s night time, isn’t it? But I don’t know where that bastard is. Sometimes when he can’t sleep he goes down to have a chat with the night guard.”

  The sergeant knows the captain well enough to suspect he does not go downstairs to talk to the guard at that time of night, but to climb into bed on the seventeenth floor.

  “Captain Castro, sir? Sergeant Capello here.”

  “I told you not to phone me here unless it’s important. What the fuck do you want?”

  “To leave, Captain, sir. Police officer Montes is giving the little birds their supper. They’re very quiet and no trouble. I’m bored up here.”

  “You’ll be even more bored in the brig if you leave now. Wait for your replacement as per your instructions.”

  “How long will you be there, Captain, sir?”

  “What the fuck is that to you?”

  “Just in case I have to report anything, sir. I wouldn’t want to wake your lady wife again.”

  “So she’s already asleep is she, that witch? She takes pills, that’s why she’s out of it so early. You’re right, call me here if there’s anything to report. I’ll be at this number until two or three in the morning, when I’ve cured my insomnia.”

  Captain Castro gives a squeaky laugh like a contented mouse that has found a cheese store in the cellar. The wife of the airman who died on a whorehouse mission in Afghanistan snickers alongside him.

  Rosamonte has removed the two prisoners’ handcuffs and gags. Silently, they eat the cold meats with Russian salad she has brought them from the nearby foodstore, together with a white wine she swigged half of before splashing the rest into plastic cups for them. She apologizes to Capello for not bringing him anything. She is not going to have anything either; she prefers to wait until their replacements arrive and then, if the sergeant goes with her, they can get a meal at a restaurant she knows where lots of actors go after their shows—it is open till 4 a.m.

  Capello shudders to imagine how Rosamonte’s breath will stink of raw onion and booze if, as he suspects, she gets heavy and wants to finish the night’s entertainment in a cheap bed nearby. As he was told on his first day at N.C.O. training school, the armed forces do not mix with the security forces. Not even rednecks like him.

  “What actors?”

  Rosamonte finds the sergeant’s question hilarious.

  “Why, are you going to ask for their autographs?”

  “Why not?” replies Capello, opening his briefcase as he does so. It is a plain black leather case, like those office juniors carry when they go to banks, or brokers use to carry their receipts and purchase orders in. Out of the corner of his eye he glances at the little birds eating their seed. They respond stealthily in the same way, as though exchanging a silent password.

  A crash startles them. The door between the two rooms has slammed shut. The building starts to sway almost imperceptibly.

  “We’re experiencing turbulence, please fasten your seat belts,” jokes Capello the aviator.

  Rosamonte smiles. A philologist would be envious of her ability to interpret silences, to read from the lips all that has not been said. She imagines the late-night supper, or rather, the late night without the supper, the room in semidarkness where the aeronautical redneck will undress her with all the urgency of someone putting on a parachute when his plane has gone into a nose dive. She will cling to him and whisper for him not to take off his uniform; the straps excite her, she loves to caress the military jacket and its gold buttons, then to zoom away with that feeling in the pit of the stomach that pilots get when their fighters lift off the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.

  Rosamonte realizes too late that the slamming door means that the Colombian and his mermaid are shut in the next room with their hands untied and without gags. The color drains from her face and she turns as white as the corpse she would be if the .38 that has suddenly appeared in the sergeant’s hand were fired.

  “Open the door.”

  “Be careful,” she warns him, sounding maternal. “It’s Oso Berlusconi who’s in charge of them.”

  The first thing Rosamonte was told at her police training school was to beware of anyone from the armed forces. They are clumsy and stupid. They might be able to hit a fixed target, but they fire wildly and kill anyone and everyone if they have to shoot in the street. And besides—she was warned—they look down on the police.

  “Open the door,” insists Capello, stroking the gun in his right hand like a cat wanting some attention. Rosamonte feels for the butt of her regulation revolver, but the sergeant stops her in her tracks. “Don’t try it,” he says. “Keep that hand still. Now for the third time, open the door. If I have to ask again, I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”

  “What’s going on?” Rosamonte asks indignantly. “Do you work for the drug traffickers? You’re nothing but a traitor. You open it: who do you think you are?”

  She is furious, not because she is afraid he might shoot, but because by now she is not so sure she would enjoy clinging to his jacket, exciting herself by stroking the straps crossing his chest, then lowering her hand until she finds what she is looking for. The wind rising from the wide, muddy brown river howls round the city like a pack of hounds. It whistles along the corridors of the Alas building, but the airman stands firm, used to storms in the sky.

  Rosamonte decides to obey and opens the door.

  11

  Where does love come from?

  Babies, in Spanish at least, come from Paris. Whining, opportunist exiles from Argentina. But where does love come from?

  She should not have thrown him out the other night. Three thousand pesos is not that much money; she has often transferred bigger sums to her expenses. She should have given him the money, or waited until the second fuck to be honest with him: “I cheated you,” she could have said. “God will repay you.”

  Where was love when she married her ombudsman?

  “Don’t complain,” Laucha Giménez told her. “You’ve had men. And if you lost them it wasn’t your fault.”

  That was a white lie; it was her fault. Romano had never hit her until the night he punched her in the face. He had not even been aggressive toward her; he worked that off elsewhere, in his work, where he felt no compunction about taking out criminals, even killing those whom he knew were just dreaming of killing a cop and eyed him greedily.

  Yet he always came home at peace with himself and without a single bloodstain on his hands. Like a general or a multinational company executive who cause massacres during their working day, then drive home to their families humming songs from their teenage years that are played on the car radio at that time of day.

  What unleashed his fury that night? Could she have been stirring it up unwittingly by creating her own world behind his back, a world in which a policeman, an ordinary cop like him, a bandit with an official badge, could never even imagine being included? And if that is how it was, with no love, only speculation and disdain, why did she stay with him?

  After his death there was no grieving. She was taken in again soon afterward, this time by her ombudsman. She met him when she was representing one side in a very complex inheritance case. A big landowner�
�s estate had to be divided up and there were three carrion crows—two men and a woman, young graduates from private universities, members of exclusive clubs they would do anything to keep their membership cards for. Verónica was representing the woman, the sister, who thought she was some kind of princess.

  In the end, none of them inherited a thing. Creditors started to appear like cockroaches on a sinking ship or in hospital wards at night time. There were more of them than the trio of crows could ever have imagined. The inheritance proceedings ran aground like the Queen of Storms and everyone, lawyers included, was left stranded. Verónica cried on the ombudsman’s shoulder. She told him she had been planning to use the money finally to buy an apartment of her own. She had already paid the deposit: who would have thought that an inheritance for land out in the pampas could become so complicated? Every inch a gentleman, the ombudsman took her in his arms and consoled her.

  “That wasn’t love,” Laucha objects, “it was a property transaction.” Verónica had just turned forty. The menopause had ceased to be a topic in women’s magazines and was tiptoeing round her like a specter. She was getting sudden flushes and unexpected pains which meant the ombudsman often had to stay in another room, resigned, unfailingly polite. “A father figure—he was twenty years older than you”

  “But I would have liked to have a child with him.”

  “With an old man?”

  “He wasn’t that old. Only fifty-nine.”

  “What kind of children can you have with an old man?” Laucha insisted. “Little old men.”

  She is certain he died because of her.

  “There was no investigation. A guy is killed in the street—and not just anyone, a federal ombudsman—and he gets buried with no questions asked. There wasn’t even an autopsy to remove the bullets.”

  “You’re a lawyer; you could have done something.”

  “I was scared stiff. On the night he was killed, I got a threatening phone call. Whenever I went out, for a walk or in the car, I was followed. They were never near enough for me to shout at them, but sufficiently close for me to feel they were on my heels, that they could kill me and disappear whenever they felt like it.”

  She lived with him for fourteen months. Every morning when she woke up she found it impossible to understand what she was doing there, but felt reassured and comforted.

  “As I said, he was your father.”

  A widow and an orphan, both deaths by shooting. An illness or an accident are shadows in a landscape of sharp contrasts. If they happen, it is possible to live on, make plans, think of something resembling a future.

  “But I’ve lived a war’s worth of devastating personal battles, Lauchita.”

  “And contemplating your navel instead of defending yourself.”

  She is referring to Bértola when she says this. Her theory is that it is no coincidence that Verónica chose an analyst to share her office expenses with. She cannot stand those charlatans: she prefers the people in her native province who offer a talking cure but do not pretend they are doctors.

  Laucha Jiménez is not called Laucha “the Mouse.” Her real name is Paloma, or “Dove.” Verónica is in fact the only person to call her Laucha, but she has to admit that her face and her behavior were mouse-like when they studied an introduction to law together. She was the only student with a permanent cough in the huge, silent faculty library. A dry, rasping little cough that got on everyone’s nerves as she scratched at the pages of books in her haste to get on to the next one. She was reprimanded and even warned she would be barred from the library because of this mousy habit of hers. “I can’t keep my hands still, I get cramp in my fingers. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to wake up one morning with little claws. It’s all very Kafkaesque,” she would say, laughing at this nervous habit gnawing away at her.

  The Mouse was born in Tucumán Province, in a town called Monteros that was surrounded by sugar-cane plantations and lemon groves, although what she most remembers from her childhood is the army. She was ten years old when the guerrillas started their rural adventure there, an adventure inspired by Che Guevara and doomed to failure like his had been.

  “I have to go.” Verónica gathers papers and her coat when she hears Chucho sounding the horn, then seconds later the entry phone.

  “You’ve changed your car at least, haven’t you?” Laucha is worried. A single individual and a good shot, according to Verónica. Did she see him shoot? No, it’s a joke. And she uses the same car every day.

  “It’s late. Why don’t you stay the night?” asks Verónica, brushing aside her friend’s advice. “I’ll be back at dawn, like a vampire.”

  “What happens if one of your lovers turns up?”

  “Switch the light off. All any of them want is a fuck. I don’t think they could tell the difference between us.”

  12

  The wind swirls round the wide, dirty pavements outside the Alas Building. Rain and cold squalls have ruined a night which only a short while before boasted a bright, round moon. Oso Berlusconi parks his gray Toyota with no license plates on Viamonte, round the corner from the main entrance. On this side are big locked shutters that were once the entrance to the tiny studios of the state-run television channel. The channel moved and now the place is shut up.

  Oso thinks they must be storing something there, but has no idea what: phantoms no doubt, and the skeletons of sets and bit-part actors who are either long since dead or confined to the actors’ hospice. In the days when they made television programs here, they were still in fuzzy black and white, the actors cried live on screen and singers did not mime to soundtracks, but sang out of tune or forgot the words. The television cameras had valves and were enormous, and often overheated.

  “To think Pichuco once played here,” Oso says, then explains to his extremely young companion that Pichuco was a famous tango musician.

  “I’ve seen photos of him,” she says. “A fat guy with jowls who looked like he was falling asleep over a tiny accordion.”

  “That wasn’t a tiny accordion, Bolivia, it was a bandoneón. And he wasn’t asleep, he was playing it. My God, could he play.”

  “Don’t call me Bolivia,” she protests.

  “Esquismii, Miss Bolivia. Wait for me here. Lock the doors as soon as I leave. If there’s any trouble, get out of here.” He hands her the car keys. It is useless for her to protest yet again that she does not drive. The car is armor-plated, Oso explains. “If you hear shooting, stay where you are. Don’t even think of getting out. Put the radio on, there’s bound to be some good music.”

  The night guard at the front desk does not seem surprised when he sees Oso’s imposing face filling the monitor screen. He has seen him somewhere before, or perhaps it is because he looks so much like a cop, he tells himself. Oso hardly needs show him his credentials and tell him he has come to see Group Captain Castro.

  The guard knows that the birdcage up on the fortieth floor is occupied. And that the little birdies must be important, because there has been a stream of federal cops coming past, as well as others, like Oso, who are not ordinary policemen.

  “How can any military officers live in this mess? The Albergue Warnes housing estate was like the Sheraton compared to this,” says Oso when the guard opens the side door for him.

  “They do complain about the rats,” the guard admits. He cannot be more than twenty and is from Corrientes Province. A quarter of a century earlier his superiors would have sent him to die in the Malvinas.

  “I think it’s the other way round,” Oso says. “I bet it’s the lady rats who complain about the officers”

  “Have you got an appointment with the group captain? It’s midnight.”

  “You don’t say! Does the group captain go to bed that early?” Oso is already turning his back on the guard and heading for the lift.

  Oso detests the way they grovel to their superiors in the armed forces these days. Before, when he was young, Argentina had conscription. Civilians were obliged to enli
st almost as soon as they were out of adolescence and were trained in the use of arms, combat practice, and keeping the officers’ quarters spick and span. They always had to serve them fresh yerba maté tea and could only chew on their anger until they were released. Now that there was no more national service, those who enlisted were human doormats, shrunken men and women who, unlike policemen, did not even risk their lives picking up the garbage of society.

  The lift climbs slowly, lurching upward. “If this is what their planes are like, I pity the airmen,” thinks Oso, “and I’m sure they are.”

  The lift door finally opens at the thirty-ninth floor. He wants to take the stairs up to the fortieth—because the lift does not go that far and just in case. If anyone is waiting for him, it is better to be able to move. His 9 m.m. Browning offers him fire power and there are some of his own people up there, so there should be no problem in getting in to greet the prisoners.

  The rain is heavier up here and the wind howls more loudly. God must be just outside. Oso has never liked heights, he has always had his feet firmly on the ground. He is a prize-winning marksman. He went to Tokyo once to receive a cup, with all expenses paid. Geishas going down on him, smiling all the time. That’s culture for you.

  He climbs the stairs slowly, on his guard. The Browning sits snugly in his right hand. A light that is not from the corridor is spilling weakly out of the room. He does not like that one bit. The birdcage door is wide open.

  He wonders whether Castro brought in some of his own men as backup, as he asked him to do. He does not trust that ingrate an inch. In fact, he does not trust anyone; that is why he is still alive.

  Oso flattens himself against the corridor wall and slides along it to the open door.

  “Sergeant … ?”

  He cannot remember Rosa Montes’ name. All he can recall is that she is a lesbian; she tried to hit on one of her female subordinates, but all she got was a slap and a complaint for misconduct, which Oso rejected. “She’s a good cop. They’ve punished her by sending her to public relations, but in the street she never took pity on those young hoodlums, she would shoot first then draw up very convincing reports afterward.”