Mapuche (31 page)

Rubén was thinking about his father on Route 7, deciphering the flashing headlights of oncoming trucks that were signaling to each other in the distance. Jana was dozing in the passenger seat. As the miles rolled by he regularly checked the rearview mirror. They had passed a police roadblock not long before, as they left the province. The motorcycle cop had demanded the car's registration and written down their names before letting them drive on. Their weapons were hidden under the seat, and their bags were in the trunk, along with the items they'd bought that morning in a suburban shopping center. They still had over two hundred miles to cover before arriving in Rufino. He'd opened the window to smoke as he drove, lulled by the hum of the engine. Jana finally awoke; she wedged the soles of her Doc Martens on the glove compartment, her mind still hazy.

“You O.K.?”

The sun shone brilliantly beyond the dusty windshield, fields rolled away as far as the eye could see, green oceans dotted with brown cattle.

“Uh-huh,” she replied faintly.

Her head bouncing against the side window, she had dreamed about Miguel. The memory left a bad taste in her mouth.

“I'd like a cup of coffee,” she said.

A gas station came into view alongside the road. They filled up at the pump while trucks lined up for diesel, and stretched their legs as they watched the semis roar by. A dusty wind was sweeping across the station's pavement, crushed by the midday heat.

“I'm going to take a turn driving,” Jana said to emerge from the mist of her dream.

“Later on, if you want.”

“I drive better than you do.”

Rubén also couldn't care less about cars. His, a Hyundai, ran fine. He ran his index finger over the Mapuche's lips, counting up the kisses he'd left there for her.

“What would you like to eat?” he asked.

“Guess.”

A smell of soggy fries permeated the service station's snack area. They drank a cup of coffee from the machine as they observed the hovel where the truck drivers were grumbling, furtively kissed as they were going toward the toilets, and met again in the shop. They paid for the gas at the counter covered with chocolate-covered junk and bought some more or less fresh vacuum-wrapped empanadas to take with them. They were sitting down outside in the shade of a yellowing advertising umbrella when Rubén received an SMS from Anita. A laconic message: “The Old Man is O.K.”

“What does that mean?”

“That we'll soon be able to track down the cell phone of the pilot, Del Piro.”

Ten minutes later Jana, reinvigorated, took the wheel: she put on the Jesus Lizard CD she'd borrowed from the apartment, turned onto the highway, and followed the exhaust of the trucks polluting the blue skies. “Goat.” Chacobuco, Junín, Vedia, the towns flashed past like explosions as they drove along Route 7.

 

*

 

Just a stopping point on the road to Mendoza, the little town of Rufino lived in slow motion, its cruising speed. A soybean processing plant with smoking chimneys provided most of the town's activity, the rest being limited to: a couple of service stations where heavily-loaded semis gathered; a few shops with Far West display windows; and two hotels on the main street, which was almost deserted even though it was a Satur­day evening. Neither of the hotels was called La Rosada. Worn-out after hours on the road, Jana and Rubén ate in the restaurant of the less depressing of the hotels. The young waitress seemed bored to death, her breasts almost popping out of her low-cut blouse in the hope that someone would get her out of this dead end: according to her, La Rosada was on the outskirts of town, beyond the traffic circle that took the truck drivers back to the main highway. The girl's eyes, at first pleasant, had turned bittersweet.

A narrow paved road full of potholes led off to the north; following the waitress's directions, they drove past the BP station with faded paint and went on half a mile farther. Soon they saw La Rosada's sign among the bushes; it was shabby and seemed centuries old. Jana parked the Hyundai in the graveled lot. Empty parking sheds were lined up behind the building, one of them closed with a blue plastic tarp. They got out and glanced briefly around, looking in vain for the entrance to the hotel.

“Strange place,” Jana said.

Rubén bent down in front of the shed covered with the blue tarp and saw the wheels of a car poking out.

“Good evening!” someone sang out behind them.

A man with a craggy face was approaching them. He was wearing a moth-eaten wool sweater flared out over his short legs, a pair of baggy sweatpants, and worn-out sandals with holey socks of different colors. He sized up the Indian woman and the white man accompanying her, and smiled, showing his remaining teeth.

“Are there two of you? It's a hundred and fifty pesos a room,” he announced valiantly. “Half an hour, huh?” he added with a complicitous wink.

A toenail black with dirt was poking out of his green sock. The couple looked at him cautiously, but the man didn't get flustered.

“If you want to stay an hour, or longer, I can give you a special price! Come on,” he said with jovial impatience, “a hundred pesos.”

Jana turned to the open shed and saw a little sign in the form of a red heart crudely taped to the door at the back, which must lead to a dinky room. La Rosada was a hotel used by prostitutes and unfaithful husbands who came there to relieve the boredom of the great plains.

“Are you Ricardo Montañez?” Rubén asked with a grimace.

“Hell, no!” the dirty dwarf retorted. “He's the boss, I'm just the manager of the sheds, Paco! As for the rooms in the hotel, we can make a deal: how about two hundred pesos for the whole night?”

Paco was wearing a wig so tacky that it looked more like a cap. The dark lines around his eyes made him resemble a sad panda, and his brain also seemed to be masticating bamboo.

“Where is he, the big boss?” Rubén growled.

“At his place,” Paco replied, pointing to the house behind the trees.

Lights were coming on at dusk, partly hidden by a high, thick hedge. The manager of the highway brothel stared at the Indian woman, met the oblique glance of the big, brown-haired man who was inspecting the place in an inconvenient way, and went all out.

“Fifty! Fifty pesos for an hour!”

The dolt. Rubén took the lout by the mop that served him as a tunic, and breathed into his drunken face:

“You're coming with us, Don Juan.”

“Hey! You can't just go to Mr. Montañez's place like that!” Paco gurgled as he was dragged over the gravel. “It's private! Hey! It's private!”

“Shut up, I told you.”

A small home appeared, a single-story house covered with ivy, invisible from the road. A string of lights and a wisteria decorated the front door, but the windows were closed.

“Does Montañez have a wife or children?”

“Divorced her, I think.”

“What business is he in?”

“The hotel!”

“What else?”

“I don't know,” the manager of the sheds stammered. “The rooms . . . I just take care of the rooms!”

A nocturnal bird chirped in the branches. Rubén pushed the guy toward the porch and handed the .45 to Jana.

“If this pile of lice tries to run away, shoot him in the foot.”

“O.K.”

Paco looked around him like a seagull in front of prey washed up on the beach.

“What? Are you nuts or what? Whattya going to do with . . . ”

“You'll get another bullet in your ass if you do anything stupid,” Rubén whispered to him. “Now ring.”

Paco's short legs were trembling under his rags. He rang, several times. The sporadic noise of trucks could be heard in the distance, insects were circling under the wisteria, but no one came to the door. It was open: Rubén pushed the wigged dwarf in front of them, ordering him to keep his mouth closed. A dark hall lit by candles led to a white double door with gilt reliefs. There was an odor of jasmine in the hall, where the candles flickered. Paco walked cautiously on the pink marble floor, giving off a foul odor amid the incense. The voices became more audible behind the gilding of the double door: a woman's moans, languorous and punctuated by unmistakable cries. Their eyes met, stunned. The double door was locked: Rubén broke the lock with a powerful kick and shoved Paco into the middle of the room with the same violence.

It wasn't a swingers' party for the leading figures in Rufino, and still less an orgy with deluxe whores getting paid per moan: Ricardo Montañez was alone in the middle of the room, naked as a jaybird, a glass of ice-cold champagne nearby. A giant screen connected to a computer faced the bubbling Jacuzzi under the speakers, from which wailing orgasms were roaring. A girl in garters was exhibiting herself on the king-size screen, clitoris wet and pubes shaved, in a clichéd brothel setting. A devotee of cybersex, Montañez was communicating with the performers on a site that offered, at the rate of fifty pesos for ten minutes, erotic stimulation of all kinds: the girls responded to their customers' orders by typing short texts, moaning on cue. Montañez saw his employee on all fours on the acrylic animal hides, the couple accompanying him, and, after a moment of shared stupefaction, reacted.

“What are you doing here? It's . . . it's private here!”

In his sixties and fattened up by business meals, Ricardo Montañez had a soft, milky body lathered with fragrant oils, short-sighted brown eyes, and a elephantine belly that almost concealed his child's penis: an immature penis, not ten years old.

Rubén approached him while Jana turned off the sound. Ashamed, furious, Montañez stood up in his birthday suit and rushed toward the silk dressing gown lying on the bed.

“It's . . . it's a violation of my home!” he protested.

Ricardo Montañez had gained over a hundred pounds since his youth in the military, but it was indeed the former petty officer.

“Listen, big guy,” Rubén began, confronting him. “I'm looking into a double murder that took place under the dictatorship: Samuel and Gabriella Verón. I know that you were serving at the ESMA at that time, and I also know that you took part in the couple's transfer and killing. September 1976. A couple whose children had been kidnapped.”

“Who . . . who are you?” the brothel's owner asked angrily.

He looked around him, saw only a video that suddenly seemed obscene, and his sheepish employee.

“Don't expect anyone to help you,” Rubén warned him.

“But . . . ”

“I don't give a shit about your sexual problems, Montañez. I just want to know who the officer was that accompanied you that night, and where you buried the bodies.”

The fat man pulled his dressing gown tighter around him, not knowing what to do.

“Either you talk or we'll have to cut off your little worm,” the Indian woman said.

“It wasn't me . . . I . . . I was just the driver . . . It's ancient history.”

“Not for us. Who was the officer assigned to extract the couple?”

Ricardo was sweating heavily under his makeup. Rubén grabbed him by the collar.

“You hear what I'm saying to you?”

“I don't know anything!” Montañez yelped. “I was never told. He . . . he wasn't at the ESMA. Or I'd never heard of him. I don't know anything, I swear!”

“Where are the bodies buried?”

“I . . . I don't remember anymore.”

“Where?”

Montañez began to choke.

“In the Andes . . . near the Chilean border.”

“Where in the Andes?”

“A pass!” the obese man breathed. “I don't know any more!”

Paco backed toward the door, staring with fear at the scarlet face of his boss, whom the big brown-haired guy was manhandling.

“Stay where you are,” Jana whispered to him, giving him a kick.

“A pass!” the boss said hoarsely. “Near Puente del Inca! In . . . in that area!”

The former petty officer was beginning to suffocate. Rubén relaxed his grip.

“You're going to take us there,” he announced in a cavernous voice.

“Wh . . . what?”

“To the pass where you buried them.”

Montañez's entire body was trembling; it seemed to be deflating.

“Huh? But . . . it's over five hundred miles from here!” he said, readjusting the collar of his kimono, which had been wrinkled by Rubén's grip.

Rubén sized up the man with a boy's penis, who was shaking beneath the silk.

“Get dressed, old man.”

 

*

 

Jana drove while Rubén grilled the guy in the backseat. Looking like a Buddha curled up in a corner of the car, receptive to the detective's threats or relieved to talk after so many years of silence, Montañez told them his story.

Having grown up in the region, without plans or any qualifications other than a license to drive large rigs (his father had been a truck driver), Ricardo had enlisted in the army at the age of nineteen, on a sudden impulse that had boomerang effects. The
verdes
, the young recruits, had no choice: those who didn't obey orders, even if they were iniquitous, found themselves on the other side of the fence. Ricardo had first been detailed to the Campo de Mayo, which had been made into a vast concentration camp in connection with hunting down “subversives,” and then to the ESMA, as a driver. He had been chosen for the extraction of a detained couple, but not informed of the special mission to which he had been assigned. The identity of the prisoners, who were drugged for the trip, was unknown to him, but he remembered the transfer, an endless road they'd covered partly at night and that took them up into the mountains. An officer accompanied them, a colonel in the army who had never said his name. Montañez had driven the van without asking any questions. When they arrived at the foot of the Andes, the officer had ordered him to put on one of the hoods they used to cover the eyes of subversives, and to keep quiet while he took over at the wheel. They had driven for an hour or two, without a word, as far as an isolated
estancia
somewhere in the bottom of a valley. Montañez had helped the colonel take the couple out of the van. At that point they were awakened and their hands tied behind their backs: a bearded man and a woman who was wearing a dress that was in pitiful condition and who could hardly walk. Someone was waiting for them inside the
estancia
: the colonel had gone in with the two detainees, while he remained freezing in the van. An hour later, the trio came out again. Ricardo had put the hood back on, still without saying a word, and they set off again in the night, as they had come. After what seemed to him another hour of driving, the colonel had taken winding roads before stopping the vehicle in the middle of the desert.