Barcelona Noir Read online

  The mechanic, Paco the Nut, came walking up the empty and badly lit cobblestone street from the garage where he kept his flamboyant taxi. He screamed, without consideration for the neighbors, who, because of the heat, probably couldn’t sleep anyway: “Tino! Telephone!”

  A customer. His number was on a list posted at different taxi stands throughout the city. There were people who preferred to hire private drivers rather than use the big companies or the collectives.

  Tino came down to the street and ran to the nearby garage. Paco the Nut and some of his relatives were playing cards, all in undershirts. The receiver was off the hook.

  “We’d like to rent a car for tomorrow,” he was told. “We’d like to go to Mataró. Very early. At seven in the morning.”

  Mataró is a tiny industrial town on the coast, about twentyeight kilometers from Barcelona. It was a long trip. At sixty cents a kilometer, he’d earn at least sixteen pesetas, maybe seventeen or eighteen with the tip. A good amount to feed his kids, pay his rent, and put toward the bank loan that had allowed him to buy the taxi and get his license.

  “Just come by the corner of Cortes Street and Paseo de Gràcia. We’ll be there. At seven sharp.”

  Euphoric, Tino turned to the garage employees: “The car must be ready by six in the morning, spotless, and with a full tank! There’s a big tip in it for you!”

  He ran home to celebrate his good luck with his wife.

  “Will it be okay?” she asked him, her heart on her sleeve, always a little fearful.

  “Of course it’ll be okay.”

  “It’s just that you still haven’t transferred the title …”

  “I’ve only had the car two weeks. It’s being processed. What do you think will happen?”

  The next day, dressed meticulously in his blue uniform with a flat hat and shiny shoes, Tino Orté waited next to his imposing white Studebaker 30 HP, license number 6205, at the intersection of the two majestic streets: Paseo de Gràcia, which is like a museum with the most advanced architecture, but also an arrogant exhibition displayed by the city’s most notable families; and Cortes Street, which today is Gran Vía de les Corts Catalanes, and runs across the whole city, from north to south.

  Two men approached him, one wearing a derby and the other a felt hat, both wearing suits, shirts with starched collars and cuffs, and dark ties, like businessmen. They looked very serious, as if their decisions could change the world.

  Tino greeted them with his hat in his hand, a bow, and a discrete smile, and didn’t bat an eye when he saw the pistol on one of the men’s belts. Back then, a lot of people carried pistols. For assault or defense, or both. After they made themselves comfortable in the back, he took the wheel.

  “To Mataró?” he asked.

  “To Mataró,” said the man in the felt hat. Then he instructed Tino on the exact route he should take. “Go around Parc de la Ciutadella to the fish market on Icaria Avenue, then take Taulat Street to the highway toward France, along the seaside.”

  Tino might have taken the same route on his own, but the precision of the passenger’s directions disconcerted him nonetheless, because it ushered him inexorably into a world he wanted to leave behind and which he did not like to visit.

  They abandoned the wide boulevards, moved past the big modernist park, and immediately found themselves on Icaria Avenue, with its anarchist echoes. Icaria was the name of the utopian society that was founded here by Étienne Cabet, in which all people would be equal and money would not exist—such was his dream. Later, Cabet would go to the United States and make a new Icarian attempt in Nauvoo, Illinois.

  Today, in the twenty-first century, Icaria Avenue is a pleasant road with trees and sculptures from that Barcelona which, in 1992, with the Olympic Games in mind, discovered the neighboring Mediterranean. That day, however, it was just the filthy and hectic main street in Catalonian Manchester.

  During the First World War, Spain had been neutral and that created an opportunity to provide whatever was needed by both sides. Whatever the war destroyed, Barcelona’s industry would replace. Especially fabric. Fabric for uniforms, for blankets, for tents. But also kegs, chemical and metallurgical products … Factories cropped up by the beach and the first railway in the Spanish state was laid to carry merchandise to nearby ports, where boats were waiting, and from there long trains would transport loads to faraway France.

  Catalonian Manchester was what we called that hodgepodge of dirty, arrogant factories, and the little workers’ houses that blossomed around it were called Poble Nou. The factories produced money, a lot of money, for the proprietors, providing huge Spanish-Swiss cars and fur coats and sumptuous feasts with tangos and the Charleston. And also spectacular buildings that are still admired by tourists from all over the world.

  They drove alongside the train tracks, between the miserable shacks where dirty, naked children splashed in the mud made toxic by the industrial waste from nearby factories.

  “It’s infuriating how these poor people live and how the bourgeoisie live downtown,” said one of the passengers in a shaky voice. “Two worlds, so close and so far away.”

  “Shut up, Manuel,” said the other voice.

  At the end of Icaria Avenue, there was the oldest cemetery in the city, with a façade that seemed like an homage to the most shameless masonry, with the eyes of God looking out at everything from five meters high, where the walls were washed with tar to cover the messages the authorities considered inappropriate.

  They drove past the misery of cardboard and woodenplank shanties and came upon the misery of dusty yards and what was once Horta’s creek, which today houses the haughty Gotham that is Diagonal Mar, filled with skyscrapers like this city has never seen or wanted to see. Then there was a depressing wasteland of warehouses and train platforms and an artillery barracks with chipped walls, wilted tomato and lettuce plants, and a train crossing.

  One of the men in the back placed the barrel of his gun under Tino Orté’s ear.

  “Now, go left. Down that road. Toward the woods up there.”

  Tino obeyed. Petrified. His mouth dry. It had to happen to him. In this cursed city of bombs, sooner or later, you were hit by shrapnel.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the other one said, less aggressively. “We don’t want to hurt you. We’re workers, like you. This isn’t about you. We need money for the Committee for Prisoners.”

  They arrived at the edge of the woods. Below them, the Mediterranean light yellowed the landscape.

  “There’s Jiménez.”

  A man smoked with ease next to the tracks, looking out toward the city of Barcelona.

  “Here comes the train.”

  The train arrived, spewing smoke every which way, working up an infernal racket. It whistled long, warning the crossing guard to put down the barrier, like he did each day.

  “If he doesn’t do anything, it means there’s nothing new.”

  “He’s not doing anything. What’s he supposed to do?’

  “Take off his hat.”

  “Well, he hasn’t taken off his hat, and there’s the train. Run—what are you waiting for?”

  The man in the derby leaned against the car window, his pistol still on Tino, watching him with the serene eyes of someone who wishes no harm but is willing to follow through on his threats if he’s obliged to.

  The man in the felt hat ran in the direction of the crossing.

  The train cars were uncovered and carried five hundred workers toward the future, to build someone else’s future, but they were happy and excited now because it was a payday. The payroll was in a strongbox guarded by two armed men.

  The man in the felt hat reached the crossing guard, who was about to comply with his daily routine. Even from afar, Tino could see how he jumped a little when he saw the gun. Then Tino heard: “Quiet! Today the barrier won’t be coming down!” The employee raised his hands and stepped back from the barrier.

  The man named Jiménez, who had seemed to be basking in the su
n, now fisted a pistol and ran toward the convoy, which was braking with an agonizing screech like the voice of a Greek tragedy’s hired mourner before the disaster. That ferocious machine had the initials M.Z.A. engraved on its side.

  Tino thought he glimpsed a man climb on top of the locomotive and then jump down to the cabin. What he couldn’t see were the two men who’d come along disguised as workers in the multitude and who, guns in hand, were trying to scare the others so they’d go away. There was a hell of a commotion, shots, five hundred people trapped and scattering every which way in panic.

  The only people who stayed behind, by themselves in one of the uncovered cars, were two armed men next to a trunk that was a meter long and half a meter tall. One already had his hands up, and even from two hundred meters away it was obvious he was shaking with fear and about to lose his balance. The second, however, was unbolting the safety on the Mauser, but not before the other three arrived and fired at him.

  He fell like a sack of potatoes. In the distance, Tino thought it looked incredibly easy to kill someone.

  One of the men who’d shot the guard, the most animated, dressed all in black and wearing espadrilles, threw the cash box on the ground. The man called Jiménez and the two dressed as workers picked it up. A fourth man jumped from the cabin and joined them.

  The locomotive immediately sounded its alarm, but the shots continued, overwhelming the cries from the scattering crowd.

  Tino realized then that some soldiers from the nearby artillery barracks were running toward the train and firing with each step. Right then, he felt like an accomplice to the assault and knew he was gambling everything in his life: his savings, his taxi, his family, his apartment in Gràcia.

  His hand went to the wheel, he wanted to leave. But he was dissuaded by the man in the derby, with his serene eyes and his pistol.

  “Be cool.”

  “For the love of God,” Tino whispered.

  “Not for the love of God, nor the homeland, nor the king.”

  The man in black, carrying the cash box with the guy called Jiménez, dashed toward the car, followed by the man in the felt hat, one of the men disguised as a worker, and the one who’d jumped from the cabin. The soldiers got to the train, climbed aboard, and took aim.

  While crossing a patch of grass, the man in black suddenly tripped and fell, taking the cash box and Jiménez with him. The fake worker tried to help him and they all ended up on the ground. The man in the felt hat managed an epileptic leap and kept running. But the guy who’d been in the cabin stopped, turned around, and helped the fallen. The man in black was hurt and limped, and the guy dressed as a worker helped him along. Jiménez ran with difficulty under the weight of the trunk. Clearly confused and ashamed for having fled, the man with the felt hat, who got to the taxi first, demonstrated his impatience with a gesture that was worthless at this point.

  The guy who’d jumped from the cabin, who was young and energetic, planted himself among the tomatoes, firing his gun, covering his friends’ escape, until he fell helplessly between the lettuce heads.

  By then, the others had reached the taxi and were climbing clumsily inside, five men and a trunk in what was designed for four, and one was hurt and howling. They piled up on each other, freaked out. “Fuck—let’s go already!” And another voice, quavering, asked, “What about El Quero? Where’s El Quero?” And another barked, “Fuck—they killed El Quero!” The treasure chest, metallic and secured with a thick lock, had the distinctive seal of the Aixelá security company.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Follow the creek to the highway to France!”

  Tino had already started the poor car. They chugged along on the uneven ground, rocks popping against the Studebaker’s underside, until they reached the highway.

  “Turn right! Go back to Barcelona!”

  Tino obeyed.

  A captain with the civil guard was crossing the street and noticed the white car packed with troublemakers; it was stained with a red liquid, an alarming red like the color of blood.

  They quickly guided Tino to Marina Street, where the man in the felt hat got out.

  “Take me to María’s house,” moaned the injured man in black.

  They continued to the city center, Plaza de Cataluña and its rounds, where the medieval walls used to stand and where the sentries kept watch.

  “This way!”

  They headed down Cera Street, which for many years had been a gypsy enclave in the city, and then reached Plaza Pedró, which still looks like it did in the ’20s. Those walls, those sidewalks, those corners, those balconies with laundry on the line, all persist as if history was frozen in a static photograph.

  That’s where the trip ended. The man in the derby and the man disguised as a worker helped the man in black out of the car. They walked off in the direction of Botella Street.

  Jiménez carried the cash box on his shoulder. He didn’t seem too worried that he’d be seen with it. He moved down Carmen Street and turned at the first intersection.

  The meter said forty-seven pesetas, which nobody paid.

  Tino put the Studebaker in gear, and minutes later he was on Las Ramblas, always noisy, colorful, and jubilant, with its florists, the Boqueria Market, café terraces, and, at the end, Columbus’s statue. Soon, he lost track of time and space.

  He realized they’d pushed him into the furious war between the anarchist union, CNT, and the employers’ union, which was called El Libre. But he’d been dragged into the wrong side—while the murders committed by El Libre had impunity, and were supported and protected by Arlegui, the chief of police, and all the powers in the city, Tino was sure that the men who’d assaulted the train would be viciously persecuted and most likely exterminated. And he had been an indispensable accomplice.

  He didn’t stop for his noontime meal. He arrived home midafternoon, left the car in Paco the Nut’s garage, and went up to his place where his wife Elena was waiting for him and who started crying immediately when he told her what had happened.

  “What will we do?” she asked. “What will we do?”

  Tino made a decision. “I’ll go to the police.”

  The captain from the civil guard who’d seen the white car and its red stain had immediately contacted the authorities, even before he found out there had been a train robbery.

  Before noon, the police were already looking for the vehicle in question. Back then in Barcelona, there were no more than twenty-five thousand cars, most of them domestic. Foreign cars were rare, and American cars even more so, because they demanded a high level of purchasing power. A white Studebaker wasn’t that hard to find. At sunset, when two undercover officers arrived at Paco the Nut’s garage, the engine was still warm and nobody had cleaned the blood off the chassis. The mechanic told them the car belonged to Constantino Orté, who lived on Venus, between Liberty and Danger streets.

  When the two inspectors got to his house, Tino Orté was just leaving, dressed in his best suit, and on his way to cooperate with the law.

  They detained him.

  “We’ll talk down at headquarters,” they told him.

  They took him to the sinister building on Via Laietana, headquarters for the Barcelona police since the world began. In those years, it was a commercial avenue, perfumed by sea air. The building was a big black stain which distinguished itself by being set wrong, to the side, so as to break up the street’s straight line.

  Police Chief Arlegui came to see him personally. Those who knew the man said he had eyes colored by malice. He was the guy who’d come up with the Law of Escape. He’d planned a couple of attempts on the life of Martínez Anido, the civil governor, just so he could pin it on the anarchists and attack them accordingly.

  “Three dead and at least three injured,” he told Tino. “Forty thousand pesetas stolen. The worst act of vandalism ever perpetuated in this city. Do you think we’re going to let you get away with that?”

  Tino began to say he had nothing to do with those thieves,
but the cops reminded him that his father had been such a dangerous anarchist that he’d been killed while committing a crime against the state. It also struck them as very suspicious that the car wasn’t registered in Tino’s name.

  “Did you think that we’d never figure out it was you?” Arlegui laughed. He asked him who his accomplices were. The names Tino had heard during the doomed adventure echoed in his brain: Manuel, Jiménez, El Quero, María.

  They beat him.

  So he sealed his lips. He was muzzled by an irrational and suicidal fury. He shook his head and turned away when they showed him photos of the suspects. He refused to indentify even El Quero, the one who’d jumped from the machinist’s cabin and then fell dead on the battlefield. He didn’t blink when they showed him a photo of the man in the derby, nor the man in the felt hat, nor the guy called Jiménez, nor the man disguised as a worker, nor the one in black who’d been injured.

  At dawn, the cops lost their patience and really let him have it. They broke the fingers on his right hand, they kicked him in the groin. His stubbornness convinced them that he’d voluntarily participated in the assault. When they threw him into a basement cell, his shirt was soaked with blood and his face was disfigured.

  Sometime later, the police arrested two men who’d hidden the thieves, and the doctor who’d helped the man in black, and the railroad company employee who’d provided the details for the robbery, but they never found the loot. It’s said that the man in black, who was named Recasens, was tried in France years later on assault charges and guillotined.

  They say the money ended up with a guy named Ramón Arín, who chaired the CNT’s Committee for Prisoners.

  Tino’s cell door opened and he raised his swollen eyes to the light.

  “Get up,” they said. “We’re taking you to the Modelo.”