I bought some more cigarettes, a Prensa, and a copy of the Argentinisches Tageblatt-the only German-language newspaper it was safe to read, in the sense that it didn’t mark you out as a Nazi. But the main reason for going into the station was the knife shop. Mostly, the blades were for tourists: bone-handled cutlery for chartered surveyors and accountants who fancied themselves as gauchos or street-fighting tango-dancers. A few of the less spectacular knives looked about right for what I had in mind. I bought two: a long, thin stiletto for pushing right through a keyway and tripping the catch within a lock housing, and something bigger for jimmying a window. I tucked the big one under my belt, in the small of my back, gaucho style, and slipped the little stiletto inside my breast pocket. When the shop clerk shot me a look, I smiled benignly and said, “I like to be well armed when my sister comes to dinner.”
He’d have looked a lot more surprised if he’d seen my shoulder holster.
Half an hour passed. Forty-five minutes turned into an hour. I’d just started to curse Anna when, finally, she showed up, wearing an ensemble of old clothes supplied by Edith Head. A nice plaid shirt, neatly pressed jeans, a tailored tweed jacket, a pair of flat heels, and a large leather handbag. And too late, I realized my mistake. Telling a woman like Anna to come out wearing old clothes was like telling Berenson to frame a great painting with firewood. I guessed she had probably changed her clothes several times just to make sure that the old clothes she had on were the best old clothes she could have chosen to wear. Not that it mattered what she was wearing. Anna Yagubsky would have looked wonderful wearing half a pantomime horse.
She eyed the Belgrano train uncertainly.
“Are we taking the train somewhere?”
“The thought had crossed my mind. But not this one. I hear the slow train to paradise is more comfortable. No, I wanted to meet you here so I wouldn’t miss you in the dark outside. But now that I’ve seen you again, I realize I wouldn’t miss you in an exodus.”
She blushed a little. I led her out of the station. With that huge, echoing cathedral of a building behind us, we walked east, through a double row of parked trolleybuses, and into a big open square dominated by a red-brick clock tower that was now striking the hour. Under acacia trees, people played music and lovers trysted on benches. Anna took my arm, and it would have seemed romantic if we hadn’t been planning trespass and the illegal entry of a public building.
“What do you know about the Immigrants’ Hotel?” I asked her as we crossed Eduardo Manero.
“Is that where we’re going? I wondered if it might be.” She shrugged. “There’s been an Immigrants’ Hotel here since the middle of the last century. My parents could probably tell you more about it. They stayed there when they first came to Argentina. In the beginning, any poor immigrant arriving in the country could get free board and lodging there for five days. Then, in the thirties, it was any poor immigrant who wasn’t Jewish. I’m not sure when they closed it. There was something in the paper about it last year, I think.”
We approached a honey-colored, four-story building that was almost as big as the railway station. Surrounded by a fence, it looked more like a prison than a hotel, and I reflected that this had probably been closer to its real purpose. The fence wasn’t more than six feet high but the top wire was barbed and it did the job. We kept walking until we found a gate. There was a sign that read PROHIBIDA LA ENTRADA and, underneath, a large Eagle padlock that must have been there since the hotel was built.
When she saw the big gaucho knife in my hand, Anna’s eyes widened.
“This is what happens when you ask questions people don’t want you to ask,” I said. “They lock up the answers.” I flicked open the padlock.
“Aiee,” said Anna, wincing.
“Fortunately for me, they use crummy locks that wouldn’t keep out a rat with a toothpick.” I pushed open the gate and walked into an arrivals yard overgrown with tufts of grass and jacaranda trees. A gust of wind blew a sheet of newsprint to my feet. I picked it up. It was a two-month-old page from El Laborista, a Peronist rag. I hoped it was the last time anyone had been there. It certainly looked that way. There were no lights in any of the hundred or so windows. Only the sound of distant traffic driving along Eduardo Manero and a train moving in the rail yards disturbed the quiet of the abandoned hotel.
“I don’t like this,” admitted Anna.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “But my castellano isn’t up to the kind of legalese and bureaucratic language you usually find in official documents. If we do find something, we’ll probably need those beautiful eyes of yours to read it.”
“And here was me thinking you just wanted some company.” She glanced around nervously. “I just hope there aren’t any rats. I get enough of those at work.”
“Just take it easy, okay? From the look of this place, nobody’s been here in a while.”
The main doorway smelled strongly of cat piss. The frosted windows were covered with cobwebs and salt from the estuary river. A largish spider scrambled away as my shoes disturbed its gossamer repose. I forced another padlock with the big knife and then raked the Yale on the door with the stiletto.
“Do you always carry a complete cutlery drawer in your pockets?” she asked.
“It’s that or a set of keys,” I said, gouging at the lock’s mechanism.
“Where were you during choir practice? You do that like you’ve done it before.”
“I used to be a cop, remember? We do all of the things criminals do, but for much less money. Or in this case, no money at all.”
“Money’s a big thing with you, I can tell.”
“Maybe that’s because I don’t have very much.”
“Well, then. We have something in common.”
“Maybe when this is all over, you can show me your gratitude.”
“Sure. I’ll write you a nice letter on my best notepaper. How does that sound?”
“If we find your miracle, you can write to the local archbishop with evidence of my heroic virtue. And maybe, in a hundred years, they’ll make me a saint. Saint Bernhard. They did it before, they can do it again. Hell, they even did it for a lousy dog. By the way, that’s my real name. Bernhard Gunther.”
“I suppose there is a doglike quality about you,” she said.
I finished raking the lock.
“Sure. I’m fond of children and I’m loyal to my family, when I have one. Just don’t hang a little barrel of brandy around my neck unless you expect me to drink it.”
My voice was full of bravado. I was trying to stop her from being scared. In truth, I was just as nervous as she was. More so, probably. When you’d seen as many people killed as I had, you know how easy it is to get killed.
“Did you bring those flashlights?”
She opened her bag to reveal a bicycle lamp and a little hand dynamo you had to keep squeezed to make it light. I took the bicycle lamp.
“Don’t switch on until we’re inside,” I told her. I opened the door and poked my muzzle inside the hotel. It wasn’t the one on my face. It was the one on my gun.
We went inside, our footsteps echoing on the cheap marble floor like those of two ghosts uncertain about which part of the building to go and haunt. There was a strong smell of mildew and damp. I switched on the bicycle lamp, illuminating a double-height hallway. There was no one about. I put away my gun.
“What are we looking for?” she whispered.
“Boxes. Packing cases. Filing cabinets. Anything that might contain records of immigration. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to dump them here when this place closed down.”
I offered Anna my hand, but she brushed it off and laughed.
“I stopped being afraid of the dark when I was seven,” she said. “These days I even manage to put myself to bed.”