Navidad & Matanza Read Online Free PDF Page A

the napkins from their laps, they brushed some crumbs off their jackets. They left some five-dollar bills on the table. The blond man bent over and picked up a heavy, black wooden case that was sitting next to his chair and handed it to the other man. They shook hands. Then they walked down separate hallways to their rooms. Two hours later the blonde man left. The other man left after breakfast, in a Corvette or a Porsche, a car that made an impression on the parking lot attendants.
    I reviewed the hotel’s register for January of 1999. As I expected, the man to whom some sources attribute the kidnapping of the Vivar siblings wasn’t listed. At least not as Boris Real or Francisco Virditti. I asked about the foreigner who’d shared his table the evening of January 12 th . Alvaro, the bartender, pointed at the name of Edgar Lee, a Mormon pastor who—visiting Region Six—spent two nights at the Verganza, accompanied by a woman who spent half the day bathing her small child. The housekeeping staff hadn’t forgotten them either—the couple had asked to have the sheets changed fourteen times; it was also speculated that they’d stolensome hand towels from the bathroom. Two lines below, on the same page of the register, appears the name of another foreigner: Patrice Dounn. The famous master of the theremin—an unusual instrument whose operation relies on magnetism—who, days later, would perform at the VIP resort in Navidad and Matanza, on the same night that Bruno and Alicia Vivar disappeared. The employees of the Verganza do not remember a dark-skinned guest from that time, despite the fact that the Congolese Dounn is definitely black, as a photograph from n° 695 of World Music Express proves. A different page in that same magazine has an article on the theremin: appearing there is a photograph of the black, wooden case, heavy and rectangular, which musicians often use to transport the instrument. It is, without a doubt, the same case that appeared in Alvaro’s story; the same case that, in the vicinity of San Fernando, the Mormon pastor Edgar Lee—the American poet, dead in 1950—gave to Patrice Dounn, the Congolese thereminist who, on that exact date, was participating in the performance of Symphony No. 4 for orchestra (and optional chorus, theremin et alia) , by Charles Ives, in London’s Royal Albert Hall. This would’ve been an extravagant way to move ten million dollars of hadón, an illegal substance better known as “the ecstasy of hate,” upon whose discovery the International Police (Interpol) justified shutting down the festival in Matanza and Navidad on the 19 th of January 1999.

34
    A FEW DAYS BEFORE the publication of my article in SEA , I got a phone call at the journal’s office from a one Juan Carlos Montes. Ihadn’t thought again about the Vivar family, but during that phone conversation I felt, what I’d call now, my first suspicion of the mess the kidnapping of the siblings would uncover. And a certainty: I too would get dirty. Or that I was dirty already. For his part, Montes had no problem beginning the conversation with a lie.
    â€“ I live down the street from the Vivar’s home. I saw a car with your journal’s logo on the door and hoped that finally a journalist with a sense of smell had arrived.
    In reality, as I verified later, Juan Carlos Montes not only lived on a different street than he claimed, he lived in a different country.
    â€“ Sense of smell?
    â€“ I’m calling to find out what sort of story you’re writing. If it’s not too much trouble, of course.
    â€“ Forgive me, but I don’t know what you mean by sense of smell.
    â€“ A nose.
    â€“ Obviously. I don’t understand why you’re calling.
    â€“ Do you like your job at SEA ?
    â€“ Sir, if this is regarding a story you should speak to the editor. It doesn’t seem like . . .
    â€“ Listen to me. My son was a