“Let’s stop, Rose,” she asked him. “Stop and tell me what’s happening, why we’re driving off like crazy.”
“Not now, later.”
“Tell me where we’re going…”
“To Vermont, to get your sister, before the beast of your boyfriend kills her,” exploded Rose, without making excuses or trying to soften the blow, showing María Paz the photograph of Bubba in his pyre and the New York Times with the news of the murder of Pro Bono.
He was glad it came out that way. It felt good: the death of Pro Bono had melted his mountain of guilt, transforming it into pure anger, and he was not affected by the horror of her astonishment, nor the deathly pallor of her face, nor her crying fits, because all Rose felt then was rage. Rage against her.
“The death of Pro Bono was the appalling proof that I had been right, that her boyfriend was a monster, a filthy murderer, something I had always known,” he tells me. “But not her, she insisted that no, that deep down the guy was harmless. My God, how could she have been so blind, and the death of Pro Bono had done me in, really done me in, and what I felt inside was anger.”
“Anger as the opposite of guilt,” I ask. “Or you had to stop hating yourself in order to hate her?”
“Either one,” he tells me, “but I was especially eager to hammer her with an ‘I told you so’ the size of the world.”
“There you go. Take a good look. Open your eyes for once,” Rose told María Paz, tapping his index finger on the papers he had just handed her. “Come down from the clouds. This is your boyfriend, so you know. This is your Sleepy Joe. The wolf that doesn’t bite, the poor little boy who’s so good we have to send him money. Are you looking? Burned one alive, and whipped the other one to death. Your lawyer. Whipped that poor old man who helped you so much to death. And my son, Cleve, knocked him off his bike and crowned him with thorns. Do you see anything in common between them, eh? I’m talking, María Paz, answer me. Do you see something in common among these poor people? You, girl. You. You are the only thing these people have in common, besides having been tortured to death by your beau. So he doesn’t kill, your macho asshole? Doesn’t kill, eh?”
“Who is the one burned, what does he have to do with me?” María Paz tried to protest.
But Rose did not even hear her; he was so busy trying to hurt her. He was aware of the pain he was causing with his words, but he could not stop himself. They had been stored for too long, and they now emerged from him with a rancor and ease that surprised him.
“A justified revenge?” I ask Rose.
“It’s possible, yes,” he responds. “Maybe I was making her pay for having loved that monster more than my son. Or who knows. All I can say is that I spoke to her like that to punish her. I noticed that her mouth had gone dry, saw the throbbing in her temples, and she shook as if it had suddenly become very cold, yet I continued, as if enjoying it.”
“So Sleepy Joe was abusive just because of money, is that still your theory?” Rose screamed at María Paz. “Well, he murdered Pro Bono three days ago, woman, three days ago, more than a week after he was handed the money that you sent him. Actually, maybe with the money you sent him, maybe that’s what he used it for.”
“Sleepy Joe did that?” María Paz asked in barely a whisper, enraging Rose even more.
“Oh, my God, girl, are you still defending him? Get out of the car, damn it. Now, get out, I can’t stand to look at you.”
Eventually, things calmed down a bit. Rose knew such a brawl between them made little sense when Violeta’s life was at stake. It would do little good for them to kill each other, when the real murderer was loose.
“Who is this man?” asked María Paz again, now more forcefully. “The burned one. Why was he burned?”
“That man is Bubba, Wendy Mellons’s son. Do you recognize him? No, of course not, he’s burned beyond recognition. Do you know of any fucked-up pyromaniacs who may have been responsible?
“Sleepy Joe did this?” María Paz insisted on asking. “How do you know that?”
“How do I know? Don’t start with that again. What are you, stupid? Sleepy Joe burned him and sent that picture to your e-mail address. A message for you to know what he’s going to do to your sister. And to me, of course. Why did he burn him alive? Is that what you’re asking? Why did he whip Pro Bono to death? Why did he murder Cleve? Why did he crucify your dog? I have no idea, but surely you do.”
“Calm down, Rose, and answer me,” she said.
“Sleepy Joe burned that man because that man was going to kill Sleepy Joe. And that man was going to kill Sleepy Joe because I paid him to do it. But things went wrong. The only bad thing was that, how I screwed up, and Sleepy Joe walked away a man possessed instead of being dead. Let’s just stop talking about it, alright? No more arguing, no more questions. Stop crying and clutching that bag. Concentrate on the map, and I’ll concentrate on driving. All we have to do is reach Vermont before him.”
Pro Bono had been murdered at night, around eleven, the lawyer still looking very formal, as usual, even though he was alone at home. He had been about to brush his teeth: a fact known because they had found his toothbrush on the bathroom countertop. Apparently, Pro Bono wore a velvet robe with a lace cord at the waist, white pajamas with a monogram on the breast pocket, a silk scarf around his neck, maybe even a carnation on the lapeclass="underline" such bombastic elegance, à la Oscar Wilde, through which he always concealed his birth defect.
Buttons had told Rose how Sleepy Joe had snuck into the apartment at that time.
“Do you want to know how?” Rose asked María Paz, a rash of anger again burning in his throat. “You’re not going to want to hear it, because it very much has to do with you. Buttons told me Pro Bono had been looking for you for a while. The trip to Paris had not gone well. The Marriage of Figaro fizzled because Pro Bono was in no mood for Mozart and had spent his second and final honeymoon making long-distance calls asking about you. He wanted to know if someone had been able to warn you about the clamp. And when he got to New York, he went right back to looking for you. So steeped was he in the task that, being told the visitor was connected to you, he had no qualms about letting a stranger into his house late at night.”
Afterward, the doorman said he had been suspicious. It was late, no time to be bugging residents, especially a guy like that, very shady, demanding to see the lawyer, all arrogant, telling him he needed to see Pro Bono, “I’m Paz’s cousin, he knows what it’s about.” Very strange, the whole thing. But the doorman had learned to be discreet, had mastered his trade for years, and knew that sometimes the residents of the building had contact with unusual people, drug dealers, for example, or prostitutes even, and who was he to butt in? So he rang Pro Bono. “Excuse me, sir,” he said quietly, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Tell him to come up to my office,” Pro Bono had ordered. “Better yet. Hold on.”
For some reason, Pro Bono changed his mind about receiving the visitor in his office, although it was just a floor above. Maybe he didn’t deem it appropriate to do so in robe and slippers, a matter of principle, because the offices were empty, the last worker having left hours before. Or maybe Pro Bono didn’t want to catch a cold, or couldn’t find the key: one of those simple twists of fates, minor in and of themselves, but of great consequence. Whatever the reason, Pro Bono did not want to go up to the office. He must have thought it better to attend to the man at the door of his apartment. It would be a matter of a few minutes, and he could ask about María Paz. That’s what the man must be here for, with news about her.