"Thank you, Laura. Excellent reporting.... There was another killing in La Boca last night, just as violent but not nearly so glamorous. Our reporter, Nelsón Franco, has the story..."
Even after Sabina flicked off the TV, Beth continued to stare at the screen.
"They're the ones you were staying with?"
Beth nodded. She felt as if she were falling into a void.
"It's good you left them. If you'd been there you might've been killed too."
"I know." She felt herself falling faster now, spiraling down into fathomless space.
"I think you should talk to Ana right away."
Beth looked up. "I saw her just a couple hours ago." Her voice sounded distant and gauzy.
"This is an emergency, Beth. You need help. I'll call her. If she's free she'll come."
They sat with her through half the night, Ana on one side, Sabina on the other. When the resident milongueras drifted back to the apartment to dress for their evenings out at the clubs, Sabina hushed them, told them Beth was facing a crisis. They retreated to their bedrooms, then slunk out together for dinner.
"You're in shock," Ana told her. "Though you broke with these people, you were close to them for a time. You're allowed to grieve and also to feel fortunate you escaped. They were headed for disaster. You sensed it, which is why you refused to join them when they trolled. It's okay for you to mourn, but wrong to feel any guilt. The guilt's on them and on the boy who killed them. You played no role in any of this."
Beth began to cry silent tears. "Lucinda told me she was pregnant. She believed she was carrying a male child who would be the salvation of the nation."
"That's rubbish," Ana said. "On top of everything else, they were delusional."
"Yes...but a child was conceived."
"Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, it's over."
Beth nodded, wiped her eyes, thanked Ana for her help. "I feel like my Buenos Aires dream is shattered now." She hugged Sabina close. "Maybe it is time for me to go home."
Chapter Twenty
DELTA DEL PARANÁ
Marta was surprised by the way things turned out. Despite her best efforts at manipulation, Liliana Méndez refused to talk. More surprisingly, her dad, Ubaldo Méndez, seemed almost eager to betray.
Marta could barely believe her ears as the hardened ex-cop, famous for having been simultaneously chief of an anti-kidnapping squad and boss of a gang of kidnappers, spilled his guts when she and Ricardi questioned him at the safe house in Barracas.
"Maybe it's middle age," Ricardi told Marta, when they took a break. "He can't face the prospect of prison."
"Or maybe he's just a guy who has no concept of loyalty," she said.
The interrogation was conducted in the same squalid converted bedroom in which she and Rolo had questioned Galluci. Outside, the oil-slick surface of the Riachuelo River was dappled by a heavy afternoon rain.
Ubaldo, slouching in his chair, wearing his old-style cop's smirk, admitted it was Charbonneau who'd ordered him to set his goons loose on Marta.
"'...I don't care how you do it,' Father Charbonneau told me, 'just make sure the bitch deadends that damn murder investigation!' I chose Galluci and Pereyra for the job, figured they'd terrorize the shit out of you." Ubaldo squinted at Marta. "Turns out you were tougher than we thought. Galluci came to me afterwards, said 'that girl's got a pair of cojones!' So...win some, lose some. Father Charbonneau was damn pissed, I can tell you. Especially when you burst into his office the next day. 'Seems your goons weren't up to the job,' he says to me. 'Maybe you're not up to it either!'"
"Is that why you're so eager to testify against him?" Ricardi asked.
"That's one reason. I got a couple more. One thing's for sure, I'm not falling on my sword for any of those guys.”
“Which guys?" Marta asked. "Father C. and the rest of them. They'd throw me to the dogs quick as a wink...so why shouldn't I do the same?"
"Who's this 'the rest of them?'" Ricardi asked.
Ubaldo shrugged. "I got no idea. There's a group of them. They want to control everything. To them Viera's just another puppet."
"You're the one told Andrés Quintana to try and bribe me," Marta said.
Ubaldo sat up straight. He was a short guy, a lot smaller than his strapping daughter. "Who told you that?" he demanded.
Marta smiled. "We know plenty, Ubaldo. Which is how we can tell when you're lying."
Ubaldo smirked. He told them he had no idea who'd killed Granic and Santini. Like everyone else Marta had questioned, he said he'd heard the crocs had done it.
"Right!" Ricardi said, in his most sarcastic whisper. "Charbonneau goes to you when he wants Inspector Abecasis roughed up. But he goes to someone else when he wants Granic whacked."
"Who says it was Charbonneau ordered that?"
"What do you know about it?"
"Let's get this straight, Chief—I don't do murder. Abduction, kidnapping, intimidating witnesses, but not killing. I leave that to the military."
"That's some admission," Marta said.
"I'm just being truthful."
"You ready to tell all this to Judge Lantini?"
"I'm ready," Ubaldo said. "Get her to sign my plea agreement, then bring me to her!"
Ricardi motioned Marta to join him outside. They didn't bother to handcuff Ubaldo, just left him alone with Rolo on guard at the door.
Outside the house, they pulled up the hoods of their police slickers and took a stroll along the river. Even in the rain, the Riachuelo stank. Old abandoned boats, left to rust, lined its banks. Oil and chemicals oozed from these nautical carcasses, embellishing the water with a rainbow-hued sheen.
"Getting cold," Ricardi said. "Going to be an early winter." He turned to Marta. "What'd you think?"
"He's been fairly honest. Admitted he told Liliana to mess up the Santini crime scene. Implicating her couldn't have been easy. On the other side, he won't say who told him to call her."
"He knows more than he's telling."
"And being an ex-cop, he understands the game."
"Which means he knows he has to satisfy us. I got an idea on how to squeeze more out of him."
Back in the safe house, Ricardi told Ubaldo they'd decided to lock him up.
"You're not telling us enough. No deal until you tell it all."
"You want to know who told me to phone Liliana?"
Marta smiled: He knows all the tricks! Hold something back, then spit it out soon as we apply pressure.
"No more games, Ubaldo," Ricardi snapped. "We're not in the mood."
"Think I'm happy about talking to you guys? Turning on my only daughter? She's a good kid—tough, smart, damn good at her job. I'm not too pleased about her orientation, but that's her business. Times have changed."
"Get to the point."
"I got a call...."
Here we go again, Marta thought.
"...caller didn't identify himself. But he knew who I was all right. He says: 'We're going to dump a body by the Recoleta wall. Tell your daughter to mess things up.'"
"And like a zombie, you did what you were told?" Ricardi shook his head with disgust.
"Yeah, because I had a pretty good idea who he was. Not his name, but I knew he was one of the crocs. I could tell by the way he talked."
"So you passed the word to Liliana?"
Ubaldo grinned. "I didn't give a shit. I didn't kill anyone."
"Do something for us," Ricardi said. "Imitate the way you think a croc talks."
Ubaldo grinned again, then launched into an imitation of a tough military guy barking out orders. Though it was obvious he was putting them on, Marta thought his performance wasn't bad.
"Everyone tells us: 'I heard the crocs did it,'" she said. "Like we're supposed to accept that as an excuse."
This time when Ubaldo squinted at her, she saw something different in his eyes, as if he were cannily calculating whether to reveal something big. Ricardi picked up on it too. He glanced at Marta, a glance that sa
id: He's ready to divulge.
"Suppose I told you something very interesting that has nothing to do with Granic, but has a lot to do with the crocs? Like what they're up to, what they're planning and where you'd find them if you looked?"
"Go on," Ricardi said.
"The crocs I'm talking about could be the guys who took care of Granic. But this is bigger than Granic, bigger than Charbonneau though he may be involved. This is the most valuable information I have. The point is ..."
"You want a deal before you reveal it?"
Ubaldo nodded. He was dead serious now. "You understand me, Chief."
"You know the protocol," Ricardi said. "You have to tell us the substance first."
"Yeah, I know," Ubaldo said, lowering his voice, drawing them closer. Then he hesitated.
This guy knows how to play people.
"Suppose I told you," Ubaldo whispered, "there's a plan to bust Kessler out of prison?"
Ricardi leaned back, not wanting to show he was intrigued.
"Yeah," he said, "that's interesting. Tell us more."
"Some of the old crocs, probably from the same gang killed Granic, are planning it. They'll have help inside Magdalena Prison, sympathetic guards. They've been training at a secret location. They have guns, explosives, everything they need. I hear they're going to create a diversion by blowing up a power station and a row of electrical towers, then scoop up Kessler in a hijacked helicopter and transport him back to their hide-out."
"How do you know all this?"
"My wife heard it from a friend in her betting pool. This woman's husband's a croc. One night he got drunk and told her stuff. She blabbed about it to a couple friends. Obviously I can't identify her. If the story gets tracked back to my wife, I don't have to tell you what would happen."
"Why should we believe you?" Ricardi asked.
"You don't have to. You're detectives. Soon as we have a deal, I'll tell you the location of the camp. Then check it out for yourselves."
"Sounds like a trap, a way to embarrass us."
"How could it be?" Ubaldo actually seemed to be begging them to believe him. "What does it cost you to investigate?"
"Our time," Ricardi said, motioning Marta to join him in the hall.
"If he's got what he says, it's huge," Ricardi said. Marta agreed. "But what about Charbonneau?"
"Ubaldo'll testify Charbonneau ordered him to have you roughed up. If he's believed, Charbonneau'll be convicted."
"It'll be the word of a discredited cop against the word of a priest."
Ricardi shrugged. "Even if Charbonneau gets off on criminal charges, he'll be ruined. Then you bring a civil suit against him. You're sympathetic, he's not. You'll win."
I wouldn't mind that, Marta thought. And if Raúl knocks off Viera with his exposé, all the better. But that still leaves Pedraza....
"Ubaldo wants immunity for Liliana," Ricardi said. "She'll have to resign, of course."
"And settle with Raúl and Miguel Giménez!"
"Yeah, sure...," Ricardi agreed.
Ricardi stayed with Ubaldo while he phoned his lawyer, then the three of them hammered out a plea agreement. Meantime, Marta went to the Palace of Justice to present the proposed deal to Judge Lantini.
"It's a good agreement," Elena Lantini told her, after Marta described it. "Too bad you couldn't trap the priest. But I think Ricardi's right—even if Charbonneau gets off at trial, he'll be a ruined man." She peered at Marta. "Don't be discouraged. You can't win them all. I admit I've been troubled by some aspects of this. Still you've done a fantastic job."
"Thanks," Marta said, brightening up.
"If Ubaldo Méndez's information proves out," Lantini told her, "and you capture this gang of Crocodiles, maybe one of them'll break and tell you who issued the kill-orders on Granic and Santini. Of course there'll be no immunity for Ubaldo if his story doesn't prove out. But I don't see an old ex-cop playing games on something like this. He'd be putting his life at risk."
It had been a grueling night followed by a punishing day.
By the time she got back to her apartment, she was exhausted. She also felt dirty. Not only had she shot someone, she'd spent the day making deals with scum. She'd also taken a heavy dose of verbal abuse from Liliana. How she'd wanted to smack that bitch! Or, better, shoot out her other knee!
One thing she was happy about: that when she'd fired at Liliana, she hadn't shot to kill, thus disregarding a cardinal rule of police training: When your life's in jeopardy, use overwhelming force.
She knew her life had been in jeopardy. Liliana had been determined to throw her off that roof. She might have done it too if the shot to the knee hadn't dropped her.
A little past 5:00 a.m. her phone rang, waking her up from a deep sleep.
It was Raúl.
"Sorry to wake you, Marta, but I couldn't resist. My intern just drove by your building. She left a copy of this morning's El Faro on your steps. Take a look. I think you'll be pleased."
He hung up before she could complain.
She lay back on her bed and smiled. Raúl's enthusiasm charmed her. He was brave, she thought, a truly heroic kid. His ordeal hadn't broken him; if anything it had emboldened him.
She slipped on a robe, went downstairs. The newspaper was, as promised, on the front steps of her building. Unfolding it, she glanced at the front page. Even under the low wattage bulb that lit the staircase, the huge photo leapt out. It showed a pretty young woman, face battered, both eyes blackened, nose squashed, cuts on her lips. The headline was sensational:
"HE TOLD ME HE'D TEACH ME A LESSON!" SAYS
FINANCE MINISTER VIERA'S BATTERED SPOUSE
The accompanying story, bearing Raúl's byline, was a devastating portrait of José Viera, depicting him as a man whose brutal temper belied his smooth facade. Raúl and his intern, it seemed, had induced Graciela Viera to tell all, even obtaining her reaction to Father Hugo Charbonneau's plea that she keep quiet until after the election ("The piercing look in the priest's eyes was clearly intended to frighten me into compliance....")
There was also an explanatory box in the lower right-hand corner of the page:
Investigative reporter, Raúl Vargas, is currently in the hospital recovering from a brutal beating administered by a ranking officer in the Federal Police in retaliation for an investigative report recently published here. In tomorrow morning's edition, Mr. Vargas will describe the beating and its aftermath.
Marta was elated; she knew Shoshana and her friends would be too. The story about Graciela would finish off Viera's campaign even before he officially announced.
"They're training at a secret camp on an island in the Delta del Paraná," Ubaldo told them, after he finished swearing out his confession before Judge Lantini.
Marta and Rolo exchanged a glance. The safe house interrogation room felt oppressively small after the grandeur of Judge Lantini's office.
"That's all you got?" Ricardi sneered.
"Not enough?" Ubaldo asked. He seemed unnerved by Ricardi's reaction, and also, it seemed to Marta, at having betrayed such an important secret. He must know, she thought, that now there was no turning back.
"There're hundreds of little islands in the delta."
"Over three thousand," Marta added.
"So which one are you talking about?" Ricardi demanded.
"Don't know. Never been there." Ubaldo looked severely stressed. "This island's privately owned, I know that. A single property, not shared. There's a big villa on it with outbuildings behind. The crocs live in the outbuildings. According to my wife's friend, there're about a dozen of them, all hard-core fanatics. They have a firing range, trenches, a watch tower, a model of Magdalena prison, and they train hard every day. My wife's friend says this group has done lots of bad stuff. To me that means they're probably the ones who knocked off Granic."
"Yeah...we'll look into it," Ricardi told him. "Meantime, we'll hold you here in protective custody."
Ubaldo was outraged. "Don't I get
to visit my daughter?"
"Not till we check your story out."
This time they placed him in one of the closet holding cells, before they went downstairs to talk.
"In a crazy way, you know, a plan like that makes sense," Ricardi said, as the three of them assembled in the headquarters room with Marta's flow-chart mounted on the wall.
"How do you mean?" Rolo asked.
"If they manage to extract Kessler from prison, they'll provoke a crisis. That could be enough to bring down the caretaker government."
"Then what?"
Ricardi shrugged. "Kessler and his people thrive on confusion. In a situation like that, people crave a strong leader."
Marta nodded. "A man on a white horse. And haven't we already had our fair share of those?"
Ricardi scratched his shaved skull.
"A planned prison bust-out isn't a homicide case," he said. "Still our informant says the guys involved could be the same ones killed Granic. So following up, we discard the bust-out story, but give credence to information that the killers we're after are operating from this island. No need to pass this on. Far as we're concerned this is just another development in a highly complex, unsolved murder case."
Marta smiled. This was vintage Ricardi. And she knew it wasn't just because he wanted to gain prestige for the Homicide Division. He also wanted to keep Ubaldo's tip between the three of them because he knew that if he passed it on there was an excellent chance word would get back to the conspirators, the island would be evacuated and the bust-out operation abandoned.
"How do you want to handle this?" Ricardi asked her.
"Rolo and I'll get property maps of the Delta," she said, "then narrow our search to one-owner islands large enough to conceal a training area. Then narrow it further to islands with a single large villa and outbuildings. Then requisition a police chopper, fly overhead and take a look. Not too low or too obvious, just a casual sweep-over to see what's what."
City of Knives Page 34
