Sweet Money (19 page)

 

They drive in silence. When they reach Agüero, Giardina points to a parked green Torino. Horacio gets into it; Giardina drives around the block and double-parks at the corner. From there he can see Horacio’s head through the rear window.

 

Horacio prepares himself for the wait. His target, Lascano, should appear on this block, but he doesn’t know when. His worst enemy is sleep. Boredom during indefinite waits can lead to dozing and then the target can get away. But he came prepared. He looks from side to side, then in front of him, then in the rearview mirror: apart from Giardina in the Renault, the street is empty. He takes a small envelope out of his shirt pocket, opens it and takes two generous snorts of blow into each nostril, using the long nail on his baby finger to shovel it in. He sucks off whatever’s left stuck under the nail, then puts the envelope back in his pocket. He takes the package out from under his seat, unwraps the gun, checks to make sure the clip is full, loads a round into the chamber, engages the safety catch and places it between the two front seats. He waits. There’s a walkie-talkie on the passenger
seat so they can alert him to Lascano’s approach. But he needs to keep watch because they couldn’t guarantee they’d be able to warn him. The problem is impatience, as well as the paranoia the cocaine provokes. He looks through the rearview mirror. Nothing. He saw Lascano only a few times at the station. He never spoke to him, but he remembers him as a bitter and sulky guy. Horacio promised Valli that he knew him well, but now he’s not too sure he’ll recognize him when he sees him. He remembers he had a peculiar way of walking, as if he had springs on his heels – that’ll surely help identify him. The plan is simple. When Lascano walks by the car, he’ll get out quietly, walk behind him without him noticing, place the barrel of the Ruger under his ear pointing upward and pull the trigger twice. The advantage of the twenty-two long is that it doesn’t make a mess; it’s not powerful enough to send the bullet all the way through the skull, so it stays lodged inside the brain, where it’s impossible to remove. The victim doesn’t fall right away; he staggers a little as if he were drunk, then goes into a coma from which he never awakens. All he’s got to do is wait.

 

Lascano was on the verge of telling that punk kid, prosecutor or not, to go to hell, but he restrained himself.
Anyway
, he thinks,
he’s nothing but a kid trying to stay afloat and keep clean in a pond full of shit.
He’s sorry he wasn’t in the mood to give him some tips on staying alive. Considering the hornets’ nests he’s sticking that nose into, it’s foolhardy the way he’s walking around the streets as if nothing would happen to him. He decides to go home on foot. He quickly gets away from the deafening traffic of Tucumán and Uruguay, quickening his pace
until he reaches Córdoba. As he passes by the doors of the General Registry Office, the exuberant relatives of a glowing and smiling couple shower him with rice. He shakes the grains off his jacket and out of his hair, reaches the corner and turns toward Callao. The traffic is hellish here, too, but at least the roar dissipates across the breadth of the avenue. He’s tired and in a bad mood, and he has no idea where he’s going to get the money to fly to Brazil now that he’s failed to settle his accounts with the people from the bank. Apparently bankers are better accountants than he is. He decides to go home and see how much cash he has left. It’ll probably be enough to get to São Paulo by bus and stay there a few days. From there he’ll improvise. A Ford Falcon is parked across the street at the corner of Laprida and Córdoba. The sun reflecting off the windshield makes it so he can’t see Onionskin, an ex-cop, or the other two in the car with him. A breeze blows through the street, making a pile of papers dumped in the street swirl into the air. When Lascano can no longer see the Falcon, it drives off, screeching around the corner at full speed. At the next corner it turns toward Fuseli’s place and parks a few yards behind the Renault, where Giardina has fallen asleep.

 

When Horacio sees Lascano walking calmly toward him through the rearview mirror, he recognizes him immediately. He grabs the Ruger and releases the safety catch. He lies down in the passenger seat so Lascano won’t see him as he walks by. He curses silently. Because of the direction he’s coming from, he’ll have to shoot him with his left hand, which he can do, but he feels more
confident with his right. He gets out of the car and starts to walk quietly behind him, the Ruger firmly gripped in his left hand. His footsteps are silent and he’s lucky the wind is blowing toward him. When he’s just three steps away from his target, he raises his gun.

 

If there’s anything that really bothers Lascano, it’s the wind in his face. That’s why he’s grateful when it suddenly changes direction and he feels a gust pushing him from behind. That gust carries to his nose the penetrating scent of barbecued meat that infuses Horacio’s clothes. He turns quickly. Fatso is aiming right at his head. He sees the flesh of his finger pressing hard on the trigger. He sees himself dead.

 

BLAM!

 

But Horacio is the one who falls. Onionskin, standing next to the kerb, has shot him. The report wakes up One-Eyed Giardina. Startled, he opens his eye and clutches the steering wheel with both hands. Onionskin is pointing his Magnum right between Lascano’s eyes. Horacio has landed face down. Blood begins to pour onto the sidewalk. Someone else hits Lascano on the head from behind, knocking him out. Onionskin stashes his gun, takes two steps, pulls a hood over Lascano’s head, and the two quickly carry him to the Falcon that just pulled up alongside them. Without moving a muscle, Giardina watches the two men load Perro into the back seat. For a moment, Giardina is too shocked to know what to do. He looks from side to side and behind him and sees that the street is quiet again. He starts the engine and
inches backward to where Horacio has fallen. Between the bumpers of two parked cars he sees Horacio bleeding to death. The Ruger he sold him is next to his body. He checks again to make sure there are no witnesses, gets out, dashes over to the gun, picks it up, puts it under his belt, returns to the Renault and takes off.

 

An hour later, Lascano opens his eyes in the darkness. He’s still hooded. He hears a voice.

 

 

The hood comes off. It’s late afternoon and a stream of orange light pours in through the window. It takes a few moments for his eyes to get used to the brightness of the room. He’s handcuffed to a chair in a seedy apartment. Across the table, Miranda the Mole’s face, grinning at him, comes into focus. Next to him is Onionskin, a merciless psychopath who has the blood of at least five, if not six people on his hands. He’s a dimwit who has no business keeping company with Miranda. Everything Lascano had with him is on the table, including Eva’s letter and his gun. He’s glad it’s Miranda and not the Apostles, because then he’d already be dead.

 

 

In a split second, Miranda’s deadpan face lights up with a smile that makes him look ten years younger. He smiles openly, heartily, proudly.

 

 

Perro and Mole laugh in unison. Onionskin, looking bored and bitter, has no interest in the exchange and sits there staring at his nails.

 

 

Miranda stands up, smiling. Onionskin picks up Lascano’s gun and shoves it under his belt. Then he takes off Lascano’s handcuffs. Onionskin and Miranda walk to the door, where another man is waiting. On the other side of the door the elevator doors can be heard, opening and closing. Lascano stands up, barefoot, and walks over to the window. He is on the top floor of a tenement building in Fuerte Apache. He looks out and sees Miranda, Onionskin and two others climb into a Falcon. Just before getting in, Mole look up, waves and smiles. The car takes off and disappears around the corner. Lascano turns and looks around for his shoes, but he doesn’t see them anywhere. Then he notices that there’s a large envelope on the table along with his things. He picks it up and opens it. Inside is a big wad of dollar bills. He returns to the window. Night is quickly falling. Strange sense of humour Miranda’s got, forcing him to walk through that neighbourhood full of muggers and murderers, at night, barefoot, without a peso and with a wad of greenbacks in his pocket. He can’t help cracking a short-lived smile. He’s going to have to figure out how to get out of there in one piece. If he were a believer he’d cross himself, but since he isn’t he touches his testicles and walks out the door.

28

Lascano strolls barefoot up the hill of the Plaza San Martín overlooking Maipú. As he walks he thinks that life, as he has been living it until that moment, has been one great big mistake. He now understands the message from the shadowy person in his dream. He now understands what he needs to change. He realizes that life is actually like a ride on a carousel with no brass ring for the winner. All that crap about austerity, about suffering being more dignified than happiness, that creed about tragedy being nobler than comedy, it’s a huge crock of shit, especially for a nonbeliever like himself. All that religion business seems to him like a swindle:
You pay now for a service you’ll get only after you’re dead.
If you don’t expect a reward in the afterlife, what’s the point of living like a rat in a sewer during this one?

The men in uniform at the doors of the Plaza Hotel are about to intercept him but, for some reason, they don’t dare. A hundred-dollar bill is all the concierge needs to give him a room, even though he has no identification and no luggage. That night he sleeps the sleep of the dead.

In the morning, wrapped in a plush terrycloth bathrobe the hotel provides and wearing slippers decorated with
the hotel’s insignia, he asks the bellhop to buy him a pair of size forty-two brown loafers at the shoe store on the corner of Marcelo T. de Alvear and San Martín. He orders a superb continental breakfast and, as he savours the freshly squeezed orange juice and contemplates the marvellous view of the treetops in the Plaza San Martín, he feel as if John Lennon were whispering in his ear:
Today is the first day of the rest of your life
.

 

Miranda the Mole, backed up by Nails and Fathead, spends the whole morning making sure Dandy’s house is not under surveillance. They take work in their stride and enjoy a steak sandwich from Argos, on the corner of Lacroze and Alvarez Thomas. To make their wait less tedious, they watch two kids, probably truants from school, playing a game of pool.