The Secret in Their Eyes (17 page)

Three days later Gómez woke up in the prison infirmary. It took him a while to remember who and where he was. When the male nurse saw him move, he called two guards, who without much ado sat him in a wheelchair and set out for a part of the prison that inmates seldom saw.

At the end of the little excursion, the guards wheeled Gómez into an office where a man seated at a bare table and smoking a cigarette seemed to be waiting for him. Except for a thin strip of hair on both sides of his head, the man was bald, but he had a thick mustache. He was wearing a dark jacket over a shirt with a wide collar and no tie. The guards pushed Gómez’s wheelchair in front of the table, left the room, and closed the door. The prisoner didn’t speak. He waited for the man to finish his cigarette. Gómez kept silent not only because of his confusion and surprise, but also because the mere act of swallowing saliva hurt his throat so much that he was afraid moving his lips and tongue would cause him intolerable pain.

“Isidoro Antonio Gómez,” the other said at last, speaking slowly, as if carefully selecting his words. “I’m going
to explain to you why you’ve been brought here.” As he spoke, he played with the hinged top of his cigarette lighter. His chair must have been comfortable, because it allowed him to lean back far enough to put his feet up on one of the corners of the table.

“Son, my goal in this friendly meeting is to figure out the answer to a question: Are you an intelligent guy, or are you a hopeless moron? That’s my entire purpose, nothing more or less,” the bald man said, and only then did he look at the prisoner. The sight seemed to shock him very much, but then again, everything about him seemed exaggerated. “Shit,” he said. “What a mess they made out of you, boy. Goddamn … but okay, look. The thing is, I have to make a complicated decision, and in order to make it, I need to answer that question I mentioned. Do you understand?”

There was another pause, and then he opened a notebook that lay on the table beside him. Gómez hadn’t noticed it before, but now he saw that it was filled with writing.

“Ever since the cell guards rescued you in the shower room, I’ve taken a strong interest in your case. You got off easy, you know. If Snake doesn’t give himself that atrocious cut, then the others don’t call the guards to help him, and instead, my friend, he and his pals open you up, you bleed to death like a butchered pig, and that’s the end of the story. You may not believe it, but I was already
familiar with your case. I didn’t know you, obviously, but I knew your case, at least the first part of it. I had to read the rest to bring myself up to date. God, talk about coincidences. I know it sounds asinine to say it’s a small world, but I’m more and more convinced that it’s true.”

He flipped rapidly through the notebook until he found a page that interested him. From then on, he turned the pages more calmly, speaking as he did so. “All right, let me come to the point. That girl you killed … a nasty business, buddy, a mighty nasty business. But none of mine. As a matter of fact, I don’t really give a damn about it. But I noticed you didn’t leave any incriminating evidence at the scene, and afterward, when the police were looking for you, you vanished completely, you just flat stopped showing up anyplace where people might know you. Am I right? And then you spent three years on your best behavior so no one would have an excuse to fuck with you. So I think about all that and I say to myself, this is an intelligent guy. And then I read on, you see, and I find out you got busted for fare-dodging on the Sarmiento Line and fighting with a conductor, and I say to myself, this guy’s an asshole. But on the other hand, I consider the fact that the boys in the examining magistrate’s court don’t have anything, or hardly anything, they can tie you to the crime with, and I say to myself, all right, he can’t spend his life looking over his shoulder, this is a guy who thinks logically. And then I read still further, and I learn
about your deposition in the clerk’s office and how you sang your heart out like you were Carlos Gardel, and so I feel justified in concluding, my friend, and I speak with all due respect and consideration, that you’re as dumb as a fucking post. But I keep on reading, and I find out some more stuff, you know? Because that’s what I do, I find out things, it’s the way I am. It’s how I live. And I find out you wound up in Devoto and spent a whole month with your ass intact, and that sets me thinking again. This kid must be some kind of smart, I think. But then I read that you got a visit from Snake and Quique Domínguez, two of the sweetest guys around, and a married couple to boot, until death do them part, the only thing they’re missing is a pair of golden wedding bands, and the best idea you can come up with is to react like a fifteen-year-old virgin who feels disrespected, you punch out poor Quique and fix it so Snake has to kick the shit out of you to save face after such an insult. And listen, what I just told you about Snake and Quique is common knowledge, even the people in the corner bakery know it. If you didn’t cop to that after living with those guys for a month, Gómez, I’m going to be forced to return to my earlier thoughts about you, the most, shall we say, pessimistic thoughts, namely that you’re a total and incorrigible asshole.”

The bald man paused to catch his breath and then went on. “Gómez. Put yourself in my place. It’s not a simple call. Should I consider how much nerve it took to
try to dominate the situation the way you did? Or should I think about what a dumb ass you were to pick a fight with those two lovebirds, who do less harm than a mixed salad? I don’t know … I don’t know … And another thing I have to take into consideration is the fact that you’re a lucky guy. I believe some people are born under a lucky star. You don’t? I do. I think some guys naturally have a lot of luck, and some guys naturally have no luck at all. And the way I look at it, you were born under a lucky star. Why? Let’s put it like this: you kill that girl, you skate; the cops start looking for you, you skate; you’re about to get killed in the shower room, you skate. Now I know, if I want to look at the bad side, I can just think about what an idiot you were to get yourself busted on that train, and how your brain stopped working at the deposition, and how you got it all wrong in the shower room. But the thing is, over and above a tendency to act like a jackass on occasion, you’re still a lucky guy, you follow me? And that’s an important attribute in a prospective employee.”

He paused again and lit another cigarette, first offering one to Gómez, who refused with a shake of his head. Then the bald man said, “You want more evidence of what a lucky bastard you are? The fact that you’re here, son. Here in front of me, the man who could become your new boss. What do you think? Look at it this way:
I
need new people, and suddenly
you
land in here, within my reach, as though you’ve fallen from heaven.”

He gazed at the young man for a long minute before going on. “And another thing, Gómez. You don’t need to know the exact details, but … I get a real kick out of the idea of using you, because it’s a way to fuck with somebody who fucked with me first, you get me?” The bald man shook his head, as if he couldn’t comprehend the chain of events that had led to this. “But leave that here, don’t think about it, forget it. You’ll have enough to worry about with doing the work I’m going to give you and doing it well.”

He took a last drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. Then he ran his hand over his hairless scalp and said, “I assume you’re not going to make me look like an asshole for doing this. Am I right?”

I
f there are sublime moments in life, Chaparro thinks, this is one of them. His inner perfectionist whispers that it could be more sublime still, but the rest of him quickly discards the objection, because he’s afloat on an indulgent sea of happiness and affectionate serenity.

Dusk is falling, and he’s sitting with Irene in her office. At this hour, the Palace and its surroundings are deserted. They’ve finished drinking their coffee, and Irene, after a prolonged silence during which they’ve exchanged questioning glances across her desk, is smiling. These silences are always uncomfortable, but in spite of that, Chaparro very much enjoys them.

He feels that something has moved, or changed, in the past few months, not only in himself, but also and above all in the woman in front of him, the woman he loves. Since the evening when Chaparro decided not to go to his retirement party and instead turned back to the courthouse to ask her if he could borrow his old Remington typewriter, they’ve met six or seven times, he figures. Always, as today, in the gathering twilight. To avoid appearing too obvious or too ridiculous, he made
up excuses for the first two or three of these encounters, but not since then, because Irene, speaking with unusual directness, told him she thoroughly enjoyed his visits and didn’t want him to come by only when he had a specific reason. She said that over the telephone, and Chaparro regrets not having seen her face while she was pronouncing those words. At the same time, however, he suspects he wouldn’t have been able to bear revealing to her how much her words enflamed him. What’s the proper facial expression in such a circumstance?

Not all of Irene’s words sound so sweet. Not long ago, trying to deepen their complicity, he ventured to suggest that their evening encounters could lead to gossip. She answered, simply and almost haughtily, that there was nothing wrong with two friends having coffee together. This statement seems to have set them at a painful remove from each other; he feels as though he’s been pushed away, compelled to retreat to a respectable and respectful distance. In his intermittent fits of optimism, Chaparro tells himself he’s exaggerating, it’s not so bad, maybe she said what she said as a way of soothing her own legitimate concern at the possibility of being exposed. Women know how to hide their feelings, how to defuse emotions that often explode inside men and show all over their faces. At least that’s what Chaparro believes, or wishes to believe. It’s as though women were condemned to understand the world and its dangers
better. So it’s not crazy to think that Irene, when she answered him that way, might have been carrying on an argument over his head, a quarrel with the world—that is, with everything outside of this office, which smells of old wood, and where Irene, uncomfortable or perhaps ashamed, has just smiled at him.

Chaparro understands her confusion, indeed he does, because it betrays … what exactly does it betray? Well, to begin with, the fact that they’ve run out of things to talk about. Chaparro has already recounted his ups and downs with his book; Irene has told him the latest Judiciary jokes. If they’re sitting in silence now, if now, in that silence, they’re questioning each other, if they don’t break the silence with their questions or their mute smiles, it’s because nothing’s holding them there except that, except their simply being face to face, letting the time pass with no purpose other than mutual nearness, and that’s what’s beautiful about sitting and asking each other unspoken questions.

On May 26, 1973, Sandoval and I were working late, and although I had no idea of what was going on, the story of Morales and Gómez had just been set in motion again.

It was already dark outside when the door of the clerk’s office opened and a prison guard entered. “Penitentiary Service, good evening,” he said, identifying himself as though his gray uniform with the red insignia weren’t identification enough.

“Good evening,” I replied, wondering what time it was.

“I’ll handle it,” Sandoval said, heading for the reception counter.

“I was afraid no one would be here,” the guard said. “Because it’s so late, I mean.”

“Yes … we’re usually gone by now,” Sandoval said, looking for the seal so that he could stamp the guard’s receipt book, which the latter held out to him, indicating the place where he was to sign.

When the document receipt was signed and stamped, the guard said, “So long.”

“Good-bye,” I replied. Sandoval said nothing, because he was reading the official letter that had just
arrived. “What’s it about?” I asked. He didn’t answer. Was it very long, or was he reading it over again? I asked more insistently, “Pablo, what does it say?”

He turned around with the letter in his hand, walked back to my desk, and handed me the document. It bore the letterhead of the Penitentiary Service, its seal, and the seal of the Villa Devoto Prison unit.

“It says they just let that son of a bitch Isidoro Gómez go,” Sandoval murmured.

I was so stunned by what he’d just said that I left the paper he handed me unread on my desk. “What?” was all I could manage to say.

Sandoval walked over to the window and opened it wide. The cool evening air invaded the office. He leaned on the window rail, cursing in a tone of boundless desolation: “The goddamned motherfucking son of a bitch.”

The first thing I did was to call Báez. I felt a desperate urgency, which together with a certain awkward rage made me want to contact a man I trusted and demand explanations from him, as if he were the person responsible for what had happened.

“Let me see what I can find out,” he said, and hung up.

He called back fifteen minutes later. “It’s like you say, Chaparro. They released him last night under the general amnesty that’s been granted to political prisoners.”

“And since when is that son of a bitch a political prisoner?” I yelled.

“I don’t have the slightest idea. Don’t get so upset. It’ll take me a few days to check into this, and then I’ll call you.”

“You’re right,” I said, reconsidering. “Please forgive me. The thing is I can’t get it through my head why they would let a piece of trash like that go free, and after what it took to nail him in the first place.”

“No need to apologize. It pisses me off, too. Don’t think this is the only case. I’ve received two other calls for the same reason. You know, it occurs to me it would be better for us to meet in a cafe. Rather than talk on the telephone, I mean.”

“All right, let me know where and when. And thanks, Báez.”

“Talk to you later.”

We hung up, and I turned to Sandoval. He was still leaning on the window rail, staring blankly at the buildings on the other side of the street. “Pablo,” I said, trying to break his trance.

He turned to me and said, “Looks like there aren’t many things you can feel proud of, are there?” Then he shifted back to the window. I think that was the moment when I realized how much his stellar performance at that little bastard’s deposition had meant to him. And the sort of medal he’d privately given himself had just been shattered to pieces. I knew that his face, which he kept turned toward Tucumán Street, must be wet with tears. At that moment, the sorrow I felt for my friend was stronger than my outrage at what had just happened with Gómez.

“What do you say we go out to dinner somewhere around here?” I asked.

“Great idea!” he said, unable to restrain his sarcasm. “You want me to teach you how to drink whiskey until you pass out? The problem is who’s going to get in a taxi and come looking for the two of us.”

“That’s not what I meant, moron. How about going to your place? We can have dinner with Alejandra and tell her the whole story.”

He looked at me like a kid who’d asked to be taken to the movies and been offered, as a substitute, a boiled lollipop. I think the devastation he saw in my face made him come back to his senses, because in the end, he said, “O.K.”

We left the official letter from the Penitentiary Service on my desk, turned off the heat and the light, locked all the locks, and went down to the street. It was late and the door leading to Tucumán was already closed, so we had to leave from the Talcahuano exit. We waited for the bus, but then Sandoval told me he’d be right back. He hurried over to a flower stall and bought a bouquet. When he returned, he said bitterly, “If we’re going to be good boys, we may as well go all the way.”

I nodded. The bus arrived immediately.