Free The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Page A

whole country’s a tango. The city’s a tango. I remember a phrase of Malraux’s, which sounds like the words of a famous tango: “Buenos Aires is the capital of an empire that never existed.” I used to hate the tango. I’m from the rock generation – people who followed the Rolling Stones, people like Pignatari, who had the balls actually to become a rocker. We thought we’d be young for ever, but now I’m forty I find myself blushing to admit I like rock music. It’s as if I liked polkas or something. But what comes after rock ’n’ roll, eh? What d’you like?’
    ‘Boleros most of the time, Mexican corridos, tangos sometimes.’
    ‘That’s because you prefer words to bodies. Rock is music for the body, the sorts you like all have words you have to listen to.’
    Carvalho stares her up and down. Alma smiles and shakes her head.
    ‘No chance. Pignatari – grey ponytail and all – is still singing rock music, in some of the poorest neighbourhoods down by the river here. In Barracas or La Boca, but not the Boca for tourists we’re in now, all the painted housefronts of Caminito. Perhaps Raúl’s gone to ask him for help. Another loser. Norman. Pignatari.’
    ‘Are you a loser too?’
    ‘He doesn’t want to see me, and I don’t want to see him.’
    ‘Will you take me to the tango place where Norman performs?’
    ‘I’ll take you when you’re ready’
    ‘Ready for what?’
    ‘Just ready, that’s all, my little Masked Galician.’
    Walking aimlessly has its limits and its cost. Carvalho is suddenly surrounded by a mass of bodies, and in all the confusion thinks he spots a police badge. A voice confirms this, shouting: ‘Police!’ Then things get even more confused because he’s being shoved around, then pushed up against a wall and forced to spread his arms and legs. He’s searched by knowing hands he only notices when they feel his balls. Then they go through his pockets. A long switch blade and a plastic bag full of a white powder fall to the ground. Cocaine, Carvalho says to himself with a grimace. Rough hands turn him around. Carvalho finds himself faced by Oscar Pascuali and two plainclothes policemen, one of them the excitable Vladimiro. Pascuali stares down at the ground, where the knife and the plastic bag look as if they’re drawing attention to themselves. Pascuali’s voice is cold; his breath is warm.
    ‘Weapons and drugs.’
    ‘How d’you know they’re drugs? It could be detergent. I live alone, I have to do my own washing. I use Surf.’
    Pascuali’s hand grabs the bag, opens it. He pokes a finger inside, sniffs it, thrusts it under Carvalho’s nose.
    ‘Surf? Omo?’
    ‘I don’t know the names of brands in Argentina.’
    ‘Detergents are the same the world over.’
    Carvalho feels it’s time to show his impatience. ‘You’ve been reading too many cheap thrillers. Any doctor, even a police one, could tell you I haven’t sniffed a thing since my first communion. The knife is mine, the drugs are yours.’
    Pascuali hands him back the blade, and puts the plastic bag in his own jacket pocket. ‘We’ll leave it there for now. But it would be easy enough for you to turn up one day with your nose full of cocaine and snot, and your apartment stuffed with bags like this. Did you tell your friend I’d paid you a visit?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘It was men’s business. The less we tell women about our affairs, the better.’
    ‘Ask her about me.’
    ‘Are you a dirty war veteran?’
    ‘Yes, from a really dirty war: the Malvinas War.’
    ‘So we’re all losers. When I was a boy, I lost the Spanish Civil War. Alma lost the dirty war, and you lost in the Falklands. Why don’t we get together and form a veterans’ association?’
    Someone behind Pascuali spits an insult at Carvalho. But it’s not Vladimiro, who is staring at the detective with something like respect. It’s the other cop, an inexperienced-looking youth. Pascuali shakes his head