17 Stone Angels (22 page)

Fabian, on posing the last
question, leaned back and rubbed his chin. “It's ironic, no? That Robert Waterbury was writing his own future in his journal, without even realizing it. But in a sense we're all thus, writing the book of our own lives, where we are, infallibly, the principal character and whose ending we never know. Our fantasies become our destinies. For that reason I imagine that death must have come as a great surprise to Waterbury. And one from which he had difficulty maintaining an editorial distance.”

Fortunato felt a haze of anguish rising from Fabian's last remark. He remembered Waterbury's look of near-irritation that he'd been pressed into something so ridiculous as a kidnapping. Later, when fear had stripped away everything else, the look he'd given him over the seat.
Protect me
.

Athena interrupted his musings. “Fabian, I missed my flight for this. If you have Robert Waterbury's journals then why don't you just give me a photocopy?” She sweetened the pot with an inviting smile. “Then we could discuss something more pleasant over dinner.”

The Inspector laughed, shaking his finger at her. He turned to Fortunato. “She's half-
piola
, the girl, eh? I think Buenos Aires is infiltrating her soul!”

Fortunato moved only his eyebrows. “Let's make her an Inspector.” He knew Athena would never trick anything out of Fabian, but by listening he could already make the first deduction. First, Fabian had Waterbury's diary, or a copy. Though a youth of great verses, the story and philosophy seemed borrowed, maybe even studied for future use in his conquests. These were the observations of a mature and thoughtful man, who had already lived his share of corruption and failure. A man like Robert Waterbury.

Fortunato mustered his most dignified face, sensing at least a momentary safety in his traditional role. “Speaking seriously, Fabian: if you have the diary, better that you produce it. I don't know what the judge will say about these irregularities.”

“And with good reason, Comiso, with good reason. But that is for afterwards. For now, I continue with my little story.”

“So Waterbury is in the office of Grupo AmiBank, no? And his friend Pablo invites him for dinner. “I have cleared my schedule,” he says, “but
unfortunately our two-year-old is sick and my wife cannot join us. So it is just you and I. Like before!” With dinner still three hours away, they have no hurry. Waterbury asks his friend about his career.

“‘Me? You know how it is, Robert. One goes on working for the company, but if one is industrious, various opportunities arise to manage a few things for one's own account. I have a partnership in an importer of electric appliances. Also, a few
acciones
in a real estate venture near Punta del Este.'

“Waterbury hears in the name of the Uruguayan resort the tell-tale shuffle of laundered money. A river of underground silver from Argentina has surfaced as luxurious chalets and tennis clubs up and down the Atlantic coast of that beautiful country, the fruit of unpaid taxes, secret percentages on government contracts, and assorted ‘commissions.' But this is his friend Pablo, and he should be happy for his good fortune. Now Pablo gets a mischievous look on his face, almost like the old days, when they'd talked about their conquests. He glances at his watch. ‘I have an idea. I'll take you to one of my little ventures. You'll be surprised. But you have to keep it private. Okay?'

“He picks up the telephone and speaks a few words, and then they are stepping into his car, a gray Mercedes sedan with polarized windows, driven by a silent, middle-aged man who, between his words of courtesy and his opening of doors, radiates a quiet malevolence. The locks click shut, and they slide through the grand commotion of Avenida Corrientes with the windows closed to all sound. Waterbury can see the huge white granite obelisk of the Plaza de la Republica growing larger in front of them, and then all twenty-eight lanes of the massive 9 de Julio spread out like a vast agriculture of metal and glass, the widest boulevard in the world, washing through the marvelous city as if for some great purpose. The balconies of the apartments have gone green with potted plants, the blocks of buildings seem endless and permissive, and the feeling of Buenos Aires comes back to him again. A city of lives infused with intense sadness and equally intense beauty, where generosity, love and corruption never stray far from each other, and where one can always trace the mark left by the edge of the knife. In that nostalgia for a fantastical Buenos Aires floats Waterbury.

They get on to the autopista 25 de Julio and the city flows past beneath them. Streets and avenues bear the dates of famous events of the revolution. They've passed from the 9 de Julio 1816, when General San Martin defeated the Spaniards at the Battle of Ayacucho, to the 25 de Julio in 18o6,
when Cordoba had risen up in arms against the Viceroy in the first abortive stirrings of independence. The plazas bear all our greatest hopes: the Plaza de la Republica, the Plaza Libertad, the Plaza del Congreso. But also, leading to these plazas or inextricably connected to them by other names, are the streets honoring our dictators and murderers: Julio Argentino Roca, president and famous exterminator of Indians. General Domingo Fausto Sarmiento, who had said that the blood of the savages would be good fertilizer for the soil. Along with those, the streets named for famous oligarchs, corrupt politicians, soldiers in dubious wars, composers, artists, authors, tango singers, the countries of the world. The jumbled city plan condenses all human aspirations and failure into an address book of times and events. Huge and shimmering, real and more than real, all of Buenos Aires has become a vast tale unrolling before him.

“After half an hour they are reaching the limits of the Capital, that imaginary ring where Buenos Aires gives way to
Provincia
. At that line the Federal Police cede to the Provincial, civic governments become parochial and informal. The buildings are smaller and less grandiose, the rents are lower. The driver follows the railroad line for a while and then pulls over at a plain brick building with a furniture store at the bottom.

“‘Here we are,' Pablo smiles, still secretive. He keeps talking as they approach a wrought iron door that covers a second door. ‘I got into this about one and a half years ago, and it is my most profitable venture. I keep it quiet for obvious reasons, but I know you'll find it amusing, so I'm showing you. This is the business of the future, here. It's high-tech.'

“He unlocks the second door and they climb a stairway between clean white walls. At the top, Pablo enters a code into a stainless steel keypad and the door beeps twice. He pushes it open and motions for Waterbury to enter.

“The room is some seventy feet long, painted crisp and clean.

The windows are covered with black doth. Half of the room is a series of metal racks burdened with computers and electrical cords. In the room's center a man in his twenties is sitting at a console of computer monitors with a thermos and a cold wet
mate
. He has an open book in front of him.

“‘How's it going,
chico
. Everything fine?'

“‘No drama whatsoever, Señor.'

“Waterbury looks around the white room and the clean polished wooden floor, unclear what the place is. Pablo motions him over towards the
monitors. ‘I'm proud to say that we have one of the few websites in Argentina that is actually making money.'

“Waterbury comes over and when he sees the first monitor he looks away for a moment, embarrassed, then looks back at it. Two naked men are kneeling at either end of a naked woman. On another screen he spots the words ‘Sexo Ardiente!' and ‘Chicas Argentinas Calentadas al Rojo!' Below the words, a woman in leather chaps bends over a saddle.

“‘We get most of the content from Los Angeles, but our big attraction is the Argentine girls. We do theme pictures, like the gaucha there. Or holding a
mate
. It's our market niche.'

“‘How much do you pay them?' Waterbury asks, looking at the willing smile of the woman in the chaps.

“The businessman tips his head as he thinks. ‘Five hundred pesos per session. Sometimes more. Sometimes a little less. I don't have anything to do with that part. There's a photographer and all that. Most of the girls are prostitutes, so for them it's easy work at a better price than they can get on the street.'

“He has the technician pull up the screen that shows the hits per hour. ‘There's a calculus for relating the hits per hour to gross sales. All we need to do is keep increasing traffic, and the money increases in step. Right now we're only selling subscriptions and a few special pay per views, but next month we're going to expand to shipping hard goods: videos, magazines, sexual aids. That area over there will be the warehouse and shipping department. We're also negotiating a strategic partnership with a company in Los Angeles to expand into the entire Latin American market. It's crazy, no?'

“Pablo goes on explaining as they descend the stairs again. ‘Three hundred thousand pesos per month, and growing every day. It's a
caramelo
! Modest capital investment, low overhead. I financed it through the World Bank!' He laughs, clapping Waterbury on the shoulder. ‘It's business, my friend! Don't look so shocked. I thought you would find it amusing.'

“They are back in the protective capsule of polarized glass, heading to the center again. They go to a restaurant in La Recoleta very new and very
de moda
, called La Rosa Blanca. A place where famous musicians and artists mingle with the blessed rich of our capital. Helena de Schutte owns it in partnership with two others. Maybe you've seen her name in the magazines lately: the Helena de Schutte that people say is the mistress of Carlo
Pelegrini. Since all this scandal with poor Señor Pelegrini, I'm sure it has affected her business. That is to say, there has been a considerable increase.”

/ / /

“But let us return to
Waterbury, who crosses the gleaming threshold with the unpleasant anxiety that he might have to pick up the check. Dining out is a privilege he and his family have long since abandoned, and the obligation of paying for a meal that could easily run, he can see from the orchids on each table, to three hundred pesos worries him. Maybe he betrays himself, because Pablo touches his back and says, ‘I invite you to everything tonight, Robert. This is a special night. We are celebrating that we are whole, that we are on our paths and that we are together.'

“As the warmth and affection in Pablo's words wash over Waterbury he has trouble understanding what Pablo sees in him. They were friends and colleagues for two years, and maintained a lazy correspondence for six years after that. But they had never shared any near-death experiences, had not been thrown in jail together or even made a long trip. He imagines that in Pablo's eyes he is a successful author, the man who quit the bank and made good, and thus is exempt from the conventional measurements of material success. And yet, he doesn't doubt Pablo's sincerity. He knows that we Porteños are a sentimental people, for whom the obligations of a friendship are a privilege and not a burden.

“La Rosa Blanca is in an old carriage house, now stripped down to the brick and expanded with vast panels of uninterrupted glass. A waterfall courses down a rock wall at one end, then flows through the restaurant to the pond that lies just outside the open end of the place. Crystal glitters everywhere against the rough brick background, ornamented by pretty young hostesses in silk who merely stand around and glow.

“Waterbury sees them and thinks
pretty girls glowing like incandescent lamps
, hears the cascade slapping along its course and thinks
the water slapping on the rocks
. He is working again, beginning the venture which he hopes will save him. With that thought and the presence of his friend, he starts to swell. His best books are ahead of him. Yes. When they write the legend, this will be viewed as his down and out time, the desperate period so many great writers go through on their way to immortality. And he could use this
restaurant, with its elegant princesses and its swans, could even use Pablo somehow. He has the sensation not of making up a story as he goes along, but of making up his life as he goes along, as if through his will he has produced this elegant scene and his own presence there.

“‘They say this belongs to the mistress of one of Argentina's richest men. A man named Carlo Pelegrini.'

“This is before Don Carlo's name became a regular entertainment in the local editions, so Waterbury only raises his eyebrows, without feeling much impact. He doesn't know that soon his life will become very much involved with Don Carlo. That strange doors will open.

“They are given the formidable menu. Waterbury is washed from one island of beautiful script to the next, dizzied by the descriptions of the foods on offer. He wavers between the rack of Patagonian lamb and the thick filet mignon in a sauce of mushrooms and champagne. Pablo orders Margaritas made from a rare Mexican tequila and fresh crab legs flown in from Tierra del Fuego.

“What do friends talk about after so much absence? Always three things: what they are doing now, what they have done, and after that, to dust off the fates of friends and colleagues that they have carried as mental curios across the years. The talk moves to their former work together at the bank.

“The deal Waterbury closed with Pablo involved the national airline. You remember, Athena, the airline whose ex-employees were beating drums on the Avenida Santa Fé the day you arrived? It was a perfect circle of business: AmiBank sold a half-billion of their uncollectable Argentine government debt to a Spanish group for a fraction of its value. The Spaniards in turn used that half-billion in debt to pay the government for the people's airline. How content everyone was! AmiBank got cash for its uncollectable loans, the Spanish got the national airline at a great discount, and the government of Argentina got a pat on the back from the International Monetary Fund for reducing its debt. Of course, certain government functionaries negotiating for the Argentine side quietly received ‘commissions.'