snatches of subdued conversation, nothing threatening, no loud vibrations.
It was the Buenos Aires siesta hour, according to Ballard; quite different
from Rome’s afternoon or the Paris lunch. Dinner in BA was very late, by the
rest of the world’s schedule. Ten, ten-thirty, even midnight was not out of
the question.
The screeching bird was not bothered by the inhabitants of the C6rdoba
apartment house; yet still he kept up his strident alarms.
And then David saw why.
On the roof, obscured but not hidden by the branches of the fruit tree,
were the outlines of two men.
They were crouched, staring downward; staring, he was sure, at him.
Spaulding judged the position of the main intersecting tree limb and rolled
his head slightly, as if the long-awaited sleep were upon him, his neck
resting in exhaustion on his right shoulder, the drink barely held by a
relaxed hand, millimeters from the brick pavement.
It helped; he could see better, not well. Enough, however, to make out the
sharp, straight silhouette of a rifle barrel, the orange sun careening off
its black steel. It was stationary, in an arrest position under the arm of
the man on the right. No movement was made to raise it, to aim it; it
remained immobile, cradled.
Somehow, it was more ominous that way, thought Spaulding. As though in the
arms of a killer guard who was sure his prisoner could not possibly vault
the stockade; there was plenty of time to shoulder and fire.
David carried through his charade. He raised his hand slightly and let his
drink fall. The sound of the minor crash ‘awakened’ him; he shook the
pretended sleep from his head and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. As he
did so, he maneuvered his face casually upward. The figures on the roof had
stepped back on the terracotta tiles. There would be no shots. Not directed
at him.
He picked up a few pieces of the glass, rose from the chair and walked into
the apartment as a tired man does when annoyed with his own carelessness.
Slowly, with barely controlled irritation.
Once he crossed the saddle of the door, beneath the sightline of the roof,
he threw the glass fragments into a wastebasket and walked rapidly into the
bedroom. He opened the top drawer of the
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bureau, separated some handkerchiefs and withdrew his revolver. , He clamped
it inside his belt and picked up his jacket from the chair in which he’d
thrown it earlier. He put it on, satisfied that it concealed the weapon.
He crossed out into the living room, to the apartment door, and opened it
silently.
The staircase was against the left wall and David swore to himself, cursing
the architect of this particular Avenida C6rdoba building – or the
profuseness of lumber in Argentina. The stairs were made of wood, the
brightly polished wax not concealing the obvious fact that they were
ancient and probably squeaked like hell.
He closed his apartment door and approached the staircase, putting his feet
on the first step.
It creaked the solid creak of antique shops.
He had four flights to go; the first three were unimportant. He to6k the
steps two at a time, discovering that if he hugged the wall, the noise of
his ascent was minimized.
Sixty seconds later he faced a closed door marked with a sign – in
goddamned curlicued Castilian lettering:
El Techo.
The roof.
The door, as the stairs, was old. Decades of seasonal heat and humidity had
caused the wood to swell about the hinges; the borders were forced into the
frame.
It, too, would scream his arrival if he opened it slowly.
There was no other way: he slipped the weapon out of his belt and took one
step back on the tiny platform. He judged the frame – the concrete walls –
surrounding the old wooden door and with an adequate intake of breath, he
pulled at the handle, yanked the door open and jumped diagonally into the
right wall, slamming his back against the concrete.
The two men whirled around, stunned. They were thirty feet from David at
the edge of the sloping roof. The man with the rifle hesitated, then raised
the weapon into waist-firing position. Spaulding had his pistol aimed
directly into the man’s chest. However, the man with the gun did not have
the look of one about to fire at a target; the hesitation was deliberate,
not the result of panic or indecision.
The second man shouted in Spanish; David recognized the accent as southern
Spain, not Argentine. ‘Por favor, seflor I’
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. Spaulding replied in English to establish their understanding, or lack of
it. ‘Lower that rifle. Now!’
The first man did so, holding it by the stock. ‘You are in error,’ he said
in halting English. ‘There have been . . . how do you say, ladrones . . .
thieves in the neighborhood.’
David walked over the metal transom onto the roof, holding his pistol on
the two men. ‘You’re not very convincing. Se dan corte, amigos. You’re not
from Buenos Aires.’
‘There are a great many people in this neighborhood who are as we:
displaced, sehor. This is a community of… not the native born,’ said the
second man.
‘You’re telling me you weren’t up here for my benefit? You weren’t watching
meT
‘It was coincidental, I assure you,’ said the man with the rifle.
‘Es la verdad,’ added the other. ‘Two habitaciones have been broken into
during the past week. The police do not help; we are … extranjeros,
foreigners to them. We protect ourselves.’
Spaulding watched the men closely. There was no waver in either man’s
expression, no hint of lies. No essential fear.
‘I’m with the American embassy,’ said David curtly. There was no reaction
from either extranjero. ‘I must ask. you for identification.’
‘Qui cosa?’The man with the gun.
‘Papers. Your names…. Certificados.’
‘Por cierlo, en seguida.’ The second man reached back into his trousers
pocket; Spaulding raised the pistol slightly, in warning.
The man hesitated, now showing his fear. ‘Only a registro, sehor. We all
must carry them…. Please. In my cartera.’
David held out his left hand as the second man gave him a cheap leather
wallet. He flipped it open with minor feelings of regret. There was a kind
of helplessness about the two extranjeros; he’d seen the look thousands of
times. Franco’s Falangistas were experts at provoking it.
He looked quickly down at the cellophane window of the billfold; it was
cracked with age.
Suddenly, the barrel of the rifle came crashing across his right wrist; the
pain was excruciating. Then his hand was being twisted “pertly inward and
down; he had no choice but to release the weapon and try to kick it away on
the sloping roof. To hold it would mean breaking his wrist.
He did so as his left arm was being hammerlocked – gami
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expertly – up over his neck. He lashed his foot out at the unarmed
extraniero, who had hold of his hand. He caught him in the stomach and as
the man bent forward, David crossed his weight and kicked again, sending the
man tumbling down on the tiled incline.
David fell in the thrust direction of the harnmerlock – downward, to his
rear – and as the first man countered the position, Spaulding brought his
right elbow back up, crushing into the man’s groin. The arm was released as
the extraniero tried to regain his balance.
He wasn’t quick enough; Spaulding whipped to his left and brought his knee
up into the man’s throat. The rifle clattered on the tiles and rolled
downward on the slope. The man sank, blood dribbling from his mouth where
his teeth had punctured the skin.
Spaulding heard the sound behind him and turned.
He was too late. The second extranjero was over him, and David could hear
the whistling of his own pistol piercing the air above him, crashing down
into his skull.
All was black. Void.
‘They described the right attitude but the wrong section of town,’ said
Ballard, sitting across the room from David, who held an ice pack to his
head. ‘The extranjeros are concentrated in the west areas of the La Boca
district. They’ve got a hell of a crime rate over them; the policia prefer
strolling the parks rather than those streets. And the Grupo – the GOU –
has no love for extranferos.9
‘You’re no help,’ said Spaulding, shifting the ice pack around in circles
on the back of his head.
‘Well, they weren’t out to kill you. They could have thrown you off or just
left you on the edge; five to one you’d’ve rolled over and down four
flights.’
11 knew they weren’t intent on killing me. . .
‘How?’
‘They could have done that easily before. I think they were waiting for me
to go out. Id unpacked; they’d have the apartment to themselves.’