Off Side (22 page)

‘Anyway, Palacín discovers that his wife has disappeared, and starts getting depressed. One day he runs into a young prostitute from the street where he lives. He uses her as his dealer, and they go off and have fun in her apartment — if you can call it an apartment … From what I gather from my informant, the girl lives in a derelict building. And this may interest you … She’s living with Marçal Lloberola, the youngest son of a man whose name will be familiar to you. Lloberola, the king of the scrapyards, as he is known all over the port. A mint of money behind him, and a hundred-year family history of calling the tune in the Port of Barcelona. The woman is Marta Becera, an ex-student friend of Marçal from his college days. They’ve been together for about ten years now, and they’re both heavily into drugs. They’re pretty much made for each other. So, Palacín takes up with the girl, and six days ago they went off on their first cocaine trip.’

‘And has there been a second time?’

‘Indeed there has. Last night, in fact. When the game was over, Palacín went for a stroll on his own in the area round the stadium. Then he took a taxi, which dropped him at the corner of calle del Hospital and pasaje de Martorell. He went to considerable lengths to find the girl, and they went off to score cocaine
in Plaza Real again. Then they went back to the flat for sex. He’s well hooked, and one of these days he’s going to crack. Without his help, Centellas is as good as dead, and I would say it was a miracle that he managed to score that goal yesterday. But he does have style. I was there for the match, and it’s obvious that he might make himself a following. I said as much to Sánchez when we contrived to bump into each other, and he was worried. He thinks it might complicate things.’

‘Hooked on cocaine, eh?’

‘Yes.’

Basté wrinkled his nose.

‘I don’t like the sound of this. It could get very mucky, Dosrius, and I can’t afford to get involved in that sort of thing.’

‘That’s what I’m here for, Basté.’

‘That’s not what I meant to say.’

‘You don’t need to say it. I said it.’

Basté habitually used Dosrius as his lawyer every time he found himself involved in some particularly delicate set of negotiations — the sort of business deals that his ex-wife had criticized him for, calling him a speculator and a cynic; the kind of deals that sat uneasily with his image as a man who, for the last thirty years, had created for himself a public image as a political progressive, and as an enterprising businessman able to preach the philosophy of the creativeness of neo-liberalism by his own example. Dosrius had understood from the start that his role was to take the facts with which Basté supplied him, and then supply him with solutions without explaining too much about the procedures, while all the time taking sole responsibility for the ways in which these ends were to be achieved. The Centellas land-grab operation was going to involve more than a dozen building firms and industrialists, all of whom were willing to place their trust in Basté because he had a good business sense and enjoyed considerable social standing. To such an extent that they didn’t even demur when, during their few discreet meetings together, Basté
placed them all in seats that were lower and less comfortable than his own, while he shifted his well-preserved skeleton and his concert-conductor arms into a Charles Eames rotating chair which his father had imported in the 1930s, and which Carlos Basté de Linyola had carried with him from one office to another as a sort of good-luck mascot. To those occasional meetings, Sánchez Zapico had contributed his brutal ordinariness, and the rat-like acuteness of his business sense, while Dosrius brought technical clarity and Basté the apostolic blessing. Even though in the past his name had figured among the princes-elect of the new democracy, he had won the definitive respect of his colleagues from the moment that he had decided to take over as managing director of the richest and most powerful football club in Barcelona. This was a position that they understood.

‘You know better than anyone that time is at a premium. Everything is in place and ready to move. The offer that we shall be putting before the board will include housing, a public park, a service area with a day nursery, a civic centre, and, just for good measure, a community centre for senior citizens. The council will give us medals, and there’s a very large amount of money waiting to be made. But these kinds of deals can go off the boil very fast; if we lose the initiative the vultures will be on us, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that we’re going to end up first in line.’

‘Sánchez Zapico is the key to all this.’

‘Sánchez Zapico can only be counted on for as long as he has no other option. He’s not much more than a rag and bone dealer who’s become rich, and a manufacturer of no account. What can you expect from a manufacturer of sugared almonds?’

‘A free hand.’

‘You have a free hand.’

‘And you can be sure that your hands will stay clean.’

‘You shouldn’t have said that.’

He felt uncomfortable. He was not a man capable of accepting the slightest hint of doubt about himself. He was a man who
liked to look into the mirror each morning and see an image that corresponded to the image that the city had of him. Everyone has his role, and his role was that of a respectable citizen.

‘I was thinking …’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘No, no need to get alarmed. I wasn’t intending to explain the solution that has occurred to me, but I should warn you that it’s probably not going to be easy. You’re going to have to accept this, and Sánchez Zapico is definitely going to get jumpy. We’re moving to completion now, and the other day I fired a warning shot over his bows and he didn’t like it. He turned up at my house at eight in the morning and started ranting. But he’s nobody’s fool. You shouldn’t underestimate him just because he’s in the confectionery business.’

‘I don’t underestimate him at all. I just try to avoid playing golf with him. He’s managed to make himself the laughing-stock of the golf club at Sant Cugat. Even the caddies laugh at him behind his back. And what about that wife of his. She looks like a hairdresser out of some bedroom farce. Very uncouth.’

‘According to my scheme of things, Sánchez Zapico will call a meeting of the group, and you’re going to have to be ready. He’s a man with a short neck, and he charges with his head. I might remind you of the dossier which I prepared on his activities, and particularly on the period when he was smuggling photographic material in the 1960s, and the prostitutes that he was running during the period before he discovered massage parlours.’

‘I never even looked at it.’

‘Well, keep it safely under lock and key. I don’t think it’s going to be necessary to bring it out — I’ll only do that if it’s needed. But he’s likely to turn nasty, and he knows a few things about me. About you, he knows nothing. Nobody knows anything about you.’

Dosrius took the opportunity of the silence that followed to ponder the fact that the sum total of what he knew about Basté
de Linyola would not be capable of staining even the white cuff of the man’s shirt, because in effect Dosrius was the instigator and the man behind the scenes. Ten years as a labour lawyer, paid for by money leached out of the clandestine labour unions. Another ten years as a business lawyer, most of them spent in the fastidious shadow of Basté de Linyola, acting as a pageboy to the immaculate patrician. He had progressed from shoes bought in Can Segarra, which had destroyed his feet, to Italian shoes or made-to-measure shoes, and had developed a habit of travelling abroad without luggage and buying new clothes in each city where he stopped, as if in search of a new skin every time.

‘If you’ll pardon the biblical quotation, Dosrius: “What you have to do, it were well that you do it quickly”.’

‘I’ll reply in equally biblical mode, Basté. “May the Lord be with you, and with thy spirit.” ’

‘Would you like to go away somewhere, Marçal? Why don’t we go? Get out of this place. Green fields and pastures new.’

‘What with? Shirt buttons?’

‘My trade travels with me.’

‘With your trade we’re better off staying here.’

‘You’re right, I suppose.’

They clung to each other like two shipwrecked souls on their mattress island.

‘I like the idea, though.’

‘Would you like to leave?’

‘Leave Spain?’

‘Sure. Just get on the road and go.’

‘Where to?’

‘Who cares.’

He raised half of his naked body on to one elbow and examined her, lost in thought; then he gazed upwards as if searching somewhere up among the rafters for an escape hatch through
which they could empty their lives, as if down some liberatory drain.

‘Let’s make the most of this sweet moment, Marta.’

‘This sweet moment …! Ha!’

‘Don’t laugh at me. I’m almost happy.’

‘You’re right. Let’s make the most of this sweet moment. What kind of life are we going to have if we carry on here? The same old shit, day after day.’

‘You’re right. It would be good to go. I’d like to go somewhere where there’s sea. There’s sea here, but it’s not what you’d call proper sea. Morocco. I’d really like to go to Morocco.’

‘We could go to the desert.’

‘We could go to the desert,’ he repeated, with a certain lack of conviction. Then again: ‘What with, though? Where will we get the money? Every time we’ve tried hitch-hiking, even a blind man wouldn’t pick us up. Remember what happened when we went to Port de la Selva in the summer?’

‘We need money.’

‘If you’re thinking we can ask my father, forget it. He’s even gone and hired a private security guard to make sure I don’t get within half a mile of him.’

‘Who said anything about your father?’

‘What are you planning then?’

‘For the moment I’m not planning anything. I’m following my nose. Sniffing the air. Using my imagination. You should try it. One morning we’re going to get up bright and early, and we’ll leave this dump behind us. We’ll have the whole world before us — anything we want. Do you remember that film about the robots and the Chinaman? I suppose not. Your brain’s shot — you can’t even remember any more.’

She looked at him as if he was a kind of freak who by some quirk of fate had ended up as her bedmate and companion in life.

‘I think your brain’s melted, Marçal.’

‘Well, you’re not so clever yourself …’

But he had to admit she was right. Sometimes it really did feel as if his brain had melted, and he couldn’t even turn his head without feeling the liquid swilling about.

‘How old are you?’

‘I don’t know. Thirty, maybe.’

‘Thirty-two. Same as me. How long do you think you’re going to last, the way you’re going … the way we’re both going?’

‘Going to last …?’ he mused, with an air of perplexity.

‘There’s still time,’ she said, seizing his arm with one hand. ‘We’ll have to break a few eggs, though, if we want to make the omelette. Are you game?”

‘How should I know? You’re flying, Marta. You’re always in a good mood when you’re flying.’

‘There’s still time, and we are going to need money.’

‘Here we go again. Sure …’

He ran through all the possible sources of money that his imagination could muster, but each time he came up with either the sullen face of his father saying no, or the pitifully small amounts of cash that Marta sometimes carried in her handbag.

‘Imagine that we’ve hit lucky. Imagine us turning up in one of those cities where everyone wears white suits and Panama hats. Fans on the ceilings and jugs full of fancy coloured drinks, and we’ll be Lord and Lady Muck.’

‘The kind of place where they have billiard halls.’

‘Billiard halls. That’s right! A billiard hall.’

‘I’ll shave my beard off, and just leave a moustache.’

‘In winter you’ll wear a cravat, and in summer you’ll wear silk shirts.’

‘I used to have silk shirts. I loved them. My mother used to give me a silk shirt every birthday.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Amazing! That’s the first time I’ve thought of my silk shirts for years. I wonder what they’ve done with them. They must still be at home. And they’re mine.’

‘You’ll have
new
silk shirts. Imagine it — there you are, in your silk shirt, and you’re leaning over a billiard table. You have to be very good looking to play billiards — in fact you’ve got something of the billiard player about you. And everyone will be saying: “Who’s the goodlooking player?” And maybe I’ll be the owner of the joint.’

‘You know what — you’d look really good as the owner of a billiard hall. No, I’m serious. You’ve got that kind of “je ne sais quoi”.’

‘And everyone will be wondering where these two good-looking creatures come from? And you and I will lay false trails for them. I’d love them to think that we came from Australia. Everyone should be from Australia.’

‘We could even go to Australia.’

‘Why not? Somewhere where we can make a new start.’

‘Seeing we’ve almost got our degrees, maybe we could give private lessons in something.’

‘Like what? Sniffing coke and screwing?! Idiot!’

All of a sudden the spell was broken and everything was the same as before. Including the iciness in Marta’s voice, and the ferocity in her eyes which tried to cover up for her confusion.

‘What’s up with you? Don’t spoil it, Marta.’

‘What exactly are you going to give classes in, eh? Tell me. That’ll be just like going backwards for us, won’t it. We’ve got to jump forwards, not backwards. As if we’ve just been born.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘OK — now listen carefully. What would you be prepared to do to make it happen?’

‘I’d give ten years of my life — twenty, even.’

‘Don’t be so generous with something you probably haven’t got. Half an hour will do. In half an hour we could change our luck.’

He didn’t want to irritate her by being blind to the obvious, so he preferred to pretend that he was thinking deeply while he
waited for her to unveil what she had in mind. He turned over the possible options, and all of a sudden he came up with a start.

‘You’re not thinking of …?’