a looker but no slut, nor someone too ladylike to wash my clothes on school trips to the country or else too ladylike, so that I always had to worry about getting laid and so on, after all I wasn’t looking for a wife; all the better if she was from La Vibora or Santos Suarez, those people threw terrific parties, and I wasn’t going to go back to Parraga or Lawton and wasn’t impressed by what the barrio had on offer, they weren’t lookers, let alone hookers, and went to parties with their mothers. My girl had to fall in my set: there were more females than males on the register, almost double, I did a quick count and came up with 1.8 per male, a whole one and another headless or titless, remarked Rabbit, perhaps that slant-eyed creature, but she’s from Varona and they already have their dudes; and then the bell rang, and on 1 September 1972 the high school gates opened in La Vibora, where I would experience so much.
We were all almost enthusiastic about entering the cage, ah the first day at school; as if there weren’t enough space, some ran – mostly girls, naturally – towards the playground where wooden posts carried numbers to indicate where each group should line up. I was in number five, and only Rabbit joined me from our barrio, and he’d been with me since fifth grade. The playground filled up. I’d never seen so many people at the same school, I really hadn’t, and I started to look at the women in our group, to start preselecting a likely candidate. Reviewing them made me forget the sun, which was fucking burning it down, and then we sang the national anthem, and the headmaster climbed on the platform that was beneath the arch in the shade and began to speak into the microphone. First he threatened us: females, skirts below the knee and the right hem, that was why you were given the paper about buying the uniform when you enrolled; males, hair cut above the ears, no sideburns or moustaches; females, blouse inside the skirt, with a collar, no frippery, that was why…; males, standard trousers, no drainpipes or flares, this is a school not a fashion parade; females, stockings pulled up, not rolled down round the ankles – although that really suited them, even the skinny ones; males, first spot of indiscipline, even if it’s nothing serious, straight before the Military Committee, because this is a school and not the Torrens Reformatory; females and males: no smoking in the lavatories at break or any time; and yet again females and males… and the sun started to roast me alive. He went on talking in the shade, and the second thing he did was to introduce the president of the SF.
He climbed on the platform and displayed a dazzling smile. Colgate, Skinny must have thought, but I didn’t yet know the skinny lad behind me in the line. To get to be student president he must have been in twelfth or thirteenth grade, I later found out he was in thirteenth, and he was tall, almost fair-haired, with very light-coloured eyes – a faded ingenuous blue – and seemed freshly washed, combed, shaved, perfumed and out of bed and, despite his distance from us and the heat, he oozed self-confidence, when, by way of starting his speech, he introduced himself as Rafael Morin Rodriguez, president of the Student Federation of the Rene O. Reine High School and a member of the Municipal Youth Committee. I remember him, the sun that gave me such a bad head and the rest, and thinking that that guy was a born leader: he talked and talked.
The lift doors opened slowly like the curtain in a fleapit, and only then did Lieutenant Mario Conde realize he wasn’t viewing that scene through dark glasses. His headache had almost gone, but the familiar image of Rafael Morin stirred recollections he’d thought lost in the dankest corners of his memory. The Count liked remembering, he had a shit-hot memory, Skinny used to say, but he’d have preferred another reason to remember. He walked along the corridor, feeling like sleep, not work, and when he came to the Boss’s office he fixed his pistol, which was about to drop from his belt.
Maruchi, the woman in charge of the Boss’s office, had deserted the reception area, and he reckoned she must be on her mid-morning break. He tapped on the glass door, opened it and saw Major Antonio Rangel behind his desk. He was listening carefully to something someone was telling him on the telephone, while stress made him shift his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. His eyes pointed the Count to the file open on his desk. The lieutenant shut the door and sat opposite his chief, waiting for the conversation to end. The major raised his eyebrows, uttered a laconic “agreed, agreed, yes, this afternoon” and hung up.
He then anxiously examined the battered end of his Davidoff. He had hurt the cigar; cigars are jealous, he used to say, and the taste would certainly no longer be the same. Smoking and looking younger were his two favourite occupations, and he devoted himself to both like a conscientious craftsman. He would proudly announce he was fifty-eight years old, while his face smiled an unwrinkled smile, and he stroked his fakir’s stomach, wore his belt tight, the grey in his sideburns seemingly a youthful caprice, and spent his free late afternoons between swimming pool and squash court, where he also took his cigars for company. And the Count felt deeply envious: he knew that at sixty – if I ever made it – he’d be disagreeably old and arthritic; hence he envied the major’s exuberance, he didn’t even cough on his cigars and into the bargain knew all the tricks to being a good chief who could switch from the very pleasant to the very demanding just like that. The voice is mirror to the soul, the Count always thought when decoding the shades of tone and gravity with which the major layered his conversations. But he now had a damaged Davidoff on his hands and an account to settle with a subordinate, and he switched to one of his worst varieties of tone of voice.
“I don’t want to discuss what happened this morning, but I won’t stand for it again. Before I met you I didn’t have high blood pressure, and you’re not going to see me off with a heart attack. That’s not why I swim so many lengths and sweat like a pig on the squash court. I’m your superior and you’re a policeman, write that on your bedroom wall so you don’t forget it even when you’re asleep. And the next time I’ll kick your balls in, right? And look at the time, five past ten, what more need I say?”
The Count looked down. A couple of good jokes came to mind, but he knew this wasn’t the moment. In fact, it never was with the Boss, but even so he chanced his luck too often.
“You said your son-in-law gave you that Davidoff as a present, didn’t you?”
“Yes, a box of twenty-five on New Year’s Eve. But don’t change the subject, I know you only too well,” and he scrutinized yet again his cigar’s smoky demise, as if he understood nothing. “I’ve ruined this fellow… Well, I just spoke to the minister for industry. He’s very worried about this business. I felt he was really shaken. He says Rafael Morin held an important post in one of the management divisions in his ministry and that he worked with lots of foreign businessmen, and he wants to avoid any possible scandal.” He paused to suck on his cigar. “This is all we have for the moment,” he added as he pushed the file towards his subordinate.
The Count picked up the file but didn’t open it. He sensed it could be a replica of Pandora’s dreadful box and preferred not to be the one to release the demons from the past.
“Why did you decide on me in particular for this case?” he then asked.
The Boss sucked on his cigar again. He seemed optimistic his cigar would make a surprise recovery: a pale, even healthy ash was forming, and he puffed gently, just enough so each drag didn’t fan the flame or sear the cigar’s sensitive entrails.
“I’m not going to say, as I did some time ago, because you’re the best or because you’re fucking lucky and things always turn right for you. Don’t imagine that for one minute, never again, OK? How’d do you feel if I say I chose you because I just felt like it or because I prefer having you around here and not at your place dreaming of novels you’ll never write or because this is a shit case anyone could solve? Select the option you prefer and put a tick by it.”
“I’ll stick with the one you don’t want to mention.”
“That’s your problem. All right? Look, there’s an officer in every province responsible for searching out Morin. Here’s a copy of the statement, the orders that went out yesterday and the list of people who can work with you. I’ve allotted you Manolo again… These are the man’s details, a photo and a short biography written by his wife.”
“Where it says he’s squeaky clean.”
“I know you don’t like the squeaky clean of this world but too bloody bad. It does appear he is an immaculate trustworthy comrade and nobody has the slightest idea where he’s holed up or what’s happened to him, though I fear the worst… Hey, you interested?” he thundered, suddenly changing his tone of voice.
“He’s left the country?”
“Very unlikely. Besides, there were only two attempts yesterday, and both failed. The north wind is a bastard.”
“Hospitals?”
“Nothing, naturally, Mario.”
“Hotels?”
The Boss shook his head and leaned his elbows on his desk. Perhaps he was getting bored.
