17 Stone Angels (14 page)

Number 33 had a reputation for yielding a good sum, and a few years ago Fortunato had passed up the chance to buy a spot as its comisario for only seventy-five thousand pesos. The Comisaria had recently undergone a complete facelift. Its century-old walls had been re-plastered and re-painted and a second floor was under construction, with new showers, lockers, a kitchen and a bunk room. One sparkling white cell, which the Comisario referred to as “the honeymoon suite,” had been freshly installed for preferential prisoners, still unused. The Comisario proudly showed off the new interrogation room, one of a very few that had a two-way mirror for observation.

“
Epa!
” Fortunato exclaimed. “
Estilo
Hollywood!”

“And we had to do it all ourselves, without a penny from Central,” the Comisario said, with a touch of rancor. Vast portions of the police expenses were paid with money that came from nowhere and flowed through the station without the encumbrance of accounting. Comisario 33 had spent, by the Comisario's reckoning, more than a hundred thousand pesos on restorations, but these would never become official and no government assessor would ever ask questions. That the police could consistently operate with a fraction of the budget truly necessary gave them a certain degree of indulgence among the politicians who controlled the official purse. It was a little arrangement between the institution and the government.

Despite the industriousness of the workmen, the
calabozos
where the prisoners were temporarily held had escaped improvement. They lay at the back of the building, running along a narrow hallway of grim unpainted concrete blocked off from the rest of the station by a heavy grid of iron. The acid stench of urine and excrement swelled out of the cells and through the iron bars, and Fortunato instinctively breathed through his mouth. In a long file were six steel doors with little rectangles cut out at eye level. A small strip of bars at the top and bottom let in a modicum of air and the only light. The cells were dark and wet, cold in the winter and sweltering in the summer.

For Boguso, this
calabozo
was a privileged resting place, one he paid dearly for. Boguso had spent years as a
buchon
for the police, and he knew that once he was transferred to the prison where his informing had sent so many others, the definition of “life imprisonment” would likely be short. Five hundred pesos per month paid to the Comisario had kept his hopes
alive for some sort of permanent arrangement, but the money would run out soon and Boguso had lately noticed signals of distraction from his not always faithful wife.

Bianco had already set things up between Fortunato and the Comisario of #33, who now unlocked the grate to the
calabozos
. As they walked along the dim putrid corridor of cells, Fortunato heard various shufflings in the dark behind the iron panels: four young thieves had been arrested the night before and their arrest records were making the long slow trip from Central. The Comisario opened the cell at the end of the line and in the rancid gloom Fortunato saw Boguso hunched up on the concrete platform that served as a bed. A few pieces of a disgusting white substance that Fortunato recognized as soggy bread sat on the urine-soaked floor below him.

The Comisario addressed him in an impersonal tone. “Stand up, Boguso.”

The prisoner slowly came to his feet and Fortunato got a better look at him. The wild black curls Fortunato had seen in the paper had been shaved to a bristle, and the man's eyes focused on them with the instinctive flinch of a victim. His hands hung limply together in their cuffs and a wet stain spread down his thigh.

“Clean him up,” Fortunato said.

Upstairs in the new interrogation
room, Fortunato gave Boguso a cigarette, sent one of the sub-inspectors for a
mate
and a kettle of water. “Sweet or bitter?” he asked Boguso politely.

“Sweet,” he said. And then, perhaps emboldened by his freshly scrubbed state, “With a slice of lemon.”

“
Con limon
,” Fortunato repeated, and the Comisario tactfully followed the sub-inspector out the door.

Fortunato flicked his lighter and lit Boguso's cigarette. Boguso had to raise both hands to bring it to his mouth and Fortunato could see a ring of sores on his wrists beneath the manacles. “They're keeping you in cuffs?” he solicited, as if surprised. The Comisario had already told him that they'd had some problems with Boguso throwing his excrement at one of the guards.

Boguso nodded, his eyes turned down at the table.

“That doesn't seem necessary. Maybe I could talk to the Comisario for you.” He let Boguso take a few more puffs of the cigarette, let him fill up
with the good feeling of the nicotine. He noticed that Boguso had a nervous twitch in his left eyebrow. “Do you know why I'm here?”

“I have no idea,” the killer told him.

“I'm here to help you.”

Boguso laughed, but his game face couldn't completely surface from the weeks of solitary confinement.

“You're not such an easy person to help, Enrique. You made yourself half-unpopular with your last stunt. The hoods, the electric prod . . . ” He shook his head. “The newspapers spent a river of ink on how your crime was the harvest of the Dictatorship.”

A weird pride slopped across Boguso's features. “I read them.”

“The human rights groups had a fiesta with that escapade. And the people who weren't crying about human rights were asking why we didn't just shoot you when we arrested you. Then Berenski reported that you were a
buchon
, protected by the police, and that made everybody look bad.” Fortunato leaned back. “No, amigo, you shit yourself with that last one. And you shit on the Institution.”

“It was Tello's idea to kill them. I told him—”

Fortunato held up his hand. “No, Enrique, let's not enter into that theme again. It already
is
. What I've found in life, though, is that even when you think you're at the bottom, it can always get worse.” The murderer looked skeptical. Fortunato shrugged. “They send you to Rio Negro,” nodding his head almost sadly, “it's worse.” The naked, fresh-shaved face flinched very subtly, but Fortunato noted it. “They'll kill you there,” he said sympathetically. “No. They'll rape you, and then they'll kill you. Did you read that last report in the paper? Some poor
buchon
bled to death through his asshole.” He sighed, threw his hands gently to the sides. “As I said, Enrique. I can help you. But I need a little favor.”

Boguso looked at him warily.

“There was a gringo killed a few months ago in San Justo, and we need to find the killer. It's political. Something of pressure on the government.” He swirled his hand airily. “You know how they are.”

“They're
hijo de puta
!”

“They're very
hijo de puta
, but for whatever reason, the gringos took an interest. It would be helpful if you could illuminate the case for us.”

The pigeon seemed to search his information, then said slowly, “You want me to denounce someone?”

“Yes. I want you to denounce Enrique Boguso.”

Boguso's mouth fell open. Even his long history of relations with the police hadn't prepared him for the bizarre demand. “You want me to take responsibility for a murder I didn't even do?”

“Sí, Señor.”

Fortunato watched Boguso try to grasp it. The eye seemed to be twitching a little bit faster. “Look,” the older man reasoned, “is it such an extra burden? Your first one was when you were sixteen and once you got your clean adult record you did it again. After this last pair, I don't think one more fake killing will make much difference. It's already perpetual chains, no? We give you the
expediente
to study, you sing your little story for the judge, the gringos write their report and everybody's happy.”

“And me? How am I happy?”

“Well, Enrique. You help us and we help you. Isn't it always like that? I think we could improve your accommodations, at least. Keep you someplace a little cozier, with conjugal privileges. And in a few years, when all the noise goes away, who knows? Someone might find a technical error in your conviction. Or you might escape somehow, or get pardoned.”

“It's
way
crazy, hombre.”

Fortunato hesitated, letting a long philosophical pause elapse before he spoke slowly and distantly. “Yes, son. It's crazy. But it's a crazy world, no? A world of illusion, where the best actor rules.” He sighed. “Think about it. I can find someone else if it's too heavy for you. Buenos Aires doesn't lack for people with complicated situtations.”

“Way crazy,” the killer murmured.

The Comisario came in with the gourd full of steaming herbs and a little steel teapot. The sub-inspector carried a sugar bowl and a lemon.

“Everything friendly?” the Comisario asked.

“He's a prince, this guy!” Fortunato put another cigarette in front of Boguso. “Take it.”

Boguso sipped the
mate
as Fortunato discussed with the Comisario the various renovations and the petty disputes and annoyances around the station. When Boguso's straw gurgled Fortunato would sprinkle some sugar on top and pour a few more tablespoons of hot water onto the herbs. After a while he stood up and went to the door. “Fine; I have things to do, Vincente. Can I chat with Enrique again in a few days?”

The Comisario played it perfectly. “You'll have to buy a plane ticket. They're transferring him to Rio Negro tomorrow.”

Boguso twisted up towards the Comisario as if hit with one of his own electric shocks. “What?”

“I got the order from the Direction of Penal Services yesterday. They want you in Rio Negro.”

“You sold me, you whore! I've been paying you five hundred pesos a month . . .”

The Comisario slapped him on the back of his head and the
mate
went spilling across the floor. “Shut up,
boludo!
I didn't tell you to murder the bricklayer and his wife! I tried to help you as much as I could, you heap of shit. It's out of my hands!”

Boguso made a reflexive motion to stand up and the sub-inspector grabbed him by his ear and sat him in the chair again, then backhanded him hard across the face with a dry impact that resounded off the walls.

“Oh, this is very inconvenient,” Fortunato said quietly. “I'm afraid I wasted your time, Vincente. I'm sorry. If he's going to Rio Negro . . .' He put his hand on the knob and opened the door.

“Don't mention it, Miguel. It's a pleasure to see you.”

Boguso screamed in panic. “Wait, Comisario! Wait!”

“It already
is
, Enrique. I came too late. I'm sorry.”

“No! Don't leave! Let's chat some more, Comi! I'm for you. Anything you want! Comi!” The prisoner's tormented face was now twitching uncontrollably, and for some reason Fortunato thought of Boguso's victims, the bricklayer and his wife, and the ugly spasms that must have transfigured their faces when Boguso had applied the electric wires to their testicles or breasts. And he thought of Waterbury again, his face in shock from the devastating wounds inflicted on him, and suddenly Fortunato felt a sensation of disgust at Boguso, wished that he could draw his nine millimeter right there and put a round through his remorseless, feral head and walk calmly out the door and keep walking, to his home, to Marcela, to some distant green place where everyone was a stranger and he had no past. Instead, he motioned for the Comisario and the sub-inspector to leave the room and calmly picked the
mate
up off the floor. He sat down across from the panic-stricken murderer and said, “And, son; shall we work together?”

Over the next four days
Fortunato had the pleasure of spending many hours with Boguso, who had been moved to the clean white VIP cell at Comisario #33, complete with lights, a toilet and a sink. It had done him well; he looked rested and he devoted himself to his studies wholeheartedly. Fortunato wrote out his story, along with all the details he would need, and gave him a photocopy of the
expediente
so that he could familiarize himself with the other evidence and declarations that had been made. The location and angle of entry of the bullet wounds, the make and color of the murder vehicle, details of Waterbury's clothing and appearance. They even took him to the crime scene one night to memorize those extra details that only an eyewitness would know.

In a strange way, it was like a piece of theater in which the part of Miguel Fortunato was played by Enrique Boguso. According to the script, a missing accomplice had fired the .32 caliber bullets into Waterbury's legs and groin and chest, and he, Boguso, had delivered the
coup de grace
to Waterbury's head with the nine millimeter to end it. Bianco procured Fortunato a clean nine millimeter Astra taken off a dead bank robber and he fired a bullet into a side of beef. A sympathetic clerk at the evidence room at the Brigada de Investigaciones never noticed when he changed that bullet for the one that had transfixed Waterbury's skull. Boguso was more than happy to wrap his fingerprints all over the “murder weapon,” after which Fortunato brought the Astra to his house for safekeeping. For Boguso's accomplice they pulled from their files an Uruguayan criminal who hadn't been seen in Argentina in five years.