Silent Island Page 7

  “It’s not a cult,” she carried on. “It’s more than that. A cult is nothing but a term, a word.”

  “How did you convince him?” I asked. “He was an intelligent person.”

  “You’re not aware of it,” she explained. The brainwashing is gradual and subtle. You never realize you are being brainwashed.”

  “But he did, didn’t he?”

  “No,” she said. “But I did. I was the one who got him into it, and also, the one who tried to get him out.”

  “But... ?”

  “Antonio was committed to the group,” she said. “He had gotten himself in a dead end.”

  “That’s why they sent Rocamora,” I deduced. “To get him back into the pen.”

  “More or less,” she responded. “It was a blow by chance. Rocamora killed a girl and didn’t know who to turn to, so he told Hidalgo.”

  “Why did he kill the girl?” I asked.

  “Cause he meant to kill me,” she said. “The poor moron got it wrong. He was sloppy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They wanted to kill me to prevent me from influencing him,” she continued. “But Rocamora went after the wrong girl.”

  “How does someone end up killing the wrong person?”

  “I guess it happens,” she said.

  “So, Hidalgo disappeared to protect you,” I carried on, helping her embellish her lie. “He found out what was going on.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “They want me.”

  “It was you who was looking for me all this time,” I said. “Right?”

  “These people are dangerous,” the girl explained. “They are powerful, more than you can imagine.”

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked. “How come I had never heard about you until now?”

  Clara reached into her bag, pulled out a set of keys, and placed them on the table.

  “These are the keys to the apartment we rented as common ground,” she said behind her sunglasses. The noise of the television was heard in the background. “There is a box under the bedroom floor,”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I am not Hidalgo. I’m not playing your game.” She pushed the keys toward me. “I’ve told you already. What makes you think that I want to get involved?”

  “It’s in your eyes,” she said. “You want to write this story.”

  “Right now,” I replied, “I’m worried about other things.”

  “In that box” — she pushed the keys further on the table — “you will find what you need to clean your name.”

  “I haven’t done anything, understood?” I insisted. “I am innocent. If the police think I otherwise, they have to prove it.”

  “You’ll do it,” she said.

  Despite her insolence, she knew how to convince through emotions. She had put me against the wall and left me without a choice. My curiosity surpassed my logic. The desire to know what was in the apartment became stronger.

  “What will you get out of this?” I asked.

  “Justice,” she said and took off her glasses. She revealed her eye, unpleasant and bruised. It was bulging and swollen like a tennis ball. Someone had worked her over unsparingly. “Justice for him, for me, and for all those who tried.”

  She put her glasses back on.

  “I need more information,” I said. “I still have a lot of questions.”

  “Everything is in the box, Gabriel” — she looked exhausted, like her energy had withered during the conversation — “names, addresses, photos. Now go.”

  My legs were shaking. I was sweating cold under the clothes.

  I got up from the table and put the keys in my pocket.

  “Will we meet again?” I asked on my way out.

  She remained seated.

  “Maybe,” she sighed. “Some day.”

  “I have one last question,” I replied.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you are the only one they fear,” said the woman. “Hidalgo told us about you. You were his obsession, a standard to surpass. You’re a good man, you know? He looked up to you until he turned you into his foe. He was wrong, though. Antonio was his own worst enemy. For those below in the hierarchy, you are a demon, the reason for everything that is happening.”

  Holding my breath, I turned around and got out of there, thinking about what she had told me. I walked to the gate that Clara had indicated me in a straight line. I did not know whether I should believe her story, but I the mere idea that something eerie might be happening frightened me. I felt hurt and impotent when I thought of Hidalgo. I could not understand what I had done for him to obsess over me. We all have our fears and obsessions. They are part of life. Sometimes, they are under control, even if they keep us up at night. His may have gone too far.

  Overwhelmed by the conversation, I stopped to breathe fresh air. I stopped in the median strip to light a cigarette.

  When I took the lighter to my face, a reflection on its surface caught my attention; I was being followed. A red car was parked in the middle of the block, several meters behind me. The engine was running. I could not see who drove it but knew it was a man because of his silhouette and his arm resting on the driver’s window. As I continued walking, the car cut on the distance between us, and increasing the noise in my ears. I walked with a brisk pace, hoping to run into a street with oncoming traffic that forced him to stop. The car sped up, and I started running as fast as my legs allowed. He caught up with me and followed me side by side. It was a man wearing sunglasses. He approached the sidewalk and hit a parked car. I heard an impact. I stopped with the heart on the throat; he had barely missed me. I pushed a green garbage container against the vehicle. It was light, it must have been empty. It was not a smart move. I continued running to the next corner. He closed in on me. The streets were deserted at that time, typical of the summer in the city. The alley was clear; there was nowhere to hide or get behind to protect myself from a charge. Then I heard a motorcycle. The noise was coming from the next street. Terrified, I looked at the car, praying. The driver, hidden behind his glasses, revved the engine and burned tire.

  I was paralyzed and expecting my executioner to charge against me, leaving me in a wheelchair for life, in the best of cases, when something happened.

  Out of the blue, a red brick impacted the windshield, shattering it in thousands of crumbs.

  “Gabriel!” a female voice shouted. It was Blanca, riding a blue Vespa. “Get on!”

  I ran to her, got on the scooter, and its engine roared, leaving a trail of smoke behind us. We darted like an arrow toward the north. Blanca passed me a helmet that I put on, and then I held on to her. A miracle, a fucking miracle. I felt nauseated, I wanted to throw up, and at the same time jump off the motorcycle to celebrate life.

  We left the car behind and got lost until we reached Albufereta beach. Blanca stopped next to the cliff and we saw the water from above.

  “My God!” I said when I got off the scooter. “What was that?”

  I felt as though I had woken up in the middle of the night after doing a line.

  She took off her helmet.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  I approached her and stood in front of her.

  “What were you doing there? Speak!” I asked at the time I pointed my finger at her face. “Were you following me?”

  “I just saved your life,” she said. “You are such a jerk.”

  I walked down the stairs that separated the tarmac from the beach and sat on a rock.

  Blanca followed me.

  “What do you want?” I asked exhausted.

  “I have pictures of you with that woman,” she said cold and squarely, like everything that had happened one hour before had occurred in a summer blockbuster instead of real life. “I want to know what is going on.”

  “Don’t you understand?” I asked her, looking her in the eye. “You have a fucking problem.”

  “No. It’s you
who has it,” she said and shut me up. “This is my story. I’m going to write it, and there is nothing that you or anyone else can do to stop me.”

  I owed her one... and my life.

  Blanca was barely starting.

  We were screwed.

  * * *

  Blanca and I talked about what had just happened. She had followed me. She had been doing it from the beginning. I do not know how I did not notice it before.

  She seemed enthusiastic about the story and determined to see the development through. However, there was another factor, other than the professional one, that kept her going. I deduced that she must have had a powerful emotional motive that she would eventually reveal to me.

  For my part, I did not have too many options. I found myself in a mice labyrinth that was becoming harder and harder to get out of.

  The circle was expanding.

  Clara was climbing positions.

  I had never heard her name, nor seen her face on the local press or television. Neither had Blanca. I always thought that powerful and influential people in Alicante were well-known whether they wanted it or not. I thought it was a fact one could not go against. Social circles could always be broken down, and in the end, one call would lead to another, and from there, a new contact. You could fit the names in one hour, one day. Nevertheless, I had never stopped to think of social sewers before. It was a separate, parallel habitat. It was a marginal stage from which the press preferred to stay away and never to step in. Writing a story about it implied facing the corrupted power of the ruling class. It was easier and safer to avoid them if one wished to keep their meager salary.

  I recalled that once in the past, I had written a similar story. It was about a kid who had managed to abandon a religious sect. The organization, conformed by psychiatrists and therapists, had robbed their members of millions of euros. It all happened in silence, away from the limelight. Families contacted one another, and it ended up engulfing a whole neighborhood. Later, while the trial against the leaders was taking place, the kid visited each one of their homes, and beheaded them with a chainsaw. Then he shot himself in the temple. A dark chapter that was soon forgotten, as it often happened with that kind of stories. We had gotten used to reading such stories that we had lost our shock capability.

  “Will you go to the police?” Blanca asked.

  “No,” I replied. Her countenance relaxed. She did not want me to give up on the story. Clara had made it clear. All I needed was in that box, in the apartment. I could not afford to act on false information. Officer Rojo would not take me seriously if I told him a story proper for the Hugo Awards . “You have to come with me into that apartment.”

  “The box?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I guess so.”

  “They must be after the same thing and will be watching; we have to be careful.”

  “They won’t find it,” I added.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because they don’t know what they are looking for.”

  Blanca gave me a ride to my apartment and parked next to Ramiro’s bar, a Spanish café that resembled a pub and served the neighbors wine, tap beer, snacks, and football. The bar was full, a football match was on television although I do not remember who was playing.

  “Thank you,” I said and got off of the scooter.

  I gave her her helmet back and unintentionally touched her fingers. I felt something ignite between us. It may have been just static electricity or the tension of everything that we had experienced. Both of us felt it. Blanca looked at me with that sneaky and distrusting gaze of a troubled femme fatale like the one referenced in the song Burning; I noticed she wore a Velvet Underground T-shirt with the infamous yellow banana crumpled on her breasts and belly-button. There was a brief moment of awkward silence, during which our eyes fluttered around while our minds desperately sought for something to say. Blanca might be tough as a turtle shell, but her shyness was evident, so I tried my luck. “Do you want a beer? It’s on me... for saving my ass.”

  “There?” she said, pointing to the bar full of old men.

  “Hum... yes?” I replied.

  “Alright,” she said expressionless.

  “Let me go up to my apartment first,” I asked her. “It’ll only be a minute.”

  * * *

  Blanca went up to my apartment with me. I had no intention to show her my place. I admit that during those days, I thought more about my survival than about the chances I had of sleeping with her. When we walked out of the elevator, we got our speech back. I opened the door to my apartment. The doorknob was out of its place. It had been forced. Upon entering, everything was messy. This time, it seemed that they had entered looking for something specific.

  “What a mess,” Blanca said. “What do other girls say when they come?”

  “Don’t be a jerk,” I replied. “Someone broke into my place.”

  I rushed to my room. They had scoured through everything. The clothes were on the bed, the mattress had been slashed. The same with the rest of the rooms. They had taken my laptop, and the pictures I had pinned on a cork board.

  “Damn it!” I said, kicking the door. “This is the second time this has happened.”

  “They are a determined bunch. Do you know what they want?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I imagine they want to find something they can use against me.”

  Blanca took her camera out of a pocket and started taking pictures of the state of the rooms.

  “This should help us understand better,” she said while the shutter made its characteristic sound. “You’re not calling the police, are you?”

  I looked at her, enraged. She only cared about herself and her story and nothing else.

  I grabbed a picture frame and hurled it against the wall, a few meters away from her. There was a loud bang.

  “Are you crazy?” she shouted. “You could’ve killed me!”

  I took a crumpled cigarette out of the pocket, lit it, and walked out without listening to her words. I left her alone, paralyzed, yelling at me.

  I walked to the bar, ordered a whiskey with coke, and sat at the countertop, next to a group of potbellied forty-year-olds; they were looking away from me, watching the game on the television. I needed to think and decide what to do. I could either call the police and put this business to rest or, like the man in the factory, jump into the meat grinder. I had a hangover, malaise, and a headache, and needed to sleep. The dryness of my head prevented me from thinking clearly. I was hungry. I ordered a tenderloin sandwich. I took several bites and began watching the game. The beverage felt too strong, and I found it difficult to drink. I understood that if they had broken in twice, they could do it again. The door was old, and the lock was cheap. Luckily, there was not much to steal in my apartment. One day, I just arrived in there, carrying two suitcases and that was it. I never bought furniture or clothes. Just food, some cleaning products, and little else. I did not care. I liked the idea of living sparingly. I had a photo of Steve Jobs under a lamp, and that helped me think we were alike, although I did not have half his talent or a hundredth of the spare change in his pocket. He was a genius on his own, and I considered myself so in my own field. The only problem was that I still had to discover what made me unique. They had not taken the notebooks. That flock of dimwits dismissed the most important in human heritage — writing. I used to take notes in cheap notebooks that I would buy in Chinese trinket-stores. I wrote on dirty slips of paper and newspaper that I stapled and turned into makeshift notebooks. I even took notes in the margins of novels that I borrowed from public libraries. Writing was one more vital function in my life, even more so than eating or walking.

  Blanca showed up at the bar after a while. She was very understanding and decided to disregard my previous temper tantrum.

  She grabbed a stool and sat at the countertop next to me. Among the noise from the television and the voices from those rough men, I heard her sweet words.

/>   “You can sleep on my couch,” she said. “Stay as long as you need.”

  Blanca Desastres, the girl who only thought of herself, was welcoming me into her home. I cannot fathom how pitiful I must have looked before her eyes when I walked out of the apartment.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Just don’t make me regret it,” she told me.

  “Thank you,” I said embarrassedly. “I won’t be a problem.”

  The waiter brought her a beer, and we toasted. Her gesture made me feel better. I had yet not assimilated the event but felt the need for a hug and sleeping with someone. Of course, I would sleep on the sofa that night, and possibly many more nights before I could sleep with her in my arms. But it did not matter. I was very lonely. The remembrance of Hidalgo corresponded to a person who had ceased to exist long ago and whose body had just departed too.

  I looked at the highball glass; the ice had melted a bit, and the drink was watery. I raised the glass against the light and drank bottoms up. The liquid soaked my teeth, caressed my throat, and went down the esophagus. I had a lot of work ahead.

  Soon, I would have to save myself and Hidalgo’s memory, save us all, and either get rid of Blanca or embrace her as a part of my life. I was running a race against the clock.

  The bar emptied little by little, leaving us both in the mundane desolation proper of reflections. I looked through my glass and saw those people in striped short-sleeved shirts open below the collarbone.

  The night was damp, and I would gladly take that sofa.

  I looked at Blanca and devoured her with the gaze.

  She looked at my mouth.

  We were close.

  Then she said.

  “Are you done? The bar is closing.”

  8

  I woke up with the smell of freshly made coffee and some unbearable music that came out of a laptop computer. I felt the seams of the sofa’s upholstery marked on my face, for I had slept on my stomach. Blanca rented a one-bedroom apartment, and its kitchen merged with the living room, where I found myself. The walls were painted white, and the furnishings were scarce, and other than the sofa and a few other pieces, there was only an Ikea table. I opened one eye and saw her with her hair tied in a ponytail; behind her was a table with her notebook and computer.