Conversation in the Cathedral (48 page)

“Eight stab wounds,” First Officer Ludovico Pantoja said. “Counted by the medical examiner, young man.”

“She was probably doped up,” Inspector Peralta said. “From the smell and the way her eyes were, it looks that way. She was almost always on dope lately. She had a file this fat at the division. The autopsy will give us the final word.”

“She was mixed up in some drug affair a year ago,” Officer Ludovico Pantoja said. “They arrested her along with a woman who was a
well-known
addict. She’d fallen pretty low.”

“Could I get a picture of the knife, Inspector?” Periquito asked.

“The lab men took it away,” Inspector Peralta said. “An ordinary kind, a six-inch blade. Yes, lots of fingerprints.”

“He hasn’t been caught, but we’ll grab him,” Officer Ludovico Pantoja said. “He left traces all over the place, he didn’t even take the weapon with him, he did it in broad daylight. He wasn’t a professional, not by a long shot.”

“We haven’t been able to identify him because this lady here didn’t have a lover, she had a whole lot of them,” Inspector Peralta said. “Anybody could make it with her lately. She’d been going downhill, poor devil.”

“All you have to do is look at the place she died in.” Officer Pantoja pointed around the room with pity. “After having lived it up so much.”

“She was Carnival Queen the year I joined
La
Crónica
,” Periquito said. “Nineteen forty-four. Fourteen years ago, how about that.”

“Life is like a swing, it goes up and down.” Inspector Peralta smiled. “Put that in your little story, young fellow.”

“I remembered her as being prettier,” Periquito said. “Actually, she wasn’t very much.”

“The years go by, Periquito,” Inspector Peralta said. “And besides, getting stabbed hasn’t helped her looks any.”

“Shall I take a picture of you, Zavalita?” Periquito asked. “Becerrita always has one taken beside the corpse, for his private collection. He must have a thousand or more by now.”

“I know Becerrita’s collection,” Inspector Peralta said. “Enough to give the shivers even to a guy like me who’s seen all there is to see.”

“When I get back to the paper I’ll have Mr. Becerra call you,
Inspector
,” Santiago said. “I won’t bother you anymore now. Thank you very much for the information.”

“Tell him to come by the office around eleven o’clock,” Inspector Peralta said. “Nice meeting you, young man.”

They went out and on the landing Periquito stopped to take a picture of the door of the neighbor woman who had discovered the body. The onlookers were still on the sidewalk, peeking at the stairs over the shoulder of the policeman guarding the door, and Darío was in the van smoking: why hadn’t they let him in, he would have liked to see it. They got in, drove off, a moment later they passed the van from
Última
Hora.

“You fucked them out of the scoop,” Darío said. “There goes
Norwin
.”

“Why, of course, man.” Periquito cracked his knuckles and nudged Santiago. “She was Cayo Bermúdez’ mistress. I saw her going into a Chinese restaurant on the Calle Capón with him once. Of course, man.”

“I didn’t see the newspapers and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ambrosio says. “I must have been in Pucallpa when it happened, son.”

“Cayo Bermúdez’ mistress?” Darío said. “Then it really is a story.”

“You felt like a Sherlock Holmes, digging into that foul story,”
Carlitos
said. “And look what it cost you.”

“You were his chauffeur and you didn’t know that he had a mistress?” Santiago asks.

“I didn’t know and I never saw her,” Ambrosio says. “It’s the first I ever heard of it, son.”

An anxious excitation had replaced the dizziness of the first moment, a crude excitement as the van crossed the downtown area and you were trying to decipher the scribbling in your notebook and reconstruct the conversation with Inspector Peralta, Zavalita. He leaped out and strode up the stairs at
La
Crónica.
The lights in the editorial office were on, the desks occupied, but he didn’t stop to chat with anyone. Did you win the lottery? Carlitos asked him, and he a big story, Carlitos. He sat down at the typewriter and for an hour didn’t take his eyes off the paper, writing, correcting and smoking ceaselessly. Then, chatting with
Carlitos
, he waited, impatient and proud of yourself, Zavalita, for Becerrita to arrive. And finally you saw him come in, dumpy, he thinks, adipose, ill-humored, aged Becerrita, with hat left over from other days, his ex-boxer’s face, his ridiculous little mustache and his fingers stained with nicotine. What a disappointment, Zavalita. He didn’t answer your hello, he practically didn’t read the three pages, he listened without any
expression
of interest to the story Santiago was telling him. What was one crime more or less for Becerrita who got up in the morning, lived and went to bed in the midst of murders, Zavalita, robberies, embezzlements, fires, holdups, who had lived for a quarter of a century off stories of junkies, thieves, whores, cheating wives. But the disappointment didn’t last long, Zavalita. He thinks: he never got enthusiastic about anything, but he knew his trade. He thinks: maybe he liked it. He took off his turn-of-
the-century
hat, his jacket, rolled up his sleeves which he had fastened at the elbows with a bookkeeper’s armbands, he thinks, and loosened the
necktie
that was as threadbare and dirty as his suit and shoes, and weary and vinegary he went through the office indifferent to the nods, stolidly and slowly and straight to Arispe’s desk. Santiago went over to Carlitos’ corner to listen. Becerrita gave a little rap with his knuckles on the typewriter and Arispe raised his head: what could he do for him, my good sir?

“The centerfold all for me.” His voice harsh and sickly, he thinks, weak, mocking. “And Periquito at my disposal for at least three or four days.”

“Do you also want a house on the beach with a piano, my good sir?” Arispe asked.

“And some reinforcements, Zavalita, for example, because two people in my section are on vacation,” Becerrita said dryly. “If you want us to do a thorough job on this, you’ll have to put a writer on it night and day.”

Arispe chewed his red pencil thoughtfully, thumbing through the pages; then his eyes wandered about the room, searching. You screwed yourself, Carlitos said, get out of it under any pretext. But you didn’t use any, Zavalita, you went happily over to Arispe’s desk, happily over to the jaws of the wolf. Excitement, emotion, blood: already fucked up for some time, Zavalita.

“Do you want to transfer to the police beat for a few days?” Arispe said. “Becerrita has asked for you.”

“Do people have a choice now?” Becerrita muttered acidly. “When I started out on
La
Crónica
nobody asked me what I thought. Go cover the police stations, we’re setting up a police section and you’re going to be in charge of it. They’ve kept me on it for twenty-five years and they still haven’t asked me whether I like it or not.”

“One day your bad mood’s going to boil up in here, my good sir,” Arispe touched his heart with his red pencil, “and it’ll explode like a balloon. Besides, if they took you off the police page you’d die of sorrow, Becerrita. You’re the top ace of the gory page in all Peru.”

“I don’t know what good it does me, because every week I’m in debt up to here,” Becerrita grunted, immodestly. “I’d rather not get so much praise and have my salary raised.”

“Twenty years eating free off the most expensive whores, getting drunk free in the best brothels, and you’re still complaining, my good sir?” Arispe said. “What effect do you think it has on those of us who have to pay out of our own pockets every time we have to get ourselves a drink or a fuck?”

The clicking of the machines had stopped, smiling faces followed the dialogue between Arispe and Becerrita from the desks, and the latter had begun to smile in a hybrid way, releasing little spasms of that hoarse and unpleasant laugh that would change into a thunder of hiccuping,
belching
and invectives when he was drunk, he thinks.

“I’m old now,” he finally said. “I don’t swill anymore, I don’t like women anymore.”

“You changed your tastes in your old age,” Arispe said, and he looked at Santiago. “Watch out, now I can see why Becerrita asked for you for his section.”

“My, the chief editors are in a good mood,” Becerrita grunted. “What about that other matter? Will you give me the centerfold and Periquito?”

“You’ve got them, but take good care of them for me,” Arispe said. “I want you to get people shook up and raise circulation for me. Icing on the cake, my good sir.”

Becerrita nodded, turned halfway around, the typewriters began to clack again and, followed by Santiago, he went to his desk. It was in the rear, he saw everyone’s back from there, he thinks, it was one of his constant themes. He would come in drunk and plant himself in the middle of the room, open his jacket, his fists on his chubby hips, they always send me to the asshole of the universe! The reporters hunched down in their seats, sank their noses into their machines, not even Arispe dared look at him, he thinks, while Becerrita, with slow, infuriated eyes, looked over the busy reporters, they looked down on his page and they looked down on him, didn’t they? the concentrating copy editors, was that why they’d hemmed him in in the asshole of the office? Hernández the busy headline writer, so he could look at the asses of the local-news gentlemen, the asses of the foreign-news gentlemen? pacing back and forth like a restless general before a battle, so he’d get the gentlemen reporters’ farts full in his chops? and raising his tortured laughter to the ceiling from time to time. But once when Arispe had suggested that he move his desk, he became indignant, he thinks: I’ll have to be dead before they can haul me out of my corner, God damn it. His desk was low and a bit rickety, like him, he thinks, greasy like the shiny suit he usually wore decorated with food stains. He’d sat down, lighted a crumpled cigarette, Santiago was waiting on his feet, excited that he’d asked for you, Zavalita, already excited by the articles you’d write: going to the slaughterhouse like someone on his way to a party, Carlitos.

“All right, she’s been given to us and we’ve got to move.” Becerrita picked up the phone, dialed a number, spoke with his sour mouth close to the piece, his chubby hand with blackish fingernails were doodling on a writing pad.

“You were always looking for strong emotions,” Carlitos said. “
Somehow
you seemed to get them.”

“Yes, Porvenir, get over there right now with Periquito.” Becerrita hung up the phone, fastened his rheumy little eyes on Santiago. “That woman used to sing there some time ago. The woman who runs it knows me. Get information, pictures. Her girl friends, her boyfriends,
addresses
, the kind of life she led. Have Periquito take some pictures of the place.”

Santiago put on his jacket as he went down the stairs. Becerrita had called Darío and the van, parked in front of the door, was blocking traffic; the drivers blew their horns. A moment later Periquito appeared, furious.

“I’d warned Arispe that I wouldn’t work for that slave driver anymore and now he gives me to Becerrita for a week.” He was loading his camera, complaining. “He’s going to grind us into dust, Zavalita.”

“He may have the mood of a dog, but he fights like a lion for his reporters,” Darío said. “If it wasn’t for him old drunken Carlitos would have been fired long ago. Don’t put Becerrita down.”

“I’m going to quit the newspaper business, I’ve had enough,” Periquito said. “I’m going to get into commercial photography. One week with Becerrita is worse than a dose of the clap.”

The van went up Colmena to the Parque Universitario, down
Azángaro
, passed the whitish stone base of the Palace of Justice, turned into the rainy sunset of República, and when, on the right, in the middle of the shadowy park, the Cabaña appeared with its lighted windows and sparkling sign in front, Periquito began to laugh, calm all of a sudden: he didn’t even want to look at that dive, Zavalita, his liver was still one big ulcer from the drunk he’d been on last Sunday.

“With a single item on his page he can sink any go-go girl, close any brothel, ruin the reputation of any nightclub,” Darío said. “Becerrita is a god in Lima’s bohemian world. And no page editor treats his people the way he does. He takes them to whorehouses, buys them drinks, gets women for them. I don’t know how you can complain about him, Periquito.”

“All right,” Periquito admitted. “Keep a stiff upper lip in a storm. If we have to work with him, instead of getting bitter, let’s try to exploit his weak point.”

The brothels, the stinking dives, the promiscuous little bars with vomit and sawdust, the fauna of three o’clock in the morning. He thinks: his weak point. That’s where he became human, he thinks, that’s where he made himself liked. Darío put the brakes on: a faceless mass was moving along the sidewalks in the shadows of 28 de Julio, over the gloomy silhouettes the small, rancid light of the lamps of Porvenir languished. It was misty, the night was very damp. The door of the Montmartre was closed.

“Let’s knock, Paqueta must be inside,” Periquito said. “This dive opens late, the nightclubs pour out into here.”

They knocked on the glass of the door—a piano player in the pink light of the window, he thinks, his teeth as white as the keys of his piano, two dancers with plumes on their behinds and their heads—steps were heard, a skinny boy in a white vest and a small bow tie who looked at them with concern: from
La
Crónica,
right? Come in, madame was expecting them. A bar covered with bottles, a ceiling with platinum stars, a tiny dance floor with an upright microphone, empty tables and chairs. A small disguised door behind the bar opened, good evening said Periquito and there was Paqueta, Zavalita: her eyes with long false lashes and round halos of eyeshadow, her scarlet cheeks, her protuberant
buttocks
smothering in the tight slacks, her tiny tightrope-walker steps.