No One Loves a Policeman by Guillermo Orsi, Nick Caistor Read Free Book Online Page B

on the coast.”
    Burgos was driving back along the rustlers’ road, avoiding all the potholes by wrenching the steering wheel from side to side so violently that I was afraid we would find ourselves upside down in the ditch. He laughed at my terrified face. “You must have been a desk man, a bureaucrat who never ventured out onto the streets,” he decided, unable to otherwise explain why I was so alarmed by his driving. He was wrong, but I had no wish to correct his impression. Better that he feel in control, carry out his own investigation in the same carefree way as he drove.
    â€œAyala is an intelligent sort, though he does his best to hide it. He’s a Dr. Jekyll who in his more lucid moments is able to see why he turns into Mr. Hyde when faced with a suspect.”
    â€œIt goes with the job,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was analyze the personality of some dumb provincial policeman, but Burgos wanted to go on talking about him.
    â€œHe wants to retire. He has a family, God help us. A fine wife, and two kids. ‘I’m not going to let the criminal scum ruin my life,’ he tells anyone willing to listen. ‘Every thug I kill without the press kicking up a fuss is one more step toward my leaving the force with honor.’”
    â€œHe wants a medal,” I said, as innocent as a schoolboy.
    â€œNo, he wants money,” the chubby doctor corrected me, steering his way round a series of gaping holes in the broken asphalt. “What ‘leaving the force with honor’ means down here is to retire but keep the money coming in.”
    By which he meant the shares in prostitution, illegal gambling, moonlight rustling, kidnaps for ransom, and all the other little sidelines that never show up in the abundant official statistics on economic activity and employment, but which are such an important part of the overall police product.
    The doctor went on and on about Ayala’s virtues, while I felt increasingly stupid, thrown out of my job and now a fugitive, a Richard Kimble with no degree and none of the women the Yankee doctor managed to pick up in that old black-and-white T.V. series while he searched for the one-armed man who had killed his wife.
    When I mentioned this existential anguish, my companion said I had picked up a real beauty myself when I answered my friend’s call.
    â€œBut you have to look after these sweeties,” he lectured me. “Soften them up a bit, then go for it. Did you really not fuck her?”
    I had no wish to answer him, and no time either. We were approaching Bahía Blanca’s station again.
    Ayala and Rodríguez’s silhouettes stood out against the bare brickarch of the station like characters from Cervantes. The inspector was tall and lanky like Don Quixote, and his sidekick was almost as round as Sancho Panza (though not as plump as the doctor). They went on smoking, oblivious to our presence while Burgos parked his exotic blue V.W. alongside the black Ford Falcon without number plates that the policemen had come in. Rodríguez was giving his version of the game between Rosario Central and Chacarita he had seen the previous evening before he went on duty. Ayala seemed far more interested in the details of the game than in our being there. Apparently the game had ended nil-nil as fixed beforehand by their managers, anxious to add another couple of games to a tournament designed to fleece summer holidaymakers.
    â€œLook, the tin-opener’s arrived,” was Ayala’s greeting for the doctor, spat from the left-hand side of his mouth directly at Rodríguez, who finished the sentence for him:
    â€œAnd he brought the sardine.”
    I stayed in the car while Burgos got out and whispered in Ayala’s ear what he had learned about me being from the Federal police force. I heard Ayala growl “So why the fuck did they throw him out,” at which Burgos shrugged and looked back in my direction,