Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series) (10 page)

In the living room, the old man stopped. He made a sweeping gesture with his hat in Alice’s direction, like a nobleman hailing a queen. Then, at the door, he looked at the man and woman standing gravely in the middle of the living room and said grandiloquently, “The potion that Brangane gave you to drink is not fatal.” This said, he withdrew, dramatically.

“What did he mean?”

“He was doing justice to the five hundred cruzeiros that you gave him.” Mattos flipped the record again.
La Bohème
in the background gave him a certain feeling of security.

“Who is Brangane? Do you have any matches?”

“A character in an opera. Isolde asks her chambermaid Brangane to prepare a lethal poison for her and Tristan. But the maid prepares a different potion. When they drink it, they rediscover that they love each other.”

“Light my cigarette.”

Mattos lit Alice’s cigarette.

Alice moved closer to the inspector.

“You said
rediscover
. Did they love each other before?”

“Yes.”

“And after the rediscovery of love, what did they, the lovers, do?”

“Nothing.”

Alice looked closely at the inspector’s face. He had always been hard to understand. At first Alice had thought that her boyfriend’s awareness of his own poverty and an exaggerated pride were the cause of his problems. Later, agreeing with her mother’s opinion, she came to believe that the young man suffered from some kind of psychological morbidity. But who didn’t?

“Why?”

“As a Wagnerian would say, the pathos in the story is that Tristan’s honor prevents their love from being consummated.”

They fell silent.

“Is your husband a Negro?”

“A Negro? My husband?”

“Whoever killed Paulo Machado Gomes Aguiar was a Negro. If your husband isn’t a Negro, he’s not the murderer.”

“I didn’t say my husband killed Paulo.”

“But you suspect he might have killed Gomes Aguiar.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. You’re making me nervous!”

“Is there some Negro who comes to your house often?”

“Of course not!”

“There are millions of Negroes in this city. One of them might frequent your house.” Pause. “You came here and told me your husband is Luciana Gomes Aguiar’s lover. And then what?”

“Why are you talking to me like that?” The hardness in the inspector’s voice and the stain from water infiltration that she had just noticed on the ceiling made her feel a sudden anxiety. Her hands were trembling.

“You make me nervous talking to me like that.” Alice picked up her purse, took a mirror from it, and went into the bathroom.

Mattos opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of milk, and drank from the bottle. The music had ended, but now he preferred silence. He needed to take a look at his feces; he was always forgetting to do that. He picked up the book on civil law and threw it violently against the wall.

“What was that noise?” asked Alice, startled, coming out of the bathroom.

“Nothing. I threw a book against the wall.”

“Oh . . .” Alice said. “I’m late, I have to go.”

“Is that what you wanted? For me to suspect your husband?”

“I’m quite nervous.”

“You do want me to suspect your husband.”

Hurriedly, Alice opened the door and ran out.

When the inspector went after her, Alice had already descended the stairs and disappeared.

At the door to the building on Rua Marquês de Abrantes, holding a package with spaghetti, tomatoes, garlic, and onions, Salete paced back and forth, waiting for Alice to leave. Salete had gone there to visit the cop and arrived at the moment Alice got out of the taxi. She had thought about going in also but lacked the courage. Besides which, Alice’s presence had spoiled her plans. Salete put on dark glasses and cried several times, standing in the street, as she imagined what Alice and the inspector were doing in bed. The displeasure engendered by wounded pride had the effect of dissipating the scruples she had felt at making plans for that visit to the inspector. Now she would go ahead to the end.

When Alice appeared at the building’s door, Salete hid in the bakery on the ground floor, from which she saw the other woman get into a cab.

Salete went up in the elevator with her heart aching. She rang the inspector’s doorbell several times in a row. Mattos opened the door.

“Are you in a hurry?”

The lump on Mattos’s forehead, as she feared would happen, had almost disappeared completely and left no scab. He was holding an egg in his hand.

Salete went in and attempted to take the egg from the inspector’s hand but only managed to break it.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Mattos, trying with his other hand to prevent the egg from sliding to the floor.

“You’re not going to eat an egg. I’m going to make spaghetti for you. Spaghetti is good for your ulcer.”

In the bathroom, Mattos threw the remains of the egg in the toilet. He washed his hands and returned to Salete in the kitchen.

“Do you have a pot?”

The inspector had a single pot, of aluminum.

“That’ll do,” said Salete, her heart beating anxiously.

Salete filled the pot with water, placed it on the stove, and turned the gas to maximum.

“I saw that woman leaving here. The blonde from the other day.”

Mattos remained silent.

“Did you screw her?”

“No.”

The water was slow to boil, increasing Salete’s nervousness. She arranged the tomatoes, the garlic, and the two onions on the counter beside the stove.

“What do you mean, no? She was here with you a long time.”

“Don’t hassle me, Salete,” said Mattos, leaving the kitchen.

Finally, small bubbles began rising to the surface of the water in the pot.

“Alberto, come here, please!” shouted Salete.

The inspector entered the kitchen and saw the pot boiling on the stove.

“Do me a favor, love. Peel those tomatoes. Look at my hand, I can’t do it.”

Several fingers on Salete’s left hand were covered with adhesive bandages.

“How do you peel tomatoes?”

Salete didn’t know how to peel tomatoes either, or any other plant. Nor did she know how to make spaghetti.

“Oh . . . with the knife . . . take off the skin . . .”

The inspector had great difficulty doing what Salete had asked. He stained his shirt; the counter was littered with pieces of tomato.

“There, I’m done.”

“Now grab all that . . . with your hands and throw it here,” said Salete, gripping the handle of the steaming pot.

The inspector filled his hands with shredded tomatoes. As he was about to toss them into the pot, everything happened fast. The pot slipped and boiling water poured over his hand.

“Oh my God,” screamed Salete. “Does it hurt bad?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the inspector.

“My God, my God!”

“It’s nothing.”

“Does it hurt a lot? Tell the truth.”

“It hurt at first. Now it’s just burning.”

“Is it going to leave a wound? And a scab?”

“It’s enough to wrap it in gauze.”

“I have some gauze in my purse,” Salete said.

Salete took from her purse a roll of gauze, adhesive bandages, and a pair of scissors. She wrapped the inspector’s hand and secured the gauze with a piece of the bandage. While she did this, she held back to keep from crying.

“You burned me on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Me—?” She began to cry.

“I’m not going to fight with you. I just want to know why. A stupid act like that must have its reasons.”

“I adore you.” Sobs.

“Answer me.”

“I’d give my life for you.”

“Yet you burned me with boiling water. Why?”

“Kill me, I deserve to die,” said Salete.

“Stop talking nonsense. Tell me right now why you threw boiling water on my hand.”

Salete kneeled and hugged the inspector’s legs.

“Hit me, at least that.”

The inspector made Salete stand up.

“Tell me, goddammit.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“You’re forgiven. Now then. Why did you burn me?”

“I need a scab from an injury of yours.”

“A scab from an injury?”

Salete told the story of Mother Ingrácia.

“I like you, you don’t need any macumba for that. And how is it you can believe in such idiocy?”

“Everybody believes it. Teachers, lawyers, doctors, politicians, big industrialists, everybody goes to Mother Ingrácia’s macumba site. If you go there, I’ll arrange a way for you to be cured of your ulcer.” Pause. “Does your hand hurt a lot?”

Salete’s face was like that of a prisoner after a nightlong interrogation.

“If this injury creates a scab, I’ll give it to you. But you have to promise me you’ll never see that Mother Ingrácia or any other macumba practitioner.”

“I promise. I swear by everything sacred.”

Mattos’s stomach ached. He went to the refrigerator and got an egg.

“You need to eat something, going around on an empty stomach isn’t good for you. I’m going to make the spaghetti.”

“I’ve lost my appetite for spaghetti.”

She loved that man. She needed to show him that: “Then eat that egg.”

Salete watch the inspector suck the egg, after making a small hole in each end. She always found that repulsive. She watched bravely without averting her eyes as the inspector sucked a second egg. When Mattos finished, Salete hugged him and kissed him, sticking her tongue in his mouth, discerning the taste of the egg.

They went to the sofa bed and fucked until the inspector’s gauze was entirely torn away.

“This is going to make a good scab,” said Mattos, looking at the condition of the burn on his hand.

PRESIDENT VARGAS
received the visit of his son, Deputy Lutero Vargas, on the second floor, in his office.

When Lutero entered, Vargas told his aide, Major Dornelles, that he didn’t want to be interrupted.

Lutero was surprised by his father’s exhausted and worried appearance.

“That shot that killed Major Vaz also hit me in the back,” said Vargas.

Lutero, who unlike his sister Alzira had never felt at ease in the presence of his father, remained silent. His recent talks had been less than pleasant. His father had been hard on him at the time of the episode, widely exploited by the press, of the robbery of eleven thousand dollars he had suffered in Venice, on a recent trip to Europe, criticizing him for making himself vulnerable to attacks by the family’s enemies.

Now, his father’s prostration mortified him. Accustomed to seeing his father as a man of great power and strength, he was surprised to see him so discouraged. He wasn’t the same man who, furious at Lacerda for having called his son debauched, shameless, degenerate, a scoundrel and a thief, had forced Lutero to file a lawsuit against the defamer. Where was the outrage, the indignation, the will to fight, now?

“You’re being accused of ordering the crime,” said Vargas. “I want to hear it from you that you’re innocent.”

“I swear I’m innocent,” said Lutero.

Vargas looked for a long time at the face of his son. Lutero had never lived up to the expectations Getúlio placed on him. Darcy, his mother, had inculcated in her son a horror of politics, helping him to dedicate himself to the profession of medicine, thus distancing himself even further from his father, who having no son to carry on the family tradition, had transferred to his son-in-law Hernani do Amaral Peixoto, a naval officer, his political sponsorship. Only upon Vargas’s return of to the presidency in 1950, not as dictator but elected in a democratic election, had Lutero decided to “go into politics.” But it would have been preferable, both for him and for the entire family, if he had continued practicing medicine. As a politician, Lutero had given no cause for pride to his father, who in reality was more interested in the political future of his son-in-law, then governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Without knowing whether or not his father believed his oath, Lutero said goodbye to him ceremoniously and left the palace.

eight

ILÍDIO, THE NUMBERS GAME BANKROLLER
assaulted by Inspector Mattos, was a proud man. He had started his life as lawbreaker by working for Mr. Aniceto Moscoso, the great numbers game financier in Madureira. With extreme efficiency he provided security for Mr. Aniceto’s betting sites. He avoided the use of violence but, when necessary, hadn’t hesitated to kill the usurper of a site or anyone else who was creating serious problems for Mr. Aniceto’s business. His industriousness had led to several promotions within the rigid hierarchy of the numbers game command. Finally, with the help and protection of his patron, and the acquiescence of the other large-scale bankrollers, Ilídio came to control several gambling sites in the city. He became a small-scale bankroller. His businesses, like those of all the others, large or small, prospered endlessly. Ilídio’s ambition was to one day become a major bankroller, like Mr. Aniceto.

The humiliation he had suffered at the hands—or rather, the feet—of that inspector had become unbearable for him. He believed that in the world of lawbreaking, and especially among his subordinates, there was no one who didn’t know and talk about what had happened. The only way to put an end to his shame and recover the prestige he assumed he was losing was to kill the inspector. This was something he couldn’t do personally: killing a person with his own hands was a violation of the rules established and followed by bankrollers, and he planned to obey them. So he ordered the summoning of a trustworthy assassin known as Old Turk.

Old Turk owed that nickname to his white hair. He was only forty-two and was younger than another gunman called Young Turk, a guy who couldn’t be trusted, not only because he dyed his hair and mustache but also because he was a coward and a liar. Old Turk, on the other hand, a reserved man, mysterious, dedicated to his family and his work, was respected for his discretion and feared for his efficiency. No one had ever seen him boast, and yet in the performance of his activities he had already killed more than twenty people—all of them men.

“I want the old one, you hear?” The message was spread among the annotators and other subordinates of Ilídio.

Old Turk was tracked down in Caxambu, Minas Gerais, where he had gone over the weekend to visit his mother.

“Mr. Ilídio, day after tomorrow I’ll be in Rio to do the job,” he said after hearing the proposal.

Aniceto Moscoso also learned of the summoning of Old Turk. Concerned, he called a meeting with Ilídio, at a barbecue restaurant in Saenz Pena Square.

“We don’t kill policemen,” said Aniceto, “we buy them.”

“The fucker isn’t for sale.”

“They all have their price. I speak from experience. I’ve been in this business a lot longer than you.”

“The bastard humiliated me. The whole city’s laughing at me. He’s gotta die, so I can look my children in the eye again.”

“The best revenge is to buy the guy.”

“That son of a bitch doesn’t have a price; he’s crazy. Everybody knows that.”

Aniceto Moscoso tried to convince him that it was a mistake to go forward with his plan, but Ilídio wouldn’t yield and left without promising anything. It was the first time in the relationship between the two that a request of Moscoso’s was not quickly heeded by his former employee.

That same day, Moscoso went to see his friend Eusébio de Andrade, the big bankroller in the West Zone and a mentor to whom the other bankers would go for advice. The two men had in common a passion for football. Andrade was a benefactor of the Bangu Athletic Club and Aniceto Moscoso was the honored patron of the Madureira Athletic Club, whose football stadium had been built with his money. In general, the numbers racket was viewed as criminal, but Andrade’s and Moscoso’s sports activities gained them favorable publicity in the media and in society, despite both clubs being small groups in the outskirts. Andrade and Moscoso urged the other numbers bosses to sponsor activities that interested the public, without, however, encountering much receptivity. “The problem is that our colleagues are very ignorant,” said Andrade. “They can’t see six inches in front of their nose.”

After hearing what Aniceto had told him, Eusébio de Andrade agreed that they would go together to talk to Ilídio, to convince him to give up his plan.

“What would you do if a cop kicked you in the ass?” Ilídio asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” replied Eusébio de Andrade. “You know I’m a person who tries to be well informed before making a decision, even if it’s something simple. I’ve gotten some information about that inspector. His colleagues don’t like him, his bosses don’t like him.”

“We don’t like him,” joked Aniceto.

“Nobody likes him. But if we kill the guy, he becomes a hero. Haven’t you seen what happened with that Major Vaz? They killed the guy and caused that shitstorm we read about every day in the papers. Killing the major was stupid. In the same way, if Old Turk kills the inspector, he’s going to stop being considered a son of a bitch by his colleagues. And the cops’ll get you.”

“How? Old Turk is like the tomb. Nothing comes out of there, you know that,” said Ilídio.

“Naturally Old Turk would never open his trap. But the cops will have an easy time figuring out it was you who ordered the inspector killed.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

“It bothers us. Aniceto and I are here representing the other colleagues, too. And we want to offer you compensation. Zé do Carmo when he died left no heirs, and his sites will be redistributed. The ones that border on your sites will go to you.”

Ilídio’s response was slow in coming. Aniceto was right, every man has his price, and his was Zé do Carmo’s sites.

“I’ll do what you want. But that son of a bitch cop is gonna stay in my sights. He’ll get what’s coming to him,” said Ilídio, aware the others knew he was only bluffing with those threats.

“Let Old Turk know immediately, before he takes action,” warned Eusébio de Andrade as he left.

After almost two hours Ilídio managed to get the long-distance call through to Caxambu.

“He’s gone to Rio de Janeiro,” Old Turk’s mother said.

Ilídio sent an emissary to look for him where Old Turk normally stayed, a two-story house on Rua Salvador de Sá. The emissary returned saying that Old Turk hadn’t shown up there for a long time.

Ilídio thought about the betting sites he would inherit from the estate of Zé do Carmo and how much that would represent in his daily take. He yelled to Maneco, his second in command, “I have to find that man!”

Maneco reminded Ilídio that it was Sunday, and the betting sites weren’t in operation. But the next day, with every site in the city alerted, it would be “a piece of cake to find Old Turk.”

AT NOON THAT SUNDAY
, Inspector Mattos went on duty. He needed to put his turbulent thoughts in order. He straightened the gauze swathing his hand. He thought about Alice’s visit, about the photo of Lieutenant Gregório with the ring. Alice and Gregório were always linked in his musings. The two things were somehow connected.

He read the note on his desk, from headquarters, signed by General Ancora. The note had resulted, apparently, from the meeting of military officers at the Aeronautics Club the Friday before, and had as its purpose calming in some way the indignation shown by those present at that assembly.

“From the first moments in which the deplorable episode of August 5 became known,” said the note, “the Federal Department of Public Safety has made every effort to shed light on the criminal action, by initiating measures to apprehend the individual responsible for the grievous occurrence in which one of the most illustrious officers of the air force, Major Rubens Florentino Vaz, lost his life and the journalist Carlos Lacerda, publisher of the
Tribuna da Imprensa
, was wounded. In the Second Police District, a task force was immediately established at the same time that the collaboration of the criminal investigation section of the Division of Technical Police was requested.”

The note was long, and Mattos scanned it, looking for the relevant points and skipping what were obvious attempts at persuasion aimed at the military. The cops had succeeded quickly in finding out the identity of the driver Nelson Raimundo de Souza. Commissioner Pastor had gone immediately to Miguel Couto Hospital, where he had entered in contact with the survivor of the assassination attempt, the journalist Carlos Lacerda, to find out in summary form how the attack had occurred. (And Lacerda’s son, young Sérgio, why hadn’t Pastor spoken with him? Pastor was a good police officer.) At approximately three a.m. the cab driver Nelson Raimundo de Souza had appeared at the Fourth Precinct, in Catete, from which he had been remanded to the Second and submitted to the initial questioning. Nelson Raimundo had said he could recognize the person he’d driven in his car, and that as he passed the corner of Avenida Calógeras and Avenida Beira Mar, he had heard an odd noise that may have been an object being thrown out by his passenger. An airline worker had seen a beggar pick up the object. On Friday, the sixth, Nelson Raimundo had been taken to the Military Police. There, questioned by Colonel Adyl, whom the air force secretary had chosen to monitor the inquiry, as Pastor had said in the telephone call he had made late on the night of the fifth, Nelson Raimundo had reiterated what he had told the cops earlier. On Saturday, while he, Mattos, was in bed with Salete, Nelson Raimundo had been questioned by Captain João Ferreira Neves, of the Military Police, with the acquiescence of Commissioner Pastor, with whom he’d been a classmate in a course at the Police Academy. (They were sparing Pastor, a proud man who must be suffering because of all that, from embarrassment.) Then Nelson Raimundo had changed his story (had he been subjected to violence?) and confessed that he had taken two men to the locale, one of them Climerio Euribes de Almeida, who the note said was a police investigator. Afterwards Nelson Raimundo had confirmed these statements in the presence of Colonel Adyl, the prosecutor Cordeiro Guerra, and Commissioner Pastor. To show that the high authorities were truly dedicated to unearthing the facts of the attack, the note mentioned those who had come to the Military Police barracks to hear Nelson Raimundo’s confession: the head of the Department of Public Safety, General Ancora; the secretary of the air force, Nero Moura; and the secretary of justice, Tancredo Neves. The two secretaries had then gone to the Catete Palace, where General Caiado de Castro was waiting for them. According to the head of the Military Cabinet, the president of the Republic had given orders for a full investigation and had charged the special commissioner of surveillance and apprehension, Hermes Machado, with the arrest of Climerio. Hermes Machado was a competent and respected commissioner. He was vain about the elegance of his attire and the articulation of his speech. One day, in his zeal to understand why people, including himself, went into police work, Mattos had asked Hermes what his reasons were. “I’m with the police because of vanity,” Hermes had replied, “vanity is man’s great motivator.” In Hermes’s case it was the vanity of power. “I can make arrests, something that no judge, no Supreme Court justice, no president of the Republic can do.” Hermes, however, used police power with moderation and refinement. His appointment had been accepted with displeasure by Pastor, even though they had been friends since the time they were both inspectors, and Pastor had served under Machado when he was chief commissioner at the Second Precinct. The note from headquarters ended by advising that Hermes Machado was taking measures to catch Climerio, aided by air force officers named by Colonel Adyl.

Mattos thought about calling Pastor and saying, “Tell those soldiers, the prosecutor, the head of
DPS
, Tancredo, the whole bunch, to go to hell.” Pastor was surrounded by people who were shit-scared or confused or both. He had all but been removed from the case. What did he have to lose? A shitty job as commissioner? In reality, that day, the superintendent of police, Colonel Paulo Torres, had held a secret meeting with his principal advisers to examine a move that would totally remove Pastor from the case: shifting the Tonelero inquiry to his department and naming Commissioner Silvio Terra, director of the Technical Police, to head the investigations. Considering, however, that the action could be seen, within the government itself, as surrendering to pressure from Lacerda and his group, Silvio Terra’s appointment had not yet been effected.

While Mattos was reading the note from headquarters, Rosalvo had come into the room. From the expression of the inspector’s face, the investigator concluded it was going to be a rough day.

WHENEVER HE VISITED HIS MOTHER
in Caxambu, a city famous for its medicinal waters, Old Turk would take advantage of the opportunity to do a twenty-one-day treatment. Three times a day, with rigorous punctuality, he would drink water from different springs “to clear the liver,” as recommended by the old doctor in the city. With the call from Ilídio, Old Turk had to suspend the treatment, much to his displeasure.

After ending his brief telephone conversation with Ilídio, Old Turk had headed to the Rede Mineira de Viação train station, in Caxambu, and purchased a ticket for Rio. In Cruzeiro he would switch to a train on the Central Railroad. On the train he made his plans. Normally he enjoyed contemplating the landscape, especially during the descent from the mountains. But, thinking about Ilídio’s proposal, that day he didn’t look out the window at the trees and mountains and valleys and rivers whose sight gave him such pleasure. “I want to get a cop out of my hair,” the numbers boss had said. “No problem,” Old Turk had answered, “he won’t be the first.” “But he’s an honest inspector.” “No problem,” Old Turk had repeated. Now, on the train, he tried to remember if any inspector had ever been eliminated under similar circumstances. He recalled an inspector who had been murdered and the confusion that resulted, but the cop had been killed by his wife’s lover, merely a crime of passion. This thing had to be done using great caution.

Old Turk preferred working alone. Before acting, he liked to concentrate, in solitude. When he got to Rio, instead of going to his house, he began looking for a room to rent somewhere far away from the districts he normally frequented. He therefore avoided Santo Cristo, Saúde, and Estácio. He found a room on Rua das Marrecas, downtown, in the home of an old retired procuress. His immediate problem was to find out the address of the inspector’s residence. The weapon he would use had already been selected. A Belgian
FN
7.65 that Old Turk zealously guarded and had never before used. He was going to break in the pistol by killing an important guy. The
FN
deserved no less.