The Barcelona Brothers (24 page)

“He’s scared, Epi, and—”

“Please be quiet, Miss. This is strictly between men. No women allowed, right, Percy?”

The guy’s not well. Never has been. Tiffany now sees this clearly. He’s always been like a soda pop, always getting shaken up one way or another, and now he’s about to blow the cap right off the bottle. She’ll have to be very careful. As she had to be with her father and even with Tanveer. They’re always the same: blind, unpredictable bulls. What they liked yesterday can send them into a rage today. Words they once found flattering they’ll take as insults the next time.

“Come on, sweetheart, bump knuckles with Epi. He wants to be your friend.”

“Shut up! It has to come from him! It has to be him! He has to do it because he wants to, not because you tell him to.”

“Can’t you see him, Epi? He’s half asleep and scared. He doesn’t understand anything. This isn’t right, Epi. Let him leave and—”

“Set him on his feet. In front of me.”

Epi enjoys making no effort to understand. He’s been too weak too long to forget that when you show yourself as you really are, others know how to take advantage of it and use it against you. Like when he was desperate and begged Tiffany not to leave him, when she was already totally in thrall to Tanveer’s evil arts, and she petted his face the way you’d pet a dog. Epi hasn’t forgotten that. He hasn’t been able to, not in all this time.

Tiffany sets Percy on the floor. The kid has trouble keeping his balance. His mother props him up from behind. His little eyes start to close. Epi’s sure that all the child wants to do is to go to sleep. To get into his bed and crawl between the sheets, just as Epi used to do when he was that age.

“Come on, sweetheart, bump with Epi.”

“It has to be him, Tiffany,” Epi repeats, more gently this time.

If only she loved him, if only they lived together far from here, far from all the friends and relatives and acquaintances who think they know everything about them. If only they didn’t take drugs or drink. If he had a good job and they lived in a big, pretty house and had kids.
If all that would happen, life would be good
, Epi thinks, while Percy looks at the fist held out level with his eyes. If all that would happen. If they just had the chance, he’d sure know how to take advantage of it now.

“Go on, sweetie …”

“It has to be him, goddamn it.”

Having recovered a little, the kid’s standing on his own, without his mother’s help. He looks at Epi, sees the fist, raises his own, and taps the man’s knuckles. Epi feels emotion clouding his eyes. He’d love to snort a line right this very moment. He wants to feel strong and see clearly. The unlocalized pain affecting his whole body is worsening. He knows he ought to take the kid’s reaction as a sign that everything’s going to turn out all right. Even more than that: it demonstrates that the decisions he’s made and the attitude he assumed were the right ones. If he hadn’t remained firm, if he’d wavered, Tiffany wouldn’t be obeying him, and Percy wouldn’t want to be his friend.

“Way to go, kid. Look, now we’re going to do something, all right? Mama and I have to stay here and talk, but you’re going
to go with Alex. Do you remember my brother Alex? No? Sure you remember him. He’s going to take you to buy some candy, right, Alex? And then you can go home to Grandma and sleep a little more.”

The boy nods assent and clings to his mother. Tiffany smiles. Epi raises his voice and shouts through the apartment door: “Percy’s coming out, all right?”

Alex answers from the landing. “Perfect. Why don’t you let his mother out, too, and be done with all this, Epi?”

“Why don’t you fuck off!”

Along with everything else, Alex is in a hurry. He doubts whether he can maintain the situation any longer. Moreover, he’s starting to feel his resistance weakening. As soon as he can, he’s going to put some tranquillity under his tongue yet again on this shitty fucking day. “Well, come on,” he says. “Send him out.”

“But you have to buy him candy in that store by the movie theater. You promise?”

“Of course. He can relax. I’ll buy him whatever he wants.”

Allawi and Alex hear noises coming from the other side of the door, which seems about to open. If that happens and the kid comes out, it will be the beginning of the end. A good way—not the best or quickest way—to start injecting a bit of common sense into all this.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Epi warns Tiffany. “The kid’s leaving. You don’t want to complicate things now.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I just want to talk to you.”

“All right.”

“I’ll explain everything. Then you’ll see it all clearly. I’ll do a good job of explaining, but you have to let me talk. Tanveer was bad. If you had known what I know about him, fuck, you would have killed him yourself. But I did it. When you kill the cause of the problem, you kill the problem. I just want—”

“Okay, Epi, but I don’t want the child to hear all this.”

“You’re right.”

“You let him go and we’ll talk calmly, right?”

“I am calm. I’m not crazy, only angry. Don’t talk to me as if—”

“Okay, I won’t talk to you like that.”

“Are you going to say I’m right about everything?”

“No, but the thing is—”

“You’re going to say I’m right? You’re going to do everything I want?”

“Yes, if you want me to, yes, but—”

“Okay, then lemme see ’em.”

“Fuck, Epi, don’t push it. The kid’s here, and—”

“It was a joke, woman.”

Epi smiles from ear to ear, and at the sight of that smile, Tiffany gets scared again. She’s had it with his stupid, shitty little games. Of course, it occurs to her to seize her chance and slip through the door when he opens it and, with the help of the people outside, get out of this hell she’s in, but if she did such a thing, she knows it would be extremely unlikely to
end well. She considers other possibilities. She could hit him on the head with something when his back is turned. Maybe with the ashtray. But it’s in the bedroom. She could go and get it. No, it would take too long. Or maybe not. Why not try it? Or while Percy’s being liberated, she could raise the shutter, hang down from the window ledge, and drop to the street. Two floors, more or less. Not so high you’d kill yourself, unless you landed wrong. But she’d have to run over to the window, and he’d have time to catch her, and …

Epi takes Percy by the hand and opens the door. Tiffany knows she must do something, but she can’t even move. She tells herself it’s because of the child. But there’s no denying that fatalism has settled over her like a cloak. She’s resigned, certain that nothing she can do is going to work. She looks at them, hand in hand, like father and son. What a strange sight, however often she may have seen it before, in parks or on walks. At birthday parties. At Epi’s mother’s apartment. But this time is different: they’re kidnapper and hostage. A madman and a bewildered child. And Tiffany herself, the mother, the ex-girlfriend, the other hostage. The little boy turns around and says, “Good-bye, Mommy.” Tiffany can’t reply. Weeping fills her chest and throat, but she doesn’t want either the child or Epi to see her cry. Nor does she care to dwell on the thought that this guy’s going to brain her the way he did Tanveer, maybe even with the same hammer. Or that she’ll never see her son again, his little face, his hands, his eyes, his way of waking up or walking. Or that she’ll never know anything more about him. Or that she won’t see him
grow up and become a man. Or that now it won’t make sense to save the best kisses for anybody. Or that she hasn’t been a good mother, no she hasn’t. Or that she wasted a lot of time. Or that this will be her last image of her little son: walking away, his back to her, hand in hand with his mother’s murderer. Opening a door and disappearing. She can’t stop the tears; they’re already coursing down her cheeks.

ALEX EMBRACES THE CHILD AND THEN GIVES HIM A
superficial inspection, tousling his hair, looking for marks or scratches. He appears to be all right. It’s true he seems very drowsy; maybe he just woke up. Alex asks him how he feels, but Percy doesn’t answer. He looks like he’s about to burst into tears. His entire face is pouting. He starts to turn toward the door to take refuge with his mother but realizes that’s impossible.

“Say, barber, why don’t you take him out and buy him some candy?”

“Candy?”

“Yeah, fuck, caramels, nougat, sweets, whatever they’ve got.”

“Okay. Come on, kid. But wouldn’t you rather go yourself? Epi might listen to me.”

“He’s my brother. I’m staying.”

“All right.” Allawi doesn’t seem interested in disputing the point. “We’ll go buy some candy, and then I’ll take Percy home. His grandmother has to be worried about him. I’ll come right back here.”

“Sounds good to me. But go on now. The fewer people who see there’s a kid involved in this, the better. Buy him some caramels, some nougat …”

“Yes, Alex. I got that.”

“The store’s near the movie theater. Get him some candy and stuff like that.”

Allawi scoops up Percy an instant before the pout disintegrates into weeping. The barber tries to soothe the child by whispering in his ear, telling him about the pile of candy he’s going to be holding in his hands in just a few minutes. Percy says nothing. They descend the stairs and go out into the street. The sunlight surprises them and activates the energy stored in Allawi’s legs. The time spent on that landing upstairs has stiffened his muscles and darkened his mood. Almost with pleasure, he quickens his pace. They’re practically at the corner; from there to the candy store is only a five-minute walk at most. Then however long it takes to get the kid home.

The flashing red and blue lights of a police car parked on the corner tell him that things are about to get complicated. There is, he remembers, more than one problem. Two policemen are walking on the sidewalk toward the apartment building Allawi just left. There can be no doubt about where they’re going. That guy in the Citroën or maybe one of the neighbors
must have called the
mossos
, and they, with their usual diligence, have come to preserve order. Without stopping, Allawi picks Percy up and carries him on one arm. Taking out his cell phone with his other hand, he looks for the number and dials it. While the rings succeed one another, Allawi ponders the question of whether or not he’s really interested in returning to that apartment, which is about to become fiendishly crowded. He skips Alex’s voice mail and presses the redial button. This time he has more luck.

“What’s up?”

“You’ve got cops in the street downstairs.”

“Holy shit!”

“I’ll be back soon. Stay calm.”

Alex steps over to the stairs and believes he can make out a scarlet-and-blue reflection in the glass of the building’s main door. He’s not mistaken in believing that the police want to find out which window the girl was calling for help from. But what Alex doesn’t know is that they’re going to get this information quickly from the Citroën driver, who called the
mossos
and has been waiting for them across the street.

So in spite of all he’s been through, Alex believes he has more time than he actually does. He looks attentively at the door and immediately regrets it. He knows that if he detects a face in the wood, some capricious contour reminiscent of a profile, he’s not going to be able to stop staring at it, to keep from watching it almost come alive. He pats his pocket. Then he puts the tranquilizer under his tongue and drinks from his little water bottle. He can’t lose his cool, not precisely now. He
closes his eyes. The image of something he’s seen in the wood of the apartment door has remained as though stamped in his brain. That edge forms a snout and a chin, and this …

“Epi, listen to me. It’s important. Epi? Can you hear me?”

But his brother doesn’t answer. It’s possible that he’s standing right next to the door; however, it’s also possible that he’s at the other end of the apartment, killing his girlfriend. Why not just start running and abandon them to their fate? Alex tells himself, without conviction, that he’s done more for Epi than Epi would ever have done for him. But he, Alex, made a promise. To Mama. He swore an oath to her. So let’s recapitulate: He’s done everything he could. He concedes this point. He’s tried to think clearly; he’s coordinated his version of the murder with Salva’s; and he’s gotten the cops off their backs, or so he thought. They may well have followed him, but wouldn’t it have been much worse if he hadn’t tried to come here and talk some sense into Epi? At least he managed to get the child released from the apartment. He’s afraid, he is most definitely afraid. Then why not take off? If the cops come, he’s not going to be able to do anything. Except maybe stop them from killing his brother. In the presence of witnesses, those people control themselves; they’re not the animals they turn into when they’re alone with a suspect. My God, how could all this have happened? What diabolical course of events has brought the two Dalmau boys to this place? Where are the rest of the people in his world? Why is there no one behind him, no mother or father to support him? And no one at his side, a woman, a companion, someone to salve his wounds,
to advise him to go back home and leave Epi to a destiny that Epi and Epi alone has forged for himself? All Alex has in life is on the other side of that door: a crazy, homicidal brother, and the girl Alex fantasizes about when he wants to ejaculate rapidly and well.

The cops are in the building. They’ve opened the door and entered the lobby. With all the gear they’re carrying—handcuffs, nightsticks, cell phones, gold insignia, all as though copied from a child’s police costume—they make an unmistakable noise.

“Epi, listen to me. Do you hear me? The cops are here. Let Tiffany come out right now, and nothing will happen. She can just say you two were in there together and that’s all. Tiffany, can you hear me?”

The sound of Tiffany’s voice restores his calm. She replies that she thinks his proposal’s a good idea. Alex hears nothing more from the other side of the door. He doesn’t hear Tiffany trying to make Epi understand that letting her go is the best solution for everyone. For him, for her, for both of them. They can leave together, she says, or better yet, they can wait for the police to knock, and then she’ll open the door, half-dressed, and it will be obvious that the whole thing’s a mistake, an embarrassing mess they’ve wound up in because of some evil-tongued, attention-seeking, officious neighbor. Epi doesn’t reply. He’s sitting silently on a chair next to the door, staring at the tips of his sneakers. Tiffany goes over to him, and when he notices she’s so close he could touch her, he reacts. They gaze into each other’s eyes, but Tiffany can’t read anything in Epi’s.
Once again, they’re two deep, black holes. She asks if he heard the plan and then repeats it to him: when the police come, I answer the door and tell them it’s a mistake, and then they go away. But although by now Epi’s looking at her and listening to what she’s saying, he continues to make no reply.