Crimes Of August Part 23

Luciana clutched the bottle tightly. Her face was contorted.

"Crazy people throw themselves under trains, jump out of windows, drink ant poison, set fire to their clothes, slash their wrists, put a bullet in their head. Why doesn't Alice do any of those things? Do you still love me? Then prove it, go on, f.u.c.k me, kill Alice, f.u.c.k me first, now."

The bottle slipped out of Luciana's hands, shattering on the floor.

Lomagno picked her up in his arms and carried her, moving slowly, carefully climbing the stairs to the bedroom on the upstairs floor.

Before arriving at the bedroom, Luciana had fallen asleep. Lomagno laid her down on the bed. He stood there for several moments, looking at his lover as if she were a stranger.

Leaving the lamp on, he left the bedroom and walked, curious, through the ample apartment. The quarters formerly occupied by servants were empty. None of the help any longer slept at the apartment. "I don't want anyone watching me," Luciana had said.

Finally Lomagno stopped, pensive, in a room that had originally been planned as a nursery and now served as a storage area. He opened the window and let in fresh air from the sea.

A good place for a punching bag, he thought.

LATE AT NIGHT, Inspector Padua entered the precinct lockup.

"Ibrahim a.s.sad," he shouted.

a.s.sad approached the bars.

"You're being let go," said Padua.

"At this time of night?"

"Your habeas corpus just came down."

The only ones on duty in the precinct at that moment were Padua, Detective Murilo, who had worked with Padua for years, and the lockup guard.

Padua, accompanied by Murilo, took a.s.sad to the empty Robbery and Theft office.

"Where's my lawyer?"

"There isn't any lawyer, no f.u.c.king habeas corpus. I'm going to waste you," said Padua. "But if you tell me why you wanted to kill Inspector Mattos, I might spare you."

"You'll forgive me, but I can't say, Mr. Padua."

The prisoner's calmness impressed the inspector.

"Why can't you say?"

"I'd be discredited, sir. I have a name to defend."

"Ibrahim? That's a name to defend?" Murilo laughed.

But Padua remained serious. This guy wasn't just some two-bit loser.

"Exactly. You understand these things. I'm better known by the nickname Old Turk."

"The Old Turk?" said Murilo, admiringly.

"No wonder I suspected something when I saw your ID card . . ." said Padua. "Old Turk . . . I've always wanted to meet you, Old Turk."

"Good thing you've heard of me. Then you know it's not possible for me to do what you ask, sir. I can't, even if I wanted to, I couldn't rat-and I don't want to. Please, don't waste your time."

"You understand that you've got to die, to serve as an example?"

"I do understand, sir. I know how life is," said Old Turk stoically. "It was written the day I was born that I would die."

"You killed a lot of people. What's the fastest and most painless way?"

"In the back of the neck. Holding the barrel steady. What in the old days they called the coup de grace."

"Good. Shall we have some coffee?"

"Can you do me one favor?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"To call my mother and tell her to pick up a deed I left at the public registry in Caxambu. I bought a small house for her and the dear old lady doesn't know it yet. It was for her birthday, day after tomorrow."

"Give me the phone number, and I'll call her."

"Thank you, sir."

Old Turk knew that Padua would honor his word. The three of them drank coffee from a thermos. Afterward, they left by car.

thirteen.

PDUA SPENT THE RAINY MORNING in his office, flexing his arm muscles and thinking. He phoned Old Turk's mother as agreed. A promise was a promise, even when made to an outlaw.

"You worried, boss?" asked Murilo, who rarely saw Padua so somber.

"No," replied Padua.

However, Padua was very worried. He regretted having killed Old Turk. In the past he had regretted not having killed someone. But for having killed, it was the first time. It had been a mistake to liquidate Old Turk. Old Turk was an expensive gunman who usually worked for politicians, plantation owners, and others with financial resources. Now it was impossible to find out who had hired him to kill Mattos. There was some b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the city with the b.a.l.l.s to order a police inspector killed; the f.u.c.ker had to be identified. How? How? On top of everything, now he couldn't warn that idiot Mattos, saying "Know who Ibrahim a.s.sad was? The famous Old Turk, the biggest hired gun in the country. Somebody with a lot of green wants you dead." Mattos was nuts; if he knew that he, Padua, had killed Old Turk, he'd immediately open an inquiry, saying in that d.a.m.ned way of his, "Very sorry, Padua, but you broke the law." What important interests could Mattos be bucking, who had Mattos gotten riled up to cause such a strong reaction? Padua, mistakenly, lost no time thinking about the arrest of Ilidio. Numbers bigwigs don't have policemen killed. Someone else was behind it.

Mattos arrived at the precinct shortly after eleven in the morning.

Padua turned over the blotter to Mattos.

"Anything important?"

"Nothing. Just routine."

"Are you feeling all right?"

"I've got a slight headache. Oh yeah, I was forgetting. I released that itinerant peddler that you arrested."

"What peddler?"

"That guy that entered your apartment. A third-rate burglar who got the wrong address. I think he learned his lesson."

"He wasn't some s.h.i.ta.s.s burglar. I'd like to know more about him. Did you ask HQ for his record?"

"I asked for the information by phone, like you do. The guy was, is clean."

"Did you draw up the concealed weapons charge?"

"No. You've done the same thing with me. Releasing crooks I arrest. See how annoying it is?"

"This case was different. He was caught in the act."

"But I let the guy go. It's too late now." Pause. "Too late now."

Mattos perceived lies and bitterness in his colleague's voice.

"How are things going?" asked Padua.

"What things?"

"Work."

"Nothing new."

"You never told me why you want info on Senator Vitor Freitas. Anything I can help with?"

"No. Thanks."

"If you need help, you can count on me, okay?"

After Padua left, Mattos went to the lockup. He told the jailer to open the cell.

"Odorico, come to my office."

The cell boss followed Mattos to his room.

"Remember that tall guy who was arrested two days ago?"

"I remember him, sir. A guy with the face of a Syrian. I didn't like him. He kept to himself in a corner, without speaking to n.o.body. I figured I'd have problems with him. He got out."

"Who let him out?"

"Inspector Padua."

"Did you see it?"

"Uh-huh. At night Inspector Padua showed up at the cell and called the guy. Said he was getting out."

"Anything else?"

Odorico thought it very strange for Padua to release a prisoner. But a cell boss's job was to maintain order in lockup. Anybody who talked a lot was a gossip.

"After the man was let go, I went back to sleep, sir. Everything in order."

Mattos summoned Rosalvo.

"Call all the precincts and tell them we're looking for a dark-skinned man with a mustache, named Ibrahim a.s.sad. Born in Caxambu, Minas Gerais, in 1912. Call the morgue and ask them to notify me if a corpse matching that description shows up."

Mattos remained in his office listening to the radio while he signed poverty papers and proofs of residence.

Brigadier Eduardo Gomes had denied that an uprising had taken place at the air base at Santa Cruz, where the Brazilian Air Force fighter planes were housed. There was an atmosphere of apprehension in the city, according to the newscast. Families were taking their children out of schools.

Radio Globo spoke of a second attack on Lacerda, kept secret till then. On Sunday, August 8, Lacerda was arriving by boat to the island of Paqueta for a rally, accompanied by a Radio Globo reporter, Raul Brunini, and other persons when, amid the popping of fireworks launched by voters in welcome, they heard a loud blast underfoot. It was a stick of dynamite that had exploded near the hull. No one had been hurt. The vessel had begun taking on water, without, however, sinking. Lacerda's party attempted to downplay the fact and returned to the mainland on a different boat.

Downplay the fact? Did anyone believe that? thought Mattos. A cherry bomb had probably gone off near the launch, and some joker must have suggested, "Why don't we say we were under attack?"

News from everywhere in Brazil was transmitted by the radio, emphasizing the atmosphere of agitation among students, politicians, the manufacturing cla.s.s, and professionals, because of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Major Vaz.

The ASA agency distributed statements by Federal Deputy Otavio Mangabeira, offered at the Hotel Bahia, in Salvador. Mangabeira said the nation was exhausted from so much humiliation and suffering. However, everything had limits. Only the armed forces could come to the aid of the country. "Let us unite around them as one, placing in them our complete confidence, obeying their command as if we were at war."

What could be expected of a guy, thought Mattos, who as a sitting federal deputy had subserviently kissed Eisenhower's hand in Congress when the American general had visited Brazil after the war? What could be expected from an old enemy of Vargas? From one of the founders of the UDN?

Mangabeira said he had no doubts about the responsibility of the government and of the president himself for the monstrous attack that was having such an effect on public opinion in the nation. Until then, it was the unprecedented levels of embezzlement, the immorality that corrupted with incredible insolence. The people, driven to hunger by the cost of living resulting in great part from acts of the government, were clearly and calculatingly being led toward anarchy, to the benefit of the administration itself. But now came the effort to eliminate the unvanquished denouncer of the scandals, who had escaped only by a miracle. But the bullets intended for him had killed an officer of the air force, an exemplar of devotion to his kind, who was accompanying the intrepid Lacerda. What was operating in the country under the name of legality was the negation of legal order, even greater now that it had stooped to murder. The wretch who had committed the crime was, in this case, the least responsible. The one most responsible, the one truly responsible occupied the Catete Palace, though ready, if necessary, to shed tears. Mangabeira preferred to see Brazil attacked and bravely expelling the foreign aggressor than to see what he said he was seeing: the country sapped, undermined, and corrupted by the enemy within, ensconced in power.

At seven p.m. Mattos told Rosalvo he was going out. "I won't be long. If anyone comes looking for me, I'll be back around nine."

"Can I ask where you're going?"

"No. It's official."

He took a cab. "Sixty Rainha Elizabeth," Mattos told the driver. Had Rosalvo been lying or mistaken Jose Silva's address? Number sixty was a luxury apartment building.

"Which is Mr. Jose Silva's apartment?" Mattos asked the doorman.

"Five-oh-one," the doorman said.

Mattos took the elevator. One apartment per floor.

He rang the bell. A little girl, with her hair in two long braids, opened the door.

"Daddy," the girl shouted, "it's for you."