Death in the Andes (13 page)

“I get hungry when I'm nervous. My hair stood on end when I saw you in the square. Well, to tell you the truth, everything makes me hungry.”

He had finished eating. He stood, went to his jacket, and took out a pack of light-tobacco cigarettes. He lit one.

“I talked on the phone to my contact, the one they call Mameluke,” he said, blowing smoke rings. “I filled him in on everything. How the boss had been shot and how you and the dame disappeared. He got an attack of hiccups. What do you think his reaction was? ‘So he sold him out to the Colombians. And the whore too, that's for sure.'” The half smile on Iscariote's face abruptly turned into a grimace. “Did the Colombians pay you, Carreñito?”

“He was a little bit like you, Corporal. He couldn't get it through his head that anybody could kill for love.”

“Iscariote, Mameluke, Hog.” Lituma laughed. “Those names are right out of a movie.”

The fat man nodded, his expression wary. Behind a new set of smoke rings, his slanted eyes, half buried in the fat pockets of his cheeks, examined Mercedes from head to foot.

“Were you already fucking her?” he asked, with an admiring whistle.

“A little more respect,” Mercedes protested. “Who do you think you are, you elephant…”

“She's with me now, so treat her the right way.” Carreño took the woman's arm possessively. “Mercedes is my fiancée now, Fats.”

“All right, let's not make a big deal out of nothing,” Iscariote apologized, looking from one to the other. “I only want to be sure of one thing. Are the Colombians behind this?”

“I didn't have anything to do with it,” Mercedes said quickly.

“It was just me, Fats,” the boy swore. “I know it's hard for you to believe. But it was just like I told you. A spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“At least tell me if she was already your girlfriend,” Iscariote insisted. “At least tell me that, Carreñito.”

“We never even talked. I only caught a glimpse of her when we picked her up and dropped her off at the airport, in Pucallpa and in Tingo María. That's how it was, Fats, you have to believe me.”

Iscariote continued smoking, shaking his large head, overwhelmed by so much stupidity.

“It's so crazy,” he murmured, “it must be true. So you killed him because—”

“All right, all right,” the boy interrupted, laughing. “Let them think the Colombians paid me, what difference does it make?”

Iscariote flicked the cigarette out the window and watched it zigzag through the air before landing among the pedestrians on the Plaza de Armas.

“Hog wanted them off his back, he was tired of the Colombians taking the lion's share. I heard him say it a lot of times. Somebody could have tipped them off, and then they had him killed. Doesn't that make sense?”

“It does,” the boy acknowledged. “But it isn't true.”

Iscariote scrutinized the crests of the trees on the square. “It could be true,” he said at last with a vague gesture. “Anyway, it's the truth that does you the most good. Do you understand what I'm saying, Carreñito?”

“Not a word,” said Lituma in surprise. “What was he cooking up?”

“This elephant is one smart cookie,” said Mercedes.

“She understood.” Iscariote sat down again on the bed next to Carreño. He put a hand on his shoulder. “Give the corpse to the Colombians as a gift, Tomasito. Didn't Hog want out? Didn't he want to set up on his own, do the refining and exporting himself, write them off? You did them a favor when you got rid of a competitor. They'll have to do something for you, damn it. What are they drug lords for if they can't take care of you?”

He stood, looked through his jacket, and lit another cigarette. Tomás and Mercedes started smoking, too. They were silent for a moment, dragging on their cigarettes and exhaling mouthfuls of smoke. Outside, the bells in various churches began to ring. Harsh or high-pitched, with long or brief echoes, the sound filled the room, and Mercedes crossed herself.

“As soon as you get to Lima, put on your uniform and go see your godfather,” said Iscariote. “Say ‘I got rid of him, now they don't have to worry about him. I did a big favor for the Colombians, Godfather, and you can present them with the bill.' The commander knows them. He's in touch with them. He gives them protection, too. You'll turn a bad thing into something good, Carreñito. And your godfather will forgive you for what you did.”

“That fat man was pretty sharp,” said Lituma admiringly. “Damn, what an imagination.”

“Well, I don't know,” said the boy. “Maybe you're right. Maybe that's what I should do.”

Mercedes looked from one to the other, disconcerted. “What's this about putting on your uniform?” she asked.

“Fats had thought it all out,” the boy explained. “He had his plan. Make the Colombians think I killed Hog to get in good with them. Iscariote's dream was to work for the international Mafia and get to New York one day.”

“This way, something good will come out of something bad, for you, and even for me,” Iscariote said with satisfaction. “Will you go to your godfather and tell him what I said, Carreñito?”

“I promise I'll go, Fats. Let's stay in touch in Lima.”

“If you get there,” said Iscariote. “That's still up in the air. You won't have me as a guardian angel every time you do some damn stupid thing.”

“That fat man is becoming more interesting than you fooling around with the Piuran,” Lituma exclaimed. “Tell me more about him.”

“A great guy, Corporal. And a great friend, too.”

“Until it's time for you to leave, you'd better not go around engaging in indecent behavior on public thoroughfares,” Iscariot recommended. “Didn't they teach you that when you put on the uniform?”

“What uniform is he talking about?” Mercedes asked Tomás again in an irritated voice.

Iscariote burst out laughing, then abruptly turned to face her and asked an unexpected question: “How did you do my friend to make him fall for you like this? What's your secret?”

“How, how did she do it?” Lituma cut him off. “Doggie-style?”

But Mercedes ignored him and continued to question the boy. “What's this about a uniform, what does he mean?”

“She's your fiancée and you haven't told her yet that you're in the Civil Guard?” Iscariote asked mockingly. “That's a bad deal you made, comadre. Trading a drug boss for an ordinary cop.”

“The son of a bitch was right, Tomasito.” Lituma laughed. “Your Piuran made a rotten deal.”

“Do you mean we're under arrest?” asked Señora Adriana.

It was pouring, and her voice could barely be heard in the clatter of heavy raindrops on the tin roof. She was sitting on a sheepskin on the floor, staring at the corporal, who was perched on a corner of the desk. Dionisio stood next to her, his expression remote, as if nothing going on around him was his concern. His eyes were bloodshot and glassier than usual. The guard Carreño stood as well, leaning against the wardrobe-armory.

“You understand, there's nothing else I can do.” Lituma nodded as he spoke. He was not happy in these Andean storms, with their thunder and lightning; he had never gotten used to them. It always seemed to him that they would become more and more violent until they exploded in a cataclysm. And he was not happy either about detaining the drunken cantinero and that witch. “It would be better if you helped us out, Doña Adriana.”

“And why are we under arrest?” she insisted, showing no sign of emotion. “What have we done?”

“You didn't tell me the truth about Demetrio Chanca, or, should I say, Medardo Llantac. That was the foreman's name, wasn't it?” Lituma took out the radiogram he had received from Huancayo in reply to his inquiry, and waved it in front of the woman's face. “Why didn't you tell me he was the mayor of Andamarca, the one who escaped the Senderista massacre? You knew why he came here to hide.”

“Everybody in Naccos knew,” the woman said calmly. “Worse luck for him.”

“Why didn't you tell me when I questioned you last time?”

“Because you didn't ask me,” she replied just as calmly. “I thought you knew, too.”

“No, damn it, I didn't.” Lituma raised his voice. “But now that I do, I also know that after your fight with the unlucky bastard it was easy to take your revenge and turn him over to the terrucos.”

For a long while Doña Adriana looked at him with pitying irony, her prominent eyes scrutinizing him. Finally she began to laugh.

“I don't have dealings with the Senderistas,” she exclaimed sarcastically. “They like us even less than they liked Medardo Llantac. They weren't the ones who killed him.”

“Who was it, then?”

“I already told you. Destiny.”

Lituma felt like hitting both of them, her and her drunken sot of a husband. No, she wasn't pulling his leg. She might be as crazy as they come, but she knew exactly what had happened; she had to be an accomplice.

“At least you know that three corpses are rotting in a shaft in the abandoned mine, isn't that true? Didn't your husband tell you? He told me. And he could confirm it if he wasn't falling-down drunk.”

“I don't recall telling you anything,” Dionisio muttered, grimacing and playing the fool. “I guess I was a little high. But now I'm in fine shape, and I don't remember ever talking to you, Corporal, sir.”

He laughed, contorting his soft body a little and then becoming distracted again, adopting an impassive attitude, eyeing the objects in the room with interest. Carreño walked to the bench behind the woman and sat down.

“Every finger in Naccos is pointing at the two of you,” he declared, but Señora Adriana did not turn to look at him. “They all say you planned what happened to them.”

“And just what is it that happened to them?” She guffawed in a badgering way.

“That's what I want you to tell us, Doña Adriana,” said Lituma. “Forget about devils, evil spirits, black and white magic, and all those witches' stories you recite for the laborers. Just tell me straight out what happened to those three men. Why is there talk in camp that you and your husband are responsible?”

She laughed again, joylessly and with a touch of contempt. As she sat on the sheepskin, her body distorted by her posture and her bulky clothing, there was something sinister and disturbing about the woman. She did not seem frightened at what could happen to her. Lituma thought that Doña Adriana was so certain of her fate she could even permit herself the luxury of feeling sorry for them when he and Carreño fumbled like blind men. As for the cantinero, he was the most cynical man he had ever seen. Now he claimed not to remember wanting to sell him the secret; he even had the gall to deny their conversation at the abandoned mine, when he let him know unequivocally that the missing men were at the bottom of a shaft. From that time until the radiogram arrived from Huancayo, Lituma and Tomasito had not considered the terrucos responsible for the disappearances. But now they weren't so sure. The terrucos must have been looking for that Andamarcan mayor with his false name, no question about it. Which means…In any case, as Tomasito said, every finger pointed at these two. Gradually, by putting some pressure on one laborer, a little more on another, and connecting what still others had hinted at, they knew beyond any doubt that the cantinero and his wife were seriously involved, and in any case certainly knew every detail of what had happened. The rain continued, coming down harder.

“You need somebody to blame for the disappearances,” Dionisio exclaimed suddenly, as if coming back to the real world to confront Lituma. “You're barking up the wrong tree, Corporal, sir. We have nothing to do with it. Adriana may read people's fates, but she doesn't decide them.”

“What happened is beyond you, beyond us,” his wife interrupted. “I already told you. Destiny, that's what it's called. It exists, even if people wish it didn't. Besides, you know very well that the camp gossip is garbage.”

“It's not garbage,” said Carreño, still sitting behind her. “Before she left Naccos, Demetrio's wife, I mean Medardo Llantac's wife, told us that the last time she saw her husband he said he was going to have a drink at the cantina.”

“Don't all the laborers and foremen come to our place?” Dionisio exclaimed, waking up again. “Where else can they go? Is there another cantina in Naccos?”

“To tell the truth, we have no concrete accusations against you,” Lituma acknowledged. “That's right. Either because they only know part of the story, or because they're afraid. But with a little pressure, they all imply that the two of you had a hand in the disappearances.”

Señora Adriana laughed her bitter, defiant laugh, grimacing and stretching her mouth wide into the kind of face adults make to amuse children.

“I don't put ideas into anybody's head,” she said quietly. “I take out the ideas they already have inside and make people look at them. But these Indians don't like to see themselves in the mirror.”

“I just pour their drinks and help them forget their troubles,” Dionisio interrupted again, turning his glazed, unfocused eyes toward Lituma. “What would happen to the laborers if they didn't even have a cantina where they could drown their sorrows?”

There was a distant lightning flash followed by thunder. The four did not speak until the noise stopped and the only sound was the rain. The entire hillside leading down to the camp was a quagmire rutted by streams of water. Through the half-opened door, Lituma saw curtains of rain and a backdrop of dark storm clouds. The camp and the surrounding hills had vanished into a gray blur. And it was only three in the afternoon.

“Is it true what they say about you, Doña Adriana?” Carreño exclaimed suddenly. “That when you were young, you and your first husband, a miner with a nose this big, killed a pishtaco?”

This time the witch turned to look at the guard. They took each other's measure for a long while, in silence, until Tomasito finally blinked and lowered his eyes.

“Give me your hand, boy,” Señora Adriana murmured gently.

Lituma saw the guard pull back and begin to smile, but he immediately became serious again. Dionisio watched in amusement, crooning quietly to himself. Doña Adriana waited, her hand extended toward him. Seen from behind, her head looked like a ruffled feather duster. The adjutant's eyes were asking him what he should do. Lituma shrugged. Tomasito allowed the woman to take his right hand between both of hers. The corporal craned his head forward slightly. Doña Adriana blew on the guard's hand and wiped it, and brought it up to her large, bulging eyes: to Lituma they seemed about to pop out of their sockets and roll around the floor of the shack. Tomasito turned pale and looked at her suspiciously, but allowed her to continue. “He ought to tell her to go to hell and put an end to this farce,” Lituma thought, not moving. Dionisio was lost again in some dream, and with half-closed eyes hummed one of those tunes that mule drivers sang to while away their boredom on long trips. Finally, the witch released the guard's hand, exhaling as if she had just made a great effort.

“Boy, you have a broken heart,” she said softly. “Your face already told me so.”

“Every fortune-teller in the world says that,” Lituma declared. “Let's get back to serious business, Doña Adriana.”

“And your heart is this big,” she added, as if she had not heard Lituma, separating her hands and sketching a gigantic heart. “She's a lucky girl to have somebody who loves her so much.”

Lituma attempted a laugh.

“She's trying to soften you up, Tomasito, don't let her do it,” he said. But the guard did not laugh. Or listen to him. He was very serious, staring at her, fascinated. She took his hand again and blew on it, peering at it with her bulging eyes. The cantinero continued to sing the same song under his breath, swaying and hopping in time to the music, indifferent to everything else.

“It's a love that has brought you misfortune, that makes you suffer,” said Doña Adriana. “Your heart bleeds every night. But at least that helps you to go on living.”

Lituma did not know what to do. He felt uncomfortable. He did not believe in witches, much less in the wild rumors about Adriana that circulated through the camp and the Indian community of Naccos, like the story that she and her first husband had killed a pishtaco with their bare hands. All the same, he felt disoriented and confused whenever the supernatural was involved. Could you read people's fates in the lines of their hands? In cards or in coca leaves?

“Everything will work out, so don't despair,” Señora Adriana concluded, releasing the guard's hand. “I don't know when. You may have to suffer a little while longer. Some hungers are never satisfied, they always demand more and more. But the thing that's making your heart bleed now, that's going to work out fine.”

She exhaled a second time, and turned back to Lituma.

“Señora, are you trying to get on our good side so we'll forget about the disappearances?”

The witch gave her little laugh again. “I wouldn't read your future even if you paid me, Corporal.”

“And I wouldn't let you. Son of a bitch, what's wrong with him?”

Animated by his own fantasy, singing in a louder voice and keeping his eyes shut tight, Dionisio, in a state of great concentration, had begun to dance in place. When Carreño grasped his arm and shook it, the cantinero stopped moving and opened his eyes, gazing at each of them in astonishment, as if seeing them for the first time.

“Quit acting, you're not that drunk,” Lituma chided him. “Let's get back to business. Are you finally going to tell me what happened to those guys? Then I'll let you go.”

“My husband and I didn't see a thing,” she said, her eyes and voice hardening. “Go shake the truth out of the ones who say we did anything wrong.”

“Besides, what's done is done, and there's no way to change it, Corporal, sir,” Dionisio intoned. “Just accept it. You can't fight destiny, it's useless, understand, it can't be done.” The rain came to an abrupt stop, and immediately the world was filled with bright afternoon sunlight. Lituma could see a rainbow crowning the hills around the camp, hovering over the eucalyptus grove. The ground, covered with puddles and gleaming rivulets, looked like quicksilver. And on the horizon, along the Cordillera where rock and sky met, there was that strange color, somewhere between violet and purple, which he had seen reproduced on so many Indian skirts and shawls and on the woolen bags the campesinos hung from the ears of their llamas; for him it was the color of the Andes, of this mysterious, violent sierra. The witch's words had left Carreño pensive and withdrawn. Of course, Tomasito: she told you what you wanted to hear.

“Where are you going to keep us prisoner?” Señora Adriana cast a scornful glance around the shack. “In here? Are the four of us going to sleep on top of each other?”

“Well, I know this isn't the classy kind of station you're used to,” said Lituma, “but you'll have to settle for what we have. It isn't good enough for us, either. Isn't that right, Tomasito?”

“Yes, Corporal,” the guard whispered, waking up.

“At least let Dionisio go. Who else will keep an eye on the cantina? They'll steal everything, and that junk pile is all we have.”

Lituma examined her again, intrigued. Thick and shapeless, buried inside the rags of a secondhand clothes dealer, with only her flaring hips to remind the world that this was a woman, the witch spoke without a trace of emotion, as if she were complying with a formality, demonstrating that she really did not care what happened to her. Dionisio seemed even more contemptuous of his fate. His eyes were half closed again, he had distanced himself from the world. As if the two of them were above it all. Son of a bitch, they were still acting superior.

“We'll make a deal,” Lituma said at last, suddenly overcome by a sense of defeat. “Give me your word you won't leave camp. Not even twenty meters. On that condition, I'll let you live at the cantina while we investigate.”

“Where would we go?” Dionisio opened his eyes. “If we could have gone, we'd have left by now. Aren't they out there, hiding in the hills, with their stones all ready? Naccos has turned into a jail, and all of us are prisoners. Don't you know that yet, Corporal, sir?”

The woman struggled to her feet, holding on to her husband. And without saying goodbye to the guards, the two of them left the shack. They moved away, walking carefully, searching out the stones or higher ground where it wasn't so muddy.