going to take time to find El Pulmon. I've got one other candidate.'
Falcon sat in his car making calls, trying to find out where Alejandro Spinola would be at this time of the afternoon. He was in a press conference in the Andalucian parliament building. Falcon left Las Tres Mil, opted for the ring road rather than mess with the traffic through the centre.
Alejandro Spinola was as pretty as a man could get without slipping over the gender line. He liked to run his hand through his longish black hair with off-centre parting, and clench it in his fist at the back of his head. He had the athletic body of a professional tennis player gone slightly to seed. He wore a good suit with the cuffs of his white shirt shot beyond the sleeves and a light blue silk tie. He talked easily and kept the press amused while turning a gold ring on one of the fingers of his right hand. He didn't look like someone who had the intention of playing second fiddle to the mayor for the rest of his life. There was too much vanity streaming from every pore. He was a man who'd learnt not to blink in flash photography and tap-danced to the percussion of lens shutters.
The press were thick around Spinola, all looking for an off-the-record discussion. Falcon shouldered through them and showed Spinola his police ID card.
'Can't this wait?' he asked, careful not to use Falcon's rank in front of the political press corps.
'Probably not,' said Falcon.
Spinola took him by the arm and guided him out of the room, casting jokes and compliments as he went. They crossed the corridor; Spinola checked for an empty office, found one. He sat behind the desk, pulled out one of the side drawers and rested his expensive loafers on the edge. He sat back, comfortable, hands resting on his stomach, which proved to have its first gathering of middle-aged fat.
'What can I do for you, Inspector Jefe?' he asked, vaguely amused by it all.
'I want to talk to you about Marisa Moreno.'
'Esteban's girlfriend?' he said, frowning. 'I hardly know her.'
'But you met her first.'
'That's true. I met her at a gallery opening,' he said, nodding, looking out of the window. 'Over the past few years Esteban hasn't had much time for art. He used to go to openings all the time. He was always interested in paintings, literature, that kind of thing, much more so than me.'
'Then why did you go?'
'The people. A good art dealer can always bring together an interesting bunch of people. Collectors tend to have money and influence. And that's my job.'
'What is your job?'
'I work for the mayor.'
'That's what Esteban told me,' said Falcon. 'I'm sure you've got more to add?'
'I make sure the mayor is in touch with the right sort of people to achieve his aims,' said Spinola. 'Things don't happen on their own, Inspector Jefe. Whether you're building a mosque in Los Bermejales or pedestrianizing the Avenida de la Constitucion, or remodelling La Alameda or tunnelling a metro under the city, there are huge numbers of people to deal with. Angry residents, disgruntled religious groups, disappointed contractors, furious taxi drivers, to name but a few.'
'Presumably there are happy people as well.'
'Of course. My job is to help the mayor convert those unhappy people into… well, maybe not totally happy people, but at least quieter, more manageable people.'
'And how do you do that?'
'You must know my father, Inspector Jefe, he's a lawyer,' said Spinola. 'I never had the temperament for sitting down and learning lots of stuff from books, like Esteban did. But in my own way I'm like both of them. I'm a very persuasive guy.'
'So what happened with Marisa, then?' said Falcon, smiling.
'Oh, yes, right, exactly. What happened with Marisa…' said Spinola, giving him a delayed laugh. 'I met her at Galeria Zoca. Do you know it? Just off the Alfalfa. She wasn't showing. She's not a big enough name for that place. But she's very nice to look at, no? So, Jose Manuel Domecq, the owner, always invites her to, you know, prettify the usual assembly of toads and trout with their crocodile-skin handbags and wallets bulging with cash. I already knew everybody there, so I didn't have to work very hard, and we all went out to dinner and Marisa and I sat together and, you know, Inspector Jefe, we got along. We got along very well.'
'Did you sleep with her?'
Spinola initially narrowed his eyes, as if preparing to take affront, but in the end decided on a lightness of touch. He laughed, a little exaggeratedly.
'No, no, no, que no, Inspector Jefe. It wasn't like that.'
'I see,' said Falcon. 'Forgive my misunderstanding.'
'No. We exchanged numbers and I called her the following week to invite her to the garden party at the Duchess of Alba's house. It's an annual affair and I thought it would be… exotic to turn up with a beautiful black girl on my arm.'
As Spinola's eyes travelled from the window back across the room, they stopped for a beat to check how things were going down with Falcon, then carried on to the door. For a persuasive man, Spinola was weak on eye contact.
'So, how did your introduction of Marisa to your cousin come about?'
'Well, it wasn't so much an introduction as Esteban arriving on my shoulder within seconds of my arrival and introducing himself to Marisa.'
'I think you might have misremembered something.'
'I don't think so. I can see it now. Esteban cutting her away from me while I got drawn into the crowd. He hogged her the whole evening.'
'I think that's doubtful,' said Falcon, 'because Esteban was married to Ines and, at that point in their relationship, he was not in the habit of brazenly displaying his inclination for infidelity, especially in front of his and her parents and, of course, your father, the Juez Decano de Sevilla, who was his employer.'
A pause for thought. Some rearrangement of the details. Falcon could hear the brain furniture scraping around in Spinola's head. Then the mayor's fixer suddenly shrugged and threw his hand up in the air.
'These are just details, Inspector Jefe,' he said. 'Think of how many parties I go to, how many social situations I find myself in. How am I supposed to remember the finer points of every meeting and introduction?'
'Because, as you've just told me,' said Falcon, 'it's your job. Your job is to know what makes people tick. What they like and dislike. And people in social situations don't wear their needs and intentions on the outside, especially, I imagine, when you're around and they're very conscious of the impression they want to make on the mayor's office. Yes, I would have thought that, under those circumstances, it would all be in the detail. And your reading of that detail is what makes you so successful.'
Finally, the eye contact, very level and sustained. A mixture of respect and fear. Spinola now thinking: What does this man know?
'How does Esteban remember it?' he asked, in order to avoid another lie and to give himself a chance of building a different point of view on the rock of truth.
'He remembers you pulling him out of a family group. You were on your own at the time. You told him that he must meet this wonderful sculptress that you'd found at an opening the previous week. He says you took him into the house, to a room with some magnificent paintings where you'd left Marisa to wait alone. He remembers you introducing her and the next thing he knows you are no longer in the room. Does that refresh your memory?'
It did. Spinola's eyes drifted above Falcon's head as he tried to massage the facts he'd just heard into something perfectly comprehensible.
'How old are you, Senor Spinola?'
'Thirty-four,' he said.
'You're not married?'
'No.'
'Perhaps you could explain why you, a single man, would effect an introduction to a very attractive woman, also single, to your married cousin?'
Something like relief passed over Spinola's face and Falcon realized a strategy had occurred to him.
'I'm sorry to say this, Inspector Jefe, but Marisa would not be the first woman I'd ever introduced to my cousin.'
