Who Killed Palomino Molero? (11 page)

“I was informed that some smugglers were coming in,” answered the lieutenant without blinking an eye.

“One day you’re going to pay for all your little tricks let me warn you.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said the lieutenant, smiling and puckering his lips obscenely to blow her a kiss. “Oh, maaaama!”

“My fingers are all stiff, I’ve completely lost my touch. When I was a cadet, I could play any song I heard even once. Now I can’t even scratch out ‘La Raspa.’ Shit.”

Lieutenant Silva had in fact been trying several songs and they’d all come out flat. Lituma barely heard his boss because his mind was occupied by a single thought: what the fuck would happen now that they’d turned in a report like that?

They were on the fishermen’s beach, between the two piers. It was after midnight: a blast from the refinery siren had just announced the new shift. Lituma and Lieutenant Silva were smoking a cigarette with old Matías Querecotillo, while his two helpers pushed
The Lion of Talara
into the surf. Doña Adriana’s husband also wanted to find out if what people all over Talara were saying was true.

“And just what are people all over Talara saying, Don Matías?”

“That you two already know who killed Palomino Molero.”

Lieutenant Silva told him what he told everyone who asked him that (although how the rumor had spread so quickly was still a mystery to him): “We can’t say anything yet. Soon we’ll tell what we know, Don Matías. I can tell you personally that the announcement’s going to come any time now.”

“I hope so, Lieutenant. I hope that, for once, justice is done and the people who always win find out what it’s like to lose.”

“Who do yon mean, Don Matías?”

“Who else? You know as well as I do. The big guys.”

He walked off, bouncing along like a bottle on the waves, and scrambled expertly onto his boat. He didn’t act like a man who coughs up blood; he seemed robust and seaworthy for his age. Perhaps all that about his being sick was nothing more than Doña Adriana’s imagination. Did Don Matías know that Lieutenant Silva was after his wife? He’d never shown it. Lituma noticed that the fisherman was always friendly to the lieutenant. Perhaps when you got old you stopped being jealous.

“The big guys . . . Do you think the big guys left this guitar on our doorstep as a gift for us?”

“No, Lieutenant. It was Colonel Mindreau’s daughter. You yourself heard her say she had the kid’s guitar.”

“If you say so . . . but somehow I don’t see it. I didn’t see any letter or card or anything else that would prove she brought, the guitar to the station. I don’t even know for sure if this is Palomino Molero’s guitar.”

“Are you kidding me, Lieutenant?”

“No, Lituma. I’m trying to distract you a little because you’re so edgy. Why are you so edgy? A Guardia Civil should have balls like a brass monkey.”

“You’re a bit jumpy yourself, sir. Don’t try to deny it either.”

Lieutenant Silva laughed involuntarily. “Of course I’m jumpy. But I cover it up so people can’t see. You look as though you’d shit in your pants if you heard a mosquito fart.”

The moon shone so brightly they could clearly see the outlines of the houses belonging to the gringos and the executives of the I.P.C. up on the cliff, near the blinking lighthouse. Everyone talked about how wonderful the Paita moon was, but the moon right here was the brightest and most perfectly round Lituma had ever seen. People should be talking about the moon of Talara. He imagined the kid on a night like this, singing right on this very beach, surrounded by captivated airmen:

Lituma and the lieutenant had gone to the movies and seen an Argentine film with Luis Sandrini which made everyone but them laugh. Then they had a talk with Father Domingo at the church door. The priest wanted a Guardia Civil to scare off the Don Juans who were molesting the Talara girls when they came for chorus rehearsals. Several mothers had withdrawn their daughters from chorus because of those wise guys. The lieutenant promised he would do it, provided, of course, he had a man available. When they got back to the station, they found the guitar the lieutenant now had on his knees. Someone had left it leaning against the door. Anyone could have taken it. If they decided to have dinner instead of returning directly to the station. Lituma had no doubts about the significance of the guitar:

“She wants us to return it to the kid’s mother. She felt sorry—maybe because of what I told her about Doña Asunta—and that’s why she brought it.”

“That may he what you think, but I don’t buy it.”

Why was the lieutenant always joking like that? Lituma knew very well that his boss was in no mood for laughter, that he had been uneasy ever since he sent in his report. The proof was that they were in the station at that hour of the night. After dinner, the lieutenant picked up the guitar and suggested they stretch their legs. They walked down to the fishermen’s beach, in silence, each one immersed in his own worries. They watched the men prepare the nets and gear and then set sail.

Once they were alone, the lieutenant had started to strum Palomino’s guitar. Perhaps he was too nervous to get a song out of it. That was it, even if he tried to hide it by telling jokes. For the first time since he’d begun to serve under him, Lituma hadn’t heard him mention Doña Adriana even once. He was just about to ask him if he might bring the guitar to Doña Asunta the next time he went to Piura—”At least let me give this small consolation to the poor lady, Lieutenant”—when he realized they were no longer alone.

“Good evening,” said the shadow.

He’d materialized suddenly, as if he’d sprung from the sea or dropped from the sky. Lituma started, speechless, opening his eyes wide. He wasn’t dreaming: it was Colonel Mindreau.

“Good evening, Colonel.” Lieutenant Silva jumped out of the boat in which he was sitting, dropping the guitar into the sand. Lituma saw his boss half reach for the pistol he always wore on his right hip.

“Please stay seated,” said the colonel’s shadow. “I was looking for you and I suspected the nocturnal guitar player I’d been hearing might be you.”

“I was just seeing if I still remembered how to play. But I seem to have lost my touch. Lack of practice, I guess.”

The shadow nodded. “You’re a better detective than a guitar player.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“He’s come to kill us.” Lituma watched Colonel Mindreau step toward them, his face suddenly illuminated by the moonlight. Lituma could see his wide forehead, the two deep furrows on his brow, and his precise military mustache. Had he been this pale the two times he’d seen him in his office? Maybe it was the moon that made him seem so pale. His face was neither threatening nor angry, but indifferent. His voice had the same haughty tone it had that last time in his office. What now? Lituma felt an emptiness in his stomach: “This is what we were waiting for.”

“Only a good detective could clear up the murder of that deserter so quickly. Barely two weeks. Right, Lieutenant?”

“Nineteen days, to be precise, Colonel.”

Lituma never took his eyes off the colonel’s hands, but they were not in the moonlight. Did he have his revolver out? Would he threaten the lieutenant, demanding he retract what he’d put in the report? Would he just shoot him two or three times? Would he shoot Lituma as well? Perhaps he’d come to arrest them. Maybe he had his MPs surrounding them while he distracted them with this gab. Lituma sharpened his ears and looked around. No one was coming, and except for the sea, there was no other noise. In front of him, Lituma had the old pier, which rose and fell with the waves. The sea gulls slept on the rusty ladder encrusted with shells and starfish that ran up and down the pier. The first order Lieutenant Silva had ever given Lituma was to chase off the kids who climbed up the ladder to ride the pier up and down on the waves.

“Nineteen days,” echoed the colonel after a while.

He was speaking without irony, without rage, in glacial tones, as if nothing in all this mattered or affected him in the slightest. Deep in his voice there was an inflection, a pause, a way of accentuating certain syllables, that reminded Lituma of his daughter’s voice. “The Unstoppables were right,” he thought. “I’m no good at this stuff, I don’t like being afraid.”

“Not bad at all, especially when you think that it takes years to solve some of these crimes. Some are never solved.”

Lieutenant Silva said nothing. There was a long silence in which none of the three men moved. The pier was seesawing violently. Could some kid be up there bouncing? Lituma heard the colonel’s breathing, as well as his own and the lieutenant’s. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”

“Do you think you’ll be rewarded with a promotion for this?” Lituma realized that, with only a short-sleeved shirt on, the colonel must be cold. He was a short man, at least half a head shorter than Lituma. In his day, there must not have been a minimum height requirement for the service academies.

“I don’t come up for promotion until July of next year, Colonel.” Now. Now his hand would rise and he’d start shooting: the lieutenant’s head would splatter like a ripe papaya. But just then the colonel raised his right hand to wipe his mouth, and Lituma could see it was empty. So why had he come? “In answer to your question, sir, no, I don’t think I’ll be promoted for solving this case. Speaking frankly, I think this business is going to cause me a lot of headaches, Colonel.”

“Are you so sure you’ve found the definitive solution?”

The shadow didn’t move, and Lituma realized that the colonel spoke without parting his lips, like a ventriloquist.

“Only death is definitive,” murmured the lieutenant. His posture and speech betrayed not the slightest apprehension, as if this conversation didn’t concern him in any way, as if they were talking about other people. “He’s playing along with the colonel,” Lituma thought.

The lieutenant cleared his throat and went on: “Some details are still unclear, but I think the three key questions have been answered. Who killed Palomino Molero. How he was killed. Why he was killed.”

Either the colonel had stepped back or the light had shifted: his face was again in darkness. The pier rose and fell. The cone of light from the lighthouse swept the water, turning it gold.

“I read the report you sent to your superiors. The Guardia Civil informed my superiors, and they were kind enough to send me a copy.”

His expression hadn’t changed; he spoke neither more quickly nor with more emotion than before. A gust of wind ruffled the colonel’s sparse hair, which he immediately smoothed. Lituma remained tense and frightened, but now he had two extra images in his mind: the kid and Alicia Mindreau. The paralyzed girl watched in horror as they shoved the boy into a blue van. On the way to the rocky field, the airmen tried to please the officer by putting out their cigarettes on Palomino Molero’s aims, neck, and face. When he screamed, they laughed, nudging each other. “Make him suffer, make him suffer,” thundered Lieutenant Dufó. Then, kissing his fingers: “You’ll be sorry you were ever born, that I promise you.” He saw that Lieutenant Silva had moved away from the boat and was contemplating the sea, his hands in his pockets.

“Does this mean the matter will be covered up, Colonel?”

“I have no idea,” replied the colonel dryly, as if the question were too banal or stupid, a waste of his precious time. But almost immediately he began to doubt: “I don’t think so, not now anyway. It’s hard, it would be . . . I just don’t know. It depends on my superiors, not on me.”

“The big guys again,” thought Lituma. Why did the colonel talk as if none of this mattered to him? Why had he come if that was the case?

“I have to know one thing, Lieutenant.” He paused, and Lituma thought he looked at him for an instant, as if only now he’d noticed him and had at the same time decided that he could go on talking in front of this nobody. “Did my daughter tell you I took advantage of her? Did she say that?”

Lituma watched Lieutenant Silva turn toward the colonel.

“She did suggest that . . .” he murmured, swallowing hard. “She wasn’t explicit, she didn’t actually say ‘took advantage.’ But she suggested that you . . . that she was a wife and not a daughter to you, Colonel.”

Lieutenant Silva was nonplussed and tongue-tied. Lituma had never seen him so confused. He was sorry for him, for Colonel Mindreau, for the kid, for the girl. He was so sorry for the whole world he felt like crying, damn it. He realized he was trembling. Josefino had defined him to a T, he was a sentimental asshole and would always be one.

“Did she also tell you that I would kiss her feet? That after taking advantage of her I would get down on my knees and beg her to forgive me?” Colonel Mindreau wasn’t really asking questions but confirming what he already seemed certain of.

Lieutenant Silva stuttered something Lituma couldn’t understand. It might have been “I think so.” Lituma wanted to run away. If only someone would come and interrupt this scene.

“Then I, mad with remorse, would hand her my revolver so she would kill me?” the colonel went on in a low voice. He was tired and seemed far away.

This time the lieutenant did not answer. There was a long pause. The colonel’s silhouette was rigid and the old pier rose and fell, buffeted by the waves.

“Are you all right?”

“The English word for it is ‘delusions,’ “ said the colonel firmly, as if speaking to no one in particular. “There is no word for it in Spanish. Because ‘delusions’ means illusions, fantasies, deception, and fraud. An illusion which is also a deception. A deceptive, fraudulent fantasy.” He breathed deeply, as if hyperventilating, and then put his hand to his mouth. “To take Alicia to New York, I sold my parents’ house. I spent my savings. I even mortgaged my pension. In the United States they cure every sickness there is, they work scientific miracles. Isn’t that what they say? Well, if that was true, then any sacrifice would be worthwhile. I wanted to save my daughter and myself as well.

“They didn’t cure her. But at least they discovered she had delusions. She’ll never be cured, because it’s something that never gets better. It just gets worse. It grows like a cancer, as long as the cause is there to stimulate it. The gringos explained it to me in their usual crude way. Her problem is you. You are the cause. She holds you responsible for the death of the mother she never knew. All the things she invents, these terrible things she makes up about you, the things she told the nuns at the Sacred Heart School in Lima, the things she told the nuns at the Lourdes School in Piura, that she told her aunts, and friends—that you beat her, that you’re stingy, that you torment her, that you tie her to the bed and whip her. All to avenge her mother’s death.