“That’s more like it.”
The first step lasted more than two hours, so they decided to combine the second and third steps. They’d have the rest of the night for the fourth.
The restaurant Irene selected was nice, not as noisy as other trendy places, and it was only a few blocks from the hotel. They walked holding hands, like lovers. Which, of course, they were.
She brought it up first.
“What’s eating you?”
“The possibility of committing an enormous injustice, on the one hand … and on the other, the possibility of letting someone get away with murder.”
“Tell me about it.”
They still hadn’t ordered. They were drinking wine and nibbling on the Italian bread.
“What I’m going to tell you can’t be said officially. You’re the only person I feel comfortable burdening with my imaginary extravagances.”
Irene sat silently, concentrating on what he was saying. The whole restaurant seemed to quiet down, lending Espinosa’s speech the resonance of the confessional.
“I think I already know the name of the murderer. The whole time it was so close that we didn’t even see it. But a few days ago, a detail reported by a witness began to take shape and become more important, so important that I went into the apartment of one of the people implicated without a warrant. With what I found there, and what I managed to learn from the phone and insurance companies, my doubts became certainties. Yesterday, I received a postcard that seemed to confirm the certainty. From the very beginning, we had it in our heads that the murderer was someone from outside, a hired professional unknown in Rio de Janeiro. We looked for months for someone intelligent enough to pull off the murders. It never occurred to anyone that it might not be a man.”
“And it was a woman?”
“Nobody thought of that, not even the victims, which is why they were killed so easily. They were all killed by someone who could get close to them without raising any suspicions, someone they trusted, both the cops and the women, someone who knew their habits, who could ring the bell or knock on the door and be welcomed by the unarmed victim. Someone who even in the middle of the street would attract no attention, from the victim or the locals…. A woman. Someone smart and competent. A woman like Celeste.”
“The woman I lent the clothes to?”
“The same.”
“And what about the attacks on her? Wasn’t she the one you were hiding and protecting?”
“She was never in any danger. Nobody ever busted into her apartment, except me and my staff. Nobody tried to kill her. That’s what she told us, but we didn’t check it out. I was protecting her from us.”
“And the killer you’ve been talking about?”
“He never existed.”
“But …”
“Nothing’s definitive; lots of things still have to be cleared up, lots of holes still have to be filled in—and not just by my imagination. For now this story is pure fiction. I hope someday, once and for all, we’ll get to the truth. Here goes: Ramos, Silveira, and Nestor, the three cops who were killed, weren’t brilliant people. They were completely mediocre, so much so that nobody ever noticed them. And they weren’t honest, either. They had worked together before, in the robbery division, and realized that there was money to be made from stolen cars. Celeste was Nestor’s mistress, and she sat in on the group’s meetings. She quickly realized that there was a lot more money in the detectives’ scam than they realized. She was smarter and better educated, and she spoke some Spanish and English, which made it easier to work with foreigners. She came up with a much more sophisticated plan and suggested that they test-drive it for a few months. If they were happy with the results, all they’d have to do was carry on. They accepted. There was nothing to lose. The plan was a big success, and they decided to stick with it. From what I gathered from the insurance companies and secondhand-auto-parts dealers, the plan included getting middle-class kids to steal cars and then have the police “recover” them—the police being the three of them. Then they would cut a deal with the insurance companies and the cars’ owners. They also stole imported cars for resale in provincial cities and Paraguay; and they stole luxury cars, foreign and domestic, for parts. The whole thing depended on the support of cops from several places. Celeste reorganized the bribery system already in place, paying out even better tips. The enterprise moved full speed ahead, well oiled and completely secure. The base of operations was a garage in the Zona Oeste. They made a lot of money. Much more than they’d imagined. And the business was extremely safe. It didn’t depend on murder or violence against third parties. There was an important detail: Celeste decided that only a very small portion of the proceeds could be used for buying material goods, so as not to draw attention to themselves. Most of the money was exchanged for dollars and secreted abroad. They agreed not to touch the money for a few years, at which point the money would be divided up. I think that Celeste decided to keep all the money right before she was going to have to divvy it up. She drew up a list of everyone on the take, which included both precinct chiefs and detectives as well as local politicians, and deposited copies of the list, in addressed envelopes, in a safe-deposit box. She hired a lawyer and gave him a letter instructing him to send the lists to several people in case she was killed.”
“And what did she do to get her hands on the money?”
“The only thing she could.”
“She killed the others?”
“That’s what I think.”
“Shot them?”
“It’s clean. Silent, no physical contact.”
“And her friend? She wasn’t thrown out the window?”
“We thought the killer had made a mistake. Not knowing Celeste and going only on a description—a description that fit both of them—he killed the wrong woman. But that was when we thought we were dealing with a hired gun. Now I think that Celeste herself pushed Rosita out of the window. Which made her seem like the next victim. A perfect alibi.”
“Espinosa, how does a woman my size mange to push another one out of a window?”
“By throwing her purse out first.”
“What?”
“They were fighting in the living room—according to a witness. For some reason, Celeste throws her friend’s purse out of the window. When the friend, shocked, runs over to see where her purse fell, Celeste comes up from behind; the friend is dangling over the windowsill, and …”
“That’s evil!”
“I don’t think it was planned. What was evil was knowing exactly how to take advantage of the situation.”
“A few days ago you thought she’d be the next victim. What made you change your mind?”
“The cap.”
“The cap?”
“The cap I found in her apartment.”
“What does that prove?”
“A witness who saw the fight, who lived across the street and saw the purse fly out of the window, said that the person fighting with Rosita was wearing a cap and a jacket. Why would someone wear a cap and a jacket on a hot summer day? It could only be as a disguise. Celeste is as tall as a man of medium height. I found a cap and three different jackets in her wardrobe. Besides, I remembered that one of the people we interviewed about the first murder said that the male nurse who went up in the elevator with the old man in the wheelchair was wearing a cap—”
“So what? I have plenty of jackets and more than one cap.”
“But you never sent me a postcard from the airport on your way out of the country, telling me it’s too bad we weren’t on the same side.”
“You mean that she not only borrowed my clothes but my boyfriend as well?”
“Just your clothes. Your boyfriend was indeed used, but not in the way you think.”
“I know. You’re not going to get her?”
“Under what charge?”
“Murder. Didn’t she kill six people?”
“Maybe even seven. The witness who lived across the street
died in circumstances that will probably never entirely be explained. But listen, this is just a story. Most of it is based on suppositions; a little bit can be deduced, but I don’t have any proof. There’s still a lot I’ve just dreamed up—maybe even most of it.”
“And so?”
“So for now it’s just a story.”
“You’re not going to do anything?”
“By now she must be miles away, in some foreign country. I’d bet on some Caribbean tax haven. The whole time she said she was hiding from the murderer she was putting the finishing touches on a plan she’d been developing for a long time.”
“She sent the clothes back.”
“I thought she would.”
“With a note of thanks.”
“She’s not your average criminal. Crime, for her, is a question of logic, not ethics.”
“For me, she’s just a faceless size six.”
“Her face is quite attractive.”
“You were all—including the victims—seduced by her. You think she’s going to get off scot-free?”
“I don’t think so. She’s smart, but she’s too self-confident. After a while, she’ll feel safe enough to risk coming back to Brazil. By then I’ll have all the proof. And I’ll be waiting for her.”
“It’s terrible. Someone with no criminal record murders her boyfriend, two friends, and three girlfriends—six people, or seven, as you said—while making everybody think she’s a poor vulnerable girl threatened by a ferocious assassin.”
“We still don’t know if she has a criminal record. She could be using an assumed name.”
“Are you completely sure about what you’ve told me?”
“In my heart of hearts. That’s why I’m talking to you. Being sure doesn’t necessarily mean knowing the truth. It’s intimate, subjective.”
“What do you need to go from certainty to truth?”
“Facts.”
“Aren’t the murders the facts?”
“The only facts in this whole story.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Order dinner.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A distinguished academic, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza is a bestselling novelist who lives in Rio de Janeiro. The first book in the Espinosa series, The Silence of the Rain, was published in 2002 by Henry Holt to critical acclaim, followed by December Heat (2003) and Southwesterly Wind (2004).
Read on for an excerpt of
PURSUIT,
© 2006 BY LUIZ ALFREDO GARCIA-ROZA
PROLOGUE
On that hot December afternoon, his long strides and fixed stare didn’t make it any easier to weave through all the pedestrians. To avoid bumping into people, and to maintain his steady rhythm, Espinosa found himself walking long stretches with one foot on the curb and the other in the street. He wasn’t late for anything and he wasn’t heading anywhere in particular. On the Rua da Quitanda, he had planned to turn onto the Rua do Carmo in order to check out the used-book store he’d visited since his law school days. But at the quick pace he was going, the Rua do Carmo and the bookstore were forgotten. Whenever possible, Espinosa took advantage of quiet afternoons at the station to examine a new bookstore or revisit one of his old haunts in the colonial buildings downtown. That was when he was working, but this afternoon he was just trying to enjoy one of his last days of vacation. The previous days hadn’t differed much from the one that was already halfway over.
Things had started going south a week before the beginning of his vacation, when Irene had received an invitation to a two-week seminar at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It came, out of the blue, from the museum itself, extended to foreign professionals who had distinguished themselves in some way over the last few years. So their own holiday, a trip to a beach in the Northeast, had no choice but to relocate to Rio, which, after all, had beaches too. Great for Irene, a disaster for him. Great, too, for highlighting the difference between a graphic designer and a police chief, he thought, picking up the pace even more.
He’d been wandering through the downtown streets for almost two hours. In one of his hands he carried a small bag with two books he’d bought that afternoon, but he no longer remembered their titles, or even where he’d bought them. He didn’t have much interest either in the snack he’d planned to enjoy at the Confeitaria Colombo. It was Thursday and he didn’t have to be back at work until Monday. He headed to the nearest subway station and returned home.
The phone rang for the first time at seven-twenty that evening. Over the next fifteen minutes, it rang twice more. But nobody spoke on the other end of the line. Espinosa hesitated before picking up the fourth time, and when he did he met the same silence he’d encountered the first three times. He was about to hang up when he heard a man’s voice.
“Chief Espinosa?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to be calling you at home, but at the station they said you were on vacation.”
“That’s true.”
“My name is Artur Nesse. I’m a doctor…. A colleague at the hospital gave me your name…. You helped him….”
“… and now you need my help.”
“Right … Well, not me, exactly … somebody else … But I really don’t know what to do. Excuse me, Officer, I’m feeling really confused.”
“I’m going back to work on Monday. Why don’t you come by then to tell me what’s going on?”
“I can’t wait until then…. it’s urgent…. It’s my daughter….”
“What happened to your daughter?”
“She disappeared … kidnapped.”
“She disappeared or she was kidnapped?”
“First she disappeared, then I saw she’d been kidnapped.”
“And how did you see she’d been kidnapped?”
“Well … it’s obvious.”
“How long ago did she disappear?”
“One day. A day and a night.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“Seventeen.”
“Have you had any contact with her since she disappeared?”
“No, none.”
“So how do you know that she was kidnapped?”
“Because there’s no other explanation.”
“Have you already informed the kidnapping police?”
“No! I don’t want my daughter mixed up with the police.”
“Do you want her involved with kidnappers?”
“Can we speak personally?”
“We already are speaking personally.”
“I mean face-to-face. They told me you’re a considerate man.”
“I am, but my consideration makes me reluctant to believe that your daughter’s been kidnapped.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because if you thought your daughter had been kidnapped, you wouldn’t be doing this. Maybe your daughter ran away from home.”
“I’d like you to take on the case.”
“Dr. Nesse, I’m a police officer, not a private investigator. If you want a private investigation, you should get in touch with a detective agency.”
“Could we at least talk about the case? It’s not just my daughter’s disappearance. There are other things as well.”
“Fine. I’ll expect you in half an hour in the square in the Peixoto District, in Copacabana. Take down the address.”
Also by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
The Silence of the Rain
December Heat
Southwesterly Wind
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
115 West 18th Street
New York, New York 10011
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of
Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2001 by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Translation copyright © 2004 by Henry Holt and Company
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Originally
published in Brazil in 2001 under the title Uma Janela em Copacabana
by Companhia das Letras, Sao Paulo Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garcia-Roza, L. A. (Luiz Alfredo)
[Janela em Copacabana. English]
A window in Copacabana : an Inspector Espinosa mystery / Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza ; translated by Benjamin Moser.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7438
ISBN-10: 0-8050-7438-4
I. Title.
PQ9698.17.A745J3613 2005
869.3’42—dc22 2004052336
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premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.
First American Edition 2005
eISBN 9781466850330
A Window in Copacabana Page 17