Read Online The Convert's Song by Sebastian Rotella - Free Book Online Page B

mistaken.”
    “You come all the way from your shitty country to slaughter people here. Sneaky arrogant American. You think you can get away with anything because of this shitty passport.”
    Mendizábal picked up and slammed down his passport.
    “Inspector, listen: The idea you would accuse me of having anything to do with this makes me physically sick.”
    Pescatore had a flashback to El Almacén: the bloody broken glass, the fleeing shoppers, the arm. He closed his eyes. He was shaking.
    “Spare me your girlish tears. Explain why you were in telephonic contact with the terrorists.”
    The Ferribotte-looking investigator glanced up from his laptop. Pescatore wondered if Mendizábal was bluffing about the phone calls.
    “I haven’t phoned any terrorists. Almost all my calls are work-related. Unless someone I have dealt with for work is secretly a terrorist.”
    Mendizábal sighed operatically.
    “To be precise.” He put a small silver cell phone on the table and flipped open the display screen. “Your phone shows—”
    “That’s not my phone! That’s not even my—”
    Mendizábal shot out of his chair. He grabbed Pescatore by the collar of his sweatshirt and pulled him in to a big descending fist. The punch slammed into his brow, rocking him back, straining his handcuffed arm. The interrogator leaned over the table, his movements measured and precise, to administer a pair of vicious follow-up blows.
    Pescatore rode the pain, a roaring noise in his ears, blood in his mouth. The enraged face floated in front of him, distorted and oblong, a moon in a space cloud. His vision blurred. He was going to pass out.
    He had fucked up. It was his phone.
    In his haste, he hadn’t recognized it. He had bought the phone on his second or third day in Buenos Aires. He remembered downloading the ringtone: the refrain from “Evil Ways” by Santana. A private joke. While living with Isabel, he had often sung “Evil Ways” when he returned from work, the verse about coming home to a dark house and cold pots.
    A week after Pescatore’s arrival, Facundo had given him the latest model of the iPhone. Pescatore had stored the cheap local phone in a drawer and rarely used it again.
    “I was mistaken,” he muttered. “I can confirm that is my phone.”
    “Where were we?” Mendizábal said. A bead of sweat slid along his temple and down a jowl. “You received three calls from terrorists in France on Tuesday.”
    “I wasn’t here Tuesday,” Pescatore said through lacerated and swollen lips. “I was in Rosario on business. That phone never moved. I never knew about any calls; I wasn’t here to answer. You can verify that. The phone hasn’t been used for months. Hardly anyone has the number…”
    He trailed off. He looked down. One person had the number: Raymond. Pescatore had given it to him to avoid giving him a number connected to Facundo’s company.
    Raymond had the number. The old friend who had materialized out of nowhere. The smooth-singing, fast-talking mystery man. The Muslim convert.
    “Yes, no one called that phone for months,” Mendizábal snarled. “Radio silence. We have seen it before. The phone is a dedicated secure line. A call is placed to trigger the operation. No conversation, just a call. Three days later, there is an attack. You present yourself at the scene, pretending to help the authorities. We have seen that before too. The pyromaniac fireman. The Carapintadas with an ambulance.”
    Pescatore was suffocating. He remembered the case of the Carapintadas, or “Painted Faces”: they were fascist army commandos who had been caught at the scene of the attack on the Jewish center in 1994 posing as volunteer paramedics with a fake ambulance. Their presence was a mysterious detail in the unsolved case. If someone overseas linked to the attack at El Almacén had called Pescatore’s phone, things added up to make him look bad.
    “Who called you from France?”
    “I have no idea.”
    He wasn’t going