Murder in Buenos Aires (8/9)

Felonious Finds

“Jules! What’s going on? What happened?” Sandra had opened the door and was shocked to see her friend shivering, her teeth chattering. Juliet threw herself around Sandra’s waist and started sobbing.

For a few moments Sandra was too shocked to say anything but then she practically carried her weeping friend inside and deposited her on a couch. She sat with Juliet, hugging her and ‘shhhing’, waiting until she was ready to speak.

Finally, when the sobbing had subsided and Juliet’s tears had been mopped up, Sandra asked again.

“What happened?”

“Frank Giordano tried to kill me,” Juliet said dully.

“What?”

“I arranged to meet him at the Children’s Park tonight. I think he guessed I was going to break up with him. He tried to strangle me.”

Sandra stared.

“Why?”

Juliet gave out a shuddering sigh.

“He was afraid I’d go to the cops.

“I spent the other night at his place. I woke up early and he wasn’t in bed so I went to see what was going on. I realized someone was in the next room and they were whispering. I heard him saying something about a shipment of weapons. It was definitely criminal. I don’t know who he was talking to—I didn’t want to know. I went back to bed but I knocked something over and the voices stopped. I know they heard me. I pretended to be asleep but he knew I’d heard. When he came back into bed I knew he was standing looking at me for a long time. I thought he might kill me then and there.

“The next morning I said I’d meet him at the park—sometimes I rollerskate there. I wanted to be somewhere there’d be lots of people when I broke up with him. He’d thought of that. He pretended to be hugging and kissing me. It would have been hours before anyone realized.”

She shuddered.

“You have to go to the cops,” Sandra said. “You have to report him!”

“I’m too scared,” said Juliet. “I can’t. Please don’t make me. I don’t want to go out again.”

Sandra hugged her again.

“Shhhh. It’s OK. You can stay here tonight. I’ll make up the spare bed, OK?”

“You want me to draw you a bath? Something to drink? I have hot chocolate, herbal tea…”

“Chamomile. Thanks Sandy.”

“Of course darling. We’ll talk about it all tomorrow.”

***

Christina, armed with a wet sponge, was at her most hyper-focussed. Señora Lampedusa had clearly neglected the high dusting for years so she needed her headscarf, gloves and mask to deal with the fallout. After a couple of hours, she emerged and the lady of the house invited her to sit down and have a cup of coffee.

Señora Lampedusa was ninety one but her eyes were good enough to read the newspaper every day. She was glad to have someone to discuss events with, or rather at. Christina’s participation in the discussion was minimal.

“Won’t you have a cat’s tongue, dear?” she pushed the saucer over to Christina, her fingers knobbly with arthritis. “These foreign billionaires,” She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Did you know that one of them just bought CABA? Soon enough we’ll be like the UK, having oligarchs buying all our soccer teams. Why, I remember when football was a matter of national pride. Nowadays it’s all about the money, isn’t it. I was there in 1978, when the Albiceleste beat the Netherlands. What a glorious moment! It gave you shivers. Now…nothing but criminals, isn’t it.”

“Who was it that bought CABA?” Christina asked.

“That horrible man who looks like a lizard. What’s his name? Ah yes, here it is. Frank Giordano. Oops! Butterfingers, isn’t it.”

Christina had dropped her cup onto the table.

She apologized profusely and fetched a cloth to mop up the aftermath.

Meanwhile, Señora Lampedusa had moved on to another story.

“This Frank Giordano person is up to no good, I’ll be bound. Look at him throwing his money about, awarding young businesspeople with this and that. None of those profits are likely to come to us ordinary Argentinians, are they? A great show. This woman, now, Juliet Harris, why it says here that she’s a close friend with Giordano and that she hasn’t even lived in Argentina for most of her life! Ridiculous. Then there’s the wife of that soccer player. Well! As if she needed the money! All for show. A great shame. When I think of all the hardworking folk I know…”

“Yes, yes,” said Christina thoughtfully .

***

Kristin Ocampo shut the door of her brother’s bedroom. It was just as he’d left it the night he went out. There was still a towel on the floor, clothes folded on a chair. The bed had been made hastily. She knew Gustavo had made it because their mother would not have tolerated so many wrinkles.

She looked at a picture of the Sacred Heart hanging on the wall and felt a pang of pain. Gustavo had devoted his life to God. She wondered if the shock of what he learned at Santo Domingo had shaken that devotion. Probably not, knowing him. He’d always made a distinction between God-as-Love and people as frail.

She walked over to the window and opened it, letting the air in and hoping it would help her to think.

If I were Gustavo, where would I hide something?

She opened his closet doors. Everything was neat. There was a box of his old toys and things that clearly hadn’t been touched for a decade or more. A few trousers and shirts. Two pairs of shoes. Kirstin closed the doors.

She walked over to his bookshelf. Theology—yawn. A whole shelf of science-fiction paperbacks. Old high-school text books. Methodically, she opened each book and shook it in the hope that something would come out. Nothing. She heard her parents downstairs, the clink of cutlery as her mother did the washing up. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time—soon they’d look for her. Hastily, she made sure all the books were back in order, wrinkling her nose at the dust.

Where else is there?

She looked back at the bed. She looked under it. There was one paperback, a pair of slippers, nothing else. She drew back the coverlet and the sheets, looked under the pillows. Nothing. Then she thought about the mattress. She lifted one corner, then another…and found a manila folder.

She smiled. She knew—she knewthat he’d been hoping she would find it.

Hearing footsteps, she dropped the mattress and had returned the bed to its original position just as the door opened.

Her mother stood on the threshold, looking at her with a gaunt face. It was a mixture of bewilderment and reproach—a question as to why she’d intruded on this sanctum.

“I just wanted to tell him goodbye,” Kristin extemporized, which was essentially true.

Her mother nodded, accepting it.

“I made you some pancakes,” she said hollowly.

Kristin nodded and followed her out. She’d come back for the folder later.

***

León strode up the driveway of Santo Domingo wondering at the red-brick monstrosity. Even if none of the architecture in the city really ‘belonged’ there, this belonged there the least. It was as if a Dickens orphanage had been spirited away from London’s East End in 1860 only to materialize in twenty-first century Argentina, in this no-man’s-land between a busy highway and the slum-under-reconstruction of Barrio 31.

The hush as he pushed open the big doors and entered the building was disconcerting. He didn’t hear or see any of the signals that would mark this as a school; it was more like a museum. The main school building must be some way distant. In the pdf’s that Kristin had emailed him, the victims had all agreed that this was the building where they’d been taken for their ‘special meetings’. And they all agreed that the same man had led them to their abusers, who’d impressed on them the importance of secrecy, who’d threatened and cajoled. It was this felonious factotum he intended to meet.

León walked up the stairs into darkness, up towards the glowering portrait of Saint Dominic and the lilies, considering his approach. He’d written out a short script earlier. He had his phone in his hand, switched to the Dictaphone app. It would either work or it wouldn’t. The main thing was to stay calm…

A sliver of bright light lay across the floor, showing that the office door was open. León knocked.

“Buenos días,” he said. “Gigi, I believe?”

Gigi, looking dapper in a tailor-made suit expertly cut to his fit his proportions, raised his head from his task and raised his eyebrows at the same time.

“Buenos días. How can I help you?”

León deliberately stood blocking the door, the only exit assuming Gigi did not want to jump out of the window, which was more than five meters off the ground. He took out his police identification.

“My name is Detective Inspector Marconi. I have reason to believe that there have been serious crimes committed here and I’d like to chat with you about them.”

“What an extraordinary claim,” Gigi laughed. “It does sound intriguing though.” He leaned back and folded his arms, smirking. León felt a very strong desire to manually adjust that obnoxious smirk, but he kept calm.

“You’re saying you know nothing about illegal activity conducted in this building?”

“Well, yes, Detective Inspector, you’re right. That is what I’m saying.”

“Strange,” said León. “Because I have fifteen witness statements alleging that you were directly involved in this crime.”

“Oh!” Gigi laughed again. “Our students love pranks. I’m sure they’ve invented a story to make us all look like idiots. Being a little person, you know, I’ve learned to be the butt of jokes all through my life, and to take ludicrous claims with a pinch of salt…”

“No, I wouldn’t say it was a prank, Mr….?”

Gigi ignored him.

“Well, I must say, you seem to know an awful lot more about all this than I do. I’m a busy man, Mr. Marconi. I’d appreciate it if you got to the point of your visit.”

“The point of my…? Well it was originally to have a reasonable conversation and to shed some light on some distressing facts. But now, I’ve changed my mind,” he growled.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said Gigi lazily, observing the belligerent tenor of Marconi’s aspect.

“If you were me you wouldn’t be a slimy little toady!”

León strode forward and went to slap Gigi on the cheek. What actually happened was that the smaller man had leapt nimbly to his feet, grasped Marconi by the wrist and hurled him halfway across the room, smashing a porcelain vase in the process. Marconi blacked out for a moment and when he came to, he felt pointy-toed shoes digging into his kidneys, ribs and other delicate parts. At a blow to his head, he passed out again and came to in the back of an ambulance.