"Uh ..."

"Anyway, we discussed the case with Fortuna, and he told us to move ahead with it, and he'd bring you up to date on the proceedings later," I lied.

As usual when faced with any eventuality beyond the pale of his daily routines, Perez didn't know what to do. In some part of his brain, there must have been a suspicion that he ought to take some initiative. It seemed an appropriate moment to offer him a decorous solution.

"Let's do this," I proposed. "I'll add you in at the end and say you joined the deposition after it began, and that will be that. Provided, of course," I added after a short pause, "that your defendant agrees."

"Uh ..." Perez hesitated. "I guess it wouldn't be possible to start all over, would it?"

I opened my eyes wide and looked at Sandoval, who opened his wide, too, and finally we both looked wide-eyed at the guard. "Excuse me, counselors," he said, prudently including all of us in the lawyerly brotherhood. "It's getting late, and if you want the prisoner transported back to the police jail, the trucks are about to leave ... I don't know. It's up to you."

"Another day over there in the police lockup? And still in solitary confinement? That seems too irregular, Julio," said Sandoval, suddenly concerned for the suspect's civil rights.

"Right, right." Perez felt comfortable doing what he was best at, namely concurring with somebody else. "Well, if the accused has no objection to the foregoing proceedings ..."

"No problem," said Gomez. His tone was still haughty and aloof.

I handed Perez the pages and a ballpoint. He accepted the pages, but he preferred to sign them with the handsome Parker fountain pen that was one of his most precious worldly treasures.

"Take him back to the station," I instructed the guard. "I'll send somebody along with the official letter to the Penitentiary Service and an order to remand your prisoner to Devoto."

While he was being handcuffed again, Gomez turned to me and said, "I didn't know there was so much work here for drunken losers."

I looked at Sandoval. By this point, we had what we wanted: a signed confession, and Gomez in deep s.h.i.t. Anyone else-me, for instance, to cite the nearest example-would have taken advantage of the opportunity to exact a modic.u.m of revenge. To remark to the lad, say, that he'd just fallen for a trick that only a conceited jacka.s.s like him would fall for. But Sandoval was beyond the reach of such temptations, and therefore he confined himself to gazing at Gomez with a slightly bovine expression on his face, as if he hadn't completely understood the kid's comment. The guard gave Gomez a light push, and he started walking. There was a click as the door closed behind them. Almost immediately afterward, Perez left, too, saying something about another obligation he couldn't postpone. Was he still carrying on his affair with the female public defender?

When Sandoval and I were alone, we looked at each other and remained silent. After a while, I extended my hand to him.

"Thanks."

"It was nothing," he answered. He was a humble guy, but he couldn't hide his satisfaction with the way things had turned out.

"What was that part about the perpetrator being 'a very well endowed man' with 'extraordinary strength in his upper extremities'? Where did that come from?"

"Sudden inspiration," Sandoval said, laughing contentedly.

"Let me take you to dinner," I offered.

Sandoval hesitated. "I appreciate it, thanks," he said. "But my nerves are still zinging, and I think it would be a better idea if I took a little time to relax by myself."

I understood perfectly well what he was referring to, but I didn't have the courage to tell him not to go. I went out into the main office and charged one of my subordinates with drawing up the official letter to authorize Gomez's transfer to Devoto Prison, having the worthless Fortuna sign it, and delivering it to the police station where Gomez was being held. There would be time enough afterward to inform the judge of what had taken place.

Sandoval, eager to be gone, picked up his jacket and waved a sweeping good-bye to everyone in the clerk's office. Before he left, however, he carefully tucked his shirttail back into his trousers.

I looked at the clock and figured I'd give him two hours' head start. No, three. Inadvertently, I glanced over at the shelf that held cases waiting to be sent to the General Archive. Luckily, Sandoval would be able to occupy himself during his recovery with a good deal of sewing.

22.

On the day following Gomez's confession, I went looking for Morales. I didn't try to see him at the bank or reach him by telephone. I counted on finding him at the Once train station. I thought it would be worthy and fitting for the poor man to learn of his great enemy's arrest precisely while conducting one of his improvised stakeouts in hopes of catching him. Although Morales's efforts had been in vain, I was sure, even after three and a half years, that he was still on the hunt. Going there to tell him the news seemed to be a way of including him in our accomplishment.

The little bar was almost empty. A quick glance through the window was enough to a.s.sure me that Morales wasn't there. As I was about to turn and go, a thought occurred to me. I stepped inside and walked to the cash register. The man in charge was tall and fat, and he looked like one of those guys who have seen everything and can no longer be surprised.

"Excuse me, sir," I said, smiling as I approached him. It always bothers me a little to go into a place of business where I have no intention of buying anything. "I'm looking for a young man who comes in here a lot, I think several evenings a week. He's got dirty blond hair. Pretty pale complexion. A tall, skinny guy with a straight little mustache."

The fat man looked at me. I suppose one of the prerequisites for running a bar in Once station is the ability to identify crazies and con men at once. Apparently and silently, he concluded that I fit neither of those two categories. Then he nodded slightly and looked down at the counter, as though searching his memory. "Ah," he suddenly said. "I know who you mean. You're looking for the Dead Man."

It came as no shock to me to hear Morales referred to in that manner, and there wasn't the slightest hint of jest in the fat man's voice. He'd simply reported an objective characterization based on certain obvious signs. A customer who comes in at least once a week, always orders the same thing, always pays with coins, and spends two hours in silence, unmoving, looking out the cafe window, might indeed seem to share some qualities with a dead body or a ghost. Therefore, I didn't feel I was being disloyal or sarcastic or excessive when I answered, "Yes."

"He's been in here once this week already, you know." He paused, as if trying to recall another circ.u.mstance that he could relate to Morales's last visit. Then he said, "It was Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday. The day before yesterday."

"Thanks," I said. So Morales was still making his rounds. I wouldn't have expected anything else.

"Do you want me to give him a message when I see him?" The fat man's question caught me when I was halfway out the door.

After a moment's thought, I said, "No, that's all right. But thanks. I'll come back another day." I said good-bye and left.

The harsh sound of the public address system a.s.saulted me in the dimly lit corridor. Only then did I realize that the last time I'd been in Once station was the evening when I'd run into Morales, a few hours before I put an end to my marriage.

I saw Marcela two or three more times after that, when we were signing papers in the civil court. Poor girl. I reproach myself to this day for having hurt her so much. On the night when I finally decided to leave her for good, I burned the script she'd written for the way her life was supposed to go. I tried to explain. Although I was afraid it might wound her, I spoke to her of love, and I ventured to confess that I found a total lack of it in our relationship. "What does that have to do with it?" was her reply. I don't think she loved me any more than I did her, but her plan allowed no room for uncertainties. Poor thing. If I had died, I would have caused her far fewer complications. The neighbor women holding court in the beauty parlor had no objection to the existence of widows. But an estranged wife, in 1969? Positively appalling. How was she going to get her three kids now, her firstborn son, the doctor, and her house with a garden in the suburbs, and her family automobile, and her Januaries at the beach without a legitimate husband? Sometimes, the grief we can cause without intending to is astonishing. In this case, I suspect that her pain was greater than the sacrifice I refused to make to avoid hurting her. On that early evening in 1972 when I went back to Once station, a sense of guilt weighed me down, and after it came sadness. Except for the few impersonal meetings I've mentioned, I never saw her again. Did she find someone with whom she could set out once more on the path she felt prepared to travel, the one that would lead her, without surprises, to an old age without questions? I hope so. As for me, or as for who I was that evening, I exited the station onto Bartolome Mitre Street and walked home to the little apartment I'd rented in the Almagro barrio.

23.

Eventually-on the following Tuesday, to be exact-I found him. The same blond hair, perhaps a little thinner than it had been at our last meeting. The same gray extinguished eyes. Sitting just as before, with his hands immobile in his lap and his back to the bar. The same straight mustache. The same low-key obstinacy.

I told him the whole story from the beginning. I chose (or maybe it just came out that way) a calm, measured tone, much calmer and more measured than the one Sandoval and I, once his hangover subsided, had employed to gloat over our success. Something told me that the little bar was no place for such emotions as triumph, euphoria, or joy. The only part of my account where I let myself get a little more vehement, a little adjectival, a little gesticulatory, was when I described the magisterial intervention of Pablo Sandoval. Of course, I avoided quoting the two or three hair-raising phrases with which Gomez had dug his own grave, but I spoke clearly enough to do justice to the splendid way Sandoval had tricked us, both Gomez and me. Finally, I revealed that Judge Fortuna Lacalle had signed a preventive detention order for first-degree murder without objecting to so much as a comma.

"So now what?" Morales asked when I'd finished talking.

I told him that the investigative phase of the case was almost over. By way of solidifying it even further, I said, I was going to order that a couple of witnesses' statements be expanded and a few more tests made, and I'd also initiate some small legal maneuvers intended to prevent a clever defense attorney from complicating our existence. In a few months (six, or eight at the most), we'd conclude our indictment and send the case to the sentencing court.

"And then?"

I explained that a year could pa.s.s, or two at the outside, before a final sentence was handed down, depending on how fast the sentencing court and the Appellate Court worked. But I told him there was nothing to be concerned about, because we had Gomez dead to rights.

After a long silence, Morales asked, "What will he get?"

"Life in prison," I declared.

That was a somewhat th.o.r.n.y subject. Would it be worthwhile to point out that Isidoro Gomez, no matter how severe his prison sentence, would probably be eligible for release in twenty or at most twenty-five years? I'd kept quiet about that on another occasion and did so this time, too; I didn't want to cause Morales any more suffering. He sat sideways on his stool, facing me, heedless at last-maybe for the first time in three and a half years-of the flood of people streaming toward the platforms.

As if he were able to read my thoughts, Morales turned back to the window. His stool squealed on its axis. Ingrained habits don't go away so easily, I reasoned. But something had changed. Now he was looking at the pa.s.sersby without insistence. I waited for another question, but it never came. What could have been going through his head? After some thought, I believed I understood him.

For the first time in more than four years, Ricardo Agustin Morales didn't know what to do with the rest of his life. What was left for him now? I suspected that the answer was nothing. Or, worse yet, that what was left for him was Liliana's death. And apart from her death, nothing. Something else happened for the first time that evening: Morales was the one who got to his feet and brought our meeting to an end. I stood up as well. He held out his hand. "Thank you" was all he said.

I didn't answer him, limiting myself to looking him in the eye and shaking his hand. Although at the time I didn't realize this, I had acc.u.mulated several reasons for thanking him, too. He put his hand in a pocket and came out with the exact change to pay for his coffee. The fat man behind the bar was absorbed in La oral deportiva, a sports talk radio show. He wasn't sufficiently aware of us to perceive that he'd just lost a customer. Morales walked to the door and turned around. He said, "Please give my best to your a.s.sistant ... what did you say his name was?"

"Pablo Sandoval."

"Thanks. Please convey my respects and tell him I appreciate his help very much."

Morales barely lifted his hand, turned around, and disappeared into the seven o'clock throng.

Abstinence.

Would that be the best conclusion for the story he's telling? Yesterday, Chaparro finished recounting his second meeting with Morales in the little bar in Once station, and now he's tempted to let his book stop there. It's cost him a mighty effort to bring the tale around to this point. Why not be satisfied? He's described the crime, the investigation, and the discovery of the murderer. The wicked is imprisoned and the good is avenged: a happy ending, of a sort. The half of Chaparro that hates uncertainty and almost desperately longs to be done with his project suggests that he's reached the perfect stopping point; he's managed, more or less, to tell the story he proposed to tell, and he feels that the voice he's found to tell it is adequate to the purpose. The characters he's created have a startling resemblance to the flesh-and-blood people he knew, and those characters have said and done, more or less, things the real people said and did. His cautious side suspects that if he pushes ahead, everything will go to h.e.l.l, his story will overflow its banks, and his characters will wind up acting at their own whim without sticking to the facts, or his memory of the facts, which in this case amounts to the same thing, and all his efforts will have been in vain.

But Chaparro has another half, and a strong desire to be guided by it. After all, it's the part of him that felt the urge and made the decision to write what he's written so far. And that part constantly reminds him that the story didn't end where he's ended it, that it kept on going, that he hasn't yet told it all. So why is he so tense, so nervous, so distracted? Is it simply that he's unsure of how to continue? Anxious about being in the middle of the river and unable to make out the other bank?

The correct answer is both simpler and more difficult, and that's because for three weeks he's heard nothing from Irene. Well, why should he? There's no reason why he should, he acknowledges, and he falls to cursing her, himself, and his G.o.dd.a.m.ned novel. Once again, he begins to circle the telephone, distracted from his book merely because he's busy inventing a series of more and more unlikely excuses for calling her up.

This time, it takes barely two days of fasting, insomnia, and literary inaction before he picks up the phone and dials.

"h.e.l.lo?" It's her, in her office.

"h.e.l.lo, Irene, this is-"

"I know who this is." Brief silence. "Are you going to tell me where you've been all this time?" Another silence.

"Are you there?"

"Yes, yes, sure. I've been wanting to call you, but ..." "So why didn't you? You didn't have any more favors to ask me?"

"No ... I mean, yes ... Well, it's not exactly a favor, I just thought maybe you'd have time to read a few chapters of my novel, that is, if you want to, of course ..."

"I'd love to! When are you coming?"

After their conversation is over, Chaparro doesn't know whether to be happy about Irene's enthusiasm (and about the fact that he's going to see her very soon-next Thursday-and about the way she recognized his voice before he told her who he was) or terrified because he's offered to bring her some chapters to read. And why would he make such an offer? Because he's stuck, that's why. Chaparro suspects that no serious writer would be prepared to show his work in such an unfinished state.

In any case-and this is unusual for him-he realizes that it doesn't bother him very much to think he might not be a serious writer. What's much more important is that he's going to have coffee on Thursday with Irene.

24.

Isidoro Gomez languished in Devoto Prison for an entire month before finally deciding to go to the showers. In all that period of time, he hardly closed his eyes, and when he did, it was only in s.n.a.t.c.hes, and only during the day; he spent his nights sitting erect on his bunk, with his fists tight and his eyes fixed on the other beds, prepared to repel any a.s.sault by his fellow inmates. For most of the daylight hours, he sat in some isolated corner or perched on the sill of one of the big, heavily barred windows, blatantly staring at the other prisoners. Throughout the whole course of a month, he never lowered his guard and never changed his aspect, which was that of a fighting c.o.c.k, ready to do battle.

On his thirtieth day in Devoto, having at last made up his mind to wash, he marched resolutely-chest inflated, brow furrowed-down the aisle that separated the two rows of bunks and led to the showers. He was pleased when another prisoner seemed to move a little to one side as he pa.s.sed.

Calmer now, and surer of himself, Gomez stood next to a wooden bench with gray slats and took off his clothes. He walked across the damp floor of the shower room and turned on a faucet. The jet of warm water striking his face and streaming down his body gave him an agreeable sensation of well-being.

When he heard someone clear his throat behind him, he spun around and clenched his fists in a movement that might have been tenser and faster than he would have liked. Two prisoners were standing in the entrance to the shower room and looking at him. One of them was tall and heavily built, big as a house in fact, with dark skin, dark hair, and the appearance of a dyed-in-the-wool criminal. The other, a fair-haired, skinny fellow of average height with light skin and eyes, stepped forward a few paces and held out his right hand in greeting. "h.e.l.lo," he said. "So you're finally washing off all that grime, darling? Excellent. I'm Quique and this is Andres, but everybody calls him Snake." Quique's way of speaking was well mannered and affable.

Gomez backed up against the wall and raised his guard a little higher. His fists were tightly clenched again. "What the h.e.l.l do you want?" he asked, using the sharpest and most aggressive tone he was capable of producing.

The other apparently didn't notice or chose to ignore Gomez's reaction. "Think of us as your welcoming committee, babe. I know you've been here awhile, but what could we do? Today, though, I can see you're loosening up a little. Am I right?" "Loosen up your a.s.s."

The blond prisoner appeared genuinely surprised. "Oh! Please, please, what manners! Would it hurt you to be a little nicer? Acting like a mean jerk isn't going to get you anywhere around here."

"What I do or don't do is none of your f.u.c.king business, f.a.ggot."

Quique opened his eyes and mouth very wide. Then he turned to his companion, as if inviting him to intervene or asking him for an explanation. The big man, who'd been leaning in the doorway, drew himself up before he spoke: "Shut your trap, shrimp, or I'll pull your tongue out through your a.s.s."

"Stop, Andres. Don't you start talking like that, too. Obviously, the poor-"

The blond prisoner was unable to complete his sentence, because Gomez gave him a sudden, hard push, driving him into the wall, where the back of his head banged against the tiles. He let out a shriek and slid down to a seated position. A furious grimace twisted his friend's face, and in two strides he was standing in front of Gomez, fully clothed and two heads taller. "I'm going to kick the s.h.i.t out of you, you dumb little punk."

"f.u.c.k your mother, big black f.a.g-" Gomez's retort was cut short. With one blow, the large, dark-haired prisoner struck him down, and before he could get back up, a ferocious kick in the chest left him gasping for air. He tried to crawl away, slipped on the soapy water that covered the floor, and curled up into a ball, protecting his head and chest with his arms as best he could. The swarthy prisoner, holding on to a faucet to keep from slipping in his turn, began to kick Gomez in the back with the fierce indifference of a man booting a ball against a building. From time to time a m.u.f.fled moan could be heard. Several curious prisoners, attracted by the commotion, gathered around the shower room, summoning others with their shouts to come see the show. One of the first to arrive hissed to get Andres's attention and then handed him a large knife: "Here, Snake. Take it, man! Open him up and get it over with!" The big fellow accepted the weapon, taking hold of it carefully so as not to cut himself.

"Stop, Andres! Don't do anything crazy!" The blond prisoner's voice was a desperate prayer, uttered as he tried to get to his feet.

"Cool it, Quique." The swarthy prisoner's voice was gentle, affectionate, ever so slightly amused, as if his comrade's distress touched him. He turned back to Gomez, whom he'd left writhing in pain, and discovered that his opponent had taken advantage of the pause to rise to a sitting position. He was holding his stomach with both hands; his back hurt him even more, but he had no way of touching it. Snake hesitated, apparently unsure whether to continue the punishment or heed his companion's pleas. Some of the onlookers urged him to carve the fresh meat with his knife.

Because Gomez's kick to his ankles was surprisingly violent, or because it caught him unawares, or because his feet were too close together on the soapy floor, Snake pitched sideways as if the ground had ceased to exist beneath him. He instinctively thrust out his arms to break his fall, but as he was still grasping the knife in his right hand, upon impact the blade sank into his palm and wrist. Now it was his turn to cry out in pain. His blond companion leaped to his aid and almost immediately stood upright again, his hands and shirt covered with blood and a howl of panic in his throat.

As several figures rushed toward Gomez, who was still on the floor, lying on his side, he watched them getting closer, and then another kick, this one in the jaw, stopped his vision.

25.