At the main door Ericourt came across Andrés Torres, who was busy hurling extravagant looks at his colleagues on the opposite pavement. They were all at their posts as if in defiance of the respective managements for having forbidden them from talking until the police interrogations had come to an end. Seeing him dressed in his blue uniform with silver buttons, Inspector Ericourt breathed a sigh of relief.
“Are you burning any rubbish at the moment?”
“No, sir.”
“I need to go down to the basement to look for something in the waste.”
The rubbish was piled up in the unlit incinerator. Torres, deep in the oppressive silence of protest, took off his livery and put on his leather apron and gloves. His reserved gestures belied the extent of his displeasure.
“What would you like me to look for, sir?” he asked, brandishing the iron fork like a sceptre.
“A spare fuse that was thrown down the incinerator chute.”
People’s modes of expression are limitless. Torres’s head sank between his shoulders, speaking volumes. The soft sound of material being sifted was heard.
“There’s nothing like what you’re looking for in here,” he said after a short while, standing up straight. The Inspector’s small failure was ample compensation for him.
“Allow me,” ordered Ericourt, snatching the fork from his hands.
“But Inspector, you’ll get filthy. Take this at least.” Torres removed his apron and went to put it on the other man. Ericourt ignored him. Among the pile of papers and scraps of food a shiny blue rectangle had appeared. Pushing away the scraps that covered it he saw it was a notebook with an imitation leather cover, almost the size of an exercise book.
“Caramba, señor Inspector, if you’d told me you were looking for a notebook I could’ve found that too.”
Ericourt brushed off the cover of the notebook with his handkerchief. He put it in his pocket as if wanting to shield it from the caretaker’s curious gaze, which was boring into it.
“It’s fine. Tell me one thing: señor Soler’s apartment is directly above the Czerbós’s, is that right?”
“Yes.”
Torres’s face lit up. His expression changed instantly from resentment to amiability.
“Let’s go,” said Ericourt peremptorily.
An officer was keeping watch at the main door. He wouldn’t move from there now. Andrés Torres had been right after all.
7
Where is Emilio Villalba?
The laundry was a small rectangular space, a corridor almost entirely filled by white counters and cupboards on one side, and shelves with red oilcloth curtains over the washing machines on the other.
“Can I help?” a woman asked Blasi. Her dishevelled head emerged from among the white canvas bags she was emptying. Her face looked as if it had been sculpted by a child from a ball of red clay. Her hair had all the charm of a wire brush that someone had attempted to fix in a perm.
“I’m looking for a young man who works here, your delivery lad. What’s his name?”
“Why do you want him? He’s not here.”
Blasi showed his ID card. The woman’s face suddenly changed colour. Now it seemed as if it were moulded from the insides of a loaf of bread.
“Wait a minute, I’ll go and get my husband,” she said, disappearing between the blocks of white enamel and glass where water, soap and clothes were dancing an infernal sarabande.
Her husband appeared, a rough man in shirtsleeves showing dense reddish hair on his forearms and at the top of his chest. He spoke with a Polish accent.
“Good afternoon, sir, how can I help you?” he asked in a syrupy voice.
“I’m looking for your delivery lad. What’s his name and where does he live?”
“Emilio Villalba. He hasn’t come to work since yesterday afternoon.”
“Is he ill?”
The man raised his hands, opened his mouth and arched his eyebrows in a gesture that perfectly illustrated both irony and doubt.
“How should I know?”
“Quite easily, by asking.”
“He doesn’t have a telephone.”
“Does he often miss work?”
The woman let out a laugh. She had not aimed to be cordial and had absolutely fulfilled this intention.
“Ha, ha! Half the week, at least. He’ll be back.”
“Is he the one who delivers to number nine, Calle Santa Fe?”
“Yes, he’s our only delivery lad.”
“Where does he live?”
“Wait a moment,” said the man. He took a battered, stained exercise book out of a drawer. The place’s neatness had its limits. The pages of notes revealed their assistants never stayed long in the job.
“Here it is. He lives at number forty-nine, Calle Paraguay.”
“Thank you. If Villalba does show up, tell him to report to the police station,” said Blasi.
The building on Calle Paraguay was a tenement like so many in the poor areas of Palermo, close to the railway tracks. On its flaking, faded front there was a sign painted with irregular black letters on yellowing wood which read: “Lodgings.”
The woman washing clothes in the sink in the yard said Emilio Villalba had not been back there the previous evening or that whole day.
“Do you know where he might be?” asked Blasi. “Does he have family in Buenos Aires?”
“That one? Who knows! They come and go. There’s a good reason I charge upfront.”
“What kind of lad is he?”
“Same as all the others.” The woman pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her forearm. “Round here all they talk about is their ‘dead cert’ bets.”
“What are the names of his roommates and where do they work? You can at least tell me that.” The slap of damp fabric which had so far accompanied the conversation suddenly stopped.
“Come with me to the store on the corner and I’ll show you them,” the woman suggested. “They’ll be playing dice about now. If they’re not there ask the storekeeper, he knows them.”
They had not arrived yet, of course. Blasi sat down to wait for them in front of a glass of caña. He glanced around the narrow store with its boarded floor. The tables were shiny from use. The bottles placed untidily on the shelves suggested carelessness of ordinary routine. The storekeeper studied Blasi’s movements with dark, evasive little eyes and his head tilted to one side.
Blasi did not get his hopes up. Like so many young men of his age and social standing, Emilio Villalba must have had only acquaintances rather than friends, people with whom he worked, lived or slept. His human contact would be limited to receiving and handing over laundry tickets from or to his employers or getting tips about the weekend races from his roommates. The kind of person who brushes past others every day, their lives as different as sun and rain. Distanced from one another more through indifference and overwork than they might be in time and space. Orphans of spirit, unable to build meaningful relationships, concerned only about their right to sleep in a bed, to eat and drink and enjoy their Saturday ‘loves’. Selfish and protective of their meagre pleasures because they are the only things that give them a sense of the marvellous adventure God has bestowed on every man: life itself.
The notebook with blue covers lay open on Santiago Ericourt’s desk, picking up the beam of light cast by the lamp with its green shade. More than a diary, it was a long, written confession that seemed to follow a series of sudden impulses. The dotted lines signalled different entries. Ericourt was rereading the pages.
“I do not know how much longer I can bear this torture. All my life I have been a coward, afraid to take responsibility for my actions, seeking the protection of others to solve my problems. This is how I was educated and fear has led me to live a constant lie, but what about him?