Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa

Silva.
    “Come on, buddy, it’ll do you good, it’ll take your mind off your problem. You can forget about your girl for a minute. Did they kill him because he tried something with an officer’s wife? Is that it?”
    “I won’t tell you a fucking thing about Palomino Molero! You can kill me first.”
    “That’s the thanks I get for fishing you out of the whorehouse alive. They would’ve cut your balls off. I brought you here so you could sober up and then go back to the base in good shape and not get reported. I’m your handkerchief, your pillow, and your crying towel. Just look at what you’ve done to my shirt, drooling all over me. And you won’t even tell me why they killed Palomino Molero. Are you chicken or what?”
    “He won’t get a thing out of him,” thought Lituma, depressed. They’d been wasting time, and, which was worse, he’d got his hopes up. This drunk wasn’t going to reveal anything.
    “She’s a shit, too, a bigger one even than her old man,” the pilot complained through clenched teeth. He choked, then gagged, then went on, “But even so I love her. Damn right. Heart and soul. And what a piece of ass.”
    “But why did you say your girl’s a shit, too, pal? She’s got to follow her old man’s orders, same as you, or is it that she doesn’t love you anymore? Did she tell you to get lost?”
    “She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s her master’s voice, like the little dog in the RCA ads. She only does and says what the monster tells her to. The one who told me to get lost was him speaking through her.”
    Lituma tried to remember exactly what the girl looked like when she made that brief appearance in her father’s office. He could reconstruct the words they exchanged, but he couldn’t remember if she was pretty or not. He could draw a mental picture of her silhouette—she was slim; and she must have had a strong personality, to judge by the way she talked. She was certainly vain, with a face that would have looked good on a queen. She’d wiped the floor with this poor pilot, wrecked him completely.
    ‘Tell me about Palomino Molero, man. Anything you want. At least, if they killed him for messing around with an officer’s wife over in Piura. Come on, at least that.”
    “I may be drunk but I’m not an asshole, and you’re not gonna treat me like your nigger here.” He paused and then added, bitterly, “But if you want to know something, here it is: he asked for it and he got it.”
    “You mean Palomino Molero?”
    “Why don’t you call him the motherfucker Palomino Molero.”
    “Right, the motherfucker Palomino Molero, if you prefer it that way,” purred Lieutenant Silva, patting him on the back. “How did he ask for it?”
    “Because he reached too high. Because he poached on somebody else’s territory. You pay for mistakes like that. He paid, and how.”
    Lituma had goosebumps. This guy knew everything. He knew who killed the kid and why.
    “I’m with you, buddy. A guy who reaches too high, who poaches on somebody else’s territory, usually pays for it. But whose territory did he poach on?”
    “Yours, motherfucker.” The pilot tried to stand up. Lituma watched him crawl, get halfway up, and fall flat on his face.
    “No, it wasn’t my territory, pal, and you know that for a fact. It happened over in Piura, on the Air Force base. In one of the houses on the base, right?”
    The pilot, still on all fours, raised his head, and Lituma thought for a second he was going to start barking. He stared at them with a glassy, anguished look, and seemed to be fighting hard against the alcohol. He was blinking incessantly.
    “And who told you that, motherfucker?”
    “I always remember what that Mexican comic Cantinflas says in all his movies: ‘There’s this little problem.’ You’re not the only one who knows things. I know a few things mvself. I’ll tell you what I know, you tell me what you know, and we’ll solve this mystery together.”
    “First,