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.