Gandolfini’s building is all polarized glass. Black when looked at from outside. There’s as much security here as in La Maravillosa. No sooner have you got through the revolving door than you’re stopped by one of the guards sitting behind a long desk and asked for your name, ID and the floor and office that you want to visit. When it’s her turn, Nurit says that she wants to see Señor Gandolfini, but can’t remember which floor his office is on. Floor 17, the guard says and asks: Have you got an appointment? Yes, of course, she lies. The man writes down her details on a form and passes her a visitor tag; it seems strange to Nurit that this stage of security should be so easy to breach, requiring only a brazen lie. Although having the right face, skin colour and clothes (and the fact that she’s a woman) also surely play a part. The security guard tells her that she must leave her ID at the front desk until she hands back the tag on leaving the building. And although Nurit doesn’t like leaving the document with anyone, she hands it over. Before passing through a turnstile she also has to show her bag (like the maids at La Maravillosa, although in this case a different fear is at work), walk through a metal detector and then press her visitor tag against a reader. Everyone’s identities have been reduced to a given number of cards for different uses, she thinks. She feels as though she’s in an American film, entering the CIA, or in the series 24, going into the building where Jack Bauer works. It seems excessive, especially bearing in mind that all these measures are to protect, among others – if she, the Crime boy and Jaime Brena suspect rightly – a murderer. Someone who pays for other people to be assassinated to order. Like commissioning a suit from a tailor. A made-to-measure murder, she thinks, and wonders if this would be a good title for her next novel. Or perhaps The Tailor of Death or Death XXL. But is she really thinking about writing another novel? She stops in front of the lifts and, when the door opens, gets in among a group composed of men in impeccable suits, women in office clothes and high heels of the kind she stopped wearing years ago, a motorbike courier holding his helmet on one arm and assorted packages under the other, and a woman holding the hand of a little boy who asks: Is this where Daddy works? Nurit gets off on the seventeenth floor and looks around for a secretary. She finds one behind a frosted glass door on which in white letters, difficult to make out, are carved the words RG Business Developers. She introduces herself to the secretary: My name is Nurit Iscar, I’m a writer and I’ve come to interview Señor Roberto Gandolfini for a book of journalism I’m putting together. The secretary looks down at her diary: I can’t find a note of any appointment with you, could you repeat your name, please? Nurit Iscar, just as it sounds – but how strange, they told me at the publisher’s that everything was arranged. Which publisher? Nobody has spoken to me about this. They probably spoke to Señor Gandolfini directly and he forgot to let you know. I don’t think so; he always tells me. Well, would you be kind enough to ask if he can see me anyway, even though it isn’t in the diary? I doubt that will be possible, Señor Gandolfini has a very full day. Could you try? The woman looks doubtful. Please could you try? Nurit presses. You said Nurit Iscar, is that right? the secretary asks. Yes, she says, and tell him that Señor Collazo suggested I speak to him, don’t forget that – to mention Luis Collazo. The woman dials through to her boss and there’s an exchange at the end of which she repeats: Yes, yes, Luis Collazo. She hangs up and says, He’ll see you in fifteen minutes. Please take a seat in reception, and as soon as his meeting is over he’ll call you in. OK, says Nurit Iscar, and feels as though her legs may buckle. There is nothing she wants more than to be here at this moment. But there is nothing she wants less, either. She thinks of Jaime Brena and the Crime boy, of what they will say when they find out that she came here. She imagines the dressing-down. On the coffee table in front of the chairs there’s a copy of Newsweek, a Sunday newspaper magazine that’s two months old and the directory of an Argentine business association. She closes her eyes and waits.
At the very moment that Nurit Iscar is closing her eyes, Jaime Brena is arriving, sweating and out of breath, in the El Tribuno newsroom. The Crime boy, who sees him come in, watches his movements closely, trying to read into them whether or not Brena is still annoyed with him. Brena issues a general greeting and sits down at his desk. He’s still annoyed, the boy thinks. Jaime Brena settles into his chair, rubs his face and stretches his neck a little while the computer starts up. There on the screen, waiting for him, is the wire story for his next piece: a clinical study in Lyons, France, has found that people who are allergic to penicillin are 64 per cent more likely to divorce before they turn forty than people who are not. Can someone really have gone to the trouble of studying the link between penicillin and divorce among the under-forties? He reads it once, twice, three times. Then he shuts down the computer, takes out the voluntary redundancy papers from his drawer and starts to fill them in. The Crime boy comes over to his desk. Jaime Brena quickly turns the forms over so that he won’t see what he’s doing. Have you got a minute? the boy asks. Jaime Brena looks at him without saying anything; the boy, on the other hand, says: Sorry. Jaime Brena still says nothing. Sorry, the boy says again. I was scared that you would go and see Gandolfini without considering the risks and it seemed like the only way to stop you. OK, Jaime Brena says. Anything else? The boy, wrong-footed, makes an effort and continues: Yes, there is something else. Do you remember that question you asked me back when you first started teaching me about crime reporting? No, says Jaime Brena, I asked you a lot of questions; I’ve got no idea what the first one was. It was the most important one of all: you asked me who I wanted to be like, who my role model was, but I didn’t know at that point. I’d forgotten that, Brena says. Well, I know now, the boy says, and waits to be asked who it is that he would most like to be like. But Brena doesn’t ask him, so he gives the answer anyway: I want to be like you – like Jaime Brena. Brena keeps looking at him, with no other reaction than a barely perceptible tremor of the lower lip, like an involuntary pulse; if the boy knew him better he would understand that if Brena’s lower lip quivers this way it’s because these words have struck some part in his body, we don’t know which, but somewhere he still has feeling. Shall we go to see Gandolfini together? says the boy. What? Let’s go together, it’ll be less risky. We definitely can’t wimp out of it, but this way we can look out for each other. Shall we go? And Jaime Brena, as though this were just another workday and yesterday’s altercation, the half-completed redundancy forms, even the boy’s declaration of admiration, had never existed, asks: Where is it? Did you look at the card I gave you? The boy curses: I left it at Nurit’s house, like an idiot. Call and ask her for directions, Brena suggests. The boy does as he’s told: It’s switched off, he says. Why does that woman even have a mobile? Brena grumbles, as though he weren’t every bit as difficult to reach by mobile as she is, then says: Call her house. I don’t have the number; I’ll go and ask Rinaldi’s secretary for it. The boy goes off and comes back along the corridor moments later, talking on the phone to Anabella. The Señora has gone out, she’s telling him. A minicab came to pick her up; why don’t you call her on the mobile? It’s switched off. I don’t suppose you know where she was going? She said she had to see someone in town, I think. The boy strokes his jawbone several times, then claps his hand over his mouth, shaking his head, as though not wanting to believe the direction of his own thoughts. Could you do me a favour, Anabella? Go and see if there’s a card that I left behind yesterday on the table in the living room, a card with the name Roberto Gandolfini on it. The woman goes to have a look, confirming his suspicion when she returns to the phone: There’s nothing on the table in the living room. Thanks, says the boy, hanging up and returning to Jaime Brena’s desk. Nurit Iscar is on her way to Gandolfini’s office, he says, assuming she isn’t there already. What a nightmare that woman is, Brena groans. Did you speak to her? No, but going on what the cleaner told me, I’m sure that’s where she’s gone. She must be mad, the boy says. Only as mad as us, Brena points out, but a lot qu
icker off the blocks. And for all that he admires his colleague, he fears for her, too: We have to get to her. I don’t like to think what she may be getting into. Look on the Internet and see if you can find an address for Gandolfini’s company. I’ve already looked, the boy replies, and there’s nothing. It’s as if it didn’t exist. Brena thinks for a moment, then says: Ask Rinaldi’s secretary which minicab service Nurit uses; if it’s the one the newspaper always uses then we’re safe, if not…
A few minutes later the boy speaks to the minicab driver who took Nurit Iscar to Gandolfini’s office, but the man doesn’t know the exact address, only where he’s waiting for her, illegally parked, and that she crossed Leandro N. Alem a little before the Córdoba turn-off and that she went into one of the identikit buildings in that area: Could have been any one of them, how should I know if it was two storeys higher or two storeys lower, they all look the same, he says. And that he has to wait for her there. No, he already said that he doesn’t know which building she went into. No, she’s going to call him when she’s finished. Please stay right where you are, the boy says, we’re on our way over. And so they are.
By the time the Crime boy and Jaime Brena are leaving the newspaper office, Nurit Iscar is already sitting opposite Roberto Gandolfini. The view through the immense window behind him is so beautiful that it inspires ambivalence: on one hand, the limpid scene attracts her and she can’t stop her eyes drifting towards it – the river, the boats that seem not to be moving, the reflected sun. On the other, the picture doesn’t fit with the conversation that she will have to have here with Gandolfini. If this were a Nurit Iscar novel, she’d lose the window and that view. The man is also very different to how she had imagined him: shorter, less portly. His clothes are good quality, but a little dated. If she didn’t suspect what she suspects of him, she would not be frightened of the man sitting opposite her. He would strike her as inoffensive. So you’d like to interview me for a book that you’re writing? he asks while playing with a ballpoint pen, pressing it at one end to make the nib intermittently appear or disappear. Yes, she says, I’m grateful to you for seeing me despite the confusion about our appointment. Gandolfini nods, with a tightening of his lips, then says: What’s your book about? Well, I’m investigating companies that offer special or unusual services. Ah, in that case, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. There’s nothing extraordinary about my companies, he says, but she detects a note of false humility. Perhaps not for you, because you work with them every day, but for the readers there is. The man looks at her and she knows that he’s studying her. My secretary said that Luis Collazo recommended you come and see me. Yes, shortly before his death, says Nurit, coming straight to the point and watching Gandolfini’s face for a reaction. But he says, almost without expression: A tragedy; I heard that he hanged himself. He was found hanged, she corrects him; and yes, it was a tragedy. And which of the companies I manage did you want to ask me about? About the one that can have people eliminated on request, she says, making an effort to look impassive. Eliminated from where? he asks. Eliminated from the world. Gandolfini smiles: And what makes you think I have a company that organizes that? It may not be yours, you may only have contracted it. Once again, Señora, I don’t know what has led you to think that. Certain circumstances and coincidences. Circumstances and coincidences can lead to the wrong conclusions. It’s striking that all the members of the group known as “Little Ranch”, including your brother, have died in very particular circumstances; I take it you remember Little Ranch? When she mentions the name, she looks to see if it makes Gandolfini uneasy in any way, if there is any flicker of recognition. But there’s still no sign of any such unease, not that she can detect. Yes, of course I remember; in fact, somewhere round here I think I still have a photograph of them that I came across a while ago, he says, and Nurit knows which photograph he’s talking about and guesses that he came across it in Chazarreta’s photo frame and took it as the spoils of war. Why should something as mundane as a car accident particularly concern you? Gandolfini asks. Because everyone feared exactly that: that your brother might die in a car accident. Well then, he should have paid more attention to those fears and learned to drive more slowly; my brother never listened to anyone, and the greatest challenge in his life seemed to be breaking his own record for speed. People say he drove very well, says Nurit. Very well, but much too fast, Gandolfini shoots back. And with absolutely no respect for the law, endangering not only himself but also other people. So you believe that I did something to cause or bring about his death on the road? You or someone that you hired, yes, that’s what I believe, Nurit asserts. I cut his brakes, for example. For example. You’ve got a prodigious imagination, says Gandolfini, smiling. And I got Collazo to hang himself and Bengoechea to kill himself skiing, he says. She adds: You had Miranda killed by someone disguised as an alienated gunman, and you had Chazarreta killed in the same way his wife had died, with his throat slit. Each death took place in the way it should, in the way people would have expected. Gandolfini nods: Now that you say it, yes, I’ll give you that: each man got the death he deserved. He gets up, walks over to the window and looks out at the river. Without turning round, he says: Which doesn’t mean to say that I had anything to do with their deaths. Nor that anybody else did. It could be nothing more than coincidence, the fate assigned by each one’s statistical probability of risk, Señora Iscar. It could even be divine justice, if one wants to take a religious view, for want of a better word. Or it could be that somebody considered that possibility and recognized it as the perfect way to conceal a crime, she says, that each one got the death you would expect for him. He turns round and looks at her: And you think that person was me. Yes. Gandolfini smiles again, returns to his chair and looks at Nurit without saying anything. No, on second thoughts, if this were a Nurit Iscar novel, she’d keep the window in – it’s one of the few elements that allow the characters to move. Gandolfini tries derailing Nurit Iscar’s theories by retreating into the absurd: So, as far as you’re concerned, I’m almost God; or God Himself. I don’t believe in God. You’re an atheist, he says. Agnostic, she corrects. Gandolfini watches her, but now there’s a shine in his eyes that owes more to excitement, it seems to Nurit, than to alarm. Like when someone who is highly competitive in a particular sport discovers that his rival is good, almost as good as him, but that even so he has every chance of beating him. And that being the case, if he can win, beating him will bring great satisfaction. Greater than with any other rival. It’s a very good idea you’ve come up with, Señora, very good. May I steal it? Do you have copyright on it? Let’s think about this. I, from the luxury of this office overlooking the river, equipped with the best technology, decorated with excellent taste for which I can take no credit because it came courtesy of my architects, as I was saying, let’s imagine that I, from here, manage two or three people in this country plus hitmen overseas, a small team so as to keep my secret well protected, and for a sum commensurate with the difficulty of each case arrange the death of whoever it happens to be to occur exactly in the way that people might expect that person to die. Something like that, says Nurit. It’s not a half-bad idea, I have to hand it to you. And as well as hitmen, I’d need to have people who are experts in obtaining information from the victims, right? Gandolfini continues enthusiastically. Old-school spies as well as experts in cyber espionage. People who can even find out a potential victim’s make of underwear. Gandolfini smiles, goes to one side of the office and pours himself a coffee. Would you like one? he asks. No thanks, she says. But let’s suppose that you are right, that these deaths weren’t accidental, let’s suppose that there is a mastermind behind them. I ask again: why me? What motive would I have, beyond how nice or nasty my brother and his friends seemed to me, for killing them? Nurit Iscar wants to see his reaction, so she answers directly, avoiding euphemisms: Because you witnessed the rape of Emilio Casabets. Now, for the first time, Gandolfini’s face betrays a tiny alteration, and it’s as though tension has
set into his cheeks, his brow, his mouth. He neither frowns nor smiles, but his features harden. Perhaps that wasn’t even the only rape they made you watch. And there came a point when you couldn’t cope any more with the guilt of having been a witness, of having done nothing to stop it happening, Nurit goes on. Gandolfini keeps watching her for a while with the same stony expression then says through clenched teeth, almost to himself: I was only eight years old. And I don’t judge you for anything that happened at that time, says Nurit Iscar, only for the recent deaths. Those feelings that had been buried for years came to the surface much later, when your brother and his friends started appearing regularly in the papers in connection with Gloria Echagüe’s death. Gandolfini walks back over to the window and stands staring out of it for a long time until, finally, like an actor finding focus and reprising his role he says: You have a lot of imagination. I don’t deny that, she agrees. Even if years ago something might have happened, and I might have been there, I say again: what proof do you have to show that I had anything to do with those deaths? None, says Nurit, nothing yet. Look, Señora Iscar, all that you say may or may not be true. But nothing in this world exists if it can’t be proven. Besides, let’s suppose for a moment that you’re right, that I do control hitmen in different parts of the world, or even that I have a firm to do that. In fact, let’s suppose that I used that firm not only to get rid of the people you’ve mentioned, but also a few others, like a business, to turn a profit. Let’s suppose that something that began in response to a personal need grew to serve other uses. Don’t you think that I’d then become somebody supremely powerful and untouchable? Me and my firm. My “people-killing” business. It would be a hugely successful business; every powerful group would come to me, I would lend my services and they would owe me favours. Politicians, other businessmen, even men of the cloth, why not? And I’d become untouchable. Imagine that I, or rather my firm, could have brought down the helicopter of a president’s son. Or could have thrown an indiscreet secretary out of a window at her home, making it look as though she were trying to cut a television cable. Or even that we could have induced a powerful businessman to blow his head off with a rifle. What a lot of power I would have, Señora Iscar, don’t you think? I would be what they call “an untouchable”. Nobody is untouchable, she says. Ah, don’t you believe it. Having a lot of favours to call in at the right moment is like a guarantee of safe conduct. But I don’t want to tell you any more. I mustn’t tell you any more, Señora. I got into enough trouble after my meeting with Jaime Brena the other day. Who gave you trouble? Nurit asks. We all answer to someone, don’t we? Have you asked yourself if there’s someone above me or if I really am my own boss? Because that can happen these days, no? An investigator – you, for example – thinks she’s identified the murderer, but who actually is the murderer? The person who wants someone dead, the person who pays for it, the person who carries out the execution with a blade, a bullet, whatever method you like, the person who organizes the execution, plans it, the person who covers it up, the person who takes payment? Which of these people is most responsible? What does the pyramid of murder look like today? Who in this twenty-first century is the true assassin, Señora Iscar? All of them, she replies. No, that’s too easy an answer, too politically correct. And politically correct answers, apart from being contemptible, never speak the truth. Do you know what my answer would be? The assassin is the one who’s still alive at the end, the one nobody could kill. The others are merely cogs in the wheel. Replaceable cogs in most cases. But the one who’s still alive at the end, he’s something different, he’s the one with the real power. Gandolfini gets up and paces around the office again without looking at Nurit, his gaze lost in the river. Then he stops and says: Oh dear, oh dear… you were so close, but you’ll never know if you hit the bullseye. The only person who can confirm that for you is me, and I’m not going to tell you, Señora Iscar, I’m sorry. Will you be able to bear the uncertainty? Will you be able to bear your question going unanswered, your theory unconfirmed? Will you be able to bear nobody telling you whether this plot you’ve imagined in so much detail is the truth? I know that it is, I’m sure that it’s true, says Nurit, trying to sound resolute, even though her legs are shaking inside her black trousers. No, I don’t believe you can be. There’s still something inside you that’s doubting, that’s making you doubt; I can see it. And Gandolfini stares at her as though he really can see that doubt in her. Only after a moment of tense silence does he ask: Is there anything else I can help with? No, says Nurit, there’s nothing else. You’ve been very clear, more than I imagined you would be, I’m going away with a lot of material. I don’t think you’ll be able to use it, Señora: there are no reliable sources for you to quote. I’m not a journalist, I’m a writer; I can tell a story without quoting sources, I can take as given something that is only in my imagination. All I have to do is call what I’m writing a “novel” instead of a “report” – almost a minor detail, Nurit says. Gandolfini looks at her, studies her, weighing up which piece to move next in deference to his rival rather than the game. There is something else I’d like to say to you, Señora Iscar. Or would you prefer I call you Betty Boo? Gandolfini asks to Nurit’s astonishment while removing from his desk drawer a yellow file with two thick black bands across the top right corner, like funereal ribbons. Only my friends call me Betty Boo. Ah, forgive me, I had no wish to appear forward. Not yet opening the file that he has just taken out of the drawer but leaving his hand on top of it, as though ready to swear an oath on the Bible, he begins to recite what Nurit Iscar takes to be its contents. This is what she will tell Jaime Brena and the Crime boy a few minutes later, speaking from memory: Jaime Brena, sixty-two years old, disorganized lifestyle, various excesses – alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, though nowadays only marijuana. Takes no physical exercise. Suggested death: heart attack. Nurit’s amazement is replaced by horror. He continues: Paula Sibona: fifty-six years old, actress, no medical problems to date, etc., etc. She likes going out and meeting people she doesn’t know. Suggested death: murdered in her apartment after a one-night stand. Juan and Rodrigo Pérez Iscar, says Gandolfini. Your children, right? Stop! she says. You don’t want me to go on? No. I can tell you about the other friends. I don’t want to know. Seriously? I mean, I’m taking a risk here; I’ll have to pay very dearly if it gets out that I’ve passed this information on to you. She’s still terrified. She can’t make a sound. He knows it. Don’t worry, it’s only a game, a theoretical exercise. Nobody’s going to die. Not for the moment. It’s not right for people to die for no reason; that’s never good. My brother and his friends had to die; it doesn’t matter whether they died in accidents or were killed. They deserved it. Now they’re dead, and for me that’s a relief. As if the world were in equilibrium again. Nobody can blame me for feeling relieved at the death of such despicable people, do you understand? Nurit stands up: Yes, I understand, she says, and her legs are shaking. Shall I show you out? No, I know the way. Aren’t you intrigued to know what the manner of your own “theoretical” death would be? Nurit says nothing, but she wants to know. You’re not a straightforward case, you know? You take few risks. You don’t go to meet people you don’t know, you don’t drink too much, you don’t smoke or take drugs. Tell me, are you happy? Once again, Nurit is bewildered by Gandolfini’s question, although this is different to the others. Oh, Señora, it’s hard to be happy, isn’t it? And I say that as someone who has almost everything. If you, if Betty Boo, were to die in the country club where you’re staying at present, the most advisable method would have to be carbon monoxide poisoning. Houses that have the boiler indoors, even when it’s in a separate room such as a utility room or a laundry, for example, are dangerous. That would work; you wouldn’t be the first to die that way in a country club. There have been various cases – and we’re talking about expensive houses here, but, you know, people prioritize other things. If you were back in your flat, on the other hand, I’d say it would be better for you to fall into
the lift shaft. You leave the flat unexpectedly and with your mind on other things; somebody has called you out for some urgent reason. You quickly grab your things, you forget your phone but you don’t stop to go back for it, you can’t, the light in the passage isn’t working, you call the lift, think it’s there, the mechanism fails, and you open the door and step into the void. You could also fall from the balcony while watering the plants, but that would be a bit too similar to the secretary who was cutting the television cable and I think you deserve more of a role, something exclusive.
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