“Kiddie porn. Oh, dear God, do we dare hope?”
“Hope, Mateo, is something you do sitting on your backside. I’ve already called up the cameras. Let’s get over there.”
11:10 a.m. The train terminal parking lot. DIEGO’S Maserati.
DIEGO: Dezi, I’m so sorry. I’ve been making calls. Have you heard from him?
DESMERELDA: No. Where are you?
DIEGO: On my way over to you. Is that right? Is that what you want me to do? Is Michael there yet?
DESMERELDA: Yes. The police are asking him questions now. Diego —
DIEGO: Dezi, what on earth is going on? I feel completely in the dark here.
DESMERELDA: Did you call that lawyer, what’s-her-name?
DIEGO: Yes. Dezi, please. Tell me what this is all about.
DESMERELDA: I’ve got just about as much idea as you have.
DIEGO: So what actually happened?
DESMERELDA: What happened is, three cops came here this morning and started asking about this girl. One of the kids we used in the Paff! shoot. Bianca something or other. Turns out she was murdered the same night. The same night as the shoot.
DIEGO: What?
DESMERELDA: Yeah. Awful. I can’t believe it. She’s on the posters, Diego. She’s in the spread in Moda. She’s everywhere.
DIEGO: Oh, my God.
DESMERELDA: Yeah. Unbelievable, isn’t it?
DIEGO: I mean, how come nobody told us about this?
DESMERELDA: I dunno. I guess, well, I dunno. Nobody made the connection. I dunno.
DIEGO: Okay. So listen, Dezi, why did they take Capitano downtown?
DESMERELDA: I don’t know. It’s crazy. One of the cops, this woman, went to the study wanting to look at our computers, look at the pictures of this girl on the Paff! disks, you know? Then she comes back and suddenly everything goes weird. I mean, do you think he . . . Oh, God, Diego. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think. I mean, they took his laptop away. . . .
[DIEGO sorts through his CDs while he listens to her fighting back tears. David Bowie? Bartók?]
DESMERELDA: Sorry. I —
DIEGO [soothingly]: It’s okay. Look, Dezi. This is some kind of misunderstanding. Or setup. I’m sure it’ll be sorted out in no time. I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes or so. Right now, let’s try and focus on the Beckers thing.
DESMERELDA: Oh, God, I don’t know if I can face it. I must look terrible.
DIEGO: I’m sure you don’t. That’s quite impossible.
11:27 a.m. The young reporter from El Correo and his photographer are escorted, without undue politeness, from the CCB building. They are rearranging themselves at the foot of the steps up to the building when Consuela Perlman and a colleague emerge from their chauffeur-driven car. Inside the building, Perlman marches up to the duty officer’s desk, presents her card, and demands to speak to Nemiso.
11:28 a.m. A large SUV pulls up, illegally, in front of the CCB building. It disgorges Mateo Campos, Estevan Ponte, a photographer, and a two-man video and sound team.
Campos and Ponte bustle up the steps. Their photographer knows the Correo photographer.
“What you doin’ here, man?”
“Ah, you know. Routine stuff.”
“Bullshit. Otello?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn!”
Campos and Ponte, full of false indignation, are ejected from the building and descend the steps.
Campos lights a cigarette and looks the kid from El Correo up and down. “Your parents know you’re down at the police station?” he asks.
The kid has the sense to get his phone out and call the Correo office for reinforcements.
Passersby who have nothing better to do — but who have a nose for anything out of the ordinary — start to gather. Because cameras mean that something is happening, and if you’re in the right place, you might have a chance to be in a background shot on the TV news and wave.
11:34 a.m. Inside the CCB building.
Torres takes the stairs down to the lobby. At the head of the last flight he surveys the comings and goings and identifies Consuela Perlman and the sharply dressed man with her. They are a dark and sober little island in a sea of purposeful motion. He descends toward them unhurriedly.
“Señora Perlman? Sergeant Torres of the Special Investigations Unit.”
She does not introduce her colleague. She says, “I believe you have a client of mine, Otello, in custody.”
“No, señora. Señor Otello is not in custody. He is here voluntarily to help us with our inquiries relating to a murder investigation.”
She blinks, like someone who cannot believe a fly has had the audacity to land on her lunch. She looks him up and down: the haircut, the mustache, the brown leather jacket, the jeans, the Italian shoes.
“Don’t you dare play games with me, Sergeant,” she says. “My client has not killed anybody, and you know it. So if he is being questioned, I’d better be there. Unless you want to be sued until your eyes bleed. Shall we go up?”
12:04 p.m. The third floor of Beckers department store.
No one expects the illustrious couple to appear exactly on time, so there is eager anticipation, and a certain amount of jostling for camera positions, but no real anxiety. The Paff! team members smile at everybody as they check details for the last time. Dario and Harumi are being interviewed by the fashion editor of La Nación. Four young boys and three young girls — a rainbow of Otello shirts — warm up their freestyle ball routines. A couple of other kids — sons of Beckers’s marketing director, as it happens — stand, self-conscious in their Paff! baggy sweats and baseball caps, clutching brand-new skateboards. Sales staff, and several security men and women disguised as sales staff, patrol among the mannequins and clothes racks.
The podium that Desmerelda and Otello will stand on is bathed in light.
12:27 p.m. Desmerelda’s car. Michael Cass is driving. Diego is in the back with Desmerelda. Her phone rings.
“Where are you? What? But why? Don’t you know what time . . . Yes, yes! We’re almost there. Oh, God, Otello. You’ve got to come. What? I can’t hear you. Please. Please. This is a disaster! I can’t . . .”
Then she lets out a little scream. Otello has ended the conversation with a harsh obscenity and the line has gone dead. She turns to Diego with tears in her eyes.
“What, Dezi? What did he say?”
“Two blocks to Beckers,” Michael Cass says, glancing at her over his shoulder. “You okay?”
“No! Stop the car. Stop the damn car, Michael.”
Otello’s expletive is not, in fact, directed at his wife. It is merely an expression of shock. He and his lawyers have been ambushed as they leave the CCB building. From out of nowhere, a number of people with cameras and microphones are in his face, shouting questions at him. Some of the questions contain the word computer. He stumbles back, almost falling. Consuela Perlman also swears, surprisingly vividly. Her colleague reacts swiftest; using his briefcase rather like a gladiator’s shield, he repels the attackers while Otello and Perlman retreat up the steps and back through the heavy glass doors.
12:31 p.m. Beckers.
By now, there is considerable agitation and impatience. Once again, the store’s managing director sends a minion down to the main atrium, through which a carpeted pathway to the escalators is fenced off from the throng by chrome posts and rope railings.
Then, at twenty minutes to one, the head of security, stationed at the top of the escalators, touches the phone plugged into his ear and raises his thumb in the direction of the MD, mouthing silently, “They’re here.”
The stills photographers jostle like players positioning themselves for a corner kick. The freestyling kids go into action, balancing their soccer balls on their foreheads and insteps. The hot TV lights come on. The soothing Muzak switches to the bass-driven pulse of Desmerelda’s three-year-old number-one hit “If Looks Could Kill.”
And she rises up into it all. Into the
applause. She’s wearing an outfit designed and made for her by Dario and Harumi. (“We will reinvent maternity wear,” Harumi had promised.) The Paff! signature colors are worked into a pearl-white dress and long jacket that make no attempt to disguise the pleasingly bell-shaped protuberance that juts in front of her. It’s an outfit that boasts of her condition; it’s an outfit that would make anyone die to be pregnant. Cass looms behind her, resplendent in a loose charcoal-gray suit and pale yellow shirt, heading an escort of Beckers staff. Flash light plays on her face.
“What’s up with her?” a photographer murmurs, keeping his finger on the drive button.
“I dunno. She looks wiped out. Where’s Otello?”
Where’s Otello? Where’s Otello? Where the hell is Otello?
Desmerelda stalls; she does not know where to go. Camera flash flash. A woman in a suit shakes her hand and speaks. Camera flash. Then it’s Harumi. Her lean arms around her.
“Dezi? What’s wrong? Where is Otello?”
A man on a sort of stage is speaking her name. He looks down at her, holding out his hand. She thinks, I can do this, and steps up. Hands help her. As always, no one, no face, is visible outside the vibrating sphere of light. She hears her own multi-tracked voice singing, “Don’t look at me that way, unless you mean it, mean it.” There are microphones close to her face. A line of kids wearing Paff! appears, level with her knees, dancing to the music. One of them looks up at her, grinning. A pretty dark-skinned girl with wild hair.
The music fades; other voices become audible. She holds on to the mic stand. Oh, God, she needs to pee. No, she doesn’t. Camera flash.
“Hi, everybody. Thank you for being here today. This is so cool, isn’t it? Listen, I can’t talk for long, for obvious reasons.” She puts her hands on her hips, pulling the pearly jacket back, displaying the famous protrusion. There is applause, a few faint whoops.
“I just wanna say that for Otello and me, this is a great day.”
She should not have said that. She doesn’t know why she said that.
“The culmination of —”
A voice, two, or maybe three voices from beyond the glare: “Where is Otello, Dezi?”
“Where’s the man, Dezi?”
He’s at a police station. They’re asking him questions. There’s a dead girl. There must be porn or something on the computer he says he never uses. Everything is breaking loose.
She says, “We’re proud . . . Paff! is . . .”
“Dezi!”
“Dezi!”
Camera flash flash flash.
Why is the stage tipping? She clings to the mic stand with both hands. She’s losing her balance; her body is too heavy for her legs. She’s going to fall. She mustn’t. God, this is going to look awful. Where’s Michael?
Michael!
PHOTOGRAPHS OF DESMERELDA’S tearful swoon into the arms of Michael Cass feature prominently in the evening papers, and there is extended coverage on the television news. The fact that the drama is inexplicable does not prevent reporters from explaining it. Experts are wheeled in to testify that women in the later stages of pregnancy are prone to attacks of uncontrollable emotion. The word stress is used repeatedly. Concern for the baby is piously expressed. Otello’s absence from the promotional event attracts comment. WHERE WAS OTELLO WHEN DEZI NEEDED HIM? asks La Estrella, typically.
A good question. Now he is where he thinks he’s needed: in the well-appointed waiting room in the private wing of Santa Theresa Hospital. Pacing up and down with his phone in his hand waiting for Diego to call him back. Michael Cass sits staring at a nice reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, or whatever it’s called.
The senior nursing sister comes through the blond wood doors and says that Desmerelda is comfortable. That there is no danger of miscarriage.
“I want to see her.”
“I don’t think that’s wise, señor. She is sleeping. We have given her a light sedative.”
Cass detects the discomfort in the woman’s voice. Dezi has told her she doesn’t want to see her husband, he thinks. He glances at Otello: has he had the same thought?
It seems not, because he says, “Can she come home?”
“We would rather she stayed here overnight. The doctors would like to examine her again in the morning. Then if all is well, she should be able to leave.”
Otello stares at the nurse. He looks baffled, hurt, diminished. His left hand closes into a fist, opens, clenches again.
Cass gets up and puts his arm around Otello’s shoulders. Gently he says, “Better she stays here, compadre. Why take risks, huh? C’mon, let’s get you home. It’s been a rough day.”
Otello falls asleep in the back of the car. At the marina, shouts and bangs and camera flashes wake him.
“Michael? What’s going on? What are these people doing here?”
“Feeding,” Cass says, and powers the car through the gates.
The following morning, both El Sol and El Correo have EXCLUSIVE banners across their front pages. El Sol’s front page is divided in half vertically. On one side the distraught Desmerelda; on the other, Otello leaving the headquarters of the Central Criminal Bureau in the company of his “elegant female lawyer.” Beneath the pictures is the headline WE KNOW WHY DEZI WEPT. El Correo is slightly more restrained, even though it has very similar photographs on its front page. Both papers make much of the taking away of computers. They sail very close to the legal wind, mentioning recent child pornography cases.
By midday, the marina complex is besieged. The company in charge of its security (already trying to deal with inquiries from the Special Investigations Unit) drafts in extra staff, including two more dog handlers. The wealthy inhabitants are greatly inconvenienced. They do not like being photographed in their cars as they come and go. They are the kind of people who do not want the common herd to know where they live.
The jostling journalists do not really know why they have gathered. They are like whale hunters in fog; there’s a ripely rancid smell in the air, but they do not know where it’s coming from. The only bright spot in their day comes when Michael Cass brings Desmerelda home in the Hummer. They jump in the air, trying to get pictures of her shrinking into the backseat of the huge machine.
Next day, the gates of Hades open wide. Somehow the Bianca connection makes the front pages of both El Sol and El Correo. Reporters from all over the country hasten to catch flights to the capital.
Nemiso, on his way to work, bought multiple copies of the newspapers, and as he walked down the corridor to his office, he pushed doors open and threw them in, saying, “Which one of you whores leaked this for the price of a couple of drinks?” His startled juniors studied the photos of a simpering, beautiful child under headlines declaring that this was the DEAD GIRL at the center of the SHOCK OTELLO INVESTIGATION.
Nemiso’s phone was ringing when he closed his door, and he ignored it. He went to the window and gazed unseeingly down at the parking lot until he had steadied himself.
His team had been marking time for thirty-six hours, and he was immensely frustrated. Interviews with just about everybody connected with the Paff! label had failed to explain how Bianca Diaz made the transition from a hovel in the Triangle to the pages of fashion magazines. The children who had modeled the clothes were “amateurs.” They were “just kids off the street.” No one seemed to know how they’d found their way to a basketball court in the eastern suburbs. The name that kept coming up was Marco Duarte, David Bilbao’s assistant. But Duarte — along with Bilbao and, no doubt, a twittering circus of hairdressers, makeup artists, and bulimic models — was on location “somewhere in Arizona.” Where their telephones didn’t work, apparently. Nemiso’s calls and e-mails to the state police headquarters in Phoenix had met with little interest and had resulted in no cooperation. So he and his team would have to cool their heels until Bilbao and his coterie returned from the United States in — Nemiso checked his watch — a little under thirty hours. In the meantime, the Otello business
was degenerating into the dangerous farce that he, Nemiso, should have predicted. And perhaps might have avoided.
He exhaled a deep breath and went to his desk. There were several e-mails; the second was from the office of the minister of internal security and had a red exclamation mark alongside it. Nemiso would need a strong coffee before he opened it. He stuck his head through the doorway into the squad room and summoned Maria Navarro.
By sunset, the siege of the marina complex has become very lively indeed. Already the occupants of two apartments that have a good view of Otello’s penthouse have found it convenient to take unscheduled holidays. Rival newspapers have offered them quite ridiculous sums of money to rent their homes, so why not? (Soon other residents will succumb to similar offers. As will owners of boats moored in the marina. Balconies and decks will be manned by unsuitable people toting cameras and binoculars. On their return, the owners will find that their fridges have been looted, their carpets ruined by cigarette ash, their rooms and cabins filled with takeout food litter. But never mind. The insurance will cover it.)
Faustino had been detained at work by an editorial “summit meeting” about the Otello-Bianca Affair. He had not been alone in arguing that no such thing existed. The fact that Mateo Campos and El Sol claimed that it did more or less proved that it didn’t. Nonetheless, he had come under considerable pressure from Carmen d’Andrade to use his “personal connection” with Otello and Desmerelda to secure La Nación an inside story. To get Carmen off his back, he’d agreed to try, while having not the least intention of doing so. Before the meeting, in a hasty and furtive conference in her office, he and Nola had agreed to say nothing about their personal knowledge of Bianca, in order to protect Bush and Felicia. They both knew that it would be a difficult and dangerous secret to keep. If their colleagues — if Carmen — found out . . . well, there’d be hell to pay, and then some. And Faustino couldn’t be certain that nobody else working in the Nación building knew that the wild-haired kid who hustled errands right outside was the brother of the “slain child model” at the center of “the Otello mystery.” What about Rubén, for instance?