A Window in Copacabana

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  “Artur and I both have cars.”

  “Great. I’ll give you a gas allowance. One of the women lives in Leme. Her name is Serena. She’s married to a big shot in the federal government, and her temporary address is the apartment the woman was thrown out of, on the tenth floor. The other is Celeste, who has disappeared. Tell Artur and nobody else.”

  “Why is the address of the woman married to the government big shot the same as the murdered woman’s?”

  “Long story. Her real address is in the building across the street. I just gave you the temporary one.”

  “Another question, sir. Is she the same one who was at the AA meeting?”

  “She is.”

  “You told me to tell Artur. Do you mean everything?”

  “Some of it you can keep under your hat.”

  He spent the time remaining before lunch getting his hands on a couple of phones for Welber and Artur. Right before he left, he got the call he had been expecting for days.

  “Espinosa? It’s Celeste. How about lunch at the Arabic place?”

  “Great idea.”

  “In ten minutes, is that all right?”

  “Perfect.”

  He put on his coat and left without speaking to anyone. He took the Rua Barata Ribeiro, the shortest way to the Galeria Menescal. Celeste wasn’t at the restaurant but at a store at the corner of the gallery. As soon as he walked by, she grabbed his arm, and they jumped into the nearest taxi. The same tactic he’d used the first time. After confirming that they weren’t being followed, Espinosa suggested a restaurant downtown that was pleasant enough and had a side entrance as well as a principal one. Celeste had cut her hair short and dyed it blond. She was wearing small, round sunglasses and one of the dresses Irene had given her.

  “Sorry about disappearing like that.”

  “What happened?”

  “People started asking questions at the hotel.”

  “Who? Asking what?”

  “Must have been the cops. Asking if there were any women there alone. Luckily the manager interpreted it a different way and said that the hotel didn’t accept unaccompanied women.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To another hotel.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Same as I’ve done until now. Until I can carry out my plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “I’ve already done the first part. Now I have to do the second. But before I explain, I have to ask if you’re going to get my lunch. I haven’t eaten very well lately.”

  “Sorry. Of course.”

  Espinosa got the waiter’s attention. Only then did he look around at the restaurant and the other guests. It was a quiet place with wood-paneled walls, small beveled-glass windows, and pleasant lighting, frequented by lawyers and executives from foreign corporations. At this hour there were few people. Espinosa asked for the menu and they ordered—or, rather, they accepted the waiter’s suggestions. While waiting for their food, Celeste described her plan for escaping her death sentence.

  “I think you’ve already found out that Nestor, Ramos, and Silveira were involved in funneling bribes to policemen. Over the last few years, I’d accompanied Nestor to the meetings he held to distribute the money. They were almost always in his apartment in Copacabana. Since I was always there, I figured out who got what and how much. It wasn’t the same amount for everyone. The chiefs got most of it and the lower-ranking officers less. Even so, everyone doubled or tripled their salaries that way. In the last few days, when I’ve been hiding, I had time to write it all down, with the names of all the beneficiaries. The list includes precinct chiefs and prison guards and even a few politicians. I wrote down names, amounts, dates, places, and means of delivery—even, in a few cases, the things they bought with the money. I made five copies of the dossier and deposited them in a bank, together with an authorization to deliver them to the five people whose names are on the envelopes. After that, I found a lawyer and had him draw up an agreement to deliver them to the addressees in case I should be attacked, die suspiciously, or disappear. The five are all people I know, and they all have access to the media. You are one of them. Your role is to let policemen know that these lists exist.”

  “Very clever … and dangerous.”

  “What’s the danger?”

  “It’s like telling every station in town that you’ve got a load of dynamite that could blow up the building, and that five people—six, including you—have the key to detonate it. It’s not a potential threat, it’s a real one.”

  “So?”

  “So they’re not going to sit back and pray for you not to change your mind. What if you decide to stir things up a little by distributing the envelopes anyway?”

  “What do you think they can do? There’s no alternative.”

  The waiter arrived with their food. Espinosa found it hard to eat after that conversation, but he was gratified to see Celeste throw herself at the clay pot holding the seafood paella.

  After lunch, they discussed other possible reactions to the news. Espinosa still thought it was risky, though he acknowledged that he couldn’t come up with anything better.

  “Think about it, Espinosa. It’s either that or having to change my name, my city, my face, and disappear from the face of the earth. What difference would it make then if I was physically dead?”

  “You already deposited the envelopes in the bank?”

  “I did.”

  “So you’re not asking for my opinion. The decision’s already been made.”

  “It has. It was my choice.”

  “You know I’m going to try to get the list.”

  “I can imagine. That’s why I didn’t tell you the name of the bank it’s kept in. I also don’t think you’re going to be able to get a court order to investigate bank by bank, branch by branch. There’s thousands of them.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of getting a court order. I was thinking of getting it from you.”

  “Espinosa, that list is my salvation.”

  “In any case, I’m going to try. While the news gets around, where are you going to be?”

  “I’m not going to stay in one place for more than two days. The hard part is that the options for my budget in the Zona Sul are running out. I don’t want to go to areas I’m not familiar with; that would make me even more nervous.”

  Celeste had eaten enough for both of them. He gazed admiringly at the woman in front of him, who, persecuted by the police force itself, had managed, all on her own, to come up with a strategy to neutralize even her fiercest pursuers.

  “You needed that, after all those days in hiding.”

  “I think it’s going to work.”

  “I was referring to the paella.”

  “Ah! And it was delicious!”

  “So now we can think about dessert.”

  “Ice cream! I’d love some mango ice cream.”

  With her new look, Celeste stood out from the other diners. The restaurant had filled up since they’d come in. She was not entirely relaxed, but she had let down her guard enough to be able to enjoy the pleasant ambience as well as the food. As she shared her bowl of ice cream with Espinosa, she entertained him with anecdotes about her quick moves over the last few days.

  “What are you going to do until the news gets around?”

  “Stay hidden for another week, here in Rio. Then I’m thinking about spending some time elsewhere, maybe a smaller city where things are more affordable. I’ve scraped together every cent I could. It’ll be enough for a month or two, depending on where I end up. Then I’ll think about what to do next. First I want to see the effect of the news.”

  “While you’re doing that, try not to go out unnecessarily.”

  Celeste stretched her arms across the table and took Espinosa’s hand.

  “You’ve been really great to me. How are you going to break the news?”

  “I’m going to say that I got a call from a lawyer telling me about the dossi
er in the bank.”

  “Perfect.”

  8

  After putting Celeste in a cab, Espinosa called the group to arrange a meeting that afternoon. At three, Ramiro, Welber, and Artur sat in a semicircle around the chief’s desk.

  “There’s no need to look out for Celeste anymore,” Espinosa began.

  “Was she …” Welber swallowed the rest of the question.

  “No, she wasn’t killed. I had lunch with her, and I can guarantee that she’s alive.”

  “Did they get the man?”

  “No. But I think he’ll have to give up. Which doesn’t mean we’re going to give up trying to get him.”

  Espinosa filled them in on his meeting with Celeste and her plan to get the murderer off her back. He added that he’d gotten a call from the lawyer confirming the existence of the envelopes and the fact that his name was among the recipients.

  “Nobody, not even the lawyer, has access to the list, unless Celeste dies or is attacked. According to what she told me, the list is perfectly complete. She didn’t give me any names.”

  “Why didn’t the people who died do the same?”

  “Maybe they didn’t understand why the murders were happening, or they didn’t have time to come up with an effective defense. Don’t forget that almost every cop equates defense with firepower. Celeste decided to use her head.”

  “If it works, we’ll have an even smaller chance of getting the killer,” Ramiro said.

  “But that’s not the idea,” Espinosa answered. “The possibility that Celeste might be out of danger doesn’t mean that we’re going to let up on trying to get the guy who killed three cops and three women right beneath our noses. He’ll probably leave town, realizing that he might himself be killed, to prevent him from snitching—even though I don’t think the people who ordered the killing have had direct contact with him. In any case, he’ll be out of circulation.”

  Espinosa kept the meeting going for another few minutes, reinforcing in his colleagues’ minds how crucial the dossier was to Celeste’s hopes of survival. It was three-forty when the meeting ended. He was sure that by the end of the afternoon everyone in his station would have heard about the dossier. By the end of the weekend, every policeman in Rio would know.

  9

  Serena was lying on the couch in her temporary apartment, thinking about the evening before with Espinosa, there, in that same room, in the fading light. Better and worse than she’d imagined: he was in better shape than she’d thought, but he wasn’t one for romance. He was a man of action. His problem wasn’t incurable; he was just a little out of touch with what women want. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

  The meeting with Espinosa brought back memories of the days when she’d sung in bars and clubs. A policeman and a nightclub singer could fit into the same photo album, but it would be hard to sneak them into the Rodes family album, along with pictures of their son graduating from Harvard. Luckily, the officer clearly hadn’t interpreted the rendezvous as the beginning of a romance. She wanted an adventure. She didn’t want romance. She could always have that with her husband, since romance was always pretend anyway.

  Every minute or so she got up and looked out the window. It wasn’t just the window across the way that attracted her attention; she was also interested in the street and the people on the sidewalks. She was sure she could identify the murderer if she saw him, even though she’d only glimpsed him from a distance on the night of the crime. It wasn’t his appearance she expected to recognize. It was more a feeling that had passed between them. He probably hadn’t seen her very clearly. The light was behind her, and he couldn’t have focused on her face for more than a second. But he had the advantage of knowing where she lived. Which was why she was waiting.

  PART 4

  1

  The airplane landed at Santos Dumont just after seven. Irene called Espinosa from the arrivals area, trying him first at the station and then at his apartment. He’d already left the one and still hadn’t made it to the other. She got in a taxi and decided not to try him again until she got home.

  Not much had happened over the last two days, nothing that required his direct involvement. Sometimes on Friday, the tide turned: not much action during the day, but then the flow of incidents increased at night, reaching a climax in the early-morning hours. It was usually street kids robbing tourists, prostitutes, and transvestites, or drunken brawls in bars and nightclubs. They could fill him in on all of it later. He left the station at six.

  He hadn’t seen Irene in almost a week. The time had been filled by Celeste and Serena, Serena occupying most of it. She wasn’t a substitute for Irene, and he didn’t mean her to be, either.

  While he was walking down the busy sidewalk—he’d chosen the new route, past the bookstore—he thought about how hard it was to adhere to a consistent sexual morality. What were you supposed to do when you were alone with a beautiful woman who stripped and stared at you like an ice-cream cone staring at a kid on a hot summer day?

  Naturally, he was looking for a justification. He wasn’t a kid, and Serena wasn’t an ice-cream cone. And it wasn’t a matter of making an ethical decision. What was done was done; he’d fallen into a sexual trap and there was no way he could have escaped. He didn’t feel guilty about Irene: they had never agreed not to see other people. She’d never asked if he’d been with other women, and he’d never asked what she did on her free evenings in São Paulo (or even in Rio). Whatever they did on their own had no bearing on the enormous pleasure they shared when they were together.

  There was nothing novel in that reflection. He wasn’t weighing the pros and cons. The truth was, the situation suited both of them perfectly. He already knew that. So why was he thinking about it? If he missed Irene, all he had to do was call her. Why keep drooping along like that, hands in his pockets, eyes gazing off into the distance, with an entirely unjustified feeling of emptiness?

  It was in that state that he arrived at the bookstore. For the first time, he was interested not in the books but in the store itself. He studied the window and the sale table outside, wondering if that’s how he would have arranged them or if he’d have tried to think of something else. Both items—the window and the sale table—were essential to attracting customers. As for the interior, he would definitely have tried to make it more attractive, more charming. Mentally, he moved things around and conjured more inviting shelving.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Thanks, I’m just having a look.”

  “I’m here if you need anything.”

  Espinosa examined a few shelves and looked at their foreign literature section, pausing in front of an old Jules Verne collection, the same one he’d had since his teens. Published in Portugal by the Livraria Bertrand, they were wine-colored hardbacks with black-and-white illustrations. He tried to remember where they were in his living room. The feeling of the binding and the paper brought back memories of adventures on the Mysterious Island and the sensation of being trapped on the Nautilus. He left the store, walked another block, and, before heading home, strolled through the Galeria Menescal.

  So that was it: his life was becoming monotonous, repetitive, and the visit to the bookstore only made him feel it more keenly. He was walking away from the Arabic restaurant with his take-out meatballs; even they expressed the dullness of his life. He thought about getting something else, but then decided against it. Spaghetti and meatballs: that was his dinner. That was what his life had become. He didn’t need to change too radically—he could still enjoy used books and Middle Eastern cuisine—but he did need to break the tedium of his days. It wasn’t just a matter of taking a different route to work; he needed to find a different route through life.

  Back at home, he checked the answering machine, transferred the frozen spaghetti from the package to a plate, left the meatballs wrapped up so they wouldn’t get cold, and got in the shower. When the phone rang, a little after seven, he was lathering up his hair.

  2
/>   Serena was waiting for her husband, not realizing that he’d arrived that morning and headed straight to Brasília. A meeting with the minister to update him on the meetings in Washington, he now called to say. He’d be back the next day. Serena turned on the light in her dressing room, went downstairs, crossed the street, and entered the other building. She didn’t turn on any lights. She simply walked up to the windowsill in order to spy on her own illuminated room. She didn’t look at the street; she imagined the murderer leaning against a lamppost, pretending to read a newspaper, as in an old detective movie. But this wasn’t a movie. That a woman had been thrown out of the window, only a couple of weeks earlier, from the same window where she now stood was tragically real. She should have brought her binoculars so she could see his face in detail. She imagined his surprise when, looking up at the window from which he’d thrown the woman, he’d catch a glimpse of a face staring at him. Maybe he’d just notice the glint off the binoculars. She didn’t have a watch, but the TVs in the other apartments announced the beginning and the end of an evening soap opera, between eight and nine. The same time that the woman had been killed. Her maid would be off duty, having gone down to the Avenida Atlântica to flirt. Her apartment was entirely available to the killer.

  From her vantage point—seated in a chair, not too close to the window, with all the lights off—she could study her own apartment without being seen by anybody else. She shifted her gaze to the sea, the street, the entrance to her building, repeating the sequence innumerable times before noticing that the light she had left on in her dressing room had been turned off. She felt slightly giddy. Maybe Zuleide had checked the lights before leaving. She slowly calmed herself down, though she was still out of breath. She looked back at her apartment. It was completely dark. She sheltered her eyes from the lights coming from the street and the other buildings, trying to make out something in the darkness of her dressing room. She lost track of time: one minute, ten minutes … she couldn’t say. Suddenly, she had the clear impression of a little point of red light—like someone removing a cigarette from their mouth after taking a drag. She couldn’t see anything else in her dressing room, but she was absolutely certain that a man was peering at her from the darkness. She felt dizzy again, this time more so, as if on the verge of fainting. She gripped the sides of the chair, thinking that she had to do something before she passed out. She found the card next to the phone, went into the bathroom, and turned on the light to read the number. She went back into the living room and called Espinosa.