Had his cousin José become nervous? Lituma, between yawns, noticed that José had started to make lines again on the surface of the table with the tip of his nail. He didn’t stare, to avoid fooling himself the way he had the other day when he thought he was drawing spiders.
“And why don’t you people do something, cousin?” Mono protested. “The Civil Guard, I mean. Don’t take offense, Lituma, but the police, here in Piura at least, are useless. They don’t do anything; they only take bribes.”
“Not just in Piura,” said Lituma, following his lead. “We’re useless all over Peru, cousin. But let me tell you that I, at least, in all the years I’ve been wearing this uniform, have never asked anybody for a single bribe. And that’s why I’m poorer than a beggar. But with Don Felícito, the truth is that the case isn’t moving forward because we’re very short on technology. The handwriting expert who was supposed to help us is on leave because they operated on his hemorrhoids. Imagine, the whole investigation held up because of one gentleman’s damaged ass.”
“Do you mean you still don’t have clues about the crooks?” insisted Mono. Lituma would have sworn that José was begging his brother with his eyes not to keep harping on the same subject.
“We have some clues, but nothing very certain,” the sergeant answered. “But sooner or later they’ll make a false move. The problem is that now, in Piura, it’s not one gang operating but several. But they’ll fall. They always do something wrong and end up giving themselves away. Unfortunately, so far they haven’t made any mistakes.”
He asked them again about Tiburcio and Miguelito, the trucker’s sons, and again he thought that José didn’t like the subject. At a certain point the brothers contradicted each other.
“We actually haven’t known them for very long,” José repeated from time to time.
“What do you mean not very long, it’s been six years at least,” Mono corrected him. “Don’t you remember the time when Tiburcio drove us to Chiclayo in one of his trucks? How long ago was that? A long time. When we tried to go into that business but it didn’t work out.”
“What business was that, cousin?”
“Selling agricultural machinery to the communities and cooperatives in the north,” said José. “The bastards never paid. They protested every bill of exchange. We lost almost everything we’d invested.”
Lituma didn’t insist. That night, after saying goodbye to Mono and José, thanking them for the meal, taking a jitney to his boardinghouse, and getting into bed, he lay awake for a long time thinking about his cousins. Especially José. Why did he have so many doubts about him? Was it just because he drew with his fingernail on the table? Or was there really something suspicious in his behavior? He’d started acting strangely, as if he were worried, every time Don Felícito’s sons came up. Or was this nothing but his own qualms about how lost the investigation was? Should he tell Captain Silva about his misgivings? Better to wait until it was all less insubstantial and something took shape.
But the first thing he did the next morning was to tell his boss everything. Captain Silva listened attentively, not interrupting him, taking notes in a tiny notebook with a pencil so small it disappeared between his fingers. When Lituma had finished, the captain murmured, “I don’t think there’s anything serious here. No clue to follow, Lituma. Your León cousins seem clean.” But he sat there brooding, silent, chewing on his pencil as if it were a cigarette. Suddenly, he made a decision. “You know what, Lituma? Let’s talk to Don Felícito’s sons again. From what you’ve told me, it seems we still haven’t gotten all the juice from those two. We’ll have to squeeze a little harder. Make an appointment with them for tomorrow, each one separately, of course.”
At that moment the guard at the entrance knocked on the cubicle door and his young, beardless face appeared in the opening: Señor Felícito Yanaqué was on the phone for the captain. It was extremely urgent. Lituma watched the chief pick up the old telephone receiver, heard him murmur, “Good morning, sir.” And he saw his face light up as if he’d just been told he’d won the lottery. “We’ll be right there,” he shouted and hung up.
“Mabel’s turned up, Lituma. She’s in her house in Castilla. Let’s go, run. Didn’t I tell you? They swallowed the story! They let her go!”
X
“This certainly is a surprise,” Father O’Donovan exclaimed when he saw Rigoberto come into the sacristy where the priest had just removed the chasuble he’d worn to celebrate eight o’clock Mass. “Fancy seeing you here, Ears. What a long time it’s been. I can’t believe it.”
He was tall and stout, a jovial bald man with kind eyes that sparkled behind tortoiseshell glasses. He seemed to take up all the space in the small room with its shabby, faded walls and chipped floor; daylight came in through a Theatine window hung with cobwebs.
They embraced with their old affection; they hadn’t seen each other for months, perhaps a year. In the Academy of La Recoleta, where they’d both been students from the first year of primary school to the fifth year of secondary school, they had been very good friends and for one year had even shared the same desk. Then, when both matriculated at the Universidad Católica to study law, they continued to see a good deal of each other. They joined Acción Católica, took the same courses, studied together. Until one fine day Pepín O’Donovan gave his friend Rigoberto the surprise of his life.
“Don’t tell me that your showing up here is because you’ve converted and have come to make your confession, Ears,” Father O’Donovan said mockingly, leading him by the arm to his small office in the church. He offered him a seat. There were bookcases, books, pamphlets, a crucifix, a photograph of the pope, and another of Pepín’s parents. A piece of the ceiling had fallen, revealing the mix of ditch reeds and clay with which it had been constructed. Was this church a colonial relic? It was in ruins and could collapse at any moment.
“I’ve come to see you because I need your help, it’s that simple.” Rigoberto dropped into the chair that creaked under his weight and exhaled, overwhelmed. Pepín was the only person who still called him by his school nickname: Ears. In his adolescence, it had made him self-conscious. Not now.
That morning in the cafeteria at the Universidad Católica, at the beginning of the second year of law school, when Pepín O’Donovan suddenly announced — as casually as if he were discussing a class in civil law and principles, or the last Clásico match between Alianza and the U — that they wouldn’t see each other for a while because he was leaving that night for Santiago de Chile to begin his novitiate, Rigoberto thought his friend was joking. “Do you mean you’re going to become a priest? Don’t kid around, man.” True, both had joined Acción Católica, but Pepín had never even hinted to Ears that he’d heard the call. What he was telling him now was no joke but a deeply considered decision made in solitude and silence, over many years. Rigoberto learned afterward that Pepín had faced many problems with his parents, that his family tried everything to dissuade him from entering the seminary.
“Yes, man, of course,” said Father O’Donovan. “If I can give you a hand, I’d be happy to, Rigoberto, that goes without saying.”
Pepín had never been one of those overly pious boys who took communion at every Mass at school, the ones the priests flattered and tried to convince that they had a vocation, that God had chosen them for the priesthood. He was the most normal boy in the world, athletic, fond of parties, mischievous, and for a time he’d even had a girlfriend, Julieta Mayer, a freckled volleyball player who studied at the Academy of Santa Úrsula. He fulfilled his obligations by going to Mass, like all the students at La Recoleta, and he’d been a fairly diligent member of Acción Católica, but as far as Rigoberto could recall, no more devout than the others and not especially interested in the talks dedicated to religious vocations. He didn’t even attend the retreats the priests organized from time to time at a country house they had in Chosica. No, it wasn’t a joke but an irreversible decision. He’d felt the call from the time he was a boy and had thought it over carefully, not telling anyone before deciding to take the big step. Now there was no going back. That same night he left for Chile. The next time they saw each other, it was many years later: Pepín was already Father O’Donovan, dressed as a priest, wearing eyeglasses, prematurely bald, and beginning his career as a die-hard cyclist. He was still a simple, amiable person, so that every time they saw each other it had become a kind of running joke for Rigoberto to tell him: “Good to know you haven’t changed, Pepín, just as well that even though you are one, you don’t seem like a priest.” To which Pepín always responded by teasing Rigoberto with the nickname of his youth: “And those donkey’s accessories of yours are still growing, Ears. Why is that, I wonder?”