Betty Boo Read online

  Jaime Brena returns to his desk. Today he has to write about the opening of a state-of-the-art nursery school in Mataderos. Rinaldi’s asked him to do it, and doubtless the mayor asked Rinaldi. Not that Rinaldi and the mayor are close friends, but these days they are united in hatred of the president. Having to write about a nursery school isn’t all bad, Jaime Brena decides, since it means taking a trip out to Mataderos in order to get the piece done by mid-afternoon. Just knowing that he’s going to spend part of his working day outside, idling around some neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, makes him feel happy. How little it takes to please you these days, Jaime Brena, he says to himself, and starts typing. Let me take you out to tea in Mataderos, he suggests to Karina Vives, who has just arrived. Tea in Mataderos! Since when are you so cool, Brena? Would that be Mataderos Soho or Mataderos Hollywood? She sits down at her desk. Mock me all you like, girl, one of these nights I’m going to take you dancing with the gauchos at the rural fair on Avenida de los Corrales and then you’ll really see what a good time is. She smiles again.

  As Jaime Brena is writing the title of his puff-piece for the mayor, yards away the Crime boy is looking online for information about all the people who work with Attorney Pueyrredón to see if by chance he knows any of them while, over in La Maravillosa, Nurit Iscar is trying to write a new piece for El Tribuno. None of the names the boy finds sound familiar; nothing she writes satisfies her. She looks out of the window: everything is green. She closes the curtains and switches on a light to recreate the feeling of being at home, in the boys’ room – which she turned into a study when they went to live on their own – sitting in her own chair and leaning on the big cushion with the knitted rice-stitch cover that once belonged to her mother. She should have brought it with her, the cushion at least, to feel more at home here. And one of the plant pots from her balcony; her plants may be less spectacular than the ones that surround her here, but at least they are hers. She could stare at the moon now, like ET, whispering “go home” in a shaky voice, but Nurit Iscar finds a crisper articulation for her predicament. What if I fuck up? This fertile line of thought is interrupted by a call from Carmen Terrada. You don’t sound yourself today, her friend says. I’m going through my second trial by fire at La Maravillosa. The first was getting in the entrance gate. Yes, I remember, Carmen says. Who are you picking fights with now? Nobody yet. So? What’s the problem? City withdrawal syndrome: the trees are stressing me out, the greenery is stressing me out, the 6 a.m. morning chorus is seriously doing my head in, not to mention the noise of crickets and the frogs merrily croaking all night. Do you know what I need, Carmen? A man, my love. No: concrete. Lots of concrete and a café on the corner of my street, Nurit says, and she goes on: Imagine what it’s like to go out for a stroll and know that you’re not going to meet anyone intriguing, that everything around you is nature, sport, so-called healthy living, and empty houses. Because even though there are people, you never see them unless they’re engaged in some sporting activity. Even if only jogging. Imagine what it’s like feeling that nothing is going to surprise you, that nothing unusual can happen to you, Nurit says. Well, I don’t know – I suppose you could get your throat slashed from ear to ear; or had you forgotten the original reason for going there? Of course not, but I tell you, give it a couple more days of solitude and birdsong and I’m going to be running out into the street begging someone to slash my throat, Nurit says. Don’t worry, Paula and I will come over early Saturday morning and stay with you all weekend, her friend promises. Thank you, Nurit says, that would be really great. Another thing, Carmen Terrada asks, did the house turn out to have a pool?

  The Crime boy’s typing his piece, still shell-shocked after Rinaldi’s outburst in the newsroom a few minutes ago. Jaime Brena is writing about the facilities at the Mataderos nursery, which so far he has only read about in the press release sent from the mayor’s office. And I’ve got the nerve to tell that boy that I don’t do publicity for anyone, he thinks, banging the keys with disgust. Rinaldi is composing the next morning’s editorial, starting with the title: Another of the President’s Lies. Karina Vives is transcribing an interview she’s just done with the Egyptian/Italian/Mexican poet, Fabio Morabito. Nurit Iscar is typing her second piece.

  Day after day, in this place, silence is the winner. The residents are frightened and perplexed: two murders, so strange and so similar, in the same house, inside the same “country club” (the self-styled name of this and other similar places, which have come together in loose association). But they don’t say anything, they don’t talk about it any more as they did during the first days. They try to think of something else and carry on with their lives as usual. Many people, most people, are content to think: this is something to do with them, the Chazarretas, and not with us. As though the person who entered the house to kill for a second time had come to finish off some business that only implicated Pedro Chazarreta and Gloria Echagüe. Or at least them and their family. Or them, their family and their closest friends. Or them, their family, their closest friends and their business partners. So the circle widens. But not too much. It doesn’t reach “us”. “We” are safe. And who are “we”? We are all the other residents, still alive, still living in La Maravillosa. There are questions, however, that make those residents uncomfortable and which they therefore neither want to be asked or to ask themselves. Because everybody living in this place, whether or not they acknowledge it, knows that there aren’t that many possible answers: either the murderer lives in La Maravillosa; or he entered and left through the security gate, with the authorization of a resident; or (and this is what makes the residents especially anxious) the club’s security measures failed. Today, anyone who wants to come into a private community like this has to provide: authorization from an adult resident (a seventeen-year-old cannot bring in a friend, nor can a maid authorize anyone to enter unless she has written permission from the owners of the house); an ID card (before, it was enough to give the number without necessarily showing the document itself, because people regularly entering the club have their photographs stored on the computer and can be checked against records on the spot, but since a recent burglary in a neighbouring private community, documents must now be shown, even if the face at the gate is identical to the one on the screen); a third-party insurance policy in the name of the person driving the car (a man driving his wife’s car would be in trouble); a photo (if it’s the first time the person is coming in, and even though this is redundant now that ID also has to be shown; “better too much than too little” is one of the head of security’s many sayings; others are “prevention is better than cure”, “better to be safe than sorry” and “everyone’s a suspect until he can prove otherwise”); inspection of the car boot on entrance and exit and now also under the bonnet – in case a visitor conceals some stolen object between the radiator and the engine? Who knows. For a few weeks now it has also been obligatory for a vehicle entering at night to turn off the external lights and turn on the internal ones until the guard has approached and checked who is travelling inside, which is exactly the same procedure for inspection of vehicles as prevailed during the military dictatorship. But even with all these safeguards – authorization, insurance, photo, document, boot in order and lights off, Chazarreta’s murderer got in. So either he was already in, or a resident authorized his entry, or he bypassed security without the guard noticing anything strange. And that is what’s really making “us” feel bad.

  Nurit Iscar saves the text and sends it to Rinaldi, but this time without copying in the Crime boy. He gets the same piece in a separate email addressed only to him. She tries to make her covering note friendly, dispensing with all formalities in favour of a breezy Hello! Then: Here’s the piece for tomorrow. I really liked your article yesterday. Warmly, Nurit Iscar. And then she adds a PS at the end of the text: If you’d like to see the scene of this crime we’re both writing about, you could come some time over the weekend, or whenever suits you. And so that there can be no s
uspicion that the invitation conceals some secret intention to throw herself at a boy who must be nearly thirty years younger than her, she adds another line to the PS: Feel free to bring someone else.

  The Crime boy opens Nurit Iscar’s email as soon as it pops up in his inbox. The invitation to La Maravillosa surprises him. Without even reading her latest dispatch, he stands up and walks over to Jaime Brena’s desk. What do you think the chick’s game is? The chick? Betty Boo. She’s just sent me her piece without sending it to Rinaldi and she’s inviting me over to La Maravillosa. She’s just being friendly; now and then you meet someone whose first thought isn’t to screw you over to get to the top faster or to get your job. Like me, you mean? No, kid, it’s not your fault that I am where I am, or rather that I’m not where I ought to be. Anyway, are you going to go? It’s a great opportunity and I shouldn’t waste it but – I don’t know. Remember the first lesson, kid, get out into the street. You have to go and be there, even if the streets inside that place are very different to the streets of Mataderos. What’s Mataderos got to do with it? Nothing, just that I have to go there in a minute to cover the opening of a new nursery. Want to come with me? If you’ll come with me to La Maravillosa at the weekend. I can’t just turn up at the chick’s house. Not the chick, Brena: Nurit Iscar – practise what you preach. Quite right. Nurit Iscar. Betty Boo. And yes you can, the boy insists, because she said in the email that I can bring someone if I like. She means your girlfriend, numskull. But she didn’t spell that out, so I can go with whoever I like. I already know La Maravillosa, says Jaime Brena. I went there to interview Chazarreta. He hated me after that interview. Why? Because I didn’t say what he wanted me to say; because he couldn’t control me. The bastard was an arch-manipulator, and those are the types that scare me most. I can defend myself in a fist fight; manipulation is much harder to tackle. So will you come with me? the Crime boy insists. If you’ve been there before, that’s even better. It will be a privilege to go with someone who knows the lay of the land. Jaime Brena’s gaze stays on the boy. This kid is nothing like how I was when I started working at El Tribuno, he thinks, but there’s something in him that makes me want to help him, even if it’s the same instinct that prompts someone to help a blind man across the road. Then he smiles and agrees: OK, you’re manipulating me, too, kid, but I like you. Thank you, that’s quite a leap forward in our relationship, the Crime boy jokes. And if it turns out that Nurit Iscar was expecting you to come with a girl, I can always squeeze your hand and give you a little kiss. You’re a bit old for me, Brena. José de Zer would have done it if the situation called for it, Brena says. You see, this can be your third lesson, kid: find out which city very close to the capital, birthplace of one of our greatest football players, got its name thanks to José de Zer and why he became famous for the catchphrase “Follow me, Chango, follow me!” I’ll find out, the boy says with enthusiasm. I’m just going to finish this piece and then I can go with you to Mataderos. Great stuff. The boy goes off and Brena looks over to Karina: See? I’ve found a colleague who’s prepared to accompany me to Mataderos even though it isn’t cool. How quickly you replace me, Brena. You’re irreplaceable, gorgeous, even though you’ve abandoned me. She smiles but says nothing, knowing he’s half-right; she’s not avoiding him because she doesn’t care about him but because spending time with him would force her to make a decision and tell him her secret. Why does Jaime Brena’s gaze affect her so powerfully? She has a father and older brothers. Why, if she could choose a father, would she opt for Brena over her own? She looks at him and smiles again. He smiles back but doesn’t say anything; he has no doubt that she’s going through something that she doesn’t yet want to tell him about. The Crime boy stands up and walks back to Brena’s desk. What’s up, kid? Brena asks. I owe you something, the boy says. I don’t understand. What do you owe me? An answer to the question you asked me in the first lesson of this crash course for lamebrain journalists. Ah, come on! It’s not such a big deal. The boy continues: Gustavo Germán González, of the Crítica newspaper, disguised himself as a plumber in order to gain access to the morgue and find out what the forensic specialists were saying about the body of the Radical councillor, and afterwards wrote: “There is no cyanide”. No traces of cyanide were present in the corpse, and he was the first to publish that. Jaime Brena smiles with a certain satisfaction. Have I passed? the boy asks. Yes, kid, you’ve passed and you’re learning, says Brena. You’re going to learn a whole lot more, too.

  11

  Nurit Iscar decides that it might be as well to get some help in for the weekend. Her friends are like family and good at mucking in, but the house is big and gets full of dust and tree pollen. Besides, if the Crime boy does come, she’d like everything to be looking nice and not to worry about food, drink, washing up, replacing toilet rolls and all those other household chores, so that she can concentrate on him, take him around the neighbourhood and over to see Chazarreta’s house (which is still sectioned off with Do Not Cross tape and guarded by a police inspector from the Buenos Aires division and a guard from the club’s private security team) as well as any other places he may want to see. She guesses that the best way to find help would be to ask a neighbour’s maid if she has a friend, relation or acquaintance she can recommend. So Nurit goes outside and waits for a maid to walk past. But none does. A car goes past, though, and another one ten minutes later and fifteen minutes after that a four-by-four. There must be a quicker method than this; perhaps it would be better to knock on some doors. Nurit tries the house on the right, with no luck. Nobody comes to the door of the house opposite, either. She can’t bring herself to ring the bell of the house on the left: if no living being comes out of that one either (dogs and other domestic animals don’t count) the sensation of absolute solitude could plunge her into a state of anguish from which she might never recover. If she, Nurit Iscar, is the only human being in the immediate vicinity, she’d rather not know about it. She lets a few minutes pass, trying to project a sense of calm she doesn’t feel. But waiting only makes her more anxious. In order to see people, she fears, it’s going to be necessary to go to the store, the tennis courts, the gym or the bar in the golf clubhouse. And Nurit Iscar really wants to see people. She’s on the point of succumbing to another bout of city withdrawal syndrome when she sees a maid come round the corner walking a chihuahua. Nurit takes a deep breath, as though having narrowly escaped a peril only she can recognize. The woman seems rather annoyed by the task she’s been given and not surprisingly, given the hysterical behaviour of the dog. Devil’s spawn, she says under her breath as she walks past. Nurit nods sympathetically then takes advantage of the exchange to ask if the woman knows anyone who could help her at the weekend. The maid tries to stand still to answer her, but the dog starts barking furiously, so she’s obliged to keep walking, with Nurit beside her. I’ve got a daughter, she says, but she can’t do weekends; her husband wouldn’t let her. Weekdays she can do, if you like, but he won’t let her do weekends. And the woman is about to launch into a diatribe about her son-in-law, but Nurit Iscar interrupts her to say that unfortunately she only needs someone to help for a few hours on Saturday and then again on Sunday and that the rest of the week she can manage alone. There won’t be many of them: just her, two friends and a work colleague, but even so she’d like someone to give her a hand. That’s a shame; her husband won’t let her do weekends, the woman repeats. That is a shame, agrees Nurit. The maid, still struggling with the chihuahua, waves to a gardener who’s cycling past carrying a load of cut grass on the handlebars and, without Nurit saying anything, asks the man if he knows of anyone. He stops and they try to stop too, but the dog’s hysterical barking makes any kind of conversation impossible. So the man turns his bike around and walks with them for a few yards in the direction the chihuahua wants to go. I did have someone, the man says; my wife, in fact, but she’s just found something, she got a job yesterday after three months with no work. It’s been really tough but yesterday she found someth
ing. Then, as though just remembering this, the man tells Nurit that at weekends women seeking casual work tend to gather at the other side of the club’s entrance barrier, and that she’ll probably find someone there. Sometimes the guards chase them away, but it’s a public street, so they can stand there if they want, can’t they? Yes, they can, Nurit Iscar says, remembering her contretemps with the guards over the ownership of streets on her first day at La Maravillosa. It’s true, says the maid. I’ve seen them too. They come early on Saturdays. And if you need them, there are also men who can prepare an asado or wash your car, whatever you need, says the gardener. Nurit thanks them for this information and returns to the house. The man goes on his way. The woman has no option but to follow the dog, still griping about her daughter’s husband as she goes.