Mario Llosa: Who Killed Palomino Molero?

Lituma wondered whether the colonel’s peremptory, unwavering tone would intimidate his boss and make him back down. But Lieutenant Silva stood firm.

“We didn’t come here merely to waste your time, Colonel. We had a reason.” The lieutenant remained at attention and spoke in a calm, measured tone.

The colonel’s small gray eyes blinked once, and a menacing little smile appeared on his face. “Let’s hear it then.”

“Lituma here has done some investigating in Piura, Colonel.”

Lituma sensed that the base commander was blushing. He felt a growing discomfort and decided he would never be able to give a convincing report to someone this hostile. Almost choking, he began to speak. In Piura he’d learned that Palomino Molero was exempt from military service but had enlisted because, as he’d told his mother, it was a matter of life and death that he get out of town. Lituma paused. Was the colonel listening? The colonel was staring at a photograph of his daughter in a setting of dunes and carob trees, his face a mixture of disgust and love.

Finally, the colonel turned toward him: “What does this ‘life and death’ business mean?”

“We thought he might have explained himself here, when he joined up,” interjected the lieutenant. “That he might have said why he had to get out of Piura so quickly.”

Was the lieutenant playing dumb? Or was he as nervous as Lituma because of the colonel’s nice manners?

The base commander looked the lieutenant up and down, as if he doubted he was an officer. A stare like that should have made the lieutenant blush, but he expressed no emotion. He waited, impassively, for the colonel to say something.

“Don’t you think that if we knew anything like that we would have included it in the memorandum?” The colonel spoke as if the lieutenant and Lituma were children or imbeciles. “Didn’t you think that if we here on the base had known that Palomino Molero felt threatened or persecuted by someone we would instantly have informed the police or the court?”

He had to stop speaking because a nearby plane began to rev its engines. The noise finally grew so loud that Lituma thought his eardrums were going to burst. But he didn’t dare clap his hands over his ears.

“Lituma found out something else, Colonel,” said the lieutenant as the noise died down. He was not perturbed-as if he hadn’t even heard the colonel’s questions.

Mindreau turned to Lituma. “You did? What was it?”

Lituma cleared his throat to answer, but the colonel’s sardonic expression silenced him. Then he blurted out: “Palomino Molero was deeply in love and it seems…”

“Why are you stuttering?” asked the colonel. “Not feeling well?”

“It seems it was not a proper love. That may be the reason he ran away from Piura. That is…”

The colonel’s face had become so sour that Lituma felt stupid and he choked up. Until he walked into the commander’s office, the conclusions he’d drawn the previous evening had seemed convincing to him, and the lieutenant had said, in effect, that they were valid. But now, faced with such sarcasm and skepticism, he felt unsure, even ashamed of them.

“In other words, Colonel, it may be that a jealous husband caught Palomino Molero fooling around with his wife and threatened to kill him.” Lieutenant Silva came to the rescue. “And that may be why he enlisted.”

The colonel looked at them silently, deep in thought. How would he insult them this time?

“Who is this jealous husband?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” replied Lieutenant Silva. “If we knew that, we’d know a lot of other things.”

“And do you imagine I keep up with all the affairs of the hundreds of airmen and noncommissioned officers on this base?” Colonel Mindreau returned to his sardonic schoolteacher’s style.

“Certainly not, Colonel,” the lieutenant excused himself. “But it occurred to us that someone on the base may know something. A messmate, one of Molero’s instructors, someone.”

“No one knows anything about Palomino Molero’s private life,” the colonel interrupted again. “I myself looked into that. He was an introvert who didn’t tell anyone his problems. Isn’t that what it says in the memo?”

It seemed to Lituma that the colonel didn’t give a shit about Palomino Molero. He hadn’t shown the slightest emotion, neither this time nor the last, about the murder. He talked about the recruit as if he were a nobody, as if he weren’t worth the time of day. Was it because Molero had deserted three or four days before he was killed? In addition to being nasty, the base commander was known to be a martinet, a man who went strictly by the book. Probably fed up with discipline and being locked in, the kid went AWOL, so the colonel must consider him a criminal. Deserters should be shot.

“The thing is, Colonel, we suspect that Palomino Molero was having an affair with someone on the base.”

He saw that the colonel’s pale, close-shaven cheeks were turning red. His expression instantly soured and he scowled. But he never got to say a word because suddenly the door opened and Lituma saw the girl in the colonel’s photographs framed in the doorway, backlit by the fluorescent light in the corridor. She was very thin, more so than in the photos, with short, curly hair and a turned-up, disdainful little nose. She was wearing a white blouse, a blue skirt, tennis sneakers, and looked as bad-tempered as her father.

“I’m leaving,” she said without entering the office and without acknowledging the existence of the lieutenant or Lituma. “Will the driver take me, or should I just go on mv bike?”

In her way of speaking there was pent-up disgust, the same that spiced Colonel Mindreau’s conversation. “A chip off the old block,” thought Lituma.

“Where are you going, dear?” The commander suddenly sweetened.

“He doesn’t bark at her for interrupting us, for not saying hello, or even for not speaking properly. He turns as gentle as a dove.”

“I told you this morning! To the gringos’ pool. This one’s going to be crowded until Monday. Did you forget? Will the driver take me, or should I just go on my bike?”

“The driver will take you, Alicia darling. But have him come back right away; I need him. And tell him what time you want to be picked up.”

The girl slammed the door and disappeared without saying goodbye. “Your daughter is our revenge,” thought Lituma.

“That is…” the lieutenant began to say, but Colonel Mindreau cut him off: “What you’ve just said is pure nonsense.”

“Excuse me, Colonel?”

“What proof do you have, what witnesses?” The commander-in-chief turned to Lituma and scrutinized him as if he were an insect under a magnifying glass. “Where did you get that stuff about Palomino Molero having an affair with a lady from the Piura Air Force Base?”

“I have no proof, Colonel,” stammered Lituma, frightened out of his wits. “I found out that he would give serenades around here.”

“At the Piura Air Force Base?” The colonel again spoke as if the lieutenant and Lituma were retarded. “Do you realize who lives there? The families of the officers. Not the families of the noncoms or airmen. Only the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of the officers. Are you suggesting that this airman had an adulterous affair with the wife of an officer?”

A fucking racist. That’s what he was, a fucking racist.

“It might have been with one of the maids, Colonel,” Lituma heard the lieutenant suggest. He thanked the lieutenant with all his heart, he felt hemmed in by the colonel’s cold fury. “With a cook or a nursemaid on the base. We aren’t suggesting anything, only trying to clear up this crime, Colonel. It’s our job. This boy’s death has turned Talara upside down. They’re saying the Guardia Civil isn’t doing its job because important people are involved. We’re working in the dark, so we have to grab at anything that looks like a lead. Please don’t take any of this personally, Colonel.”