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CHAPTER 1
PART I
FOLLOW ME IF YOU CAN
THE LAW OF ESCAPE BY ANDREU MARTÍNVilla Olímpica
At the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, Barcelona was known as "The City of Bombs." It was considered the world capital of anarchy. More than seven hundred political assassinations were carried out between January 1919 and December 1923. This tale is based on a true story that took place on September 1, 1922; a review of the case appeared in León-Ignacio's book, Los años del pistolerismo (The Years of Gangsterism).
Tino Orté's father was pinched by the cops while painting No God, No Master, No King on the walls of the Poble Nou cemetery. He had the brush in his hand, ready to dip it into the bucket with the shiny black tar that Gerardo was holding, while Fabregat encouraged them and, supposedly, looked out to make sure they weren't caught.
But Fabregat was paying much more attention to the actual painting, to the text, to his two friends' fears, and to hurrying them along, than to the movements in the fog around them. Fabregat was the one who'd recruited the other two to fill the neighborhood of Poble Nou with anarchist slogans: "C'mon, damnit, come with me right now and we'll make sure that by the time everyone wakes up tomorrow, they'll be converted to anarchism." Nobody said no to Fabregat, who always carried a pistol, was part of the union leadership, and boasted of having gotten rid of two bosses the previous month. If anybody said no, he took them for scabs and killed them right then and there.
The police didn't come with horns and sirens, nor was it a coincidence the three men were caught. They had been looking for Fabregat, because they'd gotten a tip that he'd be there. They approached him stealthily, hidden within the shadows, and then they shouted: "Stop! Police! Hands up!" The bucket of tar spilled on the ground and over the anarchists' feet as they raised their hands, offering no resistance.
Five uniformed police with rifles and two undercover cops wearing derbies and carrying pistols shoved them against the wall, frisked them, and asked, "Are you the one called Fabregat?" And to the other two they said: "Who are you?"
Tino's father should have said, Constantino Orté, at God's and your service, because the priests had taught him humility and life had taught him that the police were Catholic and would never kill another Catholic.
"So, No God, No Master, No King, eh?" an undercover cop said. "You can stop being such a fool and just go."
Tino's father and Gerardo thought they'd gotten a pass and smiled gratefully at the benevolence of those officers of the law and went ahead and turned their backs. Fabregat, however, knew what was really up.
"You can go now."
They'd all heard talk about the Law of Escape, but Gerardo and Tino's father probably thought it was an urban legend, or that it didn't apply to them because they'd never been in trouble and that those felled by the bosses' bullets were probably "up to something." But Fabregat knew it wasn't like that. Fabregat knew that twenty-three comrades had already fallen, all shot in the back, since the Law of Escape had been instituted on December 5, 1920.
The police officer repeated, "You can go now," and Fabregat let out an anguished cry: "The Law of Escape!" And they took off running, their six espadrille-covered feet leaving a trail of black tar footprints on the sidewalks, and then there was galloping, and the sounds of guns cocking, and an endless volley of bullets that shook the neighbors who'd been hiding in the dark on their balconies and looking out at the cemetery.
Tino found out what happened from one of those neighbors who heard, and more precisely saw, everything from one of the balconies. She told him about it at the Poble Nou cemetery, the oldest in Barcelona, on the other side of the wall where his father had been painting, just as the city workers were putting his father's coffin in the crypt where it would rest forever.
"You're his son?" the woman asked, full of hate. "I saw what happened." And then she told him how they were painting No God, No Master, No King and how the police shouted and the tar footprints on the sidewalk detailed the last steps of the three men before the shooting, the red blood spilling over the black tar like a symbol. The anarchists' flag was black and red.
"Ma'am, please," was all Tino could manage to say.
He hugged his wife Elena and stepped away from the crypt's high walls, from the modest bouquet of flowers, from the crowd of indignant workers, from the cemetery, from the wall his father had been painting.
He didn't want any trouble.
Tino wanted to tear off the worker's skin that had covered him his whole life. He'd been born in Poble Nou — an area so proud of being proletariat, so poor and dirty, a cauldron of conspiracies and hate — but he'd managed to save up and buy a flashy white car from a member of the bourgeoisie who was afraid to drive, and he'd fled from Poble Nou and taken up residence in Gràcia, also a worker's neighborhood, but cleaner, more bourgeois. When you went out on the streets, you could greet tidy middle-class people. Neither the bosses' bullets, which pursued workers in Ciudad Antigua and in their barracks, nor the proletariat's hunt for impresarios in rich neighborhoods, ever reached Gràcia.
That last day of August, so incredibly hot, a month after his father's death, Tino was observing the view from his terrace, wearing an undershirt and smoking, maybe thinking about the neighbor who had seen the application of the Law of Escape from her balcony. He lived on the second floor of a building on Venus Street, between Liberty and Danger. The Gràcia neighborhood maintained its ideology in its street names. Even today, just a bit further up, there's still Fraternity Street, and Progress Street ...
The mechanic, Paco the Nut, came walking up the empty and badly lit cobblestone street from the garage where he kept his flamboyant taxi. He screamed, without consideration for the neighbors, who, because of the heat, probably couldn't sleep anyway: "Tino! Telephone!"
A customer. His number was on a list posted at different taxi stands throughout the city. There were people who preferred to hire private drivers rather than use the big companies or the collectives.
Tino came down to the street and ran to the nearby garage. Paco the Nut and some of his relatives were playing cards, all in undershirts. The receiver was off the hook.
"We'd like to rent a car for tomorrow," he was told. "We'd like to go to Mataró. Very early. At seven in the morning."
Mataró is a tiny industrial town on the coast, about twentyeight kilometers from Barcelona. It was a long trip. At sixty cents a kilometer, he'd earn at least sixteen pesetas, maybe seventeen or eighteen with the tip. A good amount to feed his kids, pay his rent, and put toward the bank loan that had allowed him to buy the taxi and get his license.
"Just come by the corner of Cortes Street and Paseo de Gràcia. We'll be there. At seven sharp."
Euphoric, Tino turned to the garage employees: "The car must be ready by six in the morning, spotless, and with a full tank! There's a big tip in it for you!"
He ran home to celebrate his good luck with his wife.
"Will it be okay?" she asked him, her heart on her sleeve, always a little fearful.
"Of course it'll be okay."
"It's just that you still haven't transferred the title ..."
"I've only had the car two weeks. It's being processed. What do you think will happen?"
The next day, dressed meticulously in his blue uniform with a flat hat and shiny shoes, Tino Orté waited next to his imposing white Studebaker 30 HP, license number 6205, at the intersection of the two majestic streets: Paseo de Gràcia, which is like a museum with the most advanced architecture, but also an arrogant exhibition displayed by the city's most notable families; and Cortes Street, which today is Gran Vía de les Corts Catalanes, and runs across the whole city, from north to south.
Two men approached him, one wearing a derby and the other a felt hat, both wearing suits, shirts with starched collars and cuffs, and dark ties, like businessmen. They looked very serious, as if their decisions could change the world.
Tino greeted them with his hat in his hand, a bow, and a discrete smile, and didn't bat an eye when he saw the pistol on one of the men's belts. Back then, a lot of people carried pistols. For assault or defense, or both. After they made themselves comfortable in the back, he took the wheel.
"To Mataró?" he asked.
"To Mataró," said the man in the felt hat. Then he instructed Tino on the exact route he should take. "Go around Parc de la Ciutadella to the fish market on Icaria Avenue, then take Taulat Street to the highway toward France, along the seaside."
Tino might have taken the same route on his own, but the precision of the passenger's directions disconcerted him nonetheless, because it ushered him inexorably into a world he wanted to leave behind and which he did not like to visit.
They abandoned the wide boulevards, moved past the big modernist park, and immediately found themselves on Icaria Avenue, with its anarchist echoes. Icaria was the name of the utopian society that was founded here by Étienne Cabet, in which all people would be equal and money would not exist — such was his dream. Later, Cabet would go to the United States and make a new Icarian attempt in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Today, in the twenty-first century, Icaria Avenue is a pleasant road with trees and sculptures from that Barcelona which, in 1992, with the Olympic Games in mind, discovered the neighboring Mediterranean. That day, however, it was just the filthy and hectic main street in Catalonian Manchester.
During the First World War, Spain had been neutral and that created an opportunity to provide whatever was needed by both sides. Whatever the war destroyed, Barcelona's industry would replace. Especially fabric. Fabric for uniforms, for blankets, for tents. But also kegs, chemical and metallurgical products ... Factories cropped up by the beach and the first railway in the Spanish state was laid to carry merchandise to nearby ports, where boats were waiting, and from there long trains would transport loads to faraway France.
Catalonian Manchester was what we called that hodgepodge of dirty, arrogant factories, and the little workers' houses that blossomed around it were called Poble Nou. The factories produced money, a lot of money, for the proprietors, providing huge Spanish-Swiss cars and fur coats and sumptuous feasts with tangos and the Charleston. And also spectacular buildings that are still admired by tourists from all over the world.
They drove alongside the train tracks, between the miserable shacks where dirty, naked children splashed in the mud made toxic by the industrial waste from nearby factories.
"It's infuriating how these poor people live and how the bourgeoisie live downtown," said one of the passengers in a shaky voice. "Two worlds, so close and so far away."
"Shut up, Manuel," said the other voice.
At the end of Icaria Avenue, there was the oldest cemetery in the city, with a façade that seemed like an homage to the most shameless masonry, with the eyes of God looking out at everything from five meters high, where the walls were washed with tar to cover the messages the authorities considered inappropriate.
They drove past the misery of cardboard and woodenplank shanties and came upon the misery of dusty yards and what was once Horta's creek, which today houses the haughty Gotham that is Diagonal Mar, filled with skyscrapers like this city has never seen or wanted to see. Then there was a depressing wasteland of warehouses and train platforms and an artillery barracks with chipped walls, wilted tomato and lettuce plants, and a train crossing.
One of the men in the back placed the barrel of his gun under Tino Orté's ear.
"Now, go left. Down that road. Toward the woods up there."
Tino obeyed. Petrified. His mouth dry. It had to happen to him. In this cursed city of bombs, sooner or later, you were hit by shrapnel.
"Don't be afraid," the other one said, less aggressively. "We don't want to hurt you. We're workers, like you. This isn't about you. We need money for the Committee for Prisoners."
They arrived at the edge of the woods. Below them, the Mediterranean light yellowed the landscape.
"There's Jiménez."
A man smoked with ease next to the tracks, looking out toward the city of Barcelona.
"Here comes the train."
The train arrived, spewing smoke every which way, working up an infernal racket. It whistled long, warning the crossing guard to put down the barrier, like he did each day.
"If he doesn't do anything, it means there's nothing new."
"He's not doing anything. What's he supposed to do?'
"Take off his hat."
"Well, he hasn't taken off his hat, and there's the train. Run — what are you waiting for?"
The man in the derby leaned against the car window, his pistol still on Tino, watching him with the serene eyes of someone who wishes no harm but is willing to follow through on his threats if he's obliged to.
The man in the felt hat ran in the direction of the crossing.
The train cars were uncovered and carried five hundred workers toward the future, to build someone else's future, but they were happy and excited now because it was a payday. The payroll was in a strongbox guarded by two armed men.
The man in the felt hat reached the crossing guard, who was about to comply with his daily routine. Even from afar, Tino could see how he jumped a little when he saw the gun. Then Tino heard: "Quiet! Today the barrier won't be coming down!" The employee raised his hands and stepped back from the barrier.
The man named Jiménez, who had seemed to be basking in the sun, now fisted a pistol and ran toward the convoy, which was braking with an agonizing screech like the voice of a Greek tragedy's hired mourner before the disaster. That ferocious machine had the initials M.Z.A. engraved on its side.
Tino thought he glimpsed a man climb on top of the locomotive and then jump down to the cabin. What he couldn't see were the two men who'd come along disguised as workers in the multitude and who, guns in hand, were trying to scare the others so they'd go away. There was a hell of a commotion, shots, five hundred people trapped and scattering every which way in panic.
The only people who stayed behind, by themselves in one of the uncovered cars, were two armed men next to a trunk that was a meter long and half a meter tall. One already had his hands up, and even from two hundred meters away it was obvious he was shaking with fear and about to lose his balance. The second, however, was unbolting the safety on the Mauser, but not before the other three arrived and fired at him.
He fell like a sack of potatoes. In the distance, Tino thought it looked incredibly easy to kill someone.
One of the men who'd shot the guard, the most animated, dressed all in black and wearing espadrilles, threw the cash box on the ground. The man called Jiménez and the two dressed as workers picked it up. A fourth man jumped from the cabin and joined them.
The locomotive immediately sounded its alarm, but the shots continued, overwhelming the cries from the scattering crowd.
Tino realized then that some soldiers from the nearby artillery barracks were running toward the train and firing with each step. Right then, he felt like an accomplice to the assault and knew he was gambling everything in his life: his savings, his taxi, his family, his apartment in Gràcia.
His hand went to the wheel, he wanted to leave. But he was dissuaded by the man in the derby, with his serene eyes and his pistol.
"Be cool."
"For the love of God," Tino whispered.
"Not for the love of God, nor the homeland, nor the king."
The man in black, carrying the cash box with the guy called Jiménez, dashed toward the car, followed by the man in the felt hat, one of the men disguised as a worker, and the one who'd jumped from the cabin. The soldiers got to the train, climbed aboard, and took aim.
While crossing a patch of grass, the man in black suddenly tripped and fell, taking the cash box and Jiménez with him. The fake worker tried to help him and they all ended up on the ground. The man in the felt hat managed an epileptic leap and kept running. But the guy who'd been in the cabin stopped, turned around, and helped the fallen. The man in black was hurt and limped, and the guy dressed as a worker helped him along. Jiménez ran with difficulty under the weight of the trunk. Clearly confused and ashamed for having fled, the man with the felt hat, who got to the taxi first, demonstrated his impatience with a gesture that was worthless at this point.
The guy who'd jumped from the cabin, who was young and energetic, planted himself among the tomatoes, firing his gun, covering his friends' escape, until he fell helplessly between the lettuce heads.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Barcelona Noir"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Akashic Books.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
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