‘When we finished talking that day, Zarco and I stood up to go — he back to his cell, me back to my office, or home — but I hadn’t left the visiting room when I heard: Hey, Gafitas. I turned around. Zarco was looking at me from the opposite corner of the room, with one hand on the knob of the half-open door. Have I said thanks yet? he asked. I smiled. No, I answered. But there’s no need. And I added: You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Zarco stared at me for a couple of seconds; then he smiled too.’
Chapter 2
‘Let me make one thing clear from the start. I don’t like talking to journalists, I don’t like talking about Antonio Gamallo, and what I like least of all is talking to journalists about Antonio Gamallo; in fact, this is the first time I’ve spoken of the matter with a journalist.’
‘I’m not a journalist.’
‘Aren’t you writing a book about Zarco?’
‘Yes, but. .’
‘Then it’s as if you were a journalist. I’ll tell you the truth: I wouldn’t have agreed to talk to you if it hadn’t been the daughter of a good friend of mine who asked me to, and because she promised my name would not appear in the book. I understand you’ll respect that promise.’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t be offended: I don’t have anything against you personally; but I do have quite a bit against journalists. They’re a bunch of tricksters. They make things up. They lie. And, since they tell lies disguised as truths, people live in tremendous confusion. You take what they did to Gamallo, to Gamallo’s wife, to Ignacio Cañas; journalism is a meat-grinder: everyone gets crushed, and they’ll crush everything you put in front of them. They get nothing from me. Well. Now that we’ve got that clear, I’m at your disposal, although I have to warn you I spoke very little with Gamallo. There are lots of people who knew him much better than I did. By the way, have you already spoken with his wife?’
‘María Vela? She charges for interviews. Besides, everyone already knows her version, she’s told it a thousand times.’
‘True. And the other woman? Have you talked to her?’
‘You mean Tere?’
‘Yes. She could tell you lots of things; they say she’s known Gamallo all her life.’
‘I know. But she’s dead. She died a couple of weeks ago, near here, in Font de la Pòlvora.’
‘Ah.’
‘Did you know her?’
‘By sight.’
‘Look, I understand your reservations. I understand that you don’t want to make statements to the press. And that you don’t like talking about Zarco. But, as I said, I’m not a journalist, I don’t work for a radio or television station or write in a newspaper, and I’m not even sure I’m going to write about Zarco.’
‘You’re not?’
‘No. That was the idea at first, yes: to write a book about Zarco that denounced all the lies that have been told about him and tell the truth or a portion of the truth. But a person doesn’t write the books he wants to write, but those he can or those he finds, and the book I’ve found both is and isn’t that one.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll know when I finish writing it. At the moment all I know is that the book will be about Zarco, of course, but also about Zarco’s relationship with Ignacio Cañas, or about Zarco’s relationship with Ignacio Cañas and with Tere, or about Ignacio Cañas’ relationship with Tere and with Zarco. Anyhow: as I said I still have to find that out.’
‘I didn’t have anything to do with the girl, but I had more to do with Cañas than with Gamallo.’
‘I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Actually it was Cañas who suggested I should. It seemed like a good idea: after all, apart from Tere and María you’re the only person who was in contact with both of them at that time. Cañas also says that he has the impression that you understood things that no one else understood, not even him.’
‘He says that?’
‘Yes.’
‘It might be true: I’ve had the same impression myself sometimes. You see, it always seemed to me that, deep down, Cañas always thought that Gamallo was a victim. You know: the good thief in his youth, the perpetual rebel, the Billy the Kid or Robin Hood of his day, and then — it turns out to be the same thing except in reverse — the villain who comes to understand the evil he’s done and turns into the repentant delinquent; anyway, that story the journalists invented to sell papers, and then so many people bought it, starting with Gamallo himself. How could he not buy it, pretty as it was and with him coming out of it so well in the articles, in the songs, in the books and films about him? And I’m not saying that the story didn’t have some truth to it, albeit a small part; what I say is that Cañas was a victim of that myth, or that legend, of that great invention. Cañas believed that Gamallo was a victim of society, but Cañas turned out to be the victim himself: a victim of the legend of Zarco. That’s the reality. That he’d known Gamallo when he was young, as we discovered later, mustn’t have helped him at all, but I don’t think it was the main thing either: for me the main thing is that Cañas had grown up with the myth of Zarco, that it was the myth of his generation, and that, like so many people of his generation, he thought he could redeem him. Of course, he also thought that by redeeming him he’d make money and become famous; one thing doesn’t rule out the other: Cañas was no charitable nun. But the truth is at that moment he believed he could help Gamallo, or rather that he could save him and score a bit along the way. And believing that hurt him. And perhaps this is what Cañas has the impression that I and no one else understand, not even him, but actually I think it’s not that he doesn’t understand it but that he doesn’t want to understand.
‘But, well, if I have to tell you the story it would be best to start at the beginning. Cañas and I didn’t meet when Gamallo arrived in Gerona: we knew each other before; not well, but we knew each other. He always had clients in the prison and he visited them regularly, so our paths had crossed in the entrance foyer and we’d chatted for a moment or two. That was the extent of my relationship with him: the normal relationship of the superintendent of a prison and a lawyer with several clients incarcerated there. Anyway, although I barely knew him I didn’t have a very good impression of him; I don’t know why: we’d never had any friction, and everybody knew he was the most competent criminal lawyer in the province; or maybe I do know: because Cañas had the unmistakable vanity of guys who triumph too young; and because hardly a morning would go by without his face appearing in the papers: it was obvious the journalists adored him and he adored the journalists and, as you’ve realized, I distrust people who adore journalists. In spite of that, from the moment Gamallo arrived in my prison and I learned that Cañas was going to defend him, I wanted to talk to him.’
‘What for?’
‘I’ll explain. At the end of 1999, when he arrived in Gerona, Gamallo was no longer the most famous prisoner in Spain, but he was still Zarco, a legend of juvenile delinquency; and although physically he was in bad shape, he still had a lot of fight in him. On the other hand I was sure that Cañas had agreed to defend him to profit from his renown, among other reasons because Zarco was an inmate who couldn’t pay him and who had a tremendous history of conflicts with his lawyers. So I wanted to speak to him before Gamallo started causing the troubles he’d caused in every prison he’d been incarcerated in: I wanted him to convince Gamallo not to cause them, I wanted to arrive at an agreement with him and turn him into my ally and not my rival and enemy and, since I thought this could only benefit both of us (or rather all three of us), I was sure that it would be easy for me to achieve it.