American Visa (24 page)

“Hand me a towel!” Doña Arminda cried.

I watched the blood gush down the gray flooring, as if in search of the open sea.

By a trick of fate, I had become a murderer. It was one more detail in my life, the most important since my birth, the most transcendental; more significant than that morning my son was born or the day Antonia left. To me, murder had always been a literary or cinematic flourish, something that existed merely in fiction. Now, I had blood on my hands. I understood that my entire past was irrelevant and that I would endure whatever befell me day by day, hour by hour, until, like Don Gustavo, I stopped breathing and entered a state of permanent anesthesia.

“Towwwwwwellllll!” Doña Arminda cried out again.

I imagined the shriek she would unleash in a few moments, upon discovering the cold body of her lover and business partner. I left in a mad dash, but I was still lucid. Now things were getting serious. In the patio, I came across a small child playing hide-and-go-seek with a friend. The shoemaker was busy fastening a rubber heel onto a canoe-shaped shoe. A half-breed lady from Potosí, one of those who subsist off selling lemons, had set up shop in the doorway to the house and was preparing some soup. Three witnesses, all on another planet.

Once out on the street, I hurried up Indaburo. My nerves were jumpy as hell. Not a soul to be found. I thought about taking a taxi, but the traffic was heavy and slow-moving. Better to go by foot and not freak out. My mood was surprisingly stable, and my nerves were beginning to calm down. At Plaza Jenaro Sanjinés, I watched people gathering to attend a show at the Municipal Theater. A free adaptation of Bertold Brecht's
The Good Woman of Setzuan
was showing. Brecht wouldn't have approved of the murder, but Gustavo was bad news and expendable, just like the old lady Raskolnikov took out in
Crime and Punishment
.

I walked down Comercio. The people of La Paz, accustomed to the cold, were out for a stroll as if it were the French Riviera.

I passed by a fat panhandling street performer who was entertaining a crowd with jokes. A few hookers strutted around with about as much pizzazz as cows lined up at a country fair. Street vendors, young maids in search of a few pesos, newly uncloseted gays, and low-lying crooks all gathered in the Plaza Pérez Velasco. On the terrace in front of San Francisco Church, beside the raised sidewalk, I happened upon the eye of a storm.

I ditched the lead club and the glass cutter.

A group of obnoxious Christian rockers were making a racket in the middle of the plaza. Riffraff formed a circle around the band. My intention was to now head up Santa Cruz and get to the hotel as soon as possible to count the dollars that were burning holes in my pockets.

Cutting through the jamboree, I felt someone grab me by the arm. “You, sir, are the man I was looking for,” said the stranger.

A young fellow dressed in black, with a white shirt and reddish tie, was smiling before me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“You, sir, have been chosen to pick a card to show these people that I am not pulling their leg.” He led me to a circle in which his traveling magician's wares were on display. He turned to the audience and said, “I've never seen this man before. Isn't that right, sir?”

“I've never seen him,” I stammered. I hadn't yet come to my senses.

“He's not lying. I just arrived from Arequipa. I don't know anyone. I have no accomplices or friends; I'm no trickster.”

He thrust a stack of cards before me and told me to pick one. I pulled out a queen of hearts.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, moving away from me, “it's up to me to figure out, through telepathy, what card he took. Sir, please look at the card in your hands.” He backed up a few yards, paused to think with his head bowed, and then announced: “A queen of hearts.”

The people applauded. The magician pulled out a shining gilt cigarette case, opened it, and offered me a smoke.

“I have great powers,” he said. “For example, I can tell you blindfolded what this man is hiding in his pockets.” He winked at me and smiled.

“Thanks,” I said, “but my girlfriend's waiting for me at the merry-go-round.”

The crowd burst out in laughter. I seized the moment and slipped away. I raced up Santa Cruz Street. No doubt the know-it-all Peruvian magician's ironic gaze was still following me. If that guy had guessed I was carrying thousands of dollars in my pockets, he probably knew I had also just knocked off Don Gustavo; typical amateur magician.

In the hotel lobby, I found Blanca accompanied by two girls from the Tropicana. She was dolled up in one of those dresses that black and Latina girls wear to nightclubs in the Bronx.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You look pale. You shouldn't drink so much. What do you think of my dress? I bought it at a shop on Huyustus Street.”

“Great.”

She stroked my hair and stared at me lustfully. “I like you better when you're pale.”

“I'm going to my room. I'll see you in a few minutes.”

She looked at herself in a compact mirror. “Antelo's throwing a goodbye party,” she said.

“See you there,” I responded.

I asked for my key and went up to my room. I sat on the hard bed and placed the dollars on the bedspread; it was a good sum. I started counting: hundreds, fifties, and twenties. Fondling them, I added them up carefully. Two thousand three hundred and twenty dollars had been the price of my liberation and of Don Gustavo's head. I think that in the game of life, we were now even. Trembling, I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes. The footage of the murder passed before my eyes in full color. I feared that the memory of the club shattering Don Gustavo's skull would become an excruciating, never-ending nightmare.

I stayed there for a while fingering the bills, throwing them into the air and letting them fall into a heap on my chest. As if carrying a strange spell, they represented that same blood-soaked nightmare.

“Doctor Alvarez!”

It was Don Antonio. What did the old man want?

I opened the door and saw his scheming grandfather's face. He tried to say something, but his cough got the better of him and he stood there choking for an entire fifteen seconds. He stopped and said: “Antelo sent me. We're having a party. He received notice of his appointment as Assistant Director of Customs for Santa Cruz, a gig that will make him a millionaire overnight. To celebrate, he bought bottles of fine
pisco
, wine, and beer. That soccer star is one lucky know-nothing.” “I'm coming,” I said. I put the dollars away under the mattress and took out three twenties for spending money.

A number of hotel guests were at the bash: Blanca, Gardenia, Videla, Don Antonio, Antelo, and a couple of hostesses from the Tropicana, the ones I had seen before in the hotel lobby.

Antelo was flying high. With his tacky green jacket and white pants, he was ready for the tropics. He had shaved and put on some cologne, and was now smiling smugly, like a sheik before his harem. “Alvarez, my friend,” he said. “I have everything I ever wanted. Now, I can ramble all I want and no one can make me stop. You should join me. Life is great down east; there are tons of beautiful girls. What do you say?”

“What would I do in Santa Cruz?”

“Customs can always use consultants; don't pretend like you don't know.”

“Thanks, Antelo, but I don't even belong to your party.”

“So? You can join. What's the big deal? Take the oath and we'll give you a membership card. With the card, no one can touch you.”

“I got the money for the visa. My godfather, the barber, helped me out.”

“North America is a safer bet, but at your age moving there is no joke,” he said.

Gardenia was dressed like a man, in a leather jacket and jeans. Along with the hostesses, he was cracking jokes at the expense of the salesman, who was unable to wipe the sad Stan Laurel–like expression off his face.

Having had a few drinks too many, Blanca embraced me affectionately as soon as the radio started playing. “Dance,” she said. “Don't look so scared. Nobody's going to eat you.”

“Do I still look pale?” I asked.

“The alcohol will bring your color back. What are you worried about?” She handed me a beer, we drank a toast, and she sighed. “I'm independent. If I feel like it, I'm gone . . . or I could stay for a man. But you're not my man. You're just a crazy guy who doesn't need anyone.”

Everyone cheered when the bellboy arrived carrying two cooked chickens, baked potatoes, fried plantains, pickled vegetables, and hot sauce. Don Antonio said, “Gastronomic debauchery is the only kind of orgy I can handle at my age. What did you think of the film at the Cinema Bolívar?”

“I liked Istanbul. I'll bet that shacking up with a Turkish chick would be the best thing for someone on his deathbed.”

“Sexual euthanasia,” Don Antonio said approvingly. “It's not for a poor guy like me.”

Blanca, who was two steps away, moved closer. “Enough about Turkish girls already! What do they have that we don't?”

“Ha ha,” Don Antonio laughed. “At this altitude, jealousy is bad for your blood pressure.”

Blanca took me by the hand and said, “You're trembling.”

“I'm just so excited for Antelo. He's going to put a stop to poverty. ‘Black Panther' Yashin couldn't do it better.”

“You're acting really weird,” Blanca said. “It's as if you aren't here.” I grabbed her by the waist. She stood there for a moment and then rested her forehead on my shoulder.

Don Antonio suggested, “Take her with you to North America. You won't be lonely with a woman like that. Gringas are descendents of Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons; it would be like learning to write all over again.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Blanca said. “I love my country.”

“Patriotic fatalism,” I said.

Antelo swayed back and forth euphorically, like a fly inside a bottle. The hostesses from the Tropicana were busy eating; copper-skinned Quechuas, they radiated a sensual mixture of Indian and Spanish. With the life they led, they would get old fast. They were in their twenties but looked about as burned out as harlots celebrating their fiftieth anniversaries in brothels. I tried not to get drunk, so that if the police came I would have enough time to gather my thoughts. The first thing the coppers ask for is your alibi, and I didn't have one. I needed to be able to justify the interlude between when I left the Cinema Bolívar, up until a half-hour ago. No way could I mention my visit to the Luribay, since the mistress of the late senator worked right in front. I thought about asking Blanca to tell the cops, in case they came after me, that she had been with me. The problem was that I had dusted off someone famous, and poor Blanca would flip her lid; deep down she was just a peasant girl, and if they pressured her, she'd panic. I decided that, if asked, I would simply stop the clock and explain that I went back to the hotel after the movie with a splitting headache that had me seeing stars, and I went to bed.

To ease my distress, I headed back to my room, took a few aspirin, and dozed off. I woke up and went down to the lobby, where I ran into Blanca and the others again. She hadn't seen me enter the hotel, but somebody might have. The manager always sticks his nose in everybody's business . . . Or the helper . . . the helper had handed me the keys to my room, but the guy's a drunk, a little absentminded, and, most importantly, bribable. A hundred bucks would shut him up. Yujra was another story. If the murder made it to the papers, which was likely since a senator was involved, it would get the ex-champ's attention. He would be able to link me to the gold queen; he had seen me in that dive two or three times. Against that pack of vagrants, a middle-class guy stood out. American detective protocol would have me take out the boxer to cover my tracks, but I wasn't up for another cold-blooded murder.

Besides, killing Yujra wouldn't be so easy. You had to watch it with that guy. If I messed up the first try, I'd be a goner. The wisest thing would be to wait and see if the police thought it had to do with a settling of scores with some Trotskyite group. I needed to hide the booty immediately in a secure place, and wait . . .

“Have a beer and stop worrying about the visa,” Don Antonio said. “Money will buy you anything except your death. That's the honest truth.”

Blanca asked sarcastically, “So you managed to get enough money? When are you leaving?”

“Very soon.”

“Who loaned it to you?”

“My godfather, for old time's sake.”

“A likely story,” Blanca remarked.

One of the hostesses from the Tropicana came up to us. Her name was Fresia and she had a Polish last name. The blend of Quechua and Polish was something like a Molotov cocktail.

“Everyone's getting a little wild at this party,” she said. “Except for you, Don Mario; you're already fixed up.”

“Antelo's going to bring the house down,” Don Antonio said.