The Last Resort (13 page)

At this point I was one sigh away from losing all interest in the conversation. All the defects of human communication seem to proliferate in the most tedious manner when one is an outside observer. And I’m not just talking about syntax—syntax is the least of it. I’m talking about far more reprehensible defects: repetitiveness, conversation fillers, annoying tics, not to mention tacky, tacky comments and blatant lies. Ridiculous.

“Come on, Bea,” Bernardo was saying, newly engaged in the conversation. “In your case at least, how much do you really care what Mercedes Algorta thinks of you? You’re separated, aren’t you? You’re a free woman.”

“Yes, but you aren’t,” said the shockingly swollen lips, spitting out the “you.”

“Oh, who cares? Anyone would understand your situation—or do you think Mercedes Algorta is Santa Maria Goretti?”

Antonio Sánchez’s crown suddenly furrowed into a plethora of tiny folds, identical and symmetrical, just like one of those accordion gates that grocery stores use to protect their wares at night.

“Oh, the things I could tell you . . .”

“Enough already, Antonio, for God’s sake. You’re really starting to get on my nerves.”

“Well, you don’t even know what I’m talking about. Of course I don’t have anything personal against her, but I can assure you that that lady”—and he raised his chin toward an indistinct spot on the wall, as if the ghost of Mercedes Algorta were there,
corpore insepulto
—“is not going to tell anyone that she has seen us. Trust me on that one. Not if she knows what’s good for her. Trust me.”

When all the heads at a table of four come together in a spontaneous huddle, it is because some very interesting information is about to be divulged. I have seen it on many occasions. It always happens the same way: The bodies huddle in silence, drawn together by a magnetic force of complicity or the anticipation of ripping a fellow man to shreds.

I pricked up my ears, for these situations tend to play out in hisses and whispers. It turned out, however, to be unnecessary. Sánchez’s radio-announcer voice came out loud and clear.

“So do you all know the story of our little Mercedes?”

“By heart,” retorted she of the astonishingly swollen lips. “I’ve known her all my life, darling.”

Antonio Sánchez pretended not to hear her and turned to Bernardo instead. In group situations, men have a way of directing certain information toward the other men rather than the women. A little ploy to get the girls more interested.

“Now, what I am about to tell you is strictly confidential, of course. On my radio show, you see, we really don’t pay much attention to this type of story—society gossip, you know. We have more serious issues to tackle,” he said in that tone of voice one uses to dismiss trivial matters. “But the story does have its appeal, of course, because the people involved are very well known. Still, though, I don’t think it can be released as a strict news item, because we don’t have conclusive proof.”

“As if that ever made a difference to you! Since when have you needed conclusive proof to crucify someone?” That was Bea.

Sánchez continued, with infinite patience, which made me wonder what kind of pact existed between him and Bea. Why did she have such carte blanche to speak to him that way? Had they had a roll in the hay long ago? Had she been a rung on the ladder of his climb to the top? Call me an unforgivable snob, but the Antonio Sánchezes of this world always have some or other ladder to climb on their way to the top, and they never quite manage to kick themselves free as easily as they would like. Such a sticky business.

“Well, you all know what happened to Valdés, Mercedes Algorta’s husband, the very bizarre way he died—or supposedly died, because nobody knows for sure what happened.”

“And who the hell cares?” the blonde clone interrupted. “God, I am getting so sick of this craze of making front-page news out of people’s private lives, down to what brand of underwear they wear.”

Sánchez, sticking to his tactic of addressing only Bernardo, did not feel it necessary to interrupt his discourse.

“It really is a shame that I lost interest in these little stories, because this one does have its sizzle, trust me. There’s something fishy about Jaime Valdés’s death. Trust me.”

“I, for one,” piped up the timid blonde, delighted with herself for being able to contribute to the general conversation with a firsthand account, “know exactly what happened that night. As it turns out, my maid, who is from the Dominican Republic, is the dear friend of a Moroccan girl who happens to be Habibi’s sister. Habibi, of course, is Mercedes’s cook, and she was the one who discovered poor Valdés turning blue on the floor. And she says that her boss was having sex with Isabella Steine when he suddenly had a fit of some kind. And that is what happened: The two of them were all alone in the living room when suddenly—I think he was choking, yes, like a fish out of water. Can you imagine it? He was so young. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, Mercedes turned up. Luckily. And what do you think? Did she know what was happening? Don’t you think she would have slapped Isabella a couple of times after coming home to that? I don’t know, to tell you the truth. For that you’ll have to ask Habibi yourself. What I
do
know, however, is that Mercedes was very calm about everything—that’s what Habibi said—and that Mercedes was the one who was with Valdés during his last few minutes. You see, nobody was expecting Mercedes to arrive until the next day. But as Habibi says, she arrived that night, out of nowhere at all. First she sent everyone out of the room so that she could properly tend to Valdés, and once she was alone, she called for a . . . oh, what do they call those ambulances, the ones that have all that life-saving equipment on them? Antonio?”

“Mobile ICU, darling,” said Sánchez.

“Yes, that’s right. A mobile ICU unit. She called for a mobile ICU unit, which took forever to get there, and of course it was all for nothing, because the poor man died before they could even get to him. A real tragedy. Although, according to my Dominican maid, there is another story, a rather strange story involving a bracelet that they say Habibi spotted on the floor lying next to Valdés when she first entered the living room. After the ambulance left, it was gone. Nobody knows what happened to it. No, don’t look at me like that—I know what you’re thinking. My maid swears Habibi didn’t take it. Good Lord. You people . . . you are all so prejudiced. Poor Habibi, she’s as honest as the day is long.”

Now, I am a very methodical man, and right then a notebook would have really come in handy for jotting down bits and pieces of all that disjointed information, but of course I had no notebook on hand. I did, however, have Fernanda’s fax with me, as well as a pen, which I put to use right away. With extreme caution I wrote down a few words so that I could reconstruct things later on. First, I wrote “Habibi (Moroccan maid),” and then “missing bracelet.” After that, I turned my attentions back to the conversation.

Bea, the blond clone, had launched into her version of the incident, which was somewhat different from the previous interpretations, for it introduced several new plot elements that did not seem entirely implausible.

“Ana, darling, we all know that you are a perfect saint and that you believe everything people tell you, but I have to warn you that those of us who no longer believe in Santa Claus were not at all convinced by Habibi’s story. It makes no difference at all to me if Valdés was putting the moves on Isabella or if Isabella was sleeping in old Steine’s arms, as Isabella herself insists is the case. Who cares? And as far as that mysterious bracelet is concerned, well, it belongs to Habibi now—that is the most obvious and logical conclusion one can draw. But, listen. None of that matters in the least. The real issue is
why
it all came to pass in the first place, and that is what I am going to explain to you now. Do you want to know the truth? It’s much simpler than you think. Things don’t happen just like that—allergies, choking, come on! If the guy had some kind of fit it was because he was stressed-out. Can’t you see what is happening to us, to everyone? It’s terrible. We’re all about ready to crack, and that’s exactly how these things happen. I don’t need to tell you what the business world has come to these days. Just look at all those golden-boy yuppies—you know, the ones who thought that getting rich was as easy as winning a Monopoly game. Just ask Bernardo. He knows a few of them himself. Stressed-out, darling, that’s what Valdés was. He wasn’t going bankrupt, exactly, no, no. The opposite, actually. He had more money than God, but the more money you have, the more complicated things get. And then what do you do? You just get deeper and deeper into it: more deals, more traveling, more problems, more lovers, until one day you just fall to pieces. Look, the way I see it, everything that went down that night was one terrible, cruel joke: There was no mad passion—they didn’t have time!—no mysterious death. Seriously, it was pure, unadulterated stress that did him in. He certainly isn’t the first person to choke on something and end up dead from trying to be Mr. Macho.”

“So you mean you actually
believe
those people who say that Valdés suffered some kind of heinous allergy attack and then choked to death?” asked Ana, the timid blonde, her hand fluttering up and resting on her throat in a way that reminded me of Fernanda prattling on about Russian fumes.

This was followed by a flurry of confused whispers and one or two assertive coughs issued by the leader of the pack. The only thing I managed to discern from all of this was that the allergy story held the least weight among my four subjects.

“Well, what do you make of Isabella? She could have helped out a little, don’t you think?”

“Yes. She was in the house, there’s no doubt about that, but we’re not talking about death à la Rockefeller Junior, darling. I’m sorry to break it to all of you who eat up these soap opera stories about cheating wives and hapless husbands, but the truth in this case is so ridiculous that it has been completely blown out of proportion. People love stories of intrigue: You know, the ladies’ man, the wife who was fed up with all his philandering and lies . . . what more do you want? People make this stuff up themselves, the wilder and crazier the better, and what I’m trying to say is that nothing inappropriate happened that night. Don’t forget, it was a coincidence that Mercedes turned up when she did.”

“A bit too much of a coincidence if you ask me,” said Sánchez, furrowing his brow in a very unbecoming manner as he cocked his head to one side.

Bea, however, was on a roll, and was not interested in other people’s opinions. I think she actually thought that Sánchez’s last comment was intended to support the timid blonde’s hypothesis that Valdés had died in the arms of Isabella Steine. I must be right, because Bea now chose to ignore Sánchez entirely and direct her conversation toward Bernardo, precisely to make him feel invisible—a very disdainful and extremely useful tactic that I myself have used from time to time.

“Your friend,” she said, not even glancing over at Sánchez, “cannot help himself. All of this is too much for him, for he simply cannot resist these stories about rich people, especially when death is involved. I know him too well—right now he is telling us that this story doesn’t interest him in the least, that we should remember he is a serious journalist. But in a few days, just you wait—we will suddenly hear his voice ring out on the airwaves with ‘The Tragic Story of how Jaime Valdés died.’ I’d put money on it.”

“Oh, Bea, I can’t be bothered with those things. You know that.”

“ ‘The Bizarre Death of a Wealthy Man,’ ” Bea continued, ignoring him, tracing a huge invisible headline in the air with her ring-laden hands. “No, no, better yet: ‘Death by Love’ or ‘Death in the Arms of His Young Mistress’—that means Isabella, darling,” she said, turning toward Ana, to make sure that her
petit sarcasme
was not lost on the timid blonde. Then, with renewed brio, she resumed her commentary, directed as before to the leader of the pack. “That is exactly what our friend Antonio S. plans on doing—I’d put money on it. You’ll see, and after the shocking headline, he will tell his version of the facts as if it were the most important story of all time, important enough for a coast-to-coast broadcast. Who the hell gives a damn about the life and death of Jaime Valdés, you might ask? Well, he was in the public eye, and that alone is enough to turn his death into something marketable.” At this, the leader of the pack coughed a little more and Sánchez’s left hand grew a rosy purple color, but Bea kept on talking.

“I can already picture the sermon: Without mentioning any names, our hero will preach out over the airwaves. ‘The sins of the rich,’ he will say, to make it all the more interesting, and he wouldn’t even have to lie very much, because Valdés’s death does have all the ingredients anyone could ask for: a well-known figure, who also happens to be something of a womanizer, a beautiful woman with an old—ergo, clueless—husband, and some very strange circumstances. The ingredients are right there. All Sánchez needs to do is mix them up in the most titillating fashion, come up with the ‘revelation’ that he will try to sell us, including the bit about ‘the story of a real bitch,’ which is based, I would imagine, on the fact that Isabella was with Valdés when he choked and didn’t do a damn thing to help him. Shit, Isabella just got scared—that’s why she acted so stupidly. All of you know I am not terrifically fond of her, but to say she could have killed Valdés . . . even I can’t go that far.” Bea finished off her sentence with a long sigh that clung to the walls of the restaurant for a few moments. Then she turned back to Bernardo to say, “Don’t you get the irony of it all? Before, we had priests, and now we have to put up with journalists working night and day to expose our sins. Shit.”

Bea was getting more and more aggravated, and the leader of the pack now cleared his throat in an obvious, imperious attempt to get her to shut up: By the third or fourth cough you could see that he was surprised at her refusal to heed his warning. Bea rolled her eyes.

“Look, Sánchez. Now, seriously. And, Bernardo, sigh all you want, I don’t care. Just save yourself the trouble of doing all that research—or so-called research—because everyone in Madrid already knows what happened to Valdés. And I mean
everyone.
”