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Read with me. The Inferno begins on Good Friday in the year 1300. That would mean that on the eve of Dante´s journey we are at Thursday evening and some commentators believe that rather than Thursday April 7, it was perhaps Thursday March 24. Some 676 years later on March 24 1976, General Videla launched the coup that would lead to the bloodiest chapter in Argentina´s history. Exactly a year later, Isadora was born. The good thing about being born on the anniversary of the coup is that everyone remembers your birthday. Unforgettable. And you will forgive me I hope if I use the eve of the Inferno as a bridge between these events - historical and fictional. My own birthday is the second week of March so we combine the two in one celebration. But Diego has other plans so I find myself heading up the Autopista del Sol towards Ezeiza in his truck rather than helping with the preparations. He´s assured us we´ll be back in time after picking up his container that he shipped down from Miami - furniture and odds and ends from the bungalow in Little Havanna.

It´s warm, almost hot and the Air France Airbus is making a racket warming up it´s engines on another tarmac maybe a kilometer or so away. We´re at the warehouse and Diego is filling out forms and looking anxious. He´s worried his guitars might have been stolen. An officer with the Policia de Seguridad Aeroportuaria stomps by looking annoyed. There was a dust between them and some customs officials a while back over alleged bribes, so the situation may still be tense. Or maybe the officer is just having a bad day. I hear a woman´s voice, arguing loudly and angrily. Over there and she´s with that same officer and two, no three, customs officials. I notice musical equipment cases, quite a few of them, stacked up behind a counter. Let´s see ... I move closer. Killswitch Engage. I guess they´re in town for a show. I hear Luna Park mentioned by the woman while one offical stares at her sullenly, receiving the brunt of her indignation while the other two shuffle papers. Our customs official takes us over to the same counter. He needs a signature on one of the forms it seems. We´ve paid the duties and only need a final stamp and it´s done. The woman´s voice is more measured now but she´s still angry. She pulls out her phone,

Si!! Silvia! Si!! Sil - vi -a!! Estas sordo por dios!! ... aca en Ezeiza! Un descuido ... ya lo arreglo. Estan en Luna ya? Por dios nene!! Cuando carajo llegan??

I steal a glance at her paperwork. Hobbit Logisitcs Worldwide S.A. Brokers and Freight Forwarders, Special Logistics etc. I try not to smile. What would Tolkien think? Offices on Moreno ... I guess they´re in charge of getting the band´s equipment through customs. I wonder where Killswitch Engage´s road manager is. Silvia mentions something about Porto Alegre. Is he stuck there? I shift my attention to our own paperwork so as not to annoy or arouse the suspicions of Silvia. That´s a lot of expensive equipment stacked up there ... all ready and waiting. Our official gets the stamp required and we go hunting for a cart to load Diego´s container onto. I have to think quickly. I look back and see Silvia, two of the customs officials and the PSA cop head off to another part of the warehouse.

Late afternoon now but we´re back on highway 2 heading south. The Ford is stacked full and we had to scare up some bungee chords to hold it all in place. The good thing about a monitor board and speakers is they´re quite compact. I had loaded them up on another cart I had noticed nearby while Diego wheeled his own stuff out to the truck. The two customs officials didn´t notice or didn´t care. I loaded the board first into the back of the truck while Diego looked on quietly. He gave me a look and then simply loaded his own stuff on top so the stolen equipment wouldn´t be visible. So the JBL Floor Monitor system is ours and no longer Killswitch Engage´s. Hopefully a studio in Mardel will be interested; or a band. I doubt we´ll get more than a few thousand for it. It´s worth way more but we´ll have to take what we can get. Maybe 5 thousand. I´ll have to look up what it´s worth. We pass General Piran as a Tony Tur micro passes us doing well over 100 km an hour. The windows are open and Diego has Sherlyl Crow playing. Not a bad day´s work. I lean back and close my eyes, satisfied for now, and try to enjoy the rest of the ride.

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There´s a man with a long, yellow fiberglass fishing pole between his legs. He´s standing on the beach, just out of reach of the lapping waves. Unusual. Most stand on the short concrete and rubble piers that jot out to sea every hundred yards or so on this part of the shoreline making it look scalloped from the parapet up at street level. I climb over the wall and step onto the gravel and sand pathway that slopes down to the beach. Isa´s sunglasses, funky and sexy on her, look neurotic and absurd on my face. But they cover the shiner. It´s not a bad one, but I prefer not to let the neighbourhood know that Isa beat me up. I had managed to keep her kicks from my ribs and even though she landed one on my testicles it wasn´t a direct hit and didn´t hurt as much as you´d think. The adrenaline was flowing and I had moved quicker than I had thought I was capable of and Isa had tired fairly quickly being a smoker. But her first few volleys of punches and kicks were hard and direct. Of course the whole building must have heard everything but not even Diego came upstairs to knock on the door. I had passed him in the hallway heading upstairs and after I was sure that Isa wouldn´t take any more swings at me I had seen him through the kitchen window loading some tools or something into the back of his truck. He must have heard the noise though and even enjoyed my punishment ...

I take off my sandals and think about rolling up my pants but then snort disgustedly at myself. They´re WalMart Golf Capri´s so why the hell would I have to roll them up? I´m dazed and even a little confused, yes. Unlike the icebound traitors in the frozen absolute inner core of Hell this feels more like the shores of Dante´s Purgatory. A southern ocean, one lost soul staring at the water and a slow change. As you can imagine, my robbery of one innocent wandering Liz of Birmingham did not displease Isa one bit. But the rest ... She had looked angry and tired the minute I had walked in early that morning - she had obviously waited up all night and was on edge. Something about me had made her look quizzical for just one moment but then she had resumed her angry persona.

Donde carajo estuviste?
Estafe una inglesa. Tengo unos euros ... y los dolares obvio.
Aja ... y esa inglesa? Quien era?
Una maestra de viaje. En Puerto Madero.
A, que lindo! Y tomaste un cafe con esa puta? Una cervecita??
... La cogi y la estafe.

Had I phrased it differently she might not have hit me. But - I fucked her and I swindled her - is about as blunt as you can get. Something in me didn´t care, or more accurately cared more about the money I had made - even if it was only 300 euros. So the first punch was a direct hit and she landed a few more and then began screaming and aiming kicks at my ribs. It was over in a few minutes, I think. But it felt longer and it felt brutal. Primitive? Would that be the word? It was a matter of survival. Her wounded pride and rage at my infidelity would consume her unless she took satisfaction right there and then. And I realized that as I managed to keep my forearms between her kicks and my ribs. For some fool reason it reminded me for a short flash of high school football practice; forearm shivers let´s say. Isa had taken Tae Kwan Do as a young teenager. But it was her rage that had fueled her surprisingly athletic performance. I stop just at the edge of the wet sand. The fisherman is over on the other side of the pier, to my right. The first week of March is almost over and the weather is lovely, warm near 30 during the day and with a fresh breeze at night. I feel like stripping down and jumping into the sea. It would be just swimmable still. By early April the water is already fairly cold.

In the sullen explosive silence that followed our fight, I knew that a single word could kill what was left of our marriage. Why did I lie? About the worst possible betrayal in her eyes? At times I talk too much - a sort of semantic signal that I´m an afable, interesting and heck, just plain decent man. The last few months have stripped away that residue of self righteousness. And it´s a relief. I no longer have to stare puzzled at others as they live their lives. I have a life of my own. And it´s a very interesting one at that. So we both had waited. Me sitting in the kitchen staring out the window. Isa standing in the living room and not looking anywhere in particular. Finally, I had sensed her gaze on me so I had turned to look at her. Pain and rage on her face. But hatred? I had spoken quietly.

Habra que encontrar otra manera de hacer un trabajo.
Isa´s eyes had narrowed but then she had half nodded in a sort of visual hiccup. It´s a confused and startled gesture, perhaps involuntary. I speak again.
Soy un estafador ... amor. Y vamos a vivir de eso. O cuando laburo con Cagnazzo o cuando hago algo propio.

She jerked her cigarette to her lips and inhaled sharply and nodded again. She let me call her ´amor´. I think we may survive. I´m willing to risk she loves me still. She had nodded and smoked and looked at me. And she had let me take the cigarette from her fingers and stub it out. She had avoided making an appointment with the gynecologist but we would have to set something up soon. She hadn´t cried. We hadn´t hugged. Just silence and the crossing over into something new. Maybe another couple entering the world of petty swindles would be more elegant or more cynical about it. But we´re doing the best we can. And we´re still a we. Who do I thank ... God?

I walk slowly through the sand and hoist myself up onto the pier to get a better view of the man fishing with the pole between his legs. He has on blue jeans and a worn, rust colored sweater. He seems a pensioner. And he stares out at the water, looking for something. Mar del Plata, perhaps like other cities by the sea, forces you to contemplate your actions. To face up to who you are and what your next steps might be. You can´t lose yourself like in Buenos Aires amid the noise and movement. I slip off Isa´s shades and crouch down on my haunches and trace a line in the scattered sand that dusts the pockmarked concrete. A descending curve pointing towards the sea. I feel a rising impatience. I have to find another job, un trabajo, to sastisfy me. Isa should have lunch ready by now. I stand up and slip the sunglasses back on. Such a strange shore. My neighbourhood. My home. And my wife is waiting for me. I turn back and head through the sand, not bothering to take off my sandals.

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Da questa parte cadde giú dal cielo. It was on this side that he fell from heaven. Dante imagines Satan crashing to Earth in the southern hemisphere and all the land submerging itself under the seas and fleeing to the northern hemisphere leaving behind only the mount of purgatory. If you google-earth over the southern half of South America it does feel like the South Atlantic is swallowing up the continent: the bulk of Brazil gives way to an ever thinning cone with Tierra del Fuego a jagged, distant punctuation point. Center yourself on Buenos Aires and zoom in, keeping the shore of the Rio de La Plata in view. There I am, right downtown, emerging from the subte. Instead of going right to the end of line B, I get off at Florida. It´s very warm underground and I walk quicky up the steps to reach the sidewalk. The evening is muggy and overcast but a slight breeze provides just an edge of relief. Why did I get out here instead of at Alem where I could have grabbed a taxi and been at Retiro in five minutes? There´s something about this corner of downtown Buenos Aires - warehouses with rusted roofs and older mid century architecture crowded by mature shade trees and all facing the ever rising Puerto Madero just across the water. With that aching winter sky outside our apartment window in Mar del Plata I had read Sabato´s masterpiece On Heroes and Tombs. The middle section, A Report on the Blind, places an important pursuit right here down San Martin moving away from Plaza de Mayo and then turning down what is now Presidente Peron but what was then Cangallo. It´s an obssesive descent into a world of fantasy, paranoia and madness - a geniune argentine divine comedy although the final underworld city/universe the protagonist ( Fernando Vidal Olmos ) encounters seems more Miltonian in it´s gothic terror to me. It´s also a film apparently.

But I´m facing the other way and I´m on Florida. I walk down Corrientes one block to San Martin and then turn right towards Plaza de Mayo. A couple of kids with backpacks and sandals pass by but no they´re not tourists and the backpacks likely contain textbooks. UBA´s faculty of engineering is nearby. Two short blocks and I´m at General Peron and I turn left towards the water, chasing Fernando Vidal Olmo´s ghost. They do tours of Buenos Aires based on Sabato´s book but I´m alone in my pursuit on this late February evening. The city rumbles, swaggers and slouches by ignoring me completely. I should just jump in a taxi and get the hell to the bus station. I have over two grand on me and although it´s unlikely that I´ll get mugged here on this busy sidewalk I should be more cautious or even nervous than I feel right now. He´s thirty maybe dressed sharply and he gives me that acidic sneer as he approaches me. I´m suddenly in his face. How did I move so quickly? The yelling seems to come from someone else - or is it both of us? And his eyes turn frightened ... is he yelling and I´m quiet? He turn and walks away and I follow him and he speeds up and turns the corner.

I stop, buzzing with energy and confused. I just challenged a stranger I think. I´m now at Alem and I have to decide which way to go. I plunge across the avenue, then across Madero, then across Justo and arrive at the waterfront. To my right La Puente de La Mujer arcs and shines, slender and elegant. I head towards it walking steadily and trying not to look rushed. I stare at the water as I walk to steady my dizziness. Impatiently I reach it and cross the pedestrian bridge, surely looking a little ragged compared to the over dressed Chilean couple strolling towards me. I bump past them without even a ¨disculpeme¨. At least I´m not wearing sandals. And my shoes look expensive: another gift/suggestion courtesy of Isadora. I reach the Puerto Madero side and turn left towards some sidewalk cafes. The evening is a touch milder here and I hope I´m not sweating too much. Froilan. Heladeria-Cafe. Perfect. And there she is. Chestnut hair and maybe early or mid thirties. Sitting alone at a table and no cellphone and clearly a tourist. English? Not sure ... My pulse quickens but I walk up slowly and choose a table next to her. It´s covered with the debris from the last customers. I make a face and turn to look at her noticing as I do that she´s been looking at me.

Do you mind? ( pleasant but casual ) This is a bit much.

She smiles gratefully and nods and says, pointing at my table,

What a disaster! ( yes, she´s English; just talk and order something )
What´s the ice cream like?

It works and we talk and she´s joining a friend in Salta tomorrow and is alone in Buenos Aires. A teacher on holiday ... works in Birmingham and what did she say? She´s from somewhere in Sussex? A boyfriend from Rotterdam but that´s on the rocks and her brother worked for RBS and is now looking for another job. I don´t have to talk much but I do mention that I live in Argentina and that I´m married. Better to be direct. She nods and asks me what it´s like to be married and living in Argentina. I wait a beat. Then sigh. Then explain fulsomely how much I care for Isa. Then I try to look worn down as I sip my cafe con leche ( the waiter didn´t even blink over the fact it wasn´t a cortado ... Buenos Aires is a relief sometimes I must admit ). She relaxes some more and soon we´re hailing a taxi. I jump with joy internally when she mentions a flat in Palermo that she´s renting till tomorrow when she´s leaving to join her friend. She won´t be staying around and hopefully less chances of me getting caught.

The sex turned violent quickly and Liz enjoyed it way more than me. Our geography teacher from Birmingham slapped hard and often and I replicated more out of survival instincts - but it would be a lie to say I didn´t enjoy it as well. I had decided that sex was the only way to get at her cash. She was travelling soon so she´d have cash on hand. It had to be an amount that she couldn´t be sure she hadn´t lost or spent. And I couldn´t tell her too much about my life. It makes sense for a cheating husband to be vague and hopefully I hadn´t mentioned Mar del Plata. So I had forestalled any invitation to a shared shower by jumping in to the shower by myself and locking the bathroom door behind me. She had made tea and then while she showered I had found the euros under the microwave. Ten hundred euro bills. I took 3 of them. Then we went to Sula Bar and I paid for the drinks with my dollars, risking that the bartenders would notice my wad of bills. So perhaps she wouldn´t suspect me for a while at least. We sat at the bar and sipped Blue Hawaii´s. Then I hung my head and said I had to go. Liz put her hand on my arm and squeezed,

Thanks for the drinks. And the fuck wasn´t bad either darling.

On the sidewalk I kissed her cheek ( hopefully my face wasn´t bruised from her slaps: I hadn´t noticed anything in the bathroom mirror back at her place ) and masked my impatience to finish this job with what I hoped looked like cheating husband anxiety. As the taxi sped towards Retiro, I felt a pang of remorse. I wish I had taken more. Like Fernando Vidal Olmos, I have found my obsession. And I am not emerging from Hell to see the stars like Dante and Virgil at the end of Canto XXXIV, but rather moving in the opposite direction. And if I actually didn´t have sex with her but instead grabbed the euros as she took a piss and headed downstairs quickly to hail a cab, please forgive my imagination. Let me think of myself as a seducer rather than a desperate thief as this taxi whisks me to the bus station.

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The briefcase I bought at Bentley´s in the North Renfrew Mall is finally being put to good use. Until now it´s carried various papers and folders with documents and passwords to paypal and myspace and other sites and lists of contacts I haven´t bothered keeping in touch with. I brush the side of my foot against it and stare out the window. We´ve just passed Chascomus and the scenery is empty again. Copses of eucalyptus, willow cypress and plane trees. Presumably it´s pasture around here but I rarely see any cows from the bus window on the drive to and from Buenos Aires. I shift in my seat and glance at the nearest screen. They´re playing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The air conditioner is full on but it´s still muggy inside. Late February is a disaster. March as well. All the heat and humidity gathered up during the summer linger heavily over the pampa and it seems fall will never come. It does of course, sometime in late March or early April so we have at least a month more of this before the weather changes for real. And Buenos Aires is always much hotter than Mar del Plata - it´s a surprising difference given the 400 odd kilometers separating the two cities. I adjust my pillow and try to close my eyes and relax. I can´t nap even though I was up at 5:30 to catch this bus but at least I can rest a little. I brush my foot against the briefcase again, making sure it´s under my legs.

25,000 Shekels and five possibly fake passports. And I´m alone on this trip. Scarmiglione is picking me up at Retiro and supervising the transactions I imagine. When I found the passports under a bed in Felix Marino ( imagine several dozen teengagers singing La Marcha Peronista on a late February afternoon with the thermometer at 34, never mind the humidity, and me crawling through several of their bedrooms looking for something, anything ) I immediately wondered why anyone would leave three Italian and two Slovenian passports stuck under a bed. Five europassports wouldn´t be something a crew would leave behind would they? And it was the same method Kabe had used to hide his Shekels. I had imagined this was all an elaborate test concocted by Cagnazzo as I had slid them into a plastic bag I had brought with me for just that purpose. Outside in the courtyard the kids had finished singing their political anthems and were organizing themselves noisily into two volleyball teams. Felix Marino was a campground/resort but it felt like a school - the architecture was similar to the elementary schools built run by Exxon in Venezuela that I had attended four decades ago. I had waited in the lunchroom for Scarmiglione to enter from the courtyard. I guess both he and Cagnazzo were part of the Cordoba branch of the party. He had entered alone and I had waited till he had sat down at the table were I was sitting and then I had simply said,

Todo bien

He had looked curiously at me so I had had to add,

Passaportes europeos ... cinco.

He hadn´t looked that impressed but Cagnazzo had later phoned to say that I should take them with me to Buenos Aires along with the Shekels to see what I could get for them on the black market. So the very mobile Pipo who had returned to Cordoba with the kids a few days ago was now to meet me at Retiro in about two hours. A Petrobras service center slides by, it´s confiteria half full with families returning from their summer holidays. I´m wearing jeans and a t shirt. I´d like to have my WalMart sandals but I don´t think they´ll be helpful when I´m navigating dowtown Buenos Aires trying to change Shekels and fence stolen passports. I decide to eat my alfajor and gaze distractedy at the screen three seats ahead. The traffic is constant, almost heavy, and I´m tired. I wish I could nap.

Estas si, pero estas no

Edgardo says emphatically pointing at the Italian passports approvingly but dismissing the Slovenian ones. After we had changed the Shekels at HSBC´s ( I had to show my passport but the transaction had gone smoothly - did Cagnazzo know the manager? ) I had sarcastically mentioned to Pipo that we should find a Peruvian restaurant owner in Once who was itching to move to say, Spain. He had surprised me by enthusiastically agreeing to my proposal and we were now in Edgardo´s Peruvian restaurant not in Once but in nearby Almagro. Pipo knew the place and the owner and had overheard that he was trying to help his daughter move to Spain, despite the recession there. So we were in the kitchen trying to convince him to buy all five passports. The heat was horrid although the front room was air conditioned and fairly cool. A waiter brushed past me with a huge tray loaded with several plates of Cebiche Mixto. I asked Edgardo as quietly as I could given the noise,

Ella habla Italiano?
Habla cinco idiomas!

He answered looking offended. Was his daughter a translator? I was about to suggest how he could sell all the passports to her colleagues when Pipo cut me off.

Con seis tenes los cinco.
Cuatro answered Edgardo.
Cinco.

Cuatro he insisted. Pipo shrugged and looked at me skeptically. I nodded, dripping sweat. Egardo nodded at us both and guided us out into the front room. He wanted us out of there quickly so he could get back to business. We went into a little office behind the cash resigister and he peeled off forty hundred dollar bills from a roll he kept in a small safe. We handed him the passports and shuffled out to the sidewalk. Pipo walked around and opened the door of the Honda Pilot and then opened up the passenger door from inside. I clambered in and shut the door behind me. He handed me US $2000 - less than I had hoped for given I had netted them 10,000. I had to try and get a little more out of this ...

Che, mira arme todo esto asi que ...
Pipo handed me five more bills and then said briskly
Bueno loco tengo que volver a Cordoba.

So he was leaving me here in Almagro and heading back to Cordoba. How much mileage did he and Cagnazzo put on that SUV? I was still finding it hard to get used to how quickly things move after a job is done. But it makes sense. You don´t hang around and let people change their minds.

Me llevas al subte? I ask hopefully.
Te llevo a Medrano

Pipo says a little wearly. He seems geniunely tired. I wonder to myself if I should probe a little into Cagnazzo´s past but I dismiss the idea. We pull away from the sidewalk and head towards Rivadavia and Medrano. As we pass through Once I notice the metal shutters being lowered on many of the clothing stores even though it´s still evening. Is it a summer thing? Or was Isa right when she said that the Koreans liked to do business during the day unlike the old rag merchants in the diminshed Jewish community in Once who have moved on to bigger and better things but used to keep their shops open late? I lean back and sigh. Pipo laughs but it´s a friendly laugh. Poor little rookie me. Fifty one and hardly knows how to work a scam. Thank god for the Pilot´s air conditioning.

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The doorbell doesn´t ring. It clucks with a plump annoying click - like some huge mechanical hen, imperiously announcing that you have someone waiting outside. I´m dried off and have on a pair of green khaki pants from Soho. Isa´s always pushing me to update my wardrobe so she didn´t mind the expense. I button my shirt halfway up and one more button and slip on my worn WalMart sandals. Diego looks at me quizzically and I shrug, hoping he´ll open the door. And he does, setting down his mate and easing through the kitchen to let ... yes it´s him, Cagnazzo in. The Inferno´s thirty third canto deals with betrayal especially of one´s intimates - friends and family. And it extends the biblical notion of the souls of traitors being cast into the inferno at the very moment of their treason while their bodies remain alive above on Earth. We are hardly in Rennaisance Florence or Rome in 1300 where the inhabitants surely felt themselves at the center of the world and where their particular problems were thus felt as universal. But the problem of how to trust a traitor is very much alive in this small two bedroom apartment on the coast in Mar del Plata. Had Kabe trusted Cagnazzo? I have no choice but to deal with him and try to secure what advantage I can. Cagnazzo kisses Diego fondly and moves quickly towards me exuding warmth and kisses me tenderly.

Che ahora si estas presentable. Llegaste un desastre!

I´m off balance already. He´s a step ahead as usual.

Y con este calor ... queres un mate?

Dale Keeley! A ver que armamos ahora!

I move into the kitchen, his jovial acidity washing towards me where Diego has already filled the kettle and cleaned out the gourd in one fluid lazy series of motions. Or did he already have the kettle on? I focus and notice that the water is almost boiling. Yes, he had the kettle going already. I take the gourd that Diego has filled and carefull pour a small stream of nearly boiling water on the dusty fragments of leaves and then sip first. I then refill the mate and hand it to Cagnazzo. He takes the gourd and sips a little, less than you would expect. He´s ready to get down to business. I speak. That is, I inform my superior on the day´s events.

Y bueno, la pc quedo ahi.

Cagnazzo fixes me with a cool stare and says kindly,

Che la plata que encontraste ahi lo dividimos. Te parece?

I involuntarily move several parts of my face at once - eyebrows up, mouth open and eyes wide and then narrowing. Cagnazzo laughs easily and Diego sips a little more quietly than usual. What choice do I have?

Son Shekels, Billetes de quiñientos.

Cagnazzo´s eyebrows lift slightly - Shek-les? Cuantos billetes?

Cincuenta, 25 mil en total.
Bien, y la tasa?
Y ... ponele 25 centavos US. Quizas algo mas.
Mira vos ... 6 mil ... dos cientos cincuenta.
Si mejor cambiarlos en Buenos Aires. Los billetes de 500 apenas salieron hace poco ... no se donde podemos averiguar si ...
Lo hacemos en el city si. Decime Keeley como quedo el PH?
Quedo la pc y los utensiles. Nada mas. Nada de afiches, diplomas, fotos, ropa ... nada mas quedo. Los Shekels los encontre debajo de la cama. Una cinto los sostenia.

Cagnazzo looks approvingly at Diego and nods satisfied. I gather I´ve passed this test. I try out my next pathetic little scheme and hope it interests Cagnazzo.

Ese buque Israeli. El Arcangelo. La tripulacion ... los alojaron aca en Mardel un tiempo.
Dale te acordas donde? ( leaning forward, good )
A ver ... ( god, don´t panic where the hell was it?? ) A! Claro! Felix Marino en Tejedor ahi por Parque Camet. Lo coparon para retener la tripulacion ahi.

Diego seems interested,

Si ... me parece que lo vi en CNN en Miami. Como un camping ... algo asi.
Bien. Ya casi es Febrero. Dieguito, vos vas a reservar una semana lo antes posible ahi en Felix Marino. Para los pibes de Cordoba. Son del partido ... ahi pasaran fin de verano. Keeley armame un plan para rastrear bien el lugar mientras estamos ok? A ver si esos marineros dejaron algo por ahi.

Diego sips his mate with a skeptical look. I wait quietly while Cagnazzo takes a call on his cellphone. Then he stands and kisses us both and heads downstairs. Let´s see what we find there. Maybe the Arcangelo´s crew left something behind. Shekels, dollars, euros ... weed? I´m actually excited enough not to be worrying about what may be a dangerous scheme. Who knows if anyone else is watchng the campground? I pause as I pour some juice into a glass. Ok, maybe I´m being dramatic. It was a month ago and no one likely cares. A few sailors were kept at the campground for a week. So what? Diego is out on the balcony again and Isa is still asleep and Oriana is out somewhere. If my soul is being cast down in bits and pieces, I´m doing it on the cheap.

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Rojas is smiling at Cagnazzo who´s smiling back at him as he squeezes his elbow conspiratorially. They´re speaking rapidly and quietly as I approach up the steps at the front of the building. Despite the breeze I´m a mess. Cagnazzo lifts his head to look at me and then returns his attention to Rojas who´s talking. As I catch a few words it seems that Cagnazzo has managed to seduce Rojas with his political and judicial connections and make it all look like a favor he´s doing for Rojas. Will Caranzo squeeze him later? Or was that all a show to keep us scared and in our place? I´m standing a few cautious feet away from the two of them, not sure whether to interrupt. Cagnazzo ignores me for a few minutes more and then Rojas turns quickly towards me as if he´s about to take a swing - a habit of his when he recognizes you.

Aaaaa pibe como te va?
Bien

I don´t feel like saying anything else. Cagnazzo waits another moment and then speaks but to Rojas while gesturing towards me.

Y a ver si el pibe arma bien el sitio de web.

I´m so goddman sick and tired of them calling me pibe - kid. I´m over fifty but I suppose it´s better than gringuito. Obviously the whole plan has been agreed on and I¨m sure that Cagnazzo´s comission is far less than the six figures he tossed around with us at Retiro. I´ll have to sort out the details as best as I can from what they reveal to me.

Tranquilo guapos, esto va salir re bien.

Cagnazzo grins dryly at my attempt to butter them up. I make my exit.

Bueno, voy a subir.
Te veo en dos pibe.

I try not to slam the front door. But I´m angry and hurt. Cagnazzo is letting me know that I´m his office boy now. I´ll see you in two kid. Fucking asshole. It´s cooler and dark in the hallway and I head upstaris quickly so I can shower before Cagnazzo comes to shake me down. He must sense I found something at Kabe´s place. But I have a plan to retain some of it. I need to negotiate and not like some sweaty gringo tourist. I reach the second floor and try our door. It opens and I see Diego´s lean muscular back through the living room sliding doors. He´s out on the balcony puttering with some fan and motor - perhaps a wind turbine. I move quickly to our bedroom where Isa is asleep on the bed with her eyeshades on. I lean close and hear her snoring slightly. Strange, she never naps. I smell her skin to see if Diego´s scent is on it. No, I don´t think so. So I undress, grab a towel and head into the bathroom. Once you´re in the game you have to keep some form of momentum going. I turn on the cool tap and take a quick shower. I hope this plan works. But more than that. Let´s hope Cagnazzo sees me as a useful partner. I have to find a way to earn his respect without provoking a violent confrontation which I´ll lose. The soap slips from my hand and I reach quickly to grab it again. I´m tense. But I might just be in the game.

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Like Ishmael, and like the Ethiopian shepard of the same name from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia who was forced to flee to Kenya by his country´s military, Kabede has been forced into the wilderness. Is he a bridge between Ishmael and Isaac? This wandering con man. Or lost in Limbo, never to be harrowed? I know that sounds dramatic, but I can´t help feeling the force of his exile as I wander through his abandoned home. Diego had the key for some reason - I´m not sure if Kabe gave it to him in some desperate attempt at safekeeping his property or if Diego demanded it on orders from Cagnazzo. Regardless, Kabe is gone and I am wanderng through his house. The furniture is there. The computer is there. The desk of course. I slide open the drawer and find a few receipts and some bills. No gun. No clues. The desk had a small framed photograph of his wife and son back in Israel. That´s gone and I assume Kabe took it with him. The diplomas are gone as well ... strange. They were framed and would not fit easily into a small bag. How much time did Kabe have to collect what he could and flee Mar del Plata? What had Cagnazzo said to him? Or was it Diego who applied the pressure? Was it a phone call? I have no idea and not much inclination to ask. But I´m curious as hell.

I go through each room as methodically as I can. I´ve been assigned the task by Pipo who phoned soon after we got back.
Andá a lo de Kabe y a ver si dejo algo he had commanded me with a casual tone. So I´m here seeing if he left any trace ... of what? Well, clearly they want to know if he left any money. Bank accounts. Residency. DNI ... not sure. I doubt he had the time or the inclination to do the paperwork. Why leave a trail? I gather they think we were friends before I became aware of the scam and that I may have useful information about him. Is this a test? Unfortunately I know little about his life beyond what he told me. I try to think of something he said ... something that might point towards a bank account in Montevideo. Or Switzerland. But what good would that do? Don´t worry about it. That´s Cagnazzo´s job. I´ll just try to dig up something and they´ll do what they will with the information I provide them. I move to the kitchen and open the cabinet drawers. A few utensils. Some plates. Some coffee mugs and some plastic cups. The same ones I drank from. But nothing else. It´s hot and stuffy in here. I open the kitchen wndow and let in some warm, muggy air.

I move to the bedroom, opening the shutters to let in more light. It feels like an empty hotel room. Nothing that would mark it as a home. I think Kabe had a reasonable amount of time to leave. Maybe a day or two. I recall that his home had felt more lived in. There had been some clutter before hadn´t there ... ? Damn! I don´t make a very good sleuth do I? I open the closet and find nothing. Not even a few hangers. I turn around and stare at the bed. There is a bedsheet folded carefully. I gather it up and shake it open vigourously. Nothing. I let it fall back on the mattress. On impulse I reach under the bed besides the left front corner. The rough underside of the wooden planks scrapes against my finger tips. I move my hand along a little ... what´s this? It feels like plastic. I pull at it and it pulls away a little ... it´s tape. What´s it holding in place down there? I lay down on my back and squirm under the bedframe. It´s a bundle of bills. I carefully peel back the tape and emerge from under the bed sweaty and victorious. I slowly pull the notes away from the tape, trying not to damage them. No ... wait. They´re Shekels?? Yes ... I think so. The denomination is 500.

I turn on his computer and hope it is still working normally and not infected by some viral time bombs he may have left. It starts up and works fine. His desktop is that photo of his wife and son. I wiki Shekel and find out that the 500 Shekel note has just recently been issued ... this year. I wonder if these are counterfeit. Impossible to tell. What the hell could we do with fake Shekel bills?? I read on ... it´s a hard currency, convertible in most places. We´ll have to go to Buenos Aires to do that I suppose. I´m sweating onto the keyboard. I hustle into the bedroom and wipe myself dry with the discarded bedsheet and then return. Nothing that could help an amateur like me decide if they´re counterfeit. Is that why he left them? Maybe Kabe figured that Shekels would be an unusual sight at a money changer ( I grin at the phrase ) and decided not to take them with him. Let´s count the bills ... 50 five hundred Shekel notes. Let´s see ... the Shekel is worth about US $0.26 so that would be ... 25,000 x 0.26 = US$ 6,500. Not bad. I look up nervously from the pc. No, no one is looking through the window. But I feel anxious. What do I do? And wait ... was it Kabe who left these bills? I go to the kitchen and pour some tap water into a cup. I take only a sip but it helps. It must have been Kabe. There´s no way Cagnazzo could have got a hold of fake Shekels and stuck them under the bed. Ok, so now what do I do? I decide to walk and think, so I turn off the computer, close the windows and shutters and lock the front door behind me. The bills bulge uncomfortably in my pant pocket. I turn down Storni and head for the coast and the boardwalk. It´s a nice long stroll along the shore and it´ll give me some time to think this over. I´ll have to say something. Maybe they´ll have me head up to Buenos Aires and change them to Pesos or Dollars. Will they let me keep a commision? A breeze comes up from the sea and provides some relief. I quicken my step and work on what I´ll say when I get back to Camet. I look up at the sun. It´s fierce this time of year but there´s not much I can do. I need the sea more than the shade. I walk on.

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I sip my cortado carefully. I normally wouldn´t have a coffee but I´m not about to be fussy in a situation like this. I had thought of Las Violetas but it would have been a detour and was rather expensive nowadays after the renovation and the reopening. Instead we were at Retiro. Not the train station with it´s elegant art noveau coffee shop but the bus station. A depressing cafe with scattered tables and a waiter dressed in black pants and white shirt half tucked in. This is a pit stop for passengers waiting for their bus rides to Rosario and Tandil and places elsewhere. Pipo ( Scarmiglione, the goon´s last name ) had turned onto Antartida Argentina and navigated it´s hellish grinding congestion - trucks, buses, taxis, vans, cars - and made it to the parking lot from where you can see Villa 31´s sordid and dangerous alleys. It´s claustrophobic and on a sweltering day, opressively so. I put down my cup and look at Cagnazzo and Pipo. Their coffees are pitch black, little pools of stickyness enclosed in faded porcelain. I stare at the pitch and see nothing in it. I´m lost and I don´t like what I see but I must speak. Three times three times three plus three brings me to thirty. This is not Milton´s land. This is Dante Alighieri´s terrain. I push my cup away from me and speak, as I must.

Hay mas y mas gente que llegan aca ... y buscan mudarse aca. I start slowly.
Compran casas, departamentos...
Pipo looks bored. Cagnazzo looks impatient. He leans forward.
Keeley, basta de joder. Que nos ofreces?
I´d better cut to the chase.
El edificio en Camet, en la costa. Hay un juicio.
Cagnazzo raises his eyebrows. Good.
Rojas el dueño firmo donde no hubiera ... hay un embargo.
Quien lo jodio? Pipo wants to know. Interesting.
Una arquitecta y un abogado.
Cagnazzo and Pipo exhange a look. Pipo shrugs but looks positive all the same. Cagnazzo speaks.
Y que hacemos jefe?
I´m not sure whether to smile at his sardonic little dig. I don´t.
Para mi que apretamos los que hicieron la maniobra.
I look back at my words as if from another place. I can´t believe I said that. Putting the squeeze on two scam artists that are trying to cheat Rojas out of his building. The gossip came from the manager of the carwash next door. I hope to hell it´s true. My life may depend on it now. Cagnazzo is quiet, calculating some figures I suspect.
Cobramos el 10 por ciento del edificio a cambio de resolver este asunto para ese Rojas.
That seems a lot of money but the fact that he´s calculating percentages seems a good sign.
Podriamos refaccionar. Condominios por ejemplo y venderlos ...
Complicado eso. Que Rojas nos paga y hace lo que le canta con ese edificio.
I have to be more concrete. I venture an estimate.
Mira, hay unos 10 departamentos ahi. Algunos mas de cien lucas otros menos. Asi que ... ponele un palo y medio.
Cagnazzo nods with a dry grin at my use of luca and palo ( a thousand and a million ). Apparently he´s come to similar figures. So the shakedown might be as much as 150,000 US ... I wonder what Cagnazzo and Pipo are capable of. How much is bluff? Cagnazzo has been down to Mardel a few times and I think I recall him meeting Rojas. Helping Diego with his inheritance ... Diego. I speak quietly and tensely,
No se si Diego se interesa en esto ...
Isadora flinches despite herself, terrified of what Cagnazzo might say about her ex husband and father of Oriana. Cagnazzo looks steadily at us.
No falta involucrar a Diego con los detalles. El esta tranquilo en Mardel.
Me and Isa can´t help breathing involuntary sighs of relief. We shift in our chairs uncertain of what to do next. I have to keep going.
Ahora bien no se con que juez esta el expediente ...
Cagnazzo waves off the matter of the lawsuit over the building. He´ll arrange that himself. I continue.
Quizas si Rojas decide vender podriamos hacer un sitio de web para inversores de europa por ejemplo ...
Vos Keeley, encargate de eso. Sabes de eso?
Cagnazzo has handed me my task. I´ll have to find someone who actually can design us a website. Assuming Rojas wants to sell the building after Cagnazzo and Pipo finish with him. But he´s a scrapper himself. And if things go pear shaped, I´ll be the sacrificial goat. Cagnazzo turns to Isadora before I can answer him.
Vos sabes de diseño de web? O tu hija .... Oriana?
Isa pauses, swallows and smiles, and tries to sound in control.
Oriana sabe algo y tiene contactos.
Cagnazzo nods and looks at us,
Algo mas?
We shake our heads in unison and we all stand. He´s paid for our bus tickets as if we were schoolkids going on summer holidays. Our bus leaves in about twenty minutes. Cagnazzo leaves us at the platform with a brief nod and Pipo grins at us as he follows him downstairs and outside to the parking lot. We´re alone again in the heat and exhaust fumes. I put a tentative arm around Isa. Then I pull her towards me.
Va resultar amor. Ya veras.
Isa remains quiet. She´s managed to hide a few hundred dollars from our stash and we´ll have that to live on till Cagnazzo pays us. Our bus soon pulls in and we climb in relieved to be heading out of the city.