I needed to sit down; I pulled up a chair beside Ellie. She had already tried to explain what she knew. Greg’s real name was Gregor Nikolaidis. “Did you know that?” the policeman asked me with a sarcastic smile. No, I didn’t. My head hurt. Greg, or Gregor, was in Belize because he was being investigated by the IRS in the US. Greg, or Gregor, could no longer live in Europe, wanted on a series of charges. The cop turned to his colleague, who was eating cupcakes from the hotel buffet.
“Macedo, can you remind us what he is accused of?”
Macedo swallowed quickly, wiped his mouth, and took a small notebook from his pocket. He read before speaking: “A bit of everything. Use of false identity, larceny. He swindled a rich widow, the family found out, and he can’t set foot in Italy anymore.”
“A rich widow, huh?” said the other, feigning interest.
“That’s what it says,” replied Macedo.
“How do you say estelionato in English?” asked the gray cop.
“I used to know, but I forget.”
The gray cop turned to me. “Right. Swindling, tax evasion, extortion, and a lot more, my friend. Heavy stuff. So it’s better for you to tell us.”
I described our trip to the green-and-red house; the cop said he already knew that part. “This woman here can’t stop talking about the house and the people there, but I want to know what happened afterward.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know,” I said.
“You think I’m a fool?”
Macedo answered his cell phone, whispered something out of the corner of his mouth, and hung up. “A representative from the American consulate is on his way.”
“Shit,” said Gray. “Bucetinha said he’s going to take over the case. What he wants is to get on TV. This time he’s not going to.” They exited the Emerald Room hurriedly, leaving us in the custody of Rejane, a dyed-blonde, her huge ass stuffed into white jeans under which I could see the outline of her thong. She sat across from us, leaning against the back of her chair, her legs apart, and said she still needed to clarify a few things.
Ellie’s chilly fingers found my hand. An electric shock ran through my body. Those fingers, those gnawed nails.
Rejane wanted to know: “Does this visualization really work? I mean, do people lose weight by the power of thought?”
* * *
My boss to me: “The Internet is saying our author disappeared.”
“Can’t talk now.”
“Our book orders are doubling. Keep him disappeared awhile longer.”
“Look, I don’t think you understand—”
“We’re going to hit number one. It’s you who doesn’t understand.”
Lindsay Lohan, from house arrest, had just sent word that she didn’t know Greg Nicholas, had never been treated by him, was unfamiliar with his method, and had never been in Belize. A similar statement from Mimi Lesseos was expected at any moment.
Rejane spoke for a long time on a pink phone, pacing around the Emerald Room. Then she took a black automatic from her purse and checked to make sure it was loaded. We proceeded down dark corridors, crossed through the kitchen, and found ourselves before a side door. “Why are we leaving out the back?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. Belatedly I understood that we were throwing the representative from the consulate and that Bucetinha guy off the scent, while Gray and Macedo tried to solve the case.
* * *
We took the same busy avenue as the night before, in the opposite direction, and got stuck in traffic. The air-conditioning wasn’t working, and Ellie began saying she wasn’t feeling well. She asked Rejane where we were going, and the woman, in mirrored sunglasses, simply looked at her in the rearview mirror. We inched our way through a collection of shopping centers that ended in epic fashion with the Statue of Liberty pressed between bluish glass and beige mortar. Ellie stared like a blind person who has recovered her sight. Rejane spoke again on her pink cell phone. No, no one had seen her leaving the hotel; yes, she had turned off the radio and the vehicle’s GPS. Yes, she would keep moving, but they didn’t have much time. “Macedo, where are you guys?” she said. “No, I think the victim was only supposed to go to Rocinha this afternoon or tomorrow. You shot at who? How? What’re you doing there?”
We slowly made our way through an endless traffic circle where a huge concrete box, at least five stories high, was being constructed, a mixture of Trojan horse and smokehouse. We passed by neoclassical-style buildings, like those I saw in São Paulo, in the middle of empty lots that in a matter of months would be occupied by new neoclassical buildings. “I need to get out of here,” said Ellie, turning the door handle. Rejane looked at us again and said she would stop. She drummed on the steering wheel. She picked up her phone but wasn’t able to complete the call. She sighed, thought. We crossed under red pennants at the entrance to Makro and pulled into its parking lot, almost empty at that time of day. Rejane hesitated about which space to choose and stopped between two of them. She left the windows half rolled down and took the car key. She told us to stay there and abandoned us like children.
That was when Ellie began to cough and clutch her neck—“Air, air, air”—and tumbled out the door.
* * *
I held her as we kneeled on the hot concrete, and I could feel her breath warming my shirt. She repeated that she knew what had happened to him. I asked if he was being hunted, whether he had gotten into something bigger that not even he, Greg, understood. She shook her head. No, no, no. She said I had to go back to that dark-colored house at the top of the hill. Then I remembered the strange guy and his glasses, his straight hair. I tried to describe him to Ellie, as I held her tighter. A security guard came by on a motor scooter, but we didn’t move. I tried to kiss her but Ellie said, “No,” then added that she had been trying to explain something to those cops from the beginning. The man, the man with the caipirinhas—
“A bit ill-humored,” I said.
“Didn’t you see the gun under his jacket?”
Only then did she look directly at me with those startled amber-colored eyes. In the distance I saw Rejane lugging a large package on her shoulders. Halfway to the car she stopped, noticing our flight. She put down the box, looked around, took out her phone. We didn’t have much time. Ellie squeezed my shoulders and looked at me intensely. She said I had to go there, to that house. That I had to find out. I pressed her about the snakelike guy with the parted hair, who seemed to be working for someone, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Greg.
“He may be from some criminal organization,” I said.
That somehow broke the spell that bound us. She dried her nose on the sleeve of her shirt and got up. When she spoke, she radiated disappointment.
“No, Humberto, he’s not after Greg. He’s not violent. He’s not a gangster. He’s an editor, like you.”
The policewoman had spotted us. She waved, ordering us to come back.
“Another editor?”
“Your competitor. With whom Greg was going to sign for his next book.”
“Next book?”
“I’m sorry.”
I heard only the silence of heated concrete. Ellie called to me. Ellie tried to touch me. I was just a shadow moving on the ground to the car, to the open trunk, where Rejane was attempting to insert a monstrous box. I looked and didn’t understand. A portable barbecue grill.
“My boyfriend’s has a hole in it,” was all she said.
* * *
Betrayed. That was how I felt when I rang the doorbell of the house at the top of the hill. The sun was starting to go down, but it still burned my neck. I was tired from the interrogations in the afternoon, tired of the police. Our arrival at the 16th precinct hadn’t been pretty, to say the least. Jostling and pushing. The gray detective, bandaged, arguing with another investigator. No sign of Macedo. Some guy with a pink little mouth shining in a curly goatee was giving an interview on TV. They had placed a coat over Ellie’s head and pushed her down a hallway filled with photographers as if she were a suspec
t. And still no sign of Greg. I just wanted to get my backpack and take a shower before returning to São Paulo.
I explained on the intercom what I had come for. I explained it again to a uniformed maid who led me to the empty grand ballroom, said that madam had just woken up, and left me there. Only then did I observe the room in detail. A spiral staircase rose right in the middle of the windows, blocking the view outside. Greek pillars led nowhere. On the wall, a framed jersey from the Fluminense football team vied for space with an abstract canvas of childish bad taste. In the photos on the chest of drawers (Bariloche, yachting, carnival) I finally saw Mr. Platinum-Blonde. Gray-haired, stocky, he could have been her grandfather. Since the servant hadn’t returned, I decided to go down to the swimming pool.
The view was even more impressive at twilight. She was in a lounge chair down below.
The light blinded me momentarily. Her wavy hair shone. She was wearing a white beach skirt over a white bathing suit and white sandals with ruffles and heel. She was lying on her side, her languid legs resting on each other. Her eyes disappeared behind very dark glasses. She looked at me, I think, but said nothing. I sat in the lounge chair opposite her. She removed the cigarette holder from her lips and blew smoke into the air, framed by the indecent blue of the sea.
“Ah, the messenger boy.”
“The name is Mariconda. Humberto Mariconda.”
“Do you like the house? Is that why you came back?”
I looked around, blinking my eyes. “To tell you the truth, the colors don’t go very well with this little paradise you have here.”
She raised the holder to her mouth, examined me for a moment. “My husband, Mariconda. He’s a fanatic.”
“Is that why he’s never around? Traveling with the team? Does he visit the dressing rooms? Young men changing clothes?”
She smiled as if not smiling. “The police were already here trying to intimidate me. You’re not going to do it.”
“Ah.”
She released the smoke. I spoke again.
“And where can I find Mr. Platinum-Blonde?”
She thought a bit. Making the connection with the name was difficult. She smoked. She understood. “That’s none of your business, darling. That’s a problem between him and me.”
I got up and walked around her lounger. The sea was calling me, the trees clamored down below. I felt the same chill as the night before. Something gleamed through the foliage. In the indirect light of sunset little colored streaks striped the grass, emerged among the rocks. The hot wind whistled in my ear. I realized I was alone, completely alone, and that Ellie was right. I needed to hold on tight to the glass parapet.
“I noticed your gunman isn’t here.”
“He’s not my gunman.”
“Where is he?”
“Ask my husband, if you find him.”
She seemed to be in a bad mood. I looked at the abyss again, then at her. “You thought you’d have the night just for yourself, with your husband away.”
Now she showed a hint of a smile mixed with impatience. I went up to her again and sat down with difficulty. My back tingled. She shuffled her funereal legs. She was facing a terrific hangover, I now realized.
“Greg came back here late that night and you thought you’d have a great time. But the guy making the caipirinhas spoiled everything, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, looking bored.
I pointed to the parapet. “He should have removed the pens from Greg’s pockets before throwing him down there.”
She touched her hair. Sighed. At no time did she make a move to rise, or look behind her. She said I was being a bit ridiculous.
“What’s ridiculous is this house. Those colors,” I said.
She sighed and laughed. I stood up, feeling a chill in my spine. I suddenly felt fragile, exposed; thousands of needles pricked the nape of my neck. Then she spoke.
“Don’t worry. He doesn’t own me, and he’ll get what’s coming to him.”
“Are you going to bring in the police?”
“What do the police have to do with this? Much worse, dear. In a week all this will be a different color.”
“Color?” I said between my teeth. I couldn’t say anything else.
“Tangerine tango. The color for next summer. It will go well with the palms.”
The maid descended the stairs with a tray of drinks. My backpack wasn’t anywhere, and the sea had taken on a carnivorous blue tone. I looked at her again in the lounge chair. I understood that she had just planned that revenge, and her body emanated an opaque glow of satisfaction. I barely remembered why I was there, and she had no intention of reminding me.
The Wait
by Flávio Carneiro
Downtown
The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
—Roland Barthes
It was an ordinary day, a Monday like any other, even the hangover was the same. It was a little past noon and the sun seemed to flood its full intensity on my head as I entered the old building on Rua da Relação.
“It’s not working. I already called maintenance,” said the doorman without taking his eyes from his newspaper.
“That thing ought to be retired for good,” I replied, looking at the elevator, which was always out of order.
I climbed the stairs thinking that my life wasn’t going very well. An aching head, the heat, and that infernal din from the building, half commercial, half residential. I went from the first to the fifth floor hearing children crying, neighbors arguing, loud music, and the irritating sound of some idiot drilling into a wall.
My office door needed serious repainting. I stood there for an instant, the plaque in front of me reading, Detective André—Investigations.
I don’t really know if what I felt was what mystics call an epiphany, I don’t understand such things, but maybe it actually was that, an epiphany, a revelation. As I looked at the plaque it was as if a voice was telling me in an ironic, slightly diabolical tone: Wake up, brother, get out of this morass.
I solved problems for everyone, recorded adulterers in the act, uncovered insurance fraud, assisted cuckolds and lovers with equal competence, and was still down in the dumps, living in a matchbox in Copacabana and working in a horrific office in a horrible building in the center of a city that seemed more and more hostile.
“Excuse me, are you Detective André?”
I turned toward the voice. “Yes.”
“Can we talk?”
I opened the door and motioned the woman inside. I went in immediately after her, offered her an armchair, and opened the window.
Sunlight illuminated the spot where she was sitting. My desk was in shadow. I could turn on the light but I preferred it like that. I had read in a story by Machado de Assis that it was the way a certain card reader received her clients. The fortune teller in the shade, the client in a kind of spotlight like in a theater. The card reader could judge the customer’s face while shuffling the cards, without letting herself be seen clearly.
“How can I help you?”
She was a beautiful woman. I had noticed her perfect body when I saw her from behind, slowly entering the office. She was wearing a short knit dress, dark red, almost wine-colored, contrasting with her very white skin. Her small dark eyes took on a glow when she started to speak.
“Forgive me, I don’t know where to begin, I’ve never been in a detective’s office.”
“There’s always a first time.”
She smiled, with a somewhat forced shyness.
“You can begin by telling me your name.”
“Marina.”
The office door opened suddenly and she was startled by the noise.
“Am I intruding?”
A rhetorical question. Whatever my response, Fats was going to come in and remain in the room. An old friend, he knew all there was to know about crime fiction. He owned a used-book store on Rua do Lavradio and in h
is free time helped me with investigations. Though he didn’t call it helping. He called it advising.
I introduced the two. He greeted her with a smile. I knew that smile; Fats is a perv, and I believe he thinks the same about me.
He pulled up a chair, turned it around, and sat down, resting his arms. It was a studied move to impress the woman, as if he were one of those hard-boiled types in a gangster flick. All that was missing was to chew on a toothpick and spit on the floor. Marina ignored him.
“I came here because I’d like you to locate a person.”
“A person.”
“Yes. A man.”
I waited. She lowered her eyes and crossed her legs. She rested one hand on a knee. She had long, delicate fingers, a pianist’s fingers. I noticed the wedding ring.
“Your husband?” I let fly.
“No, it’s not my husband. My husband knows nothing about it. And he must not know.”
“I understand.”
She fell silent again.
“Want something to drink, dear? Water, soda, beer?” Fats asked.
“Water, please.”
Fats went to the minibar and opened a bottle of mineral water. He poured it into a glass and handed it to her.
Marina looked at the bookcase that occupied the back wall of the office. “You enjoy reading, I see.”
“Yes.”
She got up and went to the bookcase. She had long, straight black hair and was wearing high heels and walked as if she were barefoot, light as a feather.
She ran her eyes over the books’ spines. “There’s nothing but crime stories here!”
“Anything wrong with that?” I asked in a joking tone.
“No, of course not. It goes well with the office of a private detective.”
“Most real detectives don’t like to read. I think I’m an exception.”
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