Crimes Of August Part 18

"I'm listening."

"I don't think it's good to talk on the phone."

"Come by the house, 88 Praia do Flamengo, corner of Ferreira Viana. Seabra Building."

Teodoro knew where the Seabra was located, one of the best known residential buildings in the city. One of his dreams was to live in that building of black granite. It's a funny world, he thought.

"Want something to drink, Teodoro?"

"No, thank you, sir."

"I'm going to have some scotch; don't you want to join me? I called my adviser Clemente to hear your story, and while we wait for him-"

"Well, if you insist . . ."

In the s.p.a.cious living room was a bar, with a carved wood counter on which stood countless bottles. While Freitas prepared the drinks, Teodoro contemplated the room's decor. He had never seen anything like it.

"Do you like the decoration?" asked the senator, extending the whiskey on the rocks to Teodoro.

"Very pretty," said Teodoro.

"The motifs are Tunisian. Do you know Tunisia?"

"I've never been out of Brazil, Senator."

"The fashion these days is to decorate in the American style, a thing of unbearably bad taste. Ah, the Brazilian bourgeoisie! First it was everything French, now it's everything American. Americans are the most vulgar people in the world. They have no history, no culture, nothing but money. But Tunisia . . . You've no doubt heard speak of Carthage, an empire founded by the Phoenicians thousands of years ago . . ."

"Ah . . . Yes, sir . . ."

"Unfortunately, today it's a French colony. And the French, like all colonizers, have done nothing but try to destroy the cul-"

The doorbell cut short the senator's digression. It was Clemente.

"I waited for you to get here," said Freitas. "As yet I don't know what Teodoro has to tell us."

Clemente made himself a drink. They sat on one of the sectional sofas in the living room.

"You may speak, Teodoro," said Freitas. He and his adviser were in a good mood.

Teodoro cleared his throat. He didn't know where to begin.

"Go ahead, Teodoro. What are you waiting for?"

Awkwardly, Teodoro related the conversation he'd had with Rosalvo.

As he spoke, his listeners began to display signs of growing nervousness. Clemente went to the bar and brought back a bottle of whiskey. He and the senator served themselves several times. The senator's expression turned gloomy. Drops of sweat covered his forehead.

"Can we believe what that Rosalvo says, his promises?" asked Clemente.

"I think he'd do anything, anything, to get transferred to Vice," replied Teodoro.

"But first he'll have to hand over the merchandise. Tell the cop those are my conditions. He's the one who's got to trust me, not the other way around."

The senator's voice sounded slurred. Saliva had acc.u.mulated at the corner of his mouth, which he wiped as it began running down his chin. "Did the cop by any chance mention my involvement in the corruption of minors?"

"No, sir," said Teodoro vehemently.

Clemente noticed that the senator's intoxication might lead him to commit other imprudent acts. Whenever he drank a bit too much, Freitas lost control.

"You may go, Teodoro. We'll talk later," said Clemente, taking Teodoro by the arm and leading him out of the room.

Freitas was pouring himself another shot of whiskey when Clemente returned.

"I don't give a s.h.i.t about the Cemtex case," said the senator. "My worry is that murder investigation. Could it be the thing with the super?"

"I don't know. It might be . . . and it might not be. It might be the death of Paulo Gomes Aguiar. Inspector Ready-to-Wear is investigating that case."

"What the s.h.i.t is this Inspector Ready-to-Wear business?"

"It's because he buys his clothes off the rack."

"You made that idiotic comment before. You have the habit of underestimating people. It would be ideal if the murder Teodoro mentioned were that of Paulo. I wasn't even in Rio that day; I was in the North making political contacts. It would be ideal, ideal." Freitas filled his gla.s.s nervously, without putting ice in the drink.

"The inquiry into the super was shelved," said Clemente.

"But not closed. One of these days someone will reopen it . . ."

"They're looking for a robber."

"It was a blunder to kill that old fool."

"It was your idea, dear man."

"Mine? You're crazy!" shouted Freitas.

"Want me to remind you how it all happened, Vickie?"

"Don't be sarcastic. Who are you to be sarcastic with me?"

"You came home drunk late one night from your garconniere in Copacabana with a friend, and in a burst of pa.s.sion, inside the elevator, knelt to venerate Priapus."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Freitas tried to strike Clemente, who pushed him away violently, causing him to fall onto the sofa. Freitas sat there, gazing stupidly at his shirt wet from whiskey spilling from his gla.s.s.

The incident to which Clemente referred had occurred more than a year earlier. The superintendent of the building had entered the elevator and caught Freitas in his libidinous act. Disgusted, he said he was going to call a meeting of the owners and ask that Freitas be expelled from the building for indecent behavior.

"The son of a b.i.t.c.h was watching me," lamented Freitas as he tried to dry his shirt with a handkerchief he took from his pocket.

Freitas had telephoned Clemente saying he was ruined politically and that they had to do something. Clemente had gone to the superintendent's apartment, saying that he worked with the senator, asking that nothing be done; he guaranteed that Freitas would move out the next day. The superintendent had replied that Freitas was sc.u.m, a disgusting pederast whose sinful behavior had transformed a family building into Sodom. Clemente had offered him money to forget what he'd seen. The old man had indignantly refused Clemente's "filthy proposal," saying he was a Protestant pastor and that Freitas had to pay for his sins. As soon as the superintendent said he was a preacher, Clemente had killed him, strangling him.

"I never told you to kill the guy."

"You f.a.ggot, I did the dirty work you didn't have the courage to do, and now you want to wash your hands of it and toss me into the fire? I'll take you down with me."

"I don't want to hear it. Shut up."

The old man lived alone. After killing him Clemente had turned the place upside down so that the police would think the crime had been committed by a robber. He had taken the man's Bible with him, filled with notes in the margins. When he got home he had urinated on the book's pages, for several days, until the ink of the words scribbled by the pastor had become illegible blots. Clemente's father, whom he hated in life and went on hating after he was dead, had also been a Protestant pastor.

"I still have the super's Bible, all s.h.i.tty. I'm going to bring it here and rub your nose in it."

"You're a blasphemer, a nihilist, a monster."

"That's not what you said that day. You took my hands and said I had strong hands, and then you kissed and licked my hands like a b.i.t.c.h. I let you do it in spite of the disgust I felt: the pleasure of witnessing your debas.e.m.e.nt was greater than my repugnance."

"That's enough, Clemente, please, I'm going to end up fighting with you."

Along with the spilled drink, sweat was soaking Freitas's shirt. His flushed face had taken on a grayish pallor. "We have to kill that inspector. You can do that, I know you can."

"The super was an old man of eighty. It was easy. That son of a b.i.t.c.h, besides being a cop, is probably younger than I am."

"Younger? Then he's still a boy . . ."

"Suck-up."

"You look like a teenager . . . I swear it! You don't have a wrinkle in your face."

Clemente went to the bar, served himself a liqueur of pitanga, a specialty sent from the North by a rancher, boss of the senator's largest bloc of voters. He took a small mirror from his pocket and looked at his face, enraptured.

"Don't exaggerate . . . Teenager is overdoing it . . ."

Freitas rose from the sofa with difficulty, walked unsteadily to the bar. He tried to hug Clemente, who with a movement of his body evaded his embrace, causing Freitas to fall.

The senator rolled on the floor, his eyes closed, seeking a less uncomfortable position. In a short time he was snoring with his mouth open, before the disapproving gaze of his adviser.

AT EXACTLY THAT HOUR, 2:15 a.m., when Senator Vitor Freitas was starting his alcoholic sleep on the floor of his residence, the journalist Carlos Lacerda was arriving at the Cavalry Regiment of the Military Police, on Rua Salvador da Sa, accompanied by an enormous retinue that included lawyers, reporters, the chief of police, Inspector Pastor, and various army, naval, and air force officers. Army Colonel Florncio Lessa, commanding officer of the regiment, was waiting for Lacerda and his group.

Lacerda was there to ident.i.ty his attacker from among the members of the personal guard. Or attackers, as he stated, contradicting Inspector Pastor's conclusions. Lacerda disliked Pastor and had written in his newspaper that the police, and the inspector himself, who headed the investigation, had floated the hypothesis that it had been he, Lacerda, who killed Major Vaz. One of the questions the inspector had asked the garage man at the building was whether there had been an argument between Major Vaz and Lacerda. To the journalist, the authority leading the inquiry was duty-bound to examine all hypotheses, but given the evidence of the crime having been perpetrated by third parties, with witnesses and strong clues, such "monstrous speculation" was unnecessary and the inspector's suspicion was incomprehensible.

Pastor also disliked Lacerda. The tense relationship between the two was ceremonious but hostile.

At 2:30 a.m., forty-six members of the presidential personal guard arrived at the barracks.

"The full complement of the guard is eighty-three men," said Major Enio Garcez dos Reis, chief of the Catete Palace police, who accompanied the president's personal guards. "But given the sudden call-up asked of me, I was only able to locate forty-seven men."

Someone questioned whether the number making up the personal guard was two hundred and not eighty-three, as Major Enio claimed.

Faced with these affirmations, the major explained that the number of effectives was eighty-three, but admitted the existence of a supplementary contingent of an additional one hundred and seventeen men.

In groups of five, the guards paraded in front of Lacerda and the authorities who had accompanied him.

It was four a.m. when the inspection ended. Two guards had been called aside by Lacerda.

"I recognized in Antonio Fortes Filho," said the journalist, "the physical type that most resembled the short, fat individual who was posted at the corner of Paula Freitas and Tonelero. And in Jose Pombo Pereira, known as Pombo Manso, the individual most resembling the one who shot the major."

THE BEGGAR RUSSO, arrested by officers of the air force, indicated the person who had bought the revolver he had found on Avenida Beira Mar on the day of the a.s.sa.s.sination, an employee of Standard Esso. He and the beggar were brought face to face in the offices of the national aviation authority. The weapon was confiscated.

ten.

DAY WAS BEGINNING TO BREAK when Climerio abandoned his small place in the country, Happy Refuge, carrying a small suitcase with clothes, a few papers, a revolver with six bullets, and the fifty-three thousand cruzeiros Soares had given him two days earlier when he met with him in Republic Square downtown, beside the Campo de Santana. The money had been picked up by Valente from Gregrio's drawer in the Catete Palace, following the orders of the head of the personal guard himself. Valente had charged Soares with getting the money to the fugitive.

Before leaving, he watered his fruit trees and the small garden where he grew kale, tomatoes, pumpkins, and manioc. Whenever he visited the farm, he watered the plantings daily, even on days when atmospheric conditions presaged rain.

He fed the three hogs.

He arrived, exhausted, at nightfall, at the farm of his friend Oscar Barbosa, on Taboleiro Hill, in the Tingua mountain range.

Oscar and his wife Honorina were sitting at the table, having dinner, when they were surprised by the arrival of Climerio.

Climerio said he'd got into some trouble in the capital and needed a place to hide.

Oscar didn't ask what his friend's troubles were and invited him to sit and share with them the corn mush and beef they were eating.

After eating, Oscar told Climerio that the following day he would take him to hide out in a shack in the middle of a banana grove in the mountains. In the shack was only an old mattress, but he would be safe there and no one would find him. Daily, either Oscar or Honorina would take food to him.

FREITAS WOKE UP ON THE FLOOR to a light touch on his shoulders. The pantryman, bending over, asked: "Are you all right, sir?"

The senator looked at his wrist.w.a.tch. Half past noon.

"I'm fine. Go run my bath."

The pantryman, whose name was Severino, a poor young man of twenty-two, accepted the senator's rude treatment without complaining. His salary and the tips he got when the senator was in a good mood helped to support his widowed mother and his eight younger brothers and sisters back in Caruaru, Pernambuco.

He ran the hot bath, dipping his elbow in the water in the tub to check that the temperature was as the senator demanded. He placed two large fluffy towels and the newspapers on a small bench next to the bathtub.

The senator himself sprinkled aromatic bath salts into the water. "If there are any calls, tell them I left for the Senate."

The hot water enveloping his body gave him a feeling of well-being. He clutched between his fingers the rolls of fat of his belly. He had to do something to get rid of those undesirable acc.u.mulations of adipose. Exercise, diet, anything. He would like to have a belly like Lomagno's, hard-muscled and well defined. Clemente, his adviser, had once had such a belly, but the sedentary life he was leading had left his body more and more flaccid. He made a mental note that he needed to get rid of Clemente. The adviser had gone from merely impertinent and inopportune to dangerous. But it was necessary to carry out the operation with great skill in order to avoid irritating him and provoking an unreasonable reaction.

He picked up the newspapers. No confirmation of the rumors circulating in the Senate, that Getlio Vargas, in an effort to divide the armed forces, had named General Zenbio da Costa to replace Air Force Secretary Nero Moura, who had waffled on the open insubordination of those under his command. Secretary Nero Moura had emphatically denied the phrase attributed to him in ltima Hora that Major Vaz had not been killed as an officer of the air force. The secretary was obliged to deny this, whether he had said it or not, and could not repeat what supporters of Getlio were spreading around the city, that Vaz was a kind of hired gun for Lacerda and had been killed as such. In the Chamber, Deputy Ivete Vargas, grandniece of the president, had asked, "Why are those guarding the president called gunmen and those guarding Lacerda called friends?"

Cardinal Jaime de Barros Cmara had sent a message to Brigadier Eduardo Gomes. It said: "With the thought of the generous traditions of the Brazilian people, formed by the stimulus of Christian civilization, it is directed to priests of all Brazil, through their most excellent bishops, the request that on the same day and hour they unite in prayer for the soul of the sacrificed aviator, a sincere Catholic, raising prayers to G.o.d for the conciliation and peace of the Brazilian family."

The senator was convinced there was a well organized campaign under way to discredit Vargas, in which partic.i.p.ated the church, sectors of the armed forces, elements of the business community, opposition parties, and the press. The more mud thrown onto Vargas, the better. Earlier, it was shady dealings of members of the administration that were denounced. Now, it was crimes. In January 1920, according to newspaper reports, Getlio Vargas, with his accomplice Soriano Serra, were said to have killed Tibrcio Fongue, chief of the Inhacora Indian tribe. The inquiry had been quashed. Facsimiles of pages from the various inquiries were reproduced in newspapers. In 1923, Vargas, still with the complicity of Soriano Serra, was alleged to have murdered the engineer Ildefonso Soares Pinto, the secretary of public works of the then governor, Borges de Medeiros. "Soriano was arrested, but the other a.s.sa.s.sin, Getlio Vargas, remains free to this day."