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

by Rubem Fonseca

  “If it goes to trial he’ll get off or be fined two hundred cruzeiros, which is more probable,” said Pádua.

  “The law is meant to be obeyed,” said Mattos.

  “All right. Whatever you two want,” agreed Pádua. “I don’t want to fight with you either, Mattos.” Pause. “On second thought, you’re right. Us cops have to follow the law.”

  Pádua patted Mattos’s arm. “You forgive me?”

  “I apologize too,” said Mattos.

  “Associating with you is going to end up making me into a bleeding heart,” said Pádua.

  “Phone call for you, Mr. Mattos,” said the guard, entering the room.

  “Who is it?” asked the inspector.

  “Somebody named Lomagno.”

  The inspector took the call in the reception area.

  “Mattos speaking.”

  “My name is Pedro Lomagno.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Come by the precinct tomorrow. I go on duty at noon.”

  “It’s urgent.”

  “Then come now.”

  Mattos sensed a slight hesitation at the other end. “I . . . uh . . . have problems here at the firm, I don’t know what time I’ll be free. Could you maybe come to my office? It’s a matter that concerns you. That concerns us.”

  Mattos embraced Pádua as he said goodbye. “I have to go out.”

  “Keep your eyes open, man,” said Pádua affectionately.

  Thirty minutes later, the inspector arrived at the offices of Lomagno & Company, on Avenida Graça Aranha.

  The city was calm, the only abnormality was the presence, on almost every downtown corner, of open vehicles of the special forces, full of men in khaki uniforms and red berets.

  A secretary showed the inspector to Pedro Lomagno’s office.

  The two men were seeing each other for the first time. Mattos, who as a cop had acquired the habit of looking people directly in the eye, examined the face, the clothes, the abundant slicked-down hair, the athletic built that his elegant suit didn’t conceal, the powerful hand with long pale fingers of the man who had married his old girlfriend. He only didn’t see the eyes, for Lomagno pretended to arrange some papers on his desk.

  “Please sit down,” said Lomagno, still arranging the papers.

  He’s taller than me. Has all his teeth. Good health, thought Mattos.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” said Lomagno, sitting on the other side of the desk.

  Lomagno had rehearsed with Luciana the conversation he would have with the inspector, but he had become dominated by a sudden nervousness that he couldn’t control and that the other man must surely be noting. He felt hatred and fear of the policeman sitting in front of him. His opening sentence struck him as good justification for his uncertainty.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” Lomagno repeated.

  Mattos remained silent, observing the other man. Elusive green eyes, no wedding band, he’s uncomfortable in my presence. He doesn’t know where to begin, because he’s going to lie? Or because he’s going to tell the truth?

  “It’s about my wife.”

  Silence from Mattos.

  “About Alice.”

  Silence.

  “She told me to get in touch with you.”

  Silence.

  “What did she say to you?”

  “I’m here to listen.”

  “It’s very hard for me to say what I have to say.”

  Silence. Alice when she was with him used to say similar things, thought Mattos.

  “Alice isn’t well, she’s sick, undergoing psychiatric treatment.”

  Silence.

  “She told me she contacted you, told you that I . . . uh . . .”

  Silence.

  “. . . that I was Luciana Gomes Aguiar’s lover.”

  Silence.

  “That’s nothing but a morbid hallucination on the part of my wife. Paulo was my best friend, and I hope that you, who are investigating his murder, find the guilty person soon.”

  Silence.

  “She was already interned in Dr. Eiras’s hospital.”

  Silence.

  “I didn’t want to commit her, but the doctor said it was necessary.”

  “Can you give me the doctor’s name and address?”

  “I have his card here.” Lomagno picked up a card from the desk and handed it to Mattos, who put it in his pocket unread.

  “Do you know Lieutenant Gregório?”

  “What?”

  “Lieutenant Gregório, head of the president’s personal guard.”

  “No.”

  Well, well, thought Lomagno, relieved, the cop thinks the Negro referred to by Alice and the doorman is this Gregório. He had to check himself in order not to show his satisfaction.

  Mattos’s misconception gave Lomagno the courage to observe, openly, the policeman who was interrogating him. What could a refined and elegant woman from a good family, like Alice, have seen in the guy? Actually, Alice had never been a person with a lot of good sense.

  “I don’t know that gentleman personally, only by name. The one who knew him well was Paulo. It seems that Lieutenant Gregório helped him obtain—overcome certain, uh, bureaucratic difficulties. You know how it is . . .”

  “Be more specific.”

  “You know what Brazil is like.”

  “I don’t know. Tell me.”

  “If you had an import-export business you’d know.”

  “But I don’t.”

  “To import or export anything you need a license from Cexim. It’s not easy to get. Often the cooperation of an influential friend is necessary. Lieutenant Gregório helped Paulo get an . . . important . . . license for his firm, Cemtex, in which I also am a partner. For Brazil to grow, businessmen need to humble themselves by asking favors.”

  “Did Gregório frequent the home of Paulo Gomes Aguiar?”

  “I can’t say. I do know that they met a few times . . . They had a good relationship . . . I wouldn’t call it a friendship . . . Yes, I believe that gentleman did go to Paulo’s house, sporadically . . .”

  “Dona Luciana told me her husband was in the habit of using the services of a macumba priest. That individual would have been in their home the day Gomes Aguiar was killed.”

  “It’s true. Paulo often consulted him. I thought it strange that an intelligent person like Paulo would believe in such a fraud, a confidence man who exploits people’s superstition. I don’t think he’d be capable of committing violence.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I went to his macumba site in Caxias once, with Paulo. Strictly out of curiosity.”

  “Could you give me the address of that site?”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t know it. I don’t even know how to give you correct information about the locale. But I can take you there. I think that by going to Caxias, I can end up finding the place. I remember a bar, things like that can orient me.”

  “Would it be possible tomorrow?”

  “I believe so.”

  WHEN HE LEFT LOMAGNO’S OFFICE, Mattos’s stomach ached terribly. He had a doctor’s appointment for that afternoon. From the Mineira milk bar, on Rua São José facing the Cruzeiro Gallery, he phoned the doctor and canceled the appointment. He drank half a liter of milk and left to catch the streetcar at the Tabuleiro da Baiana; it had been years since streetcars went to the Gallery.

  In the streetcar, on his way to the Dr. Eiras clinic, the inspector thought about the interview he had conducted moments earlier.

  Lomagno was very uneasy at first; by the end, very calm. Was he getting used to the lie he was telling, or to the truth? The story about the macumba priest might be true. And also what Lomagno had told him about Alice. That thought made his stomach and his heart ache, hindered his reasoning, prevented the cop from thinking clearly about the role of—not Gregório yet, it was still too soon!—of the mysterious black man. Alice mentally ill. He hadn’t perceived
that when they had been together. How could such a beautiful woman be ill? No, he would not allow his lucidity to be compromised by irrelevant doubts: the Negro was Gregório, he was more and more certain of it. The F for Fortuna engraved in the gold ring. Then why was he, who liked repeating Diderot’s maxim that skepticism was the first step toward truth, now full of certainty? Alice’s illness again. Alice. He remembered his mother’s sister, who wasn’t right in the head, telling him—just when was it?—that she’d seen sputum on the sidewalk and had stood there mentally repeating to herself, “Do I lick it or not?” Knowing there were several crazy people in his own family, he considered it possible he himself might suffer a psychotic episode. Possible, but not probable. In any case, he hoped never to come to having an irresistible urge to lick someone’s spit off the sidewalk.

  Arnoldo Coelho, Alice’s psychiatrist, had worked for a time at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane and received the inspector graciously. Nevertheless, he only agreed to speak about his client when Mattos, after explaining he was investigating a homicide, guaranteed that the information he provided would remain confidential.

  “She suffers from manic-depressive psychosis.”

  “Can you give me more details about the illness?”

  “Falret called it circular insanity; Baillarger, biform psychosis; Delay, alternating-type madness; Magnan, intermittent psychosis; Kahlbaum, typical circular vesania; Kraepelin was the first to use the terminology manic-depressive psychosis. Kretschmer—”

  “Doctor, I can’t take anymore hearing about those Germans whose names all begin with K. In the police academy I studied judiciary psychology, legal psychiatry, forensic medicine, criminal anthropology. It nearly killed me.”

  They laughed.

  “Was your professor Alves Garcia?”

  “I wish. I wasn’t that lucky.” Pause. “Doctor, tell me about Alice.”

  “When she’s in her manic phase, she has an irresistible need for movement. She’s ironic, really biting. She has frenzied ideas, with vertical rapid associations. She compulsively writes page after page in her diary. She behaves prodigally. On one occasion she gave me a gold watch. A Vaucheron Constantin. Of course, I returned the watch.”

  “She keeps a diary?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t read it. In her depressive phase she becomes very apathetic. She once went into a stupor. That was when we had to hospitalize her.”

  “Are there any medicines?”

  “Yes, medicines exist. Manic-depressive psychosis is curable, but not all patients have the same positive response. Alice’s is, shall we say, a more difficult case. She’s very intelligent, as occurs in fact with many of these psychotics, and she’s cooperating rather well. Whenever she comes to the hospital—Alice knows when she’s having an episode—I tell her, ‘Stick out your tongue.’ If she does, I know she’s in her manic phase; if she doesn’t, she’s in the depressive phase.”

  “Does she hallucinate?”

  “No. Let’s say she has illusions, at the height of the episodes. Hallucination is perception without an object. Illusion, the deformed perception of the object.”

  “What kind of illusions?”

  “Some ideas of persecution, transitory and epiphenomenal.”

  IN THE MORNING, while the president was in Belo Horizonte, General Zenóbio conferred at length with General Caiado de Castro at the Catete Palace. The main topics aired were the disturbances in Marechal Floriano Square, the gathering of military officers at the Aeronautics Club, and the interrogation of Lieutenant Gregório in the barracks of the Second Military Police Battalion.

  In the afternoon, Zenóbio, the secretary of war, called a meeting of seventy-three generals serving in the capital, among them General Estillac Leal, who had come from São Paulo especially for that purpose.

  No general was willing to make a statement to the press following the meeting.

  Later, at about seven that night, a note would be distributed: “At the meeting today, at which were present all the general officers serving in this capital, along with the army general in command of the Central Military Zone, Estillac Leal and his Chief of Staff General Floriano Keller, the following position, arrived at yesterday by high-ranking officials of the three armed forces, was reaffirmed: to persevere in the goal of investigating the criminal action that culminated in the assassination of Major Rubens Florentino Vaz, to effect the trial of the criminals by the justice system, and, furthermore, to remain, under any circumstance that may occur, within provisions imposed by the Federal Constitution.”

  GREGÓRIO HAD BEEN INTERROGATED at Galeão air base for eight hours. The main interrogators had been Inspector Pastor, Prosecutor Cordeiro Guerra, and Colonel Adyl. Several air force officers were also present.

  Gregório had said that he had eighty men under him in the personal guard, each of whom earned five thousand cruzeiros a month. He earned ten thousand. The monthly outlay of the personal guard came to five hundred thousand cruzeiros. He was sleeping when they called to inform him of the attack. He didn’t attribute the slightest importance to it and went back to sleep. The next day he learned greater details. He had assumed it was a personal matter and not political. It had never crossed his mind that one of his men might be involved, which is why he didn’t bring the fact to the attention of the head of state or General Caiado de Castro. Later, he had been surprised to learn that Climerio had been involved in the attack.

  At the end of the interrogation, Gregório had felt ill. He was taken under escort to the Galeão hospital, where military doctors confirmed that his health was good.

  THAT NIGHT, when he arrived at the Deauville Building, Pedro Lomagno had the street door opened by a new doorman.

  “Please, sir, who are you visiting?”

  “You’re new here?”

  “I work in the garage. I’m sitting in for Raimundo.”

  “Dona Luciana Gomes Aguiar is expecting me. I’m Pedro Lomagno.”

  Luciana opened the door with a champagne glass in her hand. She embraced Lomagno tightly, biting his ear.

  Lomagno moved his head away. “How long have you been drinking?”

  “I feel so happy, so happy. I think the last time I felt this happy was when I was six years old. Remember I told you about it? The time my mother gave me that doll? Didn’t I tell you about that? I didn’t want to wear braces.”

  “You told me. How long have you been drinking?”

  “Since the time you called me to say the cop thought the Negro—but it wasn’t because of that. I’m happy because I love you . . .”

  Luciana picked up the bottle and filled two glasses. They were in the spacious living room of the Deauville apartment.

  “It’s better if you stop for a while.”

  “Everything’s turning out right, my love. Don’t you feel freer? Freer than ever? Oh . . . I was forgetting Alice. You poor thing, having to carry all that weight.”

  Lomagno took the glass from Luciana’s hand. “Stop for a while.”

  “Let’s get Alice out of our way too. In any case, a crazy woman like her won’t be missed. You deserve to be happy, we deserve to be happy. I want to be happy!”

  “Don’t cry, Luciana.”

  “My father didn’t love me, my mother didn’t love me.”

  “No child loves its parents.”

  “That’s what I meant to say.”

  “Give me that bottle.”

  Luciana clutched the bottle tightly. Her face was contorted.

  “Crazy people throw themselves under trains, jump out of windows, drink ant poison, set fire to their clothes, slash their wrists, put a bullet in their head. Why doesn’t Alice do any of those things? Do you still love me? Then prove it, go on, fuck me, kill Alice, fuck me first, now.”

  The bottle slipped out of Luciana’s hands, shattering on the floor.

  Lomagno picked her up in his arms and carried her, moving slowly, carefully climbing the stairs to the bedroom on the upstairs floor.

  Before arriv
ing at the bedroom, Luciana had fallen asleep. Lomagno laid her down on the bed. He stood there for several moments, looking at his lover as if she were a stranger.

  Leaving the lamp on, he left the bedroom and walked, curious, through the ample apartment. The quarters formerly occupied by servants were empty. None of the help any longer slept at the apartment. “I don’t want anyone watching me,” Luciana had said.

  Finally Lomagno stopped, pensive, in a room that had originally been planned as a nursery and now served as a storage area. He opened the window and let in fresh air from the sea.

  A good place for a punching bag, he thought.

  LATE AT NIGHT, Inspector Pádua entered the precinct lockup.

  “Ibrahim Assad,” he shouted.

  Assad approached the bars.

  “You’re being let go,” said Pádua.

  “At this time of night?”

  “Your habeas corpus just came down.”

  The only ones on duty in the precinct at that moment were Pádua, Detective Murilo, who had worked with Pádua for years, and the lockup guard.

  Pádua, accompanied by Murilo, took Assad to the empty Robbery and Theft office.

  “Where’s my lawyer?”

  “There isn’t any lawyer, no fucking habeas corpus. I’m going to waste you,” said Pádua. “But if you tell me why you wanted to kill Inspector Mattos, I might spare you.”

  “You’ll forgive me, but I can’t say, Mr. Pádua.”

  The prisoner’s calmness impressed the inspector.

  “Why can’t you say?”

  “I’d be discredited, sir. I have a name to defend.”

  “Ibrahim? That’s a name to defend?” Murilo laughed.

  But Pádua remained serious. This guy wasn’t just some two-bit loser.

  “Exactly. You understand these things. I’m better known by the nickname Old Turk.”

  “The Old Turk?” said Murilo, admiringly.

  “No wonder I suspected something when I saw your ID card . . .” said Pádua. “Old Turk . . . I’ve always wanted to meet you, Old Turk.”

  “Good thing you’ve heard of me. Then you know it’s not possible for me to do what you ask, sir. I can’t, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t rat—and I don’t want to. Please, don’t waste your time.”