conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for a book with the title 'The Secret in Their Eyes'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Secret in Their Eyes
  After I'd put the official seals on the court order calling for an investigation into the current whereabouts of Isidoro Antonio Gómez, after I'd placed the dossier in the file cabinet reserved for cases with fugitive suspects and informed Morales of the good news, I felt quite satisfied with my valiant intervention and safe from the aftershocks of the tragedy. So much so that I returned to my daily routine as the even-tempered boss, the husband home at seven every evening, the nighttime newspaper reader, the competent Judiciary functionary, and almost forgot about the Morales case.
  After a few months had gone by, however, my memory of the matter was unpleasantly refreshed. I had to give a deposition in the proceedings against Romano and the police lieutenant Sicora for illegal coercion and abuse of the two building workers. The statement itself was a formality, a question of confirming my original complaint and clearing up a few details. But I was surprised (and disgusted) when the person assigned to take my deposition turned out to be a very low-level member of the office staff. This was a bad sign: the court seemed to be taking it for granted that the case was going to hit a wall and was therefore limiting itself to merely observing convention. What more did they need to put those two worthless bastards on trial? They had my statement, the declarations of two policemen who'd been on duty at the station, and the medical examiner's report on the injuries the poor subjects had suffered. I decided to hope for the best, in spite of the misgivings that haunted me. The judge was Batista, who I thought was an honest guy, and whom I knew a little, since we'd worked together throughout the holiday period one January. Besides, as I've already said, my commitment to the case was no longer as ardent as it once had been.
  Some time later, Batista himself summoned me to his office. He smiled as he received me and shook my hand warmly, and when we'd taken our seats, he told me that what he was about to say was absolutely confidential and asked me please not to divulge it, because both our jobs would be at stake. Hell and damnation, I thought. so serious? I guess the judge was uncomfortable, because after hesitating for a few moments, he spit out the whole thing as quickly as possible, as if he wanted to get rid of something annoying and distasteful, right away. Without mincing words, he informed me that orders had come down "from on high" (he completed the image by pointing an index finger toward the ceiling of his office, but I didn't know whether he meant the Appellate Court, the Supreme Court, or the government) requiring that investigation into the murder of Liliana Emma Colotto de Morales be indefinitely suspended and the case closed as unsolved. He added that he couldn't be much more explicit, but that apparently this young man, this... Romano, my colleague, had a lot of clout in high places. When he said the part about "a lot of clout," Batista touched his left shoulder with two fingers of his right hand. He wasn't talking about the Appellate Court, or about the Supreme Court, either. His gesture unmistakably signified "high-ranking military officer." Suddenly, I remembered Romano's father-in-law, an infantry colonel, and I understood. How naive I'd been not to have taken that connection into account when I denounced Romano in the first place. What a dope. If I needed something to make me definitively disgusted with Onganía and his military regime, that was it.
  At this juncture, the obvious question was, "So why didn't you do that, Your Honor?" But I didn't ask it. My stomach turned at the thought of that son of a bitch getting away with such rank malfeasance, but after all, I was idle and pusillanimous too, in my way.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Was I selfish and unfeeling, or were we all? I consoled myself by thinking that I could do something for Sandoval, even though there was nothing I could do for his cousin Nacho. I wonder if I was right. Anyway, I decided to give my colleague the usual head start: I'd go looking for him in three hours. I sat down to correct an order of preventive detention. On second thought, two hours seemed better. Three might be too many.
  As I was going down the steps to Talcahuano Street, I hesitated for a moment. I was carrying a good bit of money in my pocket, because I'd planned to pay the final installment on my apartment after work that evening—the notary's office stayed open late—but out of fear that the detour would take too long and I wouldn't be able to find Sandoval, I decided I'd look for my friend and postpone my payment until another day. I patted my jacket to make sure the money was snug in the inside pocket and flagged down a cab. We drove up and down Paseo Colón, but I couldn't locate Sandoval. The taxi driver, who seemed to be in a good mood, offered me a long, off-the-cuff disquisition on the simplest and most expeditious way to solve the country's problems. If I'd been less worried and less focused on finding the bar Sandoval was in, maybe I would have asked the cabbie for some clarification of the logic linking such assertions as "The military knows what it's doing," "Nobody here wants to work," "They should all be killed," and "The River Plate club under Labruna is the example to follow."
  I had the driver cruise the side streets and eventually found Sandoval in an extremely nasty bar on Venezuela Street. I paid my fare, handing the money to the enlightened analyst of our national condition and waiting for him to give me change. Somewhat annoyed by my stinginess, he began to dig around in one of his pockets, and while he did so, I savored a tiny taste of revenge. By this point, I was no longer in a hurry. There was little chance that Sandoval would stand for being hauled out of the ugly little tavern before eleven o'clock, and now it wasn't much past nine.
  I sat across from him and ordered a Coca-Cola. The barman offered a Pepsi instead, and I accepted. I'd never seen Sandoval drink like that. It was genuinely frightening, though at the same time, you had to admire his staying power. Evenly, without excessive gestures, he'd lift a full glass to his lips and empty it in one or two swallows. Then he'd stare into the space in front of him and feel the hot liquid as it made its way down to his guts. A few minutes later, he'd fill the glass again.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He doesn't drop into Clerk's Office No. 19 to say hello. Not because he's afraid the people there will notice how lovesick he is, but because for the first time he knows that today's the day; today, without fail and without procrastination, he must go directly to her office and knock on the door; listen for her voice, telling him to come in; stand before her like a man before the woman he loves; ignore the trivial question she asks as she receives him with a smile; and pay, or collect, the outstanding debt that's the only valid reason he can find to go on living. Because Chaparro needs to answer, once and for all, the question in that woman's eyes.
  In February 1987, I started working as an office employee in the National First Instance Court, Criminal Sentencing Division, Section "Q," in Buenos Aires, the federal capital of Argentina. One morning, my more experienced colleagues related an old anecdote: as a result of the amnesty for political prisoners decreed by the Cámpora government in 1973, and under circumstances that had always remained in the most complete obscurity, an ordinary criminal who was being held in Devoto Prison was released by order of the court. He'd been charged with serious crimes, for which he was certain to receive an extremely long sentence; nevertheless, and without anyone ever knowing the reason why, he'd walked free that very day.
  Some time later, I recalled that story and in my imagination added innumerable situations and details to it; although they were invented, they could function as plausible antecedents to and consequences of the unjust release of a convicted murderer. Actually, at the end of the 1960s, Clerk's Offices Nos. 18 and 19 belonged to a sentencing court, not an examining magistrate's court; moreover, there was no examining magistrate's court in the capital that bore the number 41. As for the bloody Argentina of the 1970s, which occasionally appears as the background of the story narrated here, would that it were equally fictitious, would that it, too, had never existed.
  Be that as it may, these lines would be incomplete if I didn't acknowledge, with great affection, the people who worked with me in Sentencing Court "Q," and especially my colleagues in Clerk's Office No. 19: Juan Carlos Travieso, Evangelina Lasala, Jorge Riva, Edy Pichot, and Cristina Lara. I must also declare my profound gratitude to Cristina Lara for her invaluable aid in providing me with a multitude of juridical and procedural details that were necessary to give the story solidity and verisimilitude. If I retain very pleasant memories of that period of my life, I owe them to all my former colleagues at the court.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Apart, remembered.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He doesn't drop into Clerk's Office No. 19 to say hello. Not because he's afraid the people there will notice how lovesick he is, but because for the first time he knows that today's the day; today, without fail and without procrastination, he must go directly to her office and knock on the door; listen for her voice, telling him to come in; stand before her like a man before the woman he loves; ignore the trivial question she asks as she receives him with a smile; and pay, or collect, the outstanding debt that's the only valid reason he can find to go on living. Because Chaparro needs to answer, once and for all, the question in that woman's eyes. 
  In February 1987, I started working as an office employee in the National First Instance Court, Criminal Sentencing Division, Section "Q," in Buenos Aires, the federal capital of Argentina. One morning, my more experienced colleagues related an old anecdote: as a result of the amnesty for political prisoners decreed by the Cámpora government in 1973, and under circumstances that had always remained in the most complete obscurity, an ordinary criminal who was being held in Devoto Prison was released by order of the court. He'd been charged with serious crimes, for which he was certain to receive an extremely long sentence; nevertheless, and without anyone ever knowing the reason why, he'd walked free that very day. 
  Some time later, I recalled that story and in my imagination added innumerable situations and details to it; although they were invented, they could function as plausible antecedents to and consequences of the unjust release of a convicted murderer. 
  Apart from that remembered anecdote, the story told in these pages is entirely fictitious, as are all its characters. Actually, at the end of the 1960s, Clerk's Offices Nos. 18 and 19 belonged to a sentencing court, not an examining magistrate's court; moreover, there was no examining magistrate's court in the capital that bore the number 41. As for the bloody Argentina of the 1970s, which occasionally appears as the background of the story narrated here, would that it were equally fictitious, would that it, too, had never existed. 
  Be that as it may, these lines would be incomplete if I didn't acknowledge, with great affection, the people who worked with me in Sentencing Court "Q," and especially my colleagues in Clerk's Office No. 19: Juan Carlos Travieso, Evangelina Lasala, Jorge Riva, Edy Pichot, and Cristina Lara. I must also declare my profound gratitude to Cristina Lara for her invaluable aid in providing me with a multitude of juridical and procedural details that were necessary to give the story solidity and verisimilitude. If I retain very pleasant memories of that period of my life, I owe them to all my former colleagues at the court.