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-in-law). “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 usefuclass="underline" 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 clarified) 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 defied 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.