Ricardo Piglia - Money to Burn

Blanquita Galeano, Mereles' little concubine, is (according to the papers) a young middle-class girl, raised in a decent home and with the respect of her neighbours in the district of Caseros. Until she was fifteen years old, her behaviour was normal, she went to local dances, occasionally to her friends' houses, but that summer she'd decided to take off alone to Mar del Plata. Blonde and lanky, pretty and well- dressed, her figure had apparently impressed the son of a landowner who was living it up in the happy city. His name was Carlos Alberto Mereles. Expensive colour photos bore witness to their burgeoning romance. Then to its reversals. How long did it take Bianca to realize that Mereles was a criminal? One month, maybe two? It was already too late when she did so. At the end of August they got married. Or at least, she believed they did. Now the police have discovered that their marriage certificate was falsified and the ceremony itself a farce. Blanquita, the little sixteen-year-old girl, is currently in the hands of the Martinez Bureau of Investigations.

The Girl finally confessed that Mereles and three accomplices had abandoned the flat on Arenales Street a few hours before the police arrived, and took with them the larger part of the money from the raid along with the heavy weaponry, but she could (or would) not reveal the gunmen's present whereabouts. According to statements given by the youngster, the criminals had to be nearby, everyone went in fear of them, no one would offer them assistance and Malito, the gangsters' leader, had decided to chance it.

'He headed off to Tigre,' said the Girl, badly beaten by now, wiping the blood away with a handkerchief. There's a Polish guy out there going to help him. That's all I know.'

The Pole was Count Mitzky, who controlled the network of smugglers and petty thieves along the River Plate; he'd bought all the customs officers and those working for the Prefecture, now accustomed to turning a blind eye to the clandestine operations taking place between the two river- banks.

Silva ordered the Delta to be searched, going upriver as far as the edge of Isla Muerta, and then returned to the harbour bar where they'd found Twisty Bazán's body. No traces remained: Malito was two hours ahead of him.

When consulted by the press, the owners of the bistro at number 3300 Arenales Street{10} said it was a daily surprise to observe what the people opposite were purchasing at all hours of the day and night. Whole suckling pigs, rows of chickens on a spit, quantities of bottles of the finest wine. Thousands of pesos every day, and they always paid cash on the nail. The neighbour claimed that it was a matter of certain 'cattle owners' with business interests down in Patagonia and estates in the Venado Tuerto region. The proprietor of an important musical equipment store on Santa Fe Avenue likewise insisted as much. Two gentlemen who used to live at 3300 Arenales Street had made an extremely large purchase a few months earlier. Tape recorders, portable radios, stereo players, a complete discotheque. The sheer quantity and value of what they'd bought required the shopkeeper's personal attention. So he went along to supervise the installation of these valuables in 'the most luxurious apartment you ever saw', as he later confirmed to the journalists.

'You could see they were people with money, highly educated, with refined habits, and it was my belief that they'd come from the capital specifically to attend the polo championships on the fields at Palermo.'

Two days after the robbery the authorities had revealed details of the raid. Although those who had conducted it were now fugitives, the police had detained seven accomplices and informers, including a Town Hall employee, a well-known tango singer, the son and a nephew of the president in the local San Fernando Council, and a minor army officer, a middleman who had sold on the arms used by the criminals. This was the epilogue to an unheard-of occurrence, in which seemingly honest individuals hired assassins on to the payroll to commit a barbaric act of pillage.

Within the best-informed circles, the impression was deliberately given that the police were convinced the Argentine criminals had already succeeded in crossing over to Uruguay.

'Those who fled' (said Commissioner Silva, speaking off the record) 'are dangerous individuals, antisocial elements, homosexuals and drug addicts,' to which the Chief of Police added, 'They're not out of Tacuara, nor are they from the Peronist resistance, they're common criminals, psychopaths and murderers with extensive police records.'

'Hubris' was a word the youngster who wrote up the police reports in El Mundo was busily checking in the dictionary. It was defined as 'the arrogance of one who defies the gods and brings about their own downfall'. He decided to ask whether he could use such a title for a strapline in the paper and began writing his copy.

The one responsible for eliminating the prisoners in cold blood during the bank raid was Franco Brignone, alias the Kid, alias Angel Face, firstborn son of a wealthy entrepreneur in the construction business, resident of the rich suburb of Belgrano, who began his criminal way of life in 1961 at the age of seventeen, when he was a secondary school pupil at St George's, a smart English boarding-school, and was imprisoned for being the accomplice in an attempted robbery which ended up as a case of homicide. He was the favourite son of a respectable businessman, who'd enjoyed unlimited indulgence in being permitted to grow up dominating both his father's will and that of his younger siblings. One night he took the car and went in search of some friends — those he'd got to know at the Excursionistas Football Club — who'd ask him to go out and collect musical equipment. Waiting at the wheel, not getting out of the car, Brignone wasted hours, only for his friends to finally return empty-handed. His mates then explained that they'd fallen out with the bar owner and he'd refused to lend them any of the gear. The following day, the young man — still a minor — read in the paper that right there in the bar a man had been killed in the course of a robbery. He'd been beaten to death with a crowbar, one which just happened to be permanently stored underneath the Kid's car seat. The youngster went off to jail for the first time. The shock to his father was so severe that he died of a heart attack when he heard the news. The judge told Brignone that while the sentence might have been for mere complicity, he deserved to go down for parricide.

When he came out of jail, despite the money he inherited from his father and his mother's and brothers' desperation — they being respected and honest members of the professional classes — but under the influence of his prison contacts, he embarked on a path of crime.

'In clink' (he would sometimes recount) 'I learnt what life is: you're inside and they bug you, and you soon learn to lie and to swallow the venom inside you. It was in jail I turned into a rent-boy, a drug addict, I became a real thief, a Peronist, and a card sharp; I learnt to fight dirty, how to use a headbutt to split the nose of anyone who tried to split your soul from your body if you so much as looked at them the wrong way; how to carry a joint hidden in my balls, and to stash the wraps of dope in my arsehole; I read every history book in the library, I didn't know what else to do with myself, you can ask me who won which battle in whatever year you choose and I'll tell you, 'cause in jail you have fuck-all to do and so you read, gaze into space, you get annoyed by the noise made by the brutes they bang up there, you become poisoned and you fill up with venom — you might as well have inhaled the stuff; you listen to the cons forever repeating the same nonsense, you think it must be Thursday by now but it's really still only coming up to Monday afternoon; I learnt to play chess, how to make belts out of silver foil from cigarette packets I stuck together; how to fuck my girlfriend when we were allowed together in the yard during visiting hour, in a kind of small tent made out of a sheet, over to one side. The other prisoners helped you out, if they were also at it with their wives and the kids were there too and they needed to hide to get it off, those whores are made of steel, they pull down their knickers and get astride you, while the screws look on, they really enjoy it, laughing at how dumb and hot you are for them, grown men with no chance to make it, because that's why you're banged up, to stop you fucking, and that's why you fill up with poison, they've got you in an ice box, they put you in a cage full of males and none of you can fuck, you want to and they beat you, or worse, they make you feel like a beggar, a hobo, you end up talking to yourself, hallucinating' (and the Gaucho let him ramble on, saying yes every so often, sometimes going so far as to take his hand, in the darkness, both of them awake, smoking, face upwards, in bed, in some room, in some hotel, in some provincial village, hidden, on guard, two twins hand in hand, slagging off the cops, with the pistol wrapped in a towel on the floor beside them, the car concealed beneath the trees, taking a break, attempting to take a rest and calm down, to leave off going wild for one night at least, and get to sleep in a bed).