Blood Tango Read online

  Evita punched her fist into her left hand. Perón’s enemies should all be erased from history. Evita swore in her heart that they would be, if it took her last breath.

  * * *

  Tulio Puglisi, from his position at the back of his union’s contingent, could not see the man behind the microphone, but he heard the impassioned speech and read between its vague lines an appeal to the workers to rise up for Perón, as if the whole idea of a union was for the workers to put their faith in one powerful manipulator, instead of in the collective. This rally was a miniature of the outpourings for Hitler and Mussolini that he had seen in the newsreels. If Perón’s supporters swelled in numbers, Argentina would see adoring crowds exactly like those in Rome who had chanted, “Duce. Duce.” But here they would clamor for “Perón. Perón.”

  Nauseated by the thought, Tulio turned away from the man with the winning smile, and he saw her again a little distance away, Eva Duarte amid the crowd, wearing a green dress and grinning with pride. It would have been more like her to stick close to her colonel, but perhaps she meant to place herself in the middle of the throng so that she could take its pulse. Evidently she expected to position herself as an ordinary person so that she might learn the best way to influence the workers.

  But Eva Duarte was not a woman of the people. She may have started out working-class or less, but now she wore clothes from Florida Street and rode around in a chauffeur-driven Packard.

  While Perón left the platform and plowed through the crowd toward his car, Puglisi tried to follow the actress to see what she would do next. The army may have taken Perón down a notch, but anyone with half a brain knew he was still a threat. If Argentina was to be saved from a takeover by that fascist, Evita would have to be taken out of the picture.

  * * *

  “Oh my God,” Luz shouted into Pilar’s ear, barely audible over the applause of the people around them. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Did you see him?” Pilar shouted in return.

  Luz nodded her head and pulled on Pilar’s arm. They could hardly move. Pilar pushed and elbowed until they got free of the crush of people. She looked over her shoulder. “I think we have gotten away from him.”

  “No. No. I still see him.” Luz’s voice was filled with terror.

  Pilar could not see Luz’s father anywhere near them, but she sped away with Luz, across to Bolívar, through a knot of celebrating unionists, and around the corner. They crossed the avenida to where Perú became Calle Florida, both of them instinctively making for the safest place either of them knew, the shop where they worked.

  Pilar paused in the doorway of a lingerie store and peered behind them. The streets here were nearly empty, though on a Wednesday afternoon in spring, at the hour of the promenade, the outdoor cafés should have been noisy with the chatter of porteños comparing plans for next weekend. Instead, the chairs were stacked and the striped umbrellas folded. Three blocks behind the fleeing young women, the crowd at the rally was beginning to break up.

  “I think we are safe,” Pilar said.

  Luz still looked frightened.

  Pilar pulled her toward the tearoom across from Harrods department store, a block before Chez Claudia.

  “I can’t afford to eat here,” Luz said.

  “We’ll just have a cup of English tea. I’ll pay.” Pilar could not stand the tension. At least if they were in a place with other people, Garmendia would not have the nerve to attack them as he had promised he would when he accosted her in the tango club.

  Pilar chose a table near the window so they could watch the street. The waitress eyed Luz as if she recognized her when they ordered their tea. Luz gave her an approving smile as if she were the real Evita. “One day I will buy you a hot chocolate and some cinnamon doughnuts,” she whispered to Pilar as soon as the waitress walked away.

  In the street outside, the overcast day had turned black: one of those sudden spring tempests was about to descend. Luz soon became distracted by her reflection in the darkened window. As she finished her tea and Pilar counted out the change to pay, Luz said, “Are you going to the club to dance tonight? I want to come with you.”

  Pilar was incredulous. “Are you crazy? If he saw you with me at the rally, that is the first place he will look for you. I told you he came there trying to find you. I told you what he said.”

  Luz finally looked away from her reflection. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Your father. You said you saw him in the crowd. He could be following us.”

  “I didn’t see my father. I saw Lázaro.” She looked disbelieving. “It wasn’t my father. It was Lázaro. Torres.” Her voice was insistent, as if Pilar didn’t know the difference between Luz’s father and her ex-boyfriend.

  “I thought you said Lázaro was twenty-eight and handsome.”

  “He is. You said you saw him.”

  “I didn’t,” Pilar said. “I saw your father. Not just now. I saw him before, when we got off the Subte, as we came up the steps. He was ahead of us.”

  “I don’t think it was my father. He wouldn’t go to a rally like that. He doesn’t care about politics. But I saw Lázaro. I know I did.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “I’m not sure, but that’s why I ran away.”

  “Oh my god. This is really dangerous.” Pilar could not imagine how bad it would be if both men found them.

  Luz looked back at her dark image in the window. “Maybe not. I don’t think Lázaro would recognize me. He would think I was her.” She said the last word as if it were a prayer.

  Pilar swallowed hard. “Let’s go to the shop before someone finds us.” She watched the street as they walked the last block, and she kept them on the narrow sidewalk, near the buildings, until they got to the front door. The shutters were closed. She used her key to unlock them, put them up, and opened the inner door with the same key.

  Once they were inside, the rain came down in torrents. Pilar relocked the door. They went through the heavy green-velvet drapery to the back and sat in the chairs they used during work hours, Pilar behind her sewing machine, Luz next to her ironing board. Pilar stole out to the dark front door from time to time to see if there was anyone outside. Once the rain stopped, a few people went by, some of them carrying placards she had seen at the rally. She wanted to get to the club. Tonight was a special performance and a dance competition. She had promised Mariano that she would dance with him.

  Luz primped at the mirror and whined that Pilar would not take her to club. “Look how nice my hair looks like this. I want to go.” The style was very like what Evita herself had worn that day, upswept in front, hanging down in waves in the back.

  Pilar stood her ground. “It is just too dangerous. You have to go home and stay there.” Luz made a face but did not argue.

  When Pilar went to the front door to leave, she saw a man standing in the doorway of the shoe shop across the street. He glanced at her through the glass of the door and quickly looked away. He could have stopped there just to get out of the rain, but the downpour had let up twenty minutes ago. She went back to Luz, who was rummaging around in the scrap bin, pulling out white tulle.

  “Listen,” Pilar said, “I don’t think you should go out the front when you leave. There’s a guy out there.”

  Luz looked startled. “My father? Lázaro?”

  Pilar shook her head. “It wasn’t your father, and I don’t think it was Lázaro, either. I didn’t see this man that well, but he was not like you described Torres.”

  Luz was twisting the tulle into a ball around her fingers.

  Pilar tapped her on the forearm. “Listen! Whoever he is could be watching the store for your father or Lázaro. I am going out through the alley. You’d better, too. Go now and lower the shutter and lock up the front.” She gave Luz her key.

  Luz said, “Okay,” but she continued to sort through the pieces of fabric.

  “Promise,” Pilar insisted.

  “Yes. Yes. I promise. I p
romise. Stop nagging me.”

  “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

  Pilar went to the back door, which opened onto an alley that ran behind the shops. The walkway was narrow and empty except for mops and buckets and trash barrels that the shop owners stowed outside their back doors. Pilar made her way to the end of the block and out onto the avenida toward the Subte and the club.

  * * *

  When Juan Perón left the rally with his closest allies in the unions, he went, wearing his tie and jacket, to an early supper at the Plaza Hotel. He was aware that not all the labor representatives supported him, but those eating steaks and potatoes with him in the sumptuously appointed private room knew which side their bread was buttered on. Every one of his companions urged him to do anything he could to restore himself to power.

  Evita had gone straight home in the Packard. Alone with only the housekeeper, she listened to radio reports of packs of student protestors along the avenues shouting threats against Perón. “Epithets are also being hurled against the actress Eva Duarte,” the announcer reported. His voice was almost gleeful.

  * * *

  After Pilar left the shop, Luz stayed in the workroom, playing with fabric from the scrap bin, trying to fashion a hat like the dramatic white one with beautiful cabbage roses that she had seen on Evita the day the actress gave her this beautiful green dress. Pilar and Señora Claudia had said Evita’s white hat was ridiculous, like something from a lamp store. But to Luz, Evita looked like an English princess in it. Luz wanted to make such a hat for herself so that she could look like a princess, too. If Pilar had stayed she might have been able to show Luz how to do it. She always bragged about being a seamstress, even said that Evita’s mother had been a seamstress, too. But Pilar was taller and her body rounder. No one would ever mistake Pilar for the loveliest woman in Buenos Aires.

  Luz pulled the stitches out of her failed attempt at a hat and touched up her hair and makeup. She took the key. Pilar had made her swear she would lock up the store and leave by the alley. Pilar always treated her as if she were an idiot.

  She looked out into the alley. It was dark and creepy out there. Across from their back door was a boarded-up window covered with cobwebs. The air smelled of rotted leaves and mold. She was more afraid of that ugly place than of the elegant street out front. She knew how to be careful. She locked the alley exit.

  She returned the scraps to the bin, checked to make sure the light in the bathroom was out. She even closed the workroom door before she went out through the dark showroom. She looked out through the glass in the front door. The doorway of the shoe store across the street was empty. The Boston, the coffee bar next to it, was closed, but its name in green neon glowed over its entrance. There was no one out there. Whoever Pilar had seen was gone.

  Luz went out and carefully locked the front door. She was about to lower the shutter when someone came up behind her. She did not have time to turn or to scream before he put his hand over her mouth. She froze with fear.

  A knife went into the middle of her back. She had lost all sensation before the assailant made five more cuts and left her bleeding in the doorway of the shop.

  * * *

  At that very moment, Detective Roberto Leary of the Federal Police was in the Palermo district, waiting in the parlor of an aristocratic Italianate villa to speak with a witness to a murder. The room Leary stood in, holding his fedora in his hands, was furnished with French antiques—lots of small chairs with delicate curved legs and seats of needlepoint, but not like the bright cushions his mother and older sister made. These had tiny stitches and subtle colors that matched the flower-patterned carpet beneath his shoes. The walls were hung with paintings of landscapes in heavy, gold-leafed frames.

  Leary knew he did not belong in a place like this, but he did not belong in his job, either. He used to. Not anymore. With the help of his father’s brother, he had enthusiastically joined the Capital Police seven years ago, right after he left secondary school. In those days he was glad to have had a job at all, and one he thought he wanted at that. His first years on the force were pretty much what he had hoped: a completely masculine endeavor, unlike being in the house where he had grown up, after his father’s death, with all women—his mother, his grandmother, and his three sisters. During his first several years on the force, he had patrolled the barrios of his beautiful city. He picked up insolent compadritos with their fancy shoes and switchblades and rid Buenos Aires of thugs and jerks who plagued the neighborhoods. He had liked that a lot. Once he was promoted to detective, he grew to love his job.

  But that was before the Capitals were merged into the federal force at the beginning of this year. Since the Federals had taken over, Leary’s motivation had waned, until now it was practically nonexistent. The job he used to do, the job he still wanted, was gone. Instead, his work had become more about politics than crime. This murder was a perfect example of the kind of sham investigation he spent his time on looking into the death of a student in an antigovernment demonstration. Ordinarily, such an event would have gotten less than lip service; except in this case, his captain owed the dead kid’s grandfather a big favor. The old guy was a bigwig demanding an investigation. As far as Leary’s chief was concerned, Leary was an underdog, first of all because he had come from the Capitals, which the higher-ups, all ex-Federals, considered a bunch of pussies. And he had another strike against him. His uncle, who had pulled strings to get him the job in the first place, had died. Now Leary had no godfather with clout to defend his interests. So he had to do the dirty work and smile, and today that meant pretending to find out who had killed the kid. He would have liked to go after the murderer for real, but the student had died while demonstrating against Perón, and Police Chief Velasco was beholden to Juan Perón for his position. Figuring out how far his boss expected him to go with this investigation was harder than solving any crime. Guessing was an ex-Capital cop’s only alternative. Right now Velasco’s own position was tenuous. The big boss’s own ass might end up in a sling. The scuttlebutt was that Perón himself was about to be arrested—to get him permanently out of the way. Would Velasco throw his own patron in the pokey? There was always a chance Velasco would get tossed out of office on the heels of the departing colonel. That was a lot to hope for. Most of the men on the force supported Perón because he was a supporter of the hardworking poor. Leary liked that, too, so he guessed he liked Perón. Sort of. But that bastard Velasco was a different question entirely. Leary couldn’t find anything to like about him.

  Leary was determined to keep his job, so for now his best bet was to make a show of solving this case, but not to try too hard.

  The dead student, Alberto Ara, had lived in this palace. His ilk had long-since abandoned their educational opportunities for the chance to shout anti-Perón sentiments in the streets. The kids were demanding a return to the nation’s constitution. If Leary thought about it, that was what he wanted, too. That kind of move would force the cops to stop being political and solve real crimes. Which was what Leary wanted to do, instead of working for a political hack who didn’t give a rat’s ass who had killed the boy.

  He glanced at his Bulova watch—like his job and his car, a gift from his dead uncle. It was going on eight o’clock, and he hadn’t eaten since noon. He was trying to figure out how much longer to wait when a door in the room’s walnut paneling opened and a guy of about twenty-three walked in. Leary caught a glimpse of a weeping woman in the hall before the door closed on her hurt, inquiring glance.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” the youth demanded without preamble. He was a slender, good-looking boy, a couple of inches taller than Leary. His dark, perfectly tailored suit cost five times as much as any young detective’s.

  Leary shifted his fedora to his left hand and extended his right. The youth did not take it. Leary shrugged and said only, “Inspector Roberto Leary.” He could no longer say “of the Capital Police,” and he wouldn’t say, “of the Federals,” because they were kn
own throughout the land as a bunch of heartless thugs.

  “I am Eduardo Ara,” the young man said. “The maid said you were here about my brother’s murder.” He looked something between grieved and peeved.

  “Yes,” Leary said. “I am supposed to be investigating who killed your brother. I am sorry to have pulled you away from your family at this moment.”

  “But you have, haven’t you?” His sneer made Leary want to paste him one. This rich boy was obviously not accustomed to being polite to someone as lowly as a policeman.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions, to see if I can get a lead as to who might have…” Leary left the rest of his thought unstated. He pointed to a stiff settee that looked as if it would be only slightly less uncomfortable than continuing to stand, but before he could ask to sit down, the kid shook his head.

  “I am getting ready to take my mother and my grandmother to the country now that that travesty of a funeral is over. It was a circus, you know. Cops on horseback, treating me and the other students like we were criminals.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leary said, trying to get the kid to soften up and give him information. “I’ll try to be brief as possible. What can you tell me about the circumstances of your brother’s death?”

  “Alberto and I are … were students together,” Eduardo Ara said. “He was two years younger than me. We were in a group of other students demonstrating for a return to constitutional government. We were entirely within our rights. We have to stand up for what we believe.”

  Leary smiled without really agreeing. This elegantly dressed, pomaded scion of the upper classes was not exactly the type one would find rabble-rousing in the streets in an ordinary city. But Buenos Aires was not ordinary, and neither were the porteños, her citizens. Everyone and everything in this cosmopolitan capital gave the impression of being misplaced, as if a piece of Spain or Italy had been torn off from the little continent north across the water and stuck here on the edge of a vast wild land of Indians and desolation. Argentine kids, like this one, seemed to have no idea how many young men their age had been slaughtered fighting a war all over the world in the past few years, while here they safely ate steaks, pretended to study architecture or literature, and tried to seduce one another’s sisters.