Needle in a Haystack Read Online Free PDF

sequined dresses and make-up. A very young-sounding girl bursts in.
    What’s with the long faces, girls? Didn’t you hear? Hear what? She lives on a different planet. Darling, they just busted some subversives over there and shot everyone to shit. Don’t tell me we’re not going to be able to work tonight? I’ve got to pay the kid’s school tomorrow or they’re kicking him out. Don’t ask me. We’ll have to wait and see what Tony says.
    Eva turns towards the sound of approaching footsteps. A man enters, dressed in red trousers, socks and shoes.
    Says about what? Are we going to be able to work tonight? And why the hell not? No, just that we were wondering, because of the shooting. Don’t worry about that. The Major in charge is a friend of mine. Who do you think tipped them off in the first place? Tony’s always on top of things. All right, enough with the chat and get to work, it’s going to be a long night. We’re going, we’re going.
    The man hurries them out of the room, then shouts something Eva can’t make out. He comes back immediately with another man.
    Shut the door. How did it go? No problem. You got the dough? Here you are. Did you count it? Did you ask me to count it? Yes. Then I counted it. Twenty grand. Was the old guy happy? When he saw the two little black girls, he was practically drooling. Did he say anything? No, he just gave me the cash and chucked me out. Good, well go downstairs and keep an eye on things. I’m on my way. Did you speak to the army boys? The coast’s clear. Good. Shut the door behind you.
    Tony goes over to the wall in front of Eva and crouches down. Her heart stops as she thinks she’s been discovered,
but the man is struggling with a socket, which he pulls away to reveal a safe deposit box. He opens the box and puts two wads of cash inside, fixes the socket back in place, gets up and leaves. Eva is on the point of choking, she can’t tell how long she’s been holding her breath.
    Lascano strolls across Vicente López square, where rich families’ dogs are brought to shit by maids in aprons. The maids earn a tenth of what gets spent on these fine specimens, the more exotic the better. Smoking a cigarette in the shade of a giant rubber tree, Lascano is pleased to see that his men are at the ready. He has been tailing Tony Ventura for eight months. Now he has him. He walks calmly and smokes a cigarette while his men take up their final positions on the corner of Gaspar Campos and Arredondo. Ventura runs his business right here in a plush mansion he’s managed to get hold of through some shady dealing. Mortgaged to the hilt, it’s perfect for the high-class brothel he’s set up, at least until they get evicted. Tony’s convinced that having powerful people as clients covers him against police raids and judicial intervention. Carried away with his sense of impunity, he expanded operations into the traffic of cocaine, high-stakes poker tables and, for his sins, underage prostitution. The last development finally convinced the judge to sign the search warrant.
    The previous summer, at Punta del Este, Justice Marraco watched as Mariana, his thirteen-year-old daughter, blossomed. At La Brava beach, she wore a bikini, which struggled to contain her adolescent tits. Her little bum filled out and an incipient fuzz of straight hairs began to poke out of the sides of her tiny panties. He had never seen a woman with straight hair down there before. Her mouth became ripe, her eyes suggestive and
one morning he found her knickers stained with blood. She was a young woman now. It started to send Marraco crazy when he caught men staring at her; even his best friends ogled his little girl’s body. Jealousy stuck its teeth in and wouldn’t let go. He tried to force his daughter to wear a more discreet bathing suit, but all this achieved was to send her, with increasing regularity, to another beach, another stage on which to play out this drama, far away from prying paternal eyes.