Target in the Night Read Online Free Page B

their fellow students in La Plata—to whom they would boast on the telephone, apparently, about their North American conquests and discoveries.
    Then, toward the end of 1971, the sisters reached the New York area. In a casino in Atlantic City they met the pleasant young man of uncertain origin who spoke a Spanish that seemed to come straight out of a television series. At first, not realizing there were two of them, Tony Durán went out with both sisters, thinking there was just one. This was a system the sisters had always practiced. It was like having a double do the disagreeable (and the agreeable) tasks for you, which is how they took turns with everything in life. In fact, people in town used to say, each sister only went through half of school, half of their catechism, and even half of their sexual initiation. They were always drawing straws to see which of them was going to do whatever they had to do.Is that you, or your sister? Was the question everyone asked when one of the two showed up at a dance, or at the dining room of the Social Club. Doña Matilde, their mother, would often have to clarify which was Sofía and which was Ada. Or the other way around. Because their mother was the only one who could tell them apart—by their breathing, she said.
    The twins’ passion for gambling was the first thing that attracted Durán to them. The sisters were used to betting against each other, and he became part of the game. From that point on he dedicated himself to seducing them—or they dedicated themselves to seducing him. They were always together (dancing, dining, listening to live music) until one of the two would insist on staying a bit longer to have another drink at the bar in the hotel, while the other would excuse herself and go back to the room. He would stay with Sofía; with the twin who said she was Sofía. Everything worked out for a few days.
    Then, one night, when he was in bed with Sofía, Ada came in and started undressing in front of them. That was the start of the stormy week they spent in the motels of Long Island’s South Shore, in the freezing winter, sleeping together, the three of them, enjoying the bars in the resorts that were nearly empty in the off-season. The three-way game was hard and brutal and the cynicism was the hardest thing to bear. Perdition and evil make life fun, but conflicts evenutally arise. The two sisters would plot behind Tony’s back and make him say too much; he, in turn, would plot with the women, trying to turn one against the other. Sofía was the weakest, or the most sensitive, and the first to give up. One night she left the hotel and flew back to Buenos Aires.Durán continued traveling with Ada. They went back to the same hotels and to the same resorts, until one night they decided that they, too, would go to Argentina. Durán sent her ahead and came a few days later.
    â€œBut did he come for them? I don’t think so. And he didn’t come for the family money, either,” Inspector Croce said, stopping to light his cigar. He leaned against the counter while Madariaga cleaned glasses behind the counter. “He came because he was never at peace, because he couldn’t keep still, because he was looking for a place where he wouldn’t be treated like a second-class citizen. That’s why he came, and now he’s dead. In my time things were different.” The Inspector looked around the tavern, but no one said anything. “We didn’t need a half-Latino, half-mulatto, fake gringo coming here to complicate life for a poor country Inspector like me.”
    Croce was born and raised in the area. He became a policeman during Perón’s first government, and had been in charge of the district ever since—except for a brief period after General Valle’s revolution in 1956. The Inspector went gray overnight, that year, when he found out the military had executed the workers who had risen up