Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel (42 page)

Romero arched his eyebrows, his expression somewhere between amused and confused. That inspector had some nerve. And he was right. Suddenly, his expression turned mischievous, almost ashamed. Like that of a boy who had been caught lying. He put the machete down on the bed, near César’s indecisive hands.

“It’s true. What they don’t understand is that inside here money is worthless, especially if you can’t enjoy it. I’m gonna rot in here before getting furlough. But if I don’t kill you, I’ll lose a good chunk of the reputation I’ve earned. And then it will be my life that’s worthless. You already know how this bubble we’re in works. Here appearances are as important as anywhere else. Maybe even more.”

César Alcalá breathed somewhat easier. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the machete in his reach. But he had no intention of grabbing it and using it against Romero. The man he was before wouldn’t have thought twice; he’d have leaped on him and skewered him. But that man no longer existed. Prison had swallowed him up. Besides, he understood that Romero didn’t want to do it. But he needed an out, a worthy offer to justify his scruples.

“You don’t need to kill me. Besides, you don’t want to. You could have cut my throat in my sleep, in the shower, anytime, and you haven’t.”

“But there are others who won’t think twice. One day or another, someone will manage to do it, and I’m not always going to be around to protect you, my friend. So you’d better think of something. You can’t keep pretending that Publio, that son of a bitch, is going to be satisfied with your silence or with keeping you locked up here … You have to escape.”

César Alcalá would have laughed had the solution not seemed so obvious. And so impossible to realize.

“Not that impossible,” said Romero, reading his thoughts. He picked up the machete, although this time with a less threatening attitude. “Do you trust that lawyer who comes to visit you?”

Did he trust her? He didn’t trust anybody or anything. But at least María had been with him those weeks, she’d given him hope. And he felt something for her, a feeling similar to trust, yes. He respected her.

“In any case,” said Romero, bringing the machete close to Alcalá’s bare chest. “You are going to have to trust her and cross your fingers. It’s the only solution I’ve come up with; and now you’d better grab your pillow and cover your mouth. This is going to hurt.”

*   *   *

María looked at her wristwatch. It was the third time she’d checked it in less than twenty minutes. But as hard as she pushed, time refused to move any faster.

She stirred her now-cold coffee with a spoon, her gaze lost somewhere on the street she could see through the window. She reviewed what she had done in the last few hours minute by minute and traced a dazed smile. She almost couldn’t believe what the neurologist had just told her. She slowly chewed on the word:
tumor
. It was an ugly word, unpleasant on her palate. The neurologist had showed her the X-rays and the scanner images, but she had had a hard time associating those blotches on her lobe, nebulous slivers that looked harmless, with such a thick, definitive word.

“We have to operate right away. I don’t understand how you haven’t seen a doctor before; you must have realized that something was wrong.”

María had apologized to the doctor, as if she had been unforgivably negligent, in spite of the fact that it was her brain, and not the doctor’s, that was falling apart. She had thought that it was tiredness, stress. Lately she’d been under a lot of pressure … If she had known … The neurologist had written something in her file with a serious air. Then he had torn off a note resolutely and handed it to her.

“We have to prepare you for the operating room. We need blood work and a full medical history. You’ll have to take some pills in the preop.”

From one minute to the next, María had the feeling that she had invented that memory. That nightmare. But there she had the damn paper in front of her on the table. Her life was slipping away in the hands of that doctor who went to and fro with ascetic brutality, as if she weren’t there. She felt that she was inside a bubble and that it was all nothing more than a strange, macabre game. Two days earlier she was a healthy woman. Now she was practically a lost cause. But that reality hadn’t penetrated her intelligence in the slightest; it remained on the surface, floating.

The neurologist who was going to operate on her had advised María to get all her personal and legal affairs in order.

“It’s a good idea to be prepared,” the doctor had said as he extended his hand to her. He had merely stated an irrefutable fact. He wasn’t concerned with the patients’ reactions, just their readiness. María had looked suspiciously at those long, cold fingers that were going to operate on her. Those fingers like spider legs would enter into her private space, into her thoughts, her memories, her intelligence. They would break her neural connections; they could make her a vegetable or kill her … Why didn’t she think that they also could save her?

She looked out on the street again. She looked at her watch again. She ordered another coffee, very hot and very strong. That routine gesture seemed suddenly very important, like the sun that flooded the café, like the sound of the slot machines, like the noise of the traffic that slipped in every time someone opened the door. That moment had the sweetness of the everyday routine and the anguish of knowing that something so simple might never happen again.

She was terrified, but not even in those moments was she fully aware of what was happening to her. Although everything inside her contorted, something in her core remained still, silent. A deep truth that she refused to rationalize: she was going to die. She had seen the process of deterioration with her father’s disease. In the best-case scenario, she too could end up like a plant doing photosynthesis beside a window. Maybe Greta would want to change her diapers stained with feces, wipe away her drool, and give her hot soup to drink with a bib. But maybe María wasn’t willing to accept that.

She hadn’t told anybody what was happening to her. But, compelled by a strange serenity and clear-sightedness that had a lot to do with her resignation, she had plainly seen what her next steps would be. The first thing she had done the day before, after leaving the clinic, was to find a phone booth. She dialed the number of the Modelo prison. But she didn’t ask to speak with César Alcalá. She asked to speak with his cellmate.

She had mixed feelings about Romero. He seemed unable to hurt a fly. He was polite; his gestures were restrained; his tone of voice was friendly. More friendly the longer you listened to him. Hypnotic like the rattle of a snake. But his gaze, intense, vacant, and therefore sincere, was more intimidating than anything else. That man seemed capable of stopping the world and making it spin in the opposite direction if that was what he wanted. Yet César Alcalá trusted him. He spoke about his cellmate as if he were talking about a good friend, someone worth taking into consideration.

Romero gave her the feeling that he was expecting her phone call. That he had been waiting for it a very long time. He agreed to meet with María later that day.

It was a strange conversation, between two dead people who for some reason still appeared to be alive. Was that what Romero saw in her? Her fear, her certainty that she was going to die? The absence of life, of hope? Perhaps. But they quickly came to an agreement. Neither of them expecting anything of the other, they had barely seen each other fleetingly before when María went to the visiting room to see César. But they’d both heard plenty about the other. In some way, they were the two ends of a thin string that César Alcalá walked on, trying to keep his balance. That was their common link. The desire to help him, although it was hard for María to understand what could push Romero to want to get involved in something like what she suggested when they met. Yet after listening to her, Romero barely hesitated. He even seemed amused by the harebrained scheme for getting César out of there that María described to him in full detail. María was tempted to believe, remembering Romero’s expression, that he had almost felt relieved, as if he were getting a heavy burden off of his back.

“If you are willing to help César, you should assume that it will bring serious consequences for you.”

“
Serious consequences
,” repeated Romero as if he didn’t like the term. “Do you mean they’ll add a few more years in prison to my long rap sheet? Don’t worry about that. When you’re already soaked, you don’t mind a little more rain. Besides, I like this place. I think I’d feel like an alien outside.”

A strange guy, Romero. María checked her watch for the umpteenth time. If he had fulfilled his part of the deal, César should already be outside of the prison walls. She would know for sure soon enough. As soon as Inspector Antonio Marchán showed up in the door of the café.

She had barely formulated that thought when Marchán appeared.

The inspector stopped for a second, his hand on the doorknob. He thought that María looked nervous. She had barely had time to put on her makeup, and it was clear that she had gotten dressed in a hurry. He noticed that the top button of her shirt was in the wrong buttonhole. Her gaze had a frenetic intensity, and her hands were clenched on top of the table. Around her the other customers were having breakfast and flipping through the morning newspapers. He wondered if that was the attitude of someone about to confess to a crime. That was the impression he had gotten when she called him to arrange the meeting. Marchán glanced around quickly. Of course that wasn’t a discreet place to meet, and perhaps not the best choice. Publio’s men could be following her. They could be following him. Since he had taken on the investigation into Recasens’s death, the pressure on him and his superiors was unbearable. Congressman Publio and the head of the CESID were playing their best cards to get him off the case.

María got up from the table and extended her hand cordially. Marchán shook it. It was cold, and her arm trembled imperceptibly.

“Wouldn’t you prefer we talk somewhere more discreet?”

María shook her head. Here was fine. Surrounded by people, she couldn’t get carried away by her desperation.

Marchán agreed and sat down with a slightly worried air.

“I think you have something important to tell me. Very well, here I am, although I should warn you that anything you tell me will be on the record.”

“I’m a lawyer, Inspector. I know how this works. And I didn’t come to see you at the station because what I am going to tell you has no probative value. This isn’t going to be a confession, you understand?”

Marchán arched one brow slightly.

“Then what is it going to be?”

Suddenly, María felt uncomfortable. Calling the inspector after what Lorenzo had told her was an irrepressible impulse, a pressing need. But now that she had him in front of her, she didn’t know what to say or how to act. That irritated her. There was no reason she should have trouble communicating with him. He was a policeman, he seemed honest, and he didn’t give the impression that he was hiding anything more than the simple little lies that punctuate all truth.

“I think they are going to kill me, Inspector.”

“You think, or you know?” asked Marchán, leaning his head a bit toward her, but without becoming very alarmed.

It was a ridiculous, almost strange, question. María felt judged again, as in the neurologist’s office, as if she were the guilty one.

“I know, but you don’t seem very impressed. I didn’t just say that I broke a leg jaywalking. I said that they’re going to murder me. And I see you don’t give a shit.” It was unfair, and she was about to let herself be carried away by gluttonous self-pity, but she reined it in and apologized.

“You don’t seem very worried for someone whose life is in danger. It’s as if it doesn’t affect you, as if you were talking about something happening to some acquaintance at the office. But even if that’s the case, tell me: Who wants to kill you? And why?”

“It has to do, in part, with Recasens and that note you found in his pocket with my name and Congressman Publio’s on it. Of course, I see in your face that you still think that I had something to do with his death, that you consider me a suspect. Cops are like that; they get something in their head, and they channel their brains into proving that idea, no matter how absurd or wrongheaded it is.”

Marchán didn’t bat an eyelash. He waited for her to tell him what she wanted to say.

“But you are wrong, Inspector. My ex-husband, Lorenzo, works for the CESID. Recasens was his boss. They both asked me to meet with Alcalá since he had confidential information that incriminated Congressman Publio. But Alcalá wasn’t willing to talk to anyone about that matter as long as his daughter, Marta, was still being held. My mission was to convince the inspector that the CESID could help him find his daughter in exchange for the information.”

Marchán listened without moving a single muscle in his face. But the tips of his fingers were turning red. It was unfair to give false hope to a man with as little hope as César. First of all, nobody could prove that Publio was behind Marta’s kidnapping. Second, nobody could know if she was still alive or know her whereabouts. That girl’s face was one of the hundreds of missing faces that line the walls of police stations. Faces and dates, people who one fine day just vanished into thin air without leaving a trace and who have never been heard from again. There were too many of them, and too few policemen responsible for searching for leads.

In the case of Marta, Marchán had devoted almost all of his energy for years. And the most he had turned up were a few photographs of a house in some part of the city’s outskirts. He had searched all the similar houses between Sant Cugat and Vallvidrera without coming up with anything. He had followed leads based on rumors, names that appeared here and there, almost always linked to the Mola family or Congressman Publio, that was true. But they were too vague, too volatile. Still, he hadn’t stopped, he hadn’t ceased his efforts, perhaps led by guilt at not having supported Alcalá with sufficient fervor during his former partner’s trial. But when he’d believed he was getting close, when he thought he’d found a minor credible lead, his superiors forced him to let it grow cold, they changed his assignment, they gave him another case, or they used the flimsiest excuse to take disciplinary action against him.