“I looked over the list of prisoners the government is going to release,” he said, in a more neutral tone. “Except for that professor from Montecristi, Humberto Meléndez, there’s no objection. Go ahead. Have the families come to the National Palace on Thursday afternoon. They’ll meet the freed prisoners there.”
“I’ll begin the process immediately, Excellency.”
The Generalissimo rose to his feet and indicated to the puppet president, who was about to do the same, that he should remain seated. He wasn’t leaving yet. He wanted to stretch his legs. He took a few steps away from the desk.
“Will this new release of prisoners placate the Yankees?” he said. “I doubt it. Henry Dearborn will go on encouraging conspiracies. There’s another one in the works, according to Abbes. Even Juan Tomás Díaz is involved.”
The silence he heard behind him—he heard it, like a heavy, clammy presence—took him by surprise. He whirled around to look at the puppet President: there he was, absolutely still, observing him with his beatific expression. He did not feel reassured. Those intuitions of his had never lied. Could it be that this microscopic creature, this pygmy, knew something?
“Have you heard anything about this new conspiracy?”
He saw him shake his head vigorously.
“I would have reported it right away to Colonel Abbes García, Excellency. As I have always done whenever I hear rumors of anything subversive.”
He took two or three more steps, in front of the desk, not saying a word. No, if there was one man in the regime incapable of being involved in a plot, it was the circumspect President. He knew that without Trujillo he would not exist, that the Benefactor was the sap that gave him life, that without him he would vanish forever from politics.
He walked to one of the large windows. For a long while he observed the sea in silence. The clouds had covered the sun and the grayness of the sky and air was streaked with silver; the dark blue water reflected it in places. A small boat moved across the bay, heading for the mouth of the Ozama River; a fishing boat, it must have finished for the day and was returning to dock. It left a foaming wake, and though he could not see them at this distance, he imagined the gulls endlessly shrieking and beating their wings. He looked forward with anticipation to the hour-and-a-half walk he would take, after visiting his mother, along Máximo Gómez and the Avenida, smelling the salt air, soothed by the waves. Don’t forget to ream out the head of the Armed Forces for that broken pipe at the entrance to the air base. Let Pupo Román stick his nose in that stinking puddle, then see if the Generalissimo ever finds anything so disgusting again at the front gate of a military installation.
He left the office of President Joaquín Balaguer without saying goodbye.
“If we’re in this shape when we’re together, imagine how Fifí Pastoriza feels all by himself,” said Huáscar Tejeda, leaning against the steering wheel of the heavy black four-door Oldsmobile 98 parked at kilometer seven on the highway to San Cristóbal.
“What the hell are we doing here?” raged Pedro Livio Cedeño. “It’s a quarter to ten. He isn’t coming!”
He squeezed the semiautomatic M-1 carbine on his lap as if he wanted to break it. Pedro Livio was prone to angry outbursts; his bad temper had ruined his military career: he had been cashiered when he was a captain. By then he already knew that his temper had made him so many enemies, he would never move up through the ranks. He was sorry to leave the Army. He had attended a military academy in the United States and graduated with outstanding grades. But the temper that made him blaze like a torch when somebody called him Nigger, and lash out with his fists for any reason at all, put a brake on his promotions in the Army despite his excellent service record. He was expelled for pulling his revolver on a general who admonished him, as an officer, for undue fraternization with the troops. And yet those who knew him, like the man waiting with him, the engineer Huáscar Tejeda Pimentel, also knew that his violent exterior hid a man of fine feelings, capable—he had witnessed it—of crying over the murder of the Mirabal sisters, whom he did not even know.
“Impatience is a killer too, Nigger,” Huáscar Tejeda said, attempting a joke.
“Nigger’s the whore who bore you.”
Tejeda Pimentel tried to laugh, but his friend’s immoderate response saddened him. Pedro Livio was hopeless.
“I’m sorry,” he heard him apologize a moment later. “My nerves are shot, it’s the damned waiting.”
“We all feel the same way, Nigger. Shit, I called you Nigger again. Are you going to insult my mother a second time?”
“Not this time.” Pedro Livio laughed, finally.
“Why does ‘Nigger’ make you so angry? You know it’s an affectionate name.”
“I know, Huáscar. But in the United States, at the academy, when the cadets or the officers called me Nigger they weren’t being affectionate, they were racists. I had to make them respect me.”
A few vehicles drove past on the highway, heading west, toward San Cristóbal, or east, toward Ciudad Trujillo, but not Trujillo’s Chevrolet Bel Air, followed by Antonio de la Maza’s Chevrolet Biscayne. Their instructions were simple: as soon as they saw the two cars, which they would recognize by Tony Imbert’s signal—flashing the headlights three times—they would cut off the Goat’s car with the heavy black Oldsmobile. And he, with the semiautomatic M-1 carbine, for which Antonio had given him extra ammunition, and Huáscar, using his Smith & Wesson 9 mm Model 39 with nine shots, would lay down as much lead in front of the car as Imbert, Amadito, Antonio, and Turk were firing from behind. The Goat would not get past them, but if he did, Fifí Pastoriza, at the wheel of Estrella Sadhalá’s Mercury, two kilometers to the west, would be there to cut him off again.
“Does your wife know about tonight, Pedro Livio?” asked Huáscar Tejeda.
“She thinks I’m at Juan Tomás Díaz’s house, watching a movie. She’s pregnant and…”
He saw a speeding car race by, followed at less than ten meters by another car that, in the dark, looked like Antonio de la Maza’s Biscayne.
“It’s them, isn’t it, Huáscar?” He tried to see through the blackness.
“Did you see the headlights flash?” Tejeda Pimentel shouted in excitement. “Did you see them?”
“No, they didn’t signal. But it’s them.”
“What shall we do, Nigger?”
“Drive, drive!”
Pedro Livio’s heart had begun to pound with a fury that hardly allowed him to speak. Huáscar turned the Oldsmobile around. The red taillights of the two automobiles were speeding away, and soon they’d lose sight of them.
“It’s them, Huáscar, it has to be them. Why the hell didn’t they signal?”
The red lights had disappeared; all they saw in front of them was the cone of light from the headlights of the Oldsmobile and a pitch-black night: the clouds had just covered the moon. Pedro Livio—his semiautomatic carbine pointed out the window—thought about his wife, Olga. How would she react when she learned that her husband was one of Trujillo’s assassins? Olga Despradel was his second wife. They got along wonderfully, because Olga—unlike his first wife, with whom domestic life had been hell—had infinite patience with his explosions of anger; when he was raging she avoided contradicting him or arguing with him, and she kept the house so neat and clean it made him happy. What a surprise for her. She thought he wasn’t interested in politics, though lately he had been very close to Antonio de la Maza, General Juan Tomás Díaz, and Huáscar Tejeda, all of them notorious anti-Trujillistas. Until a few months ago, whenever his friends began to criticize the regime, he would be as silent as a sphinx and nobody could pull an opinion out of him. He didn’t want to lose his administrative position at the Dominican Battery Factory, which belonged to the Trujillo family. The company had been doing very well until business took a nosedive because of the sanctions.
Naturally, Olga knew that Pedro Livio resented the regime because his first wife, a rabid Trujillista and close friend of the Generalissimo, who had made her governor of San Cristóbal, used her influence to obtain a court order prohibiting Pedro Livio from seeing his daughter Adanela, whose sole custody had been granted to his ex-wife. Tomorrow Olga might think he became involved in the plot to avenge that injustice. No, that wasn’t the reason he was here with his semiautomatic M-1 carbine, chasing down Trujillo. It was—Olga wouldn’t understand—because of the murder of the Mirabal sisters.
“Aren’t those shots, Pedro Livio?”
“Yes, yes, shots. It’s them, damn it! Step on it, Huáscar.”
He knew what shots sounded like. What they had heard, disturbing the night, were several bursts of gunfire—the carbines of Antonio and Amadito, Turk’s revolver, and maybe Imbert’s—something that filled his spirit, so frustrated by waiting, with exaltation. Now the Oldsmobile was flying down the highway. Pedro Livio put his head out the window but could not make out the Goat’s Chevrolet or his pursuers. Then, at a bend in the road, he recognized Estrella Sadhalá’s Mercury and, a second later, illuminated by the Oldsmobile’s headlights, the thin face of Fifí Pastoriza.
“They forgot Fifí too,” said Huáscar Tejeda. “They forgot the signal twice. What assholes!”
Less than a hundred meters away, Trujillo’s motionless Chevrolet came into view, pointing to the right of the highway, its headlights on. “There it is!” “It’s him, damn it!” shouted Pedro Livio and Huáscar at the moment revolver, carbine, and submachine-gun bullets started flying again. Huáscar turned off the headlights and, less than ten meters from the Chevrolet, he slammed on the brakes. Pedro Livio, who was opening the door of the Oldsmobile, was thrown to the highway before he fired. His whole body was scraped and pounded, and he heard an exultant Antonio de la Maza—“This buzzard won’t eat another chicken” or something like that—and the shouting voices of Turk, Tony Imbert, and Amadito, toward whom he began to run blindly as soon as he could get up. He took two or three steps and heard more shots, very close, and a burning sensation stopped him short and knocked him down as he clutched at his lower belly.
“Don’t shoot, damn it, it’s us,” shouted Huáscar Tejeda.
“I’m hit,” he groaned, and without any transition, worried, at the top of his voice: “Is the Goat dead?”
“Dead as a doornail, Nigger,” Huáscar Tejeda said, at his side. “Look!”
Pedro Livio felt his strength leaving him. He was sitting on the road, surrounded by debris and broken glass. He heard Huáscar Tejeda say that he was going to find Fifí Pastoriza and then the Oldsmobile pulled away. He heard the excited shouting of his friends, but he felt dizzy, incapable of taking part in their conversation; he barely understood what they were saying, because his attention was focused now on the blazing heat in his stomach. His arm was burning too. Had he been hit twice? The Oldsmobile came back. He recognized Fifí Pastoriza’s exclamations: “Shit, oh shit, oh God Almighty, oh shit!”
“Let’s put him in the trunk,” ordered Antonio de la Maza, who spoke with great calm. “We have to bring the corpse to Pupo, then he’ll put the Plan in action.”
His hands felt wet. That viscous substance could only be blood. His or the Goat’s? The asphalt was damp. It hadn’t rained, so that must be blood too. Somebody put a hand across his shoulders and asked how he felt. The voice sounded distressed. He recognized Salvador Estrella Sadhalá.
“A bullet in the stomach, I think.” Instead of words, what came out were guttural noises.
He could see the silhouettes of his friends carrying something and putting it into the trunk of Antonio’s Biscayne. Trujillo! Damn! They’d done it. He didn’t feel joy; it was more like relief.
“Where’s the driver? Has anybody seen Zacarías?”
“He’s dead as a doornail too, back there in the dark,” said Tony Imbert. “Don’t waste time looking for him, Amadito. We have to get back. The important thing now is to take the body to Pupo Román.”
“Pedro Livio’s wounded,” exclaimed Salvador Estrella Sadhalá.
They had closed the trunk of the Chevrolet, with the corpse inside. Faceless silhouettes surrounded him, patted him on the back, asked, “How do you feel, Pedro Livio?” Were they going to give him the coup de grâce? They had all agreed on that. They wouldn’t leave a wounded comrade behind and let him fall into the hands of the
caliés
and be subjected to Johnny Abbes’s tortures and humiliations. He recalled the conversation—Luis Amiama Tió was there too—in the garden filled with mangoes, flamboyán, and breadfruit trees that belonged to General Juan Tomás Díaz and his wife, Chana. Everyone had agreed: absolutely no slow deaths. If things went badly and someone was seriously wounded: the coup de grâce. Was he going to die? Were they going to finish him off?
“Get him into the car,” ordered Antonio de la Maza. “We’ll call a doctor from Juan Tomás’s house.”
The shadows of his friends were hard at work, moving the Goat’s car off the highway. He could hear them panting. Fifí Pastoriza whistled: “Damn, it has more holes than a colander.”
When his friends picked him up to put him in the Chevrolet Biscayne, the pain was so intense he passed out. But only for a few seconds, for when he regained consciousness they hadn’t left yet. He was in the back seat, Salvador had his arm around his shoulder and had pillowed his head on his chest. He recognized Tony Imbert at the wheel, and Antonio de la Maza beside him. How do you feel, Pedro Livio? He wanted to say: “Better, with that fucker dead,” but all that came out was a moan.
“Nigger’s in bad shape,” Imbert muttered.
Which meant his friends called him Nigger when he wasn’t there. What difference did it make? They were his friends, damn it: it hadn’t occurred to any of them to give him the coup de grâce. It seemed natural to them to put him in the car, and now they were taking him to Chana and Juan Tomás Díaz’s house. The burning in his stomach and arm had eased up. He felt weak and didn’t try to speak. He was lucid, he understood what they were saying perfectly. Apparently Tony, Antonio, and Turk were wounded too, but not seriously. Flying debris had opened gashes on Antonio’s forehead and the back of Salvador’s head. They held handkerchiefs to their cuts. Tony had been grazed on the left breast and said the blood was staining his shirt and pants.
He recognized the National Lottery building. Had they taken the old Sánchez highway to come into the city by a less trafficked route? No, that wasn’t the reason. Tony Imbert wanted to stop at the house of his friend Julito Senior, who lived on Avenida Angelita, and telephone General Díaz to let him know they were taking the body to Pupo Román, using the coded sentence they had agreed on earlier: “The squab are ready to go into the oven, Juan Tomás.” They stopped in front of a darkened house. Tony got out. They didn’t see anyone around. Pedro Livio heard Antonio: his poor Chevrolet had been hit by dozens of bullets and had a flat tire. Pedro Livio had felt it, it made a horrible racket, and the jolting gave him stabbing pains in the stomach.
Imbert came back: nobody was home at Julito Senior’s. They’d better go straight to Juan Tomás’s house. They started driving again, very slowly; the car tilted and creaked, and they avoided the busy avenues and streets.
Salvador leaned toward him:
“How are you doing, Pedro Livio?”
“Fine, Turk, fine,” and he squeezed his arm.
“It won’t be long now. At Juan Tomás’s house, a doctor will look at you.”
What a shame he didn’t have the strength to tell his friends not to worry, that he was happy now that the Goat was dead. They had avenged the Mirabal sisters, and poor Rufino de la Cruz, the driver who took them to the Fortress of Puerto Plata to visit their imprisoned husbands; Trujillo had ordered him killed as well to make the farce of the accident more believable. That murder had shaken Pedro Livio in the deepest part of his being and moved him, after November 25, 1960, to join the conspiracy organized by his friend Antonio de la Maza. He had only heard of the Mirabal sisters. But, like many Dominicans, he had been devastated by the tragic end of those girls from Salcedo. Now they were killing defenseless women too, and nobody did a thing about it! Have we sunk so low in the Dominican Republic? Damn it, weren’t there any men left in this country? Listening to Antonio Imbert speak so movingly about Minerva Mirabal, he—always reluctant to externalize his feelings—broke down in front of his friends, the only time he had cried as an adult. Yes, there were still men in the Dominican Republic who had balls. The proof was the corpse bouncing around in the trunk.
“I’m dying!” he shouted. “Don’t let me die!”
“We’re almost there, Nigger.” Antonio de la Maza reassured him. “We’ll get you fixed up right away.”
He made an effort not to pass out. A short while later he recognized the intersection of Máximo Gómez and Avenida Bolívar.
“Did you see that official car?” asked Imbert. “Wasn’t that Pupo Román?”
“Pupo’s at home, waiting,” Antonio de la Maza replied. “He told Amiama and Juan Tomás he wouldn’t go out tonight.”