Who Killed Palomino Molero Read online

  “Don’t get mad. I don’t want to upset you, so I’ll be on my way. Thanks for talking to me. We’ll get in touch with you if we find out anything.”

  He got up, said good night, and went out without shaking hands with her, afraid she wouldn’t take his hand. Outside, he stuck his cap on his head and calmed down after walking a few steps down the dirt road, under the glittering stars. The distant guitar had fallen silent. All he could hear were the shrill voices of children fighting or playing, the chatter of the adults in front of their houses, and some dogs barking. What’s wrong with you? He thought. What’s gotten into you? The poor kid. He couldn’t be the easygoing guy from La Mangachería again until he understood how there could be people in the world that evil. Especially because everybody was saying that Palomino wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  Lituma reached the Old Bridge, but instead of crossing over to the city, he went into the Río Bar, which was built on the ancient bridge over the Piura River. His throat felt like sandpaper. The Río Bar was empty. No sooner did he sit down than the owner, Moisés, came over. His ears were so huge everyone called him Dumbo.

  “Just can’t get used to seeing you in uniform, Lituma,” he mocked, handing him a glass of lúcuma juice. You look like you’re in disguise. Where are the Unstoppables?”

  “They went to a cowboy movie,” said Lituma, gulping down his drink. “I’ve got to get back to Talara right away.”

  “What a fucking mess that Palomino Molero business is. Did they really cut his balls off?”

  “They didn’t cut them off, they pulled them off.” Lituma was disgusted: that was the first thing everyone wanted to know. Now Moisés would start making jokes about the kid.

  “It’s all the same.” Dumbo moved his enormous ears as if they were the wings of some huge insect. His nose and chin also stuck way out. A total freak.

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yeah, and so did you, I’m sure of it. Don’t you remember him? The rich boys would hire him for serenades. They had him sing at parties, at any special event, even at the Grau Club. He sang like Leo Marini, I swear. You must have met him, Lituma.”

  “That’s what everybody says. ]osé, Mono, and Josefino say we were all together one night when he sang at La Chunga’s place. But I just can’t remember it.”

  He closed his eyes and conjured up a series of identical nights, sitting around a small wooden table bristling with beer bottles, the cigarette smoke burning his eyes, the stink of booze, drunken voices, blurred silhouettes, and guitars playing waltzes and tonderos. Could he find, in that chaos, the young, crooning, caressing voice that made you want to dance, hold a woman, and whisper sweet nothings in her ear? No, he couldn’t turn up a thing. His cousins and Josefino were wrong. He just drew a blank: Lituma had never heard Palomino Molero sing in his life.

  “Did you find out who killed him?”

  “Not yet. Were you a friend of his?”

  “He’d come by now and then to have a drink. We weren’t buddies, but we’d chat once in a while.”

  “Was he lively, a talker? Or was he serious and cold?”

  “Quiet and shy. Romantic, kind of a poet. Too bad they drafted him. He must have suffered with all that military discipline.”

  “He wasn’t drafted; he was exempt. He enlisted. His mother can’t figure it out, and neither can I.”

  “That’s what happens when you get a broken heart.” Dumbo wagged his ears.

  “That’s what I think, but that doesn’t tell me who killed him or why.”

  Some men came into the Río Bar, and Moisés went to take their order. It was time to find the truck driver, but Lituma felt himself going slack. He didn’t move. He saw the slim boy tuning his guitar; he saw him in the half light of the streets where Piura’s purebreds lived, beneath the wrought-iron bars on the balconies belonging to girls he could never love, captivating them with his pretty voice. He saw him pocketing the tips the rich boys would give nim for serenading their girls. Did he buy his guitar with those tips saved up over the course of months? Why was it a matter of “life and death” for him to leave Piura?

  “Now I remember,” said Moisés, flapping his ears furiously.

  “What do you remember?”

  “That he was crazy in love. He told me something. An impossible love. That’s what he said.”

  “A married woman?”

  “How would I know, Lituma? There’s lots of impossible loves. You can fall in love with a nun, for instance. But I remember hearing him say that. ‘So what are you so down in the mouth about, kid?’ ‘Because I’m in love, Moisés, and it’s an impossible love.’ That’s why he joined the Air Force.”

  “Didn’t he tell you why it was an impossible love? Or who she was?”

  Moisés wagged his head and his ears.

  “That’s all he said. That he had to see her in secret. He serenaded her, but not under her window. From afar.”

  “I get it.” He imagined the kid running away from Piura because of a jealous husband who’d threatened to kill him. “If we knew who the woman was, why it was an impossible love, we’d have something to go on.” Maybe that’s why he’d been tortured: the rage of a jealous husband.

  “If it’s any help to you, I can tell you that the woman he loved lived near the air base.”

  “Near the base?”

  “One night we were talking here, Palomino Molero sitting right where you are. He heard that a friend of mine was going to Chiclayo and asked him for a ride to the air base. ‘What are you going to do out there at this time of night?’ I’m going to serenade my girlfriend, Moisés.’ So she must have lived there.”

  “But no one lives there. It’s all sand and carob trees,

  “Think about it a little, Lituma,” Dumbo said, ears wagging. “Get to work on it.”

  “Could be.” Lituma scratched his neck. “All the Air Force people and their families live right near there.”

  3

  “Right, where all the Air Force people and their families live,” repeated Lieutenant Silva. “It’s a real lead. Now the son of a bitch won’t be able to say we’re wasting his time.”

  But Lituma realized that even though the lieutenant was listening and talking about the meeting they were going to have with the commanding officer of the Air Force base, his body and soul were concentrated on Doña Adriana’s undulations as she swept out the restaurant. Her movements occasionally raised the hem of her skirt over her knees, revealing a thick, well-turned thigh. When she bent down to pick up some garbage, her proud, unfettered breasts showed over the top of her light cotton dress. The officer’s beady eyes didn’t miss her slightest movement and glowed with lust.

  Why was it Doña Adriana got Lieutenant Silva all hot and bothered? Lituma couldn’t figure it out. The lieutenant was fair-skinned, young, good-looking, with a little blond mustache. He could have had practically any girl in Talara, but he only chased after Doña Adriana. He’d confessed as much to Lituma, “I’ve got that chubby broad under my skin, goddamnit.” Who could figure it? She was old enough to be his mother, she had a few gray hairs in that tangle on her head, and, last but not least, she bulged all over, especially in the stomach. She was married to Matías, a fisherman who worked nights and slept during the day. They lived behind the restaurant and had several grown children who’d already moved out. Two of their boys worked for the International Petroleum Company.

  “If you go on staring at Doña Adriana like that, you’re going to go blind, Lieutenant. At least put on your glasses.”

  “You know, she gets better-looking every day,” whispered the lieutenant without taking his eyes off the oscillations of Doña Adriana’s broom. He rubbed his graduation ring against his trousers and added, “I don’t know how she does it, but the fact of the matter is she gets better and sexier every day.”

  They’d had a big cup of goat’s milk and sandwiches made with greasy cheese. Now they were waiting for Don Jerónimo and his taxi to take them out to the base, where Colonel Mindre
au said he would see them at eight-thirty. They were the only customers in Doña Adriana’s place, which was just a shanty made of bamboo poles, straw mats, and corrugated sheet metal. In one corner stood the camp stove where Doña Adriana cooked for her customers. On the other side of the back wall was the little room where Matías slept after his nights on the high seas.

  “You have no idea what great things the lieutenant’s been saying about you while you were sweeping, Doña Adriana,” said Lituma, flashing a honeyed smile. The owner of the restaurant waddled toward him, brandishing her broom. “He says that even though you’re a bit long in the tooth and a few pounds overweight you’re the most tempting woman in Talara.”

  “I say it because I mean it.” Lieutenant Silva wore his Don Juan expression. “Besides, it’s true. And Doña Adriana knows it, too.”

  “Instead of fooling around like this with a lady who has grown children, the lieutenant ought to be out doing his job. He ought to be hunting down the murderers.”

  “And if I find them, what’s my reward?” The lieutenant smacked his lips obscenely. “A night with you? For a reward like that I’ll find them, hog-tie them, and lay them at your feet, I swear.”

  “He says it as if he were already slipping under the covers with her.” Lituma had been enjoying the lieutenant’s jokes, but then he remembered the dead kid and the jokes stopped being funny. If that damned Colonel Mindreau cooperated, things would be easier. He had to have information, files, the power to interrogate the base personnel, and if he wanted to help them, they’d find plenty of clues and then catch the sons of bitches. But Colonel Mindreau was so snooty. Why had he turned them down? Because the Air Force guys all thought they were bluebloods. They thought the Guardia Civil was a half-breed outfit they could look down on.

  “Let go! Who do you think you are? Let go, or I’ll wake up Matías,” Doña Adriana shrieked, pulling herself free. She had handed Lieutenant Silva a pack of Incas, and he grabbed her hand. “Go feel up your maid, you fresh thing, and leave a woman with children in peace.”

  The lieutenant let go of her so he could light his cigarette, and Doña Adriana calmed down. It was always like that: she would get mad at his teasing and his sneaky fingers, but deep down she liked it. “There’s a little whore in all of them.” The thought depressed Lituma.

  “That’s all people are talking about in town,” said Doña Adriana. “I was born here, and I’ve never seen anyone get killed that way before. In these parts, people kill each other fair and square, man to man. But crucifying, torturing, that’s new. And you don’t do anything. You should be ashamed.”

  “We are doing things, honey,” said Lieutenant Silva. “But Colonel Mindreau isn’t helping us. He won’t let me question Palomino Molero’s buddies. They must know something. We can’t get anywhere, and it’s his fault. But sooner or later the truth will come out.”

  “The poor mother. Colonel Mindreau thinks he’s king of the hill; all you have to do is take a look at him when he comes to town with his daughter. Doesn’t say hello to anyone, doesn’t look at anyone. And she’s even worse. What snobs!”

  It wasn’t even eight yet and the sun was blazing hot. The restaurant was pierced by luminous spears of light in which motes of dust floated and flies buzzed. There were few people on the street. Lituma could hear the low sound of the breaking waves and the murmur of the water washing back down the beach.

  “Matías says the boy had a wonderful voice, that he was an artist,” Doña Adriana said.

  “Did Don Matías know Palomino Molero?” asked the lieutenant.

  “He heard him sing a couple of times while he was repairing his nets.”

  Old Matías Querecotillo and his two assistants were loading nets and bait onto their boat, The Lion of Talara, when suddenly they were distracted by the strumming of a guitar.

  The moonlight was so bright they didn’t need a flashlight to see that the group of shadows on the beach were half a dozen airmen having a smoke there among the boats. When the boy began to sing, Matías and his boys abandoned their nets and went over to listen. The boy had a warm voice, with a vibrato that made them weepy and sent a chill up their spines. He sang “Two Souls,” and when he finished they applauded. Matías Querecotillo asked permission to shake the singer’s hand. “You brought the old days back to me,” he congratulated him. “You’ve made me sad.” That’s when he learned that the singer’s name was Palomino Molero, one of the last batch of recruits, from Piura. “You could be singing on Radio Piura, Palomino,” Matías heard one of the airmen say. Since then, Doña Adriana’s husband had seen him several other times, on the same beach, around the boats when they were getting The Lion of Talara ready to sail. Every time, they’d stopped work to listen.

  “If Matías did all that, that kid must have sung like an angel, because Matías doesn’t get excited that easily, he’s sort of cold.”

  “Then he’s serving you to the lieutenant on a silver platter,” thought Lituma. Sure enough, the lieutenant was licking his lips like a hungry cat.

  “You mean he can’t cut the mustard, Dofia Adrianita? I’d be happy to heat you up anytime you like. I’m like a house afire.”

  “I don’t need anybody to heat me up.” Doña Adriana laughed. “When it’s cold out, I use a hot-water bottle to heat up the bed.”

  “Human warmth is so much nicer, honey.” The lieutenant purred, puckering his lips toward Doña Adriana as if he wanted to drink her in.

  lust then, Don Jerónimo appeared. He couldn’t drive right up to the restaurant because the street was sandy and he’d have gotten stuck. So he’d left his Ford on the main road, about a hundred yards away. Lieutenant Silva and Lituma signed the voucher for their breakfast and bade farewell to Doña Adriana. Outside, the sun pounded them mercilessly. It was like midday even though it was eight-fifteen. In the blinding light, it seemed as if things and people might simply dissolve at any moment.

  “Talara is buzzing with rumors,” said Don Jerónimo as they walked toward the van, their feet sinking into the sand. “Lieutenant, you find the murderers, or they’re gonna lynch you.

  “Let ‘em lynch me.” Lieutenant Silva shrugged. “I swear I didn’t kill him.”

  “Well, people are saying lots of strange things. Your ears must be burning.”

  “My ears never burn. What are they saying?”

  “That you’re covering up because the murderers are big shots,” said Don Jerónimo, cranking up the motor. And he repeated winking at the lieutenant, “There are some big shots in this, right, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know if there are big shots or nobodies in this thing, but we’ll get them no matter what. Lieutenant Silva gets his man, big or little, Don Jerónimo. So let’s go, I don’t want to be late for my meeting with the colonel.”

  The lieutenant was an honest man, and that’s why Lituma esteemed and admired him. He had a big mouth, was a smooth talker, and lost his head only when it came to the plump hostess. In all the time Lituma had been working under Lieutenant Silva, he’d always seen him do his best to be fair and not play favorites.

  “What have you found out up till now, Lieutenant?” Don Jerónimo blew his horn uselessly; the kids, dogs, pigs, donkeys, and goats that wandered in front of the taxi made no attempt whatever to get out of the way.

  “Not a goddamn thing.”

  “Not much to brag about,” mocked the driver.

  Lituma heard his boss repeat what he’d said earlier that morning: “Today we’ll find out something. You can smell it in the air.”

  By now they were on the outskirts of town, and on both sides of the road oil derricks punctuated the bare, rocky landscape. Off in the distance, the roofs of the Air Force base were shining in the sun. “I hope to God something turns up—anything,” Lituma said to himself, echoing the lieutenant. Would they ever know who killed the kid and why? Instead of wanting justice or vengeance, he just wanted to see their faces, to hear them explain why they did what they did to Palomino Molero.
/>   At the guardhouse, the duty officer looked them over from head to foot as if he’d never seen them before. And he kept them waiting in the white-hot sun, not thinking to ask them to sit in the shade of his office. As they waited, Lituma looked the place over:

  “Shit. Talk about the good life. That’s what this is.” On the right were the officers’ houses, all identical, all raised up on posts, all painted blue and white, with small, well-tended geranium gardens, and window screens. He saw women with children, and young girls watering flowers; he heard laughter. The airmen lived almost as well as the foreigners at the I.P.C, for chrissake! Just seeing everything so clean and neat made you jealous. They even had a pool, just behind the houses. Lituma had never seen it, but he could imagine it, full of women and kids in bathing suits, sunbathing and splashing each other.

  Off to the left were the hangars and offices and, farther down, the landing strip. He could see some planes parked in a triangular formation. “They really live it up. Like the gringos at the I.P.C, these lucky bastards live like movie stars behind their fences and screens. The gringos and the Air Force people could look each other straight in the eye—right above the heads of the slobs in Talara, who were roasting down there in the town, sprawled along the dirty, oily ocean. From the base, Lituma could look right over Talara and see a rocky headland, a fence patrolled night and day by armed guards, and the houses inhabited by the engineers, technicians, and executives of the I.P.C. They, too, had their pool, complete with diving boards. In town they said the foreign women went swimming half naked.

  After making them wait a long time, Colonel Mindreau finally had them sent into his office. As they walked toward the commander’s door, Lituma looked at the officers and airmen. “Some of these fuckers know what happened.”

  Lieutenant Silva and Lituma snapped to attention at the door and then advanced to the center of the room. On the desk there was a tiny Peruvian flag, a calendar, an engagement book, some forms, a few pencils, and photographs of Colonel Mindreau with his daughter, or his daughter alone. The neatness of the office reflected the colonel’s compulsive personality. Everything was in its place: the file cabinets, the diplomas on the walls, and the huge map of Peru, which served as backdrop for the commander-in-chief of the Talara Air Force Base. Colonel Mindreau was a stubby little man, barrel-chested, with a deeply lined face and a precisely trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache. The man mirrored the office. He studied them with gray, iron-cold eyes that betrayed not the slightest welcome.