Crimes Of August Part 30

"Don't wait for me, please. I seldom eat lunch. I've got a bad stomach."

"I'll wait anyway."

Leonidio lifted the faded blue sheet, displaying the cadaver on the metal table. When the sheet was raised, the smell of the body diffused into the room.

"Is it him?"

"Yes. His name is Ibrahim a.s.sad. Where was he found?"

"In the Tijuca Forest. He was killed by a bullet to the base of the skull."

"When?"

"What's today's date?"

"The fifteenth."

"The eleventh or twelfth."

"What are those marks on his mouth and face?"

"Ants. He was being eaten by ants."

There was little difference between the various noxious odors given off by a dead man and a dead rat. There were cadavers, of animals and men, that smelled like spoiled cheese; others, like rotten broccoli; others, like rancid pork; still others, like deteriorated beans; et cetera. That repulsive catalog of the stench of putrefaction gathered by Mattos's sensitive nose gained new entries as he encountered additional pestilential cadavers in his work.

The inspector descended Rua do Riachuelo toward Lapa, smelling in the air the rotten-cabbage odor of Ibrahim a.s.sad's corpse. He crossed the Arches, pa.s.sed the door of the Colonial movie theater, and continued walking along Rua Joaquim Silva to Rua Conde Lage.

The street of the elegant high-priced prost.i.tutes of his youth. He would go there in the evening to see them, when he cut cla.s.ses from night school. The women moved sumptuously under the light of candelabras in their long, elegant satin dresses, their faces an unreal alabaster, scarlet mouths and shining eyes, distributing smiles to their clients. Standing in the dark street, watching them from afar, through the windows of the large old houses, he perceived in the women's smiles something beyond the desire to seduce, something secret that showed when one of them looked at the other; something he now knew was disdain and scorn.

He had never been on that street in the light of day.

All those years later, the street seemed insipid and melancholy. The trees were less imposing. The great boardinghouses-as they were euphemistically called-had become flophouses with ruined facades, broken windows and gates. The only woman he saw was a laundress with a bundle of clothes on her head.

He walked to the gardens of Paris Square, in the Glria neighborhood, and sat on a bench. A boy was staring at the crown of an almond tree, looking for nuts. That species of almond bore a bitter nut that only a poor kid could manage to eat. He himself, at that boy's age, used to go there and throw stones at the riper fruits, to eat the nuts from those dark-yellow trees with reddish spots.

"This time of year there aren't any almonds," Mattos shouted at the boy. "No point in looking."

"Not in any tree?"

"Not any."

Since he already had stones in his hand, the boy threw them at the tree and left.

Mattos went along Flamengo beach to Rua Machado de a.s.sis, from which he arrived at Machado Square and from there to his home on Rua Marqus de Abrantes.

Alice was listening to L'Elisir d'Amore.

"Do you want to hear 'Una furtiva lagrima'?"

"No, please, no."

"Want me to turn off the record player?"

"Yes, please."

"Are you sad? What happened on Rua dos Invalidos?"

"It wasn't on Rua dos Invalidos."

"I called Pedro. I told him I was here."

"What did he say?"

"For me to come home. I said I wasn't returning. He said he loved me. That he'd broken it off with that woman. I think he really does love me, just that he's very selfish. He ordered me to see Dr. Arnoldo. I answered that I'm fine and don't need any Dr. Arnoldo. I said I love you and all I need is you."

DESPITE IT BEING SUNDAY, a group of PSD senators met at the Seabra Building to discuss the country's political situation and hear the information that Freitas usually obtained from his various sources.

Freitas had an influential friend in the palace, the head of the Civilian Cabinet, Lourival Fontes, who was playing both sides against the middle by making secret contact with allies and enemies of the government, a process Fontes had employed since the time he was the all-powerful head of the Department of Press and Propaganda in the era of the dictatorship-a tactic he'd learned from Filinto Mller, then chief of Vargas's political police. Freitas also had his spies among the Lacerdists and knew that someone inside the Catete, perhaps the head of the Civilian Cabinet himself, was secretly leaking confidential information to the archenemy Lacerda about what went on at private meetings in the governmental palace. Betrayal was part of the political game. Now more than ever, when the major newspapers, the military, politicians, students, the manufacturing cla.s.ses, the Church, were all contributing with fervent ardor to the tumult that was beginning to dominate the country.

That group had come to be known as "the Vitor Freitas independents," thanks to notes planted in the press by a reporter from O Jornal whose beat was the Senate and who owed to Freitas his appointment as administrator of the Commercial Employees Retirement and Pensions Inst.i.tute. It was common for journalists who covered the chambers of Congress or the executive branch to arrange public positions that ended up being for a lifetime. The various pensions and retirement inst.i.tutes in the Department of Labor were the favorite of journalists for several reasons, one of them being that they were not obligated to show up regularly for work.

Severino served drinks and hors d'oeuvres while the Freitas independents a.n.a.lyzed the situation.

"What do you think about Lutero voluntarily going to the Republic of Galeo"-an ironic reference to the power of the Air Force High Command-"to be interrogated? Lodi refused to accept the writ and invoked his congressional immunities."

"Getlio told Lutero to go," said Freitas. "Lutero voluntarily waived his immunities, temporarily, and went to Galeo accompanied by Adroaldo Mesquita da Costa, vice president of the Chamber of Deputies. Adroaldo told me, in confidence, what happened. Colonel Adyl de Oliveira did not deign to receive the deputy. He sent a subordinate, a major or colonel named Toledo, to interrogate him. When they got there, Toledo handed Lutero a sheet of paper, saying, 'Read this, deputy.' It was Gregrio's statement from the interrogation he underwent. Dumbstruck-that was the term he used later with Adroaldo-Lutero read what was written. Gregrio said, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's, that the brains behind the Tonelero crime was he, Lutero. In the deposition Gregrio made inelegant references to Getlio. Lutero protested, claiming that the statements were nothing but vile slander, a plot to involve his name and thus harm his father, that the attack merited the strongest possible repudiation from the president, and that no one was more committed than he to the complete uncovering of the events and the severest punishment of those responsible. Adroaldo says that Lutero was quite eloquent, but knowing as we do that Lutero was never capable of improvising even slightly bearable oratorical flights, everything indicates that he was speaking a text written by someone else."

"Probably by Tancredo Neves. It's known that Lutero consulted that sly fox before agreeing to the deposition."

Severino served more drinks and hors d'oeuvres.

"What else did Adroaldo say?"

"'Do you want to see Gregrio?' Toledo supposedly asked. It seems Lutero hesitated. It was obvious that Toledo wanted a confrontation to put Lutero in a discrediting situation. He thought he held the trump cards. Toledo took Lutero by the arm: 'Come along, deputy, I'll take you to where he is.' They went down a long corridor, Lutero, Adroaldo, and some military men, among them Toledo, who was hanging onto Lutero's arm. They opened a door, and there, sitting on a bed, was the Black Angel. Gregrio looked at the arrivals with a vague gaze and went back to the gloomy meditation in which he seemed immersed. Everyone was frustrated by Gregrio's behavior. Toledo no doubt hoped that Gregrio, obeying some agreement made with his captors, would attack Lutero directly. Lutero hoped that Gregrio would stand up, with the deference he had always shown him, and ask forgiveness in some way for the words in his deposition. Toledo, appearing surprised by Gregrio's indifference and alienation, repeated several times, without breaking the Black Angel's silence, 'Gregrio, Deputy Lutero Vargas is here.'"

"So Gregrio accused Lutero! I never thought he'd do that, whether Lutero was behind it or not."

"According to Adroaldo, Lutero believes that Gregrio must have been interrogated under the influence of some drug, scopolamine or some such thing, to force him to say what he said. Lutero also says that they put Gregrio on an air force plane and threatened to throw him into the ocean if he didn't sign that confession."

A heated discussion ensued among the "independents." To some, Lutero was innocent; to others, he was foolish enough to commit such a stupid act. All agreed that the political situation was worsening by the hour. When he was caught, some said, Climerio was going to make statements that would cause even greater agitation. If they let Climerio live, others replied.

All the legislators agreed that great interests were at stake. Including their own.

The political machinations in which Freitas had been involved in recent days had pushed his concern with Inspector Mattos into the background. Politics, to Freitas, was a kind of aphrodisiac. The contingency plans he elaborated, by weaving the threads of an intricate tapestry whose objective was to obtain the maximum advantage from the country's complex and chaotic political situation, left him in a state of euphoria in which s.e.xual desire merged with ambitious dreams of even greater power. The night before, he had satisfied that imperious necessity with a partner who had given him great pleasure and joy, and in so doing had increased his motivation to proceed in the complex schemes he had planned.

That day, the senator had awoken thinking about the problem represented by his adviser Clemente and phoned him to come by the Seabra Building as soon as the meeting of the "independents" ended.

Seeking to be persuasive, Freitas told Clemente that he was going to have to reorganize his staff. A nephew, a young and brilliant lawyer, was about to move to Rio de Janeiro. Freitas couldn't ignore his sister's request to find a place for him on his staff.

"Despite his youth, he's an a.s.sistant professor in the School of Law. A young man with several degrees, highly qualified. I can't help but make him my chief adviser."

Clemente listened in silence, his face unreadable.

"As I know you wouldn't enjoy being the subordinate of a younger man-I'm very familiar with your dignity, your pride, my dear-I'm thinking of getting you an appointment as a lawyer for the Bank of Brazil. I've already spoken with Souza Dantas about it."

"I'll think it over," said Clemente.

"Help me solve this problem. He's my only nephew. We'll go on being friends . . . Nothing's going to change between the two of us . . ."

Clemente repeated that he'd think it over. And without another word, withdrew.

sixteen.

THE EXCHANGE AND COFFEE MARKETS opened in an air of antic.i.p.ation; the majority of players were still unsure as to the interpretation of Resolution 99 by Sumoc, the money and credit oversight board, which set the floating rate of the currency.

Prices in dollars for coffee and other merchandise had come to vary in accordance with the free-exchange rates, whose average would be calculated by the Exchange Division of the Bank of Brazil.

As a result of Resolution 99, coffee dropped to sixty-five U.S. cents a pound. Pedro Lomagno had been informed by Luiz Magalhes that the resolution would be forthcoming. Thus, before the new Sumoc provision was published, Lomagno & Co. and other exporters a.s.sociated with him succeeded in closing sales contracts for 300,000 bags of coffee at the old price of eight-seven cents a pound.

These sales came to the attention of other coffee merchants, who accused the government of protectionism and alleged they had incurred the loss of a billion cruzeiros because of the resolution, for the secretary of the treasury, Oswaldo Aranha, and the president of the Bank of Brazil, Souza Dantas, had guaranteed that the minimum price of coffee would remain unchanged.

The National Confederation of Commerce distributed a note supporting the measure adopted by the government.

The free exchange market proved cautious. The dollar was quoted at sixty cruzeiros.

THE OLD POLICE VAN took Inspector Mattos along Avenida Brasil, spewing black smoke from its tailpipe. He had gone to the precinct very early, picked up the van, and spoken rapidly with Padua, whom he would replace on duty at noon, about his conversation with Anastacio.

"The f.u.c.ker wants cover, because he's afraid to die," said Padua. "So, Mr. Ilidio, huh? . . ." Padua gave a short guffaw of scorn while he flexed his arm muscles.

"When I get back from Galeo, we'll talk more about it," said Mattos.

At the bridge to Governor's Island the first air force patrols appeared, heavily armed. The inspector's van was stopped three times for identification of its occupants before it was allowed to enter Galeo airport, where the air force base was located, site of the Police/Military Inquiry into the a.s.sa.s.sination of Major Rubens Vaz. At the beginning of the PMI, the base was mockingly dubbed the Republic of Galeo by supporters of Getlio. A government within the government. But in the last few days no more jokes were heard about the air force investigation.

At the entrance to the base the van was ordered to stop once more, at a barricade. The officer of the day was called and Mattos said he wanted to speak with Colonel Adyl.

The inspector waited for a long time, in the van, under the watchful eye of a soldier armed with a machine gun standing next to the vehicle. The officer of the day returned, instructed the driver where to park the van, and told the inspector to come with him.

The base had been transformed into a frenetic war zone. Bell military helicopters and P-40 fighter planes, Tomahawks, were waiting on the runway, their pilots at ready. Trucks and jeeps occupied by army and air force soldiers and naval marines, heavily armed, awaited orders to go into action. Cars with searchlights used by army antiaircraft batteries were evident.

"We've put together a military operation to catch that outlaw. We know he's hiding in the Tingua woods," said the officer of the day. "He won't get away now."

The inspector followed the officer to a room where an air force captain sat, in field uniform and with a .45 pistol in his holster.

"I'm Captain Ranildo. Colonel Adyl asked me to see you."

The inspector spoke of his suspicions about Gregrio Fortunato's involvement in the killing of Gomes Aguiar. He said it was perhaps a case of a h.o.m.os.e.xual crime of pa.s.sion. The captain heard the inspector in silence, controlling his excitement as best he could. While the inspector was speaking, Ranildo had gotten up from his chair behind a desk and picked up the telephone in front of him, without, however, placing any call.

"I'd like to be able to interrogate Gregrio Fortunato," the inspector said.

"Wait here a moment," said the captain.

Ranildo went to the office of his immediate superior, Major Fraga, and related what he had heard from the inspector.

"That d.a.m.ned Negro is perfectly capable of having done that; it wouldn't surprise me," said Ranildo.

"I don't like this," said Fraga. "Gregrio involved in a h.o.m.os.e.xual crime? I don't trust the police; so far they haven't managed to catch Climerio. Remember Inspector Pastor trying to demonstrate that Rubens Vaz's fatal wounds could've been caused by the shots that Lacerda fired at the gunman?"

"Do you want to talk to the inspector?"

"You said you've got a buddy in the DPS. Try to get the inspector's dossier from him. All on the q.t. Meanwhile I'll have a talk with him. Advise Colonel Adyl of what's happening."

Fraga, who was unarmed, took from a drawer a belt with a .45 pistol, which he buckled around his waist.

The inspector rose when Fraga entered the room.

"Good afternoon, Inspector. Captain Ranildo told me about your investigation. The problem is that authorization to interrogate Gregrio Fortunato can only be given by Colonel Adyl, who's in charge of the PMI, and he's not in at the moment."

"I'll wait," said the inspector. "My interrogation will take place in the presence of a military officer, if that's your wish."

Fraga took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and extended it to the inspector.

"Thanks, I don't smoke."

Fraga was slow to light his cigarette and replace the pack in his pocket. "You understand that we're going through a very delicate moment. A political situation of the utmost gravity. After all, persons intimately linked to the president of the Republic are involved in the most heinous political crimes ever committed in this country."

Mattos said nothing.

"Gregrio is one of those involved," Fraga continued, "but there are others, above him. We already know, from the confession of the gunman Alcino, that Lutero Vargas, son of the president, is one of the masterminds. We want to discover the whole truth, however horrible and shocking it may be for the Brazilian people. Gregrio Fortunato still has a lot to tell about this repugnant crime. You do agree with me that it was a repugnant crime, don't you?"

"To me all crimes are the same. I'm a policeman."

"But even for a policeman there are crimes more atrocious than others."

"It's not the policeman's job to make a value judgment about the illicit act." Pause. "The best policeman would maybe be an automaton who knew the law well and obeyed it blindly."

Fraga thought about what Mattos had said.

"All authority contains, in a way, the responsibility to judge," Fraga said.

"All authority contains, in a way, something corrupt and immoral," said the inspector.

Fraga looked at Mattos in surprise, not knowing what to say. He preferred to let the cop's observation pa.s.s.