Who Killed Palomino Molero? Read Online Free PDF Page B

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