Death of a Nationalist (9 page)

The picture was not of either of Paco’s sisters. The entire López family had taken refuge in the alcázar during the siege, and Tejada had known both of the López daughters. They had been the objects of extravagant gallantry during the early days of the siege, but that was only because they were young ladies in an environment where young ladies were rare. Neither of them had possessed the startling beauty of the girl in the picture. Nor, Tejada thought, was it the kind of picture that one kept of a sister. He was not an expert on women’s fashion, but it occurred to him that the ruffled neckline of the dress would probably be thought rather daring by Doña Clara—or by his own mother and sister-in-law. He looked at the back of the photograph. The pencil writing was faint and blurred, but still legible:
Dearest, Here is your “souvenir of a happy time.” Love, Isabel
. Tejada inspected the laughing girl again. Doña Clara had been harsh. She did not look like a painted hussy. He looked up at Sergeant de Rota, who was still standing disapprovingly by the door. “Who’s she?” he asked, holding out the picture. “Do you know?”

“No,” said the thin man without moving.

“It would help if you looked at the photograph,” Tejada said mildly. He had a certain sympathy for Rota. He himself would have resented being questioned by a stranger who did not outrank him. But it seemed to him that the sergeant of Alcalá was being needlessly uncooperative. He wondered why Rota was so resentful. Was the man’s attitude a sort of proprietary response to his partner’s death? Or did he dislike Tejada’s investigation of the disappearance of rations? Morales had said that he had already spoken to all of his officers but Tejada found himself wishing that he could question Sergeant de Rota.

Tejada was considering whether and how to put Paco’s sergeant at ease when there was a squeak of bedsprings and weight shifted over his head. Then a head appeared upside down and regarded Tejada with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.

“What’s all the noise?” asked the man who had been occupying the top bunk, with a jaw-splitting yawn.

“
I’m
sorry to disturb you, Corporal García,” said Sergeant de Rota, with unnecessary emphasis. “This is Sergeant Tejada, from the Manzanares post. He was just leaving.”

“I’m sorry to break in on your rest,” Tejada said, mindful of his own feelings earlier in the day. “I’m here to collect Corporal López’s personal effects. I found this, and wondered if you knew who it was.” He held up the photograph.

Corporal García shoved himself farther over the edge of the bed, and hung downward. “Huh!” he said. “That must be Isabel. What a looker!”

Tejada suddenly remembered that he had identified himself as Paco’s friend only to Captain Morales. He decided to indulge his curiosity. “Was she his wife?” he asked.

“Not officially.” García’s tone spoke volumes.

“Fiancée?” Tejada suggested, deliberately tone-deaf.

“I don’t know what she was,
hombre
,” García laughed. “But I know he sent her half his pay every month.”

“
What
?” Tejada and Rota spoke at the same time. Rota subsided into silence, glowering at Tejada. Tejada turned his attention back to García. “How do you know this?”

García heaved himself upright and then slid off the bunk bed. “About six months ago we were out on patrol together and he asked me if I’d mail something for him,” he said, studying the photo in Tejada’s hand. “I asked him why he couldn’t mail it himself and he said it was to a girl he wasn’t supposed to see, that he had promised not to write to her
himself
, but . . . the letter, not the spirit, eh, Sergeant? I tried to kid him about it a little but he clammed up. He wasn’t the confiding type.” A few weeks ago, Tejada would have disagreed with this assessment. But now, in light of Isabel, he wondered how much Paco had confided in him. “I got the impression Isabel wasn’t the sort of girl he could bring home to Mama,” García continued, still looking at the photograph. “So that’s her, huh? Well, she looks worth the pay. Do you suppose that blond is natural?”

“How do you know he was sending her his pay?” Tejada asked, ignoring the superfluities.

“When a man hands you a roll of bills at the end of each month, the day after we all get paid, you usually assume it’s pay,” García pointed out logically.

“García, this is ridiculous,” Sergeant de Rota broke in emphatically. “Corporal López sent his pay to his parents, as do all unmarried officers.”

“No, sir.” García shook his head. “He sent gifts to his parents. Food and suchlike. I know, because he used to tell me about them when he wrapped them up. But half his wages went to this girl, Isabel, regular.”

Tejada’s mind was reeling under the onslaught of information. It seemed that Doña Clara’s confidence that her son was free of romantic entanglements had been misplaced. “What is Isabel’s full name?” he asked.

García shrugged. “Toledano, I think.”

“You think?” Tejada echoed. “But if you mailed things to her. . . .”

“Not to her,” García corrected. “The address was
poste
restante
to some little town in Cantabria.”

“But it must have been addressed to someone,” Tejada protested.

“Well, he told me the address was care of Señora Toledano,” García explained. “But the way he talked, Isabel was a señorita, not a señora.”

“Corporal, I remind you that you are speaking of a dead man,” Sergeant de Rota said, through clenched teeth. “And any dramatic touches are in extremely poor taste. Whatever his . . . liaison . . . with this girl, there was absolutely no reason for López to send her half his salary.”

“Very good, sir, just as you say,” García agreed, pulling himself to attention and stamping. He relaxed again immediately and cast Tejada a glance that clearly expressed his opinion of his commanding officer.

Tejada did not normally encourage insubordination but he flashed an amused glance back. He had already sensed the tension between Sergeant de Rota and Corporal García. Given his own dislike of Rota, he was inclined to trust the corporal. He was also curious about Rota’s vehement denials that Paco was sending his pay to a girl. “Can you think of any reason for him to send this girl money, Corporal?” he asked coolly.

“Really, Sergeant—” Rota began angrily.

“Sir!” García saluted appreciatively. “I thought, sir, that there might be a child involved.”

“You won’t cast slurs upon the dead, Corporal!” Sergeant de Rota’s sharp voice cut across Tejada’s meditations. “And that’s an order. Or do you care to face charges of insubordination?”

“I beg your pardon, Sergeant. He was obliged to answer my question.” Tejada’s voice was still cool and unconcerned but he had moved to stand in front of Corporal García. “Thank you, Corporal,” he added over his shoulder. “I’m sorry to have disturbed your rest.”

Corporal García, who knew when not to push his luck, remained silent. He was wishing that he had caught the unknown sergeant’s name and wondering what the chances were of being transferred to the Manzanares post.

Sergeant de Rota’s mustache flattened slightly as he flared his nostrils. “Do you have any other questions, Sergeant?” he asked ominously.

“Only one.” Tejada had at least ten more questions but he too knew how far he could push his luck. He sat down on the bed and began to repack Paco’s things. “You seem to think that it’s highly unlikely that Corporal López sent this girl regular payments, Sergeant. May I ask why?”

“I assume you’re aware of the salary a corporal earns, Sergeant.” Rota’s voice was blistering. “I think it highly unlikely that López would have devoted so much of it to an affair like this. And he had no other source of income.”

A suspicion had presented itself to Tejada while García was talking. He did his best to ignore it, but it was now jumping up and down on the threshold of his brain and banging the knocker. “Are you sure he had no other source of income?” he asked. “Corporal García suggested that his parents might have objected to this girl. He wasn’t from a wealthy family, perhaps?”

“I suppose it’s
possible.”
Rota’s voice was tight. “But I doubt it. And that’s more than one question, Sergeant.”

“Indeed.” Tejada stood up. “Thank you.”

Sergeant de Rota saw him to the door of the post and bid him a sullen farewell. Tejada hardly noticed. His mind was working frantically. For all his hostility Rota had managed to suggest a suspect for the post’s link to the black market. Given García’s unexpected disclosure and Rota’s insistence that Paco could not have afforded to make payments to Isabel, the obvious inference was that Paco had found some clandestine source of income. Then Rota had practically insisted that Paco did not come from a wealthy family. Tejada walked slowly along the Calle Alcalá, frowning heavily. Paco had been a proud Falangist. And he had never boasted, of course. It was just within the bounds of possibility that someone who did not know him well might imagine that he came from a humble background. Possible, Tejada thought, but not likely. But if Rota had been talking to someone who’d never met Paco, he’d have set up a nice suspect: a man sending off sums of money he couldn’t afford to an unexpected destination. A very neat little piece of character assassination. “Oh, no, he
couldn’t
have had any other source of income.” And all the while knowing that I’m looking for someone with precisely that.

He reached the end of the Calle Alcalá. The Puerta del Sol stretched in front of him, an elongated diamond shape, pockmarked by bombardment and now enlivened by the soldiers on parade. The logical thing would be to continue back to the post and make a report. Lieutenant Ramos, he knew, would be waiting for him, probably cursing impatiently, with a list of other tasks. But Ramos had insisted that the theft of rations was important, too. And Captain Morales had agreed. Tejada skirted the Puerta del Sol and bore leftward, heading for the Calle Tres Peces. It was time to seek out María Alejandra Palomino.

If Tejada had not been preoccupied with his thoughts as he crossed the Calle Atocha he might have noticed the gaunt man in ill-fitting civilian clothes and a cap that partially hid his face, who cast a stricken look at him and shrank into a doorway. Even if he had noticed the man and marked his behavior as suspicious, he would have had no way of knowing that he had just crossed paths with the uncle of the little girl he intended to see.

Chapter 9

G
onzalo was early for his appointment with the smugglers. With the help of a few sections of orange, Carmen had persuaded her unwilling daughter to go to school that morning. Aleja had agreed under protest, and only with the assurance that her mother would walk with her. Gonzalo, who had taken to sleeping late, had awakened hearing the argument, but feigned unconsciousness.

He was still lying on the couch, willing time to move faster, when Carmen returned several hours later. “Did she go to school?” he asked.

“Yes.” Carmen sank into a chair and rubbed her temples. “I believe I’ve had a headache for the last six months.”

“Only one?” Gonzalo asked, without opening his eyes. His sister snorted, but did not reply. “Did you find work?” he asked.

“I only just got back from the school,” Carmen said wearily.

Gonzalo sat up. “The school’s barely a mile away,” he protested. “You’ve been gone over three hours!”

“I rested a little on the way back,” she snapped. “Anything wrong with that?”

Gonzalo bit his tongue. He wondered for a moment whether it was worth hoarding pennies for impossibly expensive food or if it was more practical to save energy by spending them on streetcars. He remembered his own struggle to get to the Plaza de la Cebada. “Aleja make the walk all right?” he asked.

“I carried her part of the way. And I said that she shouldn’t come home for lunch.”

Gonzalo did not ask where Carmen had found the strength to carry her daughter. It was, he assumed, one of those things that mothers were able to do. “Do you know where there might be work?” he asked, aware that he was irritating her, but unable to stop himself.

“No.” To his surprise, she did not snap at him.

The unspoken whisper,
red whore
, danced in the silence, and each hoped that the other did not hear it. Carmen had seen more of the women in the street than Gonzalo so the whisper was louder in her ears. To drown it out she said aloud, “Perhaps I can take in sewing.”

Gonzalo winced as a clear voice said in his memory, “Your sister hates to sew, and, really, I don’t mind it.” Viviana had always claimed to enjoy sewing. And he had teased her, telling her she sounded like a good Catholic girl who prayed for General Franco’s health every night. “If . . . Viviana . . . were here she could help,” he managed to force out the words.

“Well, she’s not.” Carmen had no energy for gentleness.

She doesn’t know what it’s like, Gonzalo thought, shocked by her cruelty, forgetting how Carmen had reacted to the news of her husband’s death. He subsided into silence. Carmen sat silently also. Gonzalo was not sure if he dozed or simply if his mind went blank for a period of time. He was roused a little before three, when Carmen said, “I’m going to go see Man-uela. Aleja will want supper.”

He nodded, determined to say nothing, knowing that if he spoke he would say that he was hungry too. When the clock struck three-thirty, his patience ran out. He pushed himself off the sofa and went into the bedroom. Much of the closet was empty. His brother-in-law’s clothes, and many of his sister’s as well, had long since been cut up to make clothing for Aleja. But there, behind Carmen’s dresses, as he had hoped, was the revolver he had received when he had joined the carbineros. He took it and pulled an oversized coat from the closet as well. When he was satisfied that the gun did not show under the coat, he slipped out of the apartment and down the stairs. It would not, he knew, take anywhere near an hour to walk to the Calle Alcalá. But he told himself that there was no harm in resting along the way, as Carmen had. And the smugglers might not wait for him if he was late. They were weak arguments, but anything was better than lying on the sofa doing nothing.

Gonzalo walked slowly, carefully gauging which was the most direct route, to save his steps. The little alleys around Tres Peces were comfortingly familiar. The buildings pressing in on either side offered friendly shadows and promised solid walls to support him if he needed to rest. The windswept width of the Calle Atocha made him feel unpleasantly exposed. The lack of cars made the street seem bare, and the rubble-filled lots where shells had hit gaped like a prizefighter’s shattered teeth. He paused before stepping out into the open, telling himself that he was only looking for streetcars. The guardia civil crossing in the opposite direction shattered this comfortable illusion. Gonzalo froze against the shutters of what had once been a café and watched as the guardia walked past him, and then stopped.

Heart pounding, Gonzalo wondered if he was about to be challenged. The gun hidden in the folds of the coat pocket felt heavy. The guardia did not turn around. Instead, he dug in a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He read for a moment. Then he shaded his eyes with one hand and studied the street sign.

The tension pounding in Gonzalo’s stomach released itself as fury: first at himself for being stupidly afraid, then at the guardia for walking so coolly and easily into unknown streets, then at the streets themselves for allowing this invasion, and finally once more at himself, for being powerless to stop the guardia from going where he wished. Had Gonzalo been able to see the slip of paper in the guardia’s hand, with his own address written on it, he would probably have used his weapon. Since he could not see the paper, he raised his head and marched across the street with steps kept firm by pride and adrenalin.

He was walking with his head high and his thoughts elsewhere when a voice said, “Hello, Gonzalo! How are you?”

Gonzalo started and found himself facing a stooped man with several days of gray stubble on his furrowed throat. The man was smiling, apparently very pleased at having caught Gonzalo’s attention. “And your sister?” the old man continued. “How’s she? Did she ever marry that young carpenter fellow?”

“Errr . . .” Gonzalo tried desperately to place the man. He was vaguely familiar but Gonzalo had no idea from where. Who on earth, he wondered, still remembered Pedro Palomino as a carpenter’s apprentice? “Err . . . fine. Yes, actually. She’s fine.”

The man coughed and spat between a gap in his teeth. “Good, good. Glad to hear it. No good will come of this war, I said. But I remember you and that carpenter boy, all dressed up and proud of yourselves. . . .”

“And how are you, sir?” Gonzalo interrupted desperately.

“Oh, don’t worry, son. Old Tacho knows when to keep his mouth shut,” the old man grinned benevolently.

Something swam out of the depths of Gonzalo’s memory. Summer evenings in the Plaza Tirso de Molina, endless games of tag among the strolling couples, then later becoming part of a strolling couple himself. Through it all, the smell of burnt sugar and the cries: “Tacho, here’s ten centimos,” “Tacho, give me a
churro
,” “Tacho, a chocolate for the young lady.” He superimposed the face of the man behind the fragrant cart of hot pastry onto the face of the man in front of him. The image fit. But surely Old Tacho had been fatter?

“How are you, sir?” Gonzalo asked again, more gently. He had never called Tacho “sir” before.

“Oh, times are bad, times are bad.” The old man shook his head. “But it’s good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Gonzalo agreed.

He started to walk again, and Old Tacho shuffled along beside him. “I don’t suppose you’d have any bread, Gonzalo? For old times’ sake.”

The wheedling note in the man’s voice made Gonzalo blush with shame. “No,” he said, staring at the ground and feeling like a hypocrite, although he was speaking the simple truth. “No, I’m sorry.”

“Ah, well. God bless.”

“Thanks. And you.” Gonzalo wondered, as he walked away, if Old Tacho believed in God. Maybe he thought heaven was a crowded square on a summer evening, with the smell of
chur-ros
and hot chocolate hanging between the buildings like the colored lights and streamers. Maybe he was right: The concept had the fuzzy, implausible quality of a Sunday-school fable.

Gonzalo’s mind slipped away from the faded memories of a life without war and focused on his appointment once again. He could not afford to buy information. But he could threaten. The black marketeers, he told himself nervously, were not soldiers. They might bear him a grudge afterward, but they would tell him what he needed to know if he pointed a gun at them. If a guardia civil was involved, as the smuggler had hinted, it would be best not to threaten. It occurred to Gonzalo that he might actually be on his way to meet Viviana’s murderer. For a moment, he was elated at the idea that it might be that simple. Then he remembered that he had left without telling his sister he was taking the gun and that she would probably be waiting anxiously for his return. I should have told her that I might not be coming back, he thought. I don’t want her to lose sleep. He regretted the oversight but only in the way a man who has just watched the train station fade into the distance regrets forgetting to bring a toothbrush. It was a minor annoyance but it would not change his course.

He reached the Calle Alcalá, and began to walk alongside the park. Although he had confidently claimed the day before that he knew the spot meant, he realized that there were two possible gates, neither of them directly opposite the Guardia Civil post. He settled for the nearer one, willing to rest for a few minutes before walking farther. A nearby clock began to chime. It was still only four-thirty. Gonzalo settled onto a bench near the entrance and pulled at the collar of his coat. He was cold, and the encounter with Old Tacho had reminded him that it was best to hide his face. He buried his hands in his pockets for warmth.

The wind blew scraps of paper and dead pine needles along the walkways of the park. It passed easily through Gonzalo’s coat, making him shiver and making the gun he was clutching seem ice-cold. The clock struck four-forty-five. The park was empty, except for a few old women in black. “It’s the waiting that drives men mad,” the young milicianos had told each other sagely. “The waiting’s the worst part of combat.” They had told each other this in the tense autumn of ’36, proud of their maturity, until an old soldier who had fought in Morocco had laughed at them. “Shit, boys, the worst part of combat
is
combat. Enjoy the waiting while you can!” The clock struck five. Gonzalo stood up, trying to look nonchalant, and began to make his way toward the other entrance. He had clearly mistaken the directions.

The other entrance was similarly deserted. Gonzalo hesitated, wondering if perhaps he should head back to his original spot or whether he ought to rest a while here. Perhaps the men had forgotten the appointment. Perhaps they had been unavoidably detained. Perhaps the whole thing was a trap. Gonzalo began to walk back the way he had come, as rapidly as possible. At his original bench, he paused again. It might be worth waiting another few minutes.

At five-fifteen Gonzalo was about to leave his bench when he heard voices coming from the entrance of the park and saw a man in the uniform of Franco’s army heading toward his bench. The man wore the fasces of the Falange in his lapel. Gonzalo froze and then saw that the Falangist’s companion was a girl. The couple passed him without acknowledging his presence. The young soldier had one arm around the girl’s waist and was gesturing expansively with the other to illustrate some point. Gonzalo watched them until they were out of sight, his hand trembling from the effort of not raising his weapon.

Another person entering the park distracted him. This time it was a man with a suitcase who walked briskly. He was dressed as a businessman might dress if there had been any prosperous businessmen left in Madrid. He carried the suitcase lightly, with one hand, as if it were a briefcase and his coat was belted tightly around him. He checked at the sight of Gonzalo. “Good afternoon, sir.” He touched his hat. “Fancy meeting you here. Are you heading toward the lake?”

It was the man Gonzalo had spoken to the previous day. “Yes,” he said cautiously.

“So am I,” the man with the suitcase said easily. “Care to walk with me?”

“A pleasure.” As they strolled along the gravel walkway, Gon-zalo lowered his voice. “You’re late.”

“Business matters,” the other replied, hardly moving his lips.

They turned onto a narrower walkway, under what was intended as a canopy of ornamental trees, trimmed in the French style. But the trees had grown wild for the last few years and now there were only bare and gnarled branches that rattled in the wind. Gonzalo glanced around. “You’re on your own today?”

“Yes. My . . . colleague had other business.”

Gonzalo hesitated. One man would be easier to deal with, if it came to that, but he was unsure how to broach the subject that interested him. He kept silent, hoping that the other man would make the opening gambit. He was not disappointed.

“I can get what you want.” The man’s voice was pitched so low that the crunch of gravel nearly drowned it out. “But I’ll need an advance.”

“Why?” Gonzalo demanded, keeping to his role of suspicious customer.

“It’s not the sort of thing you buy on credit, friend. Fifty pesetas.”

“Fifty!” Gonzalo choked, forgetting his mission. He wondered for a moment if anyone in the city had that kind of money to waste. “You’re joking.”

“Fifty in advance. Twenty-five when I get you the goods. Burgos currency, of course.”

Gonzalo reminded himself that it was a waste of time to bargain over money that he did not have anyway. “How do I know you won’t just take the fifty and disappear?” he demanded.

“You take my word for it.”

“And why shouldn’t I just buy directly from your . . . supplier?” Gonzalo asked carefully.

“If you want to deal directly, friend, no one’s stopping you.” The man’s voice held a note of triumph.

Gonzalo took a deep breath. The time had come to take a plunge. He could use the gun. Or he could play a hunch that was almost as risky. He glanced around. Ahead of them, he could see the path broadening out by the side of the lake where the trees ended. But the walkway was deserted. The gun or the guess. “You’re lying,” he said softly.

“Think what you like.” The man shrugged, and picked up his pace a little.