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.
“Don’t tangle yourself up in too many theories, Mr. Rose,” Ming said when Rose paid a visit to the editor’s apartment in Chelsea for the second time since Cleve’s death, this time to give the editor an idea of the anguished and somewhat confusing framework of his speculations. “This is a simple but revolting story, with a clear-cut murderer named Sleepy Joe. Cleve and I agreed on this point.”
“You talked with him about this?” Rose asked.
“Yes, I did indeed. He had Sleepy Joe in his sights.”
“Alright,” Rose said, “Sleepy Joe. But who are his accomplices?”
“If I may suggest something, it’s better to assume that others are innocent until proven otherwise. Proceed slowly; don’t let yourself become overwhelmed by the whole unmanageable package. The first thing you have to do is find María Paz. Do you want me to help you, Mr. Rose? I could arrange things here, find someone to feed my bettas, and…”
“No, Ming, this is something I need to take care of on my own. Thank you, it’s good to know I can count on you.”
“Promise me you’ll get in touch if things get ugly.”
“I think I’m going to need a gun. I don’t plan on killing anyone,” Rose said, more or less lying. “It’s just a precaution.”
“I have a few. But they are basically collector’s items,” Ming said, as he pulled out a small pistol from a cabinet, giving to Rose and identifying it as a Remington Model 95.
“It looks like a toy,” Rose said, making sure it fit in his pocket. “Does it work?”
“I doubt it,” Ming responded, pointing to the name engraved on the barrel, Claro Hurtado, one of Pancho Villa’s bodyguards. “It clearly didn’t work so well for Claro that July 23, 1923, when they gunned him down in Parral, Chihuahua, along with his big boss. I also have this,” he said, pulling out a katana that according to him was the Hattori Hanzo sword used by Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill.
“Is it real or a prop?” Rose asked.
“The edge has been shaved down, and it was manufactured to be ultralight so that Uma Thurman could wield it.”
“It feels like it’s made of fiberglass.”
“No more useful than a rat’s tail,” Ming said, as he placed other collector’s items on the table.
Rose noticed a solid, black piece, free of ornamentations or other frills, which inspired some confidence in him.
“And whose was this?” he asked.
“It doesn’t have much of a history, or it does, but a personal one, because I inherited it from my father, and my father in turn from his father, and so on into the mists of time. It’s a Glock 17 9 mm. A solid and serious gadget. With a hard trigger, but on the other hand you can load seventeen cartridges into it, and it fires quickly. I have ammunition for this one, half a box, and I can show you how to load it.”
Rose stored the Glock and the box of ammunition in the glove compartment of his Ford Fiesta and returned to his home in the mountains resolved to put Empera through an Inquisition-style round of questioning. He sat her in front of him and bombarded her with questions. As expected, Empera proved a tough nut to crack, and the more he pressed her, the dodgier she became. She had no idea what he was talking about and rolled her eyes every time he mentioned María Paz, responding in a haughty tone that she didn’t know anything about anything, and that, moreover, it was none of her business. Rose couldn’t get her to shift from that position, although he swore on his son’s grave that he was not trying to harm María Paz or turn her in to the authorities. On the contrary, in fact. It was only when he explained in detail to Empera the situation with the clamp in María Paz’s uterus that she seemed to soften and said she would do what she could.
“But I’m not promising anything,” she warned him, “and by the way, I should remind you that it has been sixteen months since my last raise.”
“We’ll fix that. Don’t worry about the raise. But can I count on you?”
“No guarantees, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Rose tells me that it became imperative to find María Paz, because of the clamp, sure, but above all because he was sure that sooner or later she would lead him to Sleepy Joe. And because something very strange and powerful began to grow inside him, something that was not so much the pain from the loss anymore, but instead, in a weird way, a substitute for the pain, a kind of consolation, perhaps the only one possible.