The Crime of Julian Wells by Thomas H. Cook Page B

profound and corny, as true as it was impossible, and yet, as an expression of the old man’s Christian perfectionism, it seemed entirely sincere.
    The old man smiled. “Come then,” he said, now looking at Julian and me and nodding forward, his signal that we were to come with them to the station.
    It was only a short distance to the train station, but much of it was down a long sweep of concrete stairs, which made our progress slow and halting, Father Rodrigo somewhat unsteady on his feet, so that often Marisol took one arm and Julian the other.
    At Retiro, crowds of people gathered in great, noisy throngs. Some carried cardboard boxes tied with twine rather than luggage, but this was Buenos Aires in the eighties, not some distant jungle outpost of a century before, and so the vast majority carried simple, battered suitcases and valises not very different from what would have been seen in any American bus station.
    If the bus to the Chaco was different from the others, it was only in that those who waited for it looked poorer and more resigned than those on their way to less distant and impoverished shores. They were farmworkers, as Father Rodrigo noted, toilers in soy and sorghum and maize.
    The bus pulled in after a few minutes.
    Father Rodrigo got to his feet. “God be with you all,” he said, then turned to Marisol, and drew out a strand of dark beads. “I brought these from the Chaco,” he said.
    Marisol took the beads and hung them around her neck. “I will wear them every day,” she said.
    The old priest smiled. “Be kind to yourself, my daughter,” he said to her, “and remember me.”
    Marisol faced the bus as it pulled away, her hand raised, waving, craning her neck, trying for one last glimpse of Father Rodrigo. But he had taken a seat on the opposite side, and so she did not see him again, though she didn’t give up her effort until the bus had disappeared into the night.
    “He could easily be arrested,” Julian said firmly and in a way that gave his words a distinct authority. Then he looked at Marisol pointedly. “Talking the way he does about spies in the American consulate. If there were such people, spying for Casa Rosada, they might feel threatened.”
    Marisol’s eyes shot over to Julian, and I could see that his remark had struck her as very serious indeed.
    “Threatened? But he is just a country priest,” she said. She began to toy with the beads the old priest had just given her. “He is nothing to the ones in Casa Rosada. Who would listen to a priest from the Chaco? He is dust to them.”
    Julian’s voice was full of warning. “Even dust gets trampled,” he said. He looked out toward the distant and still-­departing bus. “No one is too small to be noticed by the generals at Casa Rosada,” he added.
    He spoke with great authority, as if he had knowledge of secret connections between the American consulate and the masters of Casa Rosada, which, of course, he did not have. And yet, as I could see, Marisol took his words to heart, though she added nothing to the exchange that had just taken place and instead nodded toward the stairs that led back to San Marco.
    “There is a nice little restaurant there,” she said. “It is called La Flora.”
    A few minutes later we were seated at an outdoor table of the little café she’d mentioned. For no apparent reason, Julian began to talk about a book I was reading, arguing with me over a certain point. He was almost never wrong in such matters, but on this point I knew he was, which rather pleased me, and so to prove that I was right, I went back to the hotel to get the book. It was a chance, however juvenile, to one-up my always completely confident friend. The hotel was only a block away, so I was back very quickly, moving briskly toward the café because I knew I was right and couldn’t wait to prove it. But as I closed in upon their table, I saw that Julian and Marisol were talking very intently. Julian was leaning forward, and