The Barcelona Brothers (26 page)

Well, in that case, Tiffany
, Epi thinks,
why did what happened happen? Why the endless humiliation?
Now it’s starting to come back to him, the quote his father used to recite. Alex even learned it by heart. How did it go?
The power of speech is granted to the woman, who is herself the gift of the gods
 … What came after that?
In the woman’s presence, the
hero—any hero—feels confused, drained of energy
. Epi strikes out at the ambient air, like a boxer blinded by fatigue and anger. Something about how
the woman has false words in her mouth and the temperament of a thief
.

“Her words cast spells …”

“What are you saying, Epi?”

“Nothing.”

“Shit, don’t scare me.”

“So I satisfied you? I fucked you good?”

“Yes, yes …”

“Well, then …”

“Well, then, what?”

“My father always used to tell us stories. It was as if everything that happened to us had already been written down; it was part of a story told long ago.”

“I really wish I’d known him.”

“Why?” Epi asks, squashing what sounded like a pleasant fantasy.
So he could fuck you the way yours did?
he thinks. But where did those other words come from, the ones from the past? It’s as if the tension he’s under has let loose words that have been shut up inside his head for a long time. Words his father said, words his brother said, like neon lights Epi’s always kept switched off, and now the recent short circuit is turning them on. For a moment, they serve to illuminate the scene.
No, I can’t believe her. She’s lying, I’m sure she’s lying
. He looks away from the girl’s gaze. He doesn’t want to see what he sees. He doesn’t want to read her thoughts. All at once he feels the way he used to when he was sick and his
mother would bathe his eyes with salty water to get the sleep out of them.

The thing is, Tiffany’s not Tiffany anymore. He looks at her tattooed blue eyelids, and they’re no longer the distinguishing mark of the pharaohs; now he sees them as the clumsy work of a clown who doesn’t know how to make people laugh. Likewise, Tiffany’s warm and friendly attitude is a fraud, one more in a long line. Like her words, which she uses to snare his. False words, and this time he’s sure he knows what they mean, every one of them. Liars all. He’s not even listening to them. The goddess he imagined at his side forever now seems to him ugly, ridiculous, clumsy. He peers into her eyes and sees only eyes. And he thinks about the words that apparently meant different things, depending on whether you looked at them from one side or another. How to explain that mystery? Why didn’t “I love you” mean “I love you”? Why did “Leave me” signify “Wait for me”? Why was “Get out of my life” equivalent to “Stay here”?

“Don’t waste any more words. You’re talking so much, it’s making me tired.”

Tiffany shuts up. She’ll do whatever he asks her to. But suddenly, he wants nothing from her. Oh, maybe he’ll bang her one more time to break the spell once and for all, to see her as the bad magic trick she is, full of blood and fluids and shit inside. He no longer wants her to love him, because by a strangely lucid insight, he sees that he can never know whether or not her love is true. He’d have to keep the woman at his side always just to assume that, to guess it, to deduce it
from each and every detail of her being. No, he doesn’t want anything from her, Epi tells himself as he turns his eyes away. He goes to the window and looks down at the street through the gaps in the shutter. He sees the police car, and it’s a relief: at last, all is lost.

He’s standing with his back to her. Now, if she should start running for the door, he wouldn’t stop her. In fact, he’d really love it if she would disappear, or better yet, if she’d never been there at all. If that poisoned gift had never crossed his threshold. He’d like her to die. He’d like to kill her while she looks at him and begs his forgiveness because everything was her fault. The key that opened up paradise was the same that bolted prison doors and sealed graves and locked dungeons. All he had to do was to think about her father, about Percy’s father, about Tanveer, about himself. He’d kill her, and no one would notice. He’d bury her somewhere, and at that precise instant, his life would begin again. The streets of the barrio would be balmy boulevards, not pitfalls or ambushes. Friends, bars, buses, and cars would gleam in the sunshine. There are so many things to do once you’ve found the road to freedom. But when he turns around, Tiffany’s still there in front of him. She’s risen to her feet, and she’s waiting for him to say something.

“Ask me to let you leave.”

“Please let me leave.”

“Not in that tone of voice. Purr like you used to do when we made love and you pretended to like it. Use that voice, please.”

“Let me go, Epi, please, don’t humiliate me. I never pretended to—”

“Ask me to kill you.”

“No …”

“Masturbate in front of me. Standing up, right now. Do it and I’ll see what to do with you. Kill you or open the door.”

Tiffany watches Epi put his hand in his pants pocket. He shows her the knife handle, which suffices to remove all her doubts about whether or not he’s serious.

PEP’S ABOUT READY TO CALL FOR BACKUP, EVEN THOUGH
he understands why Rubén doesn’t want to. There will be time for that, his partner’s gesture seemed to say. They can’t kick the door down. It’s too stout, and it appears to be double-locked besides. However that may be, the decision is his, not Rubén’s, and the consequences will be his as well. Up until now, something that seemed like luck was lending them a hand. They started off by losing the bait, and then, by sheer chance, they found it again on the end of their fishing line. Now their catch is in that apartment. With a girl.

Pep’s been trying to make sense of the case, trying to arrive at a mental image of it in which all the elements fit. The guy in the apartment is the one who wasted the
Moro
, and the woman must be mixed up in it somehow. That’s what he thinks, even though he finds it difficult to imagine how a woman could be mixed up with the rest of that garbage, with beating up prostitutes and
raping them. As a matter of fact, working such cases is always like sticking your hands into a garbage can. And once you’ve done that, everything—however perfumed and lovely—gets stained and soiled and ends up rotting when exposed to light. Drugs, success, violence, ambition, money. At bottom, all circles of the same desperation, like drowning in a whirlpool.

Nothing can be heard from inside the apartment. At one point, the girl called to them and told them to go away, but she was obviously speaking under duress. Moreover, it’s possible she had nothing to do with the murder of Tanveer Hussein. They could be dealing with yet another creep in a long line of creeps eager for a kind of cruel notoriety and intent on making their girlfriends pay for it. Then again, maybe it’s a case of score-settling. What if Epi’s frightened because his buddy’s just been killed and he could be next, as his brother suggested? But in that case, wouldn’t it be a much better idea just to disappear? Or maybe he’s shut himself up in this apartment simply because he’s so terrified.

The presence of more policemen won’t bend Epi’s will or make him free his hostage. But if this mess ends disastrously, it’s a sure thing that Pep will be asked why he didn’t notify the police station and ask for backup. He and Rubén have to act fast and prevent the worst from happening.

“Does your brother carry a weapon?”

“No, no.”

“Do you know that, or are you making an assumption?”

“I know it. He’s a good kid. He’s very peaceful. I don’t know what could have happened.”

“Is this what you call being peaceful?” Rubén interjects. “He’s got himself in a fine mess. Does he use drugs?”

“No, no. He smokes. Hashish. But he doesn’t use anything that would make him do something like this.”

“Rubén, I’m going to make the call.”

“Don’t call them yet. Wait a few more minutes, and then, if you want to, you can ask for help, but I think the two of us can do it by ourselves.”

“Let me talk to him again,” Alex adds.

“You can try, but it looks to me like he’s not going to listen to anybody.”

Rubén steps closer to Pep. A premonition watered with the venom of silence is growing larger and larger inside Rubén’s head. He could have taken care of this matter by now. Pep’s radio signals a response to his recent request for communication.

“Listen, we’ve got a five-seven-two here. Can you send someone to open a door for me?”

“Pep, is that you? It’s Natalia.”

“Hello, Nat, how you doing?”

“Probably better than you two. Is it very urgent?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“I’ll send you a squad car and a shrink as soon as I can.”

“All right.”

“Oh, by the way, Pep, they caught the guy who killed the
Moro
.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, they’re putting him in tomorrow’s lineup. He’s a Paki with priors. A nasty piece of work.”

Pep turns toward Alex. There’s no need to tell him anything, because Pep knows perfectly well that Alex has overheard the conversation. And now the elder Dalmau brother is sure they’re not going to pin Tanveer’s murder on Epi; if he lets the girl leave, the incident will come to nothing. It’s true, however, that Alex is standing with his head pressed against the wall and his eyes closed, trying in vain to stop hearing Donald Duck’s voice imploring him to look again, to keep on watching him. Alex has to concentrate. He has to know what to do. He has to choose the appropriate words, the surest path to Epi’s feelings.

“Epi, Epi, it’s me again. Please listen to me …”

Meanwhile, Rubén approaches his partner and says something in his ear. Pep immediately acknowledges that he’s committed a rookie error, and Rubén goes down the stairs like a shot. His purpose is to take up a position in front of the building and foil any attempt to escape through one of the apartment windows. The distance from window to ground isn’t great enough to deter Epi from taking a chance, dropping to the street, and getting away.

In the entrance, Rubén encounters the returning Allawi, who’s seen the
mossos’
squad car parked on the sidewalk outside and the curious onlookers gathered around, unsure of where or what to look at. Allawi was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get back inside the building, and now, in the very doorway, he runs into a cop.

“You can’t come in here.”

“I live here,” Allawi lies.

“At the moment, you can’t come in.”

“But …”

Rubén asks Allawi not to insist. The
mosso
’s in a great hurry—too great to continue arguing with this supposed neighbor—to get himself under the windows and prevent, if need be, the flight of the suspect. Rubén knows Allawi’s going to enter the building as soon as he walks away. And this is just what the barber does, having held the door open with his foot during the entire discussion.

One of the two windows of the apartment where Epi and Tiffany are still has its shutters lowered. The other window has one shutter raised. Rubén believes all four shutters were down when he and Pep arrived. Maybe the suspect’s already flown the coop. Rubén looks up and down the street, just in case he might be in time to see someone running, when he realizes he has no cause for worry on that account. Admittedly, there’s that raised shutter, but he can tell from the glass panes that the window itself remains closed, and he knows such windows can be closed only from inside. “Brilliant deduction,” Rubén says aloud, cheered up by his own sarcasm. Now all he can do is wait for events to unfold. There was a time when he would have much preferred being in the middle of the action, but ever since that incident in La Seu d’Urgell, he’s become much more cautious. He almost wished the suspect would exit by the apartment door and Pep would arrest him.

“Maybe we are few in number,” Rubén hears himself say, as if he were being recorded by a high-definition video camera as
part of a TV series or some film about policemen committed to the defense of law-abiding citizens.

Epi still hasn’t answered. Pep inwardly berates himself for being stupid. What’s happening to him? Stupid, yes, stupid and slow. Over his radio, Natalia assures him that they’re doing all they can. Then she immediately calls him back to tell him that the locksmith on duty is fortunately in the barrio and will be with them very shortly. Allawi has silently placed himself behind Alex, who recognizes him without even needing to turn around. He’s turned out to be a good friend, a loyal guy.

“Epi, I know you can hear me. Think the situation over a little. Don’t be afraid. Nothing’s going to happen to either of you. You’ll be protected. The police are worried on your account, but they’ve assured me that nothing will happen to you or Tiffany. They’ve arrested the guy who murdered Tanveer. You all have nothing to be afraid of. The police will protect you.”

Pep receives a call from Rubén, who tells him that the two subjects are still inside the apartment. He further reports that he sees no movement and hears nothing. He doesn’t think anyone’s going to escape through the window, not unless they feel like breaking a leg.

“Epi, Tiffany … Come on out and that’ll be the end of it. Don’t make things more complicated. It’s all been a misunderstanding.”

Pep’s radio crackles. He’s informed that the locksmith is already at the door of the building. The policeman asks Allawi to go down and let him in, and Allawi complies. The murmuring
that becomes audible when he opens the door comes from the rising number of people waiting outside to see what will happen. A small man carrying a toolbox mounts the stairs to the third-floor landing and presents himself to Pep. After praising the coincidence that placed him so close at hand, the locksmith sets to work. Allawi has to step back, and Alex watches with some relief as the guy with the white mustache cautiously but resolutely thrusts a screwdriver into Donald’s eye. As the screws in the door hinges are removed, one after another, it dawns on Pep that this affair is straddling the line between a glorious success and a botched job. If the guy’s armed, it could be a real bummer. He steps back from the door and calls the station again.