Mario Llosa - Who Killed Palomino Molero?

“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 easily, 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?