17 Stone Angels (41 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

A
thena found him ten minutes later in the back of the dingy restaurant. She could see from the speed with which he came to his feet that his imperturbable calm had worn thin, but his sad-eyed, weary presence still reassured her.

“You look very pretty,” he told her.

She'd chosen a navy suit and white blouse, wanting to look convincingly professional when they met the Frenchwoman. “I want to know more about who might be following me.”

“That's nothing,” he said as he steered her out of the pizzeria. “It's a precaution. We want to keep our interview confidential, so we take these small precautions. Look! I'm all prepared for tonight.” He took something from his pocket and pinned it to his lapel. Leaning closer in a streetlight, she could see it was a dove with an olive branch in its mouth: not typical adornment for the Buenos Aires police.

Fortunato made a grand flourish. “I present you to Dr Miguel Castelli, lawyer. Specialist in Human Rights. Assessor for Amnesty International.”

She looked at the newly minted human rights lawyer. “Miguel . . . We'll leave this part out of the report, okay?” He opened the door of the blue Ford, and she looked at it quizzically before getting in. “Whose car is this?

“It's borrowed. Mine has . . . problems.”

The ballroom was in the
basement of the Armenian Mutual Benefit Society, some fifty meters long with a bar at one end and seating for two hundred or more around the polished dance floor. At the moment Argentine rock music was bouncing through the speakers but at ten o'clock, the bartender said, they would change to tango and all the beginners could get free lessons. “Will the Frenchwoman be teaching tonight?” Athena asked him. He returned a sour look. “With her, who knows?”

She took a small table while the Comisario excused himself, and two young men a few seats away smiled at her and struck up a conversation. Did she know how to dance the tango? Where was she from? She glanced past them around the room while she answered their questions. In the midst of it she saw a face that gave her a clammy sensation along her ribs.

Fabian was leaning against the wall in a nondescript tweed sports jacket, looking at her. When their eyes met he pushed his face into a grin and lifted his arms as if to say, “Of course!” He made his way toward her through the crowd.

“Fabian! I thought you hated tango!”

“I'm giving it another opportunity. It's my culture, no? And moreover, there's a certain movement here that I like.”

She didn't believe the lie, but she put on her idiot face. “It's the women!”

He shrugged. “You already know me, Athena. But you see; perhaps it was destiny that you and I should tango together. I am here. You are here—”

“Actually, I'm here with Comisario Fortunato. He said I shouldn't leave Buenos Aires without learning a few steps.”

“Even better! We can all sit and drink a bottle of champagne together! I will join you!”

She gave her best imitation of enthusiasm and he wedged himself between the tightly packed tables and pulled a chair up. The two young men at the next table looked disappointed. “You're dressed very quietly, Fabian. I would have expected more.”

“I was in a quiet mood, Athena. Sometimes a man is more contemplative. But you!” He ran his eyes along her body. “Very . . . ” He squared his shoulders. “
Thus
. Super competent! Professional! But still with that touch of sensuality that is yours alone.” His words seemed slightly mechanical and he kept glancing over her shoulder toward the entrance as he spoke. “Ah, here is the Comisario! This is perfection!”

Fortunato approached. “Good evening, Fabian.”

“Comiso! What a pleasure. I insist that you let me invite you to a bottle of champagne!”

“I didn't know you were an aficionado of tango.”

“The truth is I'm more for rock and roll. I'm not a tanguero like you, Comisario, or like Comisario Bianco. He sings, no?”

“He sings,” Fortunato said absently.

While Fabian tried to attract a waitress Athena exchanged glances with Fortunato. They understood each other: Fabian had come to find the Frenchwoman. If they wanted to talk to her alone their best chance now would be to wait outside on the street and intercept her there, and to do that, they would have to shake their unwelcome host. The champagne came and she tried to feign the proper gratitude as Fabian poured out three glasses. She waited a few minutes and then put a distressed look on her face.

“Oh! Miguel.” She squirmed a bit, adopted that reluctant anguish perfected on a dozen bad dates. “I'm sorry, I have to go back to the hotel right away.” The two men looked at her with concern. She shrugged. “It's a feminine thing. I wasn't prepared . . . I'm sorry, Fabian. Let me give you money for the champagne.”

Beneath his graciousness he seemed slightly alarmed. “No! Don't even mention it!”

“Better that we go quickly,” she told the Comisario, standing up.

Fabian also rose to his feet. “I'll accompany you! I'll walk you to your car.”

“But the champagne—”

“It's nothing!”

“Really, Fabian: we can go alone!”

“No, no!”

She was desperate to get rid of him. The Frenchwoman would be arriving any minute and if they couldn't shake him, they would lose their best chance. She searched furiously for an excuse as they began to thread their way through the tightly packed tables, but Fabian stuck to her like a leech, only inches behind and with no intention of letting go. The music stopped, the crowd of dancers came flooding their way back to their seats, and a knot of boisterous young men accidentally jostled her backwards a halfpace. She felt Fabian brush inadvertently against her behind, and after the flicker of
indignation the idea came to her. It was so right in so many ways that she didn't question it. Without deliberation, she turned and slapped him across the face so hard that her hand tingled.

“Stop grabbing me!”

Fabian was rocked backwards by the shock of the blow, struggling to comprehend the unexpected attack. “It was an accident!”

“That's a lie! You've been after me since the day I arrived! You think you can touch me like an animal in a room full of people? What's your problem? Why don't you go find a prostitute and pay for it!”

“You might learn something from a prostitute.”

“Beast! Don't talk to me like that!” She moved to slap him again, but he caught it in mid-air and held it there. For a moment their eyes were locked together in an angry stalemate, and just as he began to break into a smug little laugh she came up from below and slapped him with her other hand, catching him on the jawline with a crisp snap that could be heard by all the nearby spectators.

He looked at her with disbelief. “
Puta
!” he said. His playboy superiority was gone and for a moment she thought he might hit her back.

Fortunato appeared suddenly between them. “Fabian—” the Comisario said calmly.

“Leave her alone,
tarado
,” another man shouted excitedly. “Or I'll explode you!” It was one of the two men she had been flirting with ten minutes earlier.

“Keep swelling,
boludo
, and you'll spend the next three months in the
calabozo
.”

“And you'll spend the next three months in the hospital!” The man swung his fist around Fortunato's shoulder and clipped the top of Fabian's head. Fabian exploded from the knot of people and flung himself at him.

The Comisario put on his best peacemaker voice. “It's fine, Fabian. We'll go. You stay here and enjoy yourself.”

They moved quickly through the crowd as Fabian continued the exchange with the two men. When Athena glanced back from the stairwell the three were embroiled in a knot of pushing and punching, and the bouncers were moving towards them. In a few seconds they were out in the bright quiet lobby.

“Did he really grab you?” Fortunato asked her.

She tipped her head towards her shoulder, giving a little frown. “It was an accident.” She arched her eyebrows. “But he was guilty of
something
.”

The Comisario laughed the deepest longest laugh she'd ever heard from him. He was still laughing when they got to the sidewalk. They both went silent when they realized that they had come face to face with Paulé.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE

H
er hair had grown longer than in the picture, falling now to her shoulders, and she was dressed in a black one-piece dress and a red sweater. She wore lipstick and eye shadow and carried a black athletic bag towards the ballroom of the Armenian Mutual Benefit Society. Athena's heart pounded as she recognized her, as though she were seeing a celebrity. “Paulé!” she greeted her.

La Francesa
looked at her, trying to recognize her. “Do I know you?”

“No. My name is Athena Fowler. I'm a human rights investigator from the United States. Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”

Paulé's face suddenly closed. “I'm sorry. I'm too busy. I have to teach a class.”

“Please. I'd like to talk to you about Robert Waterbury.”

The Frenchwoman mustered as much hauteur as she could, but the fear was starting to undermine it. “What are you talking about? I don't even know Robert Waterbury! With your permission . . .” She pushed on the door but Athena held it.

“Don't go down there.”

“What?”

Fortunato came forward now and when Paulé saw him she began to panic, pushing on the door. “Let me pass!”

“Señorita!” Fortunato said in his kindest voice. “Don't go down there. They're looking for you.”

She let go of the door and then put her hands stiffly at her sides and stamped her foot on the pavement. After a few seconds she began to cry.

Closer up, she looked older
than Athena had expected. Though her pale skin was virtually unwrinkled, something about her face made Athena place her in her late thirties. What was it? A hardness around the eyes? The set of her mouth? She was a pretty woman, but Athena thought it a harsh sort of beauty, stiffened with cosmetics and wariness. So this was Waterbury's Patron Saint of Desperation. Athena wondered for the first time if Paulé had ever really said that, or if the whole story was Waterbury's fictionalization of his own life—or Fabian's—or some combined fiction with which the two of them had created a world that each, for his own reasons, preferred. Where was the Truth in a world like that?

They walked to a quiet café and took a seat in the corner, calmed Paulé with a pastis and a business card. She talked in a wistful voice.

“What can I tell you about Robert Waterbury? A very gentle man. He was very kind to the children who live in the streets. He wanted to write a story about the abandoned children that live around the Plaza Misereres, that they were the angels on the fountains that came to life at night. He was like that: a man always living half in his imagination. He told me he used to work in finance, but he must have been a very bad banker.”

“We heard it wasn't going well as a writer, either.”

“It went for shit. He had a million complaints about the publishing business and the injustice of it all, and he had resolved himself to write something cheap and like a formula. That's how he got involved with the wife of Carlo Pelegrini.”

“I understand he was working on something with her,” Athena said.

Paulé scoffed. “Working! He was prostituting himself to her to try to keep his career going. She wanted him to write some sort of monument to her ego. Her life story. She offered him thirty thousand dollars for it.”

“Not two hundred thousand?”

The pale face twisted with scorn. “Don't be an idiot! She knew how desperate he was. It would be too humane to pay him so much money. For
someone like her it's much more satisfying to pay him the minimum he would accept and then keep him jumping for every penny. She used it as a hook to control him. That's the part she enjoyed. She knew he was married but she insisted on seducing him anyway. She took pleasure in corrupting him. She's a good match for her husband.”

“He slept with her?”

The Frenchwoman looked at her with scorn. “I told him not to, but he was half
-boludo
in that respect. You don't sleep with the queen and expect that the king won't cut off your head. Robert was a toy for her. In her advanced age she thinks herself some sort of artist, but she's the coldest hardest prostitute you ever saw.”

Athena led her. “So you think Carlo Pelegrini killed Robert?”

Paulé glanced away as she spoke. “How would I know?”

Athena sensed she was hiding something, and knew Fortunato had picked it up, too.

The Comisario continued in a soft voice. “Paulé, did Robert ever mention that Teresa Castex had revealed confidential information about her husband's businesses to him? Things that might make problems for Carlo Pelegrini?”