“It's as if one day you show up at my office and you kick me out of my own business,” says Bocanegra with a frown. He can't imagine what so many drunk girls could be celebrating. Except perhaps International Drunk Girl Day. He shrugs his shoulders. “It's as if you come to my business and throw me out and from that moment on you sit at my desk and you smoke my cigars and you decide that you are going to run my business. Not caring that I invented my business. Or that I am the best at what I do, or that in the end it's the only thing I'm good at. Because you are a numbskull and a loser and I am the guy that invented what I do. Well, that's what happened in Pink Floyd. When Gilmour the numbskull kicked out Waters the genius.” Bocanegra leans forward to turn up the volume on the compact disc player. The CD that's on is A Momentary Lapse of Reason by Pink Floyd. The song that's playing is “Learning to Fly.”
The British people that fill the main walkway of the Ramblas have very short hair and sportswear and carry lit cigarettes and very large plastic cups filled with beer. Their necks are that intense red color that rural Americans' necks supposedly are. The main brands of their sportswear are Burberry and Nike. Many of them wear soccer jerseys of British teams. Some of them are naked from the waist up, in spite of the fact that the giant thermometer at Puerta del Ángel has dipped below the area where there are numbers to represent the temperature. A couple of them are wearing full-body rabbit costumes of the kind that seem to have become popular that winter in Barcelona. Costumes sold in souvenir stores for tourists, filling the streets with giant rabbits.
“The history of Pink Floyd is like life.” Bocanegra takes a pensive drag on his cigar. “Or perhaps one should say that life is like the history of Pink Floyd. First there was Barrett. The origin of it all. The original genius, if you will. But nobody remembers. How the hell could they remember? The only people who saw Barrett perform with Pink Floyd were a few Englishmen so stoned they can't remember what they saw. That was in the sixties, of course. Then came Waters. And that was the worst of all. Because it turns out that there are people who remember Waters. We remember him. And now we have to bear the fact of remembering Waters and remembering his genius and his music. And all we have is that memory of better times. And Gilmour the numbskull. Playing songs that don't belong to him and ruining everything with his lack of genius. You understand?” As the Jaguar gets to the end of the Ramblas, the landscape changes. The tiny street entrances on either side are filled with shady-looking people. With that stereotypical gesturing that people use when carrying out illegal transactions. Looking around furtively. Making transactions below waist level and looking over their shoulders with serious expressions. There are also guys vomiting with the palms of their hands resting on the façades of buildings and their heads hanging between their arms.
“It's a symbolic thing. It's like the ages of man or something like that. Barrett and then Waters and then Gilmour. It's like life. It's like remembering old friends that aren't around and not being able to do anything to make them come back. Maybe you'll understand when you get to be my age.”
The Jaguar gets to the end of the Ramblas and turns onto the circle with the monument to Christopher Columbus in the middle, and takes the coastal road that's moderately filled with traffic at this hour of the early evening. The thrashing that Mr. Bocanegra gave Aníbal Manta last night wasn't limited to breaking his nose with a head butt. When Manta fell to his knees, Bocanegra grabbed the baseball bat held out by a terrified Saudade and beat him on the chest, back, and arms with it. While Saudade and Eric Yanel and Lucas Giraut watched in terror. Bocanegra found it particularly pleasurable to beat up Aníbal Manta in front of Lucas Giraut. Due to the warmly paternal feelings he has toward his old friend's young son. A clearly paternal pride came over him as he heard Manta's ribs crack under the bat. Something similar to that warm feeling you get showing your son how to bait a hook or cast a line over the waves. While Aníbal Manta trembled on the ground, shrunk into a fetal position and protecting his head with his hands, Mr. Bocanegra looked at Giraut with a warm smile. Bocanegra had to repress an ineffable desire to give him the bloodstained bat, tousle his hair affectionately and encourage him to finish the job.
The coastal road becomes more and more empty as they leave behind the city and the airport. Soon the highway begins to flow placidly through an astonishingly uniform landscape of coastal housing developments and roadside bars. With withered palm trees flanking the road. Many of the roadside bars have multicolored blinking neon signs whose bulbs form exuberant female outlines.
Bocanegra takes out his portable organizer equipped with a satellite global positioning device and introduces the exact location of the roadside bar where his contact has indicated he can find Raymond Panakian. That's one of the big advantages of being Mr. Bocanegra: the fact that no one can hide from him. Thanks to his ubiquitous and always alert network of contacts, spread out everywhere. Or at least within the area of influence of his empire of cocktail bars, nightclubs, discothèques and restaurants. That empire with The Dark Side of the Moon at its center, which is like a living creature lying in wait for its prey. Always awake. Always sniffing around in search of those things that Mr. Bocanegra wants to find. And always willing to make a little call to Mr. Bocanegra's cell phone to let him know, merely as a little insignificant favor, where a certain individual, of certain renown in the underworld, that Bocanegra has lost just a few hours earlier, can be found. Something that is always appreciated. And something that Aníbal Manta in particular should appreciate. Because, after all, said phone call has just saved his skin.
“We're almost there,” says Mr. Bocanegra, still drumming his fingers to the beat of the Pink Floyd compact disc. And giving copious signs of being in a good mood. “Keep going past two more blocks of apartments, then three roadside bars, take a left exit and look for a neon sign in the shape of a girl with devil's horns,” he says, tracing the directions that appear on the screen of his global positioning system with his finger. “The place is called Judas.”
Five minutes later, Aníbal Manta parks the Jaguar in the client parking lot of the roadside bar named Judas. From where, less than an hour ago, came the casual call to Mr. Bocanegra saying that the individual commonly known as Raymond Panakian was having glass after glass of Macallan at the hostess bar and sticking wrinkled fifty-euro bills into the dancers' panties. The building that houses Judas is a block of cement similar to a warehouse, with a neon sign on the roof and surrounded by withered palm trees. With no windows. With an exaggeratedly well-lit main entrance that's protected by a couple of security guards with headphone intercoms.
“We have to do this discreetly,” says Mr. Bocanegra when Aníbal Manta turns off the engine and takes out the ignition key, making David Gilmour's voice suddenly stop. “These people are our friends. We don't want to make a scene. I know the owner of this bar. He's a good man. His business is based on discretion. Just like ours. And we wouldn't like anyone making a ruckus in one of our places. Right?”
Aníbal Manta nods. He gives the Jaguar's keys to the parking valet and gets out of the car, followed by his boss. The two security guards at the door step aside to let them through with barely the slightest shudder of the muscles behind their identical sunglasses, betraying the fact that they've recognized the two men. Once inside the bar, Bocanegra and Manta wait a second for their eyes to adjust to the reddish half-light. An old single from the English band Iron Maiden plays on the sound system. Aníbal Manta feels a warm wave of recognition. When he was a troubled teenager traumatized by the stigma of his physical appearance, Manta used to listen to Iron Maiden tapes. In his opinion it's obvious that Iron Maiden were much better than Dio. Better than Saxon. Even better than Megadeth.