“My fingers are all stiff, I’ve completely lost my touch. When I was a cadet, I could play any song I heard even once. Now I can’t even scratch out ‘ La Raspa.’ Shit.”
Lieutenant Silva had in fact been trying several songs and they’d all come out flat. Lituma barely heard his boss because his mind was occupied by a single thought: what the fuck would happen now that they’d turned in a report like that?
They were on the fishermen’s beach, between the two piers. It was after midnight: a blast from the refinery siren had just announced the new shift. Lituma and Lieutenant Silva were smoking a cigarette with old Matías Querecotillo, while his two helpers pushed The Lion of Talara into the surf. Doña Adriana’s husband also wanted to find out if what people all over Talara were saying was true.
“And just what are people all over Talara saying, Don Matías?”
“That you two already know who killed Palomino Molero.”
Lieutenant Silva told him what he told everyone who asked him that (although how the rumor had spread so quickly was still a mystery to him): “We can’t say anything yet. Soon we’ll tell what we know, Don Matías. I can tell you personally that the announcement’s going to come any time now.”
“I hope so, Lieutenant. I hope that, for once, justice is done and the people who always win find out what it’s like to lose.”
“Who do yon mean, Don Matías?”
“Who else? You know as well as I do. The big guys.”
He walked off, bouncing along like a bottle on the waves, and scrambled expertly onto his boat. He didn’t act like a man who coughs up blood; he seemed robust and seaworthy for his age. Perhaps all that about his being sick was nothing more than Doña Adriana’s imagination. Did Don Matías know that Lieutenant Silva was after his wife? He’d never shown it. Lituma noticed that the fisherman was always friendly to the lieutenant. Perhaps when you got old you stopped being jealous.
“The big guys… Do you think the big guys left this guitar on our doorstep as a gift for us?”
“No, Lieutenant. It was Colonel Mindreau’s daughter. You yourself heard her say she had the kid’s guitar.”
“If you say so… but somehow I don’t see it. I didn’t see any letter or card or anything else that would prove she brought, the guitar to the station. I don’t even know for sure if this is Palomino Molero’s guitar.”
“Are you kidding me, Lieutenant?”
“No, Lituma. I’m trying to distract you a little because you’re so edgy. Why are you so edgy? A Guardia Civil should have balls like a brass monkey.”
“You’re a bit jumpy yourself, sir. Don’t try to deny it either.”
Lieutenant Silva laughed involuntarily. “Of course I’m jumpy. But I cover it up so people can’t see. You look as though you’d shit in your pants if you heard a mosquito fart.”
The moon shone so brightly they could clearly see the outlines of the houses belonging to the gringos and the executives of the I.P.C. up on the cliff, near the blinking lighthouse. Everyone talked about how wonderful the Paita moon was, but the moon right here was the brightest and most perfectly round Lituma had ever seen. People should be talking about the moon of Talara. He imagined the kid on a night like this, singing right on this very beach, surrounded by captivated airmen:
Moon, moon
Month of June
Tell my baby
I’ll be back soon…
Lituma and the lieutenant had gone to the movies and seen an Argentine film with Luis Sandrini which made everyone but them laugh. Then they had a talk with Father Domingo at the church door. The priest wanted a Guardia Civil to scare off the Don Juans who were molesting the Talara girls when they came for chorus rehearsals. Several mothers had withdrawn their daughters from chorus because of those wise guys. The lieutenant promised he would do it, provided, of course, he had a man available. When they got back to the station, they found the guitar the lieutenant now had on his knees. Someone had left it leaning against the door. Anyone could have taken it. If they decided to have dinner instead of returning directly to the station. Lituma had no doubts about the significance of the guitar:
“She wants us to return it to the kid’s mother. She felt sorry-maybe because of what I told her about Doña Asunta-and that’s why she brought it.”
“That may he what you think, but I don’t buy it.”
Why was the lieutenant always joking like that? Lituma knew very well that his boss was in no mood for laughter, that he had been uneasy ever since he sent in his report. The proof was that they were in the station at that hour of the night. After dinner, the lieutenant picked up the guitar and suggested they stretch their legs. They walked down to the fishermen’s beach, in silence, each one immersed in his own worries. They watched the men prepare the nets and gear and then set sail.
Once they were alone, the lieutenant had started to strum Palomino’s guitar. Perhaps he was too nervous to get a song out of it. That was it, even if he tried to hide it by telling jokes. For the first time since he’d begun to serve under him, Lituma hadn’t heard him mention Doña Adriana even once. He was just about to ask him if he might bring the guitar to Doña Asunta the next time he went to Piura-”At least let me give this small consolation to the poor lady, Lieutenant”-when he realized they were no longer alone.
“Good evening,” said the shadow.
He’d materialized suddenly, as if he’d sprung from the sea or dropped from the sky. Lituma started, speechless, opening his eyes wide. He wasn’t dreaming: it was Colonel Mindreau.
“Good evening, Colonel.” Lieutenant Silva jumped out of the boat in which he was sitting, dropping the guitar into the sand. Lituma saw his boss half reach for the pistol he always wore on his right hip.
“Please stay seated,” said the colonel’s shadow. “I was looking for you and I suspected the nocturnal guitar player I’d been hearing might be you.”
“I was just seeing if I still remembered how to play. But I seem to have lost my touch. Lack of practice, I guess.”
The shadow nodded. “You’re a better detective than a guitar player.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
“He’s come to kill us.” Lituma watched Colonel Mindreau step toward them, his face suddenly illuminated by the moonlight. Lituma could see his wide forehead, the two deep furrows on his brow, and his precise military mustache. Had he been this pale the two times he’d seen him in his office? Maybe it was the moon that made him seem so pale. His face was neither threatening nor angry, but indifferent. His voice had the same haughty tone it had that last time in his office. What now? Lituma felt an emptiness in his stomach: “This is what we were waiting for.”
“Only a good detective could clear up the murder of that deserter so quickly. Barely two weeks. Right, Lieutenant?”
“Nineteen days, to be precise, Colonel.”
Lituma never took his eyes off the colonel’s hands, but they were not in the moonlight. Did he have his revolver out? Would he threaten the lieutenant, demanding he retract what he’d put in the report? Would he just shoot him two or three times? Would he shoot Lituma as well? Perhaps he’d come to arrest them. Maybe he had his MPs surrounding them while he distracted them with this gab. Lituma sharpened his ears and looked around. No one was coming, and except for the sea, there was no other noise. In front of him, Lituma had the old pier, which rose and fell with the waves. The sea gulls slept on the rusty ladder encrusted with shells and starfish that ran up and down the pier. The first order Lieutenant Silva had ever given Lituma was to chase off the kids who climbed up the ladder to ride the pier up and down on the waves.
“Nineteen days,” echoed the colonel after a while.
He was speaking without irony, without rage, in glacial tones, as if nothing in all this mattered or affected him in the slightest. Deep in his voice there was an inflection, a pause, a way of accentuating certain syllables, that reminded Lituma of his daughter’s voice. “The Unstoppables were right,” he thought. “I’m no good at this stuff, I don’t like being afraid.”
“Not bad at all, especially when you think that it takes years to solve some of these crimes. Some are never solved.”
Lieutenant Silva said nothing. There was a long silence in which none of the three men moved. The pier was seesawing violently. Could some kid be up there bouncing? Lituma heard the colonel’s breathing, as well as his own and the lieutenant’s. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
“Do you think you’ll be rewarded with a promotion for this?” Lituma realized that, with only a short-sleeved shirt on, the colonel must be cold. He was a short man, at least half a head shorter than Lituma. In his day, there must not have been a minimum height requirement for the service academies.
“I don’t come up for promotion until July of next year, Colonel.” Now. Now his hand would rise and he’d start shooting: the lieutenant’s head would splatter like a ripe papaya. But just then the colonel raised his right hand to wipe his mouth, and Lituma could see it was empty. So why had he come? “In answer to your question, sir, no, I don’t think I’ll be promoted for solving this case. Speaking frankly, I think this business is going to cause me a lot of headaches, Colonel.”
“Are you so sure you’ve found the definitive solution?”
The shadow didn’t move, and Lituma realized that the colonel spoke without parting his lips, like a ventriloquist.
“Only death is definitive,” murmured the lieutenant. His posture and speech betrayed not the slightest apprehension, as if this conversation didn’t concern him in any way, as if they were talking about other people. “He’s playing along with the colonel,” Lituma thought.
The lieutenant cleared his throat and went on: “Some details are still unclear, but I think the three key questions have been answered. Who killed Palomino Molero. How he was killed. Why he was killed.”
Either the colonel had stepped back or the light had shifted: his face was again in darkness. The pier rose and fell. The cone of light from the lighthouse swept the water, turning it gold.
“I read the report you sent to your superiors. The Guardia Civil informed my superiors, and they were kind enough to send me a copy.”
His expression hadn’t changed; he spoke neither more quickly nor with more emotion than before. A gust of wind ruffled the colonel’s sparse hair, which he immediately smoothed. Lituma remained tense and frightened, but now he had two extra images in his mind: the kid and Alicia Mindreau. The paralyzed girl watched in horror as they shoved the boy into a blue van. On the way to the rocky field, the airmen tried to please the officer by putting out their cigarettes on Palomino Molero’s aims, neck, and face. When he screamed, they laughed, nudging each other. “Make him suffer, make him suffer,” thundered Lieutenant Dufó. Then, kissing his fingers: “You’ll be sorry you were ever born, that I promise you.” He saw that Lieutenant Silva had moved away from the boat and was contemplating the sea, his hands in his pockets.
“Does this mean the matter will be covered up, Colonel?”
“I have no idea,” replied the colonel dryly, as if the question were too banal or stupid, a waste of his precious time. But almost immediately he began to doubt: “I don’t think so, not now anyway. It’s hard, it would be… I just don’t know. It depends on my superiors, not on me.”
“The big guys again,” thought Lituma. Why did the colonel talk as if none of this mattered to him? Why had he come if that was the case?
“I have to know one thing, Lieutenant.” He paused, and Lituma thought he looked at him for an instant, as if only now he’d noticed him and had at the same time decided that he could go on talking in front of this nobody. “Did my daughter tell you I took advantage of her? Did she say that?”
Lituma watched Lieutenant Silva turn toward the colonel.
“She did suggest that…” he murmured, swallowing hard. “She wasn’t explicit, she didn’t actually say ‘took advantage.’ But she suggested that you… that she was a wife and not a daughter to you, Colonel.”
Lieutenant Silva was nonplussed and tongue-tied. Lituma had never seen him so confused. He was sorry for him, for Colonel Mindreau, for the kid, for the girl. He was so sorry for the whole world he felt like crying, damn it. He realized he was trembling. Josefino had defined him to a T, he was a sentimental asshole and would always be one.
“Did she also tell you that I would kiss her feet? That after taking advantage of her I would get down on my knees and beg her to forgive me?” Colonel Mindreau wasn’t really asking questions but confirming what he already seemed certain of.
Lieutenant Silva stuttered something Lituma couldn’t understand. It might have been “I think so.” Lituma wanted to run away. If only someone would come and interrupt this scene.
“Then I, mad with remorse, would hand her my revolver so she would kill me?” the colonel went on in a low voice. He was tired and seemed far away.
This time the lieutenant did not answer. There was a long pause. The colonel’s silhouette was rigid and the old pier rose and fell, buffeted by the waves.
“Are you all right?”
“The English word for it is ‘delusions,’ “ said the colonel firmly, as if speaking to no one in particular. “There is no word for it in Spanish. Because ‘delusions’ means illusions, fantasies, deception, and fraud. An illusion which is also a deception. A deceptive, fraudulent fantasy.” He breathed deeply, as if hyperventilating, and then put his hand to his mouth. “To take Alicia to New York, I sold my parents’ house. I spent my savings. I even mortgaged my pension. In the United States they cure every sickness there is, they work scientific miracles. Isn’t that what they say? Well, if that was true, then any sacrifice would be worthwhile. I wanted to save my daughter and myself as well.
“They didn’t cure her. But at least they discovered she had delusions. She’ll never be cured, because it’s something that never gets better. It just gets worse. It grows like a cancer, as long as the cause is there to stimulate it. The gringos explained it to me in their usual crude way. Her problem is you. You are the cause. She holds you responsible for the death of the mother she never knew. All the things she invents, these terrible things she makes up about you, the things she told the nuns at the Sacred Heart School in Lima, the things she told the nuns at the Lourdes School in Piura, that she told her aunts, and friends-that you beat her, that you’re stingy, that you torment her, that you tie her to the bed and whip her. All to avenge her mother’s death.
“But you haven’t seen anything yet. Get ready for something much worse. Because later, when she grows up, she’ll accuse you of having tried to kill her, of having raped her, of having had her raped. The most horrible things. And she won’t even realize she’s lying. Because she believes and lives her lies just as if they were the truth. Delusions. That’s what they call it in English. We have no word for it in Spanish.”
There was a long silence. The sea had become almost silent, too, just a low whisper. “I’m hearing a lot of words I’ve never heard before,” thought Lituma.
“That may well be the case,” he heard the lieutenant say in a severe and respectful tone. “But… the fantasy or madness of your daughter does not explain everything, if you don’t mind my saying so.” He paused, perhaps waiting for the colonel to say something or perhaps because he was searching for the right words. “I’m thinking about the way the boy was tortured.”
Lituma closed his eyes. There he was: roasting under the implacable sun in the flinty wasteland, tortured from head to foot, surrounded by indifferent, browsing goats. Hung, burned with cigarettes, a stick shoved up his ass. Poor kid.
“That’s another matter,” said the colonel. “But,” he corrected himself instantly, “you’re right, it doesn’t explain it.”
“You asked me a question and I answered it. Now allow me to ask you a question. Was there any reason to torture the kid like that? I ask because frankly I just don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Oh, I guess I do understand. Now. At first I didn’t. He got drunk and got his men drunk. Liquor and a need for revenge turned him from a poor devil into a sadist. Need for revenge, a broken heart, tarnished honor. Those things exist even if a policeman doesn’t understand them, Lieutenant. He seemed to be only a poor devil, not a sadist. A single bullet between the eyes would have been enough. And a discreet grave. Those were my orders. The stupid bloodbath, naturally, was not my idea. Now not even all that matters. It happened the way it happened and everyone has to take responsibility for what he does. I’ve always done that.”
He gulped air again and panted. Lituma heard the lieutenant ask: “You were not there, then? Only Lieutenant Dufó and his men?
To Lituma it seemed that the colonel was hacking, as if he were about to spit. But he didn’t.
“That was my consolation prize for him, the bullet that would soothe his wounded pride,” he said coldly. “He surprised me. I didn’t think him capable of things like that. His men also surprised me. They were Molero’s buddies, after all. There is an element of bestiality in all of us. Educated or ignorant, all of us. I suppose there’s more among the lower classes, the cholos. Resentment, complexes of all kinds. Liquor and praise from their superior did the rest. There was no need to go that far, of course. I’m not sorry about anything, if that’s what you want to know. Have you ever heard of an airman who could kidnap and rape the daughter of a base commander and get away with it? But I would have done things more quickly and cleanly. A bullet in the back of the neck. End of story.”
“He’s just like his daughter,” thought Lituma. “Elusions, delusions, whatever it is.”
“Did Molero rape her, Colonel?” Once again, Lituma found that the lieutenant was asking the same questions he was thinking. “That he kidnapped her is a fact. Although it might be more accurate to say that they ran away together. They were in love and wanted to get married. The whole town of Amotape could testify to that. So where does the rape come in?”
Lituma again heard the colonel hacking. When he finally spoke, he was the same despotic, cutting man who’d spoken with them in his office: “The daughter of a base commander does not fall in love with a recruit,” he told them, annoyed at having to explain something so obvious. “Colonel Mindreau’s daughter does not fall in love with a guitar player from Castilla.”
“She gets it from him,” thought Lituma. From the father she supposedly hates so much, Alicia Mindreau inherits this mania for calling people cholos and treating them like dirt.
“I’m not making it up,” he heard Lieutenant Silva say softly. “It was Miss Alicia who told us. We didn’t have to ask her about it, Colonel. She said they loved each other and if the priest had been in Amotape they would have been married. A rape?”
“Haven’t I explained all that already?” Colonel Mindreau raised his voice for the first time. “Delusions, delusions. Lying fantasies. She wasn’t in love with him, she couldn’t fall in love with him. Can’t you see she was doing what she always does? Just what she did when she told you all those things. Just what she did when she went to the nuns at the Lourdes School to show them wounds she’d inflicted on herself, just so she could do me some harm. She was getting revenge, punishing me, making me pay for what hurt me the most, the death of her mother. As if”-he sighed and gasped for air-”that death wasn’t cross enough for me to bear all my life. Can’t a policeman’s mind grasp all this?”
“No, motherfucker, it can’t,” thought Lituma. “It can’t.” Why make up rules like that? Why couldn’t Alicia Mindreau fall in love with that skinny kid who played the guitar so beautifully and sang with that tender, romantic voice? Why was it impossible for a little white girl to be in love with a little cholo? Why did the colonel see that love as a tortuous conspiracy against him?
“I also explained it to Palomino Molero,” he heard the colonel say, again in that impersonal tone that distanced him from them and from what he was saying. “Just as I’ve explained it to you. In more detail to him. More clearly. Without threats or orders. Not as a colonel to an airman, but as one man to another. Giving him a chance to act like a gentleman, to be what he wasn’t.”
He fell silent, and passed his hand rapidly over his mouth, as if it were a flyswatter. Lituma, half closing his eyes, could see them: the colonel, severe and neat, with his straight mustache and his cold eyes, and the kid, standing at attention, stuffed into his recruit’s uniform, probably brand-new and with shiny buttons, his hair freshly cut. The colonel, short and domineering, walking around his office as he spoke, the sound of propellers and motors in the background; and the airman, very pale, not daring to move a muscle, blink, open his mouth, even to breathe.
That child, even though she talks, laughs, and does what other girls do, is not like them. She’s fragile, a crystal, a flower, a defenseless dove (Lituma realized that the colonel was really saying: I could simply say to you that an airman is forbidden even to look at the daughter of the base commander; a boy from Castilla cannot aspire, even in his wildest dreams, to Alicia Mindreau. I want you to know this and to know as well that you must not go near her, look at her, even dream about her, or you’ll pay for your daring with your life) but instead of just forbidding him to see her, I explained it all to him, man to man. Believing that a guitar player from Castillo could still be a rational being, could think like a decent person. He told me he understood, that he had no idea Alicia was that way, that he would never look at her or speak to her again. And that night, the hypocritical cholo kidnapped her and took advantage of her. He thought he had me, the poor man. That’s it, I raped her. Now you’ll just have to resign yourself to our getting married. No, my boy, my daughter, this sick child, can do what she likes with me, can trick and disgrace me all she likes, and I have to carry this cross God has imposed on me. She can do that, and I… but not you, you poor fool.
He fell silent, took a deep breath, and gasped. Then again the silence, regularly interrupted by the regular fall of the waves. The pier had stopped bouncing up and down. And once again Lituma heard his chief ask the question that was on the tip of his own tongue: “And why Ricardo Dufó? Why could he be Alicia Mindreau’s boyfriend, her fiancé?”
“Ricardo Dufó is no beggar from Castilla. He’s an officer. A man from a good family. But above all because he’s got a weak character and a weak mind,” shot back the colonel, fed up that no one but he could see what was plain as daylight. “Because, through that poor devil Ricardo Dufó, I could go on taking care of her, protecting her. Just as I had sworn to her dying mother I would. God and Mercedes know I’ve kept my word, despite what it’s cost me.”
His voice broke and he coughed several times, trying to cover up an irrepressible anguish. Off in the distance, cats were howling and hissing in a frenzy: were they fighting or screwing? Everything in the world is confusing, damn it.
“But I haven’t come about this and I’m not going to continue talking about my family with you,” the colonel cut in sharply. He changed voices again, softening his tone: “I don’t want to waste your time, Lieutenant.”
“I don’t even exist for him,” thought Lituma. It was better that way. He felt safe knowing he’d been forgotten, abolished, by the colonel. There was an interminable pause in which the colonel seemed to be desperately fighting against his own loss of speech, trying to pronounce some rebellious and fugitive words.
“You’re not wasting my time, Colonel.”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this matter in your report,” he finally blurted out with difficulty.
“You mean about your daughter? About her hinting that you’d taken advantage of her?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it in your report,” he repeated in a surer voice. He passed his hand over his mouth and added, “Not for my sake, but for hers. This would have been a banquet for the newspapers. I can just see the headlines, all that journalistic pus and poison raining down on us.” He coughed, gasped, and made an effort to seem calm before he murmured: “A minor has to be protected from scandal. At any price.”
“I have to inform you, Colonel,” Lituma heard the lieutenant say, “that I didn’t mention the matter because it was so vague, and also because it wasn’t relevant to Palomino Molero’s murder. But don’t think that’s the end of it. When the affair becomes public, if it does, everything will depend on what your daughter says. She’ll be harassed, pursued day and night by people trying to get her to make statements. And the dirtier and more scandalous they are, the more they’ll exploit them. You know it. If it’s as you say, if she suffers from hallucinations, delusions-is that what they’re called?-it would be better to put her in a sanatorium, or send her abroad. Pardon me for sticking my nose into your personal life.”
He stopped talking because the colonel’s shadow had made an impatient gesture.
“Since I didn’t know if I’d find you, I left you a note at the station, under the door,” he said, ending the conversation.
“Understood, Colonel.”
“Good night,” the colonel said in his cutting voice.
But he didn’t leave. Lituma watched him turn around, take a few steps toward the shore, stop, his face toward the sea, and stand stock-still. The beacon from the lighthouse momentarily revealed the short, imperious figure dressed in khaki. Lituma and Lieutenant Silva exchanged indecisive looks. Finally the lieutenant signaled that they should leave.
They walked away without saying a word, the sand muffling their footsteps. They left the colonel and wended their way through the boats toward Talara. When they reached the town, Lituma turned to look back at the beach. The colonel’s figure, a shadow lighter than the shadows around it, stood in the same spot. Out at sea, there were twinkling yellow lights scattered along the horizon. Which of those lanterns was hanging on Don Matías’s boat?
Talara was deserted. There were no lights shining in the small wooden houses. Lituma had many things to ask about and comment on, but he didn’t dare open his mouth, paralyzed as he was by an ambiguous sensation of confusion and sadness. Could what the colonel told them be the truth? Maybe it was. That’s why he’d thought the girl had seemed nutty; he wasn’t wrong. At times he watched Lieutenant Silva out of the corner of his eye: he had the guitar on his shoulder, as if it were a rifle or a hoe, and seemed pensive, distant. How could he see with those sunglasses on?
When the shot went off, Lituma jumped. At the same time, it was as if he’d been expecting it. It broke the silence, briefly and brutally, and made a dull echo. Now everything was quiet and mute again. He stood still and looked at the lieutenant. After stopping for a moment, he began walking once more.
“But, Lieutenant,” said Lituma, trotting to catch up, “didn’t you hear?”
The officer was walking even more quickly now.
“Hear what, Lituma?”
“The shot, Lieutenant. Over on the beach. Didn’t you hear it?”
“I heard a noise that might have been a thousand things, Lituma. A drunk farting, a whale burping. A thousand things. I have no proof that noise was a shot.”
Lituma’s heart pounded. He was sweating and his shirt clung to his back. He was walking next to the lieutenant, shocked, stumbling, not understanding a thing.
“Aren’t we going to see about him?” Lituma asked, suddenly feeling dizzy.
“To see what about him, Lituma?”
“To see if Colonel Mindreau killed himself, Lieutenant. Wasn’t that the shot we just heard?”
“We’ll find out soon enough, Lituma. Whether it was or not, we’ll find out soon enough. What’s your hurry? Wait until someone comes, some fisherman, a bum, someone’ll find him and tell us. If it’s true that gentleman killed himself, as you seem to think. Better yet, wait until we’re back at the station. It may be that the mystery that’s tormenting you will be cleared up there. Didn’t you hear the colonel say he’d left us a note?”
“So you think that note will be his testament, Lieutenant? That he came looking for us knowing that after he talked to us he was going to kill himself?”
“Damn but you’re slow, boy,” said the lieutenant, sighing. He patted Lituma on the arm to raise his spirits. “Well, you’re going to have to go through a lot, but soon you’ll understand how things work. See what I mean, Lituma?”
They said nothing more until they reached the station, a run-down little house with peeling paint. A cloud hid the moon, and the lieutenant had to light a match to find the lock, and he had to twist the key around a lot, as usual, before it yielded. Lighting another match, he searched the floor, beginning at the threshold and working his way in, until the match burned his fingers and he had to blow it out, cursing. Lituma ran to light the paraffin lamp, which he did so awkwardly it seemed to take an age. The little flame finally caught on: a red tongue with a blue center that flickered before blazing up.
The envelope had slipped between two floorboards, and Lituma watched the lieutenant hunker down and carefully pick it up as if it were a fragile and precious object. He already knew the motions the lieutenant would make and in fact did make: he pushed his cap back on his head, took off his sunglasses, and sat down on a corner of the desk with his legs spread wide. Then he very carefully tore open the envelope and used two fingers to pull out a small, almost transparent white paper. Lituma could make out the lines of even writing that covered the entire page. He brought over the lamp so his boss could read more easily. Filled with anxiety, he saw the lieutenant’s eyes move slowly from left to right and back again, and his face slowly twisted into an expression of disgust or perplexity, or perhaps both things.
“Well, Lieutenant?”
“Holy shit,” he said, letting the hand holding the white paper drop down to his knee.
“Did he kill himself? Will you let me read it, Lieutenant?”
“That son of a bitch takes the cake.” Lieutenant Silva handed him the letter. As he read, believing and not believing, understanding and not understanding, he heard the lieutenant add: “He not only killed himself, Lituma. The son of a bitch killed the girl, too.”
Lituma raised his head and stared at the lieutenant, not knowing what to say or do. He had the lamp in his left hand, so those shadows jumping on the walls meant that he was trembling. A grimace deformed the lieutenant’s face, and Lituma saw him blink and squint, as if the glare were blinding him.
“What do we do now?” he stuttered, feeling somehow guilty of something. “Go to the base, to the colonel’s house, to find out if he really killed the girl?”
“Do you think there’s any way he didn’t, Lituma?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I think he did kill her. That’s why he was behaving so strangely out on the beach. I also think he killed himself-that was the shot we heard. Son of a bitch.”
“You’re right,” said Lieutenant Silva. “Son of a bitch.”
For a moment they were silent, immobile, standing among the shadows that danced along the walls, on the floor, over the furniture of the dilapidated office. “What do we do now, Lieutenant?”
“Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do,” he said brusquely, standing up as if he’d suddenly remembered he had something urgent to attend to. He seemed possessed of a violent energy. “But for the moment I’d advise you to do nothing except get some sleep. Until someone comes to tell us about the two deaths.”
Lituma watched him stride purposefully out of the room toward the shadows on the street, making his usual gestures: settling the holster he always wore on his belt and putting on his sunglasses.
“And where are you off to, Lieutenant?” he muttered, shocked and already sure of what he was going to hear.
“I’m gonna screw that fat bitch once and for all.”