Barcelona Shadows (17 page)

“His persistence.”

“He treats it like a job,” reasons Corvo.

“Nobody does their job with such dedication and over such a long period of time. You know that. And it’s not easy to keep up the tension.”

“You’re suggesting that he doesn’t only sell them, that he also wants them for himself.”

“No. If he wanted them for himself, he would be like any other paedophile. He doesn’t need them sexually.”

“If he doesn’t want to screw them and the sales aren’t his only objective, what else is there?”

“I think that here we’ve reached the core of the matter. If we know what else he wants them for, we can catch him.”

They go over the possibilities again and again, but they can’t come up with anything. Plus, they’re tired. The policemen have been carrying around this tension for too many days, and their thoughts get stuck in their throats.

“Let me think it over,” pleads Doctor von Baumgarten, as he walks them to the door.

“Van Helsing,” says Malsano in parting. “Thank you.”

He goes by the name of Shadow and he doesn’t have much of a story. Son of peasants who left the countryside to pile up in the capital, who suffered illnesses they hadn’t even imagined existed, who starved to death and had to sell their son at the age of fifteen, to a good house, only to end up dying a year later when the shanty town where they scraped by burned down. Shadow wasn’t adopted as a son, he was too old when they acquired him, but rather to be trained as a guard dog. An investment in the future: today he’s a lad, tomorrow he’ll be an insurance policy. Shadow knows what he has to know, which is only what he has to say and that’s it. He is strong, he spent the last fifteen years punching first sheep and calves, then defaulters and back-stabbers. Shadow is a pair of fists and iron skin, and now he waits for the woman he has to deliver a message to.

He breathes slowly, through his mouth, like a canine snore, as he sits by the door in the penumbra. In the room in the hallway, the one with the sliding door, he left Angelina gagged. She had screamed her lungs out, but no one in the building had said anything because they are already sick of the sounds that are always coming out of Enriqueta’s flat. And they are afraid of her. One day she threatened a lady neighbour with a hatchet and
ever since then she leaves turds on her landing and hides broken glass in the dirt of her geraniums. Angelina was half choked with tears and the handkerchief tightened around her mouth, and the struggling left her unconscious.

On a chair, no need to tie him up, lies the slack body of Salvador Vaquer. Shadow had pushed his way into the flat and thrashed him good and proper, without giving any explanation—none was necessary. He didn’t want anything from Vaquer, so he left him alive enough not to kill him, but dead enough so that he doesn’t look alive. Enriqueta’s lover’s face is swollen (more than normal, that is) from the blows and his nose filled with dried blood. Shadow ripped off one of his nipples, for no reason other than that he had got on his knees begging for forgiveness with the first punch. It seemed that with each breath Salvador deflated.

The sound of keys, yellowish light fanning out from the hallway, the creak of wood and Enriqueta’s silhouette, stopped short because she realizes that something’s afoot. Shadow tenses and Enriqueta doesn’t see him, but can make out Salvador’s body curled up in a foetal position.

“What happened?” She closes the door, turns on a bulb in the middle of the dining room. “Salvador!”

“Good evening.” Shadow speaks.

“Who are you?” she says when she locates the origin of the voice.

Shadow sees that she is ready to pounce, she is dangerous, he knows how to read gestures and he can sense that she is no average woman.

“I’m here to give you a message.”

Enriqueta doesn’t know where the shots are coming from. It’s Wednesday, and she’s just come from the mansion of Mr Llardó,
in the Bonanova, from bringing him the salve they’d agreed on, the one she made with the tallow from Ferran Agudín. Who is this man?

“Who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter. I’m nobody and you shouldn’t be either. But it seems you don’t have that clear. Up until this point, the gentlemen haven’t had any complaints with your work, you’ve been discreet and efficient.”

“The gentlemen?” Enriqueta tightens her thin lips until they blanch, and Shadow takes note. He remains seated, but expectant.

“You’re getting careless. The police have seen Mr Vaquer and they are asking too many questions. And the gentlemen don’t like them asking questions.”

“Get out of my house this instant.” Without moving an inch, she challenges him.

“Disappear. Vanish. The gentlemen can forget about you for a while, the police have to forget you as well.”

“I was given to understand that the police wouldn’t be a problem.”

“They aren’t if you don’t give them reason to be. And now you have. If the police ask more questions, we’ll have to squeal on you. And you can understand that we don’t want to have to do that.”

“You dare to threaten me in my own house?”

“It’s a warning, Mrs Martí.”

“Allow me to warn you as well. Give a message to the gentlemen”— there couldn’t be more hatred in the pronunciation of that word—“tell them that, if I want to, I can sink them. I have all their information, their names, their vices. That I keep a list where they are clearly identified, all of them. That if I fall, they fall with me.”

“Your word against theirs, Mrs Martí. You have all the right in the world to behave this way, but you know full well it won’t get you anywhere. Not even to trial.”

“Get out of my house.”

Shadow gets up and heads towards the door, his hands in his pockets, gripping two brass knuckles with spikes, ready to act. She doesn’t move, just challenges him with her gaze.

“We’ll take care of the police,” says Shadow in parting. “But you disappear.”

And he leaves.

Popular wisdom swears that people who carry a weapon end up having a special character, transfixed by the power it bestows, the ability to decide between life and death, ascendancy and ruin. It is even believed that it is not the man who decides to use, for example, a pistol, but rather the pistol itself that finds the perfect moment to make its appearance. An armed man is a fearsome thing, and the more cowardly and puny and whingey he is, the more serious the consequences.

But popular wisdom is more superstitious than empirical. And in this case, quite off the mark.

Let’s take Moisès Corvo, a man who’s seen it all, whose balls are rubbed raw from scrapping with the
crème de la crème
of society. A copper with his revolver in his belt. Inspector Corvo isn’t used to using his piece unless the situation requires it, and that’s happened very few times. He shows it when necessary, he pulls it out as a threat when he knows its presence will be intimidating enough, he uses it as a calling card, sure—but shooting, pulling the trigger and releasing a bullet, only in exceptional cases. No
one remembers that time when, as he was heading up the stairs of a building on Sant Gil Street to find out which flat a
sixteen-year
-old girl had just thrown herself out of, ending up a muddle among the horse manure and straw—no one remembers, I say, the pub employee who chose that day (that day, with Corvo muttering because the steps are very narrow and his knees creak and crack) to go barmy and start shooting at whoever passed by, with a hunting shotgun his brother had lent him to keep it out of the curious hands of a boy in the touch-everything phase. No one remembers… well, the brother of the deceased, yes, he was never able to recoup his shotgun or say goodbye beyond an empty wake filled with the boy’s cries. No one remembers the extraordinary aim the policeman displayed on that occasion, blowing a hole in a door, a banister, a groin and a piece of ceiling plaster, in that order.

An armed man walks differently, not because of the power of the revolver but because of its weight. With each motion he is aware that the rod is scratching against his ribs, or his hips, or his leg, depending on where he carries it, and that gives him a forced, almost orthopaedic, gait, challenging to an outside observer. Moisès Corvo feels the Euskaro near him, a Smith & Wesson model 1884-type revolver, a burden that weighs a kilo and looks like an antique, and that gives him enough confidence not to need to use it. Almost ever.

It’s the 25th of December,
fum fum fum
as the song goes, and Moisès’s wife has left first thing in the morning for his brother’s house, on Petritxol Street, to help her sister-in-law prepare the chicken for dinner. You’ll come when you feel like it, she’d said when they parted, and Corvo had nodded as if she could see him through the closing door. The policeman had dozed until
his body said
enough
, out of sync, as always, and he woke up with his head murky. He can’t stop going over it in his mind, as hard as he tries. He is obsessed with the kidnappings, and he fears that today, Christmas day,
fum fum fum,
there could be another while he is dining with his family. As if he could do anything about it. The best thing is a drink to cure his sluggishness, so he dresses, combs his hair, grabs his revolver, with its pearl barrel and wooden butt, and takes a good look at himself in the mirror. He looks older, pale, puffy-eyed, the image of the monster he thinks he’s chasing.

On Balmes Street he runs into families, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, filled with illusion, desserts and wines, one of the best days of the year because everyone pulls out the few coins they’d been saving up and spends them on a nice meal. There are beggars at the church doors. Today their hats are filled with banknotes, because everyone knows that Christmas generosity is, more than a virtue, a tradition. The sun is beating down, forcing Moisès Corvo to squint his eyes, and that keeps him from seeing the man who’s following him.

The tavern is half empty, only the four stalwarts who were born with bottles of beer in their hands. The policeman leans on the bar and orders an anise. A moment later in walks a
well-dressed
man, in suit and tie and with a bump under his jacket that doesn’t escape the inspector’s notice. He sits beside him and asks for a glass of water.

“Inspector Corvo.”

Moisès turns his head and takes in his features: grey hair doused in cologne and a moustache that hides his lips, eyes like slits and cheeks like ceramic, as if they were a poreless mask. Burnt. No: he still has his eyebrows and facial hair. He asks himself where this gentleman came from, why he’s armed and how he knows his name.

“Who’s looking for him?”

“Asking questions is one of your favourite pastimes, eh?”

“I get that a lot, lately.”

“Asking questions is good. You learn a lot. But sometimes, we don’t need to learn so much and we should just stick to what we know. Have you ever thought about taking up some other pastime instead?”

“It just so happens that what I enjoy is, also, what I’m paid to do.”

“I understand.” The man with the strange face turns 180 degrees and leans back against the bar, subtly enough not to seem aggressive, while being aggressive. “What is it you enjoy most?”

“Drinking in peace.”

The man moves his moustache and decides that the best thing to do is smile. Behave ourselves, for the moment.

“That’s a good leisure pursuit.” He pulls out a wad of notes and addresses the waiter. “My treat.”

“Give me three more,” says Corvo to the barman. “And the bill, it’s his treat.”

“What would you say if they paid you to keep up this ‘hobby’, as the English say?”

Moisès Corvo has stopped looking at him, but out of the corner of his eye he hasn’t lost sight of the bump under his jacket.

“I don’t know what a ‘hobby’, as the English say, is.”

“What would you say if for coming down here, having a couple of drinks and keeping your mouth shut, we were to pay you royally.”

“That is very elegant to use the word ‘hobby’ when what you mean is bribe.”

“You asked too many questions, Inspector Corvo.” He shows
an open envelope, with some 100-peseta bills inside, and he puts it into the pocket of the policeman’s jacket. “You bothered people you shouldn’t have bothered.”

“I don’t like receiving money from someone who hasn’t introduced himself.”

“Accept it as a sign of goodwill. There are people who are very displeased with you. People you lied to. They want to settle things with you.”

“Madame Lulú.”

The man gets uncomfortable, Corvo has spoken too loudly, but he covers it up well enough. He offers him a hand to shake and the policeman thinks it over.

“Keep the money. It doesn’t bring happiness, but it’ll help you forget your worries.”

Moisès Corvo feels wounded, humiliated. It wouldn’t be hard for him to accept the envelope, but a stab inside him (very, very deep inside) forces him to pull it out of his pocket and place it in the man’s hand. It’s not easy, not easy at all, but he feels better when he’s got rid of that burden.

“You take it. Give it to Adriana, Madame Lulú’s Filipina, and you’ll see that she knows how to make you happy.”

The man’s expression has changed and he looks like an automaton.

“You asked for it.” He turns to leave the tavern.

The inspector knows how this works. It would have been so easy. To just not do anything, let himself be carried along, look the other way. Easy and dirty. And now he’ll have to struggle. Climb the mountain while the wind and snow blow and rocks fall from the peak. He cocks his revolver. Yes, Inspector Corvo already knows how this works. He rolls a cigarette to control the
trembling in his hands, lights it and brings it to his lips. A bell tower rings out twelve noon on 25th December 1911, and Moisès Corvo goes out onto the street.

The elegant man is on the facing pavement, still, waiting for him, and their gazes cross as if they were the two sides of a mirror. Moisès Corvo’s reflection unbuttons his jacket and reveals his revolver, in its sheath, hanging from his belt, the man’s two arms tense on either side of him. Corvo repeats the ritual. There are a dozen metres between them but they seem millimetres and kilometres at the same time. There is no traffic on Balmes Street, and few people around. The sound of some window frame as it closes, the blind lowering, a distant tramcar is all that stands between the policeman and the man who challenges him. And for a while nothing happens, they are both still, dancing without moving. Corvo’s fingers tremble, they want to pull out the weapon and shoot, they need it. It’s not the revolver that wants out, but the person who chooses the moment.