Сантьяго Ронкальоло - Barcelona Noir

“There’s a little girl, an Algerian, who ran away from home and may have been seen with him. The family is Algerian, Muslim, you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean... Our buddy has gotten into a lot of trouble.”

“And you are...?”

“Let’s say I’m from somewhere in the Balkans, one of those places that changes names from time to time. Follow me,” he said as he started up the path. He moved quickly, with the economy of a tiger, or a soldier.

I tried asking him a few questions but both his silence and the panting of my lungs made me shut up right away.

Delgado’s refuge was a green tent, a military leftover.

The calm man approached as if it wasn’t necessary for him to knock, and we entered lowering our heads.

The girl — the little Moor — was preparing tea on a burner and looked scared to death when she saw us enter.

Delgado didn’t make a move; he was sitting on a camouflage sleeping bag. It was clear he trusted the calm man, and that he could only fit in the tent if he was sitting or lying down.

Then the calm man squatted and began to talk in a language that was unintelligible to me, in the sleep-inducing cadence of an animal trainer.

He talked for a long time, and I could see Delgado’s face registering shame. As his tiny eyes filled with tears, he made an attempt to explain himself by wearily gesturing toward the girl. He uttered only two or three phrases but they were enough for the calm man to lower his head as if he needed a minute to think things through.

Then the calm man spoke again, but this time it was with a different tone. It was an order. The kind of order that can’t be disobeyed. “Get your things and go. Your family is waiting for you,” he said to the girl.

“They don’t want me,” she responded, on the verge of tears.

She made a move toward Delgado for protection, but the big guy pushed her away and whispered something that must have been definitive, because she simply lowered her head and left, without taking anything, and without looking back.

“We’re finished here,” said the calm man. “I’ll go back with you, so you don’t get lost.”

When we were almost at the end of the path, I twisted my foot and he let me rest for a moment. I decided to take advantage of the stop to ask him a question: “Can you tell me what the fuck that little girl was doing with Delgado?”

“She’s pregnant, and she’s afraid of her family.”

“Right. Delgado likes skinny little Asian girls.”

“You’re wrong. Delgado, as you call him, is medically incapable of having sex.”

“What are you saying?”

“The truth,” he said. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he unveiled the story of the big scary guy who, out of the blue, liked to say, “Ah, the slender charm of Chinese women.”

He’d been a soldier — though now I’m not sure if he was Serb, Croatian, or something else — when the people in that part of the world all turned on each other. He was a combatant in one of the many battles in that senseless war, in which the enemy had been a good neighbor until the day before.

In one skirmish, they’d massacred some Muslim families and, as was the custom at the time, they’d raped a young woman — practically a girl, really — until she died. To fight and drink were the only rules in that killing game.

And soon those who fought and drank died in an ambush of which the only survivor was El Delgado. And then a woman — perhaps the dead girl’s sister or mother, a woman thin as a reed, with slanted eyes — took her revenge on Delgado.

Two days later they left him for dead. They had used needles and wooden splinters to make a porcupine of his body. Pincers and boots did away with his teeth. And with a pair of pliers, or a nutcracker, the woman tore off his genitals. Never again would the guy known as Delgado be a whole man.

“You see... he survived so he could carry his cross in this world,” said the calm man. “You can go the rest of the way by yourself.” Then he turned his back on me and disappeared into the thicket.

I only really believed half of what he told me. He didn’t quite convince me and I wasn’t going to let him screw up my little business deal. That’s why I made both calls, to Cavalcanti and to the Algerians. With my information, it wouldn’t be hard for them to find the tent.

A few minutes later I got scared, and I began running down the hillside, out to the streets, to that other city, with a couple of tears in my clothes and some scratches on my hands.

It was like arriving in a foreign country. I had a moment of disorientation when I saw three blondes — English or German — showing off their young flesh with short skirts. And I confirmed my border crossing when I saw a group of Chinese or Japanese stopped at a corner with their bird steps and avid tourist eyes.

The Russians arrived first. It was in all the papers. A photo of the Russian gymnast was found in the battered giant’s pockets, making it easy for the police to close the case. The guy was crazy, so they attributed the rape and murder of the Chinese girl to him; he carried this blame to his grave.

Everyone was pleased, myself included, although I still had some doubts.

Had El Delgado been connected to the Russian girl? Maybe. He was crazy, he’d had his balls cut off, and he’d given refuge to a pregnant little Moor — this all made him seem like a delirious savior of whores and injured women.

Had he been the victim of a crossfire, a settling of scores which would have been best avoided at any cost? I don’t know, I don’t want to know. What probably happened was that he was killed because of his gift for ubiquity: he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe what killed him was his obsession and his disturbing mantra about the slender charm of Chinese women. In any case, he’d been dead a long time, he just didn’t know it.

Everyone was pleased, myself included. Sometimes a lack of ambition can save your ass. It’s best to be content with the leftovers from the lions.

El Raval

Everybody knows that Méndez is an old cop who lives (badly) on the streets of Barcelona. Just like everybody knows Méndez eats cheaply in the city’s worst restaurants; every now and then, the owners invite him for a free meal so he’ll recommend them to the Michelin Guide . One time, to support his friends, he took a TV crew to one of those places so they’d give it some publicity, but after they ate, the cameraman couldn’t make it to the door.

As everybody suspects (although they don’t know for sure), Méndez will never get anywhere because he doesn’t believe in a single law except the law of the streets. Plus, he feels sorry for petty delinquents and rarely arrests them. Nonetheless, they say he once detained a fellow with a limp. As everybody suspects, Méndez was watching from the balcony at the station on Nou de la Rambla Street, which was the most sordid in all of Barcelona; it was so bad that sometimes not even the cops would go in at night for fear that they’d be assaulted in the doorway. From that balcony, Méndez could see all the neighborhood’s thefts, assaults, fights, and philandering.

There are other things the whole world knows about Méndez, the old cop: for instance, that his apartment is full of books and that he always carries one in his pocket, which on is why the lapels his uniform are always out of shape. There’s a great antiquarian book fair in Barcelona each year and Méndez is a loyal customer because he loves stories by dead novelists. In fact, he has more books than he can possibly read in what’s left of his life.