The Barcelona Brothers by Carlos Zanón, John Cullen Page A

thousand secrets one sometimes keeps without knowing it. “The mobile phone number you have dialed cannot be accessed,” a robotic voice tells him. He skips the voice mail. This whole thing is a screwup of epic proportions. He goes back to his seat.
    “… they say that for listening to lewd secrets or blasphemous conversations, the most appropriate instrument is a peach pit. It has the ability to retain the echoes of words, but only if they’re conspiratorial, words spoken in erotic conversations or murder plots …”
    “And the CIA wouldn’t be able to stop the attacks. Shit, plant peach orchards all over Houston. You like peaches, Alex?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I must leave you. Clients are arriving,” says Professor Malick, rising from the table and pointing to another farther back, where a blond prostitute is taking a seat. “By the way,barber, your business idea for helping my brothers seems very interesting. We’ll have to work together.”
    “What the fuck is he talking about?” asks Alex after Malick has gone.
    “How should I know? He’s a medium. He reads your mind. I play along with him. You working today?”
    “No. Tomorrow.”
    “Listen, I meant to ask you this. The personalized van with the fancy windows and carpeted interior and all that other stuff—that’s your brother’s, right?”
    “Yes. What about it?”
    “Yesterday evening, pretty late, your brother came looking for vitamins. He’s been buying dope almost continuously these past few months. Also, I don’t know about last night, but lately he and Tanveer or some other jewel have been getting into that van and going for long rides. What they do or leave undone, I don’t know. But I’ve heard the cops are looking for a van like your brother’s.”
    Behind the bar, the bartender makes signs to a guy who’s just come in. He points to the barber, who’s left a notice on the door of his shop, indicating where he can be found should anyone be looking for him, whether with good or better intentions.
    “I’m coming, I’m coming … So look, I thought that one thing went with the other. Epi’s van and Tanveer. I thought maybe the cops followed them and took them by surprise last night, and then Tanveer did his Braveheart act, and—”
    “Allawi, I saw it. It was with a hammer or a heavy stick. In the face, man. And I wish there
had
been a cop in the bar.”
    “I don’t know. Of course, I wasn’t there. If you want the scoop on the van, ask the
mossos
. They’ll know.”
    Allawi gets up, puts his hand on Alex’s shoulder, and gives him a pinch that’s meant to express complicity but actually causes pain. For a few seconds, Alex’s brain considers the possibility that the problems caused by the
Moro
’s murder aren’t going to be as easy to resolve as he thought. At the same time, out of the corner of his eye, he sees something like a shadow slip under one of the tables and settle down to observe him. Alex pretends not to notice it. Ghosts don’t exist. Shadows don’t walk or hide themselves under tables in cafés. Surely, at some point in the course of the day, his brother will be able to overcome the inopportune difficulty with his cell phone and things will begin to sort themselves out. That will surely happen. And tomorrow he’ll laugh the way the warlock predicted he would, he’ll laugh and laugh and never stop.

6
    MAYBE TIFFANY HAS HEARD ABOUT THE BLACK HOLES that gobble up everything around them. You throw a stone, and it neither falls nor comes back to you. Like women waiting for calls from men who are never going to call. Calls they know from the beginning are not going to be made. Who’d have thought she’d become so much like those women? Clinging to Tanveer, putting up with that retard Epi. Who’d have thought she’d throw stones that would never fall back to earth? And really, in general, Tiffany Brisette tries not to get too absorbed in thinking about herself. Today, however, she’s got the feeling