Free Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia

devotion. 'If you went to Mass,' (recounted the Gaucho) 'the priest would give you, when you left, a ticket (and if you'd taken communion, the priest would give you two) which got you in free to the parish cinema, which was showing after morning mass.' Dorda could get to see even a whole series of films and translated every one, as if he were on screen, as if he'd lived it all himself. 'Once we had to take him out of the screening, because he pulled out his willy and began weeing: in the film he could see a child urinating, his back to the audience, urinating in the night, in the middle of the countryside ... ': deposition from the sacristan to Dr Bunge, included in his psychiatric report.) A devout believer, Dorda, always wishing to remain in God's grace, and his mother went so far as to declare that he had wanted to become parish priest at Del Valle (a village some five kilometres away from his family home) where the Brothers of the Sacred Heart were based, but when he was on his way to visit, a hobo stopped and took advantage of him, and from that time stemmed all his many misfortunes.
    At that moment, Mereles came out of the room.
    'What are you up to, dickhead?' he asked the Gaucho, who seemed to be in a dream. 'Come on. We've got to go down and make a phone call.'
    They'd decided not to pay out and to stuff everyone else. That was why Malito had determined to change plans and get him to ring Twisty Bazán. It was six o'clock on the Thursday morning. He didn't let him tell Twisty where they were holed up, but he sent him along to meet Fontán Reyes in a bar on Carlos Pellegrini and Lavalle, so as to keep him occupied while they shifted themselves to the other safehouse. He gave the order to depart and regroup at Nando's house over in Barracas. That was where they intended to wait until the new network was in place to get them over to Uruguay.
    Tall, skinny, with his vulture's eyes and a superior smile on his lips, Twisty Bazán was arrested three hours after the call. To cover himself, Silva said Bazán had been detained in the vicinity of the square where the robbery had taken place. He had a weapon on him. He said he was carrying the gun 'to kill the stray dogs that have overrun Hurlingham'. The truth is he was a police informer. Silva had had him hooked for over a year as a nark, in return for leaving him free to circulate the Bajo among the drugs and the whores.

4
    Next day the newspapers carried pictures of Police Commissioner Silva in the act of identifying the corpse of Twisty Bazán in a bar beside the harbour. His pronouncements were both sententious and contradictory (mutually incompatible, even), as befits a perfect example of police logic.
    'In this country criminals fall to killing one another in order to avoid coming to justice. We are on the trail of the gang of assassins who robbed the San Fernando bank and their hours are now numbered.'
    The commissioner wore a crumpled suit and had a bandage on one hand. He'd not slept for two nights and had fractured his hand hitting Mereles' harlot, who had refused to cooperate and spent the entire interrogation spitting and swearing. She was only a kid, a real brat set on playing the heroine, and in the end he'd had to hand her over to the judge with almost nothing to show for his efforts. He'd broken a bone in his knuckle in throwing the first punch and his hand was now swollen and painful. He asked for ice at the bar and tied the cubes into a white napkin to hold against it. Then he turned to glower at the journalists.
    'You wouldn't happen to think ... ' began the lad who wrote up the police reports for El Mundo.
    'I don't think, I investigate,' Silva cut him short.
    'They say he was a police informer.' The lad was really only a curly-haired boy, wearing his press pass on the lapel of his corduroy jacket, which clearly read Emilio Renzi or Rienzi. 'And they also say that he'd been pulled in and detained ... Who gave the order to release him?'
    Silva glowered