Italian spaghetti, Arabic meatballs: it wasn’t exactly haute cuisine. It occurred to Espinosa that he should have gotten something German to round out the culinary fusion. He was removing the spaghetti from the microwave when the phone rang. He quickly answered, imagining that it was Irene suggesting a real dinner.
It was a woman’s voice, but not Irene’s. It took him a minute to recognize it.
“Espinosa?”
“Speaking.”
“I need you to come immediately!”
“Who—”
“It’s Serena, I can see the murderer—he’s in the apartment—”
“Where are you?”
“In the apartment. He’s there, I’m sure of it.”
“You’re in your apartment?”
“No, I’m in the one I rented. He got there … turned out the light I’d left on. I kept looking, he was smoking …”
“Your husband—”
“My husband’s in Brasília. He doesn’t smoke.”
“Nobody else is in your apartment?”
“The maid…. She left…. She doesn’t smoke either.”
“You’re sure someone’s there?”
“Fuck yes, someone’s there!”
“I’m on my way. Stay where you are and don’t do anything.”
He looked at the dinner on the table, picked up a meatball, and left. He didn’t think it was worth mobilizing Welber and Artur.
On the first try, the car’s motor groaned. He tried a second time; it barely muttered. The third time it didn’t even speak. He locked the car and got in a cab.
As soon as Irene got home, she listened to the week’s messages. There weren’t many; one of them was from Espinosa asking if she’d gotten back. Then she skimmed the mail: a few bills, two letters. She emptied her suitcase and took a slow, relaxing shower. Still wrapped in her towel, she called Espinosa. The same laconic answering-machine message greeted her. She ordered Japanese, turned on the TV, and began to think she might as well have stayed in São Paulo.
3
The taxi arrived at its destination ten minutes after the phone call. Espinosa looked up at the buildings, one across from the other, and saw that both of Serena’s apartments were dark.
He walked past the doorman, who greeted him, certainly recognizing him from two days earlier, and headed toward the elevator. He gathered from the doorman’s unperturbed manner that nothing out of the ordinary had transpired on the tenth floor, at least nothing like what had happened a couple of weeks ago. As soon as she heard the ring of the doorbell, followed by Espinosa’s voice, Serena opened the door.
She looked genuinely terrified. She took the policeman’s arm and led him to the middle of the room, at a prudent distance from the window.
“That one’s my dressing room,” she said, pointing at the building across the way. “There was someone there. I saw.”
“There was nobody home when you left?”
“Zuleide, the maid, but she left right after me.”
“Your husband might have come back from Brasília early.”
“I called the doorman. He’s not back.”
“What did you see?”
“A man taking a cigarette out of his mouth.”
“You saw that?”
“I saw the end of the cigarette and then saw him take it out of his mouth.”
“And you saw that it was a man?”
“Who is going to go into my apartment at night and smoke a cigarette?”
“That’s what I was going to ask.”
“The only people with keys are Guilherme and Zuleide. Besides me, of course.”
“You don’t think it’s a little odd that someone would break into your apartment at night to smoke?”
“I think it was on purpose … for me to see…. He knew I was here.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If he knew you were here, why didn’t he come over here to get you?”
“What the fuck! Are you interrogating me? Who knows why he didn’t come here! I almost think you would have liked it better that way.”
“I’m trying to find out if you really saw him or if you just think you saw him.”
“Of course I saw him!”
“You saw something that looked like the lit end of a cigarette. It could have been a reflection.”
“The window is open; there was nowhere for it to reflect. Besides, I didn’t just see the lit end, I also saw it move.”
“So let’s go check it out.”
“Go there?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that why you rented this place? Isn’t that why you called me?”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
The elevator was still on their floor. They went down, crossed the street, and entered her building.
“Good evening, Dona Serena.”
“Good evening, Raimundo. Did anyone ask for me?”
“I just got here. But no one’s come by, ma’am.”
“Has Dr. Guilherme gotten back?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And Zuleide?”
“She already left.”
Before going up, Espinosa asked Serena to describe the apartment: the layout of the rooms, the location of the service entrance, rooms that she kept locked. He wanted to go in without turning on the lights.
“If you enter in the dark, I should go with you to show you around.”
“Wait for me down here.”
“But I want to go with you.”
“Negative. Stay here with the doorman.”
“Why can’t I go up?”
“You’d be in the way.”
“And what if he leaves and finds me here?”
“He won’t. I’ll buzz down when you can come up.”
He took her key and went up. He didn’t believe anyone was in the apartment, which is why he hadn’t called Welber and Artur. Nobody broke into an apartment at night and smoked. If the intruder wanted to be seen, he could have turned on the lights. Just in case, he opened the door soundlessly. He didn’t need to adjust to the dark; the wide living room boasted twenty feet of windows that reflected the streetlights from the Avenida Atlântica. Espinosa stood for a minute looking around and listening carefully. He was impressed by how many noises there could be in an empty apartment, and how many little green and red lights there were blinking on different electronic apparatuses.
The room was too bright for anyone to hide there. He could make out the beginning of the hallway leading to the other rooms of the apartment. The darkness blurred the distances. He didn’t know whether the hall was long or short, and he couldn’t tell where the doors were. From Serena’s description, he knew that the first door on the right was the bathroom. He confirmed this, then calculated the distance to the other rooms and began to check these out one by one. He paid special attention not only to what he could see and hear but also to what he could smell. After examining the service area, he proceeded through the bedrooms and bathrooms, until he reached the dressing room. Only then did he turn on the lights and walk back through the apartment. Nobody. He called Serena on the intercom.
“He ran off?” Serena asked as soon as Espinosa opened the door for her.
“Nobody was there. The apartment was empty and in perfect order.”
“I want to go to the dressing room.”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
They stood in the middle of the room, Serena gripping Espinosa’s arm tightly.
“There’s one more thing,” he said. “I didn’t smell smoke, and there aren’t any ashes anywhere.”
Serena exhaled, relieved, and loosened her grip on the policeman’s arm. When she looked across the street, however, she cried out.
“It was off!”
“What was off?”
“The light in the living room! It was off when we were there, and we left it off! Now it’s on! He saw us leave and went over there.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that he saw I wasn’
t alone and decided not to attack me.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s it?”
“Or maybe you were just under the impression that you saw him in the first place.”
“And the woman thrown out of the window, that was just an impression? Maybe you standing here—just an impression!”
“What I’m saying is that all this is only based on the fact that you think you saw a lit cigarette fifty or sixty feet away. You could have perfectly well been mistaken.”
“True. And I could have perfectly well been mistaken about you…. I’m nervous. Let’s have a seat in the living room. Do you want a drink?”
“Thanks, I still haven’t had dinner … and I don’t remember having lunch either.”
“Will you walk me to the other apartment? That light is scaring me.”
“Sure.”
For the second time that night, they crossed the street toward the other apartment. The door was locked, the light was still on, and there was no sign of anybody’s having been there.
“Before you closed the door, you might have hit the light switch. People do it automatically. You were scared …”
“Maybe. Sorry. I was rude to you. Do you want to stay here? We could order some food.”
“I have to go home.”
Serena turned off the light. They went out, then crossed the street together for the third time.
It was ten-thirty when Espinosa got home and saw the spaghetti and meatballs on the table. He put the whole thing in the microwave. His appetite was only heightened by the dinner. At least there was still an old beer in the fridge.
4
He devoted Saturday morning to checking on his car’s battery. He’d try to recharge it; there was no reason to buy a new one and ruin that one as well. It wouldn’t take long; he’d still have time to finish reading the papers. The most difficult part was finding someone to help him jump-start the car. Once that was done, the rest was easy. He didn’t even lose an hour. He did lose some money: the battery couldn’t be salvaged. Back home, with the car and its new battery parked in its usual place, he picked up the papers and drank his coffee, allowing himself an extra cup and two pieces of toast. On the answering machine, there was a silent message. He thought about Celeste. Irene would have left a message or hung up before the beep. Serena … the night before had ended on such a melancholy note.
Still those three: Celeste, Irene, Serena. And on this Saturday morning he thought he’d performed heroically by taking care of the car first thing. He was past forty, an age when emotions become less pronounced, but he was still far from sixty. Being satisfied with toast and sugar-free jam on a beautiful Saturday morning in the middle of summer in Rio de Janeiro: was that how it was supposed to be? He had nothing against toast and jam. It just seemed odd that that was all the company he had this morning. That and the papers. He’d already taken the car for a walk.
He didn’t finish the papers. He put on shorts, a T-shirt, tennis shoes, and a cotton hat he’d had for several decades, and took a walk down the Avenida Atlântica. He didn’t want to walk in the sand. On the weekends it was impossible to take three steps on the beach without bumping into half a dozen people. The sidewalk wasn’t exactly deserted, but at least he could move. He walked the five blocks that separated the Peixoto District from the beach, arriving almost exactly halfway down the Avenida Atlântica. He crossed the road and found the sidewalk, veering left, toward the Rock of Leme. If he had been in good shape he would have covered the entire length of the beach; instead he did half of it and went home. At eleven on a midsummer morning, he could take being outside only if he were right next to the water, so he could jump in every once in a while. When he got home, there were two messages: the first, from Irene, reported that she was back in Rio. The second was silent. He called Irene. She’d gone out.
He had lunch at the Italian place, his usual Saturday hangout. To make up for the disappointing meal the night before, he had a risotto with red wine. When he left the restaurant, the afternoon was halfway over and people were leaving the beach, tugging their children and all their beach paraphernalia after them. The walk to the Peixoto District was leisurely, giving him time to burn off the wine and digest the risotto. The bookstore was right on the way to his house, but he decided to take a slight detour to avoid it. At the end of the afternoon he picked up Phantom Lady again—he still wasn’t even to the hundred and fourth day before the execution.
None of the three women called. Not until the next day, in the evening, the weekend almost over, did he manage to speak to Irene.
“Maybe we could meet up in São Paulo?” she said. “I have to go back tomorrow.”
“If we must …”
“We don’t must, dear, but it might actually be interesting. It’s not the most romantic city in the world, but it’s hundreds of miles from the Twelfth Precinct.”
On Monday morning, Espinosa was thinking about Celeste’s gambit. He wondered how long it would protect her. He knew that by now everyone involved would have heard about the dossiers and called off their hired guns. When he got to the station, there was a message from her suggesting lunch at A Polaca, not fifty feet from the station and often full of cops.
Fifteen minutes before the arranged time, Espinosa went to the restaurant to wait for her.
“You couldn’t have picked a more exposed place,” he said when she arrived.
“You know how in poker you can show all your cards but one? That’s what I’m doing. I’m not going to spend the rest of my days with my tail between my legs.”
“It’s risky.”
“Dating a policeman is risky too. I learned that a long time ago.”
“Having lunch with a policeman is also risky.”
“Not when the policeman’s honest. And everyone knows who is and who isn’t. Without officers like you, the police department couldn’t justify its existence and would drop dead. They need you a lot more than you know.”
“So you think I’m a good card in your hand?”
“Espinosa, I’m not playing with you.”
The decision to come out of hiding had done wonders for Celeste. She was well-groomed, nicely dressed, and, considering the circumstances, as calm as possible.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you’re so pretty.”
“Thanks. Over these last few days I’ve had plenty of time to take care of myself. This morning I went to my apartment. I could put on my own clothes and be in my own home, even if only for a short time. If you can’t do that, it’s not worth living. I sent your friend’s clothes to the cleaners. If you give me her address, I’d like to send her a thank-you note.”
“Do you feel safe at home?”
“Not yet, but I can’t keep living in cheap hotels, exposed to all kinds of dangers, without my own clothes and my own things, without a little comfort…. You can do it for a couple of weeks, but then it becomes a prison. I don’t know if I’m safer at home or in a hotel. If they decide to kill me, they’ll find a way sooner or later. But I don’t think they’ll do it. The fact is, I don’t feel safe enough yet to move back home. I’m going to give it some time. A month or two, like I said. With the money I have left, I can take a break for a few weeks, somewhere a little more remote.”
During the meal a lot of eyes were on them. If someone still didn’t know about the dossiers, they would after that lunch. The cards were on the table. Everyone knew that Celeste had come out of hiding and that a nonaggression pact had been signed. As long as it was respected, the list wouldn’t be made public. Espinosa put Celeste in a cab after she promised to stay in touch.
“Send me a postcard,” he joked. “When you get back, we’ll have lunch again.”
Celeste gave Espinosa a warm kiss, and the taxi took off.
By the Avenida Atlântica on Tuesday morning, the high waves had swallowed half the sand on the beach. The waves were frightening even from a safe distance, and nobody was sitting on the little
strip of surviving sand. Tourists hated days like that, but not Espinosa. He walked down the sidewalk admiring the same sea where, thirty years before, his father had taught him to swim. Neither the violence of the waves nor the wind that whipped up their foam bothered Espinosa; they were both old friends. Something else was bothering him.
Back at the station, the only event out of the ordinary was a call from Serena, apologizing for Friday night.
“It might have been my imagination,” she said.
“I hope so. What about the light in the other apartment?”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe I did hit the switch on the way out. It’s an old habit, even though I thought I’d notice if the light went on. But nothing else happened, and that’s what’s important.”
“Is your husband back?”
“He is. He didn’t like that I’d rented the apartment; he didn’t understand why.”
“To be honest, I don’t either.”
“Maybe I’m not sure myself … but it doesn’t matter. I can leave the apartment locked up until the end of the month, when the lease runs out, or I can just hand it back over. Thanks for your help.”
She hung up without another word.
The group’s next meeting, scheduled for noon, was held in the chief’s office. No special security measures were taken. The three detectives sat in the three available chairs; two others were loaded down with paperwork and files.
“And?” Espinosa asked Ramiro.
The inspector spoke in his capacity as chief of the detectives.
A Window in Copacabana Page 14