Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

I woke feeling pretty lousy: aching joints, tense jaw, breathlessness, burning eyes sensitive even to the dim light, bitter-tasting-snot-encrusted nostrils. Out of anything stronger, I resorted to my pot-bellied maté gourd and its stubby little bombilla, and the caress of the hot sap on my stomach restored me enough to face the exhausting routine of showering, shaving, shitting and sitting down to make the phone calls. I picked up the list and, glancing through, decided to start with Diego Armando Maradona, to see if he’d bring me any luck.

‘Engineer Urano, please.’

‘Who’s speaking?’ asked a secretary’s voice.

‘My name is Alberto Porcel,’ I improvised. ‘I’m calling from Surprise …’ There was a silence of hand over mouthpiece.

‘Urano here. Who’s speaking?’

‘My name is …’ I repeated the explanation. ‘I wanted to ask you some questions about the meeting last Wednesday 27th …’

He hung up, and my string of follow-up calls only met with the answering machine. I had no better luck with the next names on the list: two of them didn’t answer, and three of them hung up on me as soon as I explained why I was ringing; only one stayed on the line, just long enough to howl a string of insults at me and force me to hang up. This isn’t working, I thought. I’d started with the hope I’d be able to sort everything out over the phone; it’s not much more personal, after all, than a computer. Was it possible I’d have no alternative but to go out on the street and spend the day outside , ringing doorbells, talking to people — strangers, probably hostile? What assurance did I have that they wouldn’t slam the door in my face the way they’d slammed the phone down? Wouldn’t I do the same in their shoes? What they need, I decided, is an incentive …

After digging in a drawer, I salvaged a blank chequebook from some obscure, bankrupt provincial bank and, on each cheque, printed the name ‘Surprise’ and an invented account number with the laser printer; then, in case any of them proved sceptical, I stashed two thousand dollars cash in my jacket pocket. After that, I made a call to hire a mobile phone from a nearby outlet. What followed was a trick of the imagination: flattening the streets and houses of Buenos Aires into a numbered grid like the one in my Filcar guide and then, to negotiate this virtual city, rarefying myself to a sequence of algorithms that could move through it frictionlessly like a ghost. How different could it be? Buenos Aires was a file name, Felipe a search instruction and the cheques, key words to open the doors.

The first of these belonged to a branch of Tamerlán & Sons at the junction of Avenida Rivadavia and Calle Combate de los Pozos, run by one Alberto Palomeque (a.k.a. Sid Vicious). I’d been rather ambiguous over the phone about the purpose of my visit and since, to his penetrating eye, I looked less like a customer than someone wanting to sell him a timeshare, he invited me curtly to take a seat.

‘Sr Tamerlán sent me,’ I spat back at him.

The change was radical: his eyes opened disproportionately wide, he collapsed to his knees on the carpet and went into a violent coughing fit; I ran to fetch him a glass of water, which fell through his limp grip to the floor.

‘I knew it,’ he wheezed, his eyes turned towards the glazed shopfront. ‘I knew this day would come. Just like in my dream: Sr Tamerlán needed me, asked especially for me to go and see him. “The company’s in danger, and there’s only one man who can save it …” he said. And I passed through the mirrors, one after another, until I reached his office … What does he need me for?’

‘You can start by explaining what you were doing at the Surprise meeting on Wednesday night.’

I never saw such a sudden transformation in a man. It reminded me of one of those little collapsible dogs I used to play with as a boy: it was kept upright by a spring at the base, but at the slightest pressure, the threads would slacken and the little dog would collapse as if its bones had melted. Sid pulled a long face and lowered his eyes to the puddle of water on the shallow pile of his beige moquette. I think for a moment he expected me to rub his nose in it and yell ‘What have you done, you naughty boy!’

‘Only for money … loyalty … ver ppen gain,’ he stammered.

I loosened my tie (I didn’t need it any more) and made him cough it all up. Yes, he had been there. Yes, he admitted, I took a guest with me, I’ll hand him over: Sr Marcelo Rinaldo, 474 Calle Maure, 5th Floor, Apartment C, telephone number … I carefully noted everything down. We’d got off to a good start. Anyone else? Lots of people I didn’t know. What episode? I don’t know what you’re …’

‘Sr Tamerlán sent me to find out about the episode. That’s all he’s interested in. The episode.’

‘I thought that …’

‘Come on,’ I interrupted him. ‘Do you really think Sr Tamerlán would have me waste his time with the likes of you for any other reason? Tell me everything you know.’

He looked at me in childish terror, trying to buy himself some time. Perhaps I’d overdone it a bit.

‘It’s extremely important to him. He wants to hear your opinion before anyone else’s.’

He calmed down a little, but was still eyeing me distrustfully, like a boy being spoken to lovingly after a smacking.

‘It was self-defence …’ he ventured, and watched me to see how to go on. I gave him an understanding look. ‘That man was trying to throw him out of the window … you know. Luckily, Sr Tamerlán’s son managed to free himself with a judo throw.’

‘You got a clear view? Was it him?’

His eyes shrivelled in their sockets like raisins, his suit was suddenly three sizes too big for him, even his nails seemed to retract into his fingers.

‘Well, clearnnff,’ he spluttered like an empty soda-siphon. ‘Ffffpp.’

He cast abject glances at me, begging me for a gesture to give him a clue whether he should answer yes or no. But I wasn’t about to let him off the hook, and in the end, like a goalie saving a penalty, he had to dive to one side or the other.

‘No.’

‘That’s not what you told the police.’ I said, coolly stepping up to the spot.

‘They were pressurising me, I didn’t want to …’

‘ They pressurise you, so you say what they want to hear; I pressurise you and you say what you think I want to hear. We won’t get anywhere like that, Sr Palomeque,’ I said, leisurely reeling out the words, marvelling at how well I was doing. ‘You have to decide who you want to be loyal to: Sr Tamerlán or …’

‘There is something I didn’t tell the police,’ he said. ‘I also recognised the other one.’

‘The man in the grey overcoat?’

‘Wasn’t it a mackintosh?’

‘So you did recognise him’

‘No.’

‘This isn’t working, Palomeque.’ (I loved patronisingly pronouncing his surname.) ‘You just told me …’

‘I’m talking about the one that fell.’

‘You know who it was?’ I almost leaped out of my seat. He shook his head.

‘But I’d seen him before,’ he clarified.

‘How did you recognise him? I thought he fell backwards.’

‘Precisely. I never saw him from the front. But the back of his neck was unmistakable.’

‘What was so striking about it?’

‘It’s hard to put my finger on, but believe me, if you put him in a line-up with everyone’s backs turned … It’s like women’s arses: you can’t explain it, but there are arses you’d recognise from thousands of others. Know what I mean?’ he said, in an attempt to win me over with a humble smile. I was starting to like him.