17 Stone Angels by Stuart Archer Cohen

better with this one,” the Chief commented. “He’s warming up.”
    The champagne came and they toasted La Doctora’s arrival in Buenos Aires, then it was the Chief’s turn to sing.
    The sight of the Chief up there with his white performer’s jacket always struck Fortunato as slightly humorous, even after these many years. Bianco cleared his throat and took a long drink of water. “ “Mano a Mano,” he told the musicians sternly, and they launched into the classic, now some seventy years old. As the chief began singing, his face took on a look of haughty strength, verging on arrogance. He was making a perfect cara de policia .
    â€œThis is one of the most classic,” Fortunato explained.
    â€œI can’t understand it.”
    â€œThere is much lunfordo . The theme is thus: the singer loses his woman to the rich playboys. She throws their money to the passing crowd like a lazy cat playing with a miserable mouse. The man is crushed, but he resists. He says, when you are old and ugly, and they’ve put you out on the street like used furniture, don’t forget your friend, who will still help you with advice, a loan, or in any way he can.” Fortunato gave her a soft look. “He still loves her.”
    The gringa cocked her head and her guarded features warmed to the romantic sentiment. “That’s beautiful.”
    â€œYes,” he answered, “it’s beautiful.”
    The Chief sat down to applause and launched into a long discourse on tango and the deleterious moral effect of rock ‘n’ roll . The grill disappeared and Fortunato ordered more wine. The Chief asked Athena to dance and after some initial stumbles she repeated the basic step over and over again for two minutes. Fortunato enjoyed her bashful smile as he danced past her with Bianco’s wife, and on the next number, as something inevitable, he took her in his arms. A formal approach, fingers touching, his other hand politely behind her shoulder. He tried to downplay his embarrassment by lading her with compliments and teaching her another step, and in their mutual discomfort she lost her enigmatic distance and became a young woman in a bar in Buenos Aires, dancing with a man old enough to be her father. For an instant, he wanted to kiss her.
    They left at three, when the coffee could no longer hold off her exhaustion. The bookstores on Corrientes had closed and the furtive elements of the city were flitting in the darker passages. Gangs of street children at Plaza Misereres lounged half-naked and wild, looking for a victim, while the base of a grand statue crawled with spray-painted slogans against the InternationalMonetary Fund. Athena hadn’t said anything in a long time, and Fortunato’s absurd situation came down on him again. Waterbury’s murder. His wife’s death. And him between the fangs of both those events. He looked over at La Doctora; her head had lolled back against the seat, her mouth half-open in the sleep of the innocent. She looked young and childlike as the shadows skated over her skin.
    â€œIt’s so easy for you,” he confided softly. “You eat a few beefsteaks, make your report and go home. Us, we have to go on living in this whorehouse.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    T he next morning Fortunato had a busy round of police work. An overloaded lumber truck had rolled over two months before and seriously injured a pedestrian. Now the insurance company wanted the expediente to disappear. “Fifteen thousand,” Fortunato told their lawyer. “And follow the safety regulations next time.” They’d picked up a puntero the previous day, and his lawyer had come in to make the arrangements before they officially recorded the arrest. “Two thousand five hundred,” Fortunato said. Meanwhile, a string of burglaries on the western edge of the district indicated that someone was robbing on their own account, and Fortunato put