Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series)

by Rubem Fonseca

  “The police can shut down your house,” said Mattos.

  “Can. But don’t want to.” Pause. “Have a little whiskey, Pádua.”

  “Mattos, can you give us a moment? I want to say a few words to Laura in private, inside there.”

  The two left the room.

  I can shut down this whorehouse, thought Mattos. It was a crime to maintain, for personal gain, a house of prostitution or place designated for libidinous encounters, whether or not with the intent of monetary gain or direct mediation on the part of the owner or manager. But was there any harm in a bordello? Even for corrupt, crooked senators and important government officials? In Solon’s Athens prostitution was free, and prostitutes were considered a public utility, subject to taxation by the state, a source of revenue for the exchequer, while procuring for pay or acting as go-between by pimps was rigorously punished. Pádua, who enjoyed citing the thinkers of the church, was probably familiar with St. Augustine’s phrase: “Aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinus.”

  Alberto Mattos remembered the debates in his criminal law classes about the idiotic phrases dealing with prostitution, which had inflamed discussions among the students. Since childhood he had felt an attraction to prostitutes, although he had never frequented a bordello. There came to his mind phrases: from Weininger, “the prostitute is the safeguard of my mother”; from Lecky, “the prostitute is the custodian of virtue, the eternal priestess of humanity”; from Jeannel, “the prostitutes in a city are as necessary as sewers and trash bins.” An inextirpable but necessary evil—who was it said that? In an association of ideas he recalled the melody of the aria “Ah, fors è lui,” but his claqueur’s reverie was interrupted by the return of Pádua and Laura to the room.

  Pádua sat down in an armchair. Laura put on her pince-nez and looked at Mattos for a long moment. Then: “What is it you want to know?”

  “Senator Vitor Freitas.”

  “What?”

  “Does he always come here?”

  A long pause before replying: “Sometimes.”

  “Does he always go with the same girl?”

  “No.”

  Pádua guffawed.

  “Drop the subterfuge, Laura. The senator’s queer, my dear colleague.”

  “SIR, I HAVE GOOD NEWS,” said Rosalvo, entering Mattos’s office.

  After leaving Dona Laura’s house, the inspector had left Pádua and gone to a bookstore in the Cruzeiro Gallery, where he’d drunk half a liter of watery milk. Then he had caught a bus for the precinct.

  “We have to find out everything about the victim’s life to be able to arrive at the killer, isn’t that right?” said Rosalvo.

  “Go on.”

  “I went to the São Joaquim school to look at Gomes Aguiar’s transcripts. Obviously the priests didn’t show me anything; those guys are murder. But I have a brother-in-law who’s a beadle at the São Joaquim, and he let the cat out of the bag . . . As a matter of fact, that brother-in-law of mine wants to enroll in the police academy’s investigator course.”

  “What’s the problem? Have him apply and take the tests.”

  “But if he has a recommendation, it’ll be a lot easier.”

  “I can’t recommend someone I don’t know.”

  Then fuck you, thought Rosalvo. Indecisive, he said nothing.

  “What’s the good news?”

  “My brother-in-law nosed around in the school files. He was risking his job, which is a shit job but at least it’s a job . . .”

  Mattos could sense the taste of milk in his mouth, but the acidity had yet to pass completely. He filled his mouth with saliva and swallowed.

  He’s started making faces, thought Rosalvo. Fuck him. No way, José. He doesn’t want to help my brother-in-law but wants to suck his blood. Fuck him. I’m not afraid of faces.

  “If what you have to tell me isn’t urgent, leave it for afterward. I’ll call you later.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Rosalvo opened the door.

  Mattos began to read the papers the clerk had put on his desk.

  “But it’s important,” said Rosalvo, grasping the doorknob.

  The inspector continued his reading.

  This cop’s soul of mine is what fucks me, thought Rosalvo. “It’s very important.”

  “If it’s all that important, out with it, right away.”

  Rosalvo closed the door and sat down in the chair beside the inspector’s desk.

  He leaned forward conspiratorially.

  “Paulo Gomes Aguiar was expelled from the São Joaquim in high school. I mean, he wasn’t expelled, the priests are scared shitless of confronting the powerful, and Gomes Aguiar’s family was very important, so the priests merely invited him to leave the school. Know what happened?”

  “Go on.”

  “Paulo Aguiar and two classmates grabbed a kid from the elementary school in an empty room and cornholed him by force. A beadle heard the boy’s moans and caught the bastards in the act. Know who the beadle was?”

  “Your brother-in-law.”

  “The boy was kinda gay, but he was like the Chinaman in the joke. His family found out about the incident and made a federal case out of it, and there was no way to keep Paulo Aguiar’s name out of it.”

  “Chinaman?”

  “A guy was at a lumber camp in the middle of the jungle, and he went to the foreman and asked how he could find a woman to dip his wick. The foreman said there weren’t any women, but there was a Chinaman. The guy didn’t go for it, what he wanted was a woman. A few months later he went back to the foreman and said: Look, fix me with up with that Chinaman, but nobody can know about it. He didn’t wanna get known as a fairy. That’s not gonna be easy, the foreman said, I’m gonna know, the Chinaman’s gonna know, and the four guys holding him down so you can cornhole him are gonna know . . . You didn’t know that joke?”

  “I remember now. If the boy was the Chinese, there was someone holding him down.”

  “There was. Claudio Aguiar, the cousin of Paulo, who was murdered, and one Pedro Lomagno. The three took turns cornholing him.”

  “What was the boy’s name?”

  “It’s incredible, but the name of the boy was José Silva, page after page in the telephone book. It won’t be easy to find his whereabouts now.”

  After Rosalvo left, Mattos took Gomes Aguiar’s address book from his pocket. He looked for the name of Pedro Lomagno and the telephone number.

  A feminine voice answered.

  Mattos remained silent.

  “Hello,” the woman repeated.

  The inspector hung up the phone. That one short word had been enough for Mattos to identify the person who had answered the phone.

  It was Alice.

  five

  COMPACT GROUPS OF PEOPLE began coming out of the São José school. Neither Climerio nor Alcino, who carefully scrutinized everyone’s face, succeeded in spotting the journalist Lacerda. Finally, the school’s doors were shut.

  Climerio gestured to Alcino, and the pair returned to Nelson’s taxi.

  “Goddamn! The man had already left. See what you did?”

  “I didn’t get the message till nine o’clock.”

  “Let’s go to Rua Tonelero, in Copacabana. That’s where the Crow lives. Let’s see if we get lucky this time and catch up with the son of a bitch,” said Climerio. He couldn’t go back to Gregório and confess another mistake; he feared his boss’s reaction.

  “That’s the man’s building there,” said Climerio when they arrived at Rua Tonelero.

  Alcino got out. Climerio told Nelson to park nearby, on Paula Freitas, near the corner of Tonelero. “Wait here. Keep your eyes open.” He got out and went to meet Alcino.

  “The fucker maybe already got here,” said Climerio, “but anyway we’re gonna wait a while.”

  Climerio and Alcino talked for some fifteen minutes. They were about to give up when a car stopped at the door of the journalist’s building, at forty minutes aft
er midnight. Three people got out: Lacerda, his fifteen-year-old son Sergio, and Air Force Major Rubens Vaz.

  “It’s him—you see him?” said Climerio.

  “The one in glasses?”

  “Shit, of course the one in glasses! The other one’s his bodyguard.”

  Lacerda said good night to the major and walked with his son toward the garage door of the building. Vaz headed toward the car. Alcino crossed the street and fired on Lacerda, who ran into the garage. The report of the revolver when it discharged surprised Alcino, who for some instants didn’t know what to do. He saw then that the major was approaching and grabbing his weapon. Alcino pulled the trigger again. The major continued grasping the barrel of the gun until Alcino wrenched it free from the fingers grasping it, falling down from the force he had exerted. He saw that the major had fallen also, toward the other side. Alcino got to his feet and fired again, without aiming. He heard the crack of gunfire and fled to Nelson’s taxi. A cop appeared, running and shouting, “Stop! Police!” Alcino shot at the cop, who fell. He got into the car, its motor already running.

  “What about Climerio? Where’s Climerio?” asked Nelson.

  “I thought he was here. Let’s go!”

  Nelson accelerated rapidly. They heard another shot and the sound of the automobile being hit. It was the cop, who despite lying wounded on the ground, had fired.

  Inside Nelson’s taxi, which followed Avenida Copacabana at high speed, Alcino wrapped the revolver and the six bullets in a yellow flannel cloth. Arriving in Flamengo, Alcino told Nelson to take Avenida Beira Mar; Climerio had instructed him to get rid of the gun by throwing it into the sea. He intended to do so without leaving the car.

  When they came to Rua México, Alcino stuck out his arm holding the parcel with the gun, preparing to hurl it into the water, over the low seawall paralleling the sidewalk. He didn’t want to have that weapon in his possession any longer than necessary. Suddenly, Nelson swerved to avoid a car coming toward him on the wrong side of the street, startling Alcino, who dropped the cloth with the revolver.

  “I dropped the gun,” shouted Alcino.

  Nelson stopped the car. “Go get it.”

  Alcino stuck his head out the window and looked back at the dark pavement of the avenue. Car lights shone in the distance.

  “Anybody finds that piece of shit isn’t gonna turn it in to the police. A .45 is worth a lot of money.”

  Tense, they waited for the car to pass.

  “Better you get out. The cop at Tonelero saw the license plate. If they catch me, I’ll say it was an unknown customer who got out in Botafogo.”

  “You’re gonna turn yourself in?”

  “Of course not. I’ll only tell that story if they catch me. Don’t worry.”

  “They’ll beat you to a pulp, and you’ll end up spilling your guts.”

  “You’re forgetting I’m a cop too?”

  “You’re a supplementary investigator for the state of Rio. That doesn’t mean shit.”

  “I worked with Colonel Agenor Feio. It was him who hired me.”

  “Anybody can be a cop in the state of Rio. Real police work for the DPS.”

  Alcino got out of the taxi. He was near the American embassy. He wandered about, not knowing what to do. He leaned against a tree and urinated. Meanwhile, unseen by Alcino, a beggar who collected scrap paper picked up the parcel in the middle of the street and disappeared into the darkness.

  On a small bus, Alcino went to Bandeira Square. He got out at the door of a restaurant and then took a cab to Rua Sicupira. Climerio, in addition to procuring him a job as investigator for the Department of Public Safety, had promised him ten thousand cruzeiros. The sooner he received the money, the better. He knocked at the door.

  Elvira, Climerio’s wife, opened the door. Adão, one of her sons, was at her side. The two were listening to the radio.

  “Where’s Mr. Climerio?”

  “I thought he was with you,” said Elvira, turning her attention to the radio. “Carlos Lacerda and an air force officer have been wounded. An awful confusion.”

  Shortly afterward, Alcino heard a car motor and went to the window. He saw it was Nelson’s Studebaker. Nelson and Climerio got out and examined the mark the bullet had made on the body of the car. Climerio, seeing Alcino at the window, gestured for him to come outside.

  “I’ll give you the money day after tomorrow, Friday. Stay calm, we’ve got protection from higher up.”

  AT THE MIGUEL COUTO HOSPITAL, after the wound in his foot from the assassination attempt was bandaged, Carlos Lacerda was transported to his apartment at 180 Rua Tonelero. In a short time the journalist was surrounded by people who showed up to offer support, among them the auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro, Dom José Távora, former president Eurico Gaspar Dutra, and dozens of air force officers.

  “I hold the president of the Republic responsible for the attack,” Lacerda told the air force officers, who listened in silence. “It was the impunity of the government that armed the criminal hand.”

  Describing the attack, Lacerda said there were three gunmen. They had set up a perfect ambush.

  “I escaped death by a miracle, because I had gone to communion just hours before the attack.”

  RADIO STATIONS BROADCAST NONSTOP the news of the Rua Tonelero assassination attempt, but Mattos paid no attention to what he was hearing. He was reliving the pain and the hope he had felt seeing Alice again at the Cavé, and also the mortifying shock at hearing her voice when he had called the home of Pedro Lomagno.

  Mattos received a call from Commissioner Pastor, head of the Second Precinct, whose jurisdiction included Rua Tonelero.

  Pastor spoke about the attack. Sávio, the cop who had traded fire with the gunman, even though wounded had noted the taxi’s license plate. The driver, Nelson Raimundo de Souza, had appeared at the Fourth Precinct telling an unlikely story. According to a reporter, Armando Nogueira of the Diário Carioca, who said he had witnessed the crime, the individual who had shot the major was thin, dark-skinned, of medium height, and was wearing a gray suit.

  “The journalist said the assassin squatted and fired at the major. If anything happens in your jurisdiction, connected in any way to the attack, please let me know immediately. Talk to your chief and the other police in the precinct, tell them to be on the lookout. I’m making the same request in all precincts. We want to close this case right away. General Ancora is worried. Air force officers are trying to meddle in the investigation. The secretary of aeronautics, Nero Moura, named a colonel to monitor the police inquiry. I told the general I found that strange, but Ancora said he’d been persuaded by Tancredo to accept the colonel’s intervention.”

  Ancora was the head of the Federal Department of Public Safety. Mattos had met him at headquarters, shortly after the general was appointed. That was the only time he’d seen him: a thin man with a worried and indecisive expression, in glasses and a dark suit.

  At the precinct were only the inspector, a cop, and the jailer in charge of the lockup. Mattos told them of Pastor’s request and returned to his office.

  When they were alone, the cop commented to the jailer that he’d been transferred to the precinct recently and that this was his first time on the same shift as Mattos. “He’s not playing with a full deck,” the cop told the jailer. “That business of kicking Mr. Ilídio in the tail means trouble. The man bankrolls the numbers game in this jurisdiction, and he’s the partner of Aniceto Moscoso in Madureira . . .”

  “I was inside there and didn’t see what happened. Why would the inspector do something like that?” asked the jailer, shocked. After all, the money that Mr. Ilídio distributed monthly in the precinct supplemented the meager salary the cops received.

  “A bookkeeper of Mr. Ilídio’s was arrested, and he came here to get the man released. But Mr. Ilídio tried giving orders to Inspector Mattos; I think he didn’t know who he was dealing with. The inspector’s a straight arrow, he’s not involved in the split of the number
s money. That was Mr. Ilídio’s bad luck. He got kicked in the butt and wound up in a cell.”

  “I was embarrassed to lock up Mr. Ilídio, but what could I do? The inspector is goddamn tough,” said the jailer.

  “He’s like a soul in torment, pacing from side to side all night and making faces,” added the cop.

  The morning newspapers ran large headlines about the attack. Students had gone on strike in “protest against criminality. Our soul is awash in opprobrium. A grave has opened, and the people will not forget.” In Congress, repercussions of the attack had been enormous. Galleries in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate were packed when sessions opened in the two houses of the legislature. According to opposition congressmen, “blood ran in the streets of the capital, and there was no more tranquility in homes.” Representatives of every political party had given speeches condemning the attack. Deputy Armando Falcão had introduced a bill providing aid to Major Vaz’s widow. Responding to Lacerda’s statements, published in newspapers, that “the sources of the crime lie in the Catete Palace, Lutero Vargas is one of those behind the crime,” the government leader in the Chamber, Deputy Gustavo Capanema, had taken the floor to denounce as groundless the accusations against the president’s son. The crowd in the galleries had loudly booed Capanema.

  After visiting the prisoners in lockup—those he hadn’t been able to set free upon beginning his shift because they were awaiting trial—Mattos made entries in the blotter, signed documents attesting to residence and poverty, and did the paperwork to send to the morgue a body found in the street.

  Rosalvo came into the office.

  “Is it true you assaulted Mr. Ilídio?”

  “You mean Ilídio the numbers boss?”

  “And then threw him in the clink?”

  “I don’t feel well today, Rosalvo. Best not to irritate me.”

  “Sorry. The chief wants to speak to you about it.”

  Mattos entered the superintendent’s office without knocking.

  “You want to talk to me?”

  “Sit down, Mr. Mattos. It’s about the incident with Mr. Ilídio.”

  The inspector sat down, uneasy. Someone had told the chief what had happened. But he didn’t care who it was. What was certain was that the news had gotten around.