Breathing Through the Wound

by Victor del Arbol

  It had happened before. He himself, in fact, had orchestrated smear campaigns in the past, against people they needed to get out of the way, opponents of the regime, businessmen whose interests collided with the ambitions of a member of the military junta. It wasn’t hard to get someone charged—fabricated evidence, planted clues, false information leaked to the press. It was easy to create a breeding ground for public opinion that led from a witch-hunt to a false conviction. Prisons and cemeteries were full of innocent people who’d been made to look guilty. It was such an old trick, so unsophisticated it was almost tedious.

  “I didn’t kill Dámaso. I would have done it if I had to, but I didn’t. He told me what I needed to know as soon as I tightened the screws a little.” He didn’t care if she believed him or not. He knew how to handle those situations. But he couldn’t stand leaving loose ends once he’d started something. “Somebody is trying to frame me for his death, and that’s going to force me to leave a little sooner than I’d planned. But first I’m going to finish what I came to do.”

  “I have nothing to do with it. All I want is to get out of here, take my kids and go, forget about all this shit.”

  Guzmán smiled and gazed at her in genuine curiosity. There really are people like that, he thought. People who think they can just come and go as they please, do things and then walk away without facing up to the consequences, their souls intact.

  “A few days after your husband died, Arthur Fernández received a videotape in the mail. On that tape were Olsen, Ian and Dámaso—torturing his daughter. It came with an exculpatory note, as if the person who sent it were refusing to accept any responsibility for what was on the recording.” He watched her reaction—the unconscious tightening of her stomach, the rapid rise and fall of her chest beneath her V-neck T-shirt. “You said you didn’t know anything about a tape, that you had no idea what your husband was doing. But you were lying. You found that tape and sent it to Arthur anonymously.”

  Olsen’s widow looked up at the ceiling, crisscrossed with cracks that she’d no longer have to worry about plastering over. She was taking deep breaths trying to calm herself, to no avail. When she looked back down at Guzmán, she was like another person. Tiny, guilt-ridden, overwhelmed by something she’d never fully understood: human evil.

  “I didn’t know,” she murmured, sounding like she had a fly trapped in her mouth, trying to buzz its way free. And she rubbed her hands over her shoulders, searching for comfort in her own embrace.

  * * *

  —

  She’d found the tape by chance, while searching desperately through cupboards and drawers, trying to guess where Olsen had hidden the money, jewelry and important documents that she felt belonged to her—she’d earned them over the years, carrying the weight of that man who, while hanging from a ceiling beam, ironically enough seemed to weigh almost nothing. The tape was hidden behind some tiles in the kitchen. She discovered it when she accidentally knocked against the baseboard and saw that it moved. At the time she didn’t know what it was, but she guessed it must have been pretty important for Olsen to hide it there, so she slipped it into her bag.

  She didn’t watch the tape until two days later. Afterward, she vomited several times, incredulous, unable to believe Olsen could have taken part in anything so horrific. He had children, children only a few years younger than that little girl. She’d known he was a pig, known he went to prostitutes far younger than her, and she herself bore marks on her flesh from having suffered through his perversions. But that was sickening, monstrous even for a monster like him.

  Her first impulse had been to get rid of the tape, and she threw it in the bin and left it there for days. But she never dared to take the rubbish out. Obviously, she didn’t want to go to the police either. She knew exactly what that would lead to and knew it would implicate her. Suddenly she saw Olsen’s death in a new light. The images on that tape were so compromising to so many people that she had no trouble believing maybe her husband hadn’t committed suicide after all. And if whoever killed him found out she had the tape, she could only imagine the danger she and her kids would be in.

  She convinced herself of that, telling herself she had to look out for her children and their future, that it was her responsibility to protect them, and protect herself. After all, her only crime had been to sleep with the bastard. She wasn’t responsible for that monstrosity. Besides, she couldn’t do anything to stop it. But she was fooling herself and she knew it. Every night the images replayed in her head, each detail, over and over, until the bile rose to her throat. She’d go into the kitchen, pick up the tape and stare at it, and then throw it away again. Until finally she decided to do the only thing her dignity would allow, her one valiant gesture: send Arthur the tape.

  Guzmán was sitting on a pile of boxed-up books that were waiting to be loaded into the truck. As Olsen’s widow paced up and down the room, he followed her with his eyes, watching her stop to speak through her tears and then resume her monologue, which was riddled with defensive half-truths, grievances, lamentations, and gestures of exasperation. The catalog of reasons she had for not doing what she should have done was as vast as human cynicism. If she was hoping he’d understand or forgive her, she had the wrong guy. Guzmán didn’t judge her; nor could he grant her the pardon her eyes begged for. He was no priest, and he certainly didn’t talk to God.

  What he was interested in was something far different. The tape showed four people: Arthur’s daughter Aroha, who’d been missing since the time of its recording; Dámaso, who was dead, and whose death he himself was being blamed for; Magnus Olsen, who may have committed suicide, but had likely been murdered by someone who’d made it look like suicide—and the list of suspects was as long as that of the victims of Olsen’s extortion attempts; and Ian. With the possible exception of Aroha, they were all dead, and none of natural causes: feigned accidents, staged suicide. Guzmán had a hunch that the person responsible for all of their deaths would be the common thread that would lead him to Aroha, and that’s why he was discounting Arthur. Arthur wouldn’t have tried to frame him for the fire, because Guzmán was the last hope he had for finding his daughter alive.

  Toward the end of his life, Bosco had contracted severe glaucoma, which left him unable to distinguish anything but dark shadows and bright light. He had to wear thick coke-bottle glasses to read. But when he really wanted to see something, he pushed the glasses up above his bushy eyebrows and let his sleepy little eyes focus on the object in question like a zoom lens. He said he could see more clearly that way, without the distraction of magnification.

  That was the way Guzmán felt. He could see far better with no artifice in the way.

  “I’m going to ask you one more thing: did you make a copy of that tape? Did you send it to anyone else?”

  She stopped pacing erratically around the living room and bit her lip, gazing out the window. The workers were finishing up and the kids were still in the car, growing restless. Glancing at Guzmán, she nodded almost imperceptibly, using all of her effort to tilt her head.

  Half an hour later, Guzmán walked Olsen’s widow to her car. The workers had finished loading the boxes and were waiting inside the truck with the engine running. The driver shot him an inquisitive look and then said something to his buddy. Guzmán knew what was going on, but ignored them. His face had become too familiar. Olsen’s widow took a seat behind the wheel and ordered the kids to settle down. The dog was yapping excitedly, its head out the window. They looked at each other, with nothing else to say. She nodded, put the car in gear and drove off slowly, followed by the moving van.

  Guzmán stood alone in the driveway in front of the house as the wind whipped the for sale sign back and forth. The kids’ toys—a tricycle, a deflated soccer ball, a basketball hoop with a torn net—gave the place an air of abandonment. Guzmán put on his sunglasses, as Olsen’s widow disappeared into the distance with her family and her belong
ings—the few she had left. He wished her luck, he really did. Wherever she was headed, she was going to need it.

  He walked slowly to his car and for a few minutes sat gathering his thoughts. It all made sense, he thought—it made logical sense—but far from persuading him to have any faith in the human race, it simply confirmed what his own bitter experience had already taught him.

  “Human kindness—what a crock of shit,” he said, spitting out the window.

  He opened the glove compartment and pulled out his mobile phone, dialed Arthur’s number and waited for him to answer. The voicemail picked up. Guzmán smiled cynically. So Arthur was cutting him loose, too. Guzmán was alone and cornered, but he didn’t care. Dogs fight all the more viciously when they’ve got no way out. And he was the worst kind of dog—a streetwise mutt.

  “It’s me,” he said to the recording. “I know who has your daughter. Call me. I think it’s time to make a deal.”

  * * *

  —

  Two days later, Guzmán stood smoking an Argentinian cigarette. He had almost none left, but he wasn’t planning to stick around until they ran out. His flight to Santiago—with a red-herring stopover in Buenos Aires—took off in less than twenty-four hours.

  On Arthur’s desk was that day’s paper, open to the accident report. There had been a single-car accident on the Alicante–Valencia highway. For reasons unknown, the vehicle had flipped and then caught on fire. The driver had been burned to death and was not yet identified. Police found two young children and a dog on the shoulder of the road, behind the barrier fence a few meters away. Though terrified they seemed unharmed. The circumstances were most unusual, and police had opened an investigation. Guzmán knew that one way or another, their inquiries would eventually lead to him. He imagined they’d find some conveniently placed clue or evidence that whoever was really behind Dámaso’s death—and now Olsen’s widow’s, too—would have planted in order to incriminate him. The noose was tightening around his neck.

  “You’ve got real balls, showing up in my office like this,” Arthur spat, pointing to the paper. He hadn’t shaved that morning and he looked terrible. In fact, he looked like he’d spent the night in his office—his eyelids were puffy and his necktie hung loose around his unbuttoned shirt collar.

  Guzmán smiled. If there was one thing he literally did not have, it was balls.

  “I won’t stay long. Just long enough to finish what I came to do and collect my fee. Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to make me look like a killer: first Dámaso, now Olsen’s widow. Someone with enough scruples to not harm her kids and dog.”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Arthur admonished, “I had no reason to want to hurt that woman.”

  Guzmán nodded.

  “True. In fact, you should be grateful to her.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  Guzmán walked over to a green crystal ashtray and put out his cigarette, exhaling smoke through his nostrils.

  “Magnus Olsen’s wife was the anonymous person who sent you the recording with Aroha on it.” He let the surprise sink deep down inside, carefully observing Arthur’s reaction. His shock seemed sincere. “She didn’t know beforehand what her husband was up to, but she found out. She discovered the recording after he committed suicide. When she saw what was on it, she realized the people involved were too powerful—many of them held respectable positions, and she knew they’d do anything to keep the story from getting out. That’s why she didn’t dare go to the police.” He pointed to the paper on the desk. “She feared for her life, and for that of her children, and it seems the facts have proven her right, at least in part. But she didn’t just forget about it like most other people would have. She was a decent human being, you know? Not like you and me. Every time she watched that recording, she thought about the fact that she was a mother, that she had kids too, and that they were at risk. That’s why she sent you the tape, hoping you’d have the power to stop the insanity. But you didn’t do it, didn’t put an end to it, like she hoped you would. Instead you let yourself get sucked into the vortex.”

  Arthur picked up the paper and gazed at the image accompanying the story: the flipped car, the police tape, the thermal blanket over Olsen’s widow’s lifeless body.

  “This is madness,” he murmured.

  “It is, but you’re not the only one who let themselves get dragged into it. She sent a second anonymous copy of the tape to someone else.”

  Arthur looked up and fixed his eyes on Guzmán.

  “I suspect the other person is the one who killed Dámaso, first, and Mrs. Olsen after that. Every time I’ve gotten a step closer to your daughter, the step has been erased by this person, trying to close all the doors that might lead me to Aroha. And they seem to have the means to do it. I’m talking about the only person who can tell us where your daughter is.”

  “Who is it? Who else did she send the tape to?”

  Guzmán dropped his arms, as though having to state the obvious were exhausting.

  “Her. Gloria A. Tagger. Magnus Olsen had been a family friend ever since he helped them recover El Español, the Tagger’s prized violin. He’d often go to their house, they all went out on weekends, and they all knew about and struggled with their kids’ difficult characters. When Olsen’s wife watched the tape for the first time, she immediately recognized Ian. And she made sure to get a copy into his mother’s hands.”

  Guzmán made sure Arthur was listening closely.

  “Before you killed her son in that supposed accident, Gloria knew what her son was involved in. I don’t know if she was doing anything about it, or was planning to or would have. Did she know Aroha was your daughter? And if she did, when did she find that out? We should ask her, don’t you think? I’ve got a feeling this whole story is like one of those esparto ropes—the more water you give it, the harder and more tangled it gets.”

  * * *

  —

  The main entrance hall was bustling at Atocha train station. Sunlight filtered in through the vaulted ceiling, shining onto the tall trees in the station’s botanical garden in a cascade of orange hues. A few kids amused themselves with a stick, stirring up green scum on the turtle pond to make the animals surface; there were so many they couldn’t count them. A tinny voice on the loudspeaker announcing arrivals and departures blended seamlessly with the sound of heels clicking on the tile floor, of people’s conversations as they talked or made phone calls. A few musicians wandered amid café tables and newsstands, playing accordion and guitar badly.

  Gloria would have had to be blind not to see Arthur waiting for her at the bottom of the escalator. When she saw him in the crowd, she froze. Then she stepped back, seeking shelter among the other passengers who were descending, the way the weakest animals try to protect themselves by hiding in the middle of the flock. But the flow of human traffic impelled her forward. When she realized she had no way out, she strode firmly toward him with her head held high, daring him to get in her way.

  Arthur stared at her, gauging her reaction. People walking back and forth between them blocked his field of vision, and she kept disappearing and reappearing among the other passengers on the platform.

  It was Guzmán who intercepted her. He grabbed her elbow firmly and pulled her to him. They were in people’s way, blocking the flow of traffic.

  “We need to talk, Señorita Tagger.”

  Gloria recognized him, although it took her a few minutes to place him as the journalist who’d interviewed her at her farewell concert. She shot Arthur a dirty look, and Guzmán another, wondering how they were connected.

  “Let me go,” she commanded.

  Guzmán obeyed with a half-smile. He liked a woman with character.

  “Don’t make a scene. It won’t be necessary.” He escorted her over to Arthur.

  It was Arthur who spoke first.

  “I know everything
. Guzmán figured it all out.”

  Gloria writhed in fury.

  “What is it that you know? That the portrait Eduardo painted is for me? None of that even matters anymore.”

  Arthur shook his head. At this point Eduardo and his damn portrait were as important to him as bird shit on the sidewalk—they didn’t even register. Nor did he care about Gloria’s insane motives for having wanted a portrait of him to begin with. She could burn it, tear it up, or hang it on a wall in her house and spit on it every day for the rest of her life as far as he was concerned.

  “Where is my daughter, Gloria?”

  Gloria A. Tagger looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. She searched Guzmán’s face for confirmation that he really was insane, but Guzmán just looked at her impassively.

  “Why on earth are you asking me? How do you expect me to know? Maybe she’s in hell, waiting to open the gates for you.”

  Arthur’s eyes flashed with anger. He could have beat her senseless at that moment.

  Guzmán took a turn speaking.

  “I know that Magnus Olsen’s wife sent you a tape a few months before Ian died, right after Olsen was found hanging from his living room ceiling.”

  “What are you talking about? I’d met Olsen and his wife, but she and I were never friends, and she certainly never sent me any tape.”

  “She told me so herself,” Guzmán insisted, not losing his patience.

  “Well, she’s lying.”

  “She was telling the truth.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because she’s dead. She was killed for telling me.”

  As though death were the irrefutable truth, Gloria fell silent, although she’d never received the tape.

  Guzmán scrutinized that silence and a shadow of doubt fell over him. He was convinced Olsen’s wife had told him the truth, but he was starting to suspect that Gloria wasn’t lying either.