Death at the Bodega, page 26
He’d almost dozed off again when he jerked his head and his eyes flew open. Faint light entered through the circular hole of the manway above, illuminating the silhouette of the hose that dangled through and shook in incessant flow. The gushing wine fell straight down to pummel the cap a few feet away from his head, creating a frothy divot. He realized he was on his back, spread-eagled, with his body half-sunk in the semisolid floating cap. Grape skins had crept into his ears and into the corners of his mouth and eyes, and they squirted between his fingers when he balled his fists. He tried again to move his legs, and the surface moved, but he remained imbedded as an integral part of it, neither rising nor sinking.
His head swam in wooziness. He no longer detected any fumes, but was certain they were there in abundance. It was only that his nostrils had become deadened to them. The hose continued to hang and shake, sending its stream into the frothy hole not far from his head.
He tried to sit up, and got halfway there before his butt sank farther into the cap which threatened to swallow him whole. Returning to a spread-eagled position, he rolled slowly onto his side, then onto his stomach. Keeping his arms and legs spread wide, he was able to lift his head out of the skins enough so that only his chin remained buried. There! As long as he kept his weight spread out over a large area, he wouldn’t fall through. This was the good news. The bad news was that this had nothing to do with him getting out of here, which was what he needed to do, right away, before he passed out again.
Straining his neck, he looked through the manway. The faint circle was about eight feet above him. If he jumped, he might be able to grab an edge and hoist himself through. The problem was that as soon as he jumped, or even tried to stand up, his feet would sink through the cap and he’d go down instead of up, totally defeating the purpose.
His head throbbed in fumes he no longer smelled. A sharp pain pulsed behind his eyes. At any moment, he knew, he would be involuntarily sent back to sleep.
The hose dangled and shook and continued to pummel its stream into the cap. The spewing end hopped and played, just a few feet above him and a few feet over. If he lunged, could he grab it? It seemed a dubious prospect because the cap became wetter and softer the closer it got to the hose, and was nothing but a frothy all-liquid hole beneath it.
He relaxed his neck to relieve the strain and his face fell into the skins. Unable to breathe, he jerked his head back up and forced his eyes open. He had no choice. He had to go for the hose, and go for it now.
“Fernando, help me,” he gasped.
Heaving himself to all fours, his body sank as much as it rose. Without hesitating he got to his knees and lunged. He felt a boot leave a foot as he flailed with his right arm, and his fingertips glanced the metal-flanged end of the spewing hose, and he grasped it. Yes! Then he grabbed it with both hands as a rush of wine blasted down his face and front, and he felt himself fall back into the skins while hugging the hose. He sank to his chest, to his neck, and tilted his head to grab one last breath before going under.
Then he jerked to a stop.
The hose still flowed down his front. He could feel its warm rush on his chest and groin. He’d sunk to his chin in the skins, but now the hose held him like a lifeline. It was a lifeline. Apparently it was stuck in the manway and wasn’t going to drop any farther. Apparently, the makeshift knot he’d tied in the green rope had held.
He kicked his legs, which moved freely in the liquid below, but would be no help in getting him out. This was going to have to be all in his arms, in his hands. He pulled himself up along the hose, hand over hand while kicking his legs, and was able to get his body partway out of the skins. Now he was chest deep, clinging to the hose.
The manway glowed faintly, five or six feet above him. He’d get only one shot at this, he felt certain. Only dry hose would give him purchase, and once he wrapped his wet body around it, it would become slippery and useless. If he fell back down and had to try again, he’d get nowhere.
Continuing to pull, arm over aching arm, he lifted most of his body out of the skins. He wrapped his thighs around the hose and shimmied, but as expected, they slid and slipped and gave him no upward lift. Only his hands on the dry hose kept him from falling.
His breaths heaved and his arms throbbed. Focusing on the manway, he grasped and pulled, grasped and pulled, with all the remaining strength that he had.
He was almost inside the opening now.
Quickly, he released his left hand and grabbed for an edge. Yes! His other hand came next, and now he hung inside the manway, alongside the spewing hose.
With a yell and a groan, he heaved himself up and through the opening, and out onto the tank dome, where he wriggled his legs free and slid to land in a dripping red gasping mess on the metal grill of the platform.
Chapter Eighteen
IT LOOKED LIKE it was lamb chops for lunch, with roasted potatoes. Gael was sorry he’d missed it. He must have been in the tank a while, because when he hobbled up to the table with one boot on and one boot lost, he noticed everyone had pretty much finished eating and was sitting around talking—except Inés of course, who had just begun cutting into her second lamb chop. They were going to be there for a while.
A wave of surprise and astonishment flowed up and down the table in reaction to his arrival. Gael noticed that, in addition to the usual attendees, the lunch party was augmented by Pasqual, who sat near the end of the bench on his left, and Inspector Cuevas, who sat opposite him, on the right.
Joaquín was first to speak. “Whoa! You fell in!”
“No, I didn’t,” said Gael, sliding into the open space next to the Inspector, who moved away as he did this. “Martina pushed me in—Hey Martina, how about you stop going wherever you’re going and have a seat? Lunch isn’t over yet.”
Martina, who had risen and begun walking in the direction of the kitchen, paused. “I was going to use the restroom,” she said, turning. She looked around, found the chair outside Florencia’s kitchen door, and sat. “I guess I can hold it a little.”
“Did you say Martina pushed you into a fermentation tank?” Gustavo asked, from the other end of Gael’s bench.
“Yes.” He picked a grape skin out of his ear and flicked it at a passing bee. “She pushed me in, just like she pushed Eder in.”
“Martina! Why did you push Gael into a fermentation tank?” Gustavo shouted.
Martina hunched in her seat and pressed her cheeks to her knuckles. She glared at the floor. “I am not saying anything.”
“Wait a minute,” said the Inspector. He set down his napkin and pivoted in his seat to regard Gael. “What do you mean, ‘Just like she pushed Eder in?’ Do you know something I don’t?”
“I believe I do. In fact, I think I know quite a lot that you don’t. I don’t have a hundred percent knowledge of everything, but I keep learning new stuff all the time.” Gael set his phone on the table, which he’d retrieved from the tank platform. “Only this morning, for example, did I learn about Martina’s role in this whole scheme. Thanks for filling me in, Martina.”
“What whole scheme?” asked Pasqual.
Gael picked up his phone and began manipulating it. “We’ll begin with this. I’ll send it to you first, Pasqual, and you can forward it to the Inspector. Who else wants one? You, Joaquín? Okay, here you go. And Osvaldo, and Tomás, and…Felipe. And of course Gustavo and Alexandra.” He punched buttons and sent. He omitted Inés because she was busy eating, and because she didn’t have a phone.
“What are we watching?” muttered the Inspector moments later, staring at his screen like everyone else was (except Inés).
“We are watching a video presentation of Bastián lighting the Christmas Day fire of a year and a half ago, as secretly filmed by Eder on his phone,” said Gael.
“Whoa!” said Joaquín, his eyes wide. “It was Bastián! Why did he do that?”
“Why do you think?” Gael asked. “For money, of course!”
“Well I’ll be goddamned,” said Tomás, leaning to watch the video a second time on Joaquín’s phone. “Who paid him?”
Gael cleared his throat. “Count Vidal Luzzago.”
The table went silent.
“By the way, where is the Count these days?” Gael asked, turning to Pasqual.
The General Manager shifted uneasily in his seat. “He sent me a message yesterday morning, said he had some urgent business to attend to in Santiago.”
Gael looked at the Inspector. “Not that this is really my business, Sir, but I suggest you get someone to stop Mr. Luzzago before he leaves the country. It might prove difficult to get him extradited from Italy later.”
Felipe piped up. “Why would the Count pay Bastián to start the fire? Why would he burn down his beloved Imago?”
A plate appeared in front of Gael containing two lamb chops seared to perfection, along with golden roasted potatoes garnished with cilantro. It smelled marvelous. His olfactory senses were back in business. He looked up gratefully at Florencia, who stared at him with wide eyes before she turned and went to her kitchen.
“You’d have to ask the Count that, to be sure,” said Gael, popping a piece of warm potato into his mouth. “Or the Inspector will have to ask him, rather, provided you can grab him before he flees the country. From what I understand, though, the Count is quite the mama’s boy, and I suspect Mama was running out of patience regarding getting back her investment in her boy’s Chilean project.” He swallowed the potato. “Extremely rich people can be that way, or so I have heard.”
Felipe nodded. “The Count was feeling distinct pressure.”
“Distinctly more pressure as the years went by, no doubt,” said Gael. “His ‘Imago my love’ this and ‘Imago my love’ that shindig, no matter how sincere it may have been at first, evolved into nothing more than a charlatan’s performance. A smokescreen, if you will. Mother wanted her money back, plus a return, and the only way the Count could get that for her was to force a sale. I suspect the land has gone up in value quite a bit these past few years, especially in the eyes of those who are salivating like crazy to take it over. The windfall that would result from a sale to MegaAgric or Don Toledo would certainly dwarf any cashflow Imago might generate in the coming years.”
“Being a minority shareholder, however, the Count could not make that happen on his own,” Gustavo said, nodding and rubbing his chin. “He needed to apply thumbscrews to his partner.”
“Exactly,” said Gael. “Without his partner knowing he was the one doing the screwing. So he maintained a charade of being Imago’s white knight, while secretly working to destroy it.” He cut into a tender juicy lambchop that was perfectly pink in the middle.
Pasqual frowned at his phone. “This doesn’t add up. I can see why the Count might want to start that fire, but I can’t see him working with the likes of Bastián to do it.”
“I couldn’t either!” said Gael. “That was the main thing that didn’t make sense to me: how the Count could be in cahoots with Bastián. I tried to picture the two of them hunting rabbits and drinking piscos and bedding whores in Villa Gorda together, and I couldn’t. And even if the Count were able to establish a relationship with Bastián and make a deal, imagine how risky it would have been for him! It would have put him in an extremely vulnerable position. I mean, he’s the Count! No, he needed a layer of protection, a middle person to handle the transaction—which became multiple transactions—without revealing the source. He needed to be able to pull strings from a distance. That’s where Martina came in.”
All eyes turned to the lab technician, who sat by the kitchen door and dug her knuckles deeper into her cheeks and stared harder at the floor.
“I’m pretty sure,” added Gael, “That Bastián never knew who he was ultimately working for, or cared. Which means Eder probably didn’t know who Bastián was working for, either. In fact, I’m almost certain Eder didn’t even know who the middle person was.” The lamb smelled extremely delicious. Gael raised his knife and fork and attacked it.
“Hold on,” said the Inspector. “I’m hearing theories. Wonderful theories. But what I need are facts. Facts and evidence.”
“Okay,” said Gael, chewing and pointing his fork at his phone. “Exhibit A: the Christmas Day fire, as filmed on Eder’s phone.”
“How did you come to possess Eder’s phone?” asked the Inspector.
“I don’t possess Eder’s phone.” Gael swallowed lamb. “The Count does. I got that video off Eder’s fob.”
“The famous fob,” said Tomás, nodding.
“Fob?” asked the Inspector.
“Jump drive. A little red one, the one Thiare gave him.” Gael looked at Pasqual as he said this, who showed no reaction. He continued. “The fob that Eder downloaded the contents of his phone to before he sold his phone to Bastián as bribe collateral. Eder didn’t have his phone anymore during the week before he died, did he Felipe?”
Felipe put a finger to his chin. “He told me he’d lost it.”
“That’s why I don’t think Eder knew who Bastián was working for, what the chain of command was. If he did, why would he sit on the back steps of the bodega in the sunshine and show that fob to everybody? And speak cryptically about how it was his insurance policy? He didn’t know he was showing the fob to the very person who would report its existence to the one he had ultimately been extorting.”
Again, all eyes turned to Martina. She didn’t flinch.
As Gael stared at her, he recalled how her whisper had sounded on the patio behind him, on the night of the party, and how it had contrasted with Bastián’s.
“No,” he said, going for more potato. “The more I think about this, the more I believe Eder simply happened upon Bastián starting the fire, and filmed him. Later, when Eder approached him about it, Bastián told him he was working for someone. And Eder said, ‘Fine, whoever is paying you also needs to pay me,’ or something to that effect. As a result of negotiations, Eder ‘sold’ his phone, likely promising it contained the only copy of the video.”
“I’m hearing a lot of words such as ‘likely’ and ‘I believe’ and ‘I’m pretty sure’ here,” said the Inspector, irritably. “But I see nothing, no evidence linking any of this to Count Luzzago. What makes you so sure the Count has Eder’s phone?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure,” said Gael, and watched the Inspector glower as he said it. He took a bite of potato and looked around the table. “Have any of you seen that old phone the Count has been using to take pictures with around here? Not his iPhone, but the other one, the Samsung Galaxy?”
“That thing is a piece of shit,” said Tomás.
“It is ancient, and very un-Count-like,” said Gael. “However, he could drop it into a vat of wine and it wouldn’t be a big deal. I wish I had two phones myself, one to keep clean and safe, and another to take pictures with around the bodega.”
“I saw him use that phone at the party on Saturday,” said Gustavo. “He was taking pictures of his pizzas with it while his hands were covered in flour. Yes, that is an old phone.”
“He brought it out the other night while we were in the bodega,” said Gael. “I was in there doing pushdowns, and we sat together for a while, and he showed me some pictures on it. When I saw the phone I thought it was a rather odd thing for the Count to have, but I didn’t think more of it at the time. It wasn’t until I was looking at Eder’s fob contents last night that I realized, holy crap! That was Eder’s phone I was looking at, in the hands of the Count! I feel sure of it. How foolish of him, really, to have kept it.”
“That’s your expert opinion?” said the Inspector, in a sneer. “One you ‘feel sure’ of? That’s not much for me to go on, and certainly not enough for me to detain someone of Mr. Luzzago’s stature.”
“Agreed,” said Gael, slicing more lamb. “But it would certainly help in a court of law, wouldn’t it, to have that phone as evidence? Provided you hurry up and arrest him and confiscate it. I imagine there are experts who can analyze that phone and match up pixels and lens scratches and other imperfections and whatnot with the media that’s on Eder’s fob. It’s a really old phone.”
The Inspector did not appear convinced.
“Of course,” continued Gael, “The best scenario would be to combine the phone evidence with witness testimony.”
“Witness testimony?”
“Yes.” Gael spoke slower now, and in the direction of Martina. “Testimony from a person who did not originate or organize this scheme. A person who worked solely as an accomplice, as a helper, who had been taken in by the spell of a wealthy and powerful man, and the things he had promised. A person whose initial role was simply that of a middle-person, to relay an instruction and make a payment. A person who had no intention of getting involved in what this ended up being. A person who continued following instructions as they became more complicated and onerous, until they were in over their head. A person who had probably not intended to kill Eder, who had only been obeying the boss’s command to retrieve the fob, but then things spun out of control. A person,” Gael softened his voice, “who might agree to cooperate with the prosecution in exchange for a far lesser charge.”
“I see where you are going with this,” said the Inspector.
In the chair by the kitchen, Martina squeezed her eyes shut. Gael thought he saw a tear seep out of one.
“So!” added the Inspector, in a peppier voice. “Do you have any additional information for me, Mr.…”
“Novoa.”
“Mr. Novoa?”
Gael speared another chunk of lamb and put it in his mouth. “Well, for your information, Benjamin did not murder Eder.”
The Inspector chuckled. “We are well aware of that. Nothing about his story lined up. We’ve only been holding him in order to help him dry out. We’ve had our eyes on Bastián for some time now, however.”
“Bastián did not murder Eder,” said Gael.
“And neither did I!” said Martina, rising from her chair. Tears shone on her cheeks. “It was an accident! I was only following instructions! Vidal ordered me to get that fob, and get it no matter what, but I never had any intention of killing Eder! None! I only held his head into the fermentation tank to get him to go to sleep, and give me time to get the fob from around his neck. That was all!”
