“What can I do for you?” His friendly tone contradicted his glacial face.
“We’re here again about the murder of Palomino Molero, sir. We need your help, Colonel,” said the lieutenant.
“Haven’t I already helped?” the colonel cut him off. In his low tone there was an undercurrent of mockery. “Weren’t you both in this very office three days ago? If you’ve lost the memorandum I gave you, I have a copy.”
He opened a folder he had in front of him, removed a sheet of paper, and read in a toneless voice:
“Molero Sánchez, Palomino. Born Piura, 13 February 1936. Legitimate son of Doña Asunta Sanchez and Don Teófilo Molero, deceased. Education: primary school; three years of secondary at the San Miguel National High School of Piura. Enlisted in 1953. Began tour of duty Talara Air Force Base 15 January 1954. Third Company, under command Lieutenant Adolfo Capriata. Went through basic training along with other recruits. Went AWOL on night of 23-24 March. Did not report in after a twenty-four-hour pass. Declared a deserter and reported to military police.”
The colonel cleared his throat and looked at Lieutenant Silva. “Do you want another copy?”
“Why do you hate us?” thought Lituma. “And why are you such a bully, asshole?”
“No need for that, Colonel.” Lieutenant Silva smiled. “We haven’t lost the memorandum.”
“Well, what more do you want? What kind of help can I give you? The memorandum contains everything we know about Palomino Molero. I myself carried out the investigation, in consultation with the officers, noncommissioned officers, and airmen in his company. No one saw him and no one knows who could have killed him or why. I sent my superiors a detailed report and they are satisfied. You, apparently, are not. Well, that’s your problem. The staff of this base is absolutely innocent of any involvement in this matter, and there’s nothing more to be learned here. Molero was a quiet fellow who didn’t pal around with anyone and confided in no one. He doesn’t seem to have had any friends or, for that matter, enemies on the base. According to his performance reports, he was barely mediocre. Maybe that’s why he deserted. Investigate on the outside, find out who knew him in town, the people he was with from the time he deserted until he was killed. You’re wasting your time here, Lieutenant, and I have no intention of wasting mine.”
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.”
The base commander agreed, and Lituma could see the effort he was making to keep his temper in check.
“You may not know it, but until three months ago I was commander-in-chief of the Piura Air Force Base. I served there for two years. I know everything there is to know about the base, because it was my home. Nobody but nobody is going to say in front of me that a common airman is carryrng on an illicit affair with, the wife of one of my officers unless he can prove it.”
“I never said it was an officer’s wife,” Lituma dared blurt out. “It could have been a maid, like the lieutenant said. There are maids on the base, aren’t there? Molero would sneak over to give serenades, and that we know for a fact. Colonel.”
“Okay. Find the maid, question her, question her husband about these supposed threats to Molero, and if he confesses, bring him here to me.” The colonel’s forehead was shining with sweat which had begun to pour out of him when his daughter burst into the office. “Don’t come back here about this thing unless there’s something concrete you want from me.”
Abruptly he stood up, signaling that the interview was over. But Lituma noticed that Lieutenant Silva did not salute or request permission to withdraw.
“We do want something concrete from you, Colonel. We would like to question Palomino Molero’s messmates.”
From bright red, the base commander’s face turned pale again. Purple shadows surrounded his beady eyes. “Aside from being a son of a bitch, he’s loony,” thought Lituma. “Why did he get like this? Where do these fits come from?”
“I’m going to explain it to you once again, Lieutenant, since it seems you haven’t understood a word I’ve said. The Armed Forces have certain rights, they have their own courts where members of the Armed Forces are tried and sentenced. Didn’t they teach you about that in the Guardia Civil Academy? No? Well, allow me to do it now. When a criminal problem involving a member of the Armed Forces arises, they themselves carry out the investigation. Palomino Molero died under circumstances as yet unresolved, off the base, when he had been declared a deserter. I have already sent the proper report on to my superiors. If they deem it necessary, I will order a new investigation, using our own agencies. Or my superiors may decide to refer the case to the Judge Advocate’s section. But until a direct order comes, either from the Air Ministry or the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, no Guardia Civil is going to violate the code of military justice in a base under my command. Is that clear, Lieutenant Silva? Answer me. Is that clear?”
“Quite clear, Colonel.”
The colonel waved toward the door with a gesture that was final. “Then you may withdraw.”
This time Lituma watched Lieutenant Silva click his heels and request permission to leave. He did the same and they both left. Outside, they pulled on their caps. Even though the sun beat down even harder than when they arrived and the air was even more oppressive than it had been in the office, Lituma felt refreshed and liberated out in the open air. He breathed deeply. It was like getting out of jail, goddamn it. In silence, they crossed the various squares that led back to the guard post. Did Lieutenant Silva feel as browbeaten and ill-treated as he did at the way the base commander had dealt with them?
As they left the base, they suffered yet another setback: Don Jerónimo had left them behind. The only way back to town was on foot: an hour’s walk—at least—sweating bullets and swallowing dust.
They started walking down the center of the highway, still in silence. “After lunch, I’m going to take a three-hour siesta.” Lituma had an unlimited capacity for sleep, at any time and in any position, and nothing cured him of the blues like a good snooze. The highway snaked around slowly, descending toward Talara through an ocher landscape devoid of green and littered with rocks and stones of all shapes and sizes. The town was a livid metallic stain below them, stretched along a motionless lead-green sea. In the intense glare they could barely make out the outlines of houses and telephone poles.
“He really put us through the ringer, didn’t he, Lieutenant?” Lituma dried his brow with a handkerchief. “I’ve never met a guy with a worse temper. Do you think he hates the Guardia Civil just because he’s a racist, or do you think he has a specific reason? Or does he treat everybody that way? Nobody, I swear, ever made me swallow so much shit as that bald bastard.”
“You’re out of your head, Lituma. As far as I’m concerned, the interview with Mindreau was a total success.”
“Are you serious, Lieutenant? I’m glad to see you can still make jokes. As far as I’m concerned, that little chat was as depressing as it could be.”
“You’ve got a lot to learn about this business, Lituma,” said the lieutenant, laughing. “It was a bitch of an interview, let me tell you. Unbelievably useful.”
“That means I didn’t understand a thing, Lieutenant. It looked to me as though the colonel was treating us like scum, worse than the way be probably treats his servants. Did he even give us what we asked for?”
‘Appearances are tricky, Lituma.” Lieutenant Silva once again burst into laughter. “As far as I’m concerned, the colonel yakked like a drunken parrot.”
He laughed again, with his mouth wide open. Then he cracked his knuckles. “Before, I thought he knew nothing, that he was fucking around with us because he wanted to protect the precious rights of the military-justice system. Now I’m sure that he knows a lot, maybe everything that happened.”
Lituma looked at him again. He guessed that behind those sunglasses the lieutenant’s eyes, like his face and his voice, were those of a happy man.
“You think he knows who killed Palomino Molero? Do you really think the colonel knows?”
“I don’t know exactly what he knows, but he knows a lot. He’s covering for someone. Why would he get so jumpy if he weren’t? Didn’t yo
u see that? You’re not very observant, Lituma. You really shouldn’t be on the force. Those fits, that bullshit: what do you think it was all about? Pretexts to cover up his nervousness. That’s the truth, Lituma. He didn’t make us shit in our pants; we made him go through hell.”
He laughed, happy as a lark, and he was still laughing a moment later when they heard a motor. It was a pickup truck painted Air Force blue. The driver stopped even though they hadn’t flagged him down.
“Goin’ to Talara?” a young warrant officer greeted them. “Hop in, we’ll take you. You sit up here with me. Lieutenant; your man can sit in the back.”
There were two airmen in the back of the truck who must have been mechanics because they were covered with grease. The truck was full of oil and paint in cans and paintbrushes.
“Well? You going to solve this one, or are you going to cover things up to protect the big guys?” said one of the airmen.
There was rage in his voice.
“We’ll solve it if Colonel Mindreau helps us a little,” answered Lituma. “But the guy treats us like mangy dogs. Is that the way he treats all of you on the base?”
“He’s not so bad. He’s a straight-shooter and he makes the base work like a clock. His daughter’s to blame for his bad temper.”
“She really kicks him around, doesn’t she?”
“She’s ungrateful,” said the other airman. “Colonel Mindreau has been both father and mother to her. His old lady died when the girl was still a baby. He’s brought her up all by himself.”