Mario Llosa - Who Killed Palomino Molero?

“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.