Crimes Of August Part 13

"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-cla.s.s 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 So Cristvo. 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."

"Magalhes 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 Cinelndia, Grande Hotel and Revista do Radio 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 Boheme. 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 cla.s.sic traps of the criminal investigator, especially the "snare of logic." To him, logic was the policeman's ally, a critical instrument that, in the a.n.a.lysis 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 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 Gregrio Fortunato on the front page, with the caption underneath: "Gregrio is the patent symbol of the thugs with whom Getlio 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, Gregrio, 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 Gregrio'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 ident.i.ty 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 Boheme."

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 Cave. 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 So Paulo to a boxing match."

Lomagno had left the night before to attend the fights on Sat.u.r.day, at the Pacaembu Gymnasium, of two Brazilian pugilists, Ralph Zumbano and Pedro Gala.s.so, 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, pa.s.sing 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 embarra.s.sed 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 cla.s.sic 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 pa.s.sion 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.

In the living room, the old man stopped. He made a sweeping gesture with his hat in Alice's direction, like a n.o.bleman 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 Boheme 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."