The rest begin to look at him with annoyance, then horror.
19. Make No Mistake . . .
2:45 a.m. Rodríguez Moreno’s got a bad feeling. Why did these poor bastards have to come to him, of all people? And yet, there is some mysterious justification, some nod to destiny in the fact that this particular mission is going to fall to him.
Rodríguez Moreno is an imposing, difficult man with a rocky and troublesome history. Tragedy follows him like a doting dog. Even before 1943, he was apparently involved in a horrifying event as chief of the Mar del Plata precinct, according to a number of sources. A hobo is brutally beaten in a cell one night and then thrown on a beach, completely naked in the dead of winter. He dies from the cold. They end up prosecuting Rodríguez Moreno and even send him to jail in Dolores. But then he is released. Because he was innocent, say his defenders. Because of political reasons, say his critics. The episode remains murky and forgotten.
And now this. Later, toward the end of 1956, there will be talk of a similar episode again in Mar del Plata, where he has been transferred to serve as Chief of the District Police Department. A Chilean pickpocket dies from being bashed around in a cell. Does it have anything to do with Rodríguez Moreno? They say it doesn’t . . . But disaster follows him. At the start of 1957 he led an operation in which an officer was killed, riddled with bullets from a machine gun fired by his fellow officers. An unfortunate incident, is how the papers put it.
Next to him on that night of June 9 is his second-in-command, Captain Cuello. There are a number of contradictory accounts of this short, nervous man as well.
—We’re going to take your statements —Rodríguez Moreno orders.
The prisoners start to line up single-file in two groups. One group goes to the Chief’s office. The other, to the clerk’s office.
Juan Carlos Livraga is unsettled. He doesn’t want to believe that his friend Vicente Rodríguez has screwed him over, but an awful suspicion keeps rolling around in his head. That’s why, when Rodríguez returns from giving his statement, Livraga gets up in a hurry and goes in before he is even called. He wants to be interrogated by the same person, to find out what his friend has said, to protect himself with his friend’s testimony.
The interrogation is long and thorough. They ask him if he knew anything about the rebellion. He says he didn’t. He tells a long detailed story of how he arrived at the house in question. He stresses that he only went there to hear the fight. A clerk condenses everything into a pair of typed lines.
He is shown a pile of white and light blue armbands with two letters printed on them: P.V.17 They ask him if he has seen them before. He says he hasn’t. The typist adds another line.
They show him a revolver. They ask if it’s his.
The question shocks Livraga. The gun is not his, but what’s strange is that they don’t know whose it is.
They add two or three more lines to his statement. The long piece of paper curves over the roller and falls behind the machine. Livraga notices that several statements precede his on the sheet. The way he is oriented, facing the typist, he can still manage to make out a few upside-down lines. He calms down when he sees: “Rodríguez . . . accident . . . friend . . . fight . . . doesn’t know . . .” Rodríguez has given the same information. Other testimonies are similar. Giunta, who never forgets a face, is questioned by a “chubby, curly-haired officer with a handlebar mustache.”
Gavino knows perfectly well that they are not going to believe him if he says he was also at Torres’s apartment by accident. He tries to find someone who will back him up. Carranza agrees. They both state that they are Peronist sympathizers who expected there would be an uprising and went to hear the news on the radio.
—What were you doing in that house? —they ask Di Chiano.