17 Stone Angels Read online

  FROM 17 STONE ANGELS

  Boguso seemed to search his information, then said slowly: “You want me to denounce someone?”

  “Yes. I want you to denounce Enrique Boguso.”

  Boguso’s mouth fell open. Even his long history of relations with the police hadn’t prepared him for the bizarre demand. “You want me to take responsibility for a murder I didn’t even do?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  Fortunato watched Boguso try to grasp it. The eye seemed to be twitching a little bit faster. “Look,” the older man reasoned, “is it such an extra burden? Your first one was when you were sixteen and once you got your clean adult record you did it again. After this last pair, I don’t think one more fake killing will make much difference. It’s already perpetual chains, no? We give you the expediente to study, you sing your little story for the judge, the gringos write their report and everybody’s happy.”

  “And me? How am I happy?”

  “Well, Enrique. You help us and we help you. Isn’t it always like that? I think we could improve your accommodations, at least. Keep you someplace a little cozier, with conjugal privileges. And in a few years, when all the noise goes away, who knows? Someone might find a technical error in your conviction. Or you might escape somehow, or get pardoned.”

  “It’s way crazy, hombre.”

  Fortunato hesitated, letting a long philosophical pause elapse before he spoke slowly and distantly. “Yes, son. It’s crazy. But it’s a crazy world, no? A world of illusion, where the best actor rules.” He sighed. “Think about it.”

  17 STONE ANGELS

  Copyright © 2014 by Stuart Archer Cohen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Four Winds Press

  San Francisco, CA

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-940423-09-8

  Cover and interior design by Domini Dragoone

  Cover and interior images: Window wall © Luca Mason/123RF; Handcuffs © Blake Taylor/Veer; Recoleta angel statues © Jorisvo/123RF, © Jorisvo/Veer, © Ncousla/Veer, and © Fabio Santos/123RF; Jorge Videla from Wikimedia Commons.

  987654321

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  CONTENTS

  Part One: 17 Stone Angels

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Two: WaterBury’s Last Play

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part Three: Fortunato’s Law

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my three treasures:

  the Queen, the Messenger and the Hunter in the Stars.

  En el mundo del Destino, no hay estadistica.

  (In the world of Destiny, there are no statistics.)

  —Martin Alberto Vilches, Voces

  PART ONE

  17 STONE ANGELS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Robert Waterbury’s body had been discovered last October in a smoking Ford Falcon on the outskirts of Buenos Aires with six chalks of Chlorhydrate of Cocaine and his skull perforated by a nine-millimeter bullet. Thus these stories often began, and thus they usually ended, except that Waterbury was a North American, so that final tableau kept coming up as a topic of conversation between the United States embassy and the Argentine Ministry of Justice. The politicians had kicked it back and forth through the violent January heat and the fierce cancer of summer. Now the gringos were sending their own person down to investigate and he, Comisario Fortunato of the Buenos Aires Brigada de Investigaciones, was being assigned to assist and support on behalf of the Buenos Aires police.

  Fortunato turned loose a long exhausted breath and finished lighting his wife’s votive candle, then placed it gently on the windowsill. He glanced at his watch. The feeling of decay that had clung to him since Marcela’s death three weeks ago sloughed down on him again, merging with the monotonous autumn overcast that hung over the city like a sentence of perpetual chains. He brushed a cigarette ash off his sports coat and reached for his car keys.

  The assignment depressed him. He knew that the Waterbury investigation would be a sham, that it was political, and that the Chief was in on it. He knew that the reason he’d been appointed to head up the investigation was for the express purpose of not finding the killer. He knew that clearly, because he was the one who had put the bullet in the side of Waterbury’s head.

  The face of Comisario Miguel Fortunato was that of a weary beaten angel that had had too many losing days at the track and told too many lies. It was a face that seemed to comprehend all human pain. Wide and soft, it was anchored by a thick drooping mustache that presided over stubbly jowls. His large dark eyes radiated a profound melancholy, matched by a voice so low and gentle and courteous that his gaze and a few simple words could console even the most distraught or unreasonable of souls. For that reason he had often been called on to lend his saintly visage to certain tasks within the police department: he greeted the families of victims when they came to identify a body, and got a ten percent commission on the funeral arrangements they entrusted to him; he explained the necessities of enrollment in the police private security program to neighborhood businessmen. As he’d climbed through the ranks, Fortunato’s face had brought him the role of the “good” cop in the “good cop, bad cop” game, and that had become his image of himself: the good cop. Over the decades his wavy chestnut hair had gone the color of iron, and his features had softened into a mesmerizing vision of nearly religious intensity. It inspired confessions, like the mournful face of the Virgin.

  As Fortunato opened the garage door he glanced reflexively up and down the street. His neighbor was talking to his two teenage sons and the three of them fell silent under his gaze. He eased his car onto the pavement, then closed the sheet-metal doors behind him. He drove a late-model Fiat Uno that he’d gotten through police channels, with falsified papers and a phony bill of sale. He put it into gear and watched the cramped houses of Villa Luzuriaga squeeze past him in a tight continuous line, their windows barred and their walls topped with broken glass.

  Fortunato would have preferred to stay home. He didn’t like to think about the Waterbury murder, and though it wasn’t his style to complain, he knew someone had given him the hide to eat on that one. The day after he’d killed Waterbury, Marcela had received the diagnosis of cancer and a few months later she was dead. Fortunato couldn’t help but link those two events in his mind. He wasn’t superstitious, but beyond all ideas of Karma or Destiny he was a cop, an investigator, and given the evidence available he could only feel that they related to the same case: the case of Miguel Fortunato.

  La Gloria had been built longer ago than anyon
e remembered and lingered on next to a raw-brick building which housed a clandestine mechanic’s shop. Lost in the shabby exurbs of San Justo, the bar had survived through the decades nearly unchanged, absorbing the years and the black residue of a million cigarettes into its dark wainscoting. A wooden refrigerator clunked away beneath a picture of the Argentine soccer selection of 1978. The green plaster walls rose twenty feet towards a dim distant ceiling. There was a smell of dust and floor cleaner. Oozing from the loudspeakers came the vaguely insidious chords of the string introduction to the tango “Tabaco.” Chief Bianco liked this bar because they played an all-tango radio station, and the Chief was a semi-professional singer of tangos. They called him El Tanguero.

  Four old men were playing cards at the entrance, their table heaped with small piles of kidney beans and half-empty bottles of beer. They looked up at Fortunato as he came in. “Miguelito!” one of them said.

  “How’s it going, Blacky?” Fortunato leaned down and kissed him on the cheek, then sprinkled a few greetings around the table and moved on toward the back. The Chief was waiting for him in the rear alcove with a big smile. “Miguel!”

  As Fortunato got closer he made out the two men sitting with the Chief and felt his throat tighten. He swallowed and continued on, exchanging a distracted slap on the shoulder with a couple of Inspectors sitting near the pool table.

  The Chief was wearing a clean navy suit and beige silk tie and he stood up to exchange kisses with Fortunato. The other two stayed seated. Fortunato heard the clicking of the Chief’s lips in his ear as they kissed, smelled his cologne and the aldehyde overtones of his hair pomade. The familiar sensations and the crisply trimmed white hair and blue eyes reassured him a bit, like the presence of an elder brother. Seven years older than Fortunato, Bianco had taken him on as an Ayudante fresh from the Academy in 1968 and had brought him from comisaria to comisaria as he’d climbed the ranks. Now Bianco was said to be a possible successor to the chief of the entire Bonaerense, and Fortunato had become his man in Investigaciones in San Justo. The Chief scraped a rickety chair over to the table for him and motioned toward it with his hand. Fortunato noted the overfriendly air of someone selling faulty merchandise.

  Bianco indicated his companions without offering an introduction. “These are two friends. They came to explain to you the problem with the American so everything is clear.”

  Fortunato looked at them. They had that leaden unsmiling quality of people accustomed to making unilateral decisions about other people’s lives. One was tall, about forty-five, with close-clipped blond hair, wearing a blue suit over a polo shirt. He had unsettling hazel eyes. The other was younger, morrocho, black-haired and dark-skinned in a navy jogging suit. Fortunato spotted the slight hump of a shoulder holster under his left arm. Both looked fit and self-contained, the kind of operatives who lifted weights and went to the shooting range. Heavy men. Ex-military. He knew the type from the days of the dictatorship.

  He smiled at them. “Bien, muchachos. What’s up with the Northamerican? We put that case to sleep two months ago.”

  The two men looked at each other and the Chief started in with a warm serious tone, like that of a concerned relative. “Unfortunately, Miguel, as I told you over the telephone, the case seems to have aroused some interest in the exterior. We’ve been feeling some pressure from the North Americans to open it up again, shuffle some papers, that sort of thing.”

  Fortunato steadied his voice to keep out any hint of complaint.

  “You told me he was nobody.”

  “He was nobody. But Mr. Nobody had a wife and child. It seems his woman has been crying to some senator about her poor dead husband, and finally the senator started making noises, too. It’s cheap publicity for him.” He took a sip of his beer, then added ironically: “You know, Miguelito, “human rights” are very much in fashion these days.”

  Fortunato took in the information without commenting. He’d gotten lost in the first part of the explanation, that Waterbury had a wife and child. It was one of the few facts he knew about the man because Waterbury had told him that himself, in the early part of the kidnapping when he’d been trying to impose some fiction of normalcy on the situation. Fortunato felt Waterbury’s dead weight come down on him again, then focused in on what Bianco was saying. “The gringos are negotiating some new privatizations and the Minister of Economy has to show that he’s cooperating.”

  “I understand. Why do you choose me to deal with the gringos?”

  “For that face!” the Chief said. “Who wouldn’t believe that face!” No one laughed at the joke so the Chief went on. “Well, Miguel. It happened in your district. You’re a high-ranking investigator of homicides with more than three decades of service in the Institution. You have complete credibility.”

  The blond one interrupted. “You’re the one who fucked up, Fortunato! You were supposed to squeeze him, not kill him.”

  The Chief winced and tried to calm things down. “Che!” he told the blond. “The Northamerican acted badly. Everyone knows that. It was his own fault. Comisario Fortunato is one of the best officers in the Force. I trust him completely.” He turned back to Fortunato. “It’s a formality. All you need to do is air out the files, tour the crime scene and buy her a steak before she goes home.”

  “Her? Who are they sending?”

  The Chief glanced at the blond man and they both smiled. Even the dark man seemed to lighten his expression a little. The blond one answered the question. “La Doctora Fowler, from Georgetown University. Activist in human rights issues and an expert on the history and culture of Peru.”

  “Peru?”

  The other three looked at each other and broke into laughter. “So you can see,” the Chief continued, “it’s not such a big deal. The gringos don’t want to touch it but they’ve got this senator swelling their balls.”

  A number by Pugliese came on the radio and the Chief raised his hand to the opening bars. “That’s how I like it! Dry tango, without adornment!”

  The heavy men stood, and Fortunato inclined his head to look up at them. He felt weak as the blond one stared silently down at him, then the two left without a handshake. Fortunato watched them file past the card players into the brilliant doorway.

  “Who sent the monkeys?” he asked.

  The Chief sighed. “It’s a bit complicated, Miguel.”

  “Who do they belong to? Carlo Pelegrini?”

  The name startled Bianco. “Why do you say that?”

  Fortunato looked at him sharply. “You sent me into the shit with that operation. Are they Pelegrini’s or not?”

  Bianco looked away across the dark interior, shook his head. “It’s complicated.”

  The assignment had been to pick up a man named Robert Waterbury outside his hotel on the Calle Paraguay and give him a scare. He hadn’t known who Waterbury was or who they were squeezing him for, only that it involved some notebooks that Waterbury was using to blackmail someone. Waterbury didn’t carry a gun and wasn’t violent, so it looked like an easy job: they would grab him, cuff him, put a gun to his head and drive him out to a field. Maybe give him a few stiff ones to get his attention. Then they would empty his pockets, dump him in the mud, and leave him to find his own way home. All without explanation; part of the psychology was to let him use his imagination.

  Fortunato shook his head. “I only took that job because of you. And you stuck me with Domingo and his nose-stuffer. How was I supposed to work with a car full of retards with their noses full of merca? How?”

  The Chief opened up for a moment. “I didn’t want Domingo. They suggested him.”

  He thought of Domingo, with his boyish black hair and his phony servility. Behind that fleshy smile was the ever-present desire to put a bullet in someone’s back.

  “Who suggested him?”

  The Chief looked past him toward the old men playing cards. “Look, Miguelito: don’t ask me more because I can’t tell you.” Then, commandingly, “But don’t go throwing around
the name of Pelegrini.” He seemed to regret his sudden harshness, tossed his head dismissively. “It’s not for so much, Miguelito. The judge is Duarte. If we have to arrange something we can count on him. You should look over the expediente again and familiarize yourself with the case.”

  The irony of Fortunato familiarizing himself with a crime that he had committed seemed to escape the Chief, but maybe he was right. There was the crime, which was the reality, and there was The Case, which was all the fossilizations of that reality. Two very different things, especially in Buenos Aires.

  “What about the Northamerican? This Waterbury. What else do I need to know about him?”

  “Not much. It seems he was some sort of journalist, but not very successful. He had money problems, and that’s why he came down here. He must have had some kind of scheme.” The Chief’s eyes shifted sideways, then back to Fortunato. “You can ask the rest from the gringa when she gets here. It will make you look more sincere.” The Chief took another peanut from the little dish in front of them. “It’s not such a big deal, Miguel. Put on your idiot face for a week and it will all solve itself.” He brightened. “Look, Soriano’s singing at El Viejo Almacen next weekend. Take her to hear some authentic Buenos Aires tango, show her a few steps. She’ll forget all about this idiocy.”

  “She’s coming next week?”

  “Si, señor. And be nice to her,” the Chief said. “It’s her first time to Argentina.”