‘Anyway, I could tell you lots of similar anecdotes, but they’re not worth waiting for. The thing is that part of me was ashamed of having belonged to Zarco’s gang, and that’s why I kept it secret and was almost frightened at the idea that it might come to be known; but another part of me was proud of it, and almost wanted to publicize it. I don’t know: I suppose it was like having a chest buried in my own garden not knowing whether it contained treasure or a bomb. Otherwise, another possible reason that might explain why my interest in Zarco and other quinquis lasted so many years was a kind of gratitude or relief, the certainty of the implausible luck of having belonged to Zarco’s gang and having survived it: after all, from the end of the seventies until the end of the eighties Spain had swarmed with hundreds of gangs of rootless kids from the outskirts like Zarco’s, and the immense majority of those kids, thousands, tens of thousands of them, had died due to heroin, AIDS or violence, or were simply in jail. Not me. The same thing could have happened to me, but it hadn’t. Things had gone well for me. I hadn’t been locked up in jail. I hadn’t tried heroin. I hadn’t contracted AIDS. I hadn’t been arrested, not even after the bank robbery at the Bordils branch of the Banco Popular. Inspector Cuenca had left me in liberty instead of arresting me. I’d had, in short, a more or less normal life, something that for someone who’d belonged to Zarco’s gang was perhaps the most abnormal life possible.
‘Until I dug up the chest buried in the garden and realized that it contained both treasure and a bomb. That was at the end of 1999. One day in November Cortés burst into my office announcing at the top of his voice: News flash! Your idol has just landed in the city. My idol, naturally, was Zarco. Cortés was just coming back from the prison at that moment, and told me that, according to what the inmates he’d been to visit had told him, Zarco had been there since the night before; as was to be expected, his arrival had caused a certain stir, because it was a very small prison and he was still a very notorious character. Cortés had also found out that the prison board had assigned Zarco to a cell where he had a personal computer and television at his disposal, and for the moment he had almost no contact with the rest of the inmates. I listened to my partner with a slightly melancholic astonishment: ten, even five years earlier, each of Zarco’s movements was as complicated as those of the top football players or rock stars, so that, when he was transferred to a prison in one of the provinces or when he passed through one of them on his way to trial or to another prison, the directors of the centres would find themselves overwhelmed with petitions for interviews, and his court appearances were held under strict security measures to prevent the harassment of photographers, television cameramen, journalists and admirers and busybodies who pressed up against the police cordons and shouted encouragement to him, blew him kisses, said they wanted to bear his child or clapped rumbas that sang the story of his invented life; now, instead, not even the two local newspapers had devoted a miserable line in the Society section to his arrival. It was one of the differences that marked the gulf between a myth at its height and a myth that’s outlived its usefulness.
When Cortés finished giving me news about Zarco he asked: Well, what do you plan to do? I didn’t have to think before answering. Tomorrow I’ll go see him, I said. Cortés made an affectedly polite gesture and asked, lowering his voice: Should I take this to mean that you plan to offer him our services? What do you think? I answered. Cortés laughed. You’re going to get us into one hell of a shitstorm, he said, going back to his normal voice. But if you didn’t I’d kill you.
‘Although my partner knew nothing about the relationship I’d had with Zarco, what he said was not contradictory: all Zarco’s relationships with his lawyers had ended badly (and some of them very badly); in spite of that, Zarco was still Zarco and, if the matter was handled skilfully, defending him could still be very lucrative for a legal firm. Besides, I’d often felt tempted to offer to defend Zarco, but, for one reason or another, I’d always resisted; now, when Zarco had just returned to Gerona almost like an archaeological relic or a forgotten wretch, when for everyone else he was little less than a hopeless or closed case after having spent his life in prison and having wasted several opportunities for rehabilitation, I thought it was the moment to give in to temptation.
‘I wasn’t the only one to think so. That very afternoon, while I was working on my submissions for a court appearance the following day, my secretary told me two women were waiting to see me. A little annoyed, I asked her if the two women had an appointment and she said no, but added that they’d insisted on seeing me to talk about a certain Antonio Gamallo; even more annoyed, I told her to make an appointment for the two women for another day, and then asked her not to disturb me again. But I still hadn’t gone back to concentrating on my papers when I looked up from my desk and heard myself repeat out loud the name my secretary had just uttered; I stood up and rushed out to the waiting room. There were the two women, still seated. They turned towards me and I recognized them immediately: one I’d seen in photos recently, alone or with Zarco; the other was Tere.’
‘Our Tere?’
‘Who else? Over those last twenty years I had thought of her sometimes, but it had never occurred to me to look for her or ask about her whereabouts; nor would I have known where to look or who to ask. And now, suddenly, there she was. An intense silence settled on the waiting room while Tere and I stared at each other without moving; or almost without moving: I quickly noticed that her left leg was going up and down like a piston, just as it did when she was sixteen. After a couple of very long seconds, Tere stood up from her chair and said: Hiya, Gafitas. At first I thought she’d hardly changed, perhaps because her lean body and jeans and worn leather jacket and handbag strap across her chest gave her a youthful air; but I soon spied the ravages of age: the tired skin, crow’s feet, circles under her eyes, the corners of her mouth turned down, a sprinkling of grey hairs; only her eyes were just as green and intense as they were twenty years ago, as if the Tere I’d known had taken refuge there, indifferent to the passage of time. I held out my hand mumbling exclamations of surprise and meaningless questions; Tere answered cheerfully, ignored my hand and kissed me on the cheek. Then she introduced me to the woman with her. She said she was called María Vela and that she was Zarco’s girlfriend, although she didn’t say girlfriend she said partner and she didn’t say Zarco but Antonio. I did shake María’s hand. And only then did I actually notice her, a somewhat younger woman than Tere, skinny and plain, short, chestnut-coloured hair, very pale skin, wearing a heavy, poor-quality, black coat over a pink tracksuit zipped up to the neck.
Once the introductions were done, the two women went into my office. I offered them a seat, coffee and water (they only accepted the seat and the water) and Tere and I began to talk. She told me she was living in Vilarroja, working at a cork factory in Cassà de la Selva and studying nursing by correspondence. Really? I asked. Does that surprise you? she answered. I found it very surprising, but I pretended it didn’t surprise me. Tere seemed very happy to see me. María listened to us without taking part, but without missing a word of the conversation; I didn’t know if Tere had told her about my former friendship with Zarco and with her, and at some point I pretended that Cortés hadn’t told me of Zarco’s arrival that morning and asked how he was. He’s here, answered Tere. That’s why we’ve come to see you.