Target in the Night Read Online Free PDF

Buenos Aires, 340 kilometers from the capital. A military stronghold and the location of troop settlements during the time of the Indian Wars, the small town was really founded in 1905 when the railroad station was built, the plots of the downtown area were demarcated, and the lands of the municipality were distributed. In the 1940s the eruption of a volcano covered the plains and the houses with a mantle of ash. The men and women defended themselves from the gray dust by covering their faces with beekeeping and fumigation masks.
    2     Investigator was the name used, at the time, for a plainclothes policeman.

2
    On that day, in the still glare of summer, a stranger was seen getting off the northbound express. Very tall, with dark skin, dressed like a dandy, with two large suitcases that he left on the train platform—and a fine leather brown bag that he refused to let go of when the porters approached—he smiled, blinded by the sun, and gave a ceremonial bow, as if that was the way people greeted each other around here. The ranchers and laborers talking in the shade of the casuarina trees responded with a surprised murmur, as Tony—in his sweet voice, in his musical language—looked at the stationmaster and asked where he could find a good hotel.
    â€œWould you be so kind as to tell me, sir, where there might be a good hotel near here?”
    â€œThe Plaza is right over there,” the stationmaster said, pointing to the white building on the other side of the street.
    He registered at the hotel as Anthony Durán, showing his U.S. passport and using his traveler’s checks to pay a month in advance. He said he had come for business, that he wanted to make some investments, that he was interested in Argentine horses. Everyone in town tried to figure out what type of business he might have with horses. They thought that maybe Durán was going to invest in the stud farms in the area. He said something vagueabout a polo player in Miami who wanted to buy ponies from the Heguy Ranch, and something about a trainer in Mississippi who was looking to race Argentine stallions. According to Durán, a show jumper named Moore had been here before him, leaving convinced of the quality of the horses bred in the pampas. That was the reason he gave when he first arrived. A few days later he started visiting the local corrals and checking out the colts and fillies grazing in the pastures.
    At first it looked as if he had come to buy horses. Everyone became interested in him—the cattle auctioneers, the consignees, the breeders, the ranchers—thinking there was some kind of profit to be made. The gossip buzzed from one end of town to the other like a swarm of locusts.
    â€œIt took us a while,” Madariaga said, “to catch on to his connection to the Belladona sisters.”
    Durán settled in at the hotel in a room on the third floor facing the plaza and asked to have a radio installed (a radio, not a television). He asked if there was anywhere in the area where he could get rum and frijoles, but he quickly got used to the local food in the hotel restaurant and to the Llave gin that he had sent up to his room every afternoon at five.
    He spoke an archaic Spanish, full of unexpected idiomatic expressions ( copacetic, what’s the deal, in the thick of it ) and bewildering words in English or in ancient Spanish ( obstinacy, victor, frippery ). It wasn’t always possible to understand the words he used, or how he put sentences together, but his language was warm and soothing. Also, he’d buy drinks for anyone who listened to his stories. That was his moment of greatest esteem, and that’s howhe started to circulate, to become known, to visit the most varied of places, and to become friends with the young men in town, regardless of their level on the social scale.
    He was full of stories and anecdotes about that strange outside world that people in the area had only seen in