He often asked his interrogators to allow him a confessor. At last, the jailer who brought their meals asked who wanted a priest. They all raised their hands. He had them put on trousers and brought them up the steep staircase to the room where Turk had been insulted by his father. To see the sun and feel its warm touch on his skin renewed his spirit. Even more so when he confessed and took communion, something he thought he would never do again. When the military chaplain, Father Rodríguez Canela, asked them to join him in a prayer in memory of Trujillo, only Salvador kneeled down and prayed with him. His companions, disconcerted, remained standing.
From Father Rodríguez Canela he learned the date: August 30, 1961. Only three months had gone by! To him it seemed as if this nightmare had lasted for centuries. Depressed, debilitated, demoralized, they spoke little among themselves, and conversations always revolved around what they had seen, heard, and experienced in El Nueve. Of all the statements his cellmates made, the one indelibly etched into Salvador’s brain was the story told by a sobbing Modesto Díaz. For the first few weeks he had been in a cell with Miguel Ángel Báez Díaz. Turk remembered his surprise on May 30 when this individual appeared in his Volkswagen on the San Cristóbal highway to assure them that Trujillo, with whom he had walked along the Avenida, would come, which was how Salvador learned that this powerful man among the Trujillista faithful was also part of the conspiracy. Abbes García and Ramfis, infuriated with him because he had been so close to Trujillo, were present for all the sessions of electric shocks, beatings, and burnings inflicted on him, and ordered the SIM doctors to revive him so the torture could continue. After two or three weeks, instead of the usual plate of foul-smelling corn mush, a pot with pieces of meat was brought to them in their cell. Miguel Ángel Báez and Modesto gulped it down, choking, eating with both hands until they were full. A short time later the jailer came in. He confronted Báez Díaz: General Ramfis Trujillo wanted to know if eating his own son didn’t make him sick. From the floor, Miguel Ángel insulted him: “You can tell that filthy son of a bitch for me that I hope he swallows his tongue and poisons himself.” The jailer started to laugh. He left and came back, and from the door he showed them the head of a boy, holding it up by the hair. Miguel Ángel Báez Díaz died a few hours later, in Modesto’s arms, of a heart attack.
The image of Miguel Ángel recognizing the head of Miguelito, his oldest son, obsessed Salvador; he had nightmares in which he saw Luisito and Carmen Elly decapitated. He would scream in his sleep, annoying his cellmates.
Unlike his friends, several of whom had tried to end their lives, Salvador was determined to resist until the end. He had reconciled himself with God—he prayed day and night—and the Church forbade suicide. Besides, it wasn’t easy to kill oneself. Huáscar Tejeda made the attempt with a tie he stole from one of the jailers (who kept it folded in his back pocket). He tried to hang himself but failed, and because he tried, his punishment intensified. Pedro Livio Cedeño tried to get himself killed by provoking Ramfis in the torture chamber: “son of a bitch,” “bastard,” “motherfucker,” “your slut of a mother La Españolita worked in a whorehouse before she was Trujillo’s girlfriend,” and he even spat on him. Ramfis did not fire the shots he longed for: “Not yet, not so fast. That’ll come at the end. You have to keep paying first.”
The second time Salvador Estrella Sadhalá learned the date, it was October 9, 1961. They had him put on trousers, and again he climbed the stairs to the room where the sunlight hurt his eyes and brought joy to his skin. Ramfis was there, pale and impeccable in his uniform of a four-star general, with that day’s
El Caribe
in his hand: October 9, 1961. Salvador read the large headline: “Letter from General Pedro A. Estrella to General Ramfis, son of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.”
“Read this letter your father sent me.” Ramfis handed him the paper. “He talks about you.”
Salvador, his wrists cut by handcuffs, grasped
El Caribe
. He felt vertigo and an indefinable mixture of revulsion and sadness, but he read the entire letter. General Piro Estrella called the Goat “the greatest of all Dominicans,” boasted of having been his friend, bodyguard, and protégé, and alluded to Salvador with vile epithets; he spoke of “the felony of a son gone astray” and of “my son’s treason when he betrayed his protector” and his own family. Worse than the insults was the final paragraph: his father thanked Ramfis, with bombastic servility, for giving him money to help him survive the confiscation of the family’s property because of his son’s participation in the assassination.
He returned to his cell sick with disgust and shame. He did not hold up his head again, although he attempted to hide his demoralization from his companions. “It isn’t Ramfis, it’s my father who has killed me,” he thought. And he envied Antonio de la Maza. What luck to be the son of a man like Don Vicente!
A few days after that cruel October 9, when he and his five cellmates were moved to La Victoria—they were hosed down and the clothes they were wearing when they were arrested were returned to them—Turk was a walking corpse. Not even the possibility of having visitors—half an hour, on Thursdays—and hugging and kissing his wife, Luisito, and Carmen Elly, could melt the ice that had formed around his heart after he read General Piro Estrella’s public letter to Ramfis Trujillo.
In La Victoria the torture and interrogations stopped. They still slept on the floor but were no longer naked: they wore clothes sent to them from home. The handcuffs were removed. Their families could send food, soft drinks, and some money, with which they bribed their jailers to sell them newspapers, give them information about other prisoners, or carry messages to the outside. President Balaguer’s speech at the United Nations, condemning the Trujillo dictatorship and promising democratization “while maintaining order,” brought a rebirth of hope in the prison. It seemed incredible, but there was a burgeoning political opposition, with the Civic Union and June 14 operating in the light of day. Above all, his friends were encouraged to learn that in the United States, Venezuela, and elsewhere, committees had been formed to demand that they be tried in a civil court, with international observers. Salvador made an effort to share the optimism of the others. In his prayers, he asked God to give him back his hope. Because he had none. He had seen the implacable expression on Ramfis’s face. Would he let them go free? Never. He would carry his revenge through to the end.
There was an explosion of rejoicing in La Victoria when it was learned that Petán and Blacky Trujillo had left the country. Now Ramfis would go too. Balaguer would have no recourse but to declare an amnesty. Modesto Díaz, however, with his powerful logic and cold analytical method, convinced them that their families and attorneys had to mobilize in their defense, now more than ever. Ramfis would not leave before he had exterminated his papa’s executioners. As he listened, Salvador observed the ruin that Modesto had become: he was still losing weight and he had the face of a wrinkled old man. How many kilos had he shed? The trousers and shirts his wife brought swam on him, and every week he had to make new holes in his belt.
Salvador was always sad but spoke to no one about his father’s public letter, which he carried with him like a knife in the back. Even though their plans did not work out as they had hoped, and there had been so much death and so much suffering, their action had helped to change things. The news filtering into the cells of La Victoria told of meetings, of young people decapitating statues of Trujillo and tearing down plaques with his name and the names of his family, of some exiles returning. Wasn’t this the beginning of the end of the Trujillo Era? None of it could have happened if they hadn’t killed the Beast.
The return of the Trujillo brothers was an ice-cold shower for the prisoners in La Victoria. Making no effort to hide his joy, on November 17 Major Américo Dante Minervino, the prison warden, told Salvador, Modesto Díaz, Huáscar Tejeda, Pedro Livio, Fifí Pastoriza, and the young Tunti Cáceres that at nightfall they would be transferred to the cells in the Palace of Justice because the next day there would be another reconstruction of the crime on the Avenida. They pooled all their money and, through one of the jailers, sent urgent messages to their families, telling them that something suspicious was going on; there was no doubt the reconstruction was a farce and Ramfis had decided to kill them.
At dusk the six men were handcuffed and taken away, with an escort of three armed guards, in the kind of black van with tinted windows that people in Santo Domingo called the Dogcatcher. Salvador closed his eyes and begged God to take care of his wife and children. Contrary to their worst fears, they were not taken to the cliffs, the regime’s favorite spot for secret executions, but to the center of town and the Palace of Justice at the Fairgrounds. They spent most of the night standing, since the cell was so narrow they could not all sit down at the same time. They took turns sitting, two by two. Pedro Livio and Fifí Pastoriza were in good spirits; if they had been brought here, the story about the reconstruction was true. Their optimism infected Tunti Cáceres and Huáscar Tejeda. Yes, yes, why not? They’d be turned over to the Judicial Branch to be tried by civilian judges. Salvador and Modesto Díaz remained silent, concealing their skepticism.
In a very quiet voice, Turk whispered in his friend’s ear: “This is the end, isn’t it, Modesto?” The lawyer nodded, not saying anything, squeezing his arm.
Before the sun came up they were taken out of the prison and put into the Dogcatcher again. There was an impressive military deployment around the Palace of Justice, and Salvador, in the uncertain light, saw that all the soldiers wore Air Force insignia. They were from San Isidro Air Base, the fiefdom of Ramfis and Virgilio García Trujillo. He said nothing, not wanting to alarm his companions. In the cramped van he tried to talk to God, as he had for part of the night, asking that He help him die with dignity, that he not dishonor himself with any show of cowardice, but he could not concentrate now. His failure caused him great anguish.
After a short drive, the van came to a stop. They were on the San Cristóbal highway. This had to be the site of the assassination. The sun gilded the sky, the coconut palms along the road, the ocean that murmured as it broke against the rocks. There were a great many guards. They had cordoned off the highway and blocked traffic in both directions.
“As far as this circus is concerned, the boy turned out to be as much of a clown as his papa,” he heard Modesto Díaz say.
“Why should it be a circus?” Fifí Pastoriza protested. “Don’t be such a pessimist. It’s a reconstruction. Even the judges are here. Don’t you see?”
“The same kind of joke his papa liked,” Modesto insisted, shaking his head in disgust.
Farce or not, it went on for many hours, until the sun was in the middle of the sky and began to drill into their skulls. One by one, they were made to pass in front of a campaign table set up outdoors, where two men in civilian clothing asked the same questions that had been asked in El Nueve and La Victoria. Typists recorded their answers. Only low-ranking officers were present. None of the top brass—Ramfis, Abbes García, Pechito León Estévez, Pirulo Sánchez Rubirosa—were visible during the tedious ceremony. They were not given anything to eat, only some glasses of soda at noon. It was early afternoon when the rotund warden of La Victoria, Major Américo Dante Minervino, put in an appearance. He was chewing nervously on his mustache and his face looked more sinister than usual. He was accompanied by a corpulent black with the flattened nose of a boxer, a submachine gun on his shoulder and a pistol tucked into his belt. They were returned to the Dogcatcher.
“Where are we going?” Pedro Livio asked Minervino.
“Back to La Victoria,” he said. “I came to take you back myself so you won’t get lost.”
“What an honor,” replied Pedro Livio.
The major was behind the wheel and the black with the boxer’s face sat beside him. The three guards escorting them in the rear of the Dogcatcher were so young they looked like new recruits. They seemed tense, overwhelmed by the responsibility of guarding such important prisoners. In addition to handcuffs, their ankles were tied rather loosely, allowing them to take short steps.
“What the hell do these ropes mean?” Tunti Cáceres protested.
One of the guards pointed at the major and lifted a finger to his mouth: “Quiet.”
During the long ride, Salvador realized they were not going back to La Victoria, and judging by the faces of his companions, they had guessed the same thing. They were silent, some with their eyes closed and others with their eyes opened wide, and blazing, as if trying to see through the metal sides of the vehicle to find out where they were. He did not try to pray. His anxiety was so great, it would have been useless. God would understand.
When the van stopped, they heard the ocean crashing at the foot of a high cliff. The guards opened the door. They were at a deserted spot with reddish earth and sparse trees, on what seemed to be a promontory. The sun was still shining, but it had already begun its descending arc. Salvador told himself that dying would be a way to rest. What he felt now was immense weariness.
Dante Minervino and the powerful black with the face of a boxer had the three adolescent guards climb out of the van, but when the six prisoners tried to follow, they stopped them: “Stay where you are.” Immediately after that, they began to fire. Not at them, at the young soldiers. The three boys fell, riddled with bullets, without time to be surprised, to understand, to scream.
“What are you doing, what are you doing, you criminals!” Salvador bellowed. “Why kill those poor guards? Murderers!”
“We’re not killing them, you are,” Major Dante Minervino replied, very seriously, as he reloaded his submachine gun; the black with the flattened face rewarded him with a giggle. “And now you can get out.”
Stunned, stupid with surprise, the six men were taken down, and, stumbling—the ropes obliged them to move in ridiculous little jumps—over the corpses of the three guards, they were taken to another, identical van parked a few meters away. One man in civilian clothes was guarding it. After locking them into the back of the van, the three men squeezed into the front seat. Once again, Dante Minervino was at the wheel.