hounding Argentina. The skin and the hearts of the people here were as blanched as the iron ore that had marked the century.
The San Telmo neighborhood where Rubén lived had been deserted by the middle class after an epidemic of yellow fever; now weeds were growing over the walls of decrepit houses and their cast-iron balconies. A working-class bastion on the south side of downtown, the municipality was trying to rehabilitate the neighborhood around the Plaza Dorrego, its bars and flea markets. Rubén Calderón lived on Peru Street, in an art-nouveau building whose old-fashioned charm suited himâgray marble on the floors, period woodwork, doorknobs and a bathtub from 1900. A window with blue-tinted panes looked out on the inner courtyard; the kitchen was windowless but the bedroom window gave on the corner of San Juan.
The rain had stopped when the detective pushed open the agencyâs reinforced door. He laid the manila envelope on the coffee table, opened the window in the living room, which served as an office, in order to get rid of the smell of cold tobacco, and made himself a drink. Pisco, lemon juice, sugar, egg white, ice: he mixed it all vigorously in a shaker before filling a stemmed glass. A pisco sour, energizing effects guaranteed. He put on the Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD heâd bought the day before, and drank his pisco sour gazing at the sky above the roofs and listening to the lascivious moans of the guitars.
Over time, the agencyâs office had taken over more and more of the apartment, whose private space was now limited to a bedroom at the end of the hall. Computerization had made it possible to reduce the number of volumes, to expand the field of his research, and to cross-reference sourcesâto produce a DNA register of the bodies of identified
desaparecidos
, a pedigree of the torturers who were still at large or of those who had been granted amnesty, testimoniesâall of it connected with the files of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which Elena kept up to date, and to those of the GrandmothÂers, who were looking specifically for the children of the
desaparecidos
. The agency was financed by the royalty payments on his fatherâs works, which were still published abroad, the fees that his customers could pay, and private funds or resources that had been taken away from former oppressors. In any case, he wasnât much interested in moneyâhe would have to spend time counting up the money that was missing, and his own losses were final.
The air coming in the window was humid, borne by a capricious breeze that was blowing up to him. Rubén put his glass on the coffee table, sat down on the 1960s couch that faced his overloaded bookcase and opened the manila envelope.
Carlos was well equipped to decipher the financial setup of the Campallo empire and its ramifications: a specialist in economics, the journalist was also a member of a pressure group composed of jurists, intellectuals, and lawyers who were calling for the establishment of a CONADEP 9 to judge those who had bankrupted Argentina during the financial crisis of 2001-2002. Carlosâs group concentrated on property owners who, controlling the main source of currency in the country, had sequestered the dollars derived from their activities and hidden their real revenues in order to reduce their tax bills. This oligarchy, which was connected with the world of finance, had exported its enormous amounts of surplus capital, speculating against the peso and their own country, to the point of draining it dry.
Eduardo Campallo was one of the men who had been able to take advantage of the situation. Trained as an engineer and urban planner, he had studied in the United States before taking the reins of the family business after the early death of his father, who had died in harness, so to speak. In 1975, Eduardo began running Nuevos, a construction firm based in Buenos Aires. The following year, the
The San Telmo neighborhood where Rubén lived had been deserted by the middle class after an epidemic of yellow fever; now weeds were growing over the walls of decrepit houses and their cast-iron balconies. A working-class bastion on the south side of downtown, the municipality was trying to rehabilitate the neighborhood around the Plaza Dorrego, its bars and flea markets. Rubén Calderón lived on Peru Street, in an art-nouveau building whose old-fashioned charm suited himâgray marble on the floors, period woodwork, doorknobs and a bathtub from 1900. A window with blue-tinted panes looked out on the inner courtyard; the kitchen was windowless but the bedroom window gave on the corner of San Juan.
The rain had stopped when the detective pushed open the agencyâs reinforced door. He laid the manila envelope on the coffee table, opened the window in the living room, which served as an office, in order to get rid of the smell of cold tobacco, and made himself a drink. Pisco, lemon juice, sugar, egg white, ice: he mixed it all vigorously in a shaker before filling a stemmed glass. A pisco sour, energizing effects guaranteed. He put on the Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD heâd bought the day before, and drank his pisco sour gazing at the sky above the roofs and listening to the lascivious moans of the guitars.
Over time, the agencyâs office had taken over more and more of the apartment, whose private space was now limited to a bedroom at the end of the hall. Computerization had made it possible to reduce the number of volumes, to expand the field of his research, and to cross-reference sourcesâto produce a DNA register of the bodies of identified
desaparecidos
, a pedigree of the torturers who were still at large or of those who had been granted amnesty, testimoniesâall of it connected with the files of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which Elena kept up to date, and to those of the GrandmothÂers, who were looking specifically for the children of the
desaparecidos
. The agency was financed by the royalty payments on his fatherâs works, which were still published abroad, the fees that his customers could pay, and private funds or resources that had been taken away from former oppressors. In any case, he wasnât much interested in moneyâhe would have to spend time counting up the money that was missing, and his own losses were final.
The air coming in the window was humid, borne by a capricious breeze that was blowing up to him. Rubén put his glass on the coffee table, sat down on the 1960s couch that faced his overloaded bookcase and opened the manila envelope.
Carlos was well equipped to decipher the financial setup of the Campallo empire and its ramifications: a specialist in economics, the journalist was also a member of a pressure group composed of jurists, intellectuals, and lawyers who were calling for the establishment of a CONADEP 9 to judge those who had bankrupted Argentina during the financial crisis of 2001-2002. Carlosâs group concentrated on property owners who, controlling the main source of currency in the country, had sequestered the dollars derived from their activities and hidden their real revenues in order to reduce their tax bills. This oligarchy, which was connected with the world of finance, had exported its enormous amounts of surplus capital, speculating against the peso and their own country, to the point of draining it dry.
Eduardo Campallo was one of the men who had been able to take advantage of the situation. Trained as an engineer and urban planner, he had studied in the United States before taking the reins of the family business after the early death of his father, who had died in harness, so to speak. In 1975, Eduardo began running Nuevos, a construction firm based in Buenos Aires. The following year, the
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