Needle in a Haystack (15 page)

From the Lavalle entrance of the Palace of Justice, Giribaldi goes down into the basement, where the Forensic Medical Corps is based. The receptionist makes no comment as he walks past without stopping to explain himself. He marches straight into Fuseli’s office without knocking and finds the doctor submerged under a pile of papers. When Giribaldi fires off a “good morning”, Fuseli peers at him over his reading glasses, surprised that anyone should so brazenly barge in.

Giribaldi sits down in front of Fuseli. They don’t stop weighing one another up for an instant. They don’t say a word and don’t move an inch. Fuseli breaks the silence.

Giribaldi jumps to his feet, as if obeying an order. The forensic doctor’s words have confused him. He hates feeling confused. But the feeling will soon turn to anger, and anger, he finds, puts everything back in perspective. Ridiculously, he clicks his heels together and only just stops himself from bowing. Much to his regret, the “good day” he offers in farewell chokes in his throat and comes out timidly. He turns and leaves. Fuseli gets a shiver down his spine. The intimidation that emanates from the man lingers, floating in the air like the smell of steak being cooked on the grill.

Fuseli spends all morning trying to locate Lascano on the phone, but can’t get hold of him.

Waiting to see the manager, Lascano amuses himself watching the comings and goings at the bank. He’s been here before. A year ago he was called in to investigate an inside job involving the then manager and treasurer. The guys pulled off the perfect fraud. One Monday morning, they didn’t show up for work. Central office grew increasingly concerned as midday approached until finally they sent a supervisor to open the safe. It was empty. They reported the matter immediately. An expert accountant arrived and calculated that five million dollars were missing. The investigation got underway and it was soon established that on Saturday afternoon the two employees had left the country in a hired car via the Puente del Inca-Caracoles road, but there the trail ended. Before the ink had even dried on their international arrest warrants, the pair sheepishly handed themselves in to the
Carabineros
in Santiago de Chile. With due speed, they were flown back to Buenos Aires and taken, handcuffed, straight from Ezeiza airport to appear before a judge. They both expressed their remorse to his honour, saying that temptation had got the better of them but, having had a chance to think things through, they realized they had done wrong. To
prove as much, they gladly revealed where they’d hidden the booty. The millions were recovered by a warrant officer, accompanied by half a dozen police officers and led by Lascano. Taking everything into consideration, the thieves were given a short, suspended sentence and were back at large within forty days. They lost their jobs, of course. Lascano noticed that the bank executives didn’t seem at all satisfied when they received the recovered cash. It didn’t take him long to find out why.

A certain Fermín González worked at the bank, someone Lascano knew had a bit of a murky past. Before Lascano had even threatened to reveal his police record to his employers, Fermín suggested they talk outside and told him straight away what had really happened. There’d not been five million dollars in the safe but fifteen. However, the other ten belonged to a parallel trading desk. The executives had no way of justifying their off-the-balance-sheet activity. The manager and treasurer had seen an opportunity to get their hands on the dirty cash without risk of reprisal. Fermín concluded that if he’d been in their shoes, he’d probably have done the same, after all
who’s the bigger thief, the unfaithful employee or the bank?
Perro shrugged his shoulders and offered him a word of advice.

And here’s Fermín now, on the straight and narrow. When he sees Lascano, he smiles and taps his finger to his temple. A secretary then calls for Lascano to go through to see Mr Giménez, the bank manager.

Giménez clears his throat and then leans over to the intercom.

The manager adopts a tone of confidentiality.

Graciela brings in the file.

He waits for the secretary to leave, opens the folder, puts his glasses on and starts to read.

Giménez turns the printout around to face Lascano and reaches for a notepad and pencil.

Lascano scribbles down the client’s name and address, tears the page from the pad and pops it in his pocket.

Just as before, the manager coughs, leans forward and speaks into the intercom.

Giménez gets up from his chair and walks Perro to the foyer.

Within a few minutes, Graciela opens Lascano an account and equips him with a safe deposit box into which he puts the two bundles of dollars recovered from Tony Ventura’s brothel. Further down the line, he’ll try to persuade Eva to do something worthy with the cash. For now, there’s this Amancio character to consider, someone who owed a stack of money to the dead man. It’s a Barrio Norte address and Lascano senses he’s on the right track. He decides he’ll pay Pérez Lastra a visit and
see what he’s got to say for himself.

In the morning, Perro leaves his Falcon with Tito, in charge of the police workshop, to get the clutch sorted. He then boards a clapped-out number sixty-one bus and passes the time watching the world go by out of the window. As soon as the traffic jams worsen, and progress becomes too painful to contemplate, he takes out his little book and flicks through the notes he took the other night in police archives. There before him, in his own clumsy scrawl, is a summary of the police version of Eva’s story. Half an hour later, the bus drops him at the gates of the Palais de Glace. The slope on Ayacucho isn’t suited to inveterate smokers and so he tackles it slowly and carefully, inhaling as much air as his diminished lungs will allow. He approaches the Alvear Palace Hotel, adorned with flags and busy with official cars carrying people to and fro. The pavement is scattered with small light-blue and white propaganda stickers declaring Argentines to be humane and right:
Los argentinos somos derechos y humanos.
He shakes his head and crosses the street. He heads down Quintana, Guido and Vicente López, on towards a formidable building designed by the architect Alejandro Bustillo. This is where Amancio lives. At the door, dressed in the classic grey uniform
of a janitor, he finds a man mopping the footpath. Perro approaches him. The man recognizes Lascano’s superior authority without a word being said. As soon as he sees him, he leans on the mop handle and greets Lascano with the servile smile of a tip-hunter.

The man nods towards the other side of the street. Lascano follows his gaze to where a Falcon Rural is parked, encroaching into the bus-stop bay. Perro crosses the road and the porter goes back to his task. Lascano walks around the car inspecting it at great length. He takes out his notebook and jots down the registration number. At that very moment, Amancio comes out of the building with a package in his hand. Lascano tucks his pad away and watches Amancio throw the bundle down by the driver’s seat, climb in and start the engine. A few feet further back, a woman in her eighties slowly gets into a taxi. Perro jogs over, arriving just in time to grab the door as she shuts it, jumps in and waves his police badge.