Death in the Andes Read Online Free

on the outskirts of the city, about a hundred meters from the highway to Aguatía and Pucallpa, and sounds and voices could be heard clearly through its thin walls. There was another sharp crack, and the woman cried out again.
    â€œNo more, Daddy,” her muffled voice pleaded. “Don’t hit me anymore.”
    It seemed to Carreño that the man was laughing, the same lecherous snigger he had heard the last time, in Pucallpa.
    â€œA boss’s laugh, the laugh of the man in charge who can do whatever he wants, the guy who’ll fuck anything that moves and has plenty of soles and plenty of dollars,” he explained, with an old rancor, to the corporal.
    Lituma imagined the sadist’s slanted little eyes: bulging inside their pouches of fat, burning with lust each time the woman moaned. He didn’t find things like that exciting, but apparently some men did. Of course, he wasn’t as shocked by them as his adjutant was. What could you do? This fucking life was a bitch. Weren’t the terrucos killing people left and right and saying it was for the revolution? They got a kick out of blood, too.
    â€œFinish it, Hog, you motherfucker, I thought,” Tomás continued. “Get off, get done, go to sleep. But he went on and on.”
    â€œThat’s enough now, Daddy. No more,” the woman pleaded from time to time.
    The boy was perspiring and had trouble breathing. A truck roared down the highway, and for a moment its yellowish lights illuminated the dead leaves and tree trunks, the stones and mud in the ditch at the side of the road. When it was dark again, the little glowing lights returned. Tomás had never seen fireflies before, and he thought of them as tiny flying lanterns. If only Fats Iscariote were with him. Talking and joking, listening to him describe the great meals he had eaten, passing the time, he wouldn’t hear what he was hearing, wouldn’t imagine what he was imagining.
    â€œAnd now I’m going to ram this tool all the way up to your eyeballs,” the man purred, insane with joy. “And make you scream like your mother did when she gave birth to you.”
    Lituma thought he could hear Hog’s slow little snicker, the laugh of a man on whom life has smiled, a man who always gets what he wants. He could imagine him with no problem, but not her; she was a shape without a face, a silhouette that never quite solidified.
    â€œIf Iscariote had been with me, talking to me, I would have forgotten about what was going on in the house,” said Tomás. “But Fats was watching the road, and I knew that nothing would make him leave his post, that he’d be there all night dreaming about food.”
    The woman cried out again, and this time she did not stop weeping. Could those muffled sounds be kicks?
    â€œFor the love of God,” she begged.
    â€œAnd then I realized I was holding the revolver in my hand,” said the boy, lowering his voice as if someone might hear him. “I had taken it out of the holster and was playing with it, fiddling with the trigger, spinning the barrel. Without even knowing it, Corporal, I swear.”
    Lituma turned on his side to look at him. In the cot next to his, Tomasito’s barely visible profile was softened by the faint light of the stars and moon shining through the window.
    â€œWhat were you going to do, you poor bastard?”
    He had climbed the wooden steps on tiptoe and very quietly pushed at the front door until he felt resistance from the bar. It was as if his hands and feet were no longer controlled by his head. “No more, Daddy,” the woman begged monotonously. Blows fell from time to time, and now the boy could hear Hog’s heavy breathing. There was no bolt on the door. He just leaned against it and it began to give way: the creaking was lost in the sound of blows and pleading. When it opened wide with a sharp cracking sound, the wailing and beating stopped and somebody