Ricardo Piglia - Money to Burn

The cameras panned across the wounded because for the first time ever in history it was possible to transmit it all live, without censorship, including even the dead men's faces as seen in the battle of law against crime. Should a man prolong dying, his death is dirtier than you could ever imagine: chunks of torn flesh and bone and blood staining the pavement along with the terrifying groans of the dying.

The one who died here (noted Renzi, in his little exercise book) died at once, before his body could register the least surprise or comprehension, only its preceding fear, the fear previous to climbing the staircase towards the flat where the gunmen were holed up.

'They're like rabid dogs. I remember,' said a policeman, 'that when I was a little kid my parents locked our black hound, Wolf, into their bedroom. He was a rabid dog who leapt up the walls in his fury and he had to be killed through the little skylight, slashed with a knife, from above, while he leapt in his madness, that dog.'

'The wounded should be moved now,' said Commissioner Silva, who was observing the scene from the sidelines. 'A wound in living flesh is the worst there is, because the guy endlessly wails and complains, lowering the spirits of the troop.' Then he raised his voice to yell: 'Don't be such a pansy, for fuck's sake.'

But the lad who'd had his leg blown apart carried on howling and calling for his mother. The commissioner was surprised, in contrast, by the measured tones of the young officer with the shot-away stomach who moaned only feebly, with a groan of pain, and raved: 'We entered the corridor and they leapt on us firing. They were nude, drugged, they just materialized like ghosts, about five or six of them. It's going to be tough smoking them out of their lair.'

For his part, the lad with the leg wound was stupefied, as if it were him who was stretched out on the floor of the corridor, wounded; that night he'd agreed to do guard duty in place of a friend who wanted to make a move on the wife of a footballer from Peñarol, away on tour with his team. It was the only night his friend could get near the bitch, and he, like a complete patsy, had agreed to substitute for him and do the guard duty and was now stretched out on the floor shot through with a bullet that had destroyed his leg. Everything was like a bad dream, for over the last two years things had got back on track for him, he had married the woman he had always pursued and had done so despite having to convince her it was worth marrying him even though he was a cop, he had spoken and spoken to her until he convinced her, because she was sickened by the sight of cops, but in the end she resigned herself, seeing that he was much like any other young lad, and, after getting married, they'd bought a little house in Pocitos, with credit from the Police Forces Cooperative Society, but now everything was thrown off track again because the wound was bound to get infested with gangrene and he could see himself with his leg cut off, dragging along on crutches, the turn-up on the right leg of his trousers rolled back to knee-level and held together by a large safety- pin, and then a cold sweat made his teeth chatter and he screwed his eyes up tighter.

Indoors, Mereles is sitting on the floor, his back glued to the wall, with a damp handkerchief tied around his nose and mouth to dissipate the effects of the gases which hover in the stuffy air, although more faintly now, and the Kid is across the room, against the bathroom wall, also seated on the floor, and has set the machine-gun to one side, because weapons get hot with sustained use and can sometimes burn the palms of your hands. That and the sensation of a stomach clenched tight as a fist is the only thing he can feel any more, says the Kid. That and the sense of surprise in remembering the dark girl from the River Negro, the sweet bearer of death. Could it have been her who bore the ill luck that had brought them to this?

'Do you think they could have followed me …'

'Don't get worked up about that now. In any case, we didn't have anywhere else to go… This country's full of shit, Uruguay has to be smaller than a flagstone, where the hell can you hide in a place this size? I told Malito as much, we should have stayed in Buenos Aires, we had a thousand hideouts there. But here… We're cooked.'

'Malito has probably already crossed the pond… He has his own streak of luck, a seam of cold blood, on one occasion he went into a police station just when every cop out there was looking for him just because he wanted to lodge a complaint about a neighbour turning up his radio too loud.' Mereles guffawed. 'See how crazy he is, I don't care what you say, he could get through, get in here and pull us out.'

'Or else die along with us.'

'So… why not?'

'If he can get in, it has to be because he knows how to get out…'

'Oh yeah, in the blink of an eye,' says Dorda, and takes a slug of whisky from the bottle.

They laugh. They don't think any further ahead than the next ten seconds. That's the first thing to learn. It's better not to think about what's going to happen. In order to be able to carry on and not get paralysed with fright, you have to advance step by step, check out how whatever's going on right now pans out, take one thing at a time. Now it's a matter of getting as far as the kitchen and collecting some water. They're not going to let you cross the corridor. Now drag yourself over to one of the windows. They moved around the flat as if it had invisible walls. The police had placed special services marksmen to cover every position and they had had to figure out how to protect themselves, swiftly learning that there were many sites inside the flat at risk from bullets. So they made a sketch, the Crow and Kid Brignone, inside the flat, with a pencil, and traced the lines of fire and saw that it was impossible to cross here and that they had to walk sideways there, as if they were somnambulists, moving as if only in profile, supported by thin air, following invisible corridors, to avoid becoming targets.

'See?' asked Mereles. 'Here's an exit and here's the staircase.'

'Give me cover.'

Dorda stops in the door and begins firing downwards, while the Kid and the Crow slip away towards the passage and search for the fire exit down on to the flat roof.

'Look above you. The roofs are crawling with cops.'

The lengthy Odyssey which had already lasted for four hours at the time of writing this account began at approximately 22.00 hours yesterday and towards midnight a massive police operation, in which some 300 men were deployed, was mounted. They occupied the flat roofs and the neighbouring houses. Shortly after midnight the gunmen emerged from the flat on to the corridor, where they fired on the street and the nearby terraces, seeking to blaze a way out. An intense blast of shooting was followed by a period of relative calm. The firing from pistols and revolvers diminished in intensity.

A while back they had succeeded in evacuating several of the flats in the building, alerting those unable to leave by telephone that they should remain lying down on the floors of the inside rooms. The police clearly feared that the criminals intended to occupy one or more of the next-door flats and take hostages.

It was possible, in the midst of the gloom, to observe some of the neighbours depart, terrified and in their nightclothes, carrying their belongings. Some of the tenants interviewed by the journalists elaborated the most extravagant theories.

'At first I thought it was a fire,' announced Señor Magariños, wearing a black overcoat on top of his blue pyjamas. Then I thought an aeroplane had fallen on top of the building.'

'… or the madwoman on the fourth floor,' added Señor Acuña, 'making yet another suicide attempt…'