The Discreet Hero (35 page)

“I don’t know, but he was very frightened,” he explained. “The hyenas must have done something to him. I’m going to see him now. We made a plan like they do in the movies, without saying where. Probably we’ll never find each other.”

He showered and went straight down to the garage. As he was leaving, he saw reporters with cameras at the entrance to his building. Before driving to La Rosa Náutica, where he’d had lunch for the last time with Ismael Carrera, he drove around the streets of Miraflores to make certain no one was following him. Narciso probably had money problems, but that was no reason to take so many precautions and hide his identity. Or maybe it was. Well, he’d find out soon enough what was wrong. He drove into the parking lot of La Rosa Náutica and saw Narciso emerge from between the cars. He opened the door for him, and the black man climbed in and sat down beside him.

“Hello, Don Rigoberto. Please excuse me for bothering you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Narciso. Let’s take a ride and we’ll be able to talk quietly.”

The driver wore a blue cap pulled down to his eyes and seemed thinner than the last time they’d seen each other. Rigoberto drove along the Costa Verde toward Barranco and Chorrillos, joining an already dense line of vehicles.

“You’ve probably seen that Ismael’s problems don’t end even after he’s dead,” Rigoberto finally remarked. “You must know by now that Armida’s disappeared, don’t you? It seems she’s been kidnapped.”

Since he received no answer and heard only the driver’s anxious breathing, he glanced over at him. Narciso was looking straight ahead, his lips pursed and an alarmed look in his eyes. His hands were interlaced and he was squeezing them hard.

“That’s just what I wanted to talk to you about, Don Rigoberto,” he mumbled, turning to look at him and then immediately looking away.

“Do you mean Armida’s disappearance?” Don Rigoberto turned toward him again.

Ismael’s driver kept looking straight ahead, but he nodded with conviction two or three times.

“I’m going to turn into the Regatas and park there so we can talk in peace. Otherwise, I’ll have an accident.”

He drove into the Club Regatas lot and parked in the first row facing the ocean. It was a gray, cloudy morning, and many gulls, cormorants, and pelicans were flying around and screeching. A very thin girl in a blue sweat suit was doing yoga on the deserted beach.

“Don’t tell me you know who kidnapped Armida, Narciso.”

This time, the driver turned to look him in the eye and smiled, opening his mouth. His white teeth gleamed.

“Nobody’s kidnapped her, Don Rigoberto,” he said, becoming very serious. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, because it’s making me a little nervous. I just wanted to do Armida—I mean, Señora Armida—a favor. She and I were good friends when she was only Don Ismael’s servant. I always got along with her better than with the other employees. She didn’t put on airs and was very unaffected. And if she asked me for a favor for the sake of our old friendship, how could I say no? Wouldn’t you have done the same thing?”

“I’m going to ask you for one thing, Narciso,” Rigoberto interrupted. “Just tell me everything from the beginning. Don’t leave out the smallest detail. Please. But first tell me, is she alive?”

“As alive as you and me, Don Rigoberto. At least she was yesterday.”

In spite of Rigoberto’s request, Narciso didn’t get directly to the point. He liked, or couldn’t avoid, preambles, interpolations, uncontrolled digressions, circumlocutions, long parentheses. And it wasn’t always easy to lead him back to the chronological order that was the backbone of the narrative. Narciso quickly became lost in extraneous clarifications and comments. And yet, in a complicated and convoluted way, Rigoberto did learn that on the afternoon of the day he’d seen Ismael for the last time in his house in San Isidro, as it was growing dark, Narciso had been there too, called by Ismael Carrera himself. Both he and Armida thanked him profusely for his help and loyalty and tipped him very generously. That was why, when he learned a day later of the sudden death of his former employer, he hurried to offer his condolences to the señora. He also brought along a note, since he was sure she wouldn’t receive him. But Armida had him come in and exchanged a few words with him. The poor woman was shattered by the misfortune God had just sent to test her fortitude. As he was leaving, she asked to his surprise whether he had a cell phone where she could call him. He gave her the number, wondering in astonishment why she’d ever want to contact him.

And two days later, that is, the day before yesterday, Señora Armida called him late at night, when Narciso was about to get into bed after watching Magaly’s program on TV.

“What a surprise, what a surprise,” the driver said when he recognized her voice.

“Before, I always used the familiar
tú
with her,” Narciso explained to Don Rigoberto. “But after she married Don Ismael, I couldn’t anymore. Except I couldn’t say
usted
either. So I tried to talk to her in an impersonal way, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand perfectly, Narciso,” Rigoberto said, trying to get him to focus. “Go on, go on. What did Armida want?”

“I want you to do me a big favor, Narciso. Another favor, a huge one. I’m asking again for the sake of our old friendship.”

“Of course, sure, happy to,” said the driver. “And what is the favor exactly?”

“I want you to take me to a certain place tomorrow afternoon. Without anybody knowing. Could you do that?”

“And where did she want you to take her?” Don Rigoberto urged him along.

“It was the most mysterious thing,” Narciso digressed once again. “I don’t know if you remember, but behind the indoor garden, near the servants’ room, in Don Ismael’s house there’s a little service door that’s almost never used. It goes to the alley where they pick up the trash at night.”

“I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t get sidetracked, Narciso,” Rigoberto insisted. “Could you just tell me what Armida wanted?”

“For me to wait for her there, in my old jalopy, all afternoon. Until she came out. And without anybody seeing me. Isn’t that strange?”

It had seemed very strange to Narciso. But he did what she asked without any more questions. Early yesterday afternoon, he parked his car in the alley across from the service door of Don Ismael’s house. He waited close to two hours, dying of boredom, dozing sometimes, sometimes listening to funny remarks on the radio, watching stray dogs rooting through the garbage bags, asking himself over and over again what it all meant. Why was Armida taking so many precautions to leave her house? Why didn’t she go through the main door, in her Mercedes-Benz, with her new uniformed chauffeur and muscle-bound bodyguards? Why in secret and in Narciso’s old car? Finally the small door opened and Armida appeared, holding an overnight bag.

“Well, well, I was beginning to lose it,” said Narciso in greeting, opening the car door for her.

“Drive away fast, Narciso, before anybody sees us,” she ordered. “I mean fly.”

“She was really in a hurry, Don Rigoberto,” the driver explained. “That’s when I began to worry.”

“Why so many secrets, Armida, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Good, you’re calling me Armida again and using
tú
,” she said with a laugh. “Seems like old times. Good call, Narciso.”

“A thousand pardons,” said the driver. “I know I have to use
usted
now that you’re a great señora.”

“Cut the bullshit and just call me
tú
, because I’m the same person I always was,” she said. “You’re not my driver, you’re my friend and my pal. Do you know what Ismael said about you? ‘That man is worth his weight in gold.’ That’s the truth, Narciso. You are.”

“At least tell me where you want me to take you,” he said.

“To the Cruz de Chalpón Terminal?” Don Rigoberto was amazed. “She was taking a trip? Armida was going to take a bus, Narciso?”

“I don’t know if she actually did it, but that’s where I drove her,” the driver agreed. “To that terminal. I told you she had an overnight bag. I guess she was taking a trip. She told me not to ask any questions and I didn’t.”

“The best thing would be for you to forget all about this, Narciso,” Armida repeated, shaking his hand. “For my sake and yours. There are bad people who want to hurt me. You know who they are. And all my friends too. You haven’t seen me, or brought me here, you don’t know anything about me. I’ll never be able to repay all I owe you, Narciso.”

“I couldn’t sleep all night,” the driver added. “The hours went by and I got more and more scared, I’ll tell you. More and more. First the scare the twins gave me, now this. That’s why I called you, Don Rigoberto. And right after we spoke, I heard on RPP that Señora Armida had disappeared, that she’d been kidnapped. That’s why I’m still shaking.”

Don Rigoberto patted his shoulder.

“You’re too good a person, Narciso, that’s why you get scared so often. And now you’re involved again in a fine mess. You’ll have to go to the police and tell them this story, I’m afraid.”

“No way, Don Rigoberto,” replied the driver with determination. “I don’t know where Armida has gone or why. If something’s happened to her, they’ll look for a fall guy. You should realize that I’m the perfect fall guy. Don Ismael’s ex-driver, the señora’s pal. And to top it all off, I’m black. I’d have to be crazy to go to the police.”

“He’s right,” thought Don Rigoberto. “If Armida doesn’t show up, Narciso will end up paying the piper.”

“Okay, you’re probably right,” he said. “Don’t tell anybody what you’ve told me. Let me think. Then we’ll see what advice I can give you, after I mull it over. Besides, Armida may turn up at any moment. Call me tomorrow like you did today, at breakfast time.”

He dropped Narciso off in the parking lot of La Rosa Náutica and returned to his house in Barranco. He drove directly into the garage to avoid the reporters who were still crowded around the entrance to the building. Twice as many as before.

Doña Lucrecia and Justiniana were still glued to the television, watching the news with a look of astonishment. They listened to his story openmouthed.

“The richest woman in Peru running away with a small bag in a rundown bus, like some pauper heading for nowhere,” Don Rigoberto concluded. “The soap opera isn’t over, it goes on and on and gets harder to understand every day.”

“I understand very well,” exclaimed Doña Lucrecia. “She was sick of everything: lawyers, reporters, hyenas, gossips. She wanted to disappear. But where?”

“Where else but Piura,” said Justiniana, very sure of what she was saying. “She’s Piuran and even has a sister there, named Gertrudis, I think.”

XVII

“She hasn’t even cried once,” thought Felícito Yanaqué. And in fact, she hadn’t. But Gertrudis did stop speaking. She hadn’t opened her mouth, at least not with him or Saturnina, the servant. Maybe she spoke to her sister Armida, who, ever since her unannounced arrival in Piura, had been sleeping in the room where Tiburcio and Miguel slept when they were boys, before they left home to live on their own.

Gertrudis and Armida spent long hours there, behind closed doors, and it was impossible that in all that time they hadn’t exchanged a single word. But since the previous afternoon, when Felícito returned from Adelaida’s place and told his wife the police had discovered that the spider extortionist was Miguel, and that their son had already been arrested and confessed to everything, Gertrudis had stopped speaking. She didn’t open her mouth again in front of him (Felícito, of course, hadn’t mentioned Mabel at all). But Gertrudis’s eyes had flared and filled with anguish, and she’d clasped her hands as if praying. Felícito had seen her in that posture all the times they’d been together in the last twenty-four hours. As he summarized the story the police had told him, leaving out Mabel’s name, his wife didn’t ask him anything or comment at all or respond to the few questions he asked her. She continued to sit in the semidarkness of the television room, mute, turned in on herself like a piece of furniture, looking at him with those brilliant, suspicious eyes, her hands crossed, as immobile as a pagan idol. Then, when Felícito warned her that the news would be made public very soon, reporters would swarm around the house like flies, and she shouldn’t open the door or answer a call from any newspaper, radio, or television reporter, she stood, still without a word, and went to her sister’s room. It surprised Felícito that Gertrudis hadn’t attempted to see Miguel immediately at the police station or in prison. Like her silence, was her mute strike only for him? She must have spoken to Armida, because that night at dinner, when Felícito greeted his sister-in-law, she seemed to know what had happened.

“I’m very sorry to be a bother just when the two of you are having such a difficult time,” she said, shaking his hand, an elegant lady whom he resisted calling sister-in-law. “It’s just that I had nowhere else to go. It’ll be for only a few days, I promise. Please forgive my invading your home like this, Felícito.”

He couldn’t believe his eyes. This lady, so attractive, so well dressed, wearing such beautiful jewelry, was Gertrudis’s sister? She looked much younger, and her clothes, shoes, rings, earrings, and watch were those of a rich woman who lived in a big house with gardens and a swimming pool in El Chipe, not someone who’d come out of El Algarrobo, that seedy boardinghouse in a Piuran slum.

That night at dinner, Gertrudis didn’t touch a mouthful and didn’t say a word. Saturnina removed her plates of angel-hair broth and chicken and rice, untasted. All afternoon and well into the night there was endless knocking at the door, and the telephone didn’t stop ringing, even though no one opened the door or picked up the receiver. From time to time Felícito peeked through the curtains: Those crows hungry for carrion were still there with their cameras, crowded together on the sidewalk and in the roadway of Calle Arequipa, waiting for someone to come out so they could attack. Saturnina, who didn’t live in, was the only one who came out, rather late at night, and Felícito saw her defend herself against the assault, raising her arms, shielding her face from the lightning bolts of the flashbulbs, and starting to run.