Three days later Gomez woke up in the prison infirmary. It took him a while to remember who and where he was. When the male nurse saw him move, he called two guards, who without much ado sat him in a wheelchair and set out for a part of the prison that inmates seldom saw.

At the end of the little excursion, the guards wheeled Gomez into an office where a man seated at a bare table and smoking a cigarette seemed to be waiting for him. Except for a thin strip of hair on both sides of his head, the man was bald, but he had a thick mustache. He was wearing a dark jacket over a shirt with a wide collar and no tie. The guards pushed Gomez's wheelchair in front of the table, left the room, and closed the door. The prisoner didn't speak. He waited for the man to finish his cigarette. Gomez kept silent not only because of his confusion and surprise, but also because the mere act of swallowing saliva hurt his throat so much that he was afraid moving his lips and tongue would cause him intolerable pain.

"Isidoro Antonio Gomez," the other said at last, speaking slowly, as if carefully selecting his words. "I'm going to explain to you why you've been brought here." As he spoke, he played with the hinged top of his cigarette lighter. His chair must have been comfortable, because it allowed him to lean back far enough to put his feet up on one of the corners of the table.

"Son, my goal in this friendly meeting is to figure out the answer to a question: Are you an intelligent guy, or are you a hopeless moron? That's my entire purpose, nothing more or less," the bald man said, and only then did he look at the prisoner. The sight seemed to shock him very much, but then again, everything about him seemed exaggerated. "s.h.i.t," he said. "What a mess they made out of you, boy. G.o.dd.a.m.n ... but okay, look. The thing is, I have to make a complicated decision, and in order to make it, I need to answer that question I mentioned. Do you understand?"

There was another pause, and then he opened a notebook that lay on the table beside him. Gomez hadn't noticed it before, but now he saw that it was filled with writing.

"Ever since the cell guards rescued you in the shower room, I've taken a strong interest in your case. You got off easy, you know. If Snake doesn't give himself that atrocious cut, then the others don't call the guards to help him, and instead, my friend, he and his pals open you up, you bleed to death like a butchered pig, and that's the end of the story. You may not believe it, but I was already familiar with your case. I didn't know you, obviously, but I knew your case, at least the first part of it. I had to read the rest to bring myself up to date. G.o.d, talk about coincidences. I know it sounds asinine to say it's a small world, but I'm more and more convinced that it's true."

He flipped rapidly through the notebook until he found a page that interested him. From then on, he turned the pages more calmly, speaking as he did so. "All right, let me come to the point. That girl you killed ... a nasty business, buddy, a mighty nasty business. But none of mine. As a matter of fact, I don't really give a d.a.m.n about it. But I noticed you didn't leave any incriminating evidence at the scene, and afterward, when the police were looking for you, you vanished completely, you just flat stopped showing up anyplace where people might know you. Am I right? And then you spent three years on your best behavior so no one would have an excuse to f.u.c.k with you. So I think about all that and I say to myself, this is an intelligent guy. And then I read on, you see, and I find out you got busted for fare-dodging on the Sarmiento Line and fighting with a conductor, and I say to myself, this guy's an a.s.shole. But on the other hand, I consider the fact that the boys in the examining magistrate's court don't have anything, or hardly anything, they can tie you to the crime with, and I say to myself, all right, he can't spend his life looking over his shoulder, this is a guy who thinks logically. And then I read still further, and I learn about your deposition in the clerk's office and how you sang your heart out like you were Carlos Gardel, and so I feel justified in concluding, my friend, and I speak with all due respect and consideration, that you're as dumb as a f.u.c.king post. But I keep on reading, and I find out some more stuff, you know? Because that's what I do, I find out things, it's the way I am. It's how I live. And I find out you wound up in Devoto and spent a whole month with your a.s.s intact, and that sets me thinking again. This kid must be some kind of smart, I think. But then I read that you got a visit from Snake and Quique Dominguez, two of the sweetest guys around, and a married couple to boot, until death do them part, the only thing they're missing is a pair of golden wedding bands, and the best idea you can come up with is to react like a fifteen-year-old virgin who feels disrespected, you punch out poor Quique and fix it so Snake has to kick the s.h.i.t out of you to save face after such an insult. And listen, what I just told you about Snake and Quique is common knowledge, even the people in the corner bakery know it. If you didn't cop to that after living with those guys for a month, Gomez, I'm going to be forced to return to my earlier thoughts about you, the most, shall we say, pessimistic thoughts, namely that you're a total and incorrigible a.s.shole."

The bald man paused to catch his breath and then went on. "Gomez. Put yourself in my place. It's not a simple call. Should I consider how much nerve it took to try to dominate the situation the way you did? Or should I think about what a dumb a.s.s you were to pick a fight with those two lovebirds, who do less harm than a mixed salad? I don't know ... I don't know ... And another thing I have to take into consideration is the fact that you're a lucky guy. I believe some people are born under a lucky star. You don't? I do. I think some guys naturally have a lot of luck, and some guys naturally have no luck at all. And the way I look at it, you were born under a lucky star. Why? Let's put it like this: you kill that girl, you skate; the cops start looking for you, you skate; you're about to get killed in the shower room, you skate. Now I know, if I want to look at the bad side, I can just think about what an idiot you were to get yourself busted on that train, and how your brain stopped working at the deposition, and how you got it all wrong in the shower room. But the thing is, over and above a tendency to act like a jacka.s.s on occasion, you're still a lucky guy, you follow me? And that's an important attribute in a prospective employee."

He paused again and lit another cigarette, first offering one to Gomez, who refused with a shake of his head. Then the bald man said, "You want more evidence of what a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d you are? The fact that you're here, son. Here in front of me, the man who could become your new boss. What do you think? Look at it this way: I need new people, and suddenly you land in here, within my reach, as though you've fallen from heaven."

He gazed at the young man for a long minute before going on. "And another thing, Gomez. You don't need to know the exact details, but ... I get a real kick out of the idea of using you, because it's a way to f.u.c.k with somebody who f.u.c.ked with me first, you get me?" The bald man shook his head, as if he couldn't comprehend the chain of events that had led to this. "But leave that here, don't think about it, forget it. You'll have enough to worry about with doing the work I'm going to give you and doing it well."

He took a last drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. Then he ran his hand over his hairless scalp and said, "I a.s.sume you're not going to make me look like an a.s.shole for doing this. Am I right?"

Coffee.

If there are sublime moments in life, Chaparro thinks, this is one of them. His inner perfectionist whispers that it could be more sublime still, but the rest of him quickly discards the objection, because he's afloat on an indulgent sea of happiness and affectionate serenity.

Dusk is falling, and he's sitting with Irene in her office. At this hour, the Palace and its surroundings are deserted. They've finished drinking their coffee, and Irene, after a prolonged silence during which they've exchanged questioning glances across her desk, is smiling. These silences are always uncomfortable, but in spite of that, Chaparro very much enjoys them.

He feels that something has moved, or changed, in the past few months, not only in himself, but also and above all in the woman in front of him, the woman he loves. Since the evening when Chaparro decided not to go to his retirement party and instead turned back to the courthouse to ask her if he could borrow his old Remington typewriter, they've met six or seven times, he figures. Always, as today, in the gathering twilight. To avoid appearing too obvious or too ridiculous, he made up excuses for the first two or three of these encounters, but not since then, because Irene, speaking with unusual directness, told him she thoroughly enjoyed his visits and didn't want him to come by only when he had a specific reason. She said that over the telephone, and Chaparro regrets not having seen her face while she was p.r.o.nouncing those words. At the same time, however, he suspects he wouldn't have been able to bear revealing to her how much her words enflamed him. What's the proper facial expression in such a circ.u.mstance?

Not all of Irene's words sound so sweet. Not long ago, trying to deepen their complicity, he ventured to suggest that their evening encounters could lead to gossip. She answered, simply and almost haughtily, that there was nothing wrong with two friends having coffee together. This statement seems to have set them at a painful remove from each other; he feels as though he's been pushed away, compelled to retreat to a respectable and respectful distance. In his intermittent fits of optimism, Chaparro tells himself he's exaggerating, it's not so bad, maybe she said what she said as a way of soothing her own legitimate concern at the possibility of being exposed. Women know how to hide their feelings, how to defuse emotions that often explode inside men and show all over their faces. At least that's what Chaparro believes, or wishes to believe. It's as though women were condemned to understand the world and its dangers better. So it's not crazy to think that Irene, when she answered him that way, might have been carrying on an argument over his head, a quarrel with the world-that is, with everything outside of this office, which smells of old wood, and where Irene, uncomfortable or perhaps ashamed, has just smiled at him.

Chaparro understands her confusion, indeed he does, because it betrays ... what exactly does it betray? Well, to begin with, the fact that they've run out of things to talk about. Chaparro has already recounted his ups and downs with his book; Irene has told him the latest Judiciary jokes. If they're sitting in silence now, if now, in that silence, they're questioning each other, if they don't break the silence with their questions or their mute smiles, it's because nothing's holding them there except that, except their simply being face to face, letting the time pa.s.s with no purpose other than mutual nearness, and that's what's beautiful about sitting and asking each other unspoken questions.

26.

On May 26, 1973, Sandoval and I were working late, and although I had no idea of what was going on, the story of Morales and Gomez had just been set in motion again.

It was already dark outside when the door of the clerk's office opened and a prison guard entered. "Penitentiary Service, good evening," he said, identifying himself as though his gray uniform with the red insignia weren't identification enough.

"Good evening," I replied, wondering what time it was.

"I'll handle it," Sandoval said, heading for the reception counter.

"I was afraid no one would be here," the guard said. "Because it's so late, I mean."

"Yes ... we're usually gone by now," Sandoval said, looking for the seal so that he could stamp the guard's receipt book, which the latter held out to him, indicating the place where he was to sign.

When the doc.u.ment receipt was signed and stamped, the guard said, "So long."

"Good-bye," I replied. Sandoval said nothing, because he was reading the official letter that had just arrived. "What's it about?" I asked. He didn't answer. Was it very long, or was he reading it over again? I asked more insistently, "Pablo, what does it say?"

He turned around with the letter in his hand, walked back to my desk, and handed me the doc.u.ment. It bore the letterhead of the Penitentiary Service, its seal, and the seal of the Villa Devoto Prison unit.

"It says they just let that son of a b.i.t.c.h Isidoro Gomez go," Sandoval murmured.

27.

I was so stunned by what he'd just said that I left the paper he handed me unread on my desk. "What?" was all I could manage to say.

Sandoval walked over to the window and opened it wide. The cool evening air invaded the office. He leaned on the window rail, cursing in a tone of boundless desolation: "The G.o.dd.a.m.ned motherf.u.c.king son of a b.i.t.c.h."

The first thing I did was to call Baez. I felt a desperate urgency, which together with a certain awkward rage made me want to contact a man I trusted and demand explanations from him, as if he were the person responsible for what had happened.

"Let me see what I can find out," he said, and hung up.

He called back fifteen minutes later. "It's like you say, Chaparro. They released him last night under the general amnesty that's been granted to political prisoners."

"And since when is that son of a b.i.t.c.h a political prisoner?" I yelled.

"I don't have the slightest idea. Don't get so upset. It'll take me a few days to check into this, and then I'll call you."

"You're right," I said, reconsidering. "Please forgive me. The thing is I can't get it through my head why they would let a piece of trash like that go free, and after what it took to nail him in the first place."

"No need to apologize. It p.i.s.ses me off, too. Don't think this is the only case. I've received two other calls for the same reason. You know, it occurs to me it would be better for us to meet in a cafe. Rather than talk on the telephone, I mean."

"All right, let me know where and when. And thanks, Baez."

"Talk to you later."

We hung up, and I turned to Sandoval. He was still leaning on the window rail, staring blankly at the buildings on the other side of the street. "Pablo," I said, trying to break his trance.

He turned to me and said, "Looks like there aren't many things you can feel proud of, are there?" Then he shifted back to the window. I think that was the moment when I realized how much his stellar performance at that little b.a.s.t.a.r.d's deposition had meant to him. And the sort of medal he'd privately given himself had just been shattered to pieces. I knew that his face, which he kept turned toward Tuc.u.man Street, must be wet with tears. At that moment, the sorrow I felt for my friend was stronger than my outrage at what had just happened with Gomez.

"What do you say we go out to dinner somewhere around here?" I asked.

"Great idea!" he said, unable to restrain his sarcasm. "You want me to teach you how to drink whiskey until you pa.s.s out? The problem is who's going to get in a taxi and come looking for the two of us."

"That's not what I meant, moron. How about going to your place? We can have dinner with Alejandra and tell her the whole story."

He looked at me like a kid who'd asked to be taken to the movies and been offered, as a subst.i.tute, a boiled lollipop. I think the devastation he saw in my face made him come back to his senses, because in the end, he said, "O.K."

We left the official letter from the Penitentiary Service on my desk, turned off the heat and the light, locked all the locks, and went down to the street. It was late and the door leading to Tuc.u.man was already closed, so we had to leave from the Talcahuano exit. We waited for the bus, but then Sandoval told me he'd be right back. He hurried over to a flower stall and bought a bouquet. When he returned, he said bitterly, "If we're going to be good boys, we may as well go all the way."

I nodded. The bus arrived immediately.

28.

Baez and I hadn't seen each other in two years, not since Judge Fortuna Lacalle's delirium regarding his imminent appointment to the Appellate Court had subsided.

"All right, my friend. The information I'm about to give you isn't to be repeated. These days, ever since they let all those guys go free, Devoto's a real mess and dangerous to boot."

I indicated my a.s.sent. I knew the policeman wasn't going to waste time with references to the general chaos that both of us accepted as an essential aspect of the reality we were doomed to live in, mutually a.s.suming that its complexity was beyond our understanding. Baez went on, "This seems to be more or less what went down. You all transferred Gomez to Devoto in June 1972, right? They put him in one of the prison barracks ... I don't know ... let's say it was Number 7. A few weeks later, our friend Gomez pulls a Gomez: he starts a fight in the barracks and almost gets himself killed. It seems he decided to act like a bada.s.s with the two least offensive guys in the barracks and got the s.h.i.t kicked out of him."

As I listened to Baez, I felt a certain pleasure at the thought that Gomez had suffered because he'd made a bad decision.

"But this Gomez apparently has a special guardian angel. Instead of getting stabbed, say, forty-five times and croaking on the floor of the shower room, he manages to give one of the guys attacking him a bad cut with his own knife. A big commotion ensues. The other prisoners are afraid their comrade's going to bleed to death, so they call the guards, and the guards take away the wounded guy and Gomez. He's not exactly unscathed, but he's saved himself. And here we reach the first curious feature of this affair, because you know where the whole incident is reported, the fight, the injured inmates, the big ruckus? Nowhere. Two prisoners, Gomez and the other guy, are pretty badly hurt, but neither of them is taken to the hospital. They're treated right there, in the prison infirmary. There's not a single administrative report, and not one statement is taken, not from any guard and not from any inmate, either. What there is-the only thing there is in Gomez's file-is an order of transfer to another barracks, dated two weeks later, when he's released from the infirmary. You're probably thinking, that's only logical, because if he gets sent back to the barracks he was in before, they'll make mincemeat out of him. Well, maybe so, maybe not. If he has to return to the barracks where they beat him up, maybe he's a lot less c.o.c.ky when he gets there, and maybe he becomes somebody's sweetheart for the sake of protection, and everything's peaceful. In any case, it doesn't go down like that. What winds up happening is he's put in the barracks reserved for political prisoners. Now, this was the point where I really got confused. What relation could Gomez and his crime of pa.s.sion have with militant leftists, with the FAR and the ERP and the Montoneros? And on top of that, political prisoners go before a special tribunal, they aren't tried in ordinary criminal courts like the others, you follow me? Gomez's case doesn't have anything to do with that, I told myself."

He paused to slosh around what was left of his coffee and swallow it in one gulp. The cup looked ridiculously small in his huge paw. I knew we'd eventually get to the heart of the matter. That was the difference between Baez and the other cops I knew: the others would have stopped their investigations right there, at the limit of the logical possibilities. Not Baez.

"All right," he went on. "What I've told you so far was more or less easy to find out. From that point on, everything got more complicated. First of all, I know I mentioned the special tribunals, but I don't know that much about them, I don't have much contact with the antiguerrilla section. The guys doing that work have set up something like a separate clan. They strut around looking mysterious, if you know what I mean. Then, in the second place, ever since the amnesty the other day, they've been tearing down the whole circus tent they put up, so for the time being, they're out of work. And you know how it goes-in the middle of a big f.u.c.king mess like the one we've got, you can always find someone nostalgic and resentful who wants to tell you about the terrible s.h.i.t that's going on."

He raised his hand to order another cup of coffee.

"Well. It seems the government set up a little intelligence center inside the prison. I'm confused about the details, and I don't know if the unit was run by the secretary of intelligence or the Ministry of the Interior or the War Ministry. But it doesn't make any difference, because the people involved in those kinds of operations come from all over, from many different departments. Anyway, they set up this little espionage thing inside the prison so they could keep an eye on the "cadres," which is what they call the guerrillas. They were panicked by the thought that something like the breakout at Rawson Prison could happen there. You with me?"

It was like listening to the plot of a thriller, and Baez was an accomplished storyteller, but I still didn't understand what all this had to do with Gomez, and vice versa. When I asked Baez that question, he said, "We're getting there, my friend, we're getting there. But if I don't explain this first part, you won't understand the rest. So the guy in charge of the intelligence operation in Devoto Prison called himself Peralta. He tried to infiltrate some of his men into the political prisoners' barracks. Risky thing to do, you had to be careful. It seems one or two of Peralta's guys got fingered and returned to him as stiffs. Because of that, he had the bright idea of recruiting some ordinary prisoners for the job. Does that sound dangerous? It sure was, but not for him. In the worst case, one less prisoner. In the best, a direct eyewitness. It was almost like hooking up the d.a.m.n 'cadres' to a microphone, you know? Like one of those little devices you see in spy movies. Are you following me? Gomez gets recruited while he's in prison. None other than Peralta himself enlists him to do the spy work. And look, it wasn't just him. It seems there were four or five of them in all, but I'm not sure."

He paused for a moment while the waiter served us again.

"And this was where I had to ask myself why Gomez was picked to be one of the spies. That's the question that bugged me. The rest, everything that came afterward, wasn't so hard to figure out. Gomez must have carried out his a.s.signment-after all, he's a pretty bright guy, and cold as a statue when he's not flying off the handle. A little gem like that doesn't come along every day. All right, I don't really know how much of a gem he was, but if he survived in that barracks until May, he must have been doing something right. Why not keep using him on the outside? As for getting him out, that's not a problem. No special procedure required, it just happens. The prisoners know there's going to be an amnesty, and when they draw up the lists, they gladly include Gomez, with all the honors. And if they don't, there's still no problem, because Peralta's people can just add his name. So in any case, he walks."

Baez started to pay the check, but I stopped him and put some money on the table.

"But the real question goes back to before his release. What made this Peralta decide to employ Gomez? The first thing that caught his attention was the guy's nerve, the way he went into the lion's den practically doing the roaring himself. Secondly, as I said, it's a free shot for Peralta; if things go bad, he loses nothing. And in the third place ... are you ready for the best of all?"

Judging from the bitterness in the cop's tone, "the best" was going to be, in fact, the worst.

"Here it is. If all the things I just told you weren't enough to make the boss, Peralta, decide to use Gomez, once he asked for the particulars of the thug's case and learned more about it, then he had no more doubts. Gomez became a top choice right away. The reason was there, Benjamin, there in the case file."

Well, f.u.c.k, I thought. Could what he was about to tell me be so bad he had to try to soften it by using my given name for the first time in his G.o.dd.a.m.n life?

"Using that kid was a brilliant way to f.u.c.k you over."

His words absolutely confounded me. What could I have to do it? So far, Baez's story had sounded logical. Depressing, but logical. But his last remark didn't jibe with the rest, somehow. It was like a nightmare you don't think is a nightmare at first and then it begins to turn into one at precisely the moment when it moves past the limits of logic and reason and becomes incomprehensible and disturbing.

"When I couldn't find out anything more about Gomez, it occurred to me to try working from the other end, so I decided to check out his boss, the Peralta guy. It stood to reason that investigating a government intelligence operation inside a prison would be a little complicated, but actually it turned out to be not so hard. They're still Argentines, after all, and if you scratch around a little, you realize everything's cobbled together with wire. If it weren't, Peralta's description and his real name wouldn't have been so easy to find out."

The waiter picked up the money from the table and very slowly started to produce my change, as if trying to persuade me to let him have it as a tip. I dismissed him with a wave of my hand.

"It appears that he's a person around your age, Chaparro. Bald, with a thick mustache-they say it's like mine-and not very tall. He was skinny when he was younger, but now, I'm told, he's moving toward obese. And you know what? He worked in the Palace of Justice for several years. In an examining magistrate's court. Have you guessed yet?"

It couldn't be. It wasn't possible.

"Yes, indeed. Think the worst, my friend. If you do, you'll generally guess right. He worked with you in Examining Magistrate's Court No. 41. He was the deputy clerk in the other clerk's office until 1968, when he was indicted for illegal coercion and physical abuse of suspects in custody. Nothing came of the indictment, because it was quashed from above. The guy's father-in-law seems to have carried a lot of weight-he was a colonel or a general or something like that-and he used it to get the guy a job in intelligence. Have you placed him yet? His name's Romano."

29.

"No, it can't be. What bad luck!" I said several minutes later, when I finally got over my fit of furious incredulity and accepted that what was happening was, in fact, happening.

Baez was looking at me, maybe waiting for me to let him have the two or three remaining pieces of the puzzle. I spoke about the two building workers and the brutal beating Sicora had given them, practically at Romano's direction and under his orders. Baez listened to me with a mixture of surprise and curiosity, because he'd learned almost nothing about the matter at the time. He'd taken a few days off, days he'd had coming to him, and in his absence, Sicora and the other son of a b.i.t.c.h had handled things down at the police station. He wasn't even sure that the police authorities had ever brought charges against Sicora, as I'd done against Romano in the Appellate Court. I corroborated Baez's information about the indictment of my former colleague, namely that it had come to nothing. He asked me to wait a second, went to the back of the cafe, and talked for a few minutes on the public telephone. When he returned, he told me that Sicora was dead. He'd died in a car crash on Highway 2 in 1971, so we wouldn't be getting any further information from that source. He snorted and added, "Actually, we're not going to get any further information from any source."

That was the truth. With the amnesty in effect, there wasn't any way of proceeding against Gomez. And getting involved with the Secretariat of Intelligence in order to prosecute Romano would be crazy and moreover useless. The two of them were untouchable.

It was all so ridiculous it almost made me feel like laughing, except that it was so evil it made me feel like crying. By bringing charges against Romano for illegal coercion and abuse, I'd given him a chance for a fabulous career-with the help of his fascist father-in-law-in the "Antisubversive Secret Service." And in addition, heaven had granted the worthless b.a.s.t.a.r.d the opportunity to take revenge on me. He knew that case was mine, he knew I was trying to move it forward, and he figured that if he put the culprit under his protective wing, he'd eventually be able to place him beyond my reach for good. That's what he'd done, and I hadn't even noticed, not until it was unequivocally too late.

"Poor guy."