Barcelona Noir Read online

  This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2011 Akashic Books

  Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

  Barcelona map by Aaron Petrovich

  ISBN-13: 978-1-936070-95-4

  eISBN-13: 978-1-617750-45-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010939099

  All rights reserved

  First printing

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:

  Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

  Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane

  Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan

  Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth

  edited by Tim McLoughlin & Thomas Adcock

  Cape Cod Noir, edited by David L. Ulin

  Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

  Copenhagen Noir (Denmark), edited by Bo Tao Michaëlis

  D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

  D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, edited by George Pelecanos

  Delhi Noir (India), edited by Hirsh Sawhney

  Detroit Noir, edited by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking

  Dublin Noir (Ireland), edited by Ken Bruen

  Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat

  Havana Noir (Cuba), edited by Achy Obejas

  Indian Country Noir, edited by Sarah Cortez & Liz Martínez

  Istanbul Noir (Turkey), edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

  Las Vegas Noir, edited by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce

  London Noir (England), edited by Cathi Unsworth

  Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd & Johnny Byrd

  Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

  Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Lawrence Block

  Mexico City Noir (Mexico), edited by Paco I. Taibo II

  Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford

  Moscow Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

  New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith

  Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips

  Paris Noir (France), edited by Aurélien Masson

  Philadelphia Noir, edited by Carlin Romano

  Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin

  Pittsburgh Noir, edited by Kathleen George

  Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell

  Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly

  Richmond Noir, edited by Andrew Blossom, Brian Castleberry & Tom De Haven

  Rome Noir (Italy), edited by Chiara Stangalino & Maxim Jakubowski

  San Diego Noir, edited by Maryelizabeth Hart

  San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

  San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Peter Maravelis

  Seattle Noir, edited by Curt Colbert

  Toronto Noir (Canada), edited by Janine Armin & Nathaniel G. Moore

  Trinidad Noir, edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason

  Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

  Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman

  FORTHCOMING:

  Bogotá Noir (Colombia), edited by Andrea Montejo

  Jerusalem Noir, edited by Sayed Kashua

  Lagos Noir (Nigeria), edited by Chris Abani

  Long Island Noir, edited by Kaylie Jones

  Mumbai Noir (India), edited by Altaf Tyrewala

  New Jersey Noir, edited by Joyce Carol Oates

  Staten Island Noir, edited by Patricia Smith

  Venice Noir (Italy), edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  PART I: FOLLOW ME IF YOU CAN

  ANDREU MARTÍN Villa Olímpica

  The Law of Escape

  ANTONIA CORTIJOS El Born

  Brawner’s Shadows

  SANTIAGO RONCAGLIOLO Barri Gòtic

  The Predator

  ISABEL FRANC Poble Nou

  The Enigma of Her Voice

  LOLITA BOSCH Sant Gervasi

  In This World, and at the Time Mercedes Died

  PART II: SHELTERED LIVES, SECRET CRIMES

  DAVID BARBA El Carmel

  Sweet Croquette

  TERESA SOLANA Sant Antoni

  The Offering

  (Translated from Catalan by PETER BUSH)

  JORDI SIERRA I FABRA Turó Parc

  A High-End Neighborhood

  IMMA MONSÓ L’Eixample

  The Customer Is Always Right

  (Translated from Catalan by VALERIE MILES)

  PART III: DAYS OF WINE (WHITE LINES) AND ROSES

  ERIC TAYLOR-ARAGÓN Barceloneta

  Epiphany

  CRISTINA FALLARÁS Nou Barris

  The Story of a Scar

  VALERIE MILES Gràcia

  Bringing Down the Moon

  RAÚL ARGEMÍ Montjuic

  The Slender Charm of Chinese Women

  FRANCISCO GONZÁLEZ LEDESMA El Raval

  The Police Inspector Who Loved Books

  About the Contributors

  INTRODUCTION

  BLOODY RAMBLINGS

  Its physical beauty alone, surrounded by mountains with a view of the sea, was cause enough for architect Antoni Gaudí to raise his version of Candy Land upon its soil; a daily impetus for the city’s mimes and living statues to claim a spot along Las Ramblas and transform it into their stage.

  But don’t be fooled: Barcelona, with all its illustrious color and exterior fineness, hasn’t always been able to curb the darker yearnings of its Hyde to its Jekyll. Blame it on a bubbling, repressive concoction made with a pinch of Church, a touch of Crown, and a large dose of General Francisco Franco to stir up the insides of its very independent and anarchic Catalonian spirit. One that has allowed it to conserve its own language and modus operandi from the rest of Spain, and that has always attracted the vanguard to create under the sereneness of its palm trees and Mediterranean light.

  It may be hard to imagine, but Barcelona, presumably named after the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca in third century B.C., was once trapped behind the shadows of Roman walls, hidden within the largest concentrated labyrinth of Gothic architecture in all of Europe. Hundreds of years later, the thriving port city would open itself up to commerce, its industrial age, and with it came immigrants, workers, revolution, and vice. Then the city would endure the bloodshed of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), thirtyfive years of Franco’s iron fist, and, when that was finally over, its cobblestoned streets became breeding grounds of resentment.

  If noir is the genre most apt to expressing unease and malice within a society, it took awhile for Barcelona to feel safe to do so. In fact, Spain didn’t produce its first novela negra, with a police character and crimes of passion, until 1853, with the publication of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón’s El Clavo (The Nail). But bear in mind that Spain, in general, was not the easiest of places to be an author. Those brave or crazy enough to question the orthodoxy through their writing faced torture, imprisonment, or worse: death. Just remember Federico García Lorca’s tragic fate at the hands of the Nationalists in 1936.

  Over time, more crime fiction
was published, though it still faced heavy censorship. Francisco García Pavón’s novelas policíacas featuring the police chief Manuel González, a.k.a. Plinio, garnered a following in the 1950s and were eventually adapted into a popular television series. This Plinio character—who could be described as a man of few words, with his right hip attached to his gun and a cigarette appended to the side of his mouth—was without a doubt a pioneer of his time. But a true noir fan would rate the series tepid in comparison to the brutality of Franco’s very real hit men; the violence portrayed, well, a mere stroll in the park.

  It wasn’t until Franco’s death in 1975 that grittier tales began pounding themselves out upon typewriter keys soiled with absinthe and cigarette ash. The bans had been lifted and a new era had emerged. But instead of your classic whodunit style of noir that was popular in the U.K., Spain’s take on the genre stung with social criticism. Thanks to memorable protagonists created by Catalan novelists such as Francisco “Paco” González Ledesma, with his jaded inspector Ricardo Méndez (featured in this collection), as well as the great and late Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, with his bon vivant detective Pepe Carvalho, Barcelona began to be depicted as it actually was: a city riddled with violence, endemic corruption, and lack of social mobility.

  While some of the stories in Barcelona Noir still capture a certain air of this former era, a strange if more sadistic mood lurks through this small postindustrial city of today. Smeared with the pleasure-seeking sheen of its rampant tourist industry, combined with a constant stream of immigration from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and with the ever-growing tensions of Catalonian nationalism, the city has spawned a fresh new batch of resentments and culture clashes. Enter the underground world of Raúl Argemí’s “The Slender Charm of Chinese Women,” where drugs, xenophobia, and people trafficking manage to remain hidden in the city’s darkest corners. In Eric Taylor-Aragón’s “Epiphany,” two heartbroken outsiders meet at a bar and make a horrid attempt to escape their existential pain together, while in Jordi Sierra i Fabra’s “A High-End Neighborhood,” the city’s rich outright torture the foreign help.

  There are portraits here of Catalans struggling with their own sense of identity, feeling suffocated in a conservative society, as depicted in Imma Monsó’s mind-bending retail story “The Customer Is Always Right”; in Teresa Solana’s “The Offering,” where a respectable clinic becomes the setting for surgical terror; and in tiny clues scattered throughout Lolita Bosch’s scandalous tale of crosscontinental hate crimes. This repression is also expressed in Santiago Roncagliolo’s “The Predator,” where a group of officemates partake in Carnival night’s fun by putting on masks so they can take their real-life ones off; and in Valerie Miles’s “Bringing Down the Moon,” when the magic surrounding Saint John’s festival becomes the perfect excuse to commit murder.

  In the meantime, plots take us back in time in search of ghosts of the Second World War, such as in “Brawner’s Shadows” by Antonia Cortijos. And even further back, to the era of the gangster anarchists running scared through the Ciutat Vella, in Andreu Martín’s “The Law of Escape.” Today, the detectives and the pursuers aren’t necessarily men anymore either; they can be lesbian and pregnant, and penned by respected writers in the genre such as Isabel Franc and Cristina Fallarás.

  In fact, noir is so entrenched in Barcelona’s pop culture and street lore that a tourist can easily partake in it browsing the shelves of the Negra y Criminal bookstore in the Barceloneta, at its yearly BCNegra literary festival, or visiting the plaza between Sant Rafael Street and the Rambla del Raval dedicated to the memory of Vázquez Montalbán—the aforementioned creator of beloved character Pepe Carvalho, an ex-Communist detective and food connoisseur who, accompanied by his prostitute girlfriend, baptized the Raval district’s watering holes and best restaurants. There are fine-dining tour-guide musts, such as the Boquería Market’s Pinotxo bar or Casa Leopoldo, where if you tell your waiter, “Pepe Carvalho recommended I come, so serve me whatever you wish,” you’re bound for a killer meal you’ll never forget. If you are seeking a hard-to-swallow serving of Catalonia’s culinary snobbism, we recommend your next course be David Barba’s “Sweet Croquette,” a fascinating journey into one man’s obsession with the star chef Ferran Adrià.

  Repression, vice, immigration … the fourteen stories within will divert your eyes from Barcelona’s lively Ramblas and Gaudí spires, opening them onto the city’s tainted side. One that will never appear in any recommended walking tour.

  Adriana V. López & Carmen Ospina

  Barcelona, Spain

  January 2011

  PART I

  FOLLOW ME IF YOU CAN

  THE LAW OF ESCAPE

  BY ANDREU MARTÍN

  Villa Olímpica

  At the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, Barcelona was known as “The City of Bombs.” It was considered the world capital of anarchy. More than seven hundred political assassinations were carried out between January 1919 and December 1923. This tale is based on a true story that took place on September 1, 1922; a review of the case appeared in León-Ignacio’s book, Los años del pistolerismo (The Years of Gangsterism).

  Tino Orté’s father was pinched by the cops while painting No God, No Master, No King on the walls of the Poble Nou cemetery. He had the brush in his hand, ready to dip it into the bucket with the shiny black tar that Gerardo was holding, while Fabregat encouraged them and, supposedly, looked out to make sure they weren’t caught.

  But Fabregat was paying much more attention to the actual painting, to the text, to his two friends’ fears, and to hurrying them along, than to the movements in the fog around them. Fabregat was the one who’d recruited the other two to fill the neighborhood of Poble Nou with anarchist slogans: “C’mon, damnit, come with me right now and we’ll make sure that by the time everyone wakes up tomorrow, they’ll be converted to anarchism.” Nobody said no to Fabregat, who always carried a pistol, was part of the union leadership, and boasted of having gotten rid of two bosses the previous month. If anybody said no, he took them for scabs and killed them right then and there.

  The police didn’t come with horns and sirens, nor was it a coincidence the three men were caught. They had been looking for Fabregat, because they’d gotten a tip that he’d be there. They approached him stealthily, hidden within the shadows, and then they shouted: “Stop! Police! Hands up!” The bucket of tar spilled on the ground and over the anarchists’ feet as they raised their hands, offering no resistance.

  Five uniformed police with rifles and two undercover cops wearing derbies and carrying pistols shoved them against the wall, frisked them, and asked, “Are you the one called Fabregat?” And to the other two they said: “Who are you?”

  Tino’s father should have said, Constantino Orté, at God’s and your service, because the priests had taught him humility and life had taught him that the police were Catholic and would never kill another Catholic.

  “So, No God, No Master, No King, eh?” an undercover cop said. “You can stop being such a fool and just go.”

  Tino’s father and Gerardo thought they’d gotten a pass and smiled gratefully at the benevolence of those officers of the law and went ahead and turned their backs. Fabregat, however, knew what was really up.

  “You can go now.”

  They’d all heard talk about the Law of Escape, but Gerardo and Tino’s father probably thought it was an urban legend, or that it didn’t apply to them because they’d never been in trouble and that those felled by the bosses’ bullets were probably “up to something.” But Fabregat knew it wasn’t like that. Fabregat knew that twenty-three comrades had already fallen, all shot in the back, since the Law of Escape had been instituted on December 5, 1920.

  The police officer repeated, “You can go now,” and Fabregat let out an anguished cry: “The Law of Escape!” And they took off running, their six espadrille-covered feet leaving a trail of black tar footprints on the sidewalks, and then there was
galloping, and the sounds of guns cocking, and an endless volley of bullets that shook the neighbors who’d been hiding in the dark on their balconies and looking out at the cemetery.

  Tino found out what happened from one of those neighbors who heard, and more precisely saw, everything from one of the balconies. She told him about it at the Poble Nou cemetery, the oldest in Barcelona, on the other side of the wall where his father had been painting, just as the city workers were putting his father’s coffin in the crypt where it would rest forever.

  “You’re his son?” the woman asked, full of hate. “I saw what happened.” And then she told him how they were painting No God, No Master, No King and how the police shouted and the tar footprints on the sidewalk detailed the last steps of the three men before the shooting, the red blood spilling over the black tar like a symbol. The anarchists’ flag was black and red.

  “Ma’am, please,” was all Tino could manage to say.

  He hugged his wife Elena and stepped away from the crypt’s high walls, from the modest bouquet of flowers, from the crowd of indignant workers, from the cemetery, from the wall his father had been painting.

  He didn’t want any trouble.

  Tino wanted to tear off the worker’s skin that had covered him his whole life. He’d been born in Poble Nou—an area so proud of being proletariat, so poor and dirty, a cauldron of conspiracies and hate—but he’d managed to save up and buy a flashy white car from a member of the bourgeoisie who was afraid to drive, and he’d fled from Poble Nou and taken up residence in Gràcia, also a worker’s neighborhood, but cleaner, more bourgeois. When you went out on the streets, you could greet tidy middle-class people. Neither the bosses’ bullets, which pursued workers in Ciudad Antigua and in their barracks, nor the proletariat’s hunt for impresarios in rich neighborhoods, ever reached Gràcia.

  That last day of August, so incredibly hot, a month after his father’s death, Tino was observing the view from his terrace, wearing an undershirt and smoking, maybe thinking about the neighbor who had seen the application of the Law of Escape from her balcony. He lived on the second floor of a building on Venus Street, between Liberty and Danger. The Gràcia neighborhood maintained its ideology in its street names. Even today, just a bit further up, there’s still Fraternity Street, and Progress Street …