A Quiet Flame

I hardly recognized her from before. She looked like a circus horse. Her mane was long and very blond with just a touch of gray. Her eyes were big but not as big as her beautiful curving behind, which her skirt did nothing to conceal. She was also wearing a kind of spangled leotard that almost preserved her modesty. At least I think it was a leotard only, it was a little hard to be sure the way it disappeared between her buttocks.

I stared hard back at her, just to let her know I’d seen her. She stared back and then pointed at a table. I sat down. A waiter appeared. Everyone else seemed to be drinking cubano from large, round glasses. I ordered the same and lit a cigarette.

A burly man came over to my table. He was wearing boots, black trousers, a gray jacket that was a size too small for him, and a white scarf. He had pimp written all over him like the numbers on a pack of cards. He sat down, turned slowly to look at the circus horse. When she nodded at him, he looked back at me, spreading his mouth into a smile that was somehow both approving and pitying at the same time. I worked it out. He approved my choice of woman but pitied me for being the kind of jerk who would even contemplate the kind of degrading transaction that was about to occur. There was no fear in his craggy face. It was a tough face. It looked like something you could use to beat a carpet. When he spoke, his breath sharpened my thirst for strong liquor. I kept my nose in my glass until he’d finished blowing his patter my way.

Silently, I tossed some notes onto the table. I wasn’t in the mood for anything except information but, sometimes, information costs the same as the more intimate relations. He gathered the money in his fist and went away. Only then did she come over and sit down.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I’ll get the money back off him at the end of the evening and pay you back later. But you did the right thing to pay him. Vincent’s not an unreasonable man, but he’s my creolo and creolos like things to look like what they’re supposed to look like. In case you’re wondering, he’s not my pimp.”

“If you say so.”

“A creolo just looks out for a girl. Kind of like a bodyguard. Some of the men I dance with. They can get a little rough sometimes.”

“It’s okay about the money. Keep it.”

“You mean, you want to?”

“I mean keep the money. That’s all. It’s information I’m after. Nothing more. No offense, but it’s been a hell of a day.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Let’s just talk.” I sipped some of my cubano. “You look different from the last time we met.”

A waiter placed a drink in front of her. She ignored it and him.

“So who put you up to it?”

“The cop. The one who brought you. He came to my apartment and said he’d seen me in a show and that he had a special kind of job for me. If I did as I was told, I’d make some money and keep some nice clothes into the bargain. All I had to do was play a rich, worried mother.” She shrugged. “That was easy enough. There was a time when I had a rich, worried mother of my own.” She lit a cigarette. “So I met von Bader and we talked.”

“How long were you there?”

“Most of the day. We didn’t really know what time you were going to show up.”

“And this was all for my benefit?”

“Ostensibly, yes. But Colonel Montalban wanted me to report on von Bader as well.”

“Yes, that does sound like him. Two jobs for the price of one.” I nodded. “So how was he? Von Bader?”

“Nervous. But nice. A couple of times I heard him on the telephone. I think he was pla

“So why did you?”

“When von Bader said that you were a famous German detective and that you’d often looked for missing persons, in Berlin, before the war, I’m afraid I rather lost interest in their scheme. Whatever that is. You see, it was I who told A

“So why do it at all?”

“Because A

I sighed. “Go ahead. Tell me about them. Tell me about yourself.” I shrugged. “Why not? I’ve paid for your time.”

“My mother got me out of Poland just before the war. I was twenty-five years old. She gave me some jewels and I managed to bribe my way into Argentina. My two sisters were too young to come with me. At the time, one was ten and the other was eight. The plan was that I’d send for them when I could. I wrote to tell my mother I was well, and received a letter back from a neighbor, saying that my mother and sisters were now in France, and in hiding. Then, in 1945, I received word that my two sisters were false weight aboard a cargo ship from Bilbao.”

“False weight?”

“It’s what we used to call an illegal immigrant on a ship. When the ship docked here in Buenos Aires, however, there was no sign of either of them. My then husband made some inquiries. He was a former policeman. He found out that they had both been sold by the captain to a casita. As franchuchas.”

I shook my head.

“A franchucha is what the portenos call a French prostitute. A gallina is what they call one from Russia. Wherever they come from, they usually always had one thing in common: they were Jewish. At one time, half the prostitutes in this city were Jewish. Not by choice. Most of them were sold into it. Like slaves. Then my husband ran away with what was left of my money and most of A

“It was my ex-husband, Pablo, who introduced me to the colonel. And I really only took the job with Senor von Bader in the hope that I might find an opportunity to ask the colonel about my two sisters.”

“And did you?”

“No. For the simple reason that he and von Bader made some remarks about Jews. Anti-Semitic remarks. You remember?”

“I remember.”

“As a result, I didn’t think it likely he was going to be very sympathetic to my situation. Then I noticed how you didn’t seem comfortable with those remarks, either. And what kind eyes you seemed to have. And I decided to abandon my plan to speak to the colonel, and speak to you instead. Or at least to persuade A