Holy City

by Guillermo Orsi

  He leaves the building and jumps into the Renault parked the wrong way by the opposite pavement. He switches the engine on and waits. Five minutes later Ana comes out. She is carrying her high-heeled shoes in one hand and seems to float across the street like a ghost. Carroza has already opened the car door for her, so she settles alongside him without a word.

  “I hope you didn’t hurt her,” says Carroza.

  “I don’t hurt anyone. I leave the pain and blood to the Jaguar.”

  PART FOUR

  Happiness is for Fools and Madmen

  1

  It is not for nothing they call him the Bear. There have to be a lot of them to take him on, to surround him like this. The ten men all have their guns trained on Oso, who stands there without moving in the center of the circle, staring at them one by one, memorizing their faces. All ten of them know that even if they pour bullets into him, Oso’s body has so much violence within it, in his past, that it is impossible to deactivate it like that.

  At his feet lies a pool of blood, with the lifeless Rottweiler almost floating in it. Oso crushed its head with a single kick, almost without glancing at it. The dog must have come too close without meaning to, perhaps it was even hoping he would stroke it: violence is a magnet, a centripetal force.

  “Dogs like him are very expensive. And affectionate in their own way,” the chief complains. He is sitting a couple of meters outside the circle of men training their guns on Oso. “He was guarding you, Oso, and much better than any of these thugs.”

  The weapons sprouted in the ten men’s hands as soon as Oso smashed his boot into the dog’s skull. The Rottweiler did a somersault, like a trapeze artist launching himself into mid-air only to discover the next trapeze is nowhere to be found. It crashed to the floor and the blood flowed out as it gave a last few spasms.

  “So what do we have?” the chief goes on, not looking at anyone in particular. He is comfortable in a big armchair that must once have been used by some rich guy with two surnames to read the property section in La Nación, the social pages devoted to other rich guys like him who were “resting at home” following their return by ship from Europe, weary, old, the decrepit scions of a society proud of having exterminated its young.

  “We have an international scandal,” he says, and his voice is the only sound in this vast room in the mansion, the stale atmosphere filled with agitated breathing, submissive silences. “France, Germany, Italy … incredible what the stupidity of a mindless cop can achieve, a crisis that must be on the lips of the entire United Nations, the Security Council and all the European parliaments.”

  Oso stares at the dog, as lifeless as he is inside. If any of the armed men around him makes a move, if a single finger tightens on a trigger, Oso is going to be aware of it even before it happens. They all know this and none of them wants to be the first, because they are all afraid they will be the last.

  “Everyone in the Western world has their eyes on us,” says the chief. “On the police in a banana republic in the south of Latin America. Police who are clumsy, inept, corrupt, unable to take care of their visiting citizens.”

  “Somebody betrayed me.”

  Three words from Oso, who until then had seemed prepared not to say a thing, at least until after he was dead.

  “You wouldn’t be alive if I didn’t know that,” says the chieftain of this tribe of crooks, usurpers in this setting where the noblest oligarchs once comfortably glided. “What did you expect? That those who hate you most would be faithful to you? That those who want to make an example of you to conceal their own crimes would make a hero of you?”

  “The minister promised me his support.”

  “I couldn’t give a shit about the minister, Oso, and the minister feels the same way about you and all the rest of us. No dog, not even the one you’ve just killed, bites the hand that feeds it. But ministers do, Oso.”

  “There must be a traitor.”

  “There’s a system, Oso. They use their brains—what you’re missing.”

  “I follow orders.”

  The chief sighs. He tries to catch his breath, to contain his desire to give the order to kill Oso then and there. He does not like the spectacle of death. Rooms like this one on an estate that was once noble were not designed or built as scaffolds but to receive important people: top businessmen, government officials, ambassadors even.

  “You should have asked me, for Christ’s sake.” The chief is losing patience. He is growing nervous because he can see how scared his henchmen are. He knows that if he orders them to kill Oso now it will turn into a slaughter and he himself will run the danger of being hit by a stray bullet. Fear is a fragmentation bomb, it has to be controlled, handled without it going off. “It’s four in the morning,” he says, more calmly. “That makes it nine in Europe, so there is still time. We have to distract them, make them look elsewhere, double the stake.”

  Oso concludes he is not going to die. Not that he is worried: he has fallen off his pedestal; they have him in his sights. But they will not dare do it now, because the chief, the man in charge here, who in fact is no more than the hinge between people like him and those who really run things, is thinking out loud. He wants to get out of the trap and he is talking of doubling the stake. And Oso, who may be brainless but has a natural instinct when it comes to violence, knows what he has to do before they say a word.

  “They want you dead, Oso,” the chief says finally, signaling to his men to put away their guns. “They would be happy if you did not come out of here alive. That way all the blame would lie with you and your hopeless feds. The provincial governor has already put champagne on ice so that he can celebrate the end of the scandal.” The chief stares down at the floor, refusing to look at his men. They have put down their guns but are still on edge. They glance out of the corners of their eyes at Oso, still afraid that any one of them could be the first this beast leaps on and crushes in the same way he did the Rottweiler. But Oso knows. He has more years and more experience under his belt than any of these thugs trained in the basements of democracy by indifferent experts who lack the certainties that still find a home in his black heart. “The minister leaves his house at eight, Oso. You know where he lives, the route he takes and all the alternatives.”

  “But the traitor …”

  “The traitor was only obeying orders like you, Oso. The loyal and the treacherous belong to the same sub-species of brainless humanoids. But this time, no mistakes, Oso. Make sure that between eight when he leaves home and eight-twenty when he ought to be going into the ministry, Argentina and the whole world are shocked by the news.”

  Oso feels a shudder of pleasure. He was expecting to face death, not this new mission. He is excited, as if a beautiful woman had slapped him and then asked for a kiss.

  “I want my Rerum Novarum back,” is his only condition.

  *

  They are sleek cats playing with a mouse. They push him from one wall to another, feel his ass, take turns to slap him. Four cops in the provincial station at Pilar. They have already forced his head underwater for longer than any normal person could stand, but Pacogoya was helped by the cocaine, it is his ally in this useless resistance, the steps on the calvary he takes with only instinct and cocaine to keep him going.

  The provincial cops are waiting for instructions. They called to say they had him, first to Oso Berlusconi, then to the other cop whose name none of them can remember. His number is in their plaything’s mobile. They know he is a cop because Pacogoya told them so, just as he told them that all the drugs were in his backpack. “Help yourselves,” he told them, “it’s free.”

  “Careful, all that stuff belongs to someone, let’s not be stupid,” says the man who appears to be in charge of the other three. He is a sergeant who believes in the institution because it protects him and his family with a doctor and medicine, a fortnight’s holiday at the seaside every year, a gun always at his waist, the feeling that he is more special than any civilian, those who fear
him due to the gun and the uniform, who need him despite their disdain for him.

  So they left the backpack on the inspector’s desk. He can decide what to do with it when he gets here at 8 a.m. What to do with it and with this Che Guevara lookalike who in the meantime they take turns to push around, fondling him like a young girl, until the giant cop drooling from the half-smile that never leaves him, not even in his sleep, announced that he felt like fucking him. The sergeant gave permission for them all to see what they could do to arouse the giant’s prick.

  “If you fuck him, it has to be in here, in front of all of us,” says the sergeant. That is why he is in charge.

  Disorientated, cut off from everything, including the feeling he was about to die when they stuck his head under water, Pacogoya stares at the giant cop. He begs him to fuck him, stares at him like a female on heat: if the giant buggers him that will mean he can rest for a moment in his embrace. He will take his warm prick in his mouth and between his buttocks, and if he closes his eyes he can gradually slip away, pass without any more suffering to what he knows is awaiting him for not stopping in time, for going first to San Pedro and then to Uncle’s place, for taking the drugs they left for him on Uncle’s bed, for handing over the tourists and thinking he would get his share, or that at least they would respect him as one of theirs.

  They came to get him only an hour earlier, but he already feels he has spent the whole night in hell. Oso Berlusconi’s instructions circulated round all the police stations in the area as if they were orders from the army. Strange that the provincial police take notice of what a fed like Oso says, something must be going on higher up: that was the last thought to cross Pacogoya’s mind as he stumbled into the petrol station with what he thought then was the last of his strength.

  “Take him with you, I don’t want any addicts here, they’re the worst,” he heard the manager tell the cops, even though a few minutes earlier he had called the hospital at Pilar rather than the police station.

  “Don’t worry,” the cop in charge told him, the sergeant who is now giving the giant permission to fuck him, provided it is in front of them all so that they can applaud if he comes, or boo him if he goes limp on the job. They are already betting on it: two against one that he does it, the sergeant says he won’t. “Ten pesos,” the sergeant says. “Put your money on the table; tonight I’m going to win twenty bucks out of Gómez’s impotence.”

  Pacogoya has done this so often for money—not a lot, usually—but this time he will do it for his life, for one small further slice of life, the chance to stay in this world, even though he no longer understands anything going on in it. He does not think he is going to die; he thinks he will let or sell his Recoleta apartment when they throw him out of the tourist agency, when he is put on trial for being a drug trafficker, for being an all-round idiot, for thinking he was something he is not.

  Gómez the giant steps toward him, toward this Che Guevara who has never set foot in the Bolivian jungle although he collects biographies of the real Che in French, German, and Italian—the languages the hostages speak, or spoke. Gómez the giant catches him as he is spun round like a ballet dancer in the Teatro Colón by the other three cops. He grips him with his enormous hands, where all the heavy fingers look the same. Hands that could never be those of a musician, fingers that crush two or three keys at once on the old Olivetti they let him use to draw up his reports. The sergeant and the two other cops laugh out loud. So too does Gómez, who always looks as if he is laughing, who was born and will die with that drooling half-smile on his face and those eyes buried in mounds of fat, and whose stinking breath forces the Teatro Colón ballet dancer to turn his face away when Gómez tries to kiss him and the others applaud, egg him on. “Go on Gómez, get on with it, get it out and have him suck it, go on.”

  It is a beautiful night, 4 a.m. in Argentina, 9 a.m. in Europe, where foreign ministries and journalists are busy composing protest notes and editorials, and the stock exchanges reflect the fall in value of shares in the leading companies run by the dead kidnap victims.

  If it were up to these four provincial cops, they would continue with their high jinks. It if were up to Oso Berlusconi too; he was the one who asked them to pick up this forty-year-old addict with the looks of a poster guerrilla. And Pacogoya as well would be happy for this to continue, as he is swept away into the void so painstakingly created all round the world and even occasionally in his Recoleta apartment.

  But they have to stop, because the other cop arrives. He is from the Feds, like Oso, and while he flashes his credentials in his right hand, the palm of his left is resting on the butt of his .38.

  “I’m taking him with me,” he tells them.

  “He’s Berlusconi’s man,” says the sergeant, mostly so as not to lose face in front of his subordinates.

  “Man …” repeats Gómez the giant, his drooling half-smile even broader. He raises Pacogoya’s right arm and spins him round again. “On your toes,” he instructs him, “and stick your ass out.”

  The others laugh. And applaud, a delayed reaction, because the .38 is already pressed against the giant’s temple.

  “I said I was taking him.”

  “Gómez, show some respect, dammit! Remember we’re public servants,” says the sergeant, though he is unable to wipe the genetically imprinted smile off the giant’s face.

  “Oso Berlusconi is involved in a matter that’s far too important for him to have time to come personally and pick up this turd,” says Deputy Inspector Carroza, with less menace in his voice. “Six foreign kidnap victims got killed; this isn’t a night for playing games.”

  The sergeant stands to attention in front of this federal officer he does not know. He is suspicious of him as he is of all feds, but he has heard something about it on the radio; he knows there is trouble outside and the last thing he wants for his quiet sergeant’s life is for something from the big world out there to get in and spoil it.

  Carroza can finally leave with his prisoner. They are applauded by the provincial cops who have regained their confidence and bid them farewell like a pair of newlyweds leaving church. “What a shame, he had such a nice ass,” sighs Gómez the giant. He has become the hero of the night, who was saved at the last minute from being put to the test. “I’d have buggered him if they’d let me,” he shouts to more laughter. They are all pleased at the fun they have had and the sense they have done their duty: they handed the prisoner over unharmed and with his ass intact. They laugh some more, looking into each other’s eyes as Carroza’s Renault pulls off, its broken exhaust snarling loudly, their smiles similar to Gómez’s permanent hilarity.

  The first one whose face drops is the sergeant, when he realizes that the backpack with the drugs in it has disappeared from the inspector’s desk.

  2

  Scotty has two children. He is thinking of them now, because of some association of ideas it is not his job as a cop to explain to himself. Both of them have been to university: the boy is a doctor, the girl an accountant. “Get the hell out of here,” he told them when they were of an age when he could talk to them and they would listen. “This country is on its last legs, get out while you can.”

  But they still live in Argentina. They think that the only problem is having a father who is a cop and is bitter because things went badly for him. He does not know how to explain to them that things have not gone that badly, that he is paid to hunt down criminals, to kill them if possible before a judge releases them to go on robbing and killing on parole. That is what he is paid for, to sweep up the rubbish even if he has to hide it under the carpet of police files. He is even encouraged to keep the change from his investigations, backhanders everyone accepts because their salaries are never enough to live on and their bonuses are pennies. Things have gone well for Scotty: he has not been killed, he has not stolen from the poor and he has wiped out at least half a dozen undesirables. The magistrates are all grateful for what he has done, even if some stupid prosecutor or other has
occasionally tried to bolster his career by making complaints that only the gutter press was interested in.

  But he is thinking of his children. Why should graduates like them have to share the world with garbage like the Jaguar? What have they got in common, what stem cells did they share, when did the differentiation occur?

  The pinko liberals say it is a problem of classes, of society, injustice. He knows it is not that. Scotty does not think of himself as right wing; he is sickened by the fascists who every so often seize power in Argentina, the people who own the cattle and hoard the grain, the big capitalists with businesses of dubious legality or who are mixed up with every kind of mafia; people who financed military coups, rebellions and the usual dirty tricks that rob governments of their power whenever they become uppity or veer too far to the left and want to share out a small part of the huge riches that they want to keep all for themselves.

  Scotty is not right wing, but he is no red either. What do they mean by revolution? They share the same vices, they also want the good life at others’ expense; for them as well, the police are the lowest of the low: they are afraid of them but do not respect them. As far as he can tell, torture was carried out on both sides of the Berlin Wall and when the Wall came down it was like a circus hit by a tornado: clowns and elephants, jugglers and lions thrown into the air, while the public started to flee West in panic. Many of them are still stumbling round a Europe that was capitalist long before they were, sleeping wherever they can, stealing or swindling, trafficking drugs or exploiting women.

  This Scotty who is of Irish descent and is Argentine by birth has got one thing clear at least: he would like to rid this city of animals like the Jaguar, to find a way to be free of them and make sure they never reproduced. Nothing, neither a society of classes nor a genetic defect ought to provide any excuse for a monster like that to walk freely on the streets the way he does, to kill when he feels the urge and carry the heads back home with him. He does not care what makes the Jaguar do it, although trying to find the answer to that has brought him hot on his heels. What is important is that he does it, he keeps on doing it.