Crimes Of August Part 36

"Uh-huh. He liked to show off the ring. Never took it off his finger. Only when he put on the gloves or took a bath. He said soap was bad for the ring. He used to say a lot of dumb things."

It was late at night, but even so Mattos got a cab and went to Rua Baro de Itapagibe, the address Kid Earthquake had given him. He got out of the cab and found himself in front of a large shed with whitewashed masonry and aluminum roof shingles. The door, of green-painted metal, was shut. There were no lights inside the building.

Mattos banged on the door. No one answered. He was about to leave when he heard the sound of the door opening.

A mulatto with missing teeth, wearing striped pajamas, asked, "What is it? What is it?"

"I'm looking for Chico."

"There's no Chico here." The man tried to shut the door, but Mattos stopped him.

"I want to speak to the owner."

"The owner is Francisco Albergaria."

"Isn't his nickname Chico?"

"Maybe."

"He's the one I want to talk to."

"He hasn't been around. I'm the watchman."

"What's your name, please?"

"Jose."

"Do you know how to read, Jose?"

"More or less. If you write with little letters on the paper, I don't know. I can only read big letters."

"Would you be able to give Mr. Francisco a message?"

"If it's not very long."

"Tell him Inspector Mattos, who's investigating the crime at the Deauville Building, wants to talk to him."

"That's real long."

"I think I'm going to write a note for you to give him. Can you get me a piece of paper?"

"I'll check."

Jose returned with a piece of brown cardboard.

Mattos wrote in large block letters: "Francisco Albergaria. I'd like to meet with you. All I need is some information from you. Nothing important. Please call me."

twenty-one.

AMONG THE PAPERS Colonel Adyl de Oliveira had found upon breaking into Gregrio Fortunato's drawers and files when he invaded the Catete Palace were doc.u.ments relating to the crooked deals in the Cexim, brokered by Gregrio along with Arquimedes Manhes and Luiz Magalhes, the lover of Salete Rodrigues, Inspector Mattos's girlfriend. According to the doc.u.ments, as intermediaries in those deals, Manhes and his a.s.sociates earned more than fifty-two million cruzeiros.

Luiz Magalhes was not located by those in charge of the inquiry. Manhes, however, was arrested and taken to the Galeo air base when he made his statement.

Manhes declared that he had been a guest at the Catete at the beginning of the Vargas administration but had distanced himself from the palace following a deal for buying and selling cotton, made with financing from the Bank of Brazil, in partnership with Roberto Alves, ex-secretary of the president. Asked how much he had realized in that transaction, he answered that he couldn't say exactly, since quite some time had gone by since the operation had occurred.

To the good fortune of the investigators, the man with whom Manhes worked in Marilia, So Paulo, went to Galeo, accompanied by a lawyer, to try to effect the prisoner's release. Manhes's patron, the j.a.panese Ia.s.suro Matsubara, was immediately arrested by the military men.

Manhes stated that Matsubara had financed the campaigns of candidates to the Chamber and Senate. Matsubara had contributed half a million cruzeiros to the campaign of Roberto Alves for federal senator from So Paulo. That money had been diverted by Gregrio to deliver to Climerio for his escape. In exchange for his contributions, Matsubara received financing and special privileges from the Bank of Brazil and other public ent.i.ties, as well as favorable treatment from state government for the purchase of land in So Paulo and Mato Grosso.

ALL DAY LONG, wherever he went Lomagno heard the rumors that were flying around the city. There was talk of a military coup deposing the president; of the scabrous scandals discovered in Gregrio's secret files-Vargas's cellar was said to be like the Borgias'; all the military garrisons were supposedly at the ready, the tanks at the military compound were prepared to go into action; it was claimed that Cafe Filho had been called to the Catete Palace to take the oath of office. To Lomagno the comments he heard from rumormongers seemed little different, in mood and confusion, from those generated months earlier by the lubricious details of the murder, out of jealousy, of the bank teller Arsnio by Air Force Lieutenant Bandeira. To him, the prestige of President Vargas and his government had for months been suffering a continuous process of attrition and had, in that month of August, hit its lowest level of popular approval. And Getlio Vargas being deposed by the armed forces was not exactly anything new.

Lomagno had reasons to worry. In the secret files taken from the Catete, on the list of import firms that bribed Gregrio with twenty percent of the value of the import licenses obtained from the Cexim without providing the hard currency reserves required by law, was the name of Lomagno & Co., along with that of other firms, like Brasfesa, Cemtex, and Corpax. The news was in all the papers. Only the Diario Carioca mentioned the circ.u.mstance of the president of Cemtex, Paulo Gomes Aguiar, having been murdered at the start of the month, saying that the police seemed to have given up finding the killer. Lomagno had reasons to worry about revelations that involved his firm, but he didn't. Lomagno had reasons to worry in case a military coup deposed the president. But he didn't. His father, in a hospital bed days before his death, probably recalling the failures he had suffered thinking he could change the country by working as a militant in the fascist Integralist Party, had told him: "Son, don't think you can change Brazil. The French, an intelligent people, invented the perfect maxim, which becomes more true the older it gets: plus ca change, plus c'est la mme chose."

But his lack of concern with developments resulted mainly from the fact that a greater anxiety occupied his mind. It included a plan for which he would need the aid of Chico.

"Zuleika gave me your message. I also needed to talk to you. The inspector was with Kid Earthquake, at the Boqueiro, looking for me. I don't know how he managed to find me. Fingerprints, maybe. But I wore a glove. The ring I forgot there-"

"You left your ring in Paulo's apartment?"

"I forgot it somewhere, when I took a bath. The f.u.c.ker bit me in the chest, got his filth all over me, even my hands were dirty, I had to take a bath. But it was a ring like any other, without any identification . . . It has an F engraved on the inside. I made a lot of sacrifices to buy it, as soon as I got back from the FEB. I was really p.i.s.sed when I lost the ring."

"That cop already knew it was a black man who killed Paulo. He was here and told me that."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to. But he was following a red herring thinking that the Negro was Gregrio, Getlio's bodyguard."

"But now he knows it was me, Francisco Albergaria."

Lomagno heard with satisfaction what Chico told him, despite the grave personal risks that Mattos's investigations could cause him. Chico was being cornered. It would be easier to convince him to defend himself.

"What did you want with me?"

"I want you to kill that son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"Not me, sir. I'm going to leave for Bahia. I've always wanted to get to know that good land."

"I know that cop. He'll go after you even in h.e.l.l. He's obsessive, crazy."

"Bahia's a big place and full of black people like me. It'll be hard for him to find me."

"I'm telling you: he'll end up finding you. You're going to live terrified, hounded, afraid to let anyone know you're from Rio, afraid to say you were a soldier, those things he already knows about you. One day you drop your guard, and he catches you. Do you want to live in a hole, hiding like a rat?"

"Is that inspector a queer like Mr. Paulo?"

"No." Pause. "It's going to be a more difficult job." Pause. "Alice-"

Lomagno was about to say that Alice had abandoned him to live with the cop but stopped. He didn't want to humiliate himself before Chico.

"If you kill that dog, which will be even more useful to you than to me, I'll give you whatever you want. Money to buy a beachfront house in Bahia. A stipend every month, for expenses, for the rest of your life."

"You've already given me a lot. I'll do this for you for free."

"By killing that b.a.s.t.a.r.d you'll give me such great pleasure that I insist on those gifts."

"Can I ask a question?"

"Sure."

"Does Dona Luciana know about this?"

"No. I don't have anything more to do with Dona Luciana. We fought."

SALETE CALLED MATTOS. Alice, irritated, stopped writing in her diary to answer the phone.

"Alberto isn't in."

"Do you know where he went?"

"He's working."

"Didn't his shift end at noon today? I called the station, and he wasn't there."

"What do you want, Salete? I'm very busy."

"I wanted to know if Alberto wanted to go to So Paulo with me. I've already bought two plane tickets. There's going to be in So Paulo, in Ibirapuera Park, it's here in the paper, a glorious fireworks festival to inaugurate the exposition of the city's four hundredth anniversary."

"The celebration's going to be postponed. Everything's being postponed."

"It's here in the paper that Governor Garcez of So Paulo said that only an earthquake will stop the festival."

"Alberto telephoned to say he'd be arriving late. It's better for you to go by yourself."

"Oh . . . What a shame . . . Wouldn't you like to go with me?"

"Me?!"

"You."

"No, thank you very much. I'm very busy. Excuse me, I'm going to hang up. I'm very busy."

twenty-two.

ALZIRA VARGAS DO AMARAL PEIXOTO discovered her father, as she herself said, the day she lost him for the first time. It was the year 1923, and her father had left for a revolution that never seemed to end, the first among many others in his life. He seemed very tall, and powerful, in his blue colonel's uniform of the Provisional Auxiliary of the Military Brigade with black boots and baldric, a black revolver in a holster attached to his belt, his head of thick dark-brown wavy hair covered by a wide-brimmed hat. Alzira would never forget the light caress of her father's mustache brushing against her cheek in a goodbye kiss. Since that time, she had come to see him, always, as the central figure in great deeds. The moments of simple happiness, as when he had taught her how to play billiards in the game room of the governor's palace in Porto Alegre, were less significant, though still pleasant to remember. The memories that dominated her mind and filled her dreams were of the moments of tension and heroism they had experienced together. Such as in May of 1938 when Integralists invaded the Catete to arrest the president, with the collusion of the commander of the guard, the Marine Lieutenant Jlio Nascimento. The invaders were beardless and inexperienced youths; attackers and defenders were matched in their grotesque and fatal inept.i.tude, she could see today, coolly. But Alzira remembered, without that memory having been deformed by time, the epic figure of her father remaining calm amid the general commotion. Earlier, in 1930, on that railroad platform, she had listened emotionally to her father, no longer a colonel but just a soldier dressed in khaki leading the revolution that would place in his hands, for many years, the destiny of a people and a country, utter his unforgettable command: "Rio Grande! Arise, for Brazil!" In 1932, on July 9, she was at a dinner dance at the country club in Rio de Janeiro, the first truly elegant party she had ever attended, when they came to take her back to the palace because an insurrection had broken out in So Paulo. Her heart pounded with excitement as her father said that the const.i.tutional allegations of the Paulistas were a simple pretext for an uprising, for over a month earlier he had named a commission to draw up the proposal for the new Brazilian const.i.tution. These reminiscences came, sometimes, mixed with the sweet aroma of the cigars her father smoked. Oh, how she had suffered that twenty-fifth of November in 1935, away from Brazil and unable to be at her father's side as he commanded the resistance to the rebels at Campo dos Afonsos or in the Third Infantry Regiment when the communists with their revolt engendered a senseless and b.l.o.o.d.y comedy of errors identical to what the Integralists would repeat three years later. She had sworn she would never again leave her father. In the treason of '45, she was at his side; defeated, he had maintained his courage; an exile in his own country, he had comported himself with exemplary dignity.

Alzira had thought that history had redeemed her father in 1950 when he became president in a democratic election. Now, in that painful August of 1954, when for the first time she saw her father as a disenchanted old man, a small man, a man without hope, without desire, without the will to fight, victim of the sordid betrayals of his enemies, the ambiguous judgments of his friends-now she became aware of history as a stupid succession of random events, an inept and incomprehensible confusion of falsity, fict.i.tious inferences, illusions populated by ghosts. Now she wondered, has that other man whose memory she had kept in her heart for so many years ceased to exist? Was he another ghost, had he never existed? That idea was so painful and unbearable that she thought she would not resist and would die of pain, there in the Inga Palace, in Niteri.

AFTER RETURNING FROM HIS TIME OFF, Mattos was at the precinct that Sunday when Cosme, the son of the Portuguese Adelino, asked to speak to him.

"Did you know my father died?"

"I did. I'm very sorry."

"Since I was a little boy, I've always been afraid of the police. When I was still very young, I would ask my father why an awful thing like that existed, that caught and mistreated people."

"That's a hard question to answer," said Mattos.

"Not that you mistreated me when I was held here."

Silence.

"And your wife's birth? Did everything go well?"

"Yes, yes. More or less. The boy has a problem with asthma, but the doctor said it'll go away with time."

Silence.

"Is there something you need? The matter of your father is finished."

"I came to tell you something. I don't know if it can be bad for me, maybe it will, but I don't care."

"Say what you have to say."

"You convinced my father to confess he killed that guy in the workshop. You convinced the prosecutor to charge him. You convinced everybody. You're an intelligent man."

"I did what had to be done. To look for the truth. I'm very sorry about the death of your father."

"The truth. You want to know the truth?"

Mattos put an antacid into his mouth. Chewed.

"Yes, I want to know the truth."

"It was me who killed the guy."

"Your father confessed."