Who Killed Palomino Molero?

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Well, Lieutenant?”

  “Holy shit,” he said, letting the hand holding the white paper drop down to his knee.

  “Did he kill himself? Will you let me read it, Lieutenant?”

  “That son of a bitch takes the cake.” Lieutenant Silva handed him the letter. As he read, believing and not believing, understanding and not understanding, he heard the lieutenant add: “He not only killed himself, Lituma. The son of a bitch killed the girl, too.”

  Lituma raised his head and stared at the lieutenant, not knowing what to say or do. He had the lamp in his left hand, so those shadows jumping on the walls meant that he was trembling. A grimace deformed the lieutenant’s face, and Lituma saw him blink and squint, as if the glare were blinding him.

  “What do we do now?” he stuttered, feeling somehow guilty of something. “Go to the base, to the colonel’s house, to find out if he really killed the girl?”

  “Do you think there’s any way he didn’t, Lituma?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I think he did kill her. That’s why he was behaving so strangely out on the beach. I also think he killed himself—that was the shot we heard. Son of a bitch.”

  “You’re right,” said Lieutenant Silva. “Son of a bitch.”

  For a moment they were silent, immobile, standing among the shadows that danced along the walls, on the floor, over the furniture of the dilapidated office. “What do we do now, Lieutenant?”

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do,” he said brusquely, standing up as if he’d suddenly remembered he had something urgent to attend to. He seemed possessed of a violent energy. “But for the moment I’d advise you to do nothing except get some sleep. Until someone comes to tell us about the two deaths.”

  Lituma watched him stride purposefully out of the room toward the shadows on the street, making his usual gestures: settling the holster he always wore on his belt and putting on his sunglasses.

  “And where are you off to, Lieutenant?” he muttered, shocked and already sure of what he was going to hear.

  “I’m gonna screw that fat bitch once and for all.”

  8

  Doña Adriana laughed again, and Lituma realized that while all Talara was gossiping, weeping, or speculating about the momentous events which had taken place, she did nothing but laugh. This had been going on for three days. That’s how she’d greeted them and bidden them farewell at breakfast, lunch, and supper—the purest horse-laugh. By contrast, Lieutenant Silva was cranky and out of sorts, as if he’d eaten something that had disagreed with him. For the fifteenth time in three days, Lituma wondered what the hell had gone on between them. Father Domingo’s bells echoed through the town, calling the faithful to Mass. Still laughing, Doña Adriana crossed herself.

  “What do you think they’ll do to this Lieutenant Dufó?” rasped Don Jerónimo.

  It was lunchtime, and along with Don Jerónimo, Lieutenant Silva, and Lituma, there was a young couple who had come from Zorritos for a baptism.

  “He’ll be tried in a military court,” an ill-humored Lieutenant Silva replied, without raising his eyes from his half-empty plate.

  “But they’ll have to convict him of something, don’t you think?” Don Jerónimo was eating hash and white rice, fanning himself with a newspaper. He chewed with his mouth open and sprayed food particles all around him. “After all, if a guy does what they say this Dufó did to Palomino Molero, you just don’t let him go free, right, Lieutenant?”

  “Right, right, you just can’t let him go free,” agreed the lieutenant, his mouth full and his face radiating his disgust at not being left in peace at lunch. “They’ll do something to him, at least I imagine they will.”

  Doña Adriana laughed again, and Lituma felt the lieutenant tense up and sink into his seat as she approached them. He must be on edge: he’s not even chasing away the flies buzzing around his face. She was wearing a flowered dress, very low-cut, and as she walked she shook her hips and breasts vigorously. She looked healthy, happy, and at peace with the world.

  “Have another glass of water, Lieutenant, and don’t eat so quickly. You might swallow down the wrong pipe,” said Doña Adriana, laughing, as she patted him on the back in a way even more mocking than the words she spoke.

  “You’ve been in a good mood lately,” said Lituma, staring at her without recognizing her. She was a different person, a coquette, what had gotten into her?

  “There must be a reason,” said Doña Adriana, picking up the plates from the table where the couple from Zorritos were sitting, and heading for the kitchen. She wiggled her backside as if waving goodbye to them. “Holy Jesus,” thought Lituma.

  “Do you have any idea why she’s been like this, so bubbly, for the last three days, Lieutenant?”

  Instead of answering, the lieutenant pierced him with a homicidal look from behind his dark glasses and went back to contemplating the street. There a vulture was furiously pecking at something. Then, suddenly, it flapped its wings and flew away.

  “Want me to tell you something, Lieutenant?” said Don Jerónimo. “I hope you won’t get mad.”

  “If it’ll make me mad, it might be better not to say it,” growled the lieutenant. “I’m not in the mood for bullshit.” “Over and out,” growled back the taxi driver.

  “Will there be more killings?” asked Doña Adriana from the kitchen, laughing.

  “She’s vamping us,” Lituma said to himself. “I have to pay a visit to Liau’s chicks. I’m getting rusty.” The taxi driver’s table was on the other side of the room, so in order to talk to the lieutenant he had to shout over the heads of the couple from Zorritos, who had been following the conversation with growing interest.

  “Well, even if you do get mad, I am going to say something to you,” decided Don Jerónimo, slapping the table with his newspaper. “There’s not a soul in Talara, man, woman, child, or dog, who believes that story. Not even that vulture out there could swallow it.”

  The vulture had returned and was sitting there, black and mean, chewing on a lizard it had in its beak. The lieutenant went on eating, indifferent, concentrating on his own thoughts and bad mood.

  “And what is ‘that story if you don’t mind telling us, Don Jerónimo?”

  “That Colonel Mindreau killed his daughter and then killed himself,” said the taxi driver, spewing food. “Who’d be dumb enough to believe that?”

  “Me,” said Lituma. “I’m dumb enough to believe that the colonel killed her and then committed suicide.”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Officer Lituma. The two of them were bumped off so they wouldn’t talk. So the murder of Palomino Molero could be blamed on Mindreau. Who do you think you’re kidding?”

  “Is that really what people are saying now?” Lieutenant Silva raised his head from his plate. “That Colonel Mindreai was bumped off? And who’s supposed to have killed him?”

  “The big guys, of course. Who else? Don’t kid me, Lieutenant. Come on, we’re all friends here. The fact is you can’t talk. Everybody says they’ve shut you up and won’t let you get to the bottom of the case. The usual stuff.”

  The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders, as if all this chatter meant nothing to him.

  “People are actually saying he took advantage of his daughter,” said Don Jerónimo through a shower of rice. “What pigs. Poor man. Don’t you think so, Adrianita?”

  “I think lots of things, ha-ha-ha!”

  “So people think this is all a made-up story,” murmured the lieutenant, turning back to his lunch with a bitter grimace.

  “Of course. To protect the real guilty parties, what else could it be?”

  The I.P.C.’s siren wailed, and the vulture raised its head and hunched down. It remained like that for a few seconds, tense and waiting. Then it hopped off.

  “So what reason do people give for the murder of Palomino Molero?” asked Lituma.

  “Smuggling. Worth millions,” declared Don Jerónimo.

  “First they killed th
e kid because he found out something. And when Colonel Mindreau discovered what was going on, or was about to discover it, they killed him and the girl. And since they know what people like to hear, they invented that filthy stuff about how he killed Molero because he was jealous, that Molero had something going with his daughter, who he was supposed to have abused. The smoke screen was a success. Nobody’s talking about the important thing: the money.”

  “Damn but they have terrific imaginations,” said the lieutenant, sighing. He was scraping his fork along the plate as if he wanted to break it.

  “Don’t swear or your tongue will fall right out,” said Doña Adriana, laughing. She stood right next to the lieutenant with a saucer of mango pudding, and when she put it in front of him, she came so close that her ample hip rubbed the lieutenant’s arm. He pulled it back instantly. “Ha-ha-ha!”

  “Nice table manners,” thought Lituma. “What the hell’s going on with Doña Adriana.” Not only was she making fun of the lieutenant, but she was flirting with him like crazy. But he did nothing. He seemed inhibited, demoralized, unable to deal with Doña Adriana’s wisecracks and jokes. He, too, seemed like a different person. Any other time, those little moves by Doña Adriana would have made him happy as a lark and he would have followed her lead. Now nothing could stir him out of the gloom which had made him seem like a sick dog for the last three days. “What the fuck happened that night?”

  “In Zorritos, people have been talking about that smuggling thing,” offered the man. He was young, had his hair slicked back, and had a gold tooth. He wore a pink shirt, stiff with starch, and he spoke too rapidly. He looked over at the woman who must have been his wife: “Isn’t that right, Marisita?”

  “Yes, Panchito, that’s right. Absolutely right.”

  “It seems they were bringing in refrigerators and stoves. To pull off a deal like that, you’ve got to be talking millions.”

  “I’m sorry about Alicita Mindreau,” said Marisita, pouting as if she were about to cry. “The girl is the innocent victim in this business. Poor child. What crimes people commit. What makes me mad is that the real guilty parties always get away. Nothing ever happens to them, right, Pancho?”

  “Around here, it’s always us poor people who get shafted,” complained Don Jerónimo. “Never the big guys. Right, Lieutenant?”

  The lieutenant got up so violently that his table and chair almost fell over.

  “I’m getting out of here,” he announced, sick of everything and everyone. “Lituma, are you going to stick around?”

  “I’ll be right with you, Lieutenant. Just let me drink my coffee.”

  “Enjoy yourself.” Doña Adriana’s mocking farewells followed him right out the door.

  A few minutes later, when Doña Adriana brought Lituma his coffee, she sat down in the lieutenant’s chair.

  “I’m so curious I just can’t take it anymore. Aren’t you going to tell me what happened the other night between you and the lieutenant?”

  “Ask him,” she replied, her round face blazing with malice.

  “I have asked him, at least ten times. But he just plays dumb. Come on, don’t be like that, tell me what happened.”

  “Only women are supposed to be that curious, Lituma.”

  “Some people are saying it might have more to do with espionage than with smuggling,” he heard Don Jerónimo say to the couple from Zorritos. “The man who said it was Don Teotonio Calle Frías, the owner of the movie house and a serious man who just doesn’t go around shooting his mouth off.”

  “If he says it, there must be something to it,” added Panchito.

  “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” recited Marisa.

  “Look, Doña Adrianita, don’t get mad because I’m asking. I have to because I’m dying of curiosity. Did you go to bed with the lieutenant? Did you give in at last?”

  “How dare you ask me a question like that, you pig.” Admonishing him with her raised index finger, she pretended to be angry. The same sardonic, self-satisfied gleam was still in her dark eyes, and her mouth was still shaped into the ambiguous smile of a person who’s remembering a bad deed, half sorry and half glad to have done it. “Anyway, keep your voice down. Matías might hear.”

  “Palomino Molero found out that military secrets were being sent to Ecuador and they killed him,” said Don Jerónimo. “The head of the spy ring was none other than Colonel Mindreau himself.”

  “The plot thickens,” said the Zorritos man. “It’s like a movie.”

  “Exactly, like a movie.”

  “How’s he going to hear if he’s in there snoring away. It’s just that everything’s been so strange since that night. I’ve been trying to guess what happened here to make you so merry and the lieutenant so down.”

  Doña Adriana laughed so hard that tears filled her eyes. Her body shook, and her huge breasts danced up and down hanging free under her flowered dress.

  “Of course he’s down. I think I’ve cooled him off forever, Lituma. Your boss’s days as a Don Juan are finished. Ha-ha-ha!”

  “I’m not surprised at what Don Teotonio Frías is saying,” said the Zorritos man, licking his gold tooth. “From the start, I suspected that with all these murders there had to be Ecuadoreans in the woodpile.”

  “But what did you do to cool him off, Doña Adriana? How’d you flatten him like that? Come on, tell me.”

  “Besides, they probably raped the Mindreau girl before they killed her,” said the lady from Zorritos, sighing. “That’s what they always do. From those monkeys you can expect anything. And I say that even though I have relatives in Ecuador.”

  “He stormed into my bedroom with his pistol in his hand, trying to scare me.” She held in her laughter and half closed her eyes so she could see once again the scene that amused her so much. “I was asleep and he frightened me out of my wits. I first thought it was a thief, but it was your boss. He smashed right through the lock, the shameless fool. Thought he’d scare me. Poor, poor guy.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that,” muttered Don Jerónimo, sticking his head out from behind the newspaper he shooed flies with. “But, of course, it wouldn’t surprise me that besides killing her they’d rape her. A bunch of them, probably.”

  “He began by telling me a bunch of silly things,” whispered Doña Adrians.

  “For instance?”

  I can’t go on living this way. I’m drowning in my desire for you. This desire I feel is killing me, I’ve reached my limit. If I don’t have you, I’ll end up blowing my brains out. Or maybe I’ll kill you.

  “What a riot.” Lituma was twisted up with laughter. “Did he really say he was drowning in desire for you and then blame you for treating him badly?”

  “He thought he’d either make me sorry for him or scared of him, or both. But he was the one who got the surprise.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” said the man from Zorritos. “A bunch of them. That’s always the way it is.”

  “What did you do, Doña Adrianita?”

  “I took off my nightgown and lay there naked,” she whispered, blushing. Just like that: she took it off and was stark naked. She made a lightning-quick move with both arms, ripping off the gown and throwing it from the bed. Her face, framed by her tangled hair, and her pudgy body in the moonlight radiated nothing but anger and disdain.

  “Naked?” Lituma blinked three times.

  “I said some things to your boss he never dreamed he’d hear. Filth.”

  “Filth?” Lituma blinked again, all ears.

  Here I am, why don’t you strip, cholito. Doña Adriana went on, her voice vibrating with indignation. She thrust forward her breasts and her stomach and held her hands at her waist. Or are you ashamed to show it to me? Is it that small, daddy? Come on, hurry up, take off your pants and show it to me. Come on, take me right now. Show me what a man you really are, baby. Give it to me five times in a row, that’s what my husband does every night. He’s old and you’re young, so you can break his record e
asily, right? Give it to me, six or seven times. Can you do it?

  “Did you really say those things,” stammered Lituma, shocked out of his wits.

  But, but . . . stammered the lieutenant. What’s gotten into you, Doña Adriana?

  “I didn’t recognize myself either, Lituma. I have no idea where I got all that dirty stuff. But I thank Our Lord in Captivity over in Ayabaca for giving me the inspiration. I made a pilgrimage there once, on foot, all the way to Ayabaca, during His festival in October. That’s why I got that idea just then. The poor man was as shocked as you are. Go on, baby, take off your pants. Let me see your dick. I want to see how big it is and to count how many times you’ll come. Think you’ll reach eight?”

  “But, but . . .” stuttered Lituma, his face burning, his eyes as wide as saucers.

  You have no right to make fun of me like that, stuttered the lieutenant, his mouth hanging open.

  “Because I said all that in the calmest voice you ever heard, Lituma. I was so mad and made such fun of him that I won the moral victory. He was totally destroyed. You should have seen him.”

  “I’m not surprised, Doña Adriana, who wouldn’t be? I’m destroyed just listening. What did he do then?”

  “Of course he didn’t take off his pants or anything else. Whatever lust he had when he came in evaporated just like that.”

  I didn’t come here to be made fun of, shouted the lieutenant, not knowing how he was going to get out.

  “Of course not, you son of a bitch. You came here to scare me with your gun and to rape me, so you could feel you were a real man. Well, go ahead and rape me, Superman. Go on, get busy. Rape me ten times in a row, daddy. I’ll be satisfied. What are you waiting for?”

  “You went crazy.”

  “Yes, I did go crazy. But it worked. Your boss took off like a shot with his tail between his legs. And he made out that it was I who offended him, the wise guy!”