17 Stone Angels (42 page)

“No! Robert knew nothing about Pelegrini's business. He would have told me. We had a very close relationship.” She looked at the two investigators. “We weren't lovers, because I know that's what you are thinking. We were friends. Does that seem so impossible? Although . . .'at this, her eyes began to loosen up and her voice went suddenly high and shaky, “if I had known they were going to kill him I might have insisted, because it was his last days anyway!” Her pretty features warped out of shape at that moment and several tears fell silently down her cheeks. Of all the people Athena had talked to about Waterbury's murder, Paulé was the only one who had cried.

Fortunato beamed at her with an open, compassionate face, a saint's face that seemed to open the
danseuse
up like a flower. “Paulé, has anyone else talked to you about this?”

She nodded, wiping at the tears. “A week after Robert was killed a man broke into my apartment.”

Athena looked at the Comisario in alarm, but he continued calmly. “What did he look like?”

“Short blond hair, well-dressed. Maybe forty-five. Milico-type. He was already inside my apartment when I came home. He wanted to know about Robert.”

Athena broke in. “Did he identify himself? Was he a policeman?”

“He's going to force his way into my apartment and then hand me his card?”

Fortunato took over again. “What did you tell him, Paulé?”

“I told him that I knew Robert but I hadn't seen him in at least a week and I thought he had gone back to the United States. After that I changed apartments.”

Athena and Fortunato considered her answer. Fortunato spoke first, gently. “Señorita Dupere, I understand your situation. It's frightening. I too would be frightened. But if you don't tell us, it doesn't end here. Others also will want the answers to these questions, and they may not be so sympathetic to your situation.”

She turned to Athena. “You'll get me killed. The United States is famous for that: they use you for their shows and then they leave you to hang.”

“I won't do that,” Athena said, though she had no idea what protection she could offer. “If you know who killed him, I promise I'll have him extradited—”

“Are you crazy? There's not going to be a trial! When these people murder someone they are celebrated in the financial papers because they're improving the economy for casket makers!”

“What people?”

She shook her head bitterly. “AmiBank!”

“What do you mean?”

“He saw them together.”

“Who?”

“The American who runs Pelegrini's security.” “William Renssaelaer?”

“Yes! That was the name. Robert saw him with Pablo Maya, of the Grupo AmiBank.”

Fortunato sat upright in his chair, his dark eyes incandescent.

Paulé went on unsteadily, intimidated by her own forbidden words. “Robert had met this William Renssaelaer before at Pelegrini's house, and since they were both Americans they had a little conversation. He knew only that Renssaelaer worked for Pelegrini in security. Some weeks later he
saw Pablo by chance in the center and he followed behind him, thinking he would surprise him. Pablo was approaching a limousine with polarized windows, so Robert hurried ahead to catch him before he closed the door and disappeared. When he looked into the car, there was Renssaelaer, the American that he'd met at Pelegrini's. He didn't understand at first. And then, with the newspaper articles that had started to come out about Pelegrini's bribes at the Post Office, Robert developed a hypothesis that Renssaelaer was acting as a sort of spy, that he was really working for AmiBank, destroying Pelegrini from inside by giving his enemies information, that they passed it to the journalists like that Ricardo Berenski. And that, yes, that frightened him, because it put him in the middle. But he trusted in Pablo!” she said bitterly. “The idiot trusted in
Pablo
!”

Paulé started crying again and Athena turned to Miguel. He had a stricken look on his face, a distant gaze into the surface of the table as if he were watching something unfold before him. She was too stunned to ask him anything but the obvious: “Could Renssaelaer and Pablo Moya have really killed Robert Waterbury to protect their arrangement?”

Fortunato had put his hands to his temples. “Don't talk,” he said.

“Miguel—”

“Please! Don't talk!”

She obeyed him, exchanging worried eyes with La Francesa, who was watching the windows and entrance nervously.

“It was Renssaelaer,” Fortunato said, almost to himself. “It was an operation within an operation. Pelegrini wanted him squeezed for sleeping with the wife. Renssaelaer wanted him dead, knowing that after that, if necessary, he and AmiBank could put the murder on Pelegrini. Pelegrini arranged it with Santamarina, Renssaelaer kept his hands off, but he paid someone inside the squeeze to make sure Waterbury ended up dead. It was all Renssaelaer.”

“But Fabian never mentioned Renssaelaer!”

The Comisario gave a long nauseated sigh and looked silently at her for a moment before speaking. “Because that's who Fabian is working for.”

The pieces were falling into place with a clarity that felt deceptive after so many lies. “So you think Pablo Moya had his own friend murdered?”

“I think that probably Moya found out afterwards, but he has to go along with it. Bankers always hold their nose and protect their capital. For the good of the institution.”

She remembered the feeling of shame Moya had radiated at the interview, as if trapped in his own comfortable little hell. He'd probably get over it. People like him usually did. “But why would Fabian tell us about Paulé if she could lead us to Renssaelaer?”

“That's an error I'm sure they intend to correct.” He looked at Paulé as he said it and the woman quivered. She'd been growing increasingly agitated as the discussion confirmed Pablo's involvement in the murder.

“Don't worry,” Athena told
La Francesa
. “It's going to be fine.” Though her words didn't seem to comfort the woman, Athena was already swelling into a peculiar form of exultation. With this she could open the case, incite the dreaded Judge Hocht and a dozen journalists to rip people like William Renssaelaer and Pablo Maya out of the background and hold them up to the world, along with all their corrupt sponsors. “Do you know what this means?” she asked La Francesa. “With your testimony, we can start a real investigation. You can do something that—”

Fortunato interrupted, touching the dancer's arm. “Daughter, give me your bag.”

She gave it to him and he shifted around so that he faced the wall and opened it. A purse and a pair of square-heeled black tango shoes were inside. Fortunato reached inside his sportscoat and to Athena's amazement pulled out three thick bundles of hundred-dollar bills and stuffed them into the bag. He zipped it up and put it in the shocked Paulé's lap.

“This is thirty thousand dollars. Go back to France and keep your mouth closed. If you stay here, they'll kill you. Like they killed Waterbury.”

Athena was too stunned to be angry. “Miguel, what are you doing? This is . . .”

The Comisario kept talking to
La Francesa
in a soft voice. “Athena can't protect you. Neither can I. They're already looking for you. If I were you I would go tonight. Don't even pack your clothes.”

The
tanguera
looked from one to the other and clutched at the bag. “Who are you? You're not lawyers, or . . . or professors!” She stood up.

“Paulé! Wait a minute! I really am—”

“It's enough! I'm going!” She was backing away from the table.

Athena stood up. “No! Please, Paulé. We need to punish Robert's murderers!”

La Francesa
looked from one to the other of them, trembling between
fear and disbelief. “
Estás loca!
” She turned and reached the door in a few strides, seeming desperate to get out into the open a1r.

“Paulé!” Athena cried. “Please! For Robert!”

Waterbury's Patron Saint turned one last time towards Athena, clutching the bag that held her tango shoes and thirty thousand dollars. The face of the pornographic grimace and of cynical hope reflected a sorrow that seemed to spring from her own sense of profound failure. “I can't!” She flickered out the door.

Athena began to go after her when she felt Fortunato's hand on her forearm.

“Let her go,” he told her. “She's marked. They'll kill her if they have to, or even for the doubts.”

“But only she can—!”

“You have nothing to offer her, Athena. Let her go.” Athena was still pulling away and he spoke more forcefully. “Let her go or I swear I'll make you identify her body after they put a bullet in her head!”

Now
La Francesa
was gliding across the front window of the café in the dark night. Athena turned to Fortunato and looked into his weary beaten-dog face. Whatever she needed to say was obstructed by her rage and frustration, and instead she pounded her fists against his chest. “How could you do that! How could you do that!”

Fortunato let her hit him, impassive before her blows and the alarmed expressions of the spectators. “Do you want her dead?”

“We need her testimony!”

“For who? Who? For the Federales? Don't joke with me! For the FBI? The FBI is controlled by your State Department, and who do you think controls your State Department? It's not your friend Carmen Amado!”

Athena looked at him, stunned. “How do you know about Carmen Amado?”

Fortunato didn't care. He was tired of lying. “Of course I know you went to INCORP! Of course! Do you think the police are going to hold their hands over their heads while you put your finger in their ass?”

“You've been spying on me the whole time?”

“You have been spying on
me
! With INCORP, with Berenski! Don't play the innocent!”

“This was all a farce! All of it! Your job was just to spy on me and keep
me from finding the truth, because it was the police that did it, wasn't it? That's why you sent her back to France! To protect your friends!”

“I sent her back to save her life! Only that!”

“Then where did you get thirty thousand dollars? Where?” Fortunato felt it all exploding in his head. “I'm corrupt!” he shouted in a low intense voice. “Corrupt! Corrupt! Do you understand? Do you know what that is? You, that always takes the good side? You that has never dared? I did difficult things! I did things other men are afraid to do! Of the forty-five thousand integrants of the Buenos Aires police only one in one hundred become comisarios, and I succeeded! Do you think you could have done that?”

“Some difficult things aren't worth doing.”

“Yes. Very legalistic! I expect that from you. But I caught a man who was killing children! He had already killed three!
I
caught him! Was that worth doing? Another was a man who had violated six women! Another who had kidnapped an adolescent! I saved her life! The same as I just saved the Frenchwoman's life, that you were ready to throw away to make yourself a better résumé!”

“Don't drag me into your sewer! This has nothing to do with my resume! You think you can justify taking bribes, and extorting money and killing people, like the police did in the Dictatorship? You—”

“I never killed anyone!” Fortunato was so carried away by the passion of his denial that in that moment he believed it. Vasquez had killed someone. Domingo had killed. “How can you accuse me of that?”

“If you cover for assassins then you're an accomplice!” She grabbed her purse and began walking towards the door, then whipped around to face him. “How did you explain all this to your wife, Miguel? What did you tell her when you brought home your bribes?”

“You don't know anything about my wife! She wouldn't touch the money!” Athena had reached the door and Fortunato suddenly couldn't bear to see her abandon him. “You saw how we lived! Even when they found her cancer she wouldn't accept a trip to a specialist in the United States! That's how good she was.” Athena had stopped now, amazed at his confession. He began to falter. “Because she thought it better to die than to accept . . .” He ran out of words then, lost in the open recognition of what he had never allowed himself to fully admit: that Marcela knew how he was and what he did, that she had tried both to absolve and to punish him with her death,
and that her only way of reconciling her love for him with her condemnation was to close her eyes like the beautiful blindfolded figure above the doorway of the 17 Stone Angels.

Athena had halted near the entry, arrested by the exhausted wonder shining in his face. He spoke softly, as if surprised to hear his own words. “I spent all my life stuffing money in a wardrobe and hiding it from my wife, playing the Good One. And she knew all the time. It's incredible, no?” He had lost all caution, gave in to the compulsion to fill in the silence over which Athena gazed at him. “I never even cared about the money.”