by Tom Epperson
A twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy walks up to Roberto with a squirming tiny puppy in his arms. He says that both he and the puppy are hungry and he asks Roberto for money so he can buy food. The puppy’s probably a prop, to be discarded as soon as it’s served its purpose, but he gives the kid some money anyway. He looks like he could use a good meal. He’s wearing a grimy T-shirt that says, “THERE WILL BE A FUTURE!” Roberto recognizes it as the rather wistful campaign slogan for one of the major parties a couple of elections ago. T-shirts by the truckload are typically distributed by the various parties and candidates in the run-up to elections, and the mostly poor people of the country are happy to have them. They don’t throw them away if they get stained or torn, they keep wearing them and wearing them and thus you see on the streets the faded ripped reminders of long-ago campaigns, with their vacuous slogans and grinning candidates who promised the people the world but delivered only more misery unless they were one of the honest few who were probably assassinated before anyone ever had a chance to vote for them.
He’s walking back up San Francisco Street when his phone rings. The number looks familiar but he can’t connect a name to it.
“Hello?”
“Roberto?”
“Yes?”
“This is Manuel.”
The soldier who lost his leg and his eyesight in Tulcán.
“Hi, Manuel. How are you?”
“Not good. Something has happened.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Maybe it’s best not to talk about it on the phone. Can you come to my house?”
* * *
His blue Kia bounces through potholes and splashes across puddles. He’s worried about Manuel, his voice sounded terrible. Maybe something has gone wrong with his planned admission to the Center for the Courageous, maybe he’s lost his spot. Or maybe something has happened to his mother and he’s alone at the house with no one to help him. But why would he not want to talk about that on the phone?
Traffic gets jammed up and people start honking. Roberto’s car is creeping along, and then he sees what the trouble is. One of those horse carts that he hates has been involved in an accident with one of those buses that he hates. The cart is lying on its side with its load of fresh fruits spilled brightly across the drab pavement. Its driver, who is wearing a cowboy hat and has a soggy olive-green blanket wrapped around him, is arguing with the bus driver, who is angrily pointing this way and that way; they seem to be on the verge of a physical fight. No one’s paying any attention to the horse, which is lying on the street, badly injured. It keeps trying to lift its head, but it keeps flopping down, as it lives out the final moments of its life in a hell of gasoline fumes and honking horns and men screaming.
Roberto drives south into the slums for about thirty minutes and then he reaches Caballito and Manuel’s house. As soon as he steps out of the car, the neighborhood feels different. Hardly anyone is on the street. No one approaches him to “watch” his car. He can hear music in some of the houses, but it’s not as loud as usual. It’s like everyone has turned down the volume because they’re listening for something. It’s almost as if they’re listening for him.
In the crummy little yard he sees the toy truck Nydia, the little girl, was playing with on Friday. It’s lying on its side, like the horse cart. The front door is open a crack. He can hear the TV. He knocks and calls out “Hello?”
No answer. He pushes the door open.
The only light in the dim room comes from the TV. A Mexican telenovela is on. A beautiful girl with dangling diamond earrings is staring at herself in a mirror; it must be a pretty dramatic moment judging from the swelling music. Manuel’s mother sits in her usual chair, her eyes closed and her chin on her chest. She now bears a resemblance to the porcelain figurine of the gory Christ on the cross sitting on the shelf behind her because she’s covered with blood, it’s like a crimson shawl has been draped over her head and shoulders.
He glances around the room and into the kitchen. For all he knows, the killer or killers might still be in the house.
“Manuel?” he calls out. Not expecting an answer.
He walks down the narrow hallway that leads to the back. His heart’s thudding. He hears Manuel’s radio, it’s playing salsa music. The back door is wide open, and the first thing he sees is Manuel’s dog, muddy and bloody, lying on his side. And then he sees Manuel.
He’s in his shed lying facedown by his workout bench. Shot in the head like his mother. As Roberto gets closer he sees a note has been pinned on his shirt. He steps over some dumbbells and bends down and takes a look.
Roberto why are you still here? Their blood is on your hands.
He straightens back up. Stands there and tries to absorb it all.
When Manuel called him he doubtless had a gun to his head. He had been told that if he didn’t get Roberto to come not only he but his mother (and Nydia? Where is she?) would be killed. But of course all along it was part of the plan for them to be killed anyway.
He looks again at the dog. Mateo. His mouth is open, his sharp yellowish teeth are showing, it’s like he was killed in mid-snarl. He bets Mateo put up a fight protecting his master. He hopes he bit the fuck out of somebody.
The song on the radio rollicks on.
Their blood . . .was that meant to include Nydia’s? Maybe she’s not here. She could have gone to the corner grocery to buy some candy, or maybe she’s somewhere playing with a friend. Or she hid in a closet, or under a bed . . .
He walks over to the outhouse. The door is closed. At its bottom he sees what appears to be the leading edge of a puddle of blood. He pulls the door open.
She’s slumped against one wall, her legs hanging off the seat. She too has been shot in the head, but that’s not all. Her pants and underpants have been removed, and she’s been mutilated between her legs. One could hardly imagine that that much blood could come from a little girl.
Roberto steps back and closes the door. Very softly, as though he’s intruded onto a scene that should have remained private. He takes his cellphone out to call the police. He knows they will take their time getting here. Till they arrive, it will be up to him to keep the dead company, but he’s done it before. He has found the dead to be a strange lot. So silent, still, and indifferent . . .
* * *
Lieutenant Matallana, a police homicide investigator, scrutinizes Roberto’s identification card.
“You’re the journalist, yes?”
He affirms that he is.
“I’ve read some of your stories,” he says. Leaving it carefully up in the air what he thinks about them. Now he hands his ID back to him.
“Tell me your connection to these people.”
Roberto tells him. They’re standing in front of the house. Other investigative personnel are taking pictures, dusting for fingerprints, talking to neighbors—the kind of things they ought to be doing when investigating a gruesome triple murder. The most likely outcome, of course, is that it will all lead to nothing. The next most likely outcome is that an innocent man will be arrested. The outcome so unlikely as to seem barely within the realm of possibility is that the actual perpetrators will be brought to justice.
Lieutenant Matallana nods and writes in a notebook as Roberto talks. He’s dressed rather well for a policeman in an Italian sports jacket and sharply creased pants. He wears glasses like Roberto. Looks, Roberto suddenly realizes, a little like Roberto. He would not like to have a job such as his in a city such as this. Death all day long. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And for a midnight snack? More death.
“Was he involved in anything illicit?” Matallana asks. “Drugs, or—?”
“No. He was blind and had one leg. He never left this house. He lifted weights and listened to the radio.”
Matallana nods, writes.
“Okay. Can you tell me about the note?”
The note. Roberto seriously considered destroying the note just so he wouldn’t have to answer questions like this. Like
most citizens of his city, he’s never thought there was any point in letting the police know anything at all about his business. Nothing good can come of it. But destroying evidence is a crime, and while it seemed unlikely he would be caught, he couldn’t be sure. Who knows what the police already know or will learn about what happened here today? In fact, it’s not unheard of for the police to investigate crimes that they themselves have committed.
“I’ve been receiving death threats. Because of my work. I’ve been given ten days to leave the country.”
“Ten days. Hm,” says Matallana, as he writes in his notebook; usually it’s Roberto scribbling while somebody else is talking. “And how many of these ten days have already passed?”
“Three.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Leave. On Wednesday.”
“And where are you going?”
“Saint Lucia.”
Matallana smiles. “Saint Lucia. I hear it’s beautiful there. I wish I could be exiled to Saint Lucia.”
“The thing is, I’d already decided to leave. So all this was . . .”
“Unnecessary?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea who’s behind it?”
“I don’t have any particular names, no. There was this guy that was following me, in a green Renault, but I didn’t get the license plate number.”
“Could you identify him if you saw him again?”
“Yes.”
Lieutenant Matallana reaches up to his face, adjusts his glasses; they have gold wire frames, like Roberto’s. He’s looking at Roberto with seeming sympathy.
“I’ll miss your stories. I thought they were very good. I’ll never forget the one about the old general who had a brain tumor and it made him think he was a great violinist. So funny and yet so sad.”
“Thank you. Could I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“The little girl. Do you think she was already dead when they . . . they did that to her?”
“There was a lot of blood,” the lieutenant says matter-of-factly. “That would suggest that her heart was still beating.” He sees the look on Roberto’s face. “Unbelievable, isn’t it? What people do to one another.”
“Can I go?”
“Not just yet. There’s something I’d like you to do.”
“What?”
“I want you to walk me through your exact movements from the time you arrived till the time you called us. Where you stepped. What you touched. What you saw.”
“Okay.” They start to walk into the house. “Am I a suspect?”
Matallana laughs. “They say when a pickpocket looks at a man, all he sees are his pockets. Well when a homicide detective looks at a man, all he sees is a suspect.”
Roberto has to behold again the blood-shrouded figure of Manuel’s mother. And then down the narrow hallway into the back yard. The dog. Manuel. His radio still playing. Matallana observing Roberto closely. He’s friendly and claims to be a fan and looks like Roberto and wears the same kind of glasses but Roberto cannot afford to let his guard down. Who knows what his game is?
The door to the outhouse is open and a police photographer is taking pictures of Nydia like some depraved pornographer. Another policeman laughs and says, “Hey, we have a survivor!”
Roberto looks toward where he’s pointing. Humberto, Manuel’s white rabbit with the gray spots, is hopping around near the outhouse, his nose nervously sniffing the air.
* * *
The sun is sinking toward the western mountains as he drives north along Avenue Three. He peers into the cardboard box that’s sitting in the passenger seat. Humberto is crouched tensely in a corner, a smudge of blood on his white fur. It was the right thing to take the rabbit with him, Manuel would have wanted that, but now what in the hell is he going to do with him?
His cellphone pings, announcing a text message. From Caroline. I bought the desk it’s in your office in front of your window waiting for you hurry roberto hurry!
He’s not going to say a word about what happened today to Caroline. She would go crazy, insist he catch the next plane out.
It’s not surprising to him—nothing in this country is surprising to him—that they have killed someone he knows in an effort to frighten him into leaving. But why Manuel? Why not a friend or a family member? Maybe the military was behind it, because the article he wrote about Manuel and the other wounded vets embarrassed them. Well, good luck to Lieutenant Matallana in going up against the military. Though it’s doubtful he has the slightest inclination to do so. More likely he is spinning some elaborate web around Roberto. Let’s see, what could be his motive for killing Manuel, his mother, and Nydia? Oh it’s obvious. He’s a pedophile. He was caught molesting the little girl and to cover up his crime he killed everyone in the house. And that would explain the sexual nature of the mutilation inflicted on the girl. They’re probably rounding up witnesses right now that will testify Roberto’s molested children before. What an entertaining circus it would be if the crusading investigative journalist were exposed as a pervert and tried for murder. Maybe catching the next plane out isn’t such a bad idea.
He hears Humberto stirring around in the box. He tries to think of someone he knows who could give him some guidance.
Gloria. Gloria Varela. She loves animals. He calls her.
“Gloria, it’s Roberto. I need your help.”
“Roberto, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve come into possession of a rabbit, and I don’t know what to do with it.”
Gloria laughs. “Oh Roberto, you scared me. The way your voice sounded, I thought something bad had happened.”
* * *
She lives behind tall adobe walls in a pretty cottage painted sky blue. She puts Humberto in the kitchen with some food and water and closes the door so he won’t be bothered by the cottage’s other occupants: a big dignified Doberman and two standoffish cats; she also has a parakeet in a cage and two turtles in a terrarium. She brings a bottle of wine and two glasses into the living room and sits down and lights a cigarette and listens as Roberto talks about what he found at Manuel’s house.
“So it’s in the hands of the police now,” he says. “Who of course will do nothing.”
“I’m sorry, Roberto,” Gloria murmurs.
He gulps down the rest of his wine. Impatient to feel the warm tingle of it hitting his brain, infiltrating the misery there. Gloria leans forward and refills his glass.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she says. “I’ve written about people, and then they’ve turned up dead, and I knew that my story probably had something to do with it, but you can’t blame yourself. The evil bastards that did it, they’re to blame.”
He nods. Looks around the room. Sees lots of reminders of Gloria’s old successes, of her glory days. Framed journalism awards and photographs of her and her wild hair and black eye patch with some of the most famous people in the world: Yasser Arafat, Vladimir Putin, Mick Jagger, Pope John Paul II. All men, he notices. She has always loved men.
He looks at a picture of her engaged in earnest conversation with a baby-faced American president in his office at the White House.
“What was Clinton like?” he asks. “Did he make a pass at you?”
“He was very smart and charming and no, he didn’t make a pass.”
His gaze falls on a photo of her lost love, Commander Romeo. Black-bearded, in a beret, jauntily smiling, much handsomer than the movie star who played him in the film.
“Do you think about him much? Luis Valasquez?”
“Oh yes.” She looks at the photo, smiles musingly. “Odd. How he’s stayed the same age, and I’ve gotten so old. I could be his mother now.” She takes a drag on her cigarette, then lets out a languid stream of smoke. “At night, sometimes, when I sleep, Luis comes to me, and we talk under the stars again. I always ask what it’s like to be dead, and he always says, ‘I can’t tell you that, my love. That’s the one thing I’m not allowed to talk ab
out.’”
A brown and black cat jumps in her lap.
“What’s happening, Chocolate?” she coos.
“Caroline has three cats.”
“Do you like cats?”
“Not particularly. But I’m trying to learn to like them.”
“What’s not to like, hm, Chocolate?”
“Do you think he was afraid to die?”
“Luis?”
“Yes.”
She is quiet for a moment, petting the cat.
“I think on the day it happened to him, it must have come as a surprise. He was very confident and resourceful. He’d been in plenty of dangerous situations and had always gotten through them, and I think he expected that to continue. But clearly he had thought about his own death. I remember something he said to me once: ‘Here’s the thing, Gloria. You have to decide ahead of time that even if the worst happens, if your side loses and you’re caught by criminal lunatics and you’re tortured and killed . . . it was worth it anyway.’ And then he repeated it, like it had already happened: ‘It was worth it anyway.’ So hopefully, at the very end, there was some kind of peace for him.”
The parakeet begins to chirp loudly; it’s like bright little chips of sound are flying out of its cage. The Doberman pads over to the open front door and stares out—into a dusk now teetering on the knife’s edge of night.
“What’s out there, Hugo?” Gloria says.
The dog looks over his shoulder at her, then back out the door.
Gloria is wearing faded blue jeans and a soft tan alpaca sweater but not her trademark boots. Her bare feet seem a little big and unfeminine-looking. Roberto has never seen her bare legs; he knows there are scars there from the bombing that she wants to conceal.
“Is it true what they say about you, Gloria?”
She smiles and leans over and taps some ash from her cigarette into an orange ashtray shaped like a fish.
