Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

After this passage, all I have to do is turn the corner to get to Sleepy Joe. The result is surprising. More than surprising, dazzling. If Borges is right, and if John Donne was right before him, each one of those ritual crimes or imitations of crimes must mean a step toward the greater ritual for Sleepy Joe, the definitive one, the one that expresses the culmination of all his anxiety, the apotheosis liturgy he has been so insistently pursuing, his own immolation. His own homicide — that must be what he is ultimately searching for. “How nicely you throw people off, you bastard,” I would tell him, “how expertly you disguise yourself, a small barrio thug, aficionado of indoor tanning who goes around showing off your six-pack, but who is shaken by sublime tempests inside, you fuck. I’ve figured you out, you damned punk, now I know that your minicrimes are reaching for perfection. What you did with the broomstick to Corina, the postmortem cuts on your brother’s body, the martyrdom of little Hero, and who knows what other perversions I don’t know about… Go ahead, you asshole, keep on climbing that ladder, giddyap, many steps to go, move ahead, man, go for your highest level yet, put your soul into it, no stopping until you have made it, put more heart into it, almost there. Your last victim will be you.”

“In the woods near the house, Buttons dug up a box with a medal and ash remains,” Rose tells me.

“Whose ashes were they?”

“Not a human’s but an animal’s: Hero, María Paz’s dog. Who knows why it had been awarded the medal, some heroic deeds in Alaska, apparently.”

Rose learned from Buttons who had killed that dog and how, and the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place in Rose’s head. It was becoming evident he was involved in a horror story unleashed by a lunatic. Cleve had been murdered, and it had not been an isolated deed. Rose had to accept this. He couldn’t let the pain cloud his judgment. He had to do something, and do it on his own. “It’s too personal a matter,” he tells me, “not the police’s, not Pro Bono’s, not anyone’s but mine, my issue, because Cleve was my son and I owe him at least that.” Buttons had offered to help, but it just didn’t seem right to Rose, and he began to shake him off. When it came down to it, he didn’t know who any of these people really were — Pro Bono, his assistant — or what they really wanted. He trusted no one and saw ulterior motives everywhere.

The unearthed medal made one thing very clear: María Paz had been in the house at least once without Rose having known about it. It had been at some point between the death of the dog and Cleve’s death. She may still have been there, for all he knew. Rose began to look for her everywhere on his property. He became obsessed with her presence, which he sensed here and there as if she were a ghost. He checked the same places again and again, although it was evident that the trail had gone cold. But she had to have been there, God knows how long, and with Cleve’s blessing. Of course, it was too late to give him the third degree, and the dogs kept whatever they knew to themselves. María Paz needed another accomplice, someone who surely must have known she was there, because that someone had her antennae tuned to every nook and cranny of the house.

“Emperatriz, the cleaning lady,” I say to Rose.

“I knew Empera must have met María Paz. When I saw that medal, I became convinced that there was some connection there. It would have been impossible for María Paz to have been there, stayed there, and eaten there, without Empera knowing. It was different with me. I never wanted to meddle into Cleve’s affairs; the attic was liberated territory and I never went up there. Empera, however, has always been a little bit nosy. And I don’t have to tell you how things are among you Latinos; not to be offensive, but when you live in a foreign country you behave like a big clan, everyone is treated as part of the same group, you hug, kiss, and are instant blood relations the first time you meet. You establish a solidarity pact with anyone from the homeland, even if the homeland extends from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, correct me if I’m wrong. Empera must have known something about María Paz’s stay with us. Maybe a little bit, maybe a lot, and whatever she knew I had to coax it out of her. I had to be tactful, like I said, because I had no idea who was involved in the death of my son, directly or as an accomplice. It could have been anyone from María Paz to Empera. It was also possible that I was on the hit list, and not just me but my dogs as well. Remember this maniac killed people and dogs, so I couldn’t decide whether to leave the house for their safety or to remain in the house to deal with things head-on. Finally, I decided to stay. I felt as if I could handle anything except letting someone who had hurt my boy so badly escape.”

For years, Rose had not given much thought to Empera’s presence in his house, having hardly any substantial interaction with her or noticing her much as she went about her business. He heard her going in and out of rooms accompanied by the slapping of her plastic sandals and jingle-jangle of her ostentatious earrings. He had no idea what Empera thought about life, whether she was forty or sixty, married or single, or how many children she had. The only thing that concerned him about her was that she was responsible, did her job, and fed Otto, Dix, and Skunko when he was away. He was impressed by how detailed she was when it came to cleaning. Empera spotted grime everywhere, even in places where no one would think to look, and she did not rest until she eradicated the last particle of dirt. She made this challenge a personal one, as if she did not want to be defeated by the dirtiness of the world, and was always asking Rose for money for more cleaning supplies. She knew the commercials on television by heart, put a blind faith in them, and if Rose was not careful she would recite them to him word for word to convince him that she just had to run out and buy them — this liquid to wash, that bleach for the whites, Mr. Clean, Tide, Cottonelle toilet paper. One time, she had shown up with a product that was specifically for removing blackberry stains, because one of Rose’s white shirts had blackberry stains.

“Empera,” Rose had said, “I must have been twenty-five years old the last time I ate blackberries.”

“Well, then that’s how long those stains have been on your shirt.”

Rose tells me that the enforced distance between him and his employee had to do with her nagging about the dogs. She complained all day long about how they made a mess and shed hair everywhere, let out toxic farts, ruined the furniture with their drooling, and, to top it all off, carried parasites in their stomachs that made humans go blind.

“Even if I go blind, I won’t get rid of them,” Rose warned her without even looking at her.

Empera had likely read whatever letters she found in her boss’s storage boxes, and she kept track of his expenses and debts. She must have also known every morning how much bourbon he had drank the night before by keeping track of the level in the bottle. By the stains on his bed, she knew he was up-to-date on his nocturnal privacies, and she was informed about his medical conditions by the prescriptions in the cabinet. It would not be surprising to him if she knew his e-mail password. Neither his mother nor Edith, and sometimes not even Rose himself knew more about him than Empera did. But who was she really? Could he trust her?

“I remember that Empera tried to warn me of the presence of someone strange in the house, or had come to me with some story that Cleve had a girlfriend up in the attic,” Rose tells me. “And I remember also that at the time I told her to mind her business, which exonerated her somewhat, but I remained suspicious and didn’t want to take one false step.” There was only one person beyond all suspicion, who moreover was attached to the family in an emotional way, and whom Rose could consult: Ming, the editor.