A Sweet Scent of Death Read online

  ‘Hi there, folks. What’s all the fuss?’ The villagers crowded around the classroom door fell back. Carmelo was not a bad man, nor was he good; he was a cop and that was reason enough to get out of his way.

  Lozano had been able to see the corpse laid out in the classroom through one of the windows. He was delighted to corroborate his hunch; his ‘vibes’ had never failed him. He grabbed Guzmaro Collazos, an absent-minded youngster who had just arrived, by the shoulder.

  ‘Who got killed, son?’ asked Carmelo.

  Guzmaro couldn’t answer. He tried to break loose but Carmelo’s huge hand held him tight.

  ‘What’s the matter? Tell me.’

  Justino Téllez appeared in the doorway and changed the focus.

  ‘First say hello, Captain…or have you forgotten your manners?’

  Carmelo looked down at him from his six foot six and smiled. He and Justino had known each other since before Loma Grande was a village called Loma Grande, when it had been merely a four-house settlement. Carmelo let go of Guzmaro, who quickly got as far away from the policemen as he could, and walked towards Justino. They greeted each other as they had since they were boys.

  ‘What’s with you, beast with claws?’ exclaimed Lozano.

  Justino immediately answered, ‘Just hanging out, beast with hoofs.’

  Carmelo reached Justino and feinted a hook to the liver. The delegate pretended to dodge it.

  ‘What’s bitten you, Captain, to bring you all the way out here?’

  ‘Nothing much, friend; just that I woke up with a yen to see your ugly face.’

  Justino offered his hand and Carmelo gripped it in his.

  ‘Well, now you have,’ said Justino, ‘you can go back where you came from.’

  Carmelo raised his eyebrows. ‘Ahhh…Justino, you’re some number.’

  The two stared at each other for a few seconds, then Téllez stepped forward.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said to the officer. ‘There are too many ears around here waiting to hear what’s none of their business.’

  The curious around them drew back as if to escape the allusion. Lozano gestured his eight men to wait for him. The two walked a few steps away into the shadow of a tall huisache.

  ‘It seems, Carmelo,’ said Téllez, as soon as he felt out of earshot, ‘that a young thing has gone and died on us.’

  ‘She died, or they died her?’

  Justino spat on the loose earth and watched his spittle disappear into the dust.

  ‘She was died…malagueña-style: a knife in the back.’

  With no change of expression, Carmelo smoothed his mustache and broke a twig off the huisache, to chew on.

  ‘And who did they kill?’

  Justino shook his head: ‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

  Carmelo shook his left arm to get rid of a grasshopper caught in his watch strap. The insect flew off towards the crowd watching them.

  ‘Do you know who killed her?’

  ‘Don’t know that either.’

  ‘About how old was the girl?’ inquired Lozano.

  Justino thought for a moment.

  ‘I’m not much good at figuring ages, but I’d guess fifteen.’

  Carmelo moistened his parched lips and wiped off the sweat beading his eyebrows.

  ‘It sure is hot,’ he said, staring at the heat waves shimmering along the street. ‘So what do you think?’ he continued. ‘Doesn’t it smell like a crime of passion?’

  Téllez assented without conviction.

  ‘These damned people, friend,’ added Lozano. ‘Nothing civilizes them. They still kill for no good reason at all.’

  Justino looked at him in disbelief. In his youth, Lozano had badly wounded a woman out of sheer jealousy. She had survived the two slugs he put into her, and he, repentant, had proposed marriage. The woman accepted, but they never married. She had died of alcoholic congestion a few days before the wedding. Since then, he had considered any outburst of passion an act of barbarism.

  ‘That’s not “no good reason,” ’ argued Justino jokingly. ‘Your problem is that you’re old and don’t understand these things any more.’

  ‘It’s your tail that’s old,’ rejoined Carmelo. He looked up at the sun, which seemed to vibrate in the sky. ‘Shit,’ he growled. ‘I came all the way out here for nothing.’

  Justino laughed sardonically. ‘What did you expect, Captain? Contraband? A plane-load of grass?’

  ‘Something worthwhile,’ answered Lozano. ‘Not a no-account killing.’

  Justino knew that, deep down, what irritated Carmelo was the absence of anyone vulnerable to extortion, and without suspects or perpetrators there was no way to squeeze some money out of the affair. The crime and its victim concerned him not at all.

  He licked his parched lips again. ‘At least offer me a beer.’

  Justino was on the verge of a ready ‘Sure’ when he remembered that, of the two stores in the village, the only one open on Sundays that sold cold beer belonged to Ramón.

  ‘Can’t be done.’

  ‘No shit,’ exclaimed Carmelo.

  ‘There’s no place to go,’ explained Justino.

  ‘How come?’ asked Carmelo, rubbing the back of his neck.

  ‘Because the victim was Ramón Castaños’ girlfriend, and he owns the store around the corner.’

  ‘Ramón? Francisca’s son?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Carmelo smacked his tongue.

  ‘Hey, didn’t you say you didn’t know who was killed?’

  ‘Honestly, no. I never saw the girl before, and I don’t know who she is. I’ve already told you the little I know, and I only found that out minutes ago.’

  Lozano scratched his head, intrigued. ‘Where’s Ramón?’

  ‘In there, at the wake,’ answered Justino.

  Carmelo threw away the huisache twig he’d been chewing.

  ‘I can’t even get a goddam beer. This isn’t worth shit,’ he complained. He took a ballpoint and a notebook out of his shirt pocket.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Justino.

  ‘Gotta write a report.’

  Justino snorted in disagreement. ‘Don’t shit me, Carmelo; leave things be. I’ll handle it here and let you know what I find out.’

  Lozano gave Justino a long look and slowly shook his head: ‘Partner, why the hell do you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong?’

  ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ exploded Justino. ‘The last time you made one of your goddam reports we had the state troopers all over the village, only because you thought—’

  Suddenly Carmelo interrupted him: ‘Ramón killed her, right?’

  Justino frowned, caught off balance.

  ‘I knew it,’ continued Lozano. ‘That’s jealousy for you, partner; no way to control it.’

  Chapter IV

  Adela Comes Back to Life

  1

  A shriek echoed across the four walls of the classroom: ‘She’s alive,’ howled Prudencia Negrete. The old woman had seen the corpse twisting under the blanket.

  Rosa León joined her with an even more strident howl: ‘She’s alive…she’s moving…’

  Ramón turned to look and felt a clawing sensation in his stomach; Adela was indeed moving: one of her sides was rising and falling slowly.

  ‘Holy God, forgive us,’ sobbed Gertrudis Sánchez, the only prostitute in Loma Grande and its environs, kneeling on the floor.

  Lucio Estrada cut short the collective hysteria. ‘Bunch of clowns,’ he whispered in Ramón’s ear. He walked to the body and uncovered it to the shoulders. Adela’s peaceful expression of the morning had changed. Now her face seemed hardened, tense, about to scream.

  ‘What do you mean, alive?’ said Lucio sarcastically. ‘All that heaving is because of the gases.’

  Confused, Rosa León drew closer to verify what Lucio said, and when she was almost on top of the corpse, Lucio poked her in the ribs.

  ‘Look out; she bites.’

>   Rosa León jumped back unsteadily as a number of people laughed out loud. But not Ramón. The sight of Adela, far more dead than before, affected him deeply. In a matter of seconds, Adela had changed before his eyes. No longer was she the warm woman he had carried in his arms, who had left him all confused. Now she was an enormous piece of meat. Even so, Adela seemed to stick to him, to swallow him, to subjugate him.

  Lucio covered the body and spread out his arms, satisfied with his demonstration and with having ridiculed the hysterical women. Full of himself, he turned to chat with his friends while Rosa León sobbed as she left the classroom amid considerable laughter.

  Prudencia’s and Rosa’s screams had caught everyone’s attention, making them forget that nine rural policemen were waiting outside. They suddenly became aware of Carmelo Lozano and his men climbing into their pick-ups and Justino waving them off with a disgruntled flip of the hand.

  The law departed as it had arrived: in a cloud of dust and scaring the kids.

  Justino had managed to dispel Carmelo Lozano’s suspicions of Ramón one by one. ‘No, Captain, the boy isn’t capable of something like this. We have both known him since he was little. How can you believe he would do something this awful?’

  Justino’s defense of the shopkeeper cost him a lot of jaw and a hundred pesos. ‘For gas,’ insisted Carmelo, ‘and to buy me some ice-cold beer in Mante, since I was not properly received here.’ Before he left, Lozano promised to return the following week ‘to check out this unsolved matter’ and, since he was not a bad man, he proved his good faith by the following report:

  Sunday, 8 September 1991

  Patrol carried out. Nothing of importance detected, nor crimes to pursue. The area in complete calm and good order.

  Justino returned to the classroom and approached Ramón.

  ‘I saved you from the lock-up,’ he scolded, ‘but you’re going to have to explain all this mystery.’

  2

  The rays of the midday sun began to lick the village. The atmosphere in the classroom turned hot and clammy with the sweat and discharges of so many bodies. The concentrated odor of perspiration spared those present the bittersweet smell revealing the corpse’s rapid decomposition. They became aware of it only when a dozen or so large green flies began to settle on the viscous ooze slipping beyond the edges of the straw mat.

  ‘The flies are after her already,’ pointed out Jacinto Cruz.

  Justino Téllez approached the butcher. ‘What do we do?’ he asked.

  Jacinto Cruz wrinkled his nose, the better to sniff and determine the body’s degree of putrefaction.

  ‘She has to be prepared quickly and put in a box,’ he said calmly. ‘She’s well on her way.’

  ‘Prepared’, in Loma Grande, meant dressed, combed, made up, put in a coffin, given a brief farewell, a blessing, and into the grave. In summertime the dead ripened too quickly. However, such haste was not feasible: Evelia had not yet returned with Adela’s parents. They would have to wait, and meanwhile find a way to protect the corpse from its own decay.

  After turning the problem over a number of times, someone suggested the possibility of placing the body in ice. Only two people in the village used it: Lucio Estrada, to refrigerate fish, and Ramón, to chill Coca-Colas and beers. The idea didn’t convince Lucio: the heat would melt the ice quickly and, mixed with blood, it would only cause a greater stench and attract more flies. Ramón didn’t like it either. It made him dizzy just to imagine Adela chilled like a bottle of pop.

  They forgot the ice. Tomás Lima, who at one time had worked in a pharmacy in Tampico, suggested injecting the body with formaldehyde. ‘That will keep her,’ he said. But the only formaldehyde available in Loma Grande belonged to Margarita Palacios, the teacher, and was used to preserve rabbit embryos in a mayonnaise jar.

  It was unlikely the teacher would give up her ration. Besides the fact that she was offended by the uproar in her school, the floating fetuses constituted the keystone of her natural science class on Darwin’s theory of evolution.

  ‘Look,’ she would say to her pupils as she shook the jar, ‘they’re just like fish.’ Then she would puff out her cheeks and exclaim, ‘But careful, they’re baby rabbits,’ and smile, satisfied with what she felt was a precise demonstration of the great scientist’s thesis.

  Indeed, the good teacher wasn’t about to donate her ration of formaldehyde to the deceased, who was upsetting her school room, and even if she had been, it wouldn’t have been enough—hardly four injections, whereas it would take three liters to embalm a body. Tomás Lima suggested 96° proof alcohol.

  ‘Who has alcohol?’ asked Justino Téllez aloud.

  Two women responded and willingly went home to get it. Martina Borja returned quickly with half a liter in a white plastic container. Conradia Jiménez came back empty-handed under the impression the little she had put away had been consumed by her husband during one of his explosive binges.

  Half a liter was not enough. Justino Téllez tried again: ‘Does anyone else have any alcohol?’

  Sotelo Villa remembered that he had seen a bottle of hydrogen peroxide among his belongings.

  ‘Would that be any use?’ he asked.

  Tomás Lima thought for a moment and said, ‘Well, it’s better than nothing.’

  So, Sotelo Villa brought the bottle of peroxide, Guzmaro Collazos some gentian violet, and Prudencio Negrete a little bottle of Merthiolate.

  Tomás Lima grimaced.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Justino.

  ‘That’s still not enough to do the job,’ he said.

  Several other people went home in the hope of finding some kind of injectable medicine or preparation, but returned empty-handed.

  Torcuato Garduño, who had been silent throughout the morning leaning in a corner, spoke up: ‘Suppose we inject her with booze?’

  Justino shot him an angry glance and was about to reprove him when Tomás Lima declared thoughtfully, ‘It’s alcohol, it might work.’

  ‘Go for it,’ said Torcuato with a grin, producing a pint from under his shirt which he passed to Tomás, who took it reverently, opened it, sniffed it and took a long pull.

  ‘Shit,’ he said with emotion, ‘this is really good rum. You bet it’ll work.’

  3

  They mixed the 96° proof alcohol with the peroxide, rum from a variety of bottles and the Merthiolate in an enamel pot.

  After preparing the embalming fluid, the matter of how to inject it into the body arose. Amador Cendejas contributed a disposable syringe with a rusty needle he had found half-buried in his own corral, which he had used to vaccinate his goats several months before. Ethiel Cervera brought a yellowing biology text containing illustrations of the human anatomy so that they could find veins and arteries. Finally, who was to inject Adela?

  ‘Will you do it?’ Justino asked Tomás discreetly.

  ‘No way, it gives me the willies…Let Ramón do it; she was his girl.’

  One glance at Ramón and Justino realized the boy would never even take the syringe in his hands.

  Justino offered the task to several others, who immediately declined: ‘No, not me, my hand shakes.’ ‘What happens if I inject myself?’ ‘Won’t Ramón get mad?’

  In view of the shower of excuses, there was nothing for it but to enlist Torcuato Garduño, who was considered by all the villagers to be clumsy and careless.

  In spite of his reputation, Torcuato revealed unusual skill in the handling of cadavers. He punctured the body with great skill and accuracy through the blanket and without exposing a single centimeter of naked skin. Following the illustrations in the biology book step by step, he introduced the needle by approximation, accurately finding the best channels through which to administer the fluid.

  It took him several minutes under the eyes of numerous attentive onlookers. When he had finished, he stood up perspiring, handed Tomás the syringe and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘It feels like shit,’ he said, his face livid and his m
outh dry.

  A sweet scent of alcohol, rum, death and perspiration hung in the air.

  Chapter V

  The Newcomers

  1

  Evelia finally showed up at four in the afternoon. She came along the hot, dusty street accompanied by Adela’s parents: a woman in her fifties, all skin and bone, with a face wrinkled by the sun, and a tall old man, bald with pale eyes.

  They reached the school and entered the classroom. The woman hurried to the body, uncovered it slowly but with obvious anxiety, and screamed at the sight of the face. The old man, seeing his wife’s reaction, approached the corpse, closed his eyes and began to cry quietly.

  Few in the village knew Adela’s parents or even Adela. They were among the ‘newcomers’, the twenty or thirty campesinos who had arrived at Loma Grande from time to time, brought by the government from such far-off places as Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán, to work land expropriated from drug-dealers that had been declared ejido. The old residents of Loma Grande avoided the ‘newcomers’, regarding them as intruders, outsiders, and opportunists who usurped plots that might well have belonged to them. The recent arrivals, mostly of humble origin and brought up in the most conservative traditions, were suspicious of the old residents, whose customs seemed strange and libertine to them. Thus, the two groups lived separate lives.

  New or not, Adela’s parents moved all those present. Her mother, lying on the floor next to her daughter’s body, moaned stifled lamentations. Crushed, her father seemed to shrink as he sat hugging his knees.