Money to Burn Read Free

for sure is that he was obliged to return home and thus began his run of lousy luck, so he ended up singing in a bar in Almagro, to guitar accompaniment. Recently he'd managed a few slots at festivals, dances at local clubs, sporadically touring the low-life dives in outer Buenos Aires.
    Luck is a strange commodity and chooses to turn up when least expected. One night, in a rundown tavern, some guys were out looking for Reyes to offer him a gig and, as if in a dream, he learnt of a major cash delivery, and realized he was in a position to go for the big time, and he gambled everything on one throw of the dice. He called Malito. Fontán Reyes wanted to get in and then out sharpish, but that afternoon in the flat on Arenales Street he found himself getting thoroughly boxed in, he didn't know which way to turn, he was pathetically afraid, this down-at-heel tango singer, afraid of everything (especially, he said, of Gaucho Dorda, a head- case, a mental subnormal), of being killed before they gave him his share, of being handed over, of being used as a dupe by the police. He was desperate, down and out, wanting to cut loose. His dream was to give it his best shot, to get paid and take off, start all over again in another place (changing his name, changing his country), imagining that with the money he could open an Argentinian restaurant in New York, entertaining a latino clientele. On one occasion he'd stopped off in Manhattan with Juan Sánchez Gorio and spent a wild night at Charlie's on West 53rd Street, a restaurant managed by a Cuban crazy about tango. He needed the dough to invest, because the Cuban had promised to help him if he arrived in New York with 'start-up capital', but everything got more dangerous by the day since he'd thrown in his lot with these guys who seemed to be forever hallucinating, as though they were perpetually high. They laughed at anything and everything and never went to sleep. Hard-boiled characters, assassins who enjoyed killing for its own sake, not exactly the kind of people one could trust.
    His uncle, Nino Noci to, was an avid Peronist supporter, elected to represent the wealthy Zona Norte, a leading figure in the Popular Unity party and interim president of the San Fernando Town Council. A few days earlier, the uncle had advised him of a meeting of the finance committee and he'd got the whole picture. The same evening Nocito went to hear his nephew sing in a low-life dive on Serrano and Honduras and, well away on his second bottle of wine, he began to sing himself.
    'Fontán ... there's at least five million in it.'
    They needed to employ a gang of thieves of the utmost trustworthiness, a group of professionals to put in charge of the operation. Reyes had to guarantee that his uncle would be taken care of.
    'Nobody can possibly know that I am mixed up in this. Nobody,' Nocito said. Nor did he, in his turn, wish to know who was going to be in on the job. He only wanted a half of a half, meaning a clean 75,000 dollars (according to his calculations).
    Fontán Reyes was told to wait for them in a house on Martinez Street where they were going to go to ground immediately after the robbery. They reckoned that within a half-hour everything could be sorted.
    'If we don't arrive within the half-hour,' announced Crow Mereles, 'that means we're moving on to second post.'
    Fontán Reyes had no idea where the next post was, nor was he at all sure what 'second post' meant. Malito had got to know the system through Nando Heguilein, a former member of the National Liberation Alliance, with whom he had become friends when they were both prisoners in the Sierra Chica a while ago. A cellular structure prevents everything collapsing like a chain of dominoes and gives you time to get out (according to Nando). You always have to cover your retreat.
    'And so?' inquired Fontán Reyes. 'What if they don't arrive?'
    'And so,' answered the Blond Gaucho, 'you'd need to hide your pretty face.'
    'And so that'd tell us