Mario Llosa: Who Killed Palomino Molero?

Lituma had stiffened. He could feel that the lieutenant was also tense, panting, as if they were hearing the rumble that comes from the bowels of the earth just before a tremor.

“I want to drink something hot, that coffee if there’s nothing else,” said the girl, once again changing her tone. Now she was talking without dramatics, as if chatting with her friends. “I think I’m cold!”

“That’s because it is cold,” blurted out the lieutenant. He repeated himself twice, nodding his head and making other superfluous gestures. “It is cold, it certainly is.”

He hesitated awhile, finally stood up and walked to the stove, Lituma noticed how awkward and slow he was; he moved as if he were drunk. Now it was he who was taken by surprise, jolted by what he’d just heard. Lituma pulled himself together and began to think again about what had bothered him most: what was all this about love being disgusting and then she’d fallen in love with Palomino Molero? What kind of nutty idea was that? Falling in love was disgusting but loving someone wasn’t? Lituma, too, felt cold. How great it would be to have a nice hot cup of coffee, like the one the lieutenant was making for the girl. Through the cone of greenish light that fell from the lamp, Lituma could see how slowly the lieutenant was pouring out the water, how slowly he stirred in the instant coffee and the sugar. It was as if he weren’t sure that his fingers would do his bidding. In silence he walked toward the girl, holding the cup with two hands, and then handed it to her. Alicia Mindreau instantly raised it to her lips and drank, turning her face upward. Lituma saw her eyes in the fragile, shimmering light: dry, black, hard, and adult, set in the delicate face of a child.

“In that case…” murmured the lieutenant, so slowly that Lituma could barely hear him. He’d again perched on the corner of his desk, with one leg on the floor and the other dangling in midair. He paused and then went on timidly, “In that case, the one you hate, the one you hope suffers the worst things, is not Lieutenant Dufó but…”

He didn’t daie finish the sentence. Lituma saw the girl nod without hesitation.

“He gets down on the floor like a dog and kisses my feet. He says love knows no bounds. The world wouldn’t understand. Blood calls to blood, he says. Love is love, a landslide that carries all before it. When he says those things, when he does those things, when he cries and asks me to forgive him, I hate him. I only wish the worst things would happen to him.”

A radio turned up full blast silenced her. The disk jockey spoke machine-gun style, whining through the static. Lituma couldn’t understand a word he said. The disk jockey’s voice drowned out by a popular dance, el bote, which was usurping the place of the huaracha among the citizens of Talara:

Look at all those chicks standin’ on the corner,

They don’ pay me no mind, even though they oughta…

Lituma was enraged by the singer, by the person who’d turned on the radio, by el bote, and even by himself. “That’s why she says it’s disgusting. That’s why she makes a distinction between falling in love and loving someone.” The long pause in the conversation was filled in by the music. Again Alicia Mindreau seemed calm, her fury of an instant ago forgotten. Her little head moved in time with el bote as she looked at the lieutenant expectantly.

“I’ve just realized something,” he heard his boss announce, very slowly.

The girl stood up and declared, “I have to be going. It’s quite late.”

“I’ve just realized that it was you who left the anonymous note on our door. It was you who advised us to go to Amotape to ask Doña Lupe what happened to Palomino Molero.”

“They must be looking everywhere for me.” In her little voice, again transformed, Lituma discovered that mischievous and mocking tone which was her most likable or least unlikable characteristic. When she talked like that, she seemed to be really what she was, a child, and not, as a moment before, a grownup, terrible woman with the face and body of a child. “He’s probably sent the chauffeur and the airmen to every house on the base, to the gringos’ houses, to the club, to the movies, everywhere. He gets scared whenever I’m late. He thinks I’m going to run away again. Ha-ha!”

“So it was you. Well, it’s a bit late, but thanks for your help, Miss Mindreau. If you hadn’t given us that hint, we’d still be in a fog.”

“The last place he’d ever think of looking is the police station. Ha-ha!”

Did she laugh? Yes, but this time with no sarcasm, no mockery. A rapid little laugh, roguish, like that of any kid on the street. She was crazy, no doubt about it. But Lituma was still plagued by doubts, and kept changing his mind. She was, she wasn’t; of course she was; no, she was faking.

“Of course, of course,” hummed the lieutenant. He coughed to clear his throat, tossed the butt of his cigarette on the floor, and stepped on it. “We’re here to protect people. You most of all, of course. All you’ve got to do is ask.”

“I don’t need anyone to protect me. My daddy protects me. He’s all I need.”

She swiveled around toward the lieutenant so quickly that the few drops of coffee in the tin cup splashed all over his shirt. He snatched the cup out of her hands. “Would you like us to escort you to the base?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Lituma watched her walk swiftly out into the street. Her silhouette materialized in the twilight air as she got back on her bicycle. He watched her pedal off, heard a horn blow, and then saw her disappear, tracing a sinuous path around potholes and rocks.

Lieutenant Silva and Lituma stood stock-still. Now the music had stopped and once again they could hear the hideous voice of the announcer speaking in his incomprehensible staccato.

“If they hadn’t turned on that fucking radio, she would have gone on talking,” grunted Lituma. “God knows what else she would have told us.”

“If we don’t get a move on, Chubby’s going to close the kitchen on us.” The lieutenant stood up and put on his cap. “Let’s get cracking, Lituma. Chow time. This stuff makes me hungry, how about you?”

Nonsense. Doña Adriana didn’t close until midnight and it was barely eight o’clock. But Lituma understood that he’d said that just to say something, that he’d made a joke just to break the silence, because the lieutenant must have felt as strange and mixed up as he did. Lituma picked up the Pasteurina bottle Alicia Mindreau had left on the floor and tossed it into the sack of empties that Borrao Salinas, a rag-and-bottle man, would buy each weekend.

They walked out, locking the station door. The lieutenant muttered where the hell had the guard gone to, he’d punish Ramiro Matelo by restricting him to quarters on Saturday and Sunday. There was a full moon. The bluish light of the sky illuminated the street. They walked in silence, waving and nodding in response to the greetings shouted to them from the families congregated in doorways. Off in the distance, above the throbbing surf, they could hear the loudspeakers from the outdoor movie-Mexican voices, a woman weeping, background music.

“You must be shaken up after hearing all that, right?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, I am a little shaken up.”

“Well, I told you you’d learn all kinds of weird things in this business.”

“Truer words were never spoken, sir.”

At the restaurant there were six regulars having dinner. They exchanged greetings with them, but the lieutenant and Lituma sat at a far-off table. Doña Adriana brought them some vegetable soup and fish, but instead of serving them, she more or less threw the dishes on the table, without answering their greeting. She was frowning, and when Lieutenant Silva asked if she was ill and why she was in such a foul mood, she barked out: “Would you mind explaining what you were doing on Crab Point this afternoon, wise guy?”