Woes of the True Policeman

different outfits that were moving, not the flesh-and-blood people. Everything was clear. The afternoon had no secrets! But at the same time, everything was out of whack. I saw skirts, pants, shoes, white tights and black tights, socks, handkerchiefs, jackets, ties, a whole store’s worth of clothes, I saw cowboy hats and straw hats, baseball caps and hair ribbons, and all the clothes flowed along the sidewalk, flowed through the arcade, completely removed from the reality of the pedestrians, as if the flesh they sat on repelled them. Happy people, is what I should have been thinking. I should have envied them. Wanted to be them. People with money in their pockets or not, but glad to be on their way to the movie theater or the record store or anywhere, people going to eat or drink beer, or on the way home after a walk. But what I thought was: all those clothes. All those clean, new, useless clothes.”
    “You were probably thinking about the blood, darling,” said the whore.
    “No, I wasn’t thinking about the bullet holes or the blood splattering everything. I was thinking about clothes, that’s all. About the motherfucking pants and shirts going back and forth.”
    “Don’t you want me to go down on you, sugar?” asked the whore.
    “No. Stay where you are. Don Gabriel’s wife, I didn’t see her clothes. I saw her pearl necklace. Like a solar system. And I saw everything about the couple of fat slobs who were with me: the way they looked at each other, the shiny jackets, the dark ties, the white shirts, and the shoes, how to describe them, leather shoes that weren’t old but weren’t new, either, shoes for jerk-offs and scum, shoes for losers, with creases where you can see the pathetic celebrations and fears of men who’ve sold out everything and still think they can be happy or at least hold on to some kind of happiness, some dinner every once in a while, a Sunday with the family and the kids, the poor brats stuck in the desert, the crumpled photos good for squeezing out a couple of tears, tears that stink of shit. Yes, I saw their shoes and then I saw the parade of clothes in the air and I said to myself look at the waste, look at the wealth in this city of sin.”
    “Now you’re exaggerating, love,” said the whore.
    “No, I’m not. It happened exactly the way I’m telling you. Don Gabriel’s wife didn’t even realize that death was on top of her. But the slobs from Tijuana and I saw it and right away we knew what we were seeing. The killers walked like movie stars. Like a weird cross between movie stars and clerks. They walked slowly, not bothering to really hide their guns and never taking their eyes off us for a second. I guess that was when my buddies decided they’d had enough. Those looks, they were thinking, beat the looks they’d been exchanging and after a second, they just spun around and went running, no, not running, trotting like draft horses, swinging past the crowds of people on the sidewalk and the arcade. They didn’t say a thing to me. And I had no time to yell assholes, cowards, faggots.”
    “The worst kind of trash, darling,” said the whore.
    “I stood there motionless, next to the señora, who didn’t know what was going on, why we had stopped, noticing how my white shirt and drill pants were shivering, too big, if my belt hadn’t been pulled tight they would’ve fallen down and lain there shivering on the ground. But I also had time to get a look at the killers. One of them, the one with the Magnum, walked on as if he hadn’t noticed a thing, and the other one smiled at the sight of my two buddies running off, as if to say life is funny isn’t it, as if to say running away isn’t cowardice, it just means you’re light on your feet. I noticed the one with the Magnum: he reminded me of someone from Villaviciosa. There was something sad and serious about him and he wasn’t so young anymore, or that’s how it seemed to me. Not the other one, I’m sure the other one was from the city. Then people began to back away, probably because they saw the guns or because all of a sudden they realized that there was going to be a shoot-out or because they got a look at the señora and me and thought we looked like goners.”
    “I can imagine how scared you must have been, love,” said the whore.
    “I wasn’t afraid. I waited until they were just fifteen feet away and when I had them there, before anyone could scream, I pulled my gun out nice and easy, no sudden