Betty Boo

by Claudia Piñeiro

  Neither Nurit nor the Crime boy knows this, but just arrived at Chazarreta’s house is the attorney, whose first complaint is that the crime scene is too busy. Milling around Chazarreta’s body are: a group of police officers from the local station and their chief, Comisario Venturini, who, amid much friendly back-slapping, is explaining to the attorney that he was in a meeting at work when a colleague received the call informing him about the incident and he didn’t want to miss the event; two more police chiefs from nearby stations who somehow got to hear about the case (they don’t say how); the emergency ambulance crew that was contacted by guards from La Maravillosa, in line with the club’s policy that they be summoned immediately following every verified accident – the very same service they called when Gloria Echagüe died; the homicide team, which is already drawing up a summary report; the forensic team, which arrived minutes before the attorney; a photographer; a planimetric surveyor; doctors; a biochemist; tracker dogs; a ballistics expert (who’s present even though a throat-slitting may not seem to require it, in case there’s also some stray bullet); and a neighbour from the club, acting as a witness and signatory to the summary report. The Criminal Procedure Code for the province of Buenos Aires doesn’t require a witness, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, said one of the police chiefs, and the others agreed. This case is going to have even more repercussions than the wife’s, and we don’t all want to end up with egg on our faces again. Hey boys, couldn’t you think of anyone else to call? jokes the attorney as he makes his way towards the body. He walks around the armchair, studying Chazarreta’s corpse from different angles, then after establishing which police chief is in charge, asks this man a few questions while observing how the neighbour who’s been called in as a witness – who’s nervous and reluctant to look at the body – drops the wrapper of a sweet he’s about to eat onto the floor. The attorney points at the paper and says to one of the dog-handlers: Pick up that piece of evidence, it may lead us to the killer. The neighbour, nearly choking on his sweet, immediately bends down to pick up the paper.

  Nurit Iscar spreads another slice of toast with cream cheese and low-calorie jam, puts it on the plate, then picks up the television remote and looks for a news channel. She skips from one to the next, trying to find something worth watching. The National Lottery results don’t interest her; a raid on a sports shop less so; the Buenos Aires to Montevideo regatta not at all. But on Crónica TV, a red banner across the screen chills her: Breaking News, Pedro Chazarreta found dead. Nurit has to read it twice. Pedro Chazarreta found dead. Dead. And the newsreader’s voice says: The widower of Gloria Echagüe has died in tragically similar circumstances to his wife, from a fatal wound to his neck. Nurit calls Paula Sibona because she needs to tell this news to someone, but there’s no one home and she doesn’t leave a message. She can’t reach Carmen Terrada, either. She scours the channels for more information, going from one to the next, back to the first, up and down the schedule, finding nothing. Minutes later, in his office, his back to the Crime boy (who’s glued to his BlackBerry again), Rinaldi is doing the same as Nurit, but with better luck because even in those few minutes the news has spread to every channel. And this despite the fact that no journalist has been able to get into Chazarreta’s private neighbourhood. The only mobile unit to get there so far is outside La Maravillosa, transmitting what little information can be gleaned at the barrier. These are the club regulations, the security officer keeps explaining to the reporter who’s demanding to be let in. Rinaldi goes to a news channel that belongs to the same media group as El Tribuno while saying to the boy: Tell them to get me the TV news editor urgently. On the screen the newsreader is asking: Can we be sure that Pedro Chazarreta died as a result of having his throat slit? Yes, replies the Crime correspondent, as a picture appears of La Maravillosa’s entrance sign bearing the words Members only beyond this point. There’s still no official confirmation, but reliable sources have informed us that Pedro Chazarreta, whose recent trial for his wife’s murder was dismissed on the grounds of lack of evidence, has been found dead with his throat slashed this morning, at the home the couple shared until three years ago, and in an armchair that was only yards away from where his wife’s body was discovered. Then, lacking images to accompany their report on Chazarreta’s death, the news channel run some relating to Gloria Echagüe’s death instead. They’ve still got nothing, Lorenzo Rinaldi murmurs to himself while the Crime boy keeps trying to contact the TV news editor. For those viewers who don’t remember the crime that had us all gripped in 2007, says the newsreader, half-smiling while waiting for the archive footage.

  A reporter reprises the details of the case, explaining how Gloria Echagüe was found dead three years ago from a wound to the throat, also apparently the cause of her husband’s death. Her body was discovered by a cousin, Carla Donatto, also resident in the Maravillosa country club, who had arranged to drop by for coffee early that evening. Gloria, who went to the gym at three o’clock every Sunday and followed her fifty-minute routine with a sauna, had evidently told her cousin to come at six o’clock. So it was Carla Donatto, who is married to Lucio Berraiz, ex-business associate and friend of Pedro Chazarreta, who discovered her cousin’s lifeless body face down, surrounded by fragments of glass in different shapes and sizes and lying half in, half out of the house across the French windows that separate the Chazarretas’ veranda from their living room. She was wearing the same exercise clothes in which she had left the gym: trainers and a black-peaked Nike cap, which was still on her head.

  Questions still remain about the case, says the reporter. Why, that Sunday, had Gloria Echagüe decided to enter her house by the French windows, when she always used the side entrance leading into the kitchen? Why was there no pool of blood under the body, as one would expect in the case of a throat-slashing? What was a stone ball, identical to the decorative ones in a bowl in the hallway, doing in the living room? Why would Gloria Echagüe, who according to statements from her friends was so careful with her woodblock floor, have expected to find the French windows open on a day of unremitting drizzle and 90 per cent humidity? Which part of Gloria’s body had broken the glass? Her knee? Her forehead? Why, then, were there no other wounds on her body? And what were those small cuts on the palms of her hands? Which of the pieces of glass around her had made such an even, clean gash, parallel to the hypothetical line of the dead woman’s shoulders? Why did the wet veranda show no muddy marks or footprints on such a foul day?

  Apparently nobody had thought to ask these questions that Sunday. At least it seemed that nobody had asked them. Carla Donatto immediately called Chazarreta’s mobile; he was buying wine in the country club’s store. “Come quickly, Pedro, come back to your house. It’s Gloria”, she screamed, according to the statement that would be read out at the trial. And Chazarreta took seven minutes to get there. He was at the checkout when he took the call, whereupon he paid with a card (his till receipt showed it was 18.15), got into his car and drove straight to his home. Exactly seven minutes, according to the transcript. Two minutes at the checkout, one minute walking to the car (which was at the far end of the parking lot), a minute to load the wine bottles into the boot, a minute to pass the clubhouse at a time of day when priority has to be given to the children coming out of their activity session and two minutes to cover the five blocks that separate the store from his home at the maximum permitted speed of twelve miles an hour. Seven minutes.

  Carla Donatto’s husband took care of the funeral arrangements, including obtaining a fake death certificate stating that Gloria Echagüe had died of natural causes. Everything was done at lightning speed, and Pedro Chazarreta’s wife was buried in less than forty-eight hours. But a week later Gloria’s mother, who lived abroad and with whom her daughter’s relations had cooled since her marriage to Chazarreta, began to have doubts. She booked a flight over, went to visit her daughter’s grave, asked some questions. The answers didn’t convince her. Her doubts grew. And eventually other people came to s
hare them. The attorney requested the body be exhumed, and after forensic reports and other legal procedures the truth came to light: Gloria Echagüe had been murdered outside her house, then dragged to the position in which she was found after someone had broken the French windows with a stone ball. The murderer – perhaps with accomplices – meticulously cleaned away the blood that had stained the veranda, wiped away footprints, staged the crime scene and left only then, without anyone having seen them. The murder weapon was never found.

  The TV shows photos of Gloria Echagüe, photos of Pedro Chazarreta, photos of them both together. Photos from their youth, more recent photos. Photos of Gloria Echagüe with some female friends. Photos of Chazarreta with male friends. Photos of the couple on their wedding day. Holiday photos. Photos of Chazarreta on the day of his wife’s funeral. Photos of Chazarreta on the first day of his trial. Photos of Chazarreta being taken into custody. Photos of Chazarreta being freed. A brief commentary from Jaime Brena, the only journalist who managed to interview Chazarreta at that time. But of course nobody yet has that killer shot: the one of Chazarreta dead. Cut.

  Then Lorenzo Rinaldi says to the Crime boy: We’re not going to be the first on this, but we’ve got to be the best, and he takes the phone out of the boy’s hands.

  Nurit Iscar goes to her computer and types in, one by one, the addresses of the online news sites that come to mind first: La Nación, Clarín, El Tribuno, Página/12, Télam, Tiempo Argentino, Perfil, Crónica, La Gaceta, La Voz del Interior, La Primera de la Mañana. And all the while she’s thinking how many people, when they hear the news, will say justice has been done. This is the same conclusion Jaime Brena reached several hours before, when he was jotting down the information Comisario Venturini gave him on the pink notepaper he later threw into the Crime boy’s wastepaper basket and which is now on Rinaldi’s desk. Because even if Justice, in the strictest sense, the Justice of judges and courts, freed Chazarreta for lack of evidence, most of the country, rightly or wrongly, still believes that it was he who murdered his wife, or had her murdered. For her part, Nurit Iscar keeps an open mind precisely because of that lack of evidence. She understands the others’ argument: why pretend something was an accident when even an idiot can see it wasn’t? Why not immediately get the police involved? Why obtain a false death certificate? Can people who were educated at the best schools and universities really be so stupid? But the compelling evidence is still missing: a murder weapon with prints, a witness, a DNA sample from a strand of hair, a drop of sweat or blood, anything to condemn Chazarreta irrefutably; and so she – though she may be wrong – prefers to leave room for doubt. It’s right to be doubtful: what she feels, what she intuits, isn’t important. Not without proof. It doesn’t matter what she thinks of Chazarreta. Everyone is innocent until proven otherwise. And she doesn’t know if Pedro Chazarreta is innocent; only that it hasn’t been possible to prove he isn’t. The same can’t be said of Jaime Brena or the other 99.99 per cent of the population: they have absolutely no doubt that the man was his wife’s murderer. Or that he ordered her death. Or that he knows who did it and why, and he’s keeping quiet about it. It all amounts to the same thing: he’s guilty. Justice isn’t democratic, though; one can’t vote on a person’s innocence or guilt the way one votes for a president or a governor. If it were, if justice depended on tallying up the votes of public opinion, there would certainly have been more than a few mistakes. Mistakes get made, even as things are. As Nurit scans the news bulletins for more information on Chazarreta’s death she considers the different reactions people will have when they hear the news. “Justice has been done”; “What goes around, comes around”; “God is just”; “You reap what you sow”. Some of them will have learned the news at the same time she did, or will find out when they watch the evening bulletin, or from the morning newspaper tomorrow; people in the flat opposite hers, or the one downstairs, or the one in the next block, people in the corner café. She double-clicks on the homepage of the La Primera newspaper and sees that there’s a short report by Zippo. As she’s starting to read it, the telephone rings and, although she doesn’t answer – she never answers without filtering her calls, so that she can hear the voice and decide whether or not to pick up – she pauses for a moment, not wanting to be distracted from her reading and confident that, once the speaker is identified, she’ll reject the call. But the voice, that voice, and the way it names her, chills her as surely as it did a moment ago when she first read the headline announcing Pedro Chazarreta’s murder. More so, even. Hello Betty Boo, says the voice; and then: Call me. Chazarreta’s been murdered, and I’m hoping this time you won’t let me down. Then he hangs up. There’s a dialling tone. The answering machine cuts off. The person ringing forgot to say who it was, or rather was certain that Nurit Iscar would know who was making the call. And he was right: she knows. He doesn’t need to tell her. There’s only one man in the world who, even today, can call Nurit by that name, Betty Boo; a man whose voice alone can send shivers into places inside her that Nurit Iscar had almost forgotten existed: Lorenzo Rinaldi. It’s because of him – and to a lesser degree Chazarreta himself, or at least the crime that most people believe him to have committed – that Nurit Iscar, after a successful literary career (measured by parameters which in literature confer success on some and failure on others) has never written another novel of her own, opting to make her living as the ghostwriter for people who want to communicate things of such nugatory interest to Nurit as Untying the Knots. Hello Betty Boo. Nurit rewinds and listens to the tape again at least five times – Hello Betty Boo – as though needing to confirm to herself who the caller really is, even though she has absolutely no doubts on that score.

  She doesn’t return the call. She knows Lorenzo Rinaldi will call again in a while, in a couple of hours. She knows that Rinaldi doesn’t give up easily if he doesn’t get what he wants. And she also knows that she, Nurit Iscar or Betty Boo, will have no option but to answer when he calls.

  5

  Nurit Iscar and Lorenzo Rinaldi first met in 2005 as guests on the same television programme. She had just published Death by Degrees, her third novel which, like the first two, had shot up the bestseller list as soon as it arrived in the bookshops. He’d been awarded a prize in Spain for his journalistic output and had a new non-fiction book doing the rounds, Who’s In Charge? Real Power in Argentina’s 21st-Century Media. Their first meeting wasn’t on the set but in make-up. When Nurit arrived he was already sitting in one of those high chairs – like the ones barbers use – with a plastic cape over his shoulders to protect his suit from the powder. They put her in the seat next to his. As soon as she sat down Nurit told the make-up artist that she liked to look simple, natural. Cover the wrinkles, definitely, but not so it shows, she asked. Beside her, Rinaldi smiled. What wrinkles? he asked and she, sensing that she was beginning to blush, pointed apologetically to her cheeks a few seconds before her face went completely red: I get rosacea. Ah, he said, and smiled again. They sat in silence as the make-up artists did their work, but two or three times their eyes met in the mirror. Before he left Rinaldi came over, this time openly looking at her but addressing himself to the make-up artist rather than to her: Hasn’t she got pretty curls? Beautiful, said the man, shaking out Nurit’s black hair so that the curls lay better. She felt uncomfortable and wondered if that was to do with finding herself under scrutiny, receiving a compliment, pre-interview nerves, the make-up or the rosacea. With every interview, as with every plane flight she took, she seemed not to feel more relaxed but instead more aware of the possibility of crashing. And before and during the interview, without fail – the same as when she buckled her belt at the moment of take-off – she’d always ask herself: What am I doing here? And yet there she was again. As a way of distracting herself she began counting the different-sized brushes the make-up artist had spread across the counter: fourteen; and then she counted the colours in the shadow palette: sixty-four. Lean your head back for me, darling, and look up, said th
e make-up artist, because Nurit hadn’t managed not to blink while he was trying to apply her eyeliner. See how well your friend behaved? Now he’s all ready, he said with a nod to Lorenzo Rinaldi, who was taking off his cape. See you in the studio, Rinaldi said to Nurit, and went out. She felt somehow relieved not to be under observation any more, and the make-up artist was able to finish his job well enough. Who’s he? she asked as the man finished off her look by dusting a little loose powder over her cheekbones. Lorenzo Rinaldi, the editor of El Tribuno – don’t you know him? Yes, by name, of course, and from the paper, but I’ve never seen him before, said Nurit. He’s one of the most intelligent men in the country, the make-up artist went on, adding, And also one of the most fucked-up. After that day Nurit often asked herself why she had paid so much attention to Lorenzo Rinaldi’s reputed intelligence while ignoring the second part of the description, which might have spared her more than a few sleepless nights and crying jags.