Advance: I have considered it convenient to alter the names -in one case, rather the suppression of part of a name- of the main characters of this story; a venal sin at best. In any case, the names matter little if the source of the story reflects the truth that lies beneath the situation, and the reader will surely recognize the true identity of the characters if he so chooses.
Twenty-five years have passed since this happened. Inquiring about this, I spoke to the psychologist who was involved in the case and asked him why he did what he did, and his answer was, “For a bowl of soup, I gave up my career.” Very well said, I thought at the time. Because after he killed his patient, there were no more murders in Lima, Peru. But I’m getting ahead of my story. Let’s go back twenty-five years or so, in this reproduced historical fiction narrative (a depiction of what may have happened before his arrest).
It was a hot summer day in Lima, Peru in the late 1970s, not sure why I was there, a place to be I guess as good as any place. All I heard was about a series of murders, and the police were finding body parts all over town. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like, to be butchered alive and my body parts buried all over town, and all of a sudden, someone finding an arm or a leg and saying, “There, look here! !” Everyone was talking about this mass murder they nicknamed “The Butcher of Lima.”
I confess, I couldn’t think of anything worse in the world.
I kept hearing about the Butcher, the Butcher, on the radio, on television, in cafes and reading about him in the newspapers, as if there were no more news. He was the star of Lima, a celebrity. So it’s no wonder I couldn’t get him out of my mind.
Lima had its own problems, without this guy, I thought, enough was enough. It was 11:00 in the morning. I came out of a sweaty dream; As macabre as they get. When I went to find a taxi to eat at the café I usually go to in Miraflores, the streets were hot as a freshly fired gun. Dust from the wind swirled and blew in my direction.
I had eggs and lamb chops for breakfast; and behind the face of Marybell, my waitress, a young mother, with twin sons, quite pretty, she, like almost everyone in Lima, shuddered when I opened the newspaper to see the dirty deeds that the Butcher could have done. the previous night. I moved the newspaper a bit, didn’t look at it too long, thinking that other people would think I liked reading such horrible garbage, but everyone was doing the same. Therefore, I didn’t leave the page where his dirty deeds were exposed for long.
(I knew something was wrong, my senses told me, they told me that these continual waves of killing were too uncomfortable for me to pass up, because the whole city was in shock over it. So I walked around the park area.) Miraflores, as if adrift, since I did the same in the Plaza de Armas a few kilometers away trying to think if I should look for my friends at the hotel and investigate more on this matter.)
He was supposed to have a long vacation, and some sort of job as well. She often put them both together. She was trying to finish a book that wasn’t really about a mass murder case. But this was becoming a concern for me nonetheless. I got some exposure as an American writer in Lima and a presentation of my previous book at a local bookstore. Therefore, I had journalistic coverage, along with a television interview and a short lecture at a university. This caught the attention of my colleagues in the hotel, and especially in the bar; the writers and reporters who were supposed to be covering this case: that being, El Carnicero de Lima.
“Look what’s going on in this country,” said one of the patrons at the hotel bar. “We can’t walk the streets at night anymore!” I really didn’t want to get into buying their grievance, not for myself, or for them. I just wanted to go marry Ol-way; you know, from typewriter to typewriter, and from hotel to hotel; and leave the gray stuff to them.
There were six of us in the hotel, writers and reporters that I got to know; or so they all said that they were of this race. Anyway, we talked about the case at hand, the Butcher, that it would be good news if one of us found out who he was and ratted him out. For me, I informed them, I didn’t want to reap the benefits of finding out, I liked the lazy fare status. None of them seemed eager to investigate this case too closely, although all of his expenses were paid for by his employer: two partners from New York City, one from Chicago, and one from Detroit; and yet another from Lima itself; and myself from Little Old St. Paul, Minnesota.
So there were six of us in the hotel on the same floor; room by room, all facing each other; three quarters on one side and three on the other. It reminded me of an army barracks: beds and rooms stacked up next to each other. Interestingly, it was a hotel where women, single women were not on the same floor as us. And the rich were above us. I saw them as I exited the hotel through the sunroof, yawning and stretching, trying to erase the drunken night.
Diaz
It came to be, Diaz worried me.
I never met a man like him.
I’m not sure where it came from, maybe Peruvian, that’s how it seemed at the time. He had a thin face, long tongue, always seemed to block his breath, and when he opened his mouth it was there before his teeth. He had shiny black hair. His mouth had a kind of arrogant sneer, as if the world was dumber than he was, and he could outwit them, if he so wished at any given moment.
Diaz pointed me out immediately when I arrived at the hotel. He made me feel smarter than the rest of the media in the hotel. He’d sit next to me at the bar while we all sat and talked about the news worth having, and he’d say to me in a low, sort of whisper, some witty, sarcastic comment.
He was conscious and he was criticizing others for not being able to find this mass murder, as if he could, if he tried. But he was just as indolent as the others. However, I didn’t say anything to that effect, leave him where he is, I said to myself. Let me repeat, he wasn’t impressed with the lot at the hotel, including me, he once said, “…you all are elaborate decadence drawn to the cat of life.” Oh well, so be it, I told myself, maybe she was right. We all seem to be somewhat magnetic when it comes to gangsters and murder, which makes them celebrities, if not heroes, at some point. Like I said, I left him pretty much alone and wondered if he fell into his own category. Or he was too close to the mountain to see.
He had an interesting smile, which stuck with him with a kind of hypnotic force. He reminded me of a charismatic preacher who could change his mood to follow the sermon.
“You know, my friend,” he would say, “no one cares how this story ends, as long as the expenses are paid.”
Diaz lit a cigarette, blew smoke in my face, I walked away a ting.
“You see how easy it is to make you move,” she said with an excited taste of veiled air in her stomach.
“I bet your ex-wife could control every move you made,” he added with confidence on his face.
–The city and the summer did not help me much to tan, I looked as dark as any gringo, as white that is, as white as a ghost. The many conversations with Diaz made me a bit cynical, if not downright witty with mocking wisdom at my fingertips at times.
He didn’t know what was going to happen in the future, but he knew perfectly well that Diaz would make something happen, call it military intuition. He showed unusual tendencies toward danger. He walked the streets as if no car could hit him. He sat on the windowsill as if he wasn’t capable of falling off them. The list goes on, but I think he had blue blood.
morning in the cafe
One night I missed meeting Diaz at the bar, and while reading the morning paper in my family cafe in Miraflores the next morning, my insides suddenly went numb, and the look on my face must have been twice as dumb. Marybell nodded at me, wanting to know if she had wanted to order breakfast, as she sat me casually in my chair in the cafe outside; Her eyes followed mine to the paper, it was wide open on the table, I was speechless. She looked at me after looking and started laughing.
The laugh should have told me, but I said, “What’s so funny?”
The traffic around the cafe was moving slowly, horns blaring as usual, but I didn’t really hear much. He was sitting tight.
“Well,” I commented.
“That’s your friend Diaz, he’s…he’s the ‘Butcher!” She was internally in a panic that she could see.
To this day I can’t remember what I said, or even if I was smiling. I think I tried, which is a natural thing for me. All I remember was the terrible silence that throbbed inside me, until someone said, “Hey you!” which woke both me and Marybell up, and snapped us out of our trance state.
Note: Written at the Roseville Cafe, Barnes and Noble, 05/20/05
