Now, rubbing the smallpox scars on his face, which he always did when nervous, he repeated the same phrase: “Leave it to me, chief.”
“But make it fast,” said Gregório.
“I’m going to see the man immediately.” Maybe Alcino, if instructed well, could do the job right.
IN THE LOCKUP, Inspector Mattos watched the prisoners having breakfast and listened to their complaints. That day was the Day of the Incarcerated. At the initiative of the Brazilian Prison Association a patron saint had been instituted for the prisoners. The choice of saint, at the suggestion of Cardinal Jaime de Barros Câmara, had been the apostle Peter, who, in the words of the prelate, had suffered in life the horrors of prison. The inspector thought about joking with the prisoners, “You’re all the time complaining on a full belly, you’ve even got a patron saint and you still want more,” but the disgust he felt upon entering the cells had changed his disposition. If he weren’t self-centered, a cowardly conformist, he would take advantage of the Day of the Incarcerated to set all those poor bastards free. But he merely jotted down the complaints and returned to his office.
At eleven o’clock he looked at his watch, anxious for the sixty minutes remaining in his shift to end. But at that instant a patrol car arrived. Central dispatch had received word of a homicide. Alberto Mattos called Rosalvo to accompany him to the scene.
“It’s after eleven already, why don’t you leave it for Inspector Maia?”
“It’s not noon yet.”
They got into the precinct’s old van, dirty from the prisoners’ breakfast that it had transported earlier that morning. When they passed by a bar, Mattos told the driver to stop, got out, and drank a glass of milk. The acidity went on gnawing at his stomach.
The patrol car was waiting for them at the door of the Deauville.
The two policemen went up to the eighth floor. A guard was in the hallway, along with the investigator in charge. The apartment door was open. Mattos and Rosalvo went into a small living room where two elegantly and expensively dressed men were. In a wall mirror, the inspector saw his face with a day-old beard, his wrinkled shirt, his crooked tie, the cheap suit he was wearing. Still in the mirror, he recognized one of the men, the shorter and stocky Galvão, the famous criminal lawyer. When he finished his law degree, before he joined the police force, Mattos had gone to work as an assistant public defender and had once represented a poor devil involved in a counterfeit ring. Galvão was the lawyer for the leader of the ring. Mattos’s client had been the only one acquitted.
Galvão and the other man addressed Rosalvo, who was better dressed than the inspector.
“I’m Investigator Rosalvo,” he said, realizing the mistake. “This is the inspector, Mr. Alberto Mattos.”
“Galvão,” said the lawyer, extending his hand. He showed no sign of having recognized Mattos. A heavy voice, polite but full of authority. “I’m here as a friend of the family. This is Mr. Claudio Aguiar, the victim’s cousin.”
“Who informed you?”
Mattos’s abruptness didn’t seem to bother Galvão. Without losing his composure as the great jurist, he replied that it had been the maid. She had called the police and then Claudio Aguiar.
“I thought the police would get here before us.”
“What’s the dead man’s name?”
“Paulo Machado Gomes Aguiar.”
“Profession?”
“Industrialist.”
“Single? Married?”
“Married.”
“Where’s his wife?”
“At the country home in Petropolis. She hasn’t been informed yet . . .”
“She hasn’t been informed?”
“We wanted to spare her the horror of seeing her murdered husband, from the brutality of the criminal investigation . . . She’s a very delicate person . . . They were very close . . .” answered Galvão.
“Where’s the body? I hope nothing’s been moved.”
“We haven’t even gone into the bedroom.”
“I believe you have nothing further to do here, Mr. Galvão. Or you, Mr. —?”
“Aguiar,” said the dead man’s cousin, who had remained silent till then.
The lawyer and the cousin, however, remained in the middle of the vestibule. Mattos loosened his collar even more. He swallowed saliva. He sighed.
Galvão stuck his hand in his coat pocket. From a leather wallet he took out a business card.
“If you need anything . . .”
The inspector put the card in his pocket. “Tell the victim’s wife I want to see her on Monday. At the precinct.”
“Wouldn’t it be better—” Galvão began.
“Monday,” repeated Mattos.
“Monday is tomorrow.”
“So it is.”
Galvão touched lightly the elbow of Aguiar, who retracted his arm. “Let’s go,” said the lawyer in his resonant voice.
“Another thing,” said Mattos, “before leaving, tell the maid who found the body to come talk with me.”
A forty-year-old woman, in a black uniform with white apron and a kind of coif on her head, appeared in the vestibule.
“What’s your name?”
“Nilda.”
“Where is the body?”
Mattos and Rosalvo followed the maid.
“Wait out here, Nilda.”
The dead man, about thirty years of age, large and muscular, lay on the bed, entirely nude. On his face, several hematomas. Marks on the neck. The sheets were stained with blood, fecal matter, and urine. The two policemen moved carefully about the room in order to avoid destroying possible clues. With his elbow, Mattos pushed the half-open bathroom door, not wanting to mix his fingerprints with any others that might exist. A large mirror occupied one entire wall, over a marble counter holding vials of perfume, brushes, soap, and other objects. Using his elbow, the inspector opened the curtain to the shower stall. While he examined, without touching it, a bar of soap with some short hairs, a gleam caught his attention. He kneeled. It was a large gold ring. He placed it in his pocket, without letting Rosalvo see it. The ring made a slight sound when it touched the gold tooth that Mattos always carried with him. Realizing that the ring had hit the tooth, a sensation of disgust overpowered him; impulsively, the inspector removed the gold tooth to his other pocket, nearly dropping it.
“Call Forensics and ask for a crime-scene team,” said Mattos, trying to hide his momentary confusion.
“The morgue too?” asked Rosalvo.
“Yes, that too.”
Rosalvo approached the night table, which held a telephone.
“Not that one. There may be fingerprints.”
Nilda was waiting at the bedroom door.
“Are there other employees in the house?”
“The cook and the pantryman. They’re in the pantry.”
The inspector, accompanied by Nilda, went to the pantry. A fat woman in an apron and a man wearing striped pants and a black vest, sitting at a table, stood up, startled.
“Wait out there. I’m going to talk to Nilda. Then I’ll call the two of you,” said the inspector, closing the door between the pantry and the kitchen.
“Was it you who called the police?”
“Yes.” Her voice tremulous. That was another unpleasant thing about being a cop: when people didn’t hate him, they feared him.
“How was it you discovered your master’s body? Take your time.”
“I went to take them breakfast and knocked on the door and nobody answered . . .”
“Them who?”
“Mr. Paulo and Dona Luciana.”
“Wasn’t his wife traveling?”
“I didn’t know. She had left in the afternoon and I didn’t know.”
“Who told you that?”
“The master’s cousin, Mr. Claudio.”
“And then?”
“Mr. Paulo wakes up early and I thought he’d already left and that Dona Luciana was in the bathroom. That’s when I opened the door and
. . . saw that . . . I ran out . . .”
“And then?”
“I called the police . . . and then Mr. Claudio.”
“What time was it?”
Silence. Rosalvo came into the pantry.
“Was it eleven?”
“Eleven? No . . . I don’t remember.”
“You’re lying, Nilda.”
The maid started to cry.
“There’s no reason for you to cry. Calm down. I’m not going to do anything to you. All you have to do is stop lying. If you’ll stop lying, I have no quarrel with you. You said your master wakes up early. Let’s say you took him breakfast at eight o’clock. You found your master dead. You didn’t know what to do, and you remembered his cousin and called him, and he told you to wait, not to do anything, that he was on his way. Then the cousin arrived with the lawyer, that short guy with the deep voice, and the short guy told you to wait a little longer before calling the police, and you did as you were told. Isn’t that how it was?”
“Yes.”
“You can stop crying. I’m not mad at you.”
“The Inspector is a gentleman, not some kakistocrat,” said Rosalvo.
“Between the time you discovered the body and you called the police, more than three hours went by.”
“And there’s the crux,” said Rosalvo.
“I want you to tell me what your master’s cousin and the lawyer did during that time.”
Finally, Mattos managed to untangle Nilda’s thoughts and discover what had happened. Galvão and Aguiar had taken some time to get there. Meanwhile, Nilda told the cook and the pantryman what she had found, but neither had the courage to go see their dead master. When the visitors arrived, they went immediately to the bedroom but remained there only briefly. Nilda did not go in with them. Aguiar came out of the room very nervous, and Galvão told him several times to stay calm and asked Nilda to prepare a strong cup of coffee. When she brought the coffee, Aguiar was sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands, as if he were crying. Galvão had made several phone calls, mentioning Dona Luciana’s name a few times.
“I’m not going to be arrested?” asked Nilda, seeing the inspector jotting down her name in his notebook.
“No, you’re not. Maybe I won’t even need you. Relax, send in the cook.”
Neither the cook nor the pantryman knew anything useful.
“Get me a glass of milk, please,” Alberto Mattos told the cook.
“Would you like some cookies?”
“No, thanks. Just the milk.”
Mattos had just finished talking to the pantryman when the crime-scene team arrived. The forensic specialist was Antonio Carlos, a technician whom Mattos respected for his knowledge. The inspector told Antonio Carlos that Galvão and a cousin of the victim had entered the room and asked him to check whether some clue could have been destroyed.
“I can’t believe Galvão would do such a thing,” the technician said.
“Not even to protect a client?”
“Now that I think about it, I don’t know . . . A lawyer is a lawyer . . .”
The crime-scene team took photographs, lifted fingerprints and trace evidence from the statuette, the doors, the telephone, the night table. Together with the inspector they opened drawers and closets, bundled up the material to be taken away—the sheets, the dead man’s clothes hanging on the back of a chair, a small address book in glossy leather, and the bar of soap with hairs.
“This stays with me, for the time being,” said Mattos, putting the address book in his pocket.
The men from the meat wagon carried off the dead man in a dirty, battered metal box. The technicians left with them.
“Can I leave?” asked Rosalvo. “Today’s the wife’s birthday.”
“Go.”
The pantryman in the rear of the room cleared his throat.
“May we go?”
“I think you’d better wait for the lady of the house to get back from Petropolis.”
When he left, Mattos spoke with the daytime doorman. At six o’clock he had gotten off work and was replaced by Raimundo Noronha. But Raimundo had already left.
“Tell him to show up at the precinct as soon as he can, to talk to me.”
Arriving at the precinct, Mattos entered the occurrence in the blotter and handed over duties to Inspector Maia, who would relieve him. At that moment, Commissioner Ramos, who rarely appeared at the precinct on Sundays, came into the room.
“Everything okay on the shift, Mr. Mattos? Anything special?” asked Ramos.
“It’s all in the blotter,” replied Mattos drily.
Ramos picked up the book. “A homicide . . . Ah, an important man . . . A big shot . . . Does the press know yet?”
Galvão must have called him, Mattos thought.
“By a person or persons unknown . . .” continued Ramos. He laid the book back on the desk. As he always did when undecided or nervous, he fidgeted with his law school ring—gold, with a ruby center, and on the sides highrelief figures of the scale of justice and the tablets of the Ten Commandments.
“You have any clues?”
“I’m going home. When I discover anything, I’ll let you know.”
Mattos got the revolver he always kept in a drawer when he was on duty, placed it in the holster at his waist, and left.
GREGÓRIO WAS SUMMONED to the phone several times but answered only three calls, after lunch.
The first call: “It’s about the Cexim license. I need to talk to you no later than today.”
“I can’t today,” Gregório replied.
“It’s extremely important, Lieutenant. It’s better for us to meet. Mine isn’t the only interest at stake. Yours is too.”
“Don’t push it, Magalhães. I’m not in a good mood today.”
“I’m not pushing anything, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that something serious has happened. The CEO of Cemtex—”
“Today’s Sunday, I can’t do anything. In a little while I’m going to the Jockey Club with the president. Call me tomorrow,” said Gregório drily, hanging up.
The second call: “When’s the job going to get done?”
“One day soon,” answered Gregório. “Let’s take it easy, I don’t want to run any useless risks.”
“If something happens with you—which I don’t believe, because I know you act with the prudence necessary to avoid any complications—I’ll deposit the money abroad in your name. You’ll be a rich man. Very rich. Trust me, the way I’m trusting you.”
The third call: “When are you going to blast the man?”
“One day soon, Mr. Lodi.”
Euvaldo Lodi was a federal deputy and an important leader in the Federation of Industries.
At three in the afternoon, the head of the president’s military cabinet, General Caiado de Castro, arrived at the Catete Palace. A short time later the secretary of finance, Oswaldo Aranha, arrived. Both were shown into the president’s office. Shortly before four o’clock, the presidential entourage, made up, among others, of the general and the secretary, got into the automobiles waiting in the palace gardens. Major Dornelles sat beside the driver in the car carrying the president and his wife, Dona Darcy.
Gregório gave instructions to the special police escorts, then gestured to Dornelles that the motorcade could get under way. His car, occupied by three other members of the personal guard, was immediately behind the president’s. Preceded by the motorcycles of the escorts in their red berets, the entourage left through the palace gates onto Rua do Catete, heading for the hippodrome in Gávea.
As Gregório feared, the president was booed when the announcer at the Jockey Club, on the loudspeakers, made his arrival known. The president pretended not to hear the jeers coming from the special stands. From the regular seats came no applause, no support. So that’s how the people treat Mr. Getúlio? thought Gregório. After all the sacrifices he’s made and goes on making for the poor and humble?
During the wine reception hosted by the Jocke
y Club’s board of directors after the race, the Black Angel, his expression grim, posted himself behind the president, caressing under his coat the dagger in his belt.
MATTOS LIVED ON THE EIGHTH FLOOR of a building on Marquês de Abrantes, in the Flamengo district. A small apartment with a bedroom and living room, bathroom and kitchen, in the rear. The bathroom was its best feature, spacious with an enormous old tub whose metal feet mimicked the paws of an animal. The living room accommodated only a table and two chairs, a bookcase crammed with books, and a console containing a phonograph and partitions for records. On the console was an album of 78-rpm records, with La Traviata, another with La Bohème in long-play, and the scores of both operas in Italian. The bedroom was also tiny, with a sofa bed and a small table with a reading lamp.
The apartment was hot and stuffy that day, despite it being August. The bedroom window looked out over a small interior courtyard. The neighbor across the way was arguing with his wife. Mattos could see and hear the couple gesticulating and shouting. He closed the window, turning on the light and the radio, took off his coat and tie, placed his revolver on the table, opened the sofa bed and, still wearing pants and shoes, lay down. He was used to sleeping dressed.
He woke up to the ringing of the telephone. The announcer on the radio was saying, “The President of the Republic, Mr. Getúlio Vargas, has just arrived at the Gávea Hippodrome.” Mattos answered the phone.
“You want to see me today?”
It was Salete. He felt a brief surge of desire, which quickly passed. This wasn’t a good day. Besides everything else, his stomach was acting up.
“I’m tired.”
“You’re not thinking about me?”
“No, I’m not thinking about anything.”
“You police people are always thinking about something. Don’t be mean.”
Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series) Page 2