Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series) (9 page)

THAT AFTERNOON, AT THE SAME TIME
Vitor Freitas was speaking in the Senate—“The nation can never forget, nor ever pardon this ignominious act”—Inspector Mattos was receiving a phone call from Antonio Carlos, of Forensics.

“The hairs on the bar of soap aren’t the victim’s.”

“Are they a woman’s?”

“A man’s. A Negro.”

“A Negro? Is it possible to discover that? I have the latest edition of Soderman, from 1952, and he doesn’t mention that.”

“Soderman is out-of-date. The tests I did are based on a study published in the latest issue of
The New England Journal of Medicine
. I ran all the tests. A Negro used that bar of soap and probably took a bath in that tub.”

A Negro. The Aguiars’ pantryman was white.

“Thank you, Antonio Carlos,” said the inspector. He took from his pocket the gold ring he had found in the bathroom shower. A Negro with thick fingers.

As Mattos was about to leave, Rosalvo asked to speak with him. “Only if it’s urgent,” the inspector replied. He was in a hurry to get to the Deauville, where Gomes Aguiar had been murdered.

“I was here Sunday,” the inspector told the doorman.

“Yes, sir. I remember.”

“You were going to tell the night doorman to see me at the precinct.”

“I spoke to Raimundo, sir. He didn’t go?”

“You said he lives in a room in the rear. Go tell him to come here.”

Raimundo appeared, looking sleepy. He was a thin man from Pernambuco, with a small brow; his hair seemed to begin just above his nose.

“Let’s go to your room.”

They entered a windowless cubicle with a narrow bed and a small doorless closet, inside which were piled cheap faded clothes.

“I’d like to ask you some more questions about the murder of Mr. Gomes Aguiar.”

“I don’t know anything. I didn’t see anything, sir.”

“You spent all Saturday night in the lobby?”

Raimundo scratched his head nervously. “Saturday, Saturday . . .”

“Saturday night.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you so nervous?”

“This police business, sir. I’m not used to it.”

“I’m certain you didn’t spend the entire night in the lobby. You either went off or slept. Which was it?”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“It’s no good lying, Raimundo. I’ll find out, and you’ll be charged.”

“What is it you wanna know?”

“Just talk.”

“I did leave the desk for a moment.”

“What for?”

“A friend of mine came here . . . A maid here in the building . . . Well . . . We went to my room . . .”

“At what time?”

“One in the morning.”

“How long did you stay here?”

“Two hours, sir. If the manager finds out, he’ll fire me . . .”

“You said that on Saturday the residents on the eighth floor had no visitors.”

“They did have one. A black guy.”

“Do you know his name?”

“No, sir.”

“Describe him.”

“A large Negro, bossy. A mean face.”

“Bossy?”

“He came through and gave me a dirty look.”

“Describe him.”

“He was wearing a coat and tie.”

“His face.”

“A wide face, frowning.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about that black guy before?”

“Dona Luciana told me not to say anything to anybody.”

“Did anyone else visit the apartment that night?’

“Maybe someone came and left while I was, I was—”

“How was it that Dona Luciana asked you not to mention the black guy?”

“She said he was there to do a job in the apartment and that she didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

“What job?”

“I think it’s some kind of macumba business, a votive offering, that sort of thing. I don’t understand any of that, sir, I don’t believe in those things. Sir, if Dona Luciana—”

“She won’t know anything about our conversation. At least not for now.”

“I’m shafted, sir, I’m gonna lose my job. The chain always breaks at the weakest link.”

“Keep your mouth shut. Don’t tell anyone about our talk.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you change addresses or leave Rio, let me know beforehand. I’m going to need to speak with you again. Understand?”

“I don’t know anything else, sir.”

“I repeat: I want to know where you go, where you are. All the time. Don’t try to run away from me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mattos returned to the hallway. The elevator was stopped on the ground floor. The cop got in, pushed the button for the eighth floor.

Nilda opened the door.

“Is Dona Luciana in?”

Nilda hesitated. “No, sir.”

The inspector went in, pushing Nilda aside.

“Tell your mistress I want to talk to her.”

Nilda returned, accompanied by the pantryman.

“Dona Luciana told me to say she can’t see you. She’s sick in bed.”

“Can you give her a message?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell Dona Luciana I’ll be back another time, to talk with her about the Negro.”

THAT NIGHT, AT EIGHT O’CLOCK
, as Vitor Freitas had predicted, more than four hundred officers from the air force, army, and navy gathered in the Aeronautics Club to “keep alive the indignation at the death of Major Vaz and to manifest the decision to proceed further with the inquiry into the slaughter of Major Vaz than the police have the courage to venture.” There were few high-ranking officers. One of them, Brigadier Fontenelle, declared: “Despite the barbarities, I am proud of Brazil.” During the meeting, Air Force Major Gustavo Borges, speaking in the name of the “commission of air force officers investigating the assassination of Major Vaz,” said that he and his comrades were ready to follow to their conclusion clues the police had not investigated, because they would lead to high-placed authorities. “We ourselves will do what the police lack the courage to do!” exclaimed Borges. The audience rose to applaud him. Then Major Helder expressed the solidarity of younger army officers with their air force counterparts: “It is necessary to pursue to the end the examination of this heinous crime, which has transformed our country from a civilized nation into a domain of criminals.” After the meeting, the military men distributed to the press a note in which they stated having requested the directors of the Aeronautics Club to convoke an extraordinary assembly to deal with the posthumous homage to be paid to the major and the care of his family.

SALETE AND MATTOS
met for dinner at the Recreio, a barbecue restaurant on the street where the inspector lived. Salete had suggested the spot. Luiz Magalhães didn’t go to barbecue restaurants.

“What’s that on your forehead?” asked Salete.

“I banged it against a wall.”

“Is it going to make a scab?”

“No, it’s just a lump.”

“Oh . . .”

Salete ordered a barbecue platter with manioc flour and a soft drink. The inspector ordered spaghetti with salt, no sauce, and a glass of milk. The restaurant had no milk.

During the meal Salete said she missed him so much it was killing her.

“We were together yesterday,” Mattos said.

“But we didn’t do anything . . . You had a stomach ache.”

“I still do.”

Salete felt a constriction in her heart. She got up abruptly, wiping her eyes. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said.

There was a mirror in the bathroom. Salete, seeing her face in the mirror, started to cry. A woman came in and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t cry, dear, men aren’t worth our tears,” the unknown woman said.

The woman was fat and ugly, poorly dressed. Even so, Salete threw herself into her arms to cry.

seven

“I’M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO SEE YOU TODAY
. I’m going on a trip,” said Luiz Magalhães.

“Where are you going?”

“Uruguay. Business. But I’ll be back on Tuesday. What’re you going to do this weekend?”

“Don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You’d better not do anything foolish.”

Could he suspect something? thought Salete. Luiz was very jealous. He had once told her he’d kill her if she betrayed him with another man.

“I think I’m going to go see that American dancer, Katherine Dunham. Or Carmelia Alves. The Queen of the Baião.”

“You’re too influenced by what you read in those idiotic magazines. The baião is for hicks.”

“It’s good for dancing.”

“What?!”

“I’m not going to dance with anybody, don’t worry.”

“You need any money?”

“I still haven’t spent what you gave me last month.”

“Behave, you hear?” said Luiz, hanging up the phone.

Salete took off her clothes, put a Carmelia Alves record on the turntable, and danced the baião in front of the mirror, her arms raised, the right arm a bit higher, as if embracing a partner. In mid-dance she started to cry; her face damp with tears, reflected in the mirror, seemed less vulgar to her, more romantic—but was still ugly. She sighed, pensive: all she did in life was cry.

She was interrupted by the maid knocking at the door. The pedicurist had arrived. She wrapped a towel around herself and opened the door.

“I’m going to do the pedicure in the bedroom, Cida. Come on in. Bring the ottoman, Maria de Lourdes.”

The maid brought a small cushioned stool and placed it in front of a large armchair near the window.

Cida did Salete’s feet every week. There wasn’t that much to do, and the pedicurist quickly finished her work. Cida hadn’t brought nail polish that matched that of Salete’s fingernails; that was that problem. The pedicurist had used one shade and the manicurist another, and the two professionals did not always have the same shades in their kits. Cida removed the polish from Salete’s hands and painted all the nails, both feet and hands, with a polish exactly the same color, bright red.

Afterward they drank coffee that Maria de Lourdes had made.

“And Malvino? How’s he doing?”

“Three days ago he showed up with a big bottle of wine, saying he’s not drinking hard liquor anymore. He said that from now on he’s drinking wine, which is the blood of Christ. But he hasn’t changed at all. I even think getting drunk on the blood of Christ is worse.”

“He’s a drunk but he’s yours, isn’t he? He lives at your house, he’s there when you need him. And me, with two men, one married and the other who doesn’t care about me? There’s a time at night when I look beside me in bed, and there’s no one there; I get up and the apartment is empty. My apartment, like you can see, has the best furniture there is, in the living room and the bedroom, it’s full of things, refrigerator, floor polisher, vacuum cleaner, blender, coffeemaker, a china set, I’ve even got pictures on the wall, sculptures, silver things, but a good man—zero.”

“I’d like to have the things you have. I love the old black man smoking a pipe, on the living room wall.”

“The one who did that is a famous painter, I forget his name. That porcelain ballerina is French, authentic. It was Luiz who gave it to me. But what good does it do?”

“Maybe someday he’ll leave his wife.”

“But I don’t want Luiz, I want the other one. He’s sick, has an ulcer in his stomach. If he came to live with me, I’d cure him.”

“Does he drink?”

“No. He’s just got an ulcer.”

“A sick man usually wants a woman to take care of him.”

“Not Alberto. When he gets sick, he hides and doesn’t want to see me.”

“Strange . . .”

“He’s a policeman.”

“That explains it. But look, don’t get involved with a policeman. Stay with that rich guy who gives you everything.”

“I think Alberto likes another woman, a high-class hussy.”

“That’s better for you. Let her have him.”

“I’m going to tell you something. I’ve never told this to anybody. I was born and raised in the Tuiuti favela, there close to São Cristóvão. My mother worked, and I took care of my two younger brothers. We went hungry. Sometimes I would go with them, without my mother knowing, to walk in the Quinta da Boa Vista. We would swim in the lake, run on the lawns. It’s the only good memory I have of that time. I stayed in the favela till I was thirteen, when my mother died, and I went to be a nanny in the home of a family in Botafogo.”

“What did your mother die of?”

“Booze. She drank a lot.”

“And your brothers?”

“They went to live with an aunt. I never saw either of them again.”

In reality, she wasn’t sure whether her mother had died or not. At thirteen, Salete had run away from home. She didn’t have the slightest idea what had happened to her mother and her brothers. But she liked to think she was dead. Her mother was a dark-skinned mulatto, almost black, fat, ugly, and ignorant. She feared that one day she would turn out to be alive and show up, like a ghost.

“What about your father? Don’t you have a father?”

“I never knew my father. All I know is that he was a lowlife Portuguese.”

She had been working for two years as a nanny in a house in Copacabana when she met Dona Floripes. She was pushing the baby carriage down the street when a woman came up to her and, after a great deal of conversation, said that if Salete came to work in her house, she could earn much more. But Salete didn’t mention that to the pedicurist.

“The time in the favela was a horror. I suffered a lot before managing to get ahead in life and become what I am today, a fashion model.”

“It’s good to be well-off, isn’t it? After having it so rough, like you.”

“Magalhães is an important man, and he gives me everything. Still, I’d trade it all to live with Alberto. But like I said, he doesn’t love me.”

The pedicurist felt sorry for her client.

“You shouldn’t just give up like that. We have to fight for the man we love. Even if he is a policeman.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“They’ve got women all over the place and can get killed from one day to the next.”

Before the pedicurist left, Salete gave her, as she always did, the
Cinelândia
,
Grande Hotel
and
Revista do Rádio
magazines that she had already read.

Salete sat on the sofa, thinking, while leafing absentmindedly through the new
Cigarra
, without seeing even the fashion designs. She thought about what the pedicurist had told her. We have to fight for the man we love.

AT THAT MOMENT
, Mattos was lying on his sofa bed listening to
La Bohème
. He had just seen a photo on the front page of the
Tribuna da Imprensa
that had greatly disturbed him. The amorous misfortunes of Rodolpho and Mimi, even though continuing to be expressed with emotion by Tebaldi and Di Stefano, had yielded to his cogitations about the Deauville Building murder.

Mattos, though recognizing that he was excessively emotional and impulsive, felt he possessed sufficient clearheadedness and perspicacity to escape the classic traps of the criminal investigator, especially the “snare of logic.” To him, logic was the policeman’s ally, a critical instrument that, in the analysis of disputed situations, allowed one to arrive at knowledge of the truth. Still, just as there was one logic adapted to mathematics and another to metaphysics, one adapted to speculative philosophy and another to empirical research, there was a logic adapted to criminology, which, however, had nothing to do with premises and syllogistic deductions à la Arthur Conan Doyle. In his logic, knowledge of the truth and the understanding of reality could only be achieved by doubting logic itself, and even reality. He admired Hume’s skepticism and regretted that the reading he had done at the university, not only of the Scottish philosopher but also of Berkeley and Hegel, had been so superficial.

He looked again at the large photo of Gregório Fortunato on the front page, with the caption underneath: “Gregório is the patent symbol of the thugs with whom Getúlio Vargas in his fear of the people attempts to surround himself. He represents the primacy of the methods of stilling the voices that disturb the sleep of the great oligarch, who wishes to sleep without nightmares despite his crimes.”

In the photo, Gregório, in a hat, coat, and tie, a white handkerchief in his coat pocket, had his hands around Vargas’s head, as if smoothing the president’s hair. What caught the inspector’s attention, however, was not that public demonstration of the affection of a hired gun for the man he was protecting. It was the bodyguard’s left hand.

The inspector took from his pocket the ring he had found in Gomes Aguiar’s bathroom and the gold tooth. Inexplicably, to him, they were in the same pocket. He hastily placed the gold tooth on the floor, beside the sofa bed. With the ring in his hand, he again looked at the photo in the newspaper, at what truly interested him, the ring finger of Gregório’s left hand, on which could be seen a ring resembling the one he held at that instant. He recalled the conversation he’d had with the doorman Raimundo about a Negro visiting Gomes Aguiar’s apartment the day of the murder. He put this information together with that of the medical examiner Antonio Carlos, according to which the hairs found on the soap from the dead man’s bathroom were from a Negro. The inspector fought the excitement of the hunt that he was experiencing, which resulted as much from the possible discovery and contingent arrest of the one responsible for the crime as from the identity of the suspect. He had to maintain his clearheadedness and confront such indications coldly: they were merely a clue, a lead to be followed like any other.

He picked up the gold tooth and went into the bathroom. Standing before the mirror, he peeled back his lips and put the gold tooth in front of where it had been previously, now occupied by a porcelain incisor. No one remembered anymore, or perhaps no one even knew, for the dentist who did the work had died, that he once had a gold tooth in his mouth. But he didn’t forget.

The music had stopped. Mattos flipped the
LP
on the turntable. His stomach was hurting. He needed to eat something. As he was opening the refrigerator, the doorbell rang.

“May I come in?” Alice asked.

“Come in.”

The two stood there, in the living room.

“What opera is that?”

“
La Bohème
.”

Alice paced from side to side in the small living room.

“Tell me right off what you want to say to me.”

“My husband is Luciana Gomes Aguiar’s lover.”

Alice spoke rapidly, never stopping her pacing.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you that day when we had tea at the Cavé. I had read in the paper that you were investigating her husband’s death.”

“Does your husband know you’re here?”

“No. He went to São Paulo to a boxing match.”

Lomagno had left the night before to attend the fights on Saturday, at the Pacaembu Gymnasium, of two Brazilian pugilists, Ralph Zumbano and Pedro Galasso, against Argentine opponents.

“Sit down, please. Why are you telling me this story of your husband and Luciana Aguiar?”

“I had to get it off my chest with someone.”

Mattos remained silent, avoiding looking his former girlfriend’s face.

“Do you still like me?” Alice asked.

“I don’t know.” A pause. “Get what off your chest?” Now Mattos looked directly at the woman’s face, seeking signs of guile or treachery.

The doorbell rang again.

“Let it ring,” Alice said.

The inspector opened the door.

It was Emilio, the maestro. He removed his Panama hat, passing it to his left hand, which was already holding his cane, and extended his hand to the inspector.

“Forgive me for bothering you at home, but—”

He stopped when he noticed Alice’s presence. “Good afternoon, Miss. I’m an old and humble friend of the gentleman.”

“Come in,” said the inspector.

“May I have a word with you in private?”

Mattos led Emilio to the bedroom.

“Yes, Mr. Emilio . . .”

The old man, surprised and disappointed at the modesty of the inspector’s apartment, didn’t know what to say. He chewed his dentures nervously.

“I’m embarrassed to make another request of you . . . After all, it hasn’t even been a week . . . But I’ll pay it all back to you . . . Something unforeseen came up . . .”

“I’m broke, Mr. Emilio. I just bought the Encyclopedia Britannica and a collection of classic books . . . More than fifty volumes . . .”

“Why didn’t you buy them on credit?”

“I bought them at a used bookstore. They don’t sell on credit.” The sounds of Emilio’s dentures touched the inspector.

“What about your girlfriend? . . . Could she maybe . . .”

“That young woman is not my girlfriend.”

“She’s not? Well, sir, these eyes that the earth will yet consume can spot passion in a woman’s face . . .”

“I can’t ask her for money.”

Emilio took an enormous dirty handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

“I’m sorry. We old people cry over nothing.”

The inspector put his arms around Emilio’s shoulders. He felt pity at the old man’s fragility and repugnance at the smell of cheap lavender that emanated from his body.

“Wait here.”

The inspector returned to the living room.

“Do you have any money you can lend me?”

“How much do you want?”

“Five hundred cruzeiros.”

“Two hundred, it can be two hundred,” Emilio shouted from the bedroom.

Alice took a checkbook from her purse and signed a check. The inspector took the check and went back to the bedroom. He found Emilio hiding near the door, his mouth open, attentive, trying to hear better. He was starting to go deaf.

The old man took the check. He looked at the amount.

“I’ll be eternally grateful, I won’t forget—”

“Yes, yes. It’s time to leave,” Mattos interrupted, taking Emilio by the arm and leading him to the living room.