The Discreet Hero

XI

When they reached the house in Castilla where Mabel lived, on the other side of the river, Sergeant Lituma and Captain Silva were dripping with sweat. The sun beat down mercilessly from a cloudless sky where turkey buzzards were circling, and there wasn’t the slightest breeze to alleviate the heat. During the trip from the station, Lituma had been asking himself questions. In what condition would they find the cute brunette? Had those bastards mistreated Felícito Yanaqué’s mistress? Had they beaten her? Raped her? Very possibly. Given how good-looking she was, why wouldn’t they take advantage of having her at their mercy day and night.

Felícito himself opened the door of Mabel’s house. He was euphoric, relieved, happy. The grim face that Lituma had always seen had changed, his recent tragicomic expression had disappeared. Now he grinned from ear to ear and his eyes gleamed with happiness. He looked rejuvenated. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his vest was unbuttoned. He was so skinny, his chest and back almost touched, and he was really a runt, he almost looked like a midget to Lituma. As soon as he saw the two policemen he did something unheard-of for a man so little given to emotional displays: He opened his arms and embraced Captain Silva.

“It happened just as you said, Captain,” he said effusively, patting him on the back. “They let her go, they let her go. You were right, Chief. I don’t have the words to thank you. I’m alive again, thanks to you. And to you too, Sergeant. Many thanks, many thanks to you both.”

His eyes were wet with emotion. Mabel was showering, she’d be with them right away. He had them sit in the living room, beneath the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, facing the small table that held a papier-mâché llama and a Peruvian flag. The electric fan twanged rhythmically and the current of air made the plastic flowers sway. The trucker, effusive and happy, nodded to all of the officers’ questions: Yes, yes, she was fine, it had been terrifying, of course, but luckily they hadn’t hit or abused her, thank God. All that time they’d kept her blindfolded, with her hands tied, what heartless, cruel people. Mabel would give them all the details herself as soon as she came out. And from time to time, Felícito would lift his hands to heaven: “If anything had happened to her, I would never have forgiven myself. Poor thing! All this via crucis on my account. I’ve never been very devout, but I promised God that from now on I’d go to Mass every Sunday without fail.”

“He’s head over heels in love with her,” thought Lituma. You could be sure he’d have a great fuck. This reminded him of his own solitude, how long it had been since he’d had a woman. He envied Don Felícito and was furious with himself.

Mabel came out to greet them in a flowered robe, sandals, and a towel wrapped like a turban around her head. Like this, without makeup, wan, her eyes still frightened, she seemed less attractive to Lituma than on the day she came to the station to make her statement. But he liked her turned-up nose and the way her nostrils quivered, her slim ankles, the curve of her instep. Her skin was lighter on her legs than on her hands and arms.

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything,” she said, indicating that they should sit down. And still she tried to make a joke: “As you can imagine, I haven’t been shopping for a few days and there’s not even a Coke in the fridge.”

“We’re very sorry for what happened to you, señora.” A very formal Captain Silva made a slight bow. “Señor Yanaqué was saying they didn’t mistreat you. Is that true?”

Mabel made a strange face, half smile and half pout.

“Well, up to a point. Luckily they didn’t beat me or rape me. But I wouldn’t say they didn’t mistreat me. I’ve never been so terrified in my life, señor. I’d never slept so many nights on the floor with no mattress and no pillow. And blindfolded and with my hands tied up like an Ekeko doll. I think my bones will ache for the rest of my life. Isn’t that mistreatment? All right, I’m alive at least, that’s true.”

Her voice trembled and at moments a profound fear could be seen in the depths of her black eyes, which she made an effort to control.

“Damn motherfuckers,” Lituma thought. He felt sorry and angry about what Mabel had endured. “Shit, they’ll pay for this.”

“You have no idea how much we regret bothering you now when you must want to rest.” Captain Silva apologized, toying with his kepi. “But I hope you understand. We can’t lose any time, señora. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions? It’s essential before the guilty parties get away.”

“Of course, sure, I understand,” Mabel agreed, putting on a good face but unable to completely hide her annoyance. “Ask your questions, señor.”

Lituma was impressed with how affectionate Felícito Yanaqué was with his little woman. Gently he passed his hand along her face, as if she were his pampered lapdog, moved stray locks of hair from her forehead and tucked them under the towel, brushed away the blowflies that came near her. He looked at her tenderly; he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He held one of her hands in both of his.

“Did you ever see their faces?” the captain asked. “Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”

“I don’t think so.” Mabel shook her head but didn’t seem very sure of what she was saying. “I only saw one of them, and that was hardly at all. The one standing beside the tree, the poinciana with the red flowers, when I came home that night. I hardly noticed him. He was standing sideways, and it was dark. Just when he turned to say something to me and I was about to get a look at him, they threw a blanket over my head. I was choking. And I didn’t see anything else until this morning, when—”

She stopped, her face agitated, and Lituma realized she was making a great effort not to burst into tears. She tried to go on talking but made no sound. Felícito implored them with his eyes to have compassion for Mabel.

“Easy, easy does it,” Captain Silva consoled her. “You’re very brave, señora. You’ve had a terrible experience and they haven’t broken you. I’ll just ask you for one last little effort, please. Of course we’d prefer not to talk about this, we’d prefer to help you bury those bad memories. But the thugs who kidnapped you have to be put behind bars, have to be punished for what they did to you. You’re the only one who can help us get to them.”

Mabel agreed, with a mournful smile. Pulling herself together, she continued. Lituma thought her account was coherent and fluent, though at times she was shaken by whiplashes of fear and had to be quiet for a few seconds, trembling, turning pale, her teeth chattering. Was she reliving the moments of the nightmare, the tremendous fear she must have felt day and night for an entire week while she was held by the gang? But then, she resumed her story again, interrupted occasionally by Captain Silva (“What refined manners,” thought Lituma, surprised), who would ask for more details.

The kidnapping had taken place seven days earlier, after a concert by a Marist choir in the Church of San Francisco on Calle Lima, which Mabel attended with her friend Flora Díaz, who owned a clothing store on Calle Junín called Creaciones Florita. They’d been friends for a long time and sometimes went out together to the movies, to have lunch, and to go shopping. Friday afternoons they usually went to the Church of San Francisco, where the independence of Piura had been proclaimed, since it presented music programs, concerts, choirs, dance, and professional groups. That Friday the Marist choir sang religious hymns, many of them in Latin, or that’s what it sounded like. Flora and Mabel were bored and left before the program was over. They said goodbye at the entrance to the Puente Colgante and Mabel walked back to her house since it was so close. She didn’t notice anything unusual during her walk, no pedestrian or car following her, nothing at all. Just stray dogs, swarms of kids getting into trouble, people enjoying the cool air and chatting in chairs and rockers they’d brought out to the doorways of houses, the bars, shops, and restaurants already full of customers and their jukeboxes playing different pieces of music at top volume, which mixed and filled the air with a deafening noise. (“Was there a moon?” asked Captain Silva, and for a moment Mabel was disconcerted: “Was there? I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”)

Her street was deserted, she thought she remembered. She barely noticed the male figure half leaning against the poinciana. She had the key in her hand, and if he’d tried to approach her she’d have become alarmed, called for help, started to run. But she didn’t notice him making the slightest movement. She put the key in the lock and had to force it slightly—“Felícito must have told you it always sticks a little”—when she sensed somebody approaching. She didn’t have time to react. She felt a blanket thrown over her head and several arms grabbing her, all at the same time. (“How many arms?” “Four, six, who knows?”) They lifted her up and covered her mouth to stifle her screams. It seemed to her that everything happened in a second, there was an earthquake and she was in the middle of it. In spite of her tremendous panic she tried to kick and move her arms, until she felt them throwing her into a van, a car, or a truck and immobilizing her, securing her feet, hands, and head. Then she heard the words that still resounded in her ears: “Nice and quiet if you want to keep on living.” She felt them pass something cold across her face, maybe a knife, maybe the butt or barrel of a revolver. The vehicle took off, shaking and bouncing her against the floor. She curled up and was silent, thinking: “I’m going to die.” She didn’t even have the strength to pray. Without complaining or resisting, she let them blindfold her, put a hood over her head, and tie her hands. She didn’t see their faces because they did everything in the dark, probably while they were driving on the highway. There were no electric lights and it was pitch-black outside. Then it must have been cloudy, with no moon. They kept driving for a time that seemed to her like hours, centuries, but might have only been a few minutes. With her face covered, her hands tied, and her fear, she lost all sense of time. From then on she could never tell what day it was, if it was night, if people were watching her or had left her alone in the room. The floor where she lay was very hard. Sometimes she felt insects walking along her legs, maybe those horrible cockroaches she detested more than spiders and rats. Holding her by the arms, they made her get out of the van, grope her way in the darkness, stumbling; they pushed her into a house where a radio was playing Peruvian music, made her go down some stairs. After putting her on the floor on a rush mat, they left. She lay in the dark, trembling. Now she could pray. She pleaded with the Virgin and all the saints she could think of, Santa Rosa de Lima and the Captive Lord of Ayabaca of course, to help her. Not to let her die like this, to end her torture.

During the seven days she was held captive she didn’t have a single conversation with her kidnappers. They never took her out of that room. She never saw the light again because they never removed her blindfold. There was a container or bucket where she could take care of her needs, in the dark, twice a day. Somebody took it away and brought it back clean, never saying a word to her. Twice a day, the same person or somebody else, always mute, brought her a plate of rice and vegetables and some soup, a lukewarm soda or a small bottle of mineral water. They removed the hood and untied her hands so she could eat, but they never took off the blindfold. Each time Mabel begged them, implored them to tell her what they were going to do with her, why they had abducted her, the same strong, commanding voice always replied: “Be quiet! You’re risking your life by asking questions.” She wasn’t allowed to bathe, or even wash herself. That’s why the first thing she did when she was free was take a long shower and scrub herself with the sponge until she had welts. And then get rid of all the clothes, even the shoes, that she’d been wearing for those horrible seven days. She would make up a parcel and give it to the poor of San Juan de Dios.

This morning, without warning, several of them, to judge by their footsteps, had come into her room-prison. Without a word, they lifted her, made her walk, climb some steps, and lie down again in a vehicle that must have been the same van, car, or truck they’d used to kidnap her. They kept driving and driving for a very long time, and the shaking bruised all the bones in her body until the vehicle finally stopped. They untied her hands and ordered: “Count to a hundred before you take off the blindfold. If you take it off before then, we’ll shoot you.” When she removed the blindfold, she discovered that they’d left her in the middle of the sandy tract, near La Legua. She’d walked for more than an hour before reaching the first houses in Castilla, where she caught a taxi that took her home.

As Mabel recounted her odyssey, Lituma continued to pay careful attention to her story but couldn’t ignore Don Felícito’s demonstrations of affection to his mistress. There was something childish, adolescent, angelic in the way the trucker smoothed her forehead with his hand, looking at her with a religious devotion, murmuring, “Poor thing, poor thing, my love.” At times the way he fawned over her made Lituma uncomfortable — it seemed exaggerated and a little ridiculous at the trucker’s age. “He must be thirty years older than she is,” he thought. “This girl could be his daughter.” The old guy was head over heels in love. Was Mabelita one of the fiery ones or was she cold? Fiery, no doubt about it.

“I told her she should go away from here for a while,” Felícito Yanaqué said to the policemen. “To Chiclayo, Trujillo, Lima, anywhere. Until this case is closed. I don’t want anything to happen to her again. Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Captain?”

The officer shrugged. “I don’t think anything will happen to her if she stays here,” he said, mulling it over. “The bandits know she’s protected now and wouldn’t be crazy enough to come near her, knowing the chance they’d be taking. I’m very grateful for your statement, señora. It will be very useful to us, I assure you. Would you mind my asking you just a few more questions?”

“She’s very tired,” Don Felícito protested. “Why don’t you leave her alone for now, Captain? Question her tomorrow, or the day after. I want to take her to the doctor and have her spend the day in the hospital so she can have a complete checkup.”

“Don’t worry, old man, I’ll rest later,” Mabel interjected. “Go ahead and ask me whatever you’d like, señor.”

Ten minutes later, Lituma said to himself that his superior had gone too far. The trucker was right; the poor woman had suffered a terrible experience, had expected to die; those seven days had been a calvary for her. How could the captain expect Mabel to remember all the insignificant, stupid details he was harassing her with? He didn’t understand. Why did his boss want to know whether from her prison she’d heard roosters crowing, hens cackling, cats meowing, or dogs barking? And how could Mabel estimate by their voices how many kidnappers there were and if they were all Piurans or whether one of them talked like he was from Lima, the sierra, or the jungle? Mabel did what she could, she wrung her hands, hesitated, it was only normal that sometimes she became confused or seemed astonished. She didn’t remember that, señor, she hadn’t paid attention to that, oh what a shame. And she apologized, shrugging, wringing her hands: “I was so stupid, I should have thought about those things, tried to be aware and remember. But I was so confused, señor.”

“Don’t worry, it’s only natural that you weren’t thinking straight, impossible to keep everything in your memory,” Captain Silva said encouragingly. “But still, make one final little effort. Everything you can remember will be very useful to us, señora. Some of my questions may seem unnecessary, but believe me, sometimes the thread that leads us to our goal can come from one of those unimportant little trifles.”

What seemed even stranger to Lituma was that Captain Silva was so insistent that Mabel recall the circumstances and details of the night she was kidnapped. Was she sure that none of her neighbors was out on the street, enjoying the cool air? Not a single woman leaning half out the window listening to a serenade or chatting with her boyfriend? Mabel didn’t think so, but maybe there was; no, no, nobody was on that end of the street when she came home from the Marists’ concert. Well, maybe there was somebody, it was possible, it’s just that she didn’t pay attention, didn’t realize, how stupid. Lituma and the captain knew all too well there was no witness to the kidnapping because they’d questioned the entire neighborhood. No one saw anything, no one heard anything unusual that night. Maybe it was true or, perhaps, as the captain had said, nobody wanted to get involved. “Everybody’s scared to death at the thought of the gangs. That’s why they’d rather not see or know anything, that’s how this useless scum is.”

Finally the chief gave the trucker’s girlfriend a breather and moved on to a trivial question.

“Señora, what do you think the kidnappers would have done to you if Don Felícito hadn’t let them know he’d pay the ransom?”

Mabel opened her eyes very wide, and instead of answering the officer she turned to her lover.

“They asked you for a ransom for me? You didn’t tell me, old man.”

“They didn’t ask for a ransom for you,” he clarified, kissing her hand again. “They kidnapped you to force me to pay protection money for Narihualá Transport. They let you go because I made them think I agreed to their demands for money. I had to put a notice in El Tiempo, thanking the Captive Lord of Ayabaca for a miracle. It was the sign they were waiting for. That’s why they let you go.”

Lituma saw that Mabel turned very pale. She was trembling again and her teeth were chattering.

“Does this mean you’re going to pay protection?” she stammered.

“Not on your life, baby,” Don Felícito bellowed, emphatically shaking his head and hands. “Not that, not ever.”

“They’ll kill me, then,” Mabel whispered. “And you too, old man. What’s going to happen to us now, señor? Will they kill us both?” She sobbed and raised her hands to her face.

“Don’t worry, señora. You’ll have twenty-four-hour protection. But not for very long, it won’t be necessary, you’ll see. I swear to you, these thugs’ days are numbered.”

“Don’t cry, don’t cry, baby,” Don Felícito comforted her, caressing and embracing her. “I swear nothing bad will happen to you again. Never again, I swear, dearest, you have to believe me. The best thing would be for you to leave the city for a little while like I’ve asked you to, please listen to me.”

Captain Silva stood and Lituma followed his lead. “We’ll give you round-the-clock protection,” the chief assured them again as he was leaving. “Don’t worry, señora.” Mabel and Don Felícito didn’t accompany them to the door; they remained in the living room, she whimpering and he consoling her.

Outside a torrid sun awaited them, along with the usual spectacle: ragged street kids kicking a ball, emaciated dogs barking, piles of trash on the corners, peddlers, and a line of cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles competing for the road. Turkey buzzards weren’t only in the sky; two of the hideous birds had landed and were picking through the garbage.

“What did you think, Captain?”

His boss took out a pack of black-tobacco cigarettes, offered one to the sergeant, took another for himself, and lit both with an old dark green lighter. He took a long drag and exhaled smoke rings. He had a very satisfied expression on his face.

“They fucked up, Lituma,” he said, pretending to punch his subordinate. “Those assholes made their first mistake, just what I was waiting for. And they fucked up! Let’s go to El Chalán, I’ll buy you a nice fruit juice with lots of ice to celebrate.”

He was grinning from ear to ear and rubbing his hands together the way he did when he won at poker, or dice, or checkers.

“That woman’s confession is pure gold, Lituma,” he added, inhaling and exhaling the smoke with delight. “You saw that, I suppose.”

“I didn’t see anything, Captain,” a disconcerted Lituma confessed. “Are you serious or are you kidding me? I mean, the poor woman didn’t even see their faces.”

“Damn, what a bad cop you are, Lituma, and an even worse psychologist,” the captain said mockingly, looking him up and down and laughing out loud. “Shit, I don’t know how you ever got to be a sergeant. Not to mention my assistant, which is saying a lot.”

Again he murmured to himself: “Pure gold, yes sir.” They were crossing the Puente Colgante and Lituma saw that a group of street kids were swimming, splashing, and carrying on along the sandy banks of the river. He’d done the same things with his León cousins a million years ago.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see that our smart Mabelita didn’t say a single word that was true, Lituma,” the captain added, becoming very serious. He puffed on the cigarette, exhaled the smoke as if defying heaven, with triumph in his voice and eyes. “All she did was contradict herself and tell us a damn pack of lies. She tried to stick it to us. And stick it up our asses too. As if you and I were a couple of real pricks, Lituma.”

The sergeant stopped dead, stunned.

“What you’re saying, are you serious, Captain, or are you putting one over on me?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see what was so obvious and so clear, Lituma.” The sergeant realized that his boss was speaking very seriously, with absolute conviction. As he spoke he looked at the sky, blinking constantly because of the glare, exalted and happy. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see that sad-assed Mabelita was never kidnapped. That she’s an accomplice of the extortionists and went along with the farce of the kidnapping to soften up poor Don Felícito, who she also wanted to fleece. Don’t tell me you didn’t see that thanks to the mistakes of those motherfuckers, the case is practically solved, Lituma. Rascachucha can rest easy and stop driving us fucking crazy. Their bed is made, and now all we have to do is lay hands on them and push them over the edge.”

He threw the butt into the river and began to laugh out loud, scratching at his armpits.

Lituma had taken off his kepi and was smoothing down his hair.

“Either I’m dumber than I look or you’re a genius, Captain,” he declared, demoralized. “Or crazier than a coot, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Better believe I’m a genius, Lituma, and besides, I know all about people’s psychology,” the exultant captain assured him. “I’ll make you a prediction, if you like. The day we arrest those thugs, which will happen very soon, as there’s a God in heaven I’ll fuck my darling Señora Josefita up the ass and break her cherry and keep her shrieking all night long. Hooray for life, damn it!”