Who Killed Palomino Molero? (8 page)

It was a kind of waking dream, again and again he saw the happy couple enjoying their premarital honeymoon in the humble streets of Amotape: he a half-breed
cholo
from Castilla; she a white girl of good family. There are no barriers to love, as the old waltz said. In this case the song was correct: love had broken through social and racial prejudices, as well as the economic abyss that separated the two lovers. The love they must have felt for each other had to have been intense, uncontrollable, to make them do what they did. “I’ve never felt a love like that, not even that time I fell in love with Meche, Josefmo’s girl.” No, he’d fallen in love a couple of times, but they were passing fancies that faded if the woman gave in or if she put up such a strong resistance that he finally got bored. But he’d never felt a love so powerful he’d risk his life for it, the kind the kid had felt, the kind that had made the girt stand up to the whole world. “Maybe I’m not the kind who gets to feel real love,” he thought. “Probably it’s because I’ve spent my life chasing whores with the Unstoppables, my heart’s turned whore, and now I can’t love a woman the way the kid did.”

“What am I going to do now, sir?” he heard Doña Lupe implore. “Give me some advice, at least.”

The lieutenant, already standing, asked how much he owed her for the
chicha
and the stewed kid. When the woman said it was on the house, he insisted. He wasn’t, he said, one of those parasitic cops who abused their power, he paid his own way, on or off duty.

“But at least tell me what I should do now.” She had her palms pressed together as if she were praying. “They’re going to kill me, the way they killed that poor kid. Don’t you see that? I don’t know where to go. I have no place to go. Didn’t I cooperate the way you asked? Tell me what I should do now.”

“Just stay quiet, Doña Lupe.” The lieutenant put the money for the meal next to the
chicha
gourd. “No one’s going to kill you. No one will even bother you. Just go on living your normal life and forget what you saw, what you heard, and what you told us. Take it easy, now.” He nicked the visor of his cap with his fingers, his usual way of saying goodbye. Lituma got up quickly and followed him out, forgetting to bid Doña Lupe farewell.

Walking out into the open air and receiving the vertical sun full blast without the protection of the woven mats and bamboo poles was like walking into hell. Within a few seconds, he felt his khaki shirt soaked and his head throbbing. Lieutenant Silva was stepping along smartly, while Lituma’s boots were sinking into the sand, making each step an effort. They walked up the winding main street of Amotape toward the open land and the highway.

As they walked along, Lituma glimpsed the clusters of human eyes behind the bamboo walls of the shacks, Doña Lupe’s curious, nervous neighbors. When he and the lieutenant arrived, they’d all hidden, because they were frightened of the police. As soon as they were out of sight, Lituma was sure they’d all run over to Doña Lupe’s cabin to ask what happened, what the cops had seen and said. Lituma and the lieutenant walked in silence, each deep in his own thoughts.

As they were passing the last houses, a mangy dog ran out to snarl at them. When they reached the sandy ground, darting lizards appeared and disappeared among the rocks. Lituma thought there were probably foxes as well as lizards. The kids had probably heard them howling during the two days they’d found refuge in Amotape. The foxes probably came in at night to prowl around the corrals where the goats and chickens were kept. Would the girl have been frightened when she heard the howling? Would she have hugged him close, trembling, seeking protection? Would he have calmed her down whispering sweet words into her ear? Or would they have been so in love that they would be oblivious, so absorbed in each other that they wouldn’t even hear the noises of the world? Had they made love for the first time in Amotape? Or had they done it among the sand dunes surrounding the Piura Air Force Base?

When they reached the edge of the highway, Lituma was soaked from head to foot, as if he’d jumped fully clothed into a stream. He saw that Lieutenant Silva’s green trousers and cream-colored shirt also had large dark patches and that his forehead was covered with beads of sweat. There wasn’t a vehicle of any kind in sight. The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of resignation: “We’ll have to be patient.” He took out a pack of Incas, offered a cigarette to Lituma, and lit one for himself. For a while they smoked in silence, baking in the heat, thinking, observing the mirage of lakes, fountains, and seas out in front of them on the endless sand. The first truck that passed going toward Talara didn’t stop, despite the frantic gestures both made with their hats.

“On my first tour of duty, in Abancay, when I’d just graduated from officer candidate school, I had a boss who wouldn’t stand for bullshit like that. A captain who, if anyone ever did something like that, you know what he did, Lituma? He’d take out his revolver and blow out the guy’s tires.” The lieutenant stared bitterly at the truck disappearing in the distance. “We called him Captain Cunthound because he was always after women. Wouldn’t you like to blow out that bastard’s tires?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

The officer looked at him curiously.

“You can’t get all that stuff you heard out of your head, can you?”

Lituma nodded.

“I just can’t believe everything Doña Lupe told us. Or that it happened here in this miserable hole.”

The lieutenant tossed his cigarette butt to the other side of the road and mopped his forehead and neck with his already drenched handkerchief.

“Right. She told us a lot.”

“I never thought the story would turn out like this. Lieutenant. I’d imagined all kinds of things, but not this.”

“Does that mean that you know everything that happened to the kid, Lituma?”

“Well, more or less, Lieutenant. Don’t you?”

“Not yet. That’s another thing you’re going to have to learn. Nothing’s easy, Lituma. The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out either to be half truths or lies.”

“Okay, that may be, but in this case, aren’t things pretty much cut-and-dried?”

“As of now, even though you think I’m kidding, I’m not even completely convinced that it was Colonel Mindreau and Lieutenant Dufó who killed him.” There was no irony in his voice. “The only thing I’m sure of is that they were the two men who came here and took them away.”

“I’m going to tell you something. That’s not what got to me in all this. Know what it is? Now I know why the kid enlisted at the Talara base. So he could be near the girl he loved. Doesn’t it seem incredible that anyone would do something like that? That a boy exempt from the draft would come and join up for love, to be near the girl he loves?”

“And why does that surprise you so much?” said Lieutenant Silva, laughing.

“It’s certainly not what just anybody would do, not something you hear of every day.”

Lieutenant Silva began to flag down a vehicle approaching in the distance.

“Then you don’t know what love is. I’d join the Air Force, become a buck private in the Army, become a priest, a garbageman, and I’d even eat shit if I had to, just to be near my chubby, Lituma.”

“There she is. Didn’t I tell you? Here she comes,” exclaimed Lieutenant Silva, his binoculars jammed against his eyes. He stretched his neck like a giraffe reaching for a high branch. “As punctual as if she were meeting the Queen of England for tea. Welcome, my dear! Come on, strip so we can see you once and for all. Get down, Lituma, if she even turns this way a little she’ll see us for sure.”

Lituma flattened out behind the rock where they’d taken up positions half an hour earlier. Was that dust cloud approaching them really Doña Adriana? Or was Lieutenant Silva so hot for her that he was seeing visions? The two of them were hiding up on Crab Point, a natural watchtower that overlooked a stony beach and a quiet inlet. How had the lieutenant discovered that Doña Adriana came here to take her afternoon baths when the setting sun turned red and the heat relented a little? Because in fact that moving red dust cloud was Doña Adriana. Lituma could now make out her compact shape and undulating walk.

“This is the greatest gift I’ve ever given anyone, Lituma. You’re going to see Chubby’s ass, nothing less. And her tits. And, if you’re lucky, her snatch with its curly little hairs. Get ready, Lituma, because you’re going to die when you see it all. It’s your birthday present, your promotion. How lucky you are to work for a guy like me!”

Lieutenant Silva had been chattering like a parrot ever since they’d arrived, but Lituma barely heard him. He paid more attention to the crabs than to his boss’s jokes or even to the advent of Doña Adriana. The point was justifiably famous for its myriad crabs: each one of those tiny holes in the ground represented a crab. Lituma watched in fascination as they peeked out, looking at first like moving stains. Once they emerged, they stretched, widened, and began to run in that confusing way which made it impossible to know if they were moving forward or backward. “Just like us in this Palomino Molero business.”

“Get down, get down, don’t let her see you. Terrific! She’s stripping.”

It occurred to Lituma that the entire point was honeycombed with crab tunnels. What if it caved in? Both of them would sink into the dark, asphyxiating sand crawling with swarms of those living shells armed with pincers. Before they died, they’d suffer hellish torture. He patted the ground: it was as hard as stone. Good.

“Well, at least lend me the binoculars,” Lituma complained. “You invited me here so I could see her, too, but you’re doing all the looking.”

“Why do you think I’m the boss, asshole?” But he passed him the binoculars. “Take a quick look. I don’t want you to become an addict.”

Lituma adjusted the binoculars and looked. He saw Doña Adriana down below, leaning against the breakwater, calmly taking off her dress. Did she know she was being watched? Did she take her time like that just to get the lieutenant hot and bothered? No, her movements were loose and casual, because she was sure she was alone. She folded her dress and stretched to lay it on a rock where the spray wouldn’t reach it. Just as the lieutenant had said she wore a short pink slip, and Lituma could see her thighs which were as thick as young laurel trees, and her breasts which were exposed right to the edge of her nipples.

“Who would have thought that at her age Doña Adriana had so many tasty little tidbits?”

“Don’t look so hard. You’re going to wear her out,” the lieutenant scolded him as he took back the binoculars. “Actually, the best part comes now when she goes in the water, because the slip sticks to her body and turns transparent. This is not a show for enlisted men, Lituma. Only lieutenants and above.”

Lituma laughed, just to be amiable, not because the lieutenant’s jokes were funny. He felt uncomfortable and impatient. Was it because of Palomino Molero? Could be. Ever since he’d seen the boy impaled, crucified, and burned on that rocky field, he hadn’t been able to get him out of his mind for a single moment. At first he thought that once they’d found out who killed him and why, he’d be free of Palomino Molero. But now, even though they’d more or less cleared up the mystery, the image of the boy was in his mind night and day. You’re ruining my life, you little bastard. He decided that this weekend he’d ask the lieutenant for a pass to go to Piura. It was payday. He’d dig up the Unstoppables and invite them to get drunk at La Chunga’s place. Then they’d finish off the evening in the Green House, with the whores. That would get his mind off things and make him feel better, goddamn it.

“My little Chubby belongs to a superior race of women: those who don’t wear panties. Think of all the advantages of having a woman who goes through life without panties.”

Lieutenant Silva passed him the binoculars, but no matter how much he squinted, he really didn’t see very much. Doña Adriana bathed right at the edge of the water: her paddling and the mild surf made her slip wet and translucent, so Lituma could actually see her body. It was garbage.

“My eyes must not be so good, or maybe I just don’t have your imagination, Lieutenant. All I see is foam.”

“Go fuck yourself. I, on the other hand, can see her as if she were on display. From top to bottom, from back to front. And, if you’re at all interested, I can tell you that her pubic hair’s as curly as any black woman’s. I can tell you how many hairs she has, if you want to know. I see them so clearly I can count them one by one.”

“And what else?” said the girl, standing behind them.

Lituma fell over backward. At the same time, he twisted his head so sharply that he wrenched his neck. Even though he could see it wasn’t so, he kept thinking it wasn’t a woman who had spoken but a crab.

“What else can you add to the list of obscenities you’ve already spit out?” She had her fists on her hips, like a matador challenging a bull. “What other disgusting expressions do you have in your filthy mind? Are there any more left in the dictionary, or have I heard them all? I’ve also been watching the dirty way you’ve been looking at her. You make me sick to my stomach.”

Lieutenant Silva bent over to pick up his binoculars which he’d dropped when the girl spoke. Lituma, still sitting on the ground, vaguely convinced he’d smashed an empty crab shell when he fell, saw that his boss had not yet recovered from the shock. He shook the sand off his trousers to gain a little time. He saluted, and Lituma heard him say: “It’s dangerous to surprise the police when they’re involved in their work, miss. Suppose I’d turned around shooting?”

“Their
work? You call spying on women while they bathe your work?”

It was only then that Lituma realized she was Colonel Mindreau’s daughter. That’s right, Alicia Mindreau. His heart pounded in his chest. Now, from down below, boomed the outraged voice of Doña Adriana. Because of all the noise, she’d discovered them. As if in a dream, Lituma saw her stumble out of the water and run, half crouched and covering herself with her hands.

“You’re not only pigs, but you abuse your authority, too. You call yourselves policemen? You’re even worse than what people say the cops are.”

“This point is a natural lookout. We use it to keep track of boats bringing in contraband from Ecuador,” said the lieutenant with such conviction in his voice that Lituma’s jaw fell open as he listened. “Besides, miss, in case you didn’t already know it, insults from a lady like you are like roses to a gentleman. So go right ahead if it makes you feel better.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lituma could see that Doña Adriana, half dressed, was bustling down the beach toward Punta Arena. She was swinging her hips, moving along energetically, and even though her back was to them, she was making furious gestures. She was probably cursing them up and down. The girl had fallen silent and stared at them as if her fury and disgust had suddenly abated. She was covered with grime from head to toe. It was impossible to know what the original color of her sleeveless blouse or her jeans had been because they were both the same dull ocher tone of the surrounding sand flats.

To Lituma she seemed even thinner than on the day he’d seen her burst into Colonel Mindreau’s office. Flat-chested, with narrow hips, she was what Lieutenant Silva mockingly called a board member. That pretentious nose, which seemed to grade people according to their smell, seemed even haughtier to him than the previous time. She sniffed at them as if they had failed her olfactory test. Was she sixteen? Eighteen?

“What’s a nice young lady like you doing among all these crabs?” Lieutenant Silva had slyly consigned the Peeping Tom incident to oblivion. He put his binoculars back into their case and began to clean his sunglasses with his handkerchief. “This is a bit far from the base for a stroll, isn’t it? Suppose some animal took a bite out of you? What happened to you? Get a flat?”

Lituma found Alicia Mindreau’s bicycle about sixty feet below, at the foot of Crab Point. Like its owner, it was covered with dirt. He studied the girl and tried to imagine Palomino Molero standing next to her. They’d be holding hands, saying tender things to each other, staring dreamily into each other’s eyes. She, fluttering her eyelids like butterflies, would whisper in his ear: “Sing to me, please, sing something pretty.” No. He couldn’t. He just could not imagine them like that.

“My dad knows you’ve been getting things out of Ricardo,” she said suddenly in a cutting tone. She had her face tilted up and her eyes were measuring the effect her words had on them. “You took advantage of him when he was drunk the other night.”

The lieutenant didn’t bat an eye. He carefully put on his sunglasses and began to descend the point toward the path, sliding on his backside as if on a sled. When he was down, he slapped the dust off his clothes..

“Is Lieutenant Dufó’s first name really Ricardo? His friends love the gringos so much that they probably call him Richard.”

“Daddy also knows you went to Amotape to talk to Doña Lupe.” She was actually rather short, small, barely any figure at all. She was no beauty. Did Palomino Molero fall in love with her just because of who she was? “He knows everything you’ve been doing.”

Why did she talk like this? Alicia Mindreau didn’t seem to be threatening them; instead, she seemed to be making fun of them, turning them into the object of some private joke. Now Lituma came scrambling down the point, right behind the girl. The crabs zigzagged back and forth between his legs. There was no one in sight. The men in charge of the oil tanks must have left a while ago because the gates were locked and there was no noise on the other side.

They had reached the path that led from the point to the fence that separated the I.P.C. From Talara. The lieutenant took the bicycle and pushed it along with one hand. They walked slowly, in Indian file, the crab shells crunching under their feet.

“I followed you from your headquarters and neither of you realized it,” she said in the same unpredictable tone, mixing anger and mockery. “At the gate there, they tried to stop me, but I threatened to tell my daddy and they let  me pass. You two didn’t even hear me. I was listening to you say all those dirty things and you didn’t even know I was there. If I hadn’t spoken, I could still be there spying on you.”

The lieutenant agreed, laughing quietly. He moved his head from one side to the other in mock shame, congratulating her.

“When men are by themselves, they talk dirty. We came to see what was going on, to see if any smugglers were around. It’s not our fault if some Talara ladies came to bathe at the same time. A coincidence, right, Lituma?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“In any case, Miss Mindreau, we’re at your service. What can we do for you? Or would you prefer we talk over at the office? In the shade, and drinking sodas, we can be more comfortable. Naturally, our little office is not as comfortable as your dad’s.”

The girl said nothing. Lituma could feel his thick, dark red blood coursing slowly through his veins and his pulse pounding in his wrists and temples. They went through the gate, and the Guardia Civil on duty, Lucio Tinoco from Huancabamba, gave the lieutenant a military salute. There were also three guards from International’s own security force on duty. They gaped at the girl, surprised to see her with Lieutenant Silva and Lituma. Were people in town already gossiping about their trip to Amotape? It wasn’t Lituma’s fault He had scrupulously followed his boss’s order to say nothing about Doña Lupe.

They passed the shiny green company hospital, then the harbor officer’s headquarters, where two sailors stood guard with rifles on their shoulders. One of them winked at Lituma and nodded toward the lieutenant and the girl, as if to say birds of a feather flock together.

“Does Colonel Mindreau know you’ve come to see us?”

“Don’t be a fool. Of course he doesn’t know.”

“He’ll find out soon enough,” thought Lituma. Everyone looked surprised to see the three of them together. Then they stared and whispered to each other.

“Did you come just to tell us that the colonel found out we’d had a chat with Lieutenant Dufó and with Doña Lupe?” He spoke looking straight ahead, not turning toward Alicia Mindreau, and Lituma, who had dropped back a bit, could see that she also kept her head facing forward, never looking at the lieutenant.

“That’s right.”

“A lie,” Lituma thought. What had she come to tell them? Had the colonel sent her? In any case, she seemed to he having trouble speaking. Maybe she’d lost her nerve. Her brow was furrowed, her mouth half open, and her arrogant little nose twitched anxiously. Her skin was very white and her eyelashes extremely long. Was it her air of delicacy, fragility, of being a pampered child, that drove the kid wild? Whatever it was she’d come to tell them, she was sorry now and would say nothing.

“It certainly was nice of you to drop by and chat with us. Really, thanks a lot.”

They walked on in silence fifty yards or so, listening to the cries of the sea gulls and the roar of the surf. At one of the wooden houses, some women were expertly cleaning fish. Around them, snarling and jumping, was a pack of dogs, waiting to devour the waste. The stench was overpowering.

“What was Palomino Molero like, miss?” A chill ran down Lituma’s spine, he was so surprised to hear himself. He’d spoken without premeditation, point-blank. Neither the lieutenant nor the girl turned to look at him. Now Lituma walked just behind them, occasionally stumbling.