Well, that caused a reaction, didn’t it? Your eyes are frightened.
“El Tigre?”
“I thought we might go out there for lunch,” he said. “Get out of the heat of the city.”
“That would be very nice,” Teresa said.
“It’s been some time since I have been there,” he said. “When was the last time you were there?”
Teresa shrugged.
“A long time ago. I don’t rem
ember.”
Mallín stood up, so suddenly it frightened her.
“I am leaving you now, Maria-Teresa,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
He threw Kertiz’s photograph on the table.
“If you want to go out to El Tigre, have your vegetable sales-boy take you there.”
“Enrico!”
“Get your things out of the apartment today,” he went on. “And please tell your father that I am no longer able to guarantee his loan at the bank.”
“Enrico, amado”—beloved.
“Don’t ‘amado’ me, you treacherous little bitch!” Mallín said, louder than he intended. He glanced around the bar. People were looking at him. Kertiz had a smug look on his face.
He marched out of the bar with as much dignity as he could muster.
There wasn’t a taxi in sight. There was never a taxi when you needed one.
He felt like crying.
Finally, a taxi appeared and he flagged it down and told the driver to take him to the Edificio Kavanagh. He would get the Rolls and drive around until he had his emotions under control, and then he would go home, where he would have several stiff drinks.
Pamela would be pleased to see him. She didn’t expect him for several hours. Perhaps he would surprise everyone, Pamela, Dorotea, and Little Enrico, and take everybody out for dinner.
[FOUR]
4730 Avenida Libertador
Buenos Aires
1730 16 December 1942
Clete put the top up on the Buick convertible, marveling again that the General Motors automotive engineers had the ingenuity to come up with a device that would raise and lower the top at the push of a button (unlike the do-it-yourself bullshit he and Tony had had with the ’37 Ford in Punta del Este). Then he carefully locked the car and walked into Uncle Guillermo’s house.
A man was loitering at the corner of Calle Jorge Newberry, and Clete wondered whether the man was there to watch him.
He was in an unpleasant mood. Who the hell was Jorge Newberry, anyway? he thought as the man on the corner glanced his way, then averted his gaze.
The plan was to leave Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo for Estancia Santa Catharina sometime in the morning. To Clete’s way of thinking, that meant sometime before ten-thirty. But it was twelve-thirty before the two-car, Horche-Buick convoy finally set out down the gravel road to Estancia Santa Catharina. During the forty-mile trip, he had to swallow the dust from his father’s Horche.