A primitive jungle instinct urged the Count to ask the questions he’d been stifling as he went further into the tragedy of frustrated love recounted by that elderly woman. But when he saw the tears flooding the deep wrinkles on Carmen Argüelles’s face, he held back, restrained by the sorrow brought by death: he decided to live with his doubts. Although the woman’s confession rounded out a story that still lacked clinching detail, he finally had something firm in place and a first mystery he’d definitively cleared up. In effect, Violeta del Río had died more than forty years ago, as he already knew, but had done so under her real name of Catalina Basterrechea, and that circumstance helped by the last ripples from Don Alcides Montes de Oca’s muscle, explained the strict oblivion into which her other ego, Violeta del Río the singer, had been relegated a few months before.
Mario Conde promised to be back in a few days and said goodbye to the old woman, who now seemed even more feeble and shrunken, as if that descent into her past had worn her out physically. He stopped on the doorstep, then went back inside. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a few notes: one hundred and forty pesos, all he was carrying on him. He placed them gently in her lap.
“It’s not much, Carmen. Today’s pesos, but it all helps,” he said and, unable to contain himself, caressed the woman’s sparse, dank hair.
His team of bodyguards on Factoría slouched like troops defeated by boredom and the stench. They sat on the jamb of a staircase, surrounded by a cemetery of peanut shells, cans of soft drink and even two abandoned newspapers, remnants of the strategies they adopted to resist attacks of hunger and the long wait.
“Fuck, man, how long did that old woman witter on for,” protested Yoyi, and the Count imagined he was reckoning up the time invested in economic terms. “I suppose you know everything there is to know now?”
“What did she tell you, Conde, what did she tell you?” repeated Rabbit, and Conde promised to tell, but first wanted to rid himself of a thorn in his side.
“You lot coming with me into the barrio?” he asked, looking at his friends.
“Hey, Conde, what are you after now?” asked Rabbit, in the tone of someone already familiar with all the potential answers.
“Nothing really, just a walk across the barrio to show them I’ve not surrendered. Yoyi, do you agree with Juan that the guys in charge here are mafiosi? Well, they’ll see killing is the only way they’ll get rid of me. You coming?”
“Why the strongman tactics, Conde?” Rabbit smiled anxiously, displaying all his dentures. “You’ve never been the strongman type.”
“Well, must say I do like the idea. Let’s see if anyone wants a bundle and a round of grievous bodily harm from me,” spoke up Yoyi, touching the side where he’d got his steel bar. “Fancy daring to lay a finger on this guy who is blood of-”
“Cut it out, Yoyi. I want to go because I’ve got a hunch…”
“Not another?” quipped Rabbit, hurrying to keep up with the crowd.
With his left eyebrow bandaged, a black eye and slight limp in one foot Conde strode off towards calle Esperanza. A group of evil-looking black and white youths on the next corner watched the strange retinue advance: their keen sense of self-preservation warned them of approaching danger and they scattered swiftly like insects, much to the relief of the invasion party.
Conde stopped his friends in front of the slum where he thought he’d been beaten up. They looked inside the building, down both sides of the street, and he looked for a cigarette and lit up, as if to say, here I am. But only two uniformed police, a few cyclists, and a hard-pressed taxi-cyclist came along the street and, along the pavement, a couple of tarts, including one the Count identified as the mulatta from his frustrated whoring episode.
“Let’s go for a beer,” he suggested without thinking, turning his back on the woman, who carried on, apparently not recognizing him with his new look.
“Conde, watch it,” warned Rabbit.
“It’s OK, man, the guys in this barrio are all dicks anyway…” shouted Yoyi and Candito smiled.
“Forget it, kid,” said Red, “being born and living around here is a schooling you never had. You see how it’s all ugly, filthy and stinks? Well, that’s how people’s hearts are and they do ugly, filthy, stinking things as if it’s what comes naturally. God’s the only power that can change them… But hurry up, the Count’s turning into a hard man.”
Conde got his bearings and pointed towards the next block, certain it was the one with Michael Jordan’s alcohol shop. As he walked, he noticed something had changed in the barrio over the last two days, but couldn’t pin down where that feeling, more atmospheric than physical, came from. When he peered into the lot, before going in, he discovered the transformations were more drastic than he’d imagined: the inside patio, where three days ago several men had been drinking, blasted by music, was now completely deserted, as if the crowded, illicit bar run by Michael Jordan’s double had never existed. Conde worried about his sense of direction, perhaps he’d got the wrong place, and he looked for the African’s building to make sure that this was where they’d drunk those beers.
“They’ve shifted the bar,” he said, immediately suggesting an alternative. “Let’s go to Veneno’s chop shop.”
They walked back two blocks, turned left in pursuit of Veneno’s, and on their way Conde finally sussed out of one of the mutations suffered by the barrio: there were as many people as ever in the street, but music now only came from a few houses, unlike on previous occasions when he’d had to advance through a thick curtain of sound. As on his last visit to Veneno’s, Conde clambered though the hole in the wall separating the ruined building from the street and, followed by his friends, headed over past the precarious canvas and zinc roofs where newly arrived pariahs resided. He went on, searching for the yard with the improvized restaurant tables, and behind the big entrance found a panorama of desolation similar to what he’d found on the lot which once housed the illicit bar.
“Something big’s happened, Conde,” was Candito’s verdict when he saw his friend’s amazement.
“They took fright after the beating they gave the Count. Perhaps they thought they’d killed him,” ventured Pigeon.
“That’s right, and as they thought he was police…” concluded Rabbit.
“No, they knew I wasn’t in the force anymore, and that was why they did me over. Perhaps they thought they’d killed me,” surmised the Count.
“They didn’t think anything at all… If they’d wanted to clean you out of the way they’d have done it by now.” Candito looked at the closed doors of the houses opening on to the patio. “There’s something weird going on here. We’d better beat it.”
“Yes, Red’s right. Let’s go. Look at the sky, it’s going to rain.”
“I wanted to see a guy I know,” said the Count.
“Leave it,” insisted Candito. “We’re out of here.”
“So what did that woman tell you, Conde?”. Relieved by the prospect of leaving this barrio, Rabbit had recovered his perpetual curiosity.
“That Violeta del Río was really Catalina Basterrechea, that she had beautiful eyes and that singing love songs was what she most liked to do on this earth,” said the Count, beginning to tell the whole story.
“So you mean when you were in the force, you didn’t have computers?”
“Of course we did. A big brute of one… We called her Felicia. Hey, if I look old, it’s because I’ve worn badly.”
“Did you work with it?”
“No, I’ve always felt computers were a bit of a headfuck. I haven’t a clue when it comes to all that technology, I’m not joking.”
“But they’re easy enough.”
“I didn’t think they were easy or difficult. We don’t get on and I don’t have a clue… How many computers does Headquarters have now?”