Alone in the Crowd

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  On Wednesday, as soon as he got to the station, Espinosa found a small envelope on his desk imprinted with the logo of the Caixa Econômica. To: Chief Espinosa. No return address. Inside, a handwritten note: “We can meet outside the station, in a neutral place, for an open conversation, with no time limit. If you agree, have this same envelope delivered to my counter at the Caixa with a date, time, and place.” The note was not signed.

  Ramiro and Welber didn’t think the boss should accept a request to meet alone with a possible murderer in a neutral place—which meant a place out of their control—for an undefined amount of time. What did he mean by “with no time limit”? That the conversation could last the whole day and go deep into the night?

  “Chief, this man is a nutcase. All you have to do is consider how he acts,” said Welber. “He’s like a wind-up doll … a robot.”

  “He didn’t talk like a nutcase.”

  “He won’t be able to stay coherent for more than fifteen minutes. That’s why he left. He knew that he couldn’t stand up to a confrontation,” Ramiro insisted.

  “What do you think could happen? He’s going to kill me? If he wanted to do that, he would have done it a long time ago. He doesn’t want me to kill him, he wants me to recognize him as an equal. And for that I have to be alive. Don’t worry, there’s no danger.”

  “Chief, he pushed that woman under the bus, believe me. And we don’t know what else he might have gotten up to during all the time he was in voluntary seclusion. Or what he did to his mother.”

  “There’s no witness to say that he was responsible for Dona Laureta’s death, much less for his mother’s. I want to hear what he has to say. One of you can make me a reservation for two people in a little hotel in the Peixoto District, halfway between his building and mine. It’s a discreet, quiet place. Make a reservation for the day after tomorrow, Friday. I want a room facing the street. Have the two beds replaced with two comfortable chairs and a table. The reservation should be made in my name. The manager knows me. Afterward, I’ll pay the bill myself, when I leave. Not with money from the station. It won’t be official. I don’t want you two in the next room or watching from the building across the street. If he realizes that he’s being monitored, that’s when he could turn violent. If people ask for me, say that I had to go to the hospital for the day for some tests. You don’t know the name of the hospital.”

  On that same Wednesday afternoon, Welber went over to the little hotel in the Peixoto District to see if they had a room available for Friday. When the manager learned it would be used by Chief Espinosa, he guaranteed that a room with the specifications requested would be available at ten on Friday morning. The manager had known Espinosa long before he became the chief of the Twelfth Precinct, situated only a few blocks away from the small hotel.

  Before returning to the station, Welber checked the access to the ground floor from the two upper floors, as well as if there was a door connecting the room they’d be in with the neighboring room. He also assessed whether there was any possibility of someone climbing the outer wall and reaching the room’s small balcony. He checked out every corner of the building, which wasn’t hard to do, given its size; and he talked with the employees in charge of cleaning, asking how many would be working on Friday and about how the staff went about their routines.

  Welber still hadn’t spoken to Ramiro about whether to obey Espinosa’s order to stay away from the hotel. The idea was to work together on a watch, in order to keep the situation under control. The challenge would be to get Espinosa to agree with the measure.

  On Wednesday night, the whole Twelfth Precinct team mobilized to break up a conflict between dealers fighting over the drug traffic in Chapéu Mangueira Hill, in what had previously been the peaceful neighborhood of Leme, at the outer edges of Copacabana. On Thursday, the policemen were all sleep-deprived, including Chief Espinosa, who planned to go to sleep early, preparatory to his encounter with his former childhood playmate. In a brief note, Hugo Breno had accepted the meeting at the hotel.

  Before bed, Espinosa reviewed the case of Hugo Breno—a case with a history and a prehistory. Espinosa had started to think that the prehistory—the events in his and Hugo Breno’s distant past—might be extremely relevant to the recent events involving the old woman’s death.

  Though tired from the sleepless night before, he didn’t feel like going to bed. It was still early. If he fell asleep right away, he would wake up in the middle of the night, which would be much worse than waiting awhile longer and going to bed when he was really tired. He thought about calling Irene, but he decided not to; depending on how the conversation went, he could end up even more wound up and wide awake. He lifted the first book from the pile waiting on the table beside his rocking chair and opened to the page where he’d left off. He closed the book again, looked at the cover, the title, and the author’s name. He returned to the story, but he didn’t remember what he’d read in the earlier pages. Tired, he thought. Too tense from the night before. Too much work piled up during the day. Eventually he stopped thinking and nodded off. He got up and went to bed, trying not to think about anything else.

  Espinosa awoke in fright, as if an alarm had gone off, summoning all the light sleepers, tired people, skeptics, and loners for one more day of work. It was Friday. He took an almost-cold shower, contrary to his usual habits, in an attempt to eliminate the remains of the day before. At eight, he was on his way to the station. There was nothing else left to do to get ready. There was really nothing to prepare anyway; he knew perfectly well that he faced an unpredictable situation, that the conversation could just as easily devolve into a resentful lament as it could turn into a debate that could digress in any direction. It would be up to Espinosa to direct or redirect the conversation.

  As soon as he got to the Twelfth Precinct, he issued orders not to be interrupted, neither personally nor by telephone, and decided that Welber and Ramiro were not to go to the hotel nor to wait nearby to offer him protection. Hugo Breno was a proven loner, and he wasn’t a member of a gang. Anything that he’d try to pull would involve him alone, without outside help. Espinosa was armed and ready to defend himself against any physical aggression (which he thought highly unlikely).

  They’d agreed to meet at ten o’clock in the hotel lobby, and he wanted to arrive a half hour early, to make sure that everything was in place, according to the arrangements he’d asked Welber to pass on to the manager.

  At nine-thirty on a sunless morning, Espinosa went up the Rua Décio Vilares, in the Peixoto District, toward a three-story colonial-style building, white with blue windows and a palm tree in the front, where he’d stayed a few times for domestic and professional reasons. He was greeted by the manager, who discreetly notified him that the other guest had not yet arrived and invited him to see if the room was set up as he’d requested. Espinosa asked if any guest had checked in the previous night or the night before that and if anyone had showed up wanting to see a room. Finally, he asked if room service was brought by male or female employees. Then he walked through the two side entrances and the service area.

  At ten, Espinosa was in the lobby of the hotel. At ten, Hugo Breno arrived. He was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a checked shirt, not tucked into his pants. He had nothing in his hands. Espinosa went up to him and introduced him to the manager as a friend. The manager took out the key to the room.

  “Are you going to need another key?”

  The two of them looked at each other, Hugo Breno shrugged in a sign of indifference, and Espinosa answered:

  “Thanks, one is enough.” Then, turning to the recent arrival, he added: “Shall we go up?”

  13

  The two chairs were facing each other, near the window and the door that went out to the balcony. There was a small table in the middle, between them. Hugo Breno examined the bathroom and the inside of the wardrobe, and only then chose one of the chairs and sat down. Up to that point, Espinosa had been standing, waiting for his interlocut
or.

  “Thank you for agreeing to this conversation, which I consider private and off the record,” Hugo began. “I know that it’s not normal procedure and I suppose you’ve agreed because we’ve known each other since we were kids. And also because you have nothing against me, except a few fragile suspicions.”

  “Right on both counts,” Espinosa answered.

  “So why are you trying to surround me, to the point that I had to take my vacation early so that I could think about what was going on, without a policeman watching me and asking questions all over the place?”

  “Because, even though our suspicions are fragile individually, they add up to a disturbing picture.”

  “Disturbing for whom?”

  “For us, the police.”

  “Can you give me an example of one of those disturbing suspicions?”

  “I can. The fact that you told my officers that your verbal contact with Dona Laureta consisted of nothing more than was required to pay out her pension. You even recounted the words you exchanged. But the security cameras showed a much more extensive and apparently harsh conversation between the two of you. There’s also the fact that other similar conversations had occurred in the three previous months. Another factor that we can’t dismiss is that on the same day that you spoke and she died, she went to my precinct to talk to the chief, whom she didn’t know; she wanted to say something she thought was very important, so much so that she wouldn’t speak to anyone less than the boss. Since I couldn’t see her, she said she’d come back later. Finally, we have the fact that Dona Laureta, before she went back to the station, died while she was waiting to cross the street on a corner of the Rua Barata Ribeiro, which might be considered an accident if it weren’t for several witnesses who said that the woman seemed to have been pushed into the middle of the street. I’ll agree that none of this incriminates you directly, but I’m sure you can agree that those are disturbing facts.”

  “Chief Espinosa, are you thinking that if two people exchange a few absolutely necessary words when one of them is withdrawing money and one of them happens to die, then that means the other one had to have killed her? I’m a teller in a bank that pays out state pensions. People go to the same bank every month, and in general they go to the same window, to collect their pensions. That lady had been getting her pension for years at my window. I’ve never talked to her outside the Caixa. Why would I kill her? And why now, and not last month, or last year?”

  “I don’t know. If I did, you’d be under arrest.”

  “Nobody saw me push her into the street. Someone could have seen me on the sidewalk on Barata Ribeiro, near where she died. That’s on the way to my house. I walk down that street every day.”

  “It’s not true that you only knew her from the bank. She was friends with your mother and the two talked frequently, and, according to information we’ve received, they were confidantes.”

  “We’ve already talked about that. Dona Laureta was friends with my mother. Not with me. She talked to my mother, not to me. I repeat that I never once spoke with her outside the bank.”

  “And inside the bank?”

  “My job is to help retirees and pensioners. There are thousands of them. Those people aren’t my friends and they don’t come to chat with me. If you think that old ladies and old men are sweet people, friendly, lovely, nice, you’re mistaken. They are neurotic, annoying, irritating, whiny, and aggressive. They are the last people I would want to talk to.”

  “Yet from what we’ve seen on the tapes, you two had conversations that were much longer than what was necessary to pay out her pension.”

  “I never spoke to her more than what was absolutely necessary.”

  “So …”

  “So, Chief Espinosa, the one who talked more than necessary was her.”

  “So besides going to the bank to pick up her pension, she also went to talk to you. And it wasn’t friendly, pleasant conversation.”

  “I knew you weren’t going to let me down, Officer.… Now you’re on the right track.”

  “She wasn’t a nice old lady, she was a big bad wolf.”

  “You got it. She had been blackmailing me for more than a year. It wasn’t much, nothing that would end in murder. It was just a shitty little bit of blackmail, tiny, annoying, dirty, which she applied in homeopathic doses, every time she went there, and that got her a little raise in her pension. Obviously that money came from me and not from the government. And she knew that. She knew that I couldn’t pay with money from the bank, because that would show up at the end of the day, at the end of my shift.”

  “And what gave her that power over you?”

  “Her conversations with my mother.”

  “With your mother?”

  “The two of them were exactly alike. Only the styles were different.”

  “You’re saying that your mother was blackmailing you too?”

  “As I said … only the styles were different. Can we get some coffee?”

  The two of them had been seated in the same position since the beginning of the conversation. When Hugo Breno got up and looked out the window toward the street, Espinosa went to the balcony to do the same and took advantage of the moment to scan the street in search of any sign of Ramiro and Welber. But there was nothing more than a few residents walking down the sidewalks and some parked cars, and neither of them were inside those.

  After a few minutes, they heard a soft knock on the door. A girl brought in a tray with a coffeepot, cups, and cookies. While they were drinking their coffee, the conversation revolved around the changes in the neighborhood since the days when the two of them played soccer in the square. Espinosa got the impression that his former playmate was a good debater, but that he wasn’t able to keep up a casual conversation. Everything indicated that his social life really was null. There was no question that this was a man without friends who felt good only among the crowd. There was no room for small talk. The coffee was good and both had another cup. Each of them had a cookie before moving ahead.

  “So you were saying that your mother was also blackmailing you.”

  “Not in the sense of threatening me or taking money, but in the sense of guilt-tripping me and trying to pass on to me the guilt that she felt herself. In our conversation at the station, you mentioned demons. Well, my mother was demonic. She was even worse than Dona Laureta, because she always did it under the cover of religion and her faith in the Lord. She was a bad egg.”

  “She was your mother.”

  “She wasn’t anyone’s mother; all she knew how to do was be a daughter. And the only father she recognized was God the Father. I don’t know how she managed to get pregnant.”

  “Aren’t you being too hard on her?”

  “You have no idea how much and for how long she tyrannized and threatened me. A daily tyranny that started when I was eleven and only ended when she died.”

  “What did she die of?”

  “Heart problems, the doctor said. An organ she never had.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Yes and no. She died in her sleep, in her room. I was sleeping in my room. Only when I got up did I notice that her door was still closed. She always got up very early.”

  “How did you know that she was asleep, if you were asleep too?”

  “I don’t know. I just guessed. But you don’t have to wonder about that. If I had been awakened by some noise from her room and noticed that she was having a heart attack, I probably wouldn’t have done anything.”

  Espinosa didn’t notice any agitation in his manner. What Hugo Breno was saying wasn’t accompanied by any emotion. There was no sadness or coldness. What he displayed was indifference. After so many years of brainwashing, what had remained of his relationship with his mother wasn’t love or hate, or the inexpressiveness of self-control; it was pure indifference. The tone of his voice didn’t change with the import of the words he was saying. The words had meaning, but no intensity.

  “You know that f
ailing to call for help can also be considered a crime.”

  “Of course I know that. It so happens that I was asleep, and I sleep deeply. Our street is noisy, and I’ve never gotten up in the middle of the night because of a car horn, a motorcycle, or a gunfight in the slums. Even if she’d called for help, with her door and mine closed, I wouldn’t have heard anything.”

  “You said that her tyranny began when you were eleven. What happened when you were that age?”

  Hugo Breno didn’t speak for a few seconds, as if deciding whether to answer, shifting in his chair and taking another cookie. Espinosa knew he would respond. What he didn’t know was whether his hesitation was real or just playacting, to make his answer more dramatic. He reinforced the question by saying:

  “We agreed that this would be a private conversation. I’m not taking notes, and this is not being recorded.”

  “These aren’t easy things to say. Some because of their content, probably, though now, after all these years, they’ve lost most of their emotional charge. But what makes it hard is that I can’t guarantee the truth of what I’m saying. Even the details might be wrong or not entirely true. It would be impossible to reconstruct exactly something that happened so long ago. I thought about it night after night. Having gone back over every detail so many times, I can’t be certain if the version I remember today coincides with what really happened. The only thing I know for sure is that you were involved in the story as well. In a way, you were there too.”

  “Where?”

  “In the square … inside the building … playing on the sidewalk … playing soccer.… Everywhere we used to play.”

  “And what happened?”