Crimes Of August Part 20

"I'm going to call him now," said Lomagno. "We can't waste any time."

Lomagno returned after a few moments.

"Everything's taken care of. Now let's play our match."

"Today I'm going to beat you," said Luciana.

"No doubt. You're getting better all the time. But don't think for a minute that I'm going to throw the match."

Having found a solution to the problem, they turned their attention to the center tennis court, which had been reserved for them.

EVERY TUESDAY Salete would go downtown to look at the displays in the high-fashion shops. Though some of the dresses in the A Imperial and A Moda caught her attention, she only tried on a little jersey dress she saw in the window of A Capital. But she felt the dress looked better on the mannequin than on her body.

"I know my face is ugly, but I have a perfect body. If this dress looks bad on me, just imagine the average woman."

"Your face is also very pretty," replied the saleswoman.

"I have a mirror at home, dearie, so don't think that by flattering me you're going to sell this dress with a defect in the sleeve. As a saleswoman you should've seen that."

"It looks very nice on you," said the woman, ignoring Salete's aggressive tone.

"You really think so?"

"It's wonderful on you."

Salete tried several poses in front of the mirror before deciding to buy the dress. Happily carrying the brightly wrapped package from the shop, taking care to avoid wrinkling its contents, she walked to the minibus stop in Carioca Square, a short distance from A Capital. She boarded the first one for Copacabana. While the vehicle remained at the stop, waiting for pa.s.sengers, Salete looked out the window. Across from her was a low-end fabric shop. A woman was coming out of the shop. When she saw her, Salete, frightened, ducked down in the seat, her head almost touching her knees. She felt dizzy, as if about to faint. It can't be her, she thought.

She cautiously raised her head and took another look. The woman was standing there, as if she didn't know where to go. It was her, all right, the wretched woman hadn't died! My G.o.d, she's blacker and uglier than ever!

Finding out that her mother was still alive made Salete's heart ache with unhappiness. What if Luiz saw her? Worse yet, what if the black woman were to show up someday in front of Alberto and say, "I'm Salete's mother"? She crouched down again in the seat, afraid her mother would look toward the bus and see her inside.

The bus finally pulled away, heading for Rua Senador Dantas. When it stopped at the corner of Evaristo da Veiga, Salete kneeled on the seat and looked back. Relieved, she saw that the ghost of her mother had disappeared. A tall, muscular black man carrying a package crossed the street, signaling to the bus driver. He got on and took the only empty seat, in the rear, having to bend over to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling.

Until a few minutes earlier that man had been in the Ca.s.sio Muniz store, where he had bought, on the installment plan, a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson, for 520 cruzeiros a month, and a French MAB pistol, 7.65, with a ten-bullet clip, for only 220 a month. The total price didn't matter; credit accounts were invented precisely so no one would have that type of concern. He had thought of also buying a Winchester .22 carbine but decided against it. He already owned a 12-gauge shotgun, a veritable lethal jewel with silver engraving on the b.u.t.t and the breech housing.

Chico-that was the Negro's name-had been contracted by Pedro Lomagno to kill Raimundo, the doorman at the Deauville Building. He planned to do so that evening. But first he would take the firearms he had bought for temporary storage in the home of a woman he slept with from time to time, on Rua Almirante Tamandare, not far from the Deauville.

CHICO HAD MET PEDRO LOMAGNO in January 1946, at the Boqueiro do Pa.s.seio club on Santa Luzia. Two years earlier he had been drafted into military service and incorporated into the Ninth Engineering Battalion, one of the first units of the FEB, the Brazilian Expeditionary Forces, to go to Italy, in July 1944, and one of the last to return, on October 3, 1945. He had risen to the rank of corporal. Chico had enjoyed the war. He'd never eaten so well in his life; the Brazilian soldiers had access to the abundant resources and services of the American Fourth Army. The rations, the cigarettes, and everything else he received facilitated his relationship with the Italian ragazze. For a pack of cigarettes or a chocolate bar he had gotten some good pieces of a.s.s. The possibility of dying didn't worry him, and after seeing two comrades die beside him, one hit by mortar fire from the tedeschi and the other blown apart by a b.o.o.by trap, without anything happening to him, Chico had come to the conclusion that he was invulnerable. His athletic build had led to his being called to serve as sparring partner for American colleagues and take part in boxing exhibitions. He had f.u.c.ked and boxed and disarmed landmines and not caught gonorrhea like everyone else and all that without breaking his delicate white man's nose and without getting blown apart: yes, the war had been a good thing. People died suddenly in war, but didn't they also die that way in So Joo de Meriti, where he lived?

Demobilization and the return to Brazil had been the worst thing ever to happen to him. He soon spent the money he had saved and needed to find a job. Before being drafted, Chico had worked in construction. But now he considered that service unworthy of a man with his experience. A former private, a comrade from his regiment, told him the Boqueiro do Pa.s.seio club was looking for a boxing instructor.

He appeared at the club wearing a wool-lined American military jacket and black ankle-high boots with thick laces and soles of hard rubber that he called batbut, the combat boot of the field uniform worn by enlisted men. Along with a German steel helmet and a Walther pistol, the boots and the jacket were his trophies of war. After a quick interview with Kid Earthquake, a former Rio de Janeiro middleweight champion who ran the Boqueiro do Pa.s.seio boxing school, Chico was hired. Two days later, he and Pedro Lomagno became acquainted. Lomagno had decided to learn to box, and the club was conveniently near the office of his father's coffee exporting firm, on Avenida Graca Aranha, where Pedro was doing an internship in preparation for one day taking over the businesses of the elder Lomagno.

Pedro and Chico were the same age, twenty-two. Each immediately felt an attraction to the other. Lomagno, who was a taciturn and introverted youth, admired Chico's enthusiasm and joie de vivre. Chico respected the education, wealth, and whiteness of the other man.

For a year, they saw each other three times a week at the gym. Despite the intimate relationship established between them, they never socialized. Pedro's parents would not have accepted a friendship with a Negro, and his friends would have thought it quite strange if he showed up with Chico at the elegant parties he frequented. With the death of his father, Pedro Lomagno a.s.sumed the family business and stopped going to the Boqueiro. But that didn't mean he abandoned his friend. He hired Chico to oversee the coffee warehouse in his firm, on Avenida Rodrigues Alves. But Chico lacked the necessary qualities for that job. Lomagno gave him the money to open his own boxing school. After some months of loss, and feeling uncomfortable asking his sponsor for more money, Chico decided to close down the school. Pedro Lomagno, who missed the boxing matches because his body was starting to acquire an undesirable flaccidity around the waist, appeared at the gymnasium in the Rio Comprido district the day that Chico was removing from the facade the plaque bearing the name Brazilian Boxing Academy.

"What happened?"

"I failed. I'm not even making enough to pay the rent on this d.a.m.ned place."

"You should've talked to me."

"I was too embarra.s.sed."

Lomagno went into the gymnasium. It was six p.m., and the s.p.a.ce was dark. A single lightbulb, at the entrance to the dressing room, was burning.

"Turn on all the lights," Lomagno said.

The ring, official size, stood out in the middle of the gym.

"You got trunks and gloves for me?"

"Here there's everything you need. Even helmets."

"Let's fight without helmets."

They fought vigorously, until Lomagno tired. It had been a long time since Lomagno had felt that sensation of well-being.

"I was missing that." The two were naked, in the dressing room. The nudity of the sweating muscular bodies imparted a sense of confidence, partnership, complicity. They went into the shower. The water made Chico's body even blacker. In contrast, Lomagno's skin, even after the violent exercise, continued pale, as if his powerful muscles were made of marble.

"Ask the owner of the gym how much he wants for it. I'm going to buy it for you."

"It won't do any good to buy it. Know how many students I had? Two."

"How many would you like to have?"

"At least twenty."

"You've got the twenty."

"I do?"

"I'll be your twenty students."

Chico bought the gymnasium, with money lent by Lomagno. They made an agreement: Chico would have no other students. Twice a week, Lomagno would leave his office in the afternoon, without telling anyone where he was going, to train at the gym, now deserted and closed, on Rua Baro Itapagibe, in Rio Comprido.

NOW, IN THE BUS, Chico was thinking of the phone call from Lomagno and making his plans for that night. What Lomagno had asked of him was a piece of cake; anybody could do it with one hand tied behind his back.

He let the bus pa.s.s Rua Almirante Tamandare and got out at Rua Tuc.u.m. He walked past the seat where Salete was sitting, without looking at her; immersed in her concerns, she in turn failed to notice him.

He went up Tuc.u.m to Rua Senador Vergueiro, from which he continued to Machado Square. He knew no one was following him, but he acted as if that might happen. From Machado Square he went to Almirante Tamandare.

His friend Zuleika was at home. He asked her to store the package.

"What's in it?"

Chico opened the package.

"What you want those weapons for?"

"I like looking at them. I think everybody who was in a war ends up liking guns."

"I get the creeps just looking at them. Wrap them up again."

Chico asked Zuleika if he could borrow her car that night.

"What you gonna do with the car? Some woman?"

"You're my woman," said Chico, picking up his friend and carrying her to the bed.

"What's that mark on your chest? It looks like a bite."

"It is a bite. I was fighting, in a clinch, and the other guy bit me."

"Weird . . ."

In bed, Zuleika forgot about the bite. Chico could stray once in a while as long as he was in love with her as he was that day.

Chico went out to do some shopping, and when he returned, with a small suitcase, it was already night.

"What do you have in there?" asked Zuleika, who was a curious woman.

"They're barbells," said Chico, sticking his hand in the suitcase and taking out two ten-pound weights.

Zuleika took one of the weights in both hands. "What a heavy thing. What are they for?"

Chico picked up a barbell in each hand and began to open and close his extended arms, exhibiting his strength. Then he grabbed both weights in one hand and easily raised them over his head.

"Don't you think there's better ways of working off energy?"

"Aren't you the little devil, eh, Zuleika?"

Chico placed the barbells back in the suitcase, carefully closing it. He didn't feel like f.u.c.king again, but he needed the car, and when Zuleika took off her clothes the desire came.

AT ALMOST ELEVEN P.M., Marshal Mascarenhas de Morais, chairman of the armed forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, received a telephone call from a member of the general staff, Brigadier Neto dos Reis, asking permission to come to his house accompanied by Deputy Amaral Peixoto and General Juarez Tavora, superintendent of the Superior War College and a member of the Joint Chiefs, to discuss a matter of the utmost importance, relating to the political crisis the country was experiencing. Marshal Mascarenhas agreed to the request. He then phoned General Humberto Castello Branco, also a member of the general staff, who had been part of the general staff in Italy, relating the call he had received and asking that he, Castello Branco, come to the house to witness the meeting Brigadier Neto dos Reis had requested.

Upon returning from Italy in July 1945, where he had commanded the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, Mascarenhas had suffered various setbacks. On October 29 of that year, his friend Vargas was deposed; General Gaspar Dutra, who had been Vargas's secretary of war and with whom Mascarenhas did not have a good relationship, was elected president in the elections of December 3 and took office on January 31, 1946. On top of that, Ges Monteiro, his enemy, was appointed secretary of war. No command was offered him, which obliged him to retire. Thus, on August 27, 1946, his transfer to the reserves was published in the Diario Oficial.

After seven years in the reserves, the marshal had been appointed by Vargas as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that capacity he conferred weekly with the president, as well as presiding at the meetings of the JCS.

At the meeting requested by Neto dos Reis, the marshal was told that Vargas was said to be thinking of handing over the reins of government to General Zenbio, according to information leaked from the palace.

The one who answered the deputy and the generals there to sound out the marshal was General Castello Branco, a short man who, like his superior Mascarenhas, seemed to lack the minimum height demanded by military regulations to serve in the army. Castello Branco said, and none of his interlocutors had the courage to disagree, that if the president resigned, it would not be a general who should a.s.sume the office but the legal replacement, the vice president.

twelve.

IT WAS SHORTLY PAST MIDNIGHT when Chico asked his friend Zuleika for the keys to her car.

"I don't know when I'll be back. Don't wait up for me."

"You didn't tell me what you're gonna do."

"I'm taking a big shot to get his rocks off with a girl at the Hotel Colonial, on Avenida Niemeier. He tells his old lady he's going to So Paulo and heads there to get some strange. I think he's afraid to go to that neighborhood by himself. I don't know if he's planning to spend the night with the woman. If he does, I won't be back till morning, I'll be waiting in the car for him. Satisfied? Later, me and you'll split the money the guy's giving me. I'm taking the black suitcase. The barbells are for him."

"The guy needs barbells to screw the woman?"

"The world's full of rough people, love."

At the wheel of Zuleika's old Armstrong, Chico stopped in front of the Deauville. Raimundo was in the reception area. It was still too early to do the job. Chico started the car and went to Machado Square, parking near the trolley stop.

He walked to the Lamas restaurant, crossed the long room among tables almost entirely occupied, toward the rear where the pool tables were.

No pool table was vacant. Kinda busy for late Wednesday night, thought Chico. For a time he watched the players and the kibitzers. He liked watching people, they were so much alike and at the same time so different. During the war he had lived for a long time among men wearing the same olive drab uniform, using the same slang, cracking the same jokes, seeking the same pleasures, feeling the same fears, and yet he'd been able to perceive that the differences among them were greater than the similarities. He'd spoken with Lieutenant Lobo, but the lieutenant had replied that all men were basically the same. The lieutenant didn't know anything. He was like Zuleika, who after listening, without understanding the first d.a.m.ned thing he said about it, had replied, "The habit doesn't make the monk."

He asked one of the kibitzers loitering around one of the tables if he wanted to play.

"I'm broke," the guy said.

"I'll pay for the hour."

They played, without betting.

"You play good," said Chico, who, his mind on the job he was going to do, had paid little attention to the game and even so had won one match.

"I once beat Carne Frita. You know who Carne Frita is, don't you?"

"Who doesn't?"

"I swear, the same one. It came down to the seven ball. People crowded around to watch."

"Was that here, in the Lamas?"

The guy hesitated.

"Uh . . . No . . . Downtown . . . At the pool hall on Tiradentes Square."

Chico placed his cue on the green felt of the table.

"If you beat Carne Frita, I'm a monkey's uncle."

Carne Frita's phony opponent looked at Chico as if about to say something, but then desisted. The black man was very large, and beneath that soft voice lurked something very bad. He lowered his eyes and chalked his cue.