Free Target in the Night by Ricardo Piglia

said. She went out with import-export agents and men traveling through, and was a very good friend to the young women in town.
    Croce and Saldías asked her if she had seen anything, if she had seen anyone go in or out. No, she hadn’t seen anyone that day. Then they asked her about Durán.
    â€œThirty-three is one of the three rooms in the hotel with a telephone,” the operator clarified. “Mr. Durán asked especially for this.”
    â€œWho did he speak with.”
    â€œThere were a few calls. Several in English. Always from Trenton, New Jersey, in the United States. But I don’t listen to the guests’ conversations.”
    â€œAnd today, when he didn’t pick up. Who was calling? Around two in the afternoon. Who was it?”
    â€œA local call. From the factory.”
    â€œWas it Luca Belladona?”
    â€œI don’t know, they didn’t say. It was a man. He asked for Durán, but he didn’t know the room number. When no one answered, he asked me to try again. He waited on the line, but no one picked up.”
    â€œHad he ever called before?”
    â€œDurán had called there a couple of times.”
    â€œA couple?”
    â€œI have the records. You can take a look.”
    The operator was nervous, in a murder case everyone believes the police are going to make their life complicated. Durán was a darling, he had asked her out twice. Croce immediately thought that Durán wanted information from her, that was why he would have asked her out, she could have told him things. She had refused out of respect for the Belladona family.
    â€œDid he ask you anything specific?”
    The woman seemed to roll up and retreat, like a spirit in an Aladdin’s lamp, until you could only see a red mouth.
    â€œHe wanted to know who Luca spoke with. That’s what he asked me. But I didn’t know anything.”
    â€œDid he ever call the Belladona sisters at home?”
    â€œA few times,” Coca said. “He spoke with Ada about everything.”
    â€œLet’s call them, I want them to come identify the body.”
    The operator dialed the number of the Belladona house. She had a satisfied expression on her face, as if she were the protagonist of an exceptional situation.
    â€œHello, yes, this is the Plaza Hotel,” she said. “I have a message for the Belladona Misses.”
    The sisters arrived late in the afternoon and quietly entered the hotel. The occasion was such that they had decided to break the taboo, or superstition, which had kept them for years from being seen together in town. The sisters were like replicas, the symmetry between them was so similar it was almost sinister. Croce had a familiarity with them that came not only from seeing them around town occasionally.
    â€œWho told you?”
    â€œCueto, the public prosecutor. He rang us up,” Ada said.
    They went up to identify the body. Covered with the white sheet, it looked like an item of furniture. Saldías pulled the sheet back. Durán’s face had an ironic sneer now and was already very pale and stiff. Neither sister said anything. There was nothing to say, all they were supposed to do was identify the body, and it was him. Everyone knew it was him. Sofía shut his eyes for him and walked to the window. Ada looked as if she had been crying, or maybe it was the dust from the street burning her eyes; she looked at the objects in the room distractedly, the open drawers. She was tapping her foot nervously in a motion that didn’t mean anything, like a spring bouncing outdoors. The Inspector lookedat the movement and, without intending to, thought about Regina Belladona, Luca’s mother, who used to make that same motion with her foot. As if the body—as if a part of the body—was the site where all desperation gathered. The crack in a crystal glass. Croce would suddenly receive strange sentences like these, as if someone were dictating to him.