He drove back through downtown on Avenida del Libertador, then headed for Belgrano, where Ettinger had an apartment on Calle Monroe (Monroe Street). Just before he reached the Avenida 9 de Julio, there was a traffic holdup of some sort. He crept along for a block or two, and the jam cleared. As he passed Avenida 9 de Julio, he looked up and saw the source of the trouble.
*"The Mouth." so called because it is the mouth of the Riachuelo Industrial Canal opening on the river Plate. Shipping tycoon-and second husband of Jacqueline Kennedy-Aristotle Onassis got his start operating a small ferry across the Riachuelo Canal.
What looked like half a squadron of cavalry, each splendidly mounted trooper holding a lance, was moving at a walk. He couldn't see an artillery cais-son, but he thought there was only one reason cavalry would be moving through downtown Buenos Aires at this hour. He checked the Hamilton chronograph. It was twenty minutes to two. The schedule of events called for the casket to be moved, starting at one.
He accelerated, drove three blocks farther, and turned left, reaching Avenida Alvear as the lead troopers of the cavalry came into sight. He drove ahead of them to the park that fronts the Recoleta Cemetery and the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar, stopped, and got out.
He stood in the shadow of the Recoleta Cemetery wall and watched the procession arrive. The maneuver had
obviously been planned carefully and re-hearsed, for it went off like clockwork.
The procession stopped by the front of the church. A half-dozen troopers in the lead of the procession dismounted, and the reins to their mounts were given to the troopers beside them. The dismounted troopers then marched to the head of the procession and held the bits of the horses of the commanding officer and the detachment of eight officers riding immediately behind him. They dis-mounted and marched to the caisson, where they unstrapped the casket, shoul-dered it, and marched into the church with it.
Two minutes later, they came back out, remounted, waited for the horse-holders to regain their mounts, and then did a column left at the walk back to-ward Avenida Alvear.
Clete waited until the last of them had left, then got back in the Ford and re-turned to Avenida del Libertador.
He wondered if Enrico had been able to get out of the hospital to go to the Edificio Libertador.
He hoped so, but it was too late to do anything about it if there was a hitch in that plan.
I'll make damned sure he's at the funeral tomorrow, if I have to go to the hospital and get him myself.
[FIVE]
As he drove back past The Horse-which he now thought of as The Fish-on Avenida del Libertador, he had a sudden thought:
There's a secret compartment in Uncle Willy's desk. Did my father know about it? Would he hide Peter's father's letters and the records Peter was talk-ing about in there?
It was an uncomfortable thought. He had discovered the secret compart-ment by accident when he lived in Uncle Willy's house. It held some of Uncle Willy's secrets: a large collection of glass slides showing a number of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen-the ladies were a bit overplump, and the gentlemen were wearing nothing but mustaches and black socks-performing various ob-scene sexual acts on one another.
On the one hand, the chances that his father even knew about the secret compartment were remote. And even if he did, would he use the secret com-partment to conceal important documents? But on the other hand, it might be just the place his father would choose to use, because it was so unlikely. And the secret compartment was certainly large enough.
What the hell, I'm practically right in front of the place. It will only take me a minute to look. And Peter is obviously scared shitless, with reason, that some-body will find his father's letter.
Directly across Libertador from the racetrack, he stopped before the cast-iron gates of a large, turn-of-the-century masonry house. The gates carried both the house number-4730-and the crest of the Frade family. He blew the horn, and thirty seconds after that there was a glow of light as the basement garage door opened. A moment later, without question, a stocky, middle-aged man started to pull the gates inward.
What Clete thought of as "Uncle Willy's house" had been built by his granduncle Guillermo, a bachelor and near-legendary ladies' man. Uncle Willy's apartment on the top floor was actually one very large room stretching the full width and length of the building.
It was designed with two objects in mind: Wide windows opening on Avenida del Libertador provided Granduncle Guillermo with what amounted to a comfortable private box for watching the horse racing at the Hipodromo across the street. And when the curtains were drawn, he had comfortable quar-ters for entertaining lady guests. According to Clete's father, there were an awe-some number of these.
Clete's connection with the building went back to his birth. According to his father, his mother flatly refused to live in "The Museum," the Frade mansion on Avenida Coronel Diaz, and moved into Uncle Willy's house. When her time came, she left Uncle Willy's house for the hospital, where she was delivered of a male infant named Cletus Howell-after her father-Frade.
He drove the Ford down a steep ramp into the basement garage, thinking, Just as soon as I can, I'm getting out of the Museum and coming back here.
A second stocky man walked up to the car. Clete almost didn't see him, his attention having been caught by two cars already in the garage. One of them- a 1941 Buick convertible coupe-was his. It was as glistening as it had been in the showroom of Davis Chevrolet-Buick in Midland, Texas, the day Uncle Jim had made it plain to him that only fools drove convertibles, and the best he could expect for a graduation present was something sensible, like a Chevy business coupe.
The second car was his father's Horche convertible touring sedan, the joy of his life. El Coronel's extraordinary attachment to his Horche was well-known, and a source of amusement to his friends.
Enrico had told Clete that from the moment el Coronel-"as nervous as a first-time father"-watched the massive automobile being lowered to the dock from the Dresden of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, only three people were ever behind its wheel, el Coronel himself, Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, and Cletus Howell Frade.
Clete thereafter made a point of asking to drive the car whenever they rode in it, and then of driving it in a manner to cause his father to hang on with white knuckles.
I really should have buried him in that, Clete thought. He really loved that car, and he died in it.
Even in the dim light, Clete could see the shattered windshield, and the bul-let holes in the massive hood and doors.
"Enrico, mi Teniente," the stocky man said, "will be here shortly. He rode with el Coronel to Our Lady of Pilar."