17 Stone Angels Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fortunato went to meet her at the Aeropuerto Ezeiza with a little placard that said “Dra. Fowler,” and a driver in an impeccable blue uniform. At the last minute he’d brought along Inspector Fabian Diaz to bulk up the delegation.

  Fortunato had explained to Fabian that this new investigation was political and would be pursued at a pace he described as “tranquilo.” In reality, Fabian took all his investigations at that pace. Loosely attached to one of the five “patotas”—plainclothes investigative groups that Fortunato directed—Fabian worked gambling and vice and used that as license to dress in clothes Fortunato considered too flamboyant for a serious policeman. He spent most of his days on obscure “operativos” to the race track and the football stadiums, putting in only a few hours at the station and writing up scanty reports that always contained the words “continuing investigation in process.” It didn’t matter; he collected the appropriate tolls from the pimps and illegal lotteries, and in his remaining time he arrested enough criminals to keep his record presentable. About thirty, he had dark blond curls and a fashion-model face. At the station they called him Romeo. Fortunately, he’d dressed relatively sedately today in a black and white check sports jacket and a black polo shirt. They scanned the arrivals for the gringa.

  Fortunato caught a woman’s face out of the crowd and felt a mixture of hope and dread that she would be the one. Her wheat-blonde hair swept back from features that wavered between beauty and a disconcerting irregularity, with eyes perhaps too far apart or too penetrating and a mouth that could be construed as either delicate or cruelly thin. A sphinx face. A face like expensive perfume. When Fortunato saw her break from the throng and move toward him, he felt something come floating free in his chest.

  She looked startlingly younger than he’d expected: perhaps in her twenties or early thirties, and slim, with sure, athletic steps made easy by flat shoes. She’d dressed in a tan skirt with a matching jacket, and a white blouse slightly rumpled from the flight. A gold chain gleamed at her neck and her fingers moved up to touch it nervously as she felt the three men watching her. She looked business-like and competent, but he noticed that she held her portfolio in a strange way, in front of her thigh, rather than to the side.

  “Doctora Fowler.” He offered his hand, resisting the normal impulse to kiss her.

  “Señor Fortunato? It’s a great pleasure to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Doctora,” he said softly. “Welcome to Buenos Aires. This is Inspector Fabian Diaz.” Fabian nodded gravely, on his best behavior. “And Officer Pilar.”

  As she moved to shake hands with Fabian, Fortunato realized that she had been using her portfolio to cover a large red stain on her thigh. It looked like tomato juice. “Doctora Fowler,” he said, “they dirtied you on the flight!”

  She peered down at the stain, then blushed. “The passenger beside me spilled his drink.” She tossed her shoulders girlishly. “With luck the hotel has a laundry service.”

  An awkward moment passed as the three men stared at her, then Fortunato said, “Of course they will. Let me help you with your luggage.” The driver seemed to get hold of himself and lunged for the bag before they headed across the cavernous lobby of the Arrivals terminal. The touts and taxi drivers recognized them as police and gave them a wide berth. Ezeiza was well-known for its taxi mafia, which gave arriving passengers the choice of being fleeced by the taxistas themselves or by the overpriced tickets sold in their phony kiosk. A fat business controlled by the Federales.

  La Doctora was craning her head as if she’d never seen an airport before, gazing intently at the newsstands and the advertisements. Outside he could sense she was breathing in the rich and humid air of Buenos Aires, scented with exhaust fumes and subtropical foliage. Even among the vast pavements of Ezeiza, one could still smell the damp black earth of the pampas. He opened the car door for her, then slid in on the other side. Fabian sat in front. “To the Sheraton, no?”

  “Please.”

  The driver flashed his badge at the man in the parking booth and was waved past.

  “Is this your first time in Buenos Aires, Doctora Fowler?”

  “Athena,” she said. “Call me Athena.”

  “The goddess of Wisdom, no?”

  She smiled. “And the goddess of War.”

  A potent little silence passed through the car, and Fortunato settled into his seat as they picked up speed toward the center.

  All around them the thirteen million inhabitants of Buenos Aires were furiously dreaming of a city that used to be. Eighty years ago Buenos Aires had been among the richest cities of the world, had made legends of its extravagant playboys and their Tango. A city of whorehouses and opera halls, of mansions built by cattle and wheat, duels fought with knives; of silk shirts, stockyards, carriages and silver. A city built to outshine and outspend the best of Europe. A Lost City now, bankrupted by fifty years of dictatorship and plunder, but still retaining, in its turbid streets, a tawdry and exhilarating magnificence.

  It was a metropolis haunted by beautiful faces. The streets coursed with Berliners and Venetians, British, Basques and Poles, all the fair features of Europe made richer by the Argentine climate and the dark eyes of the Andes. Children of war criminals mingled with the children of their victims, Indians with descendants of their brutal conquerors while, invisible among them, floated 30,000 victims of the dictatorship whose features, like their bodies, had simply “disappeared.”

  La Doctora addressed the Comisario in her textbook Spanish, spoken with a slight Mexican accent. He was pleased by the note of youthful admiration in her voice. “I’m eager to begin working on this with you, Señor Fortunato. The State Department spoke very highly of you. They said that you have an excellent reputation. A citation for excellence for capturing a serial killer of children. Another for breaking up a kidnapping.”

  Fortunato shrugged. “One tries,” he said vaguely.

  “They said you’ve even investigated other policemen.”

  Fortunato needed a few seconds to recognize that she was referring to the time they’d accidentally investigated another Comisario’s stolen car operation. By the time they realized who it belonged to, one of the honest cops had turned the evidence over to a judge, and the judge’s patrons had found it expedient to widen the net. He could see that Bianco had put together a rather heroic dossier for him. “Sometimes duty is painful, but thus is life, Doctora.”

  She nodded, watching him with her spotlight eyes. She seemed to want to begin the investigation immediately. “Do you know much about Robert Waterbury?” she asked.

  “Very little,” he answered. “I just came into the investigation a few days ago. I was hoping you could tell me. He was a journalist, no?”

  “No.” She reached into her portfolio and pulled out a book. Fortunato read the title in English: “The Black Market.” El Mercado Negro. She turned it over and handed it to him. Between his fingers gleamed a soft-focus picture of a fair-haired author with a tranquil smile. Fortunato recognized him instantly.

  “This is Robert Waterbury’s first novel. It was published in twelve countries and won several prizes.”

  Fortunato heard his own voice. “What is it about?”

  “It’s about a banker who makes a trip to the Underworld to find his wife. Along the way he realizes that his life is a lie. It’s very good.” For some reason the book’s theme irritated Fortunato. The Chief had said Waterbury was a journalist and tied him to some sort of blackmail scheme. “So he wasn’t a journalist?”

  “No. Who told you that?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought I saw it in the files.”

  Her gaze seemed to linger a trifle too long after his answer, then she reached into the portfolio again. “I brought this for you also.” Fortunato didn’t want to take the snapshot she offered him, but he had no choice. “You can keep it,” she said. “I have another one.”

  He slipped on his reading glasses and examined the glossy lit
tle square. In a sunny photograph the late Robert Waterbury sat on the beach holding close to him a little blond girl and a dark-haired woman who looked serene and pretty. The little girl was clutching her father’s arm, grimacing joyfully towards his face. The wife was lifting a handful of sand that trickled through her fingers.

  A feeling of deep anguish came over Fortunato as he looked silently at the photograph. He thought of his own father, whose death when he was eight had left a particular tang of sadness that still came back to him these fifty years later. He imagined the little girl. Even now, after four months, she would still be waiting for her father in that childish fantasy world in which hope persisted against all knowledge.

  But thus was life. Waterbury had tried to reel in a fish too big for him and things had gone wrong. That’s what happened when you blackmailed people.

  Fabian broke into his reverie, turning round in his seat to face the gringa. “You know,” he said to La Doctora, “I’m a writer also.”

  The absurd lie flopped out like a water balloon and Fortunato could see a grin crease the driver’s profile. Fabian was famous for his verses, but Fortunato had assumed that he’d know when to keep his mouth shut.

  “Really?” she said politely.

  “Yes,” he said, as if he were sitting in a literary café on Calle Corrientes with the other boludos. “I’m writing a book. It’s a policial, set in Buenos Aires. I have a cousin in Los Angeles and he’s going to be my representative to the film industry there. I’m developing the story and he’s going to write the screenplay. And me, being a real policeman, who’s better qualified?”

  “That’s a good point,” she answered.

  “Yes. Perhaps someday I’ll tell you what it is about. But meanwhile, we’ll concentrate on finding Robert Waterbury’s assassin.” He waved his hand as if she had heaved a sigh of admiration. “It’s the least I can do for a brother writer.”

  Fortunato let the outburst run its course without reacting. They were zooming over the outer rings of the town on the elevated highway and the warm autumn air was fluttering through the windows, making Fortunato think of butterflies. He saw his visitor looking out at the balconies and Beaux Arts facades of the Palermo district. They formed a mineral froth of molded pilasters and lintels, the elegant architectural elements of a half-dozen civilizations jumbled together. Green copper domes and black slate roofs went tumbling through the sky, stitched with wrought iron and draped with masonry garlands, shields, nymphs and demigods.

  “This is really fantastic,” Athena said. “How old are these buildings?”

  A pinhole of an opening. “About ninety years. The golden age of Buenos Aires was in the first thirty years of the twentieth century, when Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world.”

  “What happened? I mean …” she added quickly, as if afraid of offending them, “I keep reading in the newspaper that things are very bad here.”

  Fabian answered, playing the leftist. “First there was the Dictatorship of the Seventies, which octupled the debt in only six years. Then came the IMF and their strategy of privatization and Free Trade. Now we have this …”

  They had been stopped by a demonstration whose angry principals were banging drums and chanting down the Avenida Santa Fé. The driver swore softly under his breath.

  “What’s going on?” the gringa asked.

  Fortunato peered through the windshield at the passing signs. “This is Aerolíneas, no?” To the woman: “It’s the employees of the national airline. They were privatized ten years ago and now they’re being closed down by the parent company.”

  “The airline was making a profit when they privatized them,” Fabian explained. “They sold it at a discount to the Spanish and the Spanish sold off all their routes and airplanes and put the loot in their pocket. Now they’re firing everyone.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, the symbol of money changing hands, wrinkling his nose as if something stank. “The Spanish are the only people more hijo de puta than the Argentines.”

  “It already is!” the driver burst out in annoyance at the passing marchers. “The money’s in Geneva and Miami. Why go swelling balls here?”

  Fabian gave his dog smile to the woman. “They privatized everything: the highways, the hydroelectric, the telephones. Now they want to privatize the post office. After that,” he shrugged, “they’ll privatize the air.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Miguel Fortunato’s comisaria sat in a three-story building in Ramos Mejia. Though fifteen miles distant from Buenos Aires proper, Ramos enjoyed a relative degree of prosperity, supporting a bustling five-block commercial zone and spreading out into the small neat concentrations of houses of the middle class. Further out the houses got smaller and crouched behind walls topped with broken glass. Here transpired the modest lives of the working class, for the last decade focused on the continual belt-tightening as their wages sank and their factories closed. In the ten years since the ascension of the down-thief President Menem, all except the wealthy were struggling to hold their places.

  The Ramos Mejia Brigada de Investiciónes had a reputation for yielding a good haul. It was wealthy in stolen cars, drug distribution, clandestine lottery outlets and a rich network of protection rackets that took weekly payments from ambulant vendors, small businesses and the few remaining factories. These were the classics, but a good comisario could multiply his profits by making files disappear, freeing criminals, neglecting to arrest fugitives, or arresting those fugitives who could be squeezed for extra pesos. Fortunato kept a list of such unfortunates to be arrested and squeezed on a rotating basis. In a good month, the Brigada might bring in $100,000, and Fortunato parceled out the income according to a precise formula: a quarter for himself, a quarter for the patotas who made the collections, and half to be sent upstairs to the Chief.

  Despite its robust income, the comisaria was innocent of the gleaming technology Fortunato saw on the North American police shows. Its communications room held a simple radio and several maps with colored pins to mark various crimes—red for robbery, blue for theft, black for assault. Typewriters hammered out denuncias on violet carbon paper. There was no fingerprint lab or interview room, and the evidence locker consisted of an old strongbox at the sole disposal of the one man most certain to compromise it: the Comisario.

  Nonetheless, in the week before the gringa’s arrival Fortunato had tried to polish the fiction of crisp professionalism. The prisoners had been ordered to put a new coat of paint in the waiting room and to scrub the floor tiles with stiff brushes. Desks were neatened and the calabozos that housed the delinquents rinsed with antiseptic. They even dusted off the picture of the Virgin of Lujan that hung above the dispatch radio. He was telling a story now, a story of a hardworking detective eager to crack a case. A bit weary perhaps, a bit cynical, but nonetheless trustworthy and capable of wringing from the Buenos Aires underworld any justice that could be had.

  The morning of La Doctora’s first visit seemed blessed by good omens. The night before they had arrested a pair of delinquents suspected in a series of auto thefts that had been allocating many red pins to the crime map in the Sala de Situaciones. He’d instructed the Sub-Comisario to leave their filed-down knives and key blanks on display to show the gringa when she arrived. As a bonus, one of the patotas had called in after tracking down a load of hijacked merchandise to a grocery store.

  “Five thousand,” Fortunato told the Inspector over his cell phone.

  “I tried five thousand, Comiso, but he says for five thousand he’ll take it up directly with the judge.”

  “Tell him five thousand and if he doesn’t pay put him in cuffs right there and bring him in for processing. Tell him you’re seizing all the questionable merchandise and closing the store until the investigation is complete. When you get him in the car, tell him seven thousand, and that if you have to bring him here, it’s ten thousand. If not, he can try his luck with the laws of the Republic.”

  “Fine, Comiso.�
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  He turned off the cell phone and heard a low chanting at his open door: “Bo-ca! Bo-ca! Bo-ca!”

  It was Fabian, crowing about Boca’s victory over River in last night’s SuperClassic. River had lost it on a last-minute goal, enabled by a questionable hold by a Boca wing. Fortunato had bet on River.

  “It was a foul, hijo de puta. The referee was in on it.”

  Fabian strode in, one hand extended like an orator. “Comi! The SuperClassic is sacred! Even that jackal Morelo has to try to be honest for an hour and a half! Though the effort costs him.” Fabian was dressed today in a lime green jacket and a flamboyant tie plastered with little gold roosters.

  Fortunato looked at the handsome, ridiculous man, with his curly blond hair and his clownish garb. “You would know,” he said, picking up his pen. “You’re the one who spends all his time at the stadium and the hippodrome.”

  Fabian nodded at the Comisario’s freshly tidied office. “The place is looking good. Even the calabozos smell like a pine forest. La Doctora Fowler will be very impressed. What a piece of woman, no?” His superior’s annoyance at being stuck with the investigation returned all at once. “She’s here to investigate a homicide, Fabian, not to hear your verses. You made us look like idiots last night with your little story about being a writer.”

  Fabian couldn’t seem to lose his smile. “But it’s true, Comiso!”

  He held up his hand. “I know. You’re going to fill yourself with silver at any moment, and now is the chance for a smart woman to hook you and ride you to Hollywood.”

  “Comi,” he gave an intimate little shrug, “I don’t have a monopoly on verses here.”

  Fortunato leveled a long dusty gaze at his subordinate that, over the course of five seconds, dried up Fabian’s grin and sent his left hand fidgeting at the inside of his pocket. “Listen, Romeo, while the Doctora is here I want you to stay busy with your own investigations. If she asks you something about the Waterbury case, direct her to me.”