request permission to withdraw.
“We do want something concrete from you, Colonel. We would like to question Palomino Molero’s messmates.”
From bright red, the base commander’s face turned pale again. Purple shadows surrounded his beady eyes. “Aside from being a son of a bitch, he’s loony,” thought Lituma. “Why did he get like this? Where do these fits come from?”
“I’m going to explain it to you once again, Lieutenant, since it seems you haven’t understood a word I’ve said. The Armed Forces have certain rights, they have their own courts where members of the Armed Forces are tried and sentenced. Didn’t they teach you about that in the Guardia Civil Academy? No? Well, allow me to do it now. When a criminal problem involving a member of the Armed Forces arises, they themselves carry out the investigation. Palomino Molero died under circumstances as yet unresolved, off the base, when he had been declared a deserter. I have already sent the proper report on to my superiors. If they deem it necessary, I will order a new investigation, using our own agencies. Or my superiors may decide to refer the case to the Judge Advocate’s section. But until a direct order comes, either from the Air Ministry or the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, no Guardia Civil is going to violate the code of military justice in a base under my command. Is that clear, Lieutenant Silva? Answer me. Is that clear?”
“Quite clear, Colonel.”
The colonel waved toward the door with a gesture that was final. “Then you may withdraw.”
This time Lituma watched Lieutenant Silva click his heels and request permission to leave. He did the same and they both left. Outside, they pulled on their caps. Even though the sun beat down even harder than when they arrived and the air was even more oppressive than it had been in the office, Lituma felt refreshed and liberated out in the open air. He breathed deeply. It was like getting out of jail, goddamn it. In silence, they crossed the various squares that led back to the guard post. Did Lieutenant Silva feel as browbeaten and ill-treated as he did at the way the base commander had dealt with them?
As they left the base, they suffered yet another setback: Don Jerónimo had left them behind. The only way back to town was on foot: an hour’s walk—at least—sweating bullets and swallowing dust.
They started walking down the center of the highway, still in silence. “After lunch, I’m going to take a three-hour siesta.” Lituma had an unlimited capacity for sleep, at any time and in any position, and nothing cured him of the blues like a good snooze. The highway snaked around slowly, descending toward Talara through an ocher landscape devoid of green and littered with rocks and stones of all shapes and sizes. The town was a livid metallic stain below them, stretched along a motionless lead-green sea. In the intense glare they could barely make out the outlines of houses and telephone poles.
“He really put us through the ringer, didn’t he, Lieutenant?” Lituma dried his brow with a handkerchief. “I’ve never met a guy with a worse temper. Do you think he hates the Guardia Civil just because he’s a racist, or do you think he has a specific reason? Or does he treat everybody that way? Nobody, I swear, ever made me swallow so much shit as that bald bastard.”
“You’re out of your head, Lituma. As far as I’m concerned, the interview with Mindreau was a total success.”
“Are you serious, Lieutenant? I’m glad to see you can still make jokes. As far as I’m concerned, that little chat was as depressing as it could be.”
“You’ve got a lot to learn about this business, Lituma,” said the lieutenant, laughing. “It was a bitch of an interview, let me tell you. Unbelievably useful.”
“That means I didn’t understand a thing, Lieutenant. It looked to me as though the colonel was treating us like scum, worse than the way be probably treats his servants. Did he even give us what we asked for?”
‘Appearances are tricky, Lituma.” Lieutenant Silva once again burst into laughter. “As far as I’m concerned, the colonel yakked like a drunken parrot.”
He laughed again, with his mouth wide open. Then he cracked his knuckles. “Before, I thought he knew nothing, that he was fucking around with us because he wanted to protect the precious rights of the military-justice system. Now I’m sure that he knows a lot, maybe everything that happened.”
Lituma looked at