A Window in Copacabana

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  Ferreira came in at that exact moment.

  “Hello, Chief. You called me?”

  “Yes, I did. Why didn’t you take anybody’s testimony in the case of the woman who killed herself?”

  “I talked to a few people, sir, and went to the victim’s apartment, but as soon as I came downstairs an officer from the car that answered the call said that someone wanted to talk to me and handed me a cell phone. It was the secretary’s office, notifying us that since it was obviously a suicide there was no need to investigate more extensively. That the woman was alone at the time, there were no signs of violence, that everything was fine and it was time to turn the page. I don’t know how they knew that, but it was true, I saw it myself. The man on the phone said there was no need to open an investigation.”

  “Who was the man?”

  “The doctor who called from the office of the secretary.”

  “And you forgot the name of the doctor?”

  “He was talking from the office. I’m not sure if it was the office of the secretary or the Cabinet of the governor or what; he said a lot of things and mentioned a lot of names, he said he knew you, he told me not to bother you so late at night, that they’d take care of everything.”

  “And the woman, who was she?”

  “What woman, sir?”

  “The dead woman, dumbass!”

  “It was the cousin of the woman who lived in the apartment.”

  “And the cousin of the woman who lived in the apartment doesn’t have a name?”

  “Nobody knew.”

  “What do you mean, nobody knew? The woman didn’t know her cousin’s name?”

  “She must know it, sir, but she disappeared.”

  “She disappeared?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the name of the resident, you don’t know that either?”

  “Her name is Dona Rosita, sir. She’s the protégée of some big shot. Apparently he was in a meeting with the governor when the woman threw herself out of the window.”

  “Which explains how the body has already been autopsied and buried.”

  “But there’s no doubt it was a suicide, Chief. She was alone in the apartment. And they say she was really depressed and having all sorts of problems, taking pills, that sort of thing.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? The chief or his deputy?”

  “That’s what he said on the phone.”

  “We’re going to open an investigation—”

  “But the—”

  “Not forever. Go to the Forensic Institute and get a copy of the autopsy report. If the report’s not ready yet, talk to the guy who’s doing it and ask him what he found out. I want to know if the victim was on drugs, what kind of medication she was taking, anything you can get out of him. Don’t forget the name of the family member who collected the body.”

  That same afternoon, Welber and Artur went to Celeste’s friend Rosita’s address, the one they had gotten from the girls at the club. It was an old building in Leme, with small apartments, a few feet from the Avenida Atlântica. Even though she hadn’t worked with Celeste recently, there was the possibility that Celeste would stop by looking for her, and the cops were hoping that was the case. When they flashed their badges, they were met with a helpfulness rarely encountered by policemen from doormen.

  “The doctor said you gentlemen were coming over.”

  Welber thought it best not to ask what doctor the guy was talking about. The detectives also had no idea how the “doctor” knew that they were coming over, or why he’d told the doorman to cooperate.

  “Could you please tell Dona Rosita that we’re here?”

  “Dona Rosita?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Dona Rosita isn’t here.”

  “Did she go out?”

  “You people don’t know?” The exchange of “gentlemen” for “people” was accompanied by a sudden chill in the doorman’s tone.

  “We don’t know what?”

  “Who are you? Weren’t you sent by the doctor?”

  “We certainly were sent by the doctor, here’s our ID. But what we don’t know is if our doctor is the same as yours. Ours is the chief of the Twelfth Precinct, which is all you need to know. Now please tell me if Dona Rosita is home.”

  “Dona Rosita disappeared as soon as her cousin threw herself out the window.”

  “What?”

  “Her cousin threw herself out of the window, on Friday.”

  Welber and Artur tried to keep their cool, but they were too shocked to act indifferent.

  “Fuck, Ferreira’s case!”

  “What’s Ferreira’s case?” the doorman asked.

  “Who was the woman?”

  “I already told you. It was Dona Rosita’s cousin. She came here a few days ago.”

  “What was her name?”

  “I think it was ngela.”

  “And what did she look like?”

  “She was really pretty too; they looked more like sisters than cousins.”

  “Did you see her body?”

  “I’m not like some people, who do everything but stick their fingers in the corpse—”

  “And Dona Rosita, what happened to her?”

  “She disappeared. She didn’t even wait to see her cousin’s body. She didn’t even come get her things. It seems the doctor told her to spend a few days away. To forget.”

  “Did Dona Rosita live alone?”

  “She did. The doctor doesn’t want anyone living with her. The apartment belongs to him and he supports her, but they don’t live together. He has a family.”

  “Did she ever have visitors?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Visitors. Did she have friends who visited her?”

  “Not men. The doctor wouldn’t like that. Sometimes a girlfriend would come over. The doctor didn’t like that either, but he let her. Like this girl. Except she wasn’t a friend, she was her cousin.”

  “The cousin was alone when she fell?”

  “She was, I think she was; I had just come on. I start at eight, and the thing happened around nine. I didn’t see when she came in. I don’t know if she left. She rarely left the house.”

  “Who came here afterward?”

  “First the cops in a police car, then a cop on foot, then two others, in coats and ties, who work in the palace; they took care of everything. It didn’t take long for a car to come take away the body. The men in coats and ties stayed more than an hour up in the apartment. They left with a suitcase.”

  “And then the doctor sent you a nice fat tip.”

  The doorman looked at the two cops silently.

  “Are we going up?” Artur asked Welber.

  “I can’t imagine the doctor’s men left anything. Let’s go. The chief needs to know about this immediately.”

  The weekend had passed without a call from Irene, despite the messages he’d left on her machine; the fact didn’t lift his spirits on this hot Monday morning. Espinosa walked slowly, on the shady side of the street, on his way to the station.

  “Sir, you got here right on time. There’s a woman on the phone who wants to talk to you. She won’t give her name and she won’t speak to anybody else. She’s on the line now.”

  “Put her through.”

  Celeste would have called his apartment. He ran up two flights of stairs faster than he’d planned to and sweatily answered the phone.

  “Hello, Espinosa speaking.”

  “Sir, I have an important piece of information.”

  “Thank you. Who’s speaking?”

  “Let’s leave my name for later; the important thing is what I have to say.”

  “Go ahead, ma’am.”

  “I’d rather not say over the phone.”

  “We can talk here at the station.”

  “I’d rather not do that either, sir. Can’t we meet somewhere else?”

  “You have to admit it’s not very reasonable to ask a police chief to leave the s
tation to meet someone who claims to have an important piece of information but won’t confide the nature of the information, especially when the person won’t come to the station or give her name.”

  “You’re right, sir, but I can tell you that the reason I’m calling concerns the woman who fell from the tenth floor of a building in Leme on Friday night.”

  “I know what you’re talking about, the girl who killed herself.”

  “That’s the point, sir. She didn’t kill herself.”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “From a pay phone, by the victim’s building.”

  “I can meet you at that corner at noon. Is that all right?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “I’ll be in a taxi. I’ll get out carrying a coat in my hand.”

  In that part of Leme, the blocks were long but narrow, so that at the place the woman named there was only one building on each side of the street. Espinosa saw a woman leave the lobby of the building opposite and cross the street.

  There was no doubt that it was the woman he’d seen a month before in a café downtown.

  Her face looked well rested, her hair was well coiffed, and even the little lines around her mouth and eyes had almost completely disappeared. She really was beautiful, even without the provocative skirt, or the shorts she was now wearing.

  “I’m sorry to be hiding behind the doorman, but I didn’t know who was going to show up. My name is Serena Rodes.”

  “I’m Chief Espinosa from the Twelfth Precinct.”

  “Thank you so much for your kindness, sir. I didn’t want anyone to listen in. I’m not sure the phone is safe, and a police station is too public. Maybe my secret isn’t a secret from anyone else …”

  Espinosa awaited some sign that she recognized him: a twitch of the eyebrows, a slower gaze … but there was nothing. She was seeing him for the first time.

  “We’d better have a seat while we talk,” Espinosa said, looking around.

  “Of course, sorry. There’s a restaurant with sidewalk tables right around the corner.”

  Serena was dressed as if she’d come downstairs to buy a magazine from the kiosk—Bermuda shorts, T-shirt, and tennis shoes—but even so she was as seductive as when she’d worn the skirt with a slit up the side. It was even hotter than it had been when he’d left home to go to the station. They sat beneath an enormous umbrella, at a table protected from beggars and street vendors, and ordered fruit juice, the only reasonable drink in that temperature. The few clouds looked tacked onto the blue sky. Even right next to the beach, there was not the slightest breeze.

  “Why did you hide in the entrance of your building?”

  “I’d never seen a police chief before.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know, but someone different.”

  “And what made you leave your hiding place?”

  “You look normal. I’m sorry, I’ve never seen someone like you before, but I’ve heard a lot of stories.”

  “Do you mean I passed the test?”

  “I’m never wrong about people, at least about the essentials.”

  “So can I hear your story?”

  “Of course. And once again, thanks for coming.”

  Without dramatizing it, Serena gave him a detailed account of what she’d seen from her window and the conversations she’d had with the doorman, including the one the day before about renting the apartment.

  Espinosa waited for her to finish before asking any questions.

  “Are you sure about the purse? Couldn’t it have been a piece of paper blown by the wind, or a piece of clothing?”

  “It was clearly a purse, the kind with a long strap, and I could see it perfectly.”

  “Did you ever see the other person inside the apartment?”

  “Only briefly. Not enough to really say anything.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “It looked like a man.”

  “Why do you think they were fighting instead of just talking?”

  “Because she looked so worked up. I couldn’t see much; it was all very quick.”

  “You said on the phone that you had your doubts about her death.”

  “Not about the death—about the fact that everyone’s calling it a suicide.”

  “Why do you doubt it?”

  “Sir, nobody who’s going to kill themselves throws their purse out first. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like a person who’s about to throw themselves in front of a moving car throwing their purse first.”

  “She couldn’t have fallen together with the purse?”

  “No! I saw the purse falling. I didn’t see the woman. The purse fell first.”

  “A person who’s about to commit suicide can do strange things.”

  “And what about the guy who was with her? Why didn’t he stop her? Why did he disappear?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he disappeared because he was the one who pushed her. It wasn’t suicide, Officer, it was murder.”

  “And is that why you’re being so careful about meeting me?”

  “Absolutely. I’m scared. The murderer saw me through the window.”

  “You’re very confident that it was a murder.”

  “Sir, that’s the only reason we’re sitting here.”

  “What I meant was that the elements you’ve given me are very valuable for my investigation, but they’re still a little too fragile to draw any conclusions.”

  “But I saw—”

  “I’m going to tell you a story, Dona Serena. One morning, many years ago, in the city of Venice, a baker was making bread when he heard a scream followed by the sound of things falling at the back of his bakery. When he opened the door to look, he saw a man lying in the street with a knife in his stomach. He ran to help him and was taking out the knife when the woman next door, attracted by the noise, opened the window and saw a man lying in a puddle of blood in the street and another above him, holding a knife. The baker was arrested, tried, and convicted, thanks to the woman who saw him stabbing the victim.”

  “I understand. But can we do anything?”

  “First, we have to find out who the man is you saw in the apartment. Then we have to make sure he wasn’t trying to help the woman, like the unfortunate baker.”

  “It looked like they were fighting.”

  “The man might have been trying to convince her not to do anything extreme.”

  “You think that’s what it was?”

  “No, but I can’t eliminate the possibility.”

  Serena gestured as she spoke. As she moved her arms the movement of her white cotton T-shirt made it clear that she wasn’t wearing a bra. It was so hypnotic that it was difficult for Espinosa to stay focused on her face rather than the enchanting swaying of the breasts in front of him.

  Serena sat looking at Espinosa for a while, but he felt that she was looking right through him, trying to focus on some undefined place beyond him. There was nothing out of the ordinary about her brown eye color, but her gaze ranged from sugary sweet to piercing and metallic, with every nuance in between. Her face expressed her feelings perfectly.

  “Well, I hope I haven’t taken up your time unnecessarily. Maybe I’m overdoing it.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’m really glad you told me.”

  The conversation had arrived at its end. Espinosa thought that any attempt to stretch it out would be awkward, even though he could have talked to a woman like that all day. He left enough money on the table to cover the juices, and both of them got up at the same time. There were still a few feet between the restaurant and the entrance to her building, enough for them to talk about the heat and the unsuitability of tropical clothing. Before he left, they exchanged phone numbers.

  5

  Instead of getting in a cab and heading back to the station, Espinosa crossed the street and went looking for the doorman of the other building. It wasn’t the same one who had been there on the
night of the accident, and he took Espinosa for someone looking to rent the apartment. Espinosa didn’t correct the mistake.

  “I don’t know how much the rent is; you’d have to ask the agent. Here’s the phone number.”

  “Isn’t there some story about a woman killing herself in the apartment?”

  “No, sir, nobody killed themselves in the apartment. A woman died, but on the sidewalk, over where that car is parked.”

  “She was killed on the sidewalk?”

  “No, she fell.”

  “Fell?”

  “Yeah. Fell.”

  “Just like that, walking along, she dropped dead?”

  “No, sir, she fell from up there.”

  “From the tenth floor?”

  “They say when that happens the person dies before they hit the ground.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But it’s a nice apartment and a great neighborhood. You’ll really like it.”

  Espinosa took down the real estate agent’s phone number and looked up at the dead woman’s apartment. He also looked back at Serena’s apartment. Nobody at the window.

  Despite the visit to the restaurant, he still hadn’t eaten. He went back, sat in the same place, and asked the same waiter for their most popular sandwich and a beer. He wasn’t yet ready to return to the station. There were too many questions. The coincidences were the most intriguing part. The coincidence of the two meetings—seeing her at the café downtown and then interviewing her as a witness—plus the coincidence that the victim lived right across from her and the coincidence that Serena was in the only room in the house that faced the victim’s apartment at precisely the time the woman fell…. His other questions concerned Serena’s story itself. Had there actually been a purse thrown out of the window before the woman fell? Had there really been someone else in the apartment and had the victim been fighting with that person? If she had been tossed out the window, why hadn’t she screamed? Why hadn’t she tried to defend herself?

  From where he was, near the great Rock of Leme, the view of the Avenida Atlântica was very different from the one he was used to. The elegant curve of the beach was completely visible, up to Copacabana Fort. He’d had better sandwiches, the heat was still intense, but the beer was just the right temperature. He sat a few more minutes taking in the view and thinking about Serena before finally heading back to work.