Summary

Back in 1961, Trujillo meets with Johnny Abbes, head of the intelligence service SIM. Through Trujillo’s musings on Abbes’ failed attempt at living up to uniform standards, we get a picture of a short, ugly, and cruel man: “a toad in body and soul” (56). Abbes councils Trujillo to murder Bishop Reilly. Trujillo refuses him, worried that John F. Kennedy, the catholic president of the U.S., would use it as an excuse to invade.

As Trujillo jokes that Abbes would have no other choice but to fight with him, he remembers Abbes’ past. A poet and sports reporter, he used to be an informant in Mexico City before he was brought to Santa Dominigo to work for the SIM. After observing him reading a book on Chinese torture methods, Trujillo orders him to kill an ex-secretary and hostile author in Mexico. This becomes the...