Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“But of course.” Farina points to Bocanegra with the tiny cocktail umbrella. It doesn't look like he's taken a sip of his drink yet. “If you wanted to adopt Giraut's little tyke there's something you'd have to do first. Because you and Giraut and Cruz make three. So you'd have to get rid of Cruz. Before the kid heard about him and decided to go with him. Like his pop did. When you guys were like brothers. Not literally, of course.” He gestures with his glass toward the last traces of resistance among the clientele, entrenched on the stage and using chairs as weapons. As if said traces could offer some sort of support to what he's saying. “That's why you sent Bob Marley to his house. To take him out of circulation. I mean Cruz. Because you knew that sooner or later he'd find the little tyke or the little tyke would find him. And, anyway, I don't think this was the first time you tried it.” He makes a theatrically intrigued look. As if he couldn't quite remember. “Wasn't there some story about a bomb or something like that? In the seventies?”

The last traces of resistance among The Dark Side of the Moon's clientele disappear. A couple of blows and a couple of groans are heard from the stage. Mr. Bocanegra, Showbiz Impresario, doesn't seem to be paying particular attention to what's going on around him. Apart from the fact that the drags he's taking on his cigar are much larger and deeper than any drag Farina has seen anyone take on any cigar ever, the only sign of worry that crops up on Bocanegra's face is a focused expression that's hard to decipher. It's not exactly that expression of furrowed brow and clenched jaw of someone trying to hide a mind racing with worry. Nor one of those impassive expressions betrayed only by an occasional, slightly awkward, swallowing of saliva. It's closer to that overly impassive and almost paradoxically distracted expression of large predators waiting crouched behind a thicket for the moment to leap onto their prey.

Farina signals with his hand to the uniformed cop that seems to be in charge of the operation.

“This is a courtesy visit,” he says, leaving his untouched drink on the bar. “You can tell that to all these gentlemen. Purely routine. We're looking out for their safety, in a manner of speaking. One of those visits to make sure that everything is still going fine. I'm glad to see that everything's going fine.” He stands up and absently smooths down his suit with his hands. “Although I'm afraid I'm gonna have to shut the place down. The mayor doesn't like this whole illegally bringing in underage girls stuff. Anyway, who's going to come after what happened tonight? This is the end, and you know it.” He pauses thoughtfully. “That doesn't mean that I want to send you to jail. I can keep you out of jail. If you scratch my back, of course. You can give me the paintings now. Or better yet, give me the paintings and Giraut.” He smiles. “Or even better still, next week you can give me the paintings, Giraut and the buyer.”

Bocanegra watches Farina's back as Farina walks toward the door. The mirror ball projects a series of infinitesimally minute multicolored shapes on the back of his jacket.

At the back of the room, several Dark Side of the Moon employees in G-strings and various city government minions are helping the city official. Who is lying on the floor. Partially covered by a tablecloth. Having what seems to be a momentary fit of hyperventilation.

The beams of morning sunlight fall between the balconies of the Gothic Quarter like rubble from the ceiling falls onto fleeing characters in the dramatic climax of an action movie. Juan de la Cruz Saudade's grimy head appears among the shadows surrounded by bags of garbage in one of the doorways. Partially wrapped in cigarette smoke. With his eyes half closed and a beard obscuring the lower half of his grimy face. His resolutely threatening expression is one that doesn't necessarily mean he has a gun hidden in his pants, but which is often found on the faces of people with guns hidden in their pants. He tosses his cigarette butt onto the paving stones. He steps on it with a circular movement at the tip of his foot and finally spits on what's left of the butt. A dog that's rummaging around in the bags of garbage stares at him with a vaguely interested gesture. The way Saudade usually spits on the sidewalk and throws his butts down and releases the contents of his nasal passages onto the ground by pressing one wing of his nose with his finger suggests some sort of primitive territory marking. The dog wrinkles his muzzle and stretches out his back in a movement analogous to shrugging his shoulders and heads off down the street.

Now Saudade sticks his head and one shoulder out of the shadows of the doorway. With that smooth turn of the body you associate with people hiding in doorways in spy movies. He makes a pistol with his fingers and shoots an invisible bullet while making a shooting sound with his lips. He is aiming at the door of the former ducal palace where Lucas Giraut lives, which, in that precise moment, opens. Saudade hides in the shadows of the door and, a second later, peeks out again cautiously. A woman has just come out of Giraut's doorway. One of those women devoid of noteworthy sexual features that make Saudade feel somewhat depressed. He watches the woman's butt as she walks away. With his lips pursed disapprovingly. Saudade's clothes could be classified as decidedly filthy. His face looks like the result of taking an unwashed face that hasn't slept for four days and running it over with a ten-ton truck.

Five minutes later, Saudade closes the door to Giraut's apartment behind his back and stows his professional case filled with picklocks in the back pocket of his implausibly grimy sweatpants. He looks around. Giraut's apartment doesn't have an entryway with beaded curtains or one of those frosted mirrors. Or one of those buckets for people to leave wet umbrellas in. The front door opens directly into a living room where you could easily play a game of soccer. Everything displays that lack of common sense that Saudade associates with people who don't have to worry about money. In his experience, you can always tell a rich person's house because there's too much space between things. It's like they don't know how to make good use of the space, or like they want to brag about how much space they have in their houses, so much that they don't know how to fill it up. He'd sure know how to take full advantage of a big room like that. He'd get rid of all those fancy-pants little rugs and weird sofas and he'd put in a gym on one side, and a wood bar on the other, the good kind of wood. And one of those giant TVs with a good three-seater sofa in front of it. And he'd still have plenty of room.

After a first look in the closets, Saudade makes himself comfortable on the sofa with a glass, a bottle of Macallan, a bottle of Finlandia, two cans of Diet Coke and the remote. For some reason, ever since he became homeless a week ago, and jobless, and ran out of gas for his car, he feels overwhelmed by an intense feeling of vulnerability. Of imminent doom. As if he were walking in his team's colors through the stands of the city's other team, watching as the rival fans approach with iron bars and brass knuckles. Somewhere deep in his mind he trusts that this sensation of lost omnipotence has nothing to do with being about to turn thirty. He shakes his head sadly. He takes a long sip on his glass of Macallan and Diet Coke, leaving it half empty, and changes the television channels several times until he finds something that looks like a lingerie runway show. Except for the fact that it's on a television set and the entire audience is elderly women who watch the models with obvious disapproval. What is happening to him? he asks himself bitterly. With all his comings and goings from the world of crime to the police force and back again, there was always one constant in his life. A certain feeling that the world was, in some way, designed to display his excellence in the art of life. And now people move away from him on public transportation, with disgusted expressions and holding their noses. He frowns at the empty bottle of Macallan and throws it against the wall in front of him. The stain that remains on the white wall is shaped like a starfish that's been stepped on.