Pavel finishes his glass of whiskey with ice in one slug. He puts the empty glass back on the bar beside the pornographic novel and the Christmas wrapping. He makes a sign to the black waiter and points to the empty glass with his finger. Which in international sign language indicates a refill. Some of the black people seem to now be looking out of the corner of their eyes at the two white men at the bar. Pavel decides that the best way to tackle the problem of the bullet head who just appeared by his side is to pretend, as much as he can, that the problem doesn't exist. The black woman with the ample ass is dancing in that way a lot of black people dance: subtly swaying her pelvis and neck while talking to her male companion and introducing coins into the slot of the jukebox. A way of dancing that's not really dancing. Which more just seems to form part of her general disposition.
“Sometimes I think you think I'm a boring guy.” Leon is also looking at the ample ass of the black woman, but with a different expression. With the same expression a passenger sitting in an airport looks at the poster he has had in front of him for two hours as a result of a two-hour delay. “Maybe because I have a family and my own business and we always see each other for work-related stuff. It's an understandable prejudice, I guess. But mistaken.” Leon shows a large set of teeth, in a shade ranging from white to grayish. “The truth is I really like music and dancing and all that stuff. I used to be a pretty good dancer when I was young. In Russia. In my day, there were good jazz and rock and roll bands. With really good Russian musicians. I like movies, too. Especially the Alien series. You know the Alien movies? I guess everyone does. The ones with that dyke and the creature that crawls out of people's bellies. Which brings me to the question of why I came here to talk to you. In case you were thinking that I was just passing by here and we met up by chance. The truth is that this isn't my kind of atmosphere.” He looks around him with that expression that makes you think of air travelers during an excessive flight delay. “And I came here to make it clear to you that I'm an outgoing kind of guy. A good friend. More than that. A person perfectly willing to make friends with people who aren't his friends yet. Or who aren't his friends anymore.”
Pavel picks up his second glass of whiskey on the rocks from the bar and shakes it in a vaguely unconscious way. Making the ice tinkle against the glass. The black woman with the ample ass has taken a seat. Expanding the ampleness of her ass. Expanding her ass in a movement similar to an overflowing that threatens to make her tight red pants burst.
“Tell me what you want to know.” Pavel gets up from his bar stool with a weary gesture. The deep red and blue tie hangs from his pocket in a way that doesn't quite suggest a tail. “And I'll tell you if I can tell it to you.”
“They've talked to me about this new guy.” Leon lifts his eyebrows. “Some kind of antiques dealer. Seems he's the son of someone who was important here many years ago. And they told me about those stupid little paintings that are worth so much money to some people. And I have some idea where they might be. And I also think that all this has something to do with the fact that you broke into my friend's house. So what I want to know is: everything. Where those little paintings are going and when. So I can be waiting there. With Donald Duck and the rest of the boys.”
“I've only seen the antiques dealer a couple of times.” Pavel walks up to the dirty glass screen of the jukebox and starts pushing buttons on the panel. “At Bocanegra's club. And I don't know anything about the paintings.”
Leon plants an enormous hairy finger on the jukebox's dirty screen. The finger is pointing to the face of a black guy with his mouth open very wide in some sort of chemically induced expression of enthusiasm. With his eyes open unrealistically wide. With an overall expression of chemically induced enthusiasm whose effect is vaguely terrifying. An enthusiasm that surpasses all known limits of the healthy and normal.
“Louis Armstrong.” Leon taps on the glass screen with his fingertip a few times. “A genius of modern music. It can take a little while to get used to his voice. It's not like Russian voices. Russian voices are strong. Masculine and all that,” he says in his high-pitched voice. “You know what I'm talking about. But, hey, Armstrong came to Russia. As an American cultural ambassador. And he made a lot of people happy.” He nods with a satisfied expression on his bullet-shaped head.
He puts a coin in the machine and punches a numerical code into the panel. A slight buzzing is heard, similar to a bicycle chain. The buzzing every jukebox in the world makes when changing from one song to another. Pavel keeps making the ice in his glass tinkle languidly. After a moment the opening bars of a Louis Armstrong song are heard.
“Of course, what people say Louis Armstrong's music means is stupid,” says Leon. While he moves his head to the rhythm of the song. The rocking of his head and hand is that stereotypical rocking that people associate with classical music lovers listening to chamber music in the smoking salons of their homes. “All that crap about the joy of being alive and waking up to see a new day. Bullshit. It's not about birdies in the sky and the joy of living. You just have to go out on the street. I don't see much blue skies or birdies singing or happy people frolicking. The truth is the weather sucks and the birdies are dead. No, sweetheart. What Louis Armstrong is saying, like the genius he is”—he makes a pause obviously designed to create a certain sense of mystery or paradox about to be revealed—“is that the world is wonderful because the world is horrible. And therein lies his great wisdom. The crazies who get on a bus with a bomb and kill all the passengers. Or that gigantic wave that was on every TV news show. Those are the things that make the world wonderful.” He nods and begins tracing arabesques of cutaneous grease with the tip of his hairy and vaguely phallic index finger on the dirty glass screen of the jukebox. “A world like us. For us.” He looks at Pavel's face. “Isn't it wonderful?”
The soft winter breeze that enters through the open windows of the bar on the Rambla del Raval carries a characteristic Barcelona port odor with it, a mix of the smell of overflowing sewers, rotten fish and urine. No one in the bar or its surroundings seems aware of the odor. Pavel has finished his second glass of whiskey on the rocks.
“I'm a locksmith,” he says, looking at the bartender and pointing at his empty glass again. “Bocanegra only uses me to open doors. Or to get into places he can't get into. What makes you think he'd explain his plans to me?”
Leon stares at him for a long moment. His expression no longer reminds one of passengers put out by inconvenient flight delays.
“Maybe Bocanegra is very happy with his new little friend the antiques dealer,” he says. “But that's not the way things work. You can't just put a new fish into the tank without the other fish getting nervous. Without making waves. This city is my fish tank. It belongs to me and the people I represent,” he adds, and although he doesn't move or turn toward the exit or make any motion that suggests he is about to leave, something in his tone and his general attitude seems to indicate that somehow he's no longer in the bar with Pavel. “And we're going to have to explain that to him. With your help, of course.”
Pavel drinks his third whiskey in one gulp and tries to imagine the implications of Leon showing up in his favorite bar of the Rambla del Raval. The implications of the fact that he knows where to find him and that he also knows about things like the paintings. Particularly the implications having to do with his own personal safety. As for Leon, he's no longer in the bar.