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sequestrations, tortures or beatings, every year there were an enormous number of complaints concerning minors tortured or strangled in the police stations.
    The station at La Boca smelled of worn-out shoe leather and mothballs. Two broken chairs next to a dead plant decorated the room where Paula and Jana had been waiting for three-quarters of an hour, sitting on a bench opposite the desk. They had been refused a phone call, a glass of water, and access to the toilets, which were, it seemed, plugged up.
    â€œIt’s going to be okay, precious,” Jana whispered to her friend. “It’ll be okay when we get out of here.”
    Tears were running down Paula’s cheeks, completing the ruin of her makeup.
    â€œIt’s horrifying,” she repeated into her Kleenex. “Did you see what they did to him?”
    In death, Luz had become a man again.
    â€œTry not to think about it,” Jana said, stroking her feeble hand.
    But Paula wasn’t listening.
    â€œWhat kind of animal could do something like that? What monster? And Luz? I don’t understand how he could have let himself be taken in like that.”
    Luz was her protégée, her kitten by the roadside, her associate; Paula had taught her about the night, the neighborhoods, the hours to avoid, suckers to be cajoled, hotels that welcomed prostitutes, backrooms, the risks and the rules that had to be observed: it was just incomprehensible. And then why did they have to kill her? Because she was different? Because she was on the bottom rung of society, and it was eternal human nature to take revenge?
    â€œIt’s disgusting.”
    â€œYes,” Jana agreed. “But it’s not your fault.”
    â€œIf I hadn’t had that appointment in Niceto, I could have been there: things would have turned out differently.”
    â€œIt’s pointless, I’m telling you.”
    Agent Troncón was watching them out of the corner of his eye, and was less frisky than he’d been when his boss was around. Raised by a father who kicked him in the ass and who even in the morning looked like he’d just come out of a
pulpería
—a country bar in the time of the gauchos—Jesus Troncón came of age on a high, arid plain, afflicted with short-sightedness, persistent acne, and a downy mustache that caressed downturned lips. The apprentice policeman walked up and down a few times in his too-short uniform and finally beckoned to them from the hall.
    â€œHey! It’s your turn!”
    Paula cringed beneath her cheap cream-colored coat. She knew Sergeant Andretti by reputation—he was to be avoided. Jana helped her get up from the bench where they’d been marinating and shot a withering look at the greenhorn in his cap. The boss’s office was situated at the end of the hall, after the empty vending machine.
    â€œCome on, we’ve got lots of things to do!” Troncón bawled for form’s sake.
    Paula moved forward, teetering.
    â€œYou won’t do anything stupid, will you?” she whispered to her friend before going in.
    â€œNo. I promise.”
    A smell of old sweat emanated from the walls of the office, which were covered with search bulletins, drug-abuse prevention posters, and tattered pictures of naked women. His burly body wedged into a groaning chair, Andretti sized up the couple—a transvestite with a giraffe’s neck decked out in an unlikely white dress with flounces and an Indian with a torso like a female monkey’s, her buttocks poured into a black combat suit: faggots disgusted him, but the little whore, with her round ass and her Amazon’s legs, would be well worth visiting in a cell.
    â€œCan you tell us what we’re doing here?” Jana asked for openers.
    â€œWhat do you mean, what are you doing here? We’re dealing with a murder, kid,” the cop snapped at her, “and I’m the one who asks the questions. Three out of four guilty parties