by Achy Obejas
The haze in the funeral home caused by the smokers drove me outside, far from all the chattering, where I engaged in monosyllabic exchanges with acquaintances who went in and out. My mother-in-law came out now and then to share what she was hearing inside: It looked like it was true about the closet and the knifing, though the stab count varied between one and five (the theories about strangulation and poisoning, which had struck me as crazy, had disappeared). The issue of the time also appeared to be resolved: A little before 10, Pupy had left her seat to go to the bathroom. The game had ended at 10:40 and Guillermo didn’t think it was particularly strange at first that his wife hadn’t come back before the game’s last out. On nights like that, with the stadium full, the lines in the women’s bathrooms were long, interrupted now and again by employees in charge of flushing the toilets by forcing buckets of water into them.
I approached the chorus surrounding the widower: He was ashen, and he kept pausing to explain more than tell about the moment when he arrived at the women’s bathroom and found an employee closing the door. The woman had assured him that there was no one inside except an older woman, whose description didn’t fit the person Guillermo said he was looking for. He thought maybe Pupy had gone to the bathroom on the other side of the Latino (those near where we had been sitting), and he went around, avoiding the employees who’d started to put up gates and burglar bars, only to find that bathroom empty as well. He climbed the stairs to the stands, looked over to the area behind third base: There was no one there except the cleaning crew, which was sweeping. He went out to the streets, moving from one entrance to the other.
“I was just walking from here to there and there to here,” he said. Somebody from the chorus asked what he’d been thinking during his search. “You know, Pupy was kind of nutty,” he answered, “and since I’d moved from where we’d been sitting to go look for her, it occurred to me that maybe she’d gone ahead to the bus stop.”
According to the police, what made Guillermo a suspect was that he’d been found at home, fast asleep, when Pupy’s body was discovered in the closet in the third base women’s bathroom, surrounded by buckets and mops.
“They just don’t know how it happened,” the widower tried to explain. “How was I supposed to know she was dead?”
According to Guillermo’s own telling, the two of them had drunk an entire bottle of Patricruzado at the stadium just before the seventh inning. Azúcar, Luis, and I had finished off our rum in the ninth, with the last out.
“I was beat when I got home, I threw myself in bed, and I was dead to the world,” Guillermo said. The cops came knocking on the door around 2 in the morning. A stadium worker had found the body when she went looking for the acid to pour into the toilets after the general cleaning.
The mourners demanded that Guillermo enlighten them about possible motives, that he name suspects, that he repeat every word uttered by the police.
“You all knew Pupy,” he said, “and there was stuff, but she always tried to get along with everybody. As far as I’m concerned, they just got her mixed up with somebody else.”
I asked him if she’d left her seat before or after the seventh inning.
“During the walk,” he responded.
It was almost 11 o’clock in the morning. Sunday’s game started at 2 and the players from my team might still be hanging out in the hotel lobby. I asked my mother-in-law to wait for me. When I parked next to the Plaza de las Banderas, I saw the players’ bus leaving. A few foreigners waved goodbye from the sidewalk with a certain familiarity. I identified a few picture hats, a cap with a Marlins logo.
At five till 2, I entered the Latino. The stadium felt like a different place. The sun washed out the colors in the stands, the worn field sparkled, and a few kids ran in the aisles. The silence came not from awe but from abandonment. I found the place where the tourists had been seated the night before. Nobody was watching the access door now. I sat down in the very middle of the section by myself. The applause and whistles after good plays sounded like the echoes of a small town stadium. The players were closer, and more visibly tired; the uniforms dirty; the bats scarred. I left before the game had even reached its midway point. Las Ratas were ahead but nobody seemed to care, not even me.
A few weeks later, the radiator in my car began to leak; days later, it had become a stream that lined the walk from my garage. When it got to be a hose watering the garden, I remembered Azúcar. I found him on the basketball court in a bad mood: His team had just lost and the players were arguing about whose fault it was. He told me there were no radiators to be found, and then gave me an obscure address on the banks of the Almendares River where I could get a box of balloons and the sealant to repair the damage myself. The postseason had already begun and Santiago had destroyed its first rival in only three games. I told Azúcar that I was sure El Torpedo would take us through to the championship.
“That guy throws rocks,” he said. “That night was different, but anybody can have a game like that.” Then he laid out El Torpedo’s career statistics, which were, in fact, mediocre.
I mentioned that a neighbor of mine had been killed at the Latino.
“You’re neighbors with the late Pupy?” he asked. “Well, you were neighbors.” He grinned. “Hell, you still are—you didn’t move.” He stood there thinking. “Fuck, how would you say that?”
“I was neighbors with the late Pupy.”
He repeated it. “You were neighbors…” He wasn’t sure I was right.
“I guess she had to pay,” I said.
“She was out of her league,” he responded.
“How much did you lose?” I dared to ask.
He looked at me uncertainly. “Forget about that.”
Two months later, Pupy’s death was still in the shadows. Guillermo was brought in once or twice and Pupy’s mother told my mother-in-law that something had happened with the woman who cleaned the bathrooms. It was also being said that a woman’s wig and high heels had been found that night abandoned in the stands.
“Did they make him try on the shoes?” I asked her, trying to imagine that robust black guy in high heels and crowned by a brilliant blond wig. Were we now playing some kind of Cinderella game in reverse, with the police going door to door to see which of the men who had been at the Latino that night could fit into the shoes worn by the killer transvestite? My mother-in-law suggested I be more respectful.
The championship was about to end, my team looked invincible, and I invited Luis and Charo, his wife, for lunch at my house to watch the decisive game, being broadcast from Santiago. As my friends rang the bell, Pupy’s father, bent over an old cane that looked like a stick of wood, passed by on his morning walk from one corner to another.
“Poor man,” Luis said after I told him who it was.
I lit the coals and brought out the plate of chops marinated in sour orange, salt, and garlic.
I tried to make sure Pupy didn’t get dropped from the conversation. I reminded Luis of El Torpedo’s exploits. The chops, now resting over a slow fire, began to drip on the burning coals and release a smell of burning fat. I suggested to Luis that we make a game out of guessing Pupy’s killer.
He laughed. “Artur, you’re such a kidder…”
My mother-in-law brought out a tray of pork rinds, “so you have something with which to fill your mouths.” I asked her to join us. She preferred showing off her flowering rhododendrons to Charo, as well as the lilies that would dry up if the rains didn’t come soon.
I got a piece of paper and drew a few lines that could be the field and others that attempted to define the stands. Underneath, I made a mark suggesting a timeline. At the beginning I wrote in twelve noon.
Luis asked me if that was when I’d called him. “I don’t remember a thing, Artur.”
I knew I’d gotten his interest. On the timeline, I started scribbling in words to define actions: the moment I saw Pupy with El Torpedo, when we arrived at the Latino…And on the diagram of the stadium,
I marked the hours in which these events occurred: A little before 10, Pupy gets up to go to the bathroom; minutes later, second base gets stolen from under El Torpedo and he allows a hit; then Azúcar leaves our side.
As soon as I wrote Azúcar, I could see Luis’s eyes getting worried.
“No, Artur, not Azúcar.”
I calmed him. I explained that his neighbor being a fan of Las Ratas did not, in my opinion, make him a killer. But later I did raise the topic more soberly: If in fact Azúcar had gotten up from his seat with the purpose of murdering Pupy, fate was sweeping by us (I only said “us” to implicate Luis) with such force that, in a way perhaps we didn’t yet understand, we might also be guilty.
Luis shot up, his hands in the air as if asking for a time out, and made his way to the pork rinds. He grabbed a fistful (some were hard, or “past their prime,” according to my mother-inlaw). “Let’s see, let’s see,” he said. “So Azúcar didn’t kill her?”
“Correct.” I needed him not to feel compelled to defend his friend.
“Well, then, go on.”
But Azúcar could certainly be useful: Why did he get up from his seat just as Las Ratas were threatening in the seventh inning?
Luis demurred—how could he possibly know?
I was as clear as I could be: Azúcar had gotten up to make a bet.
Luis narrowed his eyes, now two little lines on his face.
I told him about the conversation I’d had with his buddy when I went looking for the radiator.
Luis pulled a cigar from his pocket and asked me for a light. The flame on the stove was better than the burning coals on the grill.
“You want me to tell you the truth?” he asked on his way back from the kitchen, a little bit of malice in his voice. “That night, Azúcar lost a bundle.”
I liked the phrase, and it sounded natural in Luis’s voice: “a bundle.”
I called over to my mother-in-law and my wife, who was prepping the salad. “I’ve got it,” I said euphorically.
My mother-in-law told me to lower my voice: Behind the patio fence bobbed the heads of some of our neighbors. She always assumed their ears were on alert, spying on our conversations.
I explained the diagram and the timeline. On another sheet of paper, I scribbled my logic:
a) Someone whose identity we’d yet to discover contracted Pupy to seduce El Torpedo and somehow convince him to lose the game;
b) El Torpedo went to bed with Pupy (“Pupy slept with El Torpedo,” my wife clarifled) and agreed to drop the game. We can assume that the sex alone was not enough to convince him (Pupy was no longer young and, according to my wife and mother-in-law, had never been pretty). The pitcher was probably also offered a substantial amount of money.
c) At the end of the sixth inning, Santiago was ahead by one run and El Torpedo seemed invincible. It would have been easy to get a bunch of neophytes to bet on them.
d) Pupy went to complete the second half of her assignment—to promote big bets against Las Ratas.
e) The walk, the stolen second, the hit all made it look like El Torpedo was doing his part.
f) Azúcar got up to go bet a bundle in favor of Las Ratas—that is, against the popular current.
g) El Torpedo reacted. We could attribute it to his pride, perhaps because of something said by a teammate, or maybe an insult hurled from the bleachers, or perhaps he simply realized he was having an exceptional night and he wasn’t prepared to throw it away. h) When he decided to stand facing the batter to pitch, with men on first and third, El Torpedo defled those who were trying to buy him. The dimwits figured he was just shamelessly screwing up. The more alert understood he was laughing at them.
i) When El Torpedo managed to dominate Las Ratas without allowing the tying run, Pupy’s fate was sealed.
I repeated Azúcar’s words: “She was out of her league.”
“So who do you think killed her?” my mother-in-law asked. Her look wasn’t curiosity so I was prepared to have her contradict me.
The chops were just about ready, the game was about to start, and there were still two outstanding questions. Or three. And a clarification.
“Do you know why Azúcar isn’t a suspect?”
Luis shook his head.
“Because he got up before Las Ratas became a threat, and because he came back too quickly.”
My wife said it was all absurd and went to deal with the lettuce and tomatoes.
“Who’s an easy touch for a lot of money on a bet? Who would bet against Las Ratas at the Latino?”
I’ve always admired how keen Charo can be, and her response was what I expected: “No Habanero would dare it, and people from Santiago never have enough money.”
So who was in position to lure the foreigners, for whom betting was probably not illegal, to the stadium? Who, in fact, was in a position to make the bets that, in the language of the profession, could be called part of the “tourist package”?
My wife brought the salad. “Olivia,” she said.
“Oh, please, be quiet,” my mother-in-law admonished, immediately surveying the top of the fence for listeners.
“The one whose father’s on the radio?” asked Luis.
Trying to imagine the actual killing seemed futile to me, but my audience demanded it. The women’s bathroom, where the stadium security guards have little access, could easily be a betting spot.
Olivia might well have been with her guests in the stands, explaining the doings on the field. “The one who’s going up to bat next is the loud one from the restaurant,” she might have said, and the tourists would have looked at the guy under mercury lights, hardly believing he was the same man who had slept in a chair in the hotel lobby.
Did Olivia kill with her own hands or merely order the hit? My mother-in-law, for the second time, said she didn’t want to hear anymore. I couldn’t imagine Olivia going into those flooded bathrooms, which you could smell from far away. At the third out of the seventh inning, there would have been plenty of resentment to go around.
“Olivia probably didn’t even have to have her killed,” Charo proposed.
I declined to accept the idea. How much money did those people lose who’d trusted in Pupy, in El Torpedo? Who had thought up the operation?
So that it wouldn’t be Olivia’s cadaver that showed up in the hallway at the Latino, or in one of the dark little streets around it, Pupy had to die.
“Thank God they didn’t kill El Torpedo.”
“Too risky,” I said.
“Yes, here we’re all equal, but some are more equal than others,” added Charo.
My wife came to tell us that they were singing the national anthem in the stadium in Santiago. “Are you finished wasting time yet?” she asked.
“This has given me a headache,” Luis said.
“That’s because you let him get to you.”
But Luis and Charo agreed that my conclusions were irrefutable.
“If it’s so easy to solve the murder, why haven’t the police been able to do it?” my wife asked.
“Because they’re idiots,” explained Charo.
“I don’t think they’d play around with a murder.” My wife had lost her sense of humor. “It’s a good thing you never wanted to be a policeman.”
According to her, the detectives had to know everything we’d come up with, and more. In fact, we didn’t really know much about that world of gambling and revenge. For what I was saying to be true, wouldn’t Olivia have had to pay something to someone? Where would she get that kind of cash? Was Javier, her husband, unaware of her dealings, or was he in on it too?
My wife might very well have been right, but in cases like this, I know she can get insufferable, and it becomes impossible for me not to argue against her.
“She’s a murderer,” I said conclusively.
Luis took his plate to the living room and I went ahead to tell my mother-in-law she could serve.
“She’s always up in the clouds,” my mother-in-law sai
d, as she gave the black beans a final touch by pouring just a smidgen of olive oil and vinegar on top. “And you don’t even know what I know!”
I tried to get her to at least drop a hint: Had the police interviewed Olivia?
“Are you crazy?” When my mother-in-law decides to bite her tongue, she’s as silent as a tomb. Anyway, El Torpedo was on the pitcher’s mound and Luis was screaming for me to come watch.
I went to bed early and in a foul mood: El Torpedo was spanked and the championship had slipped through our hands. By the fifth inning, the game was a mess and we had abandoned the TV. Out on the terrace, which was still haunted by the smell of the grilled chops, Luis and I silently finished off the two bottles of rum that were left. I fell asleep out there, without noticing when our friends went home. The world was still in balance inside my head when I dropped into bed. I shut my eyes. Then the world made a sudden turn. I opened my eyes and tried to focus until the ceiling above me almost righted itself.
“You know you screwed up,” my wife said.
I pleaded with her not to move the bed; I assured her I was feeling better. But she was talking about Olivia. The ceiling was now just about flat again and parallel with the floor.
“If she finds out what you were saying about her, she could make trouble for you, and you won’t have an easy time of it.” The ceiling was once more intent on oscillating, on coming closer then retreating. I got up and had a glass of ice water. Dawn found me in a chair in the living room.
Some days after those pork chops had been served and devoured, I was sitting on the porch reading. My mother-in-law was in the garden admiring some gardenias that were beginning to sprout. Olivia and her husband walked by on the street and greeted us. Their arms were full and their exhaustion was obvious. My mother-in-law didn’t even lift her eyes from the gardenias’ pale, fragile stems.
“Has their car broken down?” I asked my mother-in-law.
Olivia and her husband stopped to talk with Pupy’s parents.