“And you fired her?”
Cláudia gave me a look of sheer horror:
“How could I live without her?”
“Then your assistant knows you’re here.”
“No.” For the first time since the beginning of our conversation, something like a smile appeared on her face. The dimple grew larger, not without a certain charm. “Now I have a secret agenda.”
The food arrived. No seafood for me this time.
“But you were afraid of being followed,” I pointed out to her.
“The agenda might be secret, but my movements…”
“Right.” I had a forkful of spaghetti, and then I decided it was business time. “So, what can you tell me about Raul and Sabrina’s relationship? How long were they together?”
“Years,” she answered without hesitating. “Not many, but at least a couple. They even talked about marriage, I think, about seven or eight months ago, but it didn’t go well.”
“Did they break up?”
“Oh, no. They just stopped talking about living together.”
I chewed my pasta thoughtfully, digesting the information. Her food arrived next, a thing full of purple leaves and smelling of smoked fish. Silently, I hoped she was luckier with her salmon or tuna than I with my cod before.
“And what was it like ‘being together’ or ‘staying together’ for them?”
Cláudia gestured vaguely, turning the knife and resting the fork on the edge of the plate. It was as if she wanted to say, “Gee, I don’t know, you know what I mean?” without opening her mouth. After reflecting a little and taking two short sips of sparkling water, she tried to explain:
“Well, they worked in different sectors of the industry. I think they met when Raul was instructed to try to create a process that gave commercial viability to a new yeast she had invented. They had a few meetings, he went to her lab, she went to his workshop, they started to meet at the cafeteria and, well… You know how it is. Birds and bees. The course of nature. Where do babies come from? Et cetera.”
“Their dating was public knowledge, then?”
“Not exactly. The board certainly knew, with the kind of pattern recognition software that security cameras have today, that even say if the person who is going to the bathroom really needs it or it’s just to kill time. But among colleagues, it was all very discreet. Sabrina is super quiet, she used to talk stuff with her friends… with me… but it seems to me that Raul wasn’t like this. No one in his sector knew he was engaged. The two made a trip together to Europe last year, after much effort to synchronize some time off of work to which they were entitled, but the engineering team thought that Raul was on a working trip.”
I raised my eyebrows slightly.
“And how do you know that?”
“I heard the boys talking then. It’s the kind of thing that tends to catch your attention, even more to me, since I knew the truth.
“And they talked about getting married and living together.”
“Yes.”
“Did that happen right after the trip?”
“Good question. Yes, I heard Sabrina mention it a day or two after they came back, I guess.”
“Are you still going to testify about her relationship?”
Since the beginning of the meal, Cláudia had calmed down quite a bit. The fact that she had arrived at the restaurant safe and sound and the food apparently hadn’t been poisoned or sabotaged somehow was quickly rebuilding her sense of self-confidence.
“I’m thinking of going from here straight to the notary’s office. As soon as we finish the dessert, I’ll call the lawyer.” The dimple grew large again, malicious, but then a look of fear formed on her doll face. “You were not followed here, were you?” If they know you’re working for her and see us together…”
I thought about it a little. My previous interview had been with a Puritan. A nice fellow, but nothing prevented him from calling the church right after I left, passing them the coordinates.
I shrugged. It was unlikely that some amateur could follow me without my noticing. And if Cláudia really had misjudged the secretary, I couldn’t see we had anything to fear.
“I wasn’t followed,” I answered, sounding just a little more confident than I actually felt.
* * *
The fact is that I was not even taking seriously the idea of a “shock and awe” campaign against my client. Cláudia had described a sequence of unfortunate events—problems with her microbiota, her car, her bank account—but it was nothing that couldn’t be attributed to an unfortunate confluence of coincidences.
Fiction is full of researchers who live by repeating things like “there are no coincidences” or “I don’t believe in coincidences,” but chance is a far more powerful influence than most people are willing to admit. Randomness and incompetence kill far more people than professional murderers and crime geniuses.
My predisposition to blame stupid, cruel fate, as opposed to hidden rational forces, for the vicissitudes of life was shaken, however, when I returned to the office after lunch, for there were still a few hours left before the interview with Raul’s friend, and my secretary said to me, “Good morning.”
It was a very simple part of the program, the machine saying “good morning”, “good afternoon” or “good night” whenever the door opened, depending of the time of the day. Twentieth-century devices were already able to do this without difficulty. My software was cheap but not so cheap as to confuse the mid-afternoon with the morning period.
And that might just be my impression, but the synthetic voice was kind of creepy.
“Any messages?” I asked. Like everyone else, I walk with a phone plugged into my ear and I have a passive media screen in the lens of my glasses, but my number or privilege of access are off-limits to the general public. The desktop has a filter that defines when to pass the call to me when alerting me to the appearance of something interesting in FaceSpace.
Or when, simply, to jot down the message.
“Only a gentleman came here. He was identified as ‘Archimandrite Serapião’, speaking on behalf of the Puritan Church. Online search confirmed the identity and revealed that ‘archimandrite’ is a title reserved, by this denomination, to celibate brothers in the early stages of the priesthood…”
“Right,” I cut her short. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“He just asked you to call as soon as possible. He left a phone number.”
“Right.”
“Shall I make the call?”
“In a while.”
Leaving the antechamber and going to the office proper, I stopped by the coffee machine. The lunch drinks were starting to take their toll and the cafezinho in the restaurant hadn’t been much more than hot water dyed black.
Looking at the machine, I felt a pang of guilt for not offering Sabrina a shot when she came here to hire me. Those knees had mesmerized me, no doubt about it. I missed a great chance to impress her.
The variety of bean I use is particularly good, and my obsession with keeping the machine well regulated is comparable to some guys with their car engines. It’s no use having the best coffee beans in the world if the roasting point is wrong or, even worse, if the water pressure and temperature aren’t well calibrated.
I set the machine for a ristretto and waited as usual. I was getting ready to put the cup in the base where the coffee should fall, when something made my eyes widen. I stepped back immediately.
I don’t know exactly where the warning came from. It’s possible that, almost unconsciously, I had sensed a faint, abnormal vibration of the great golden cylinder that formed the main body of the machine. Whatever the cause of my instinctive retreat, however, the device began to hiss like an angry snake. The sound came in a crescendo until it became a high gurgling that ended in a spurt of boiling water and steam, which jumped in my direction.
Scheduled to have my safety as top priority, the secretary remained silent. A few spatters had hit the sleeve of m
y shirt and the hem of my jacket. Where wet, the fabric produced a fine white smoke, small lint clouds.
It was water, only water, but at an absurdly high temperature, obtained thanks to the pressure inside the machine. If I were holding the cup under the spout of the coffeepot at the instant of the jet, my skin would probably now be loosening from my flesh. Nothing that a few days with restorative cream could not repair, but the pain would have been …
Just imagining the intensity of the pain sent a chill down my spine and I felt a cold wind on the back of my neck. The cup—I use the foam ones, which I prefer to old porcelain cups, not only because they diffuse the heat better, but also because they don’t cut my hands when I crush them—was forgotten, in the clenched fist of my right hand. I suppose if I had a mirror in front of me at that moment, I would have seen a purple face of rage.
“Diagnostic mode,” I commanded in a surprisingly calm voice. “Foreground.” In response to the instruction, which deactivated all the functions of the secretary while the software was searching for defects or viruses, I heard some notes of classical music and the lights of the office suddenly became more intense, since, without the secretary, there was no one to control the smart dimmer.
Then I called Cid, a systems security specialist with whom I used to exchange favors now and then. He remotely accessed the secretary’s program and gave me the preliminary report in less than fifteen minutes:
“Whoever did it was a smart guy.”
“Did what?”
“Your secretary was disoriented with a data overload. Remember an old episode of a TV series, when the computer is disabled because they ask it to determine the ‘last digit of pi’?”
“Don’t think I saw it.”
“Well, it was something like that. Your secretary seemed distracted and inattentive because she was inattentive, and had been distracted.”
“By whom?”
“By someone who read the user manual of this model much better than you, I guess. Well enough to know how to use voice commands to define a high-level priority activity, capable of mobilizing most computing resources and leaving all other priorities behind.”
“Including taking care of my safety and preventing tampering with the coffee machine.”
“For example, yes, that. The origin of that order has been erased, but the order itself is still here: an analysis of the energy flow in M.C. Escher’s Waterfall.”
I was familiar with the image. There was, in fact, a reproduction on the wall of the antechamber. And I knew the task given to the secretary was impossible, since the water in the picture seems to rise and fall at the same time (I like Escher precisely because of the graphic paradoxes). Whoever the hacker was, he had worked quickly and with the material at hand.
“How long? How much money?”
“It’s already done,” he replied, laughing. “As I said, anyone familiar with the manual would know how to create the problem and also how to solve it. As soon as the secretary returns from diagnostic mode, it’ll work fine. But I would give it an upgrade. As for the price, you buy me a beer later and we’re even.”
After thanking him and saying goodbye, I started to adjust the coffeemaker. As in the case of the secretary, the cause of the problem itself was not complex—a mere, so to speak, malicious valve manipulation—but, unlike the case of the program, the damage would cost me high: there were sealing rings to change, and at least one bronze tube was slightly deformed.
Then, my share of “unfortunate coincidences” already filled up for the rest of the week, I called the likely author of all the chaos around, the Archimandrite Serapião. Before freaking out, the secretary had printed the number and left the strip of paper stuck to my desk.
I was careful to keep the video off, so as not to give the bastard the pleasure of seeing my face purple with anger.
He picked up the phone on the first ring and then greeted me before I told him who he was. The archimandrite seemed to suppose that this foolish sleight of hand with the caller ID would baffle me.
“I suppose you have received…my message.”
The way he uttered “my message” reminded me of Bela Lugosi’s inflection in saying “wine” in “I don’t drink…wine” in the early scenes of Dracula. I had to hold back the urge to laugh. The guy really thought he was intimidating me. What kind of people are his kind used to dealing with anyway?
Olavo, the only Puritan faithful I had interviewed so far, didn’t seem to me to be a complete idiot, but if he took people like Archimandrite Serapião seriously…
“My secretary told me that you called. What can I do for you?”
“Are you all right? Your health? How’s business?”
“Very well, thank you.”
An embarrassing silence. On his part. What did he expect me to say? “Actually, I just burned myself a bit…” or “How awful, my secretary fritzed”?
“Glad to know. May your future conduct allow you to continue like this.”
And then I remembered something I had read long ago somewhere, how the original archimandrites—monks of the time of the Byzantine Empire—refused to bathe because they considered the concern with personal hygiene an unforgivable form of vanity. “The unspeakable filth of the saints covered several blocks in Alexandria, in an emanation of spiritual purity that offended the vultures of the sky,” someone had written.
It wasn’t that hard to imagine Serapião sweating and stinking a lot in some medieval alley.
“Thank you for your concern,” I said in a neutral tone. “How can I help you?”
“Ah. Yes.” He sounded rather mortified, perhaps for giving up the veiled threat game without scoring any point. “The Church would like to hire you.”
“Ah, yes?”
“It has come to our attention that you are conducting a private inquiry into the passing of one of our faithful…”
“Disappearance.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“It’s not ‘passing’, it’s ‘disappearance’. There’s no concrete evidence that the lady in question is dead.”
“So you confirm your involvement in the case?”
I had to smile. The old man—the call was audio only, but I could only imagine him as an old man, and fat too—thought that by Machiavellian means he had extracted important information from me.
“Well, since at least one member of your church has talked to me about it, there’s no reason to deny it, is there?”
“Indeed.”
I noticed, once again, the mortified tone. My “at least one” had puzzled him. Perhaps there were relapsed Puritans out there, ignominious to the point of not communicating to the hierarchy the contact with this infidel sleuth? Oh, cruel doubt.
Cruelty, by the way, was something I was beginning to feel in the back of my throat, a metallic taste that leaves the saliva bitter. That fucker had sabotaged my office to intimidate me and, belatedly acknowledging the strategic error, was now appealing for indirect threats and childish charades. It wouldn’t be long before he came to the bribe offer. I decided to encourage him.
“Since we have established, to our mutual satisfaction, my involvement in the case of Dona Albertina’s disappearance, what, pray tell, can I do for you?” I made a point of giving an impudent tone to you.
To my surprise, the Archimandrite ignored the provocation.
“The Church would like to follow your efforts. I was allowed to mention the possibility of an incentive, a reward, so to speak, if the body was located.”
“What if it can’t be located?”
“Well, I suppose, for a man of your talent and creativity, it really should not be at all impossible to find a solution.”
My patience was running scarce by the second.
“Is that so? And what solution would that be?”
I had a good idea of what that worm had in mind: that I should steal a suitable corpse or even kill a lady of reasonable likeness. It should be enough that the body was properly mutilated as to be unr
ecognizable, and they would surely know who to bribe for the DNA tests to provide the desired result. But my wish was to hear the son of a bitch say it. Request a crime. Deliver the body.
Of course, my anger had surpassed good sense: however rudimentary the means and techniques of the old Serapião, even he was too smart to propose a crime, explicitly, in a conversation that could have been recorded. As indeed was the case.
“If we here in the Church knew how to do that, sir, we would not need to offer incentives or rewards to professionals of your caliber,” he answered in a glacial tone.
“Any idea of the value of the reward?”
“The archpriest’s generosity is well known. Imagine your usual fees for dealing with a missing person case…”
“I don’t need to imagine. I have the fee table here in front of me.”
“…and multiply said value by ten.”
It was good money. Not enough to guarantee me an early retirement, but still very good money indeed. There was the ethical question of acting in the same case having two clients with opposite purposes, Sabrina being infinitely more pleasant and, most importantly, Serapião having destroyed my coffee machine. Getting a piece of brass at a reasonable price to replace the deformed pipe would take weeks, maybe even months, in this world where everything is made of polymer and biomass.
“Up yours!” I said, hanging up.
* * *
Feeling lighter and spry, I decided to walk home. The plan for the rest of the afternoon was to ponder the information I had already obtained and put on a clean shirt before leaving for the bar where I would have a chat with Antonio, Raul’s former co-worker, that night.
I lived in an apartment not far from the office, though most of the time I preferred to use the Light Rail Vehicle to get around. The place was only two stations away.
I was passing through the station door where I used to take the tram when I noticed a guy standing out from a small crowd that was watching a bipedal dancing dog show (hadn’t such a modification been forbidden?) and started to walk in the same direction, but keeping some distance. I noticed he had put something in his mouth and, as he walked, he was chewing it vigorously. I had the feeling that it wasn’t gum.
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World Page 3