Ricardo Piglia: Money to Burn

Luck is a strange commodity and chooses to turn up when least expected. One night, in a rundown tavern, some guys were out looking for Reyes to offer him a gig and, as if in a dream, he learnt of a major cash delivery, and realized he was in a position to go for the big time, and he gambled everything on one throw of the dice. He called Malito. Fontán Reyes wanted to get in and then out sharpish, but that afternoon in the flat on Arenales Street he found himself getting thoroughly boxed in, he didn't know which way to turn, he was pathetically afraid, this down-at-heel tango singer, afraid of everything (especially, he said, of Gaucho Dorda, a head- case, a mental subnormal), of being killed before they gave him his share, of being handed over, of being used as a dupe by the police. He was desperate, down and out, wanting to cut loose. His dream was to give it his best shot, to get paid and take off, start all over again in another place (changing his name, changing his country), imagining that with the money he could open an Argentinian restaurant in New York, entertaining a latino clientele. On one occasion he'd stopped off in Manhattan with Juan Sánchez Gorio and spent a wild night at Charlie's on West 53rd Street, a restaurant managed by a Cuban crazy about tango. He needed the dough to invest, because the Cuban had promised to help him if he arrived in New York with 'start-up capital', but everything got more dangerous by the day since he'd thrown in his lot with these guys who seemed to be forever hallucinating, as though they were perpetually high. They laughed at anything and everything and never went to sleep. Hard-boiled characters, assassins who enjoyed killing for its own sake, not exactly the kind of people one could trust.

His uncle, Nino Noci to, was an avid Peronist supporter, elected to represent the wealthy Zona Norte, a leading figure in the Popular Unity party and interim president of the San Fernando Town Council. A few days earlier, the uncle had advised him of a meeting of the finance committee and he'd got the whole picture. The same evening Nocito went to hear his nephew sing in a low-life dive on Serrano and Honduras and, well away on his second bottle of wine, he began to sing himself.

'Fontán… there's at least five million in it.'

They needed to employ a gang of thieves of the utmost trustworthiness, a group of professionals to put in charge of the operation. Reyes had to guarantee that his uncle would be taken care of.

'Nobody can possibly know that I am mixed up in this. Nobody,' Nocito said. Nor did he, in his turn, wish to know who was going to be in on the job. He only wanted a half of a half, meaning a clean 75,000 dollars (according to his calculations).

Fontán Reyes was told to wait for them in a house on Martinez Street where they were going to go to ground immediately after the robbery. They reckoned that within a half-hour everything could be sorted.

'If we don't arrive within the half-hour,' announced Crow Mereles, 'that means we're moving on to second post.'

Fontán Reyes had no idea where the next post was, nor was he at all sure what 'second post' meant. Malito had got to know the system through Nando Heguilein, a former member of the National Liberation Alliance, with whom he had become friends when they were both prisoners in the Sierra Chica a while ago. A cellular structure prevents everything collapsing like a chain of dominoes and gives you time to get out (according to Nando). You always have to cover your retreat.

'And so?' inquired Fontán Reyes. 'What if they don't arrive?'

'And so,' answered the Blond Gaucho, 'you'd need to hide your pretty face.'

'And so that'd tell us there must be some sort of problem,' went on Mereles.

Fontán Reyes observed the loaded weapons on the table and for the first time realized that he'd played for stakes of all- or-nothing. Until then he'd worked as their cover on a few dirty deals for his friends. He'd concealed them, following a robbery, in his house at Olivos, he'd brought the dope into Montevideo and had sold on a few 'raviolis' — 'wraps' — in seedy downtown bars. Easy work, but this time was different. Arms were involved, and probably corpses, and he was a direct accomplice. Naturally, he was risking himself for a decent sum.

'At the very least,' his uncle had told him, 'it works out at a million pesos a head.'

With 100,000 dollars he could open his bar in New York. A place where he could live out his retirement in peace.

'Do you have somewhere to go tonight?' inquired Mereles, and Fontán Reyes jumped with surprise.

He was going to wait for them in a place no one else knew about, then call them up by phone.

'The operation is due to last six minutes,' insisted the Kid. 'Any longer and it gets too dangerous because there are two police points and a short-wave radio covering the whole twenty blocks.'

'The key to it all,' said Fontán Reyes, 'is that there are no deep throats.'

'Spoken like one who knows,' said Dorda.

At this moment the door opened and a young blonde woman, almost a girl, dressed in a miniskirt and a flowery blouse, came into the room. She was barefoot and embraced Mereles.

'Do you have some for me, little Daddy?' she asked.

Mereles pushed some cocaine on a mirror over towards her and the Girl moved to his side and began chopping at it with a razor. Then she warmed it with a lighter while she hummed Paul McCartney's 'Yesterday'. She took out a 50- peso note, rolled it up into a cone, inserted it into one nostril and inhaled with a gentle snort. Dorda looked on in amazement and noticed how the Girl wasn't wearing a bra, you could see her breasts through her light blouse.

'Delay, medium term, ten minutes, according to the traffic.'

'There'll be two guards and a cop,' recited Brignone.

'We have to kill the lot of them,' said Dorda suddenly. 'If you leave witnesses, they'll lock you up 'cause they're all out to do the rounds and spit on you.'

The young girl's life had suddenly changed and she went along with them in the conviction that it wasn't going to offer her another chance like this. Her name was Bianca Galeano. In January she had travelled all by herself to Mar del Plata to visit a friend and celebrate, because she'd just got through her exams in the third year of secondary school a month earlier. On the Rambla one afternoon she'd got to know Mereles, a thin guy who was staying at the Provincial Hotel. Mereles introduced himself as the son of a landowner from Buenos Aires province, and Blanquita believed him. She had just reached her fifteenth birthday and by the time she'd learnt who Crow Mereles was and what he did, she was past caring. (On the contrary, she fancied him like crazy, fired by the idea of a gangster who loaded her with presents, and who pleased and excited her more and more.)

She began living with him and the guys from the gang followed her with their eyes like starving dogs. Once on some wasteland, she had seen a cage of dogs dying of hunger, all chained up, who entwined and plaited themselves around one another, then threw themselves hungrily on whatever appeared, and these guys gave her exactly the same impression. If Mereles let them loose, they would all leap on her. Sooner or later, she knew, it was bound to happen. She imagined them staring at her if she walked by undressed, in her high heels, then saw herself in bed with the Kid, as Mereles had sometimes provoked her to. 'Do you want me to bring him here?' the degenerate would ask her and she'd begin to feel the heat. She liked that twin, pale as he was, he seemed to be about the same age as herself. But he was a faggot (according to the Crow). 'Or maybe you like the big guy?' Mereles would ask her, 'look what rough trade he is,' and Bianca would laugh and throw herself at him. 'Gimme,' she'd say, 'little Daddy.' Naked, in her high heels, the Girl strutted about, until he shoved her up against the mirror, and she leaned over the bench for him to have his way with her.