Around that time the father suffered the accident that left him half paralyzed, so the sisters abandoned their studies and came back to town. There were several versions of what had happened to the old man. That his horse had thrown him when he was surprised by a swarm of locusts from the north, and that he spent the whole night lying in the middle of the field, his face covered with the insects and their razor-sharp legs. That he suffered some kind of stroke when he was screwing a Paraguayan at Bizca’s brothel and that the girl had saved his life, almost without realizing it, because she went on giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Or also, that one afternoon he discovered, or so people said, that someone very close to him had been poisoning him. He didn’t want to believe it might be one of his sons. Apparently, someone had been adding a few drops of the liquid used to kill ticks in the whiskey he drank at the end of every day, at dusk, on his flower-filled balcony. By the time they realized what it was, the poison had done part of its job, and from that point on the old man couldn’t walk anymore. In any case, before long the family was not seen around town anymore. The father because he stayed in his house and never went out; and the sisters because, after taking care of their father for a few months, they grew bored of being locked in and decided to go abroad.
Unlike all their friends who were going to Europe, the sisters went to the United States. They spent time in California, then crossed the continent by train on a trip that took several weeks with long stops in various cities along the way, until they reached the East Coast around the beginning of the northern winter. They spent the trip staying in large hotels, gambling wherever they could along the way, living the life and playing the part of South American heiresses in search of adventure in the land of upstarts and the nouveau riche.
This was the news about the Belladona sisters that reached town. The information arrived with the evening train that left the mail in large canvas bags on the station platform. It was Sosa, the post office agent, who reconstructed the itinerary of the young women from the postmarks on the envelopes addressed to their father. Complemented by the detailed stories of the travelers and businessmen who came to the bar of the Plaza Hotel to recount what was rumored about the twins among their fellow students in La Plata—to whom they would boast on the telephone, apparently, about their North American conquests and discoveries.
Then, toward the end of 1971, the sisters reached the New York area. In a casino in Atlantic City they met the pleasant young man of uncertain origin who spoke a Spanish that seemed to come straight out of a television series. At first, not realizing there were two of them, Tony Durán went out with both sisters, thinking there was just one. This was a system the sisters had always practiced. It was like having a double do the disagreeable (and the agreeable) tasks for you, which is how they took turns with everything in life. In fact, people in town used to say, each sister only went through half of school, half of their catechism, and even half of their sexual initiation. They were always drawing straws to see which of them was going to do whatever they had to do. Is that you, or your sister? Was the question everyone asked when one of the two showed up at a dance, or at the dining room of the Social Club. Doña Matilde, their mother, would often have to clarify which was Sofía and which was Ada. Or the other way around. Because their mother was the only one who could tell them apart—by their breathing, she said.
The twins’ passion for gambling was the first thing that attracted Durán to them. The sisters were used to betting against each other, and he became part of the game. From that point on he dedicated himself to seducing them—or they dedicated themselves to seducing him. They were always together (dancing, dining, listening to live music) until one of the two would insist on staying a bit longer to have another drink at the bar in the hotel, while the other would excuse herself and go back to the room. He would stay with Sofía; with the twin who said she was Sofía. Everything worked out for a few days.
Then, one night, when he was in bed with Sofía, Ada came in and started undressing in front of them. That was the start of the stormy week they spent in the motels of Long Island’s South Shore, in the freezing winter, sleeping together, the three of them, enjoying the bars in the resorts that were nearly empty in the off-season. The three-way game was hard and brutal and the cynicism was the hardest thing to bear. Perdition and evil make life fun, but conflicts evenutally arise. The two sisters would plot behind Tony’s back and make him say too much; he, in turn, would plot with the women, trying to turn one against the other. Sofía was the weakest, or the most sensitive, and the first to give up. One night she left the hotel and flew back to Buenos Aires. Durán continued traveling with Ada. They went back to the same hotels and to the same resorts, until one night they decided that they, too, would go to Argentina. Durán sent her ahead and came a few days later.
“But did he come for them? I don’t think so. And he didn’t come for the family money, either,” Inspector Croce said, stopping to light his cigar. He leaned against the counter while Madariaga cleaned glasses behind the counter. “He came because he was never at peace, because he couldn’t keep still, because he was looking for a place where he wouldn’t be treated like a second-class citizen. That’s why he came, and now he’s dead. In my time things were different.” The Inspector looked around the tavern, but no one said anything. “We didn’t need a half-Latino, half-mulatto, fake gringo coming here to complicate life for a poor country Inspector like me.”
Croce was born and raised in the area. He became a policeman during Perón’s first government, and had been in charge of the district ever since—except for a brief period after General Valle’s revolution in 1956. The Inspector went gray overnight, that year, when he found out the military had executed the workers who had risen up asking for Perón’s return. The week before the uprising Croce had been rallying the local police stations, but when he learned the rebellion had failed he wandered through the countryside speaking to himself for days, without sleeping. By the time they found him it was already as if he were someone else. His hair white, his head agitated, he locked himself in his house and didn’t come out for months. He lost his post that time, but he was reinstated during Frondizi’s presidency in 1958 and has kept it ever since, despite all the political changes. He was supported by Old Man Belladona who, as they say, always defended him, although they weren’t particularly close.
“They want to catch me slipping up somehow,” Croce said, smiling. “They have me under surveillance. But it won’t work, I won’t let them.”
He was legendary, much loved by all, a kind of general consultant in town. Everyone thought Inspector Croce had a bit of a screw loose, especially when people saw him riding through the countryside in his one-horse cart. Always the lone ranger, he’d detain cattle rustlers and horse thieves, or round up bums and rich kids from the large ranches when they came back drunk from the bars near the port. His style sometimes provoked scandals and grumbling, but he got such great results that everyone ended up thinking that his was the way every country Inspector should behave. He had such extraordinary intuition, he was like a psychic.
“He’s a bit off,” everyone said. A bit off, maybe, but not like Madman Carousel, who circled around town all dressed in white, talking to himself in an incomprehensible tongue. No, a bit off but in another way, like someone who can hear a song in his head but can’t quite play it on the piano. An unpredictable man who ranted at times, had no set rules, but was always right and always remained impartial.
Croce got it right so often because he seemed to see things that others didn’t. He caught a man who had raped