Operation Massacre(37)

            Giunta who, up until that moment had conducted himself with the utmost clarity, now does something stupid. He wants to come forward and explain his situation.

            He went to his parents’ place to turn himself in. He knew they were waiting for him there and he actually didn’t even make it inside because they stopped him first.

            What happened next constitutes an entire chapter in the history of our barbarity.

            First they took him to the precinct in Munro, and from there to the District Police Department. They locked him in some sort of kitchen. An armed guard came in with him, sat Giunta down in a corner, and pointed a gun at him for the entire time.

            —Take even one step and I’ll blow your brains out! —he would repeat every so often.— Talk and I’ll blow your brains out! Make even one move and I’ll blow your brains out!

            His vocabulary was rather limited, but convincing. Still, now and then he would provoke him:

            —Go ahead, make a move. That way I can shoot you.

            The prisoner did not attempt even the slightest gesture. Now and again, the guard seemed to get tired and would place his gun back in its holster. But soon enough he would go back to his entertaining game.

            They were deliberately pushing him toward madness. When changing shifts, the guards would speak softly in a way that made their conversations sound confidential, but loudly enough for the prisoner to hear them:

            —He’s “getting out” tonight . . . —one of them would murmur.

            —Wherever is he going? —the other would answer, chuckling.

            —No one survives twice.

            Aside from one sandwich, they gave him nothing to eat for hours at a time. When he wanted to sleep, he had to lie down on the freezing tile floor. The shouting outside interrupted his painful sleep.

            —Caaareful, he’s getting awaaay! Shut all the windows!

            They seemed to be provoking him to run. It actually wouldn’t have been so hard. He wasn’t in a real cell. Giunta would not let himself be tempted.

            Maybe they were trying to get him to kill himself. At one point they moved him to a different room on the second floor with a window facing the courtyard.

            —Don’t you think about trying to escape through there —an officer said to him, pointing at the window that was within reach.— Because even if you don’t die from the fall . . . Anyway, that’s just my opinion.

            From the very start, they had been trying to recover the receipt they had issued him in the very same Department at dawn on the tenth. When their threats failed, they tried to seduce him. A young officer was trying to persuade him logically:

            —Look, your situation has been cleared up, but we need that receipt. All you have to do is hand it in and you’ll be a free man.

            Giunta kept saying he didn’t have it, and he was telling the truth. He had burned the receipt.

            After two or three days of being locked up, he received a visit from Cuello, the second-in-command of the Department who had made a vague attempt to save him from execution. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He thought he was seeing a ghost.

            —But how did you do it? —he kept repeating.— How did you do it?

            Giunta was so out of sorts at this point that he tried to apologize for running away. He explained that it had been an instinctive reaction, to escape death; the truth was that he hadn’t meant to . . . Yes, he hadn’t meant to offend them.

            When they transferred him to San Martín’s First Precinct on the seventeeth of June, he was a shell of a man, on the brink of insanity.