“SHEER COINCIDENCE,” exhaled Jaimito, Sacamata junior soon after arriving, feigning a bodily relaxation belied by the cold gleam in his eyes and the rictus of his mouth. “Bermejo was away on business in Rosario that day, I had my old man down with otitis I think it was and had to look after the store, and my friend Beto here … What was it you had on?”
“Had to take Mamá to the specialist in Toro Mocho. She was in a really bad way by then,” and he added unnecessarily in a barely audible voice: “Died a year later.”
“You see?” boomed Sacamata in confirmation. “We liked a good time it’s true, but we weren’t kids either. Bermejo was pushing forty, you and me were going on for thirty, and Ezcurrita was around …”
“Thirty-four,” I beat the infallible Nene Larrieu to it.
“Didn’t I tell you Beto? If he carries on like this our friend Fefe here’ll end up knowing Ezcurrita better than any of us. That’s what I’m saying, we weren’t kids, we all had responsibilities. Not Ezcurra of course, he was our very own Isidoro Cañones, he could afford not to. But the rest of us had work obligations or family obligations, like Beto with his late Mamá. I mean the razz is the razz and graft’s graft right? That’s something Ezcurrita could never grasp.”
“I couldn’t say anything to you in front of Batata ’cause he still goes crazy nowadays if anyone dares to insinuate,” Iturraspe whispered when we were alone, “but what you’re thinking’s the truth. We did everything we could not to run into Ezcurrita all day. It wasn’t ’cause we were scared — least not in my case — it was ’cause we were embarrassed. If I hadn’t told him anything by then how would I find the face to tell him now? He’d never forgive me for not warning him earlier. What if nothing happened and I’d burnt my boats with him over nothing? I clung on to that hope, it was my last card … There were so many reasons to be hopeful. I don’t think Neri thought about it beforehand, too Machiavellian for a cop’s brain, but paradoxically enough the result of his enquiries was to convince everybody that he wouldn’t do anything in the end see? His bark’s worse than his bite people were saying, so we inadvertently gave him the go-ahead …”
“You were his friends,” I opined.
Iturraspe automatically opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. All his vanished eloquence rose to his eyes. I changed the subject as a mark of gratitude for his silence.
“IF ANYONE sent him a letter as they say …”—the pharmacist Don Mauro Mendonca had seemed to hesitate—“it wasn’t me. I phoned him. He answered and I quickly outlined the situation for him and suggested that the best thing he could do was to leave town for a while, and the province too to be on the safe side. Then I hung up.”
“You didn’t tell him who you were?” I couldn’t help asking, knowing full well the answer would be:
“Are you mad? Knowing what a blabbermouth Ezcurra was the first thing he’d do would be to tell the whole town I’d told him. I did what morally I had to and warned him that’s all. The others didn’t even do that.”
“LOOK HERE KIDDO,” says the last Jaimito, Bermejo, a fifty-something mahogany-dyed Pappo clone in black leather jacket and dark glasses to match the daytime half-light of his locked, empty nightclub. Through the black-painted windows comes the busy sound of traffic and pedestrians with which the not-quite-town of Fuguet does its best to drown the memory of the days when the Agrofé farm machinery and equipment factory was open and they vied with Malihuel for its administrative supremacy of the county. “I agreed to see you ’cause Beto Iturraspe, who’s a friend of mine, asked me to, but to be honest the less you remind me of the better. If there’s one thing I don’t regret in my life it’s leaving for good, don’t know how I stood the place for nearly fifteen years. This may not be New York but at least they let you work, and live as well, which is a luxury in itself. I’m a believer,” he says, tugging at a thick silver chain and disentangling a little medallion of the Virgin Mary from the others — a swastika, a yin-yang and a Megadeath skull nestling in the fuzz of his chest — then kissing it, “but I couldn’t set foot inside the church there without being a dartboard for Father Raneri’s sermons,” he says and I stifle a remark about his pitted cheeks being proof of the current Malihuel priest’s excellent aim. “So as you might’ve guessed I don’t find the idea of this little chat very exciting, nothing personal I can assure you but still … What do you wanna know?”
I tell him. He shakes a crumpled pack of black Particulares under my nose until a reluctant cigarette pokes out. I decline. He lights up.
“Ezcurra was a burnt offering,” he exhales, “and anyone as tried to save him was going to drown with him,” he continues, his composure apparently immune from the almost physical way his metaphors cancelled each other out. “’Specially me. Superintendent Neri wanted to run me out of town so he’d get the holier-than-thou female vote. Twice the pigs raided my place with people inside, trumped up one charge for drugs they did and another for underage drinking, it sucked up the month’s profits to pay off a shyster and get myself off the hook. Not to mention the money for the first to the fifth.”
“I thought Neri didn’t take bungs in Malihuel.”
Bermejo laughs hoarsely, coughing smoke. I’m a tad disappointed none of his stained teeth are gold.
“That story still doing the rounds is it? What a shower.” He adjusts the bridge of his glasses with a jab of his index finger. “He’d go easy on butchers and grocers and tighten the screw on me and the Mochica and the bookies. It’s easy for some. Singled me out he did. It got so bad I started winding myself up about how they’d do me in in a blind alley, that’s why I’ve taken the precaution of carrying a piece ever since,” he says flashing the butt of a revolver under his jacket. “In the end Ezcurra was the one as copped it, but it could just as easily’ve been me. He had me in his sights I tell you. With Greco it was all a lot easier. If you coughed up on time he left you alone; if you didn’t you’d had yer chips. Everything clear as daylight. Even used to stop by the premises and have a few drinks with the good fellas. Straight up and down he was. Back there they say he ditched them in the flood. Good for him’s what I say. I’d’ve burnt down anything sticking out of the water. What?”
I repeat the question, a bit louder the second time.
“I was over here trying to close a deal on some premises. Wanted to get out of there at all costs. And if I’d’ve been at Ezcurra’s side when they grabbed him you know what”—he dramatised with index finger and thumb at right angles—“Two birds with one stone. Look, with the pigs you don’t have to use tongues but you do have to learn to live together. In my line of business you can’t afford to have them breathing down yer neck. Bad for business. The fuzz are people just like you and me when you come down to it, and over the years they lay down certain ground rules that both sides learn to respect. And incidentally my good friend Ezcurra conned me over that Expotencia deal as well, never saw a red cent of that dough again I can assure you. Short reckonings make long friends as they say. Well they didn’t in this case.”