Lucas Giraut still has the slide projector switch in his hand, but now it seems that the focus of his attention has moved elsewhere. Now he seems to be watching something located on the other side of the large windows. Far below the Meeting Room where the meeting is taking place. With a slight frown.
“I'm good at convincing people,” says Saudade in a tone completely devoid of irony. While he examines the residue beneath one fingernail with his brow gathered. All his fingers seem to have the same uniform amount of dark residual material beneath the nails. “I always end up completely convincing 'em.”
“There's a car out front that seems to be watching us.” Lucas Giraut points with his head at Commissioner Farina's lackeys' car that is parked across the street. “They have cameras. And it looks like they're watching us.”
“That car belongs to Commissioner Farina's lackeys,” says Mr. Bocanegra. Without looking at where Lucas Giraut is pointing. “The guy that put your father in jail. And who's been on my ass since the late seventies. A real psychopath. One of those cops, you know. Loves car chases. But you have nothing to worry about.” His tone is not reassuring in any kind or quasi-paternal way. It is a tone that mixes elements of quasi-paternal advice with a veiled threat. “That's all you need to know for now. In the next few days I'll give you all instructions and blueprints. Guidelines. The details of my plan. The fee is the usual one for this kind of job. In other words, a ton of money. So you can have some more fun and get yourselves in some more trouble. Except for Mr. Yanel, who has been so kind as to renounce his share in exchange for my taking lightly certain matters that he and I have pending.” He expels a puff of thick smelly cigar smoke and looks at the twisting distorted images of the faces of the four members of his audience through the cigar smoke. “Now is the moment where you ask all the questions you need to. And I hope that they'll be relevant and intelligent questions and that none of them will be too long or complicated, because it turns out that tonight I am having dinner with my nieces and nephews. The people I love most in the world. And I don't want to show up late for my dinner with them. So go ahead.” He makes a gesture slightly similar to the gesture one makes when, in a fistfight, they want to indicate to their opponent to come closer so they can give them a good slug. “Ask me your relevant and intelligent questions.”
There is a moment of silence. Lucas Giraut has never heard of anyone named Commissioner Farina. Not in relation to his father or his father's arrest. The silence that has fallen over the Meeting Room allows the amalgam of female laughter and dance music to filter through from the Main Floor of The Dark Side of the Moon.
“Where's Bob Marley?” asks Aníbal Manta finally, his enormous arms crossed over the front of his suit and his eyes a bit squinted. In that way that Aníbal Manta squints his eyes and gathers his features together slightly when he is dealing with matters that challenge his ability to obtain a good perspective on what is going on around him. “Did they really nab him?”
Mr. Bocanegra stares at Aníbal Manta with an expression that seems to suggest that he's trying to decide if Manta's question meets the requirements he has just put forward.
“It seems,” he says, “that Bob Marley has had a small streak of bad luck. And it's quite possible that he's going to have another streak of bad luck when I catch up with him. Then he may join our mission. If there's anything left of him, of course. More questions?”
Saudade raises his hand. Bocanegra's face reflects a certain degree of surprise.
“I don't mind working with Russians,” says Saudade with a frown, and crosses his arms in a way that perhaps unconsciously and perhaps not imitates the way Aníbal Manta's arms are crossed. Manta is seated behind and definitely falls outside of his visual field. “Or with any kind of strange people. But I don't like working with Piece of Shit Rich Kids that don't know how to tie their own shoes. I'm talking about Mr. Rich Kid Esquire.” He makes a gesture with his eyebrows raised in Lucas Giraut's direction. “I mean, I don't know who you are, Sir Mr. Rich Kid Esquire, but to tell you the truth, I get the impression that you're a shit-for-brains rich kid who has no fucking idea of how people like us do things. And that you're gonna shit your pants when the going gets rough.” He looks at Aníbal Manta. Aníbal Manta looks away. “You all know what I'm talking about.”
There is a long moment of silence. Bocanegra's expression seems to indicate that Saudade's question definitely does not meet with the previously established requirements of relevance and intelligence.
CHAPTER 10. Italian Academy Basketball Club
“My mother embarrasses me,” says Valentina Parini, seated in a genuinely prepubescent posture on the bench of the basketball court of Barcelona's Italian Academy. She isn't seated with her back erect in the modest and elegant carriage of a postpubescent girl. Instead her legs hang down and her body leans slightly forward and she grabs the edge of the bench with her hands. “I mean when she's looking for a boyfriend to marry her. People can't tell, but I can. I can always tell.” She turns to look at Lucas Giraut, who is standing with his hands in his pockets a few steps behind the basketball court bench. Dressed in a burgundy herringbone stitch Lino Rossi suit. In addition to Valentina Parini, there are three other girls sitting on the bench. Alternately paying attention to the game that is taking place on the basketball court and the conversation that Valentina is having with Lucas. “Like the other night. Sometimes she embarrasses me so much it makes me want to punch her.”
Lucas Giraut nods. Marcia Parini's behavior during the last part of Fanny Giraut's Unnumbered Birthday party was pretty much the same as it always is toward the end of every Giraut family party she's ever been invited to. Rubbing rounded parts of her anatomy against the anatomy of various male guests, hanging with both arms from the neck of said guests and speaking into their ears while kissing them on the cheeks.
Giraut watches as the center from the home team, a tall plump girl, throws the ball vigorously against the opposing team's backboard. The ball bounces off the backboard and forces several players on both teams to crouch instinctively and cover their heads with their hands. The referee blows her whistle emphatically and gestures with her arms. The visiting team is a team from downtown made up of racially diverse girls with no uniforms. Some of the prepubescent and postpubescent girls from the downtown team chew gum with cruel expressions on their faces. Many of them have scabs on their knees and wear faded T-shirts of bands for teenage girls. One of the girls from the downtown team wears a faded black T-shirt of a metal band. The girls from the home team, including Valentina Parini, are impeccably dressed in uniforms with green T-shirts that read “ITALIAN ACADEMY BASKETBALL CLUB BARCELONA” on the front, white shorts and red socks that come all the way up to their unbruised knees.
The coach of the home team shouts something from the sidelines of the basketball court, putting her hands along both sides of her mouth and making signs to one of the players on the home team defense to sit on the bench.
“Parini,” says the home team coach, who wears her hair short and seems to have something below her nose that slightly resembles a mustache. “You replace Adelfi.” She looks at Lucas Giraut with clear displeasure, which doesn't seem to be based on Giraut's presence behind the players' bench but rather on the mere fact that people like Lucas Giraut exist in the same cosmos as she and her players do. “If your father doesn't mind, of course.”
There is a second of silence. Some of the players from the downtown team watch the scene with their hands on their hips and spit on the floor of the basketball court.