Mattos said nothing.
“Gregório is one of those involved,” Fraga continued, “but there are others, above him. We already know, from the confession of the gunman Alcino, that Lutero Vargas, son of the president, is one of the masterminds. We want to discover the whole truth, however horrible and shocking it may be for the Brazilian people. Gregório Fortunato still has a lot to tell about this repugnant crime. You do agree with me that it was a repugnant crime, don’t you?”
“To me all crimes are the same. I’m a policeman.”
“But even for a policeman there are crimes more atrocious than others.”
“It’s not the policeman’s job to make a value judgment about the illicit act.” Pause. “The best policeman would maybe be an automaton who knew the law well and obeyed it blindly.”
Fraga thought about what Mattos had said.
“All authority contains, in a way, the responsibility to judge,” Fraga said.
“All authority contains, in a way, something corrupt and immoral,” said the inspector.
Fraga looked at Mattos in surprise, not knowing what to say. He preferred to let the cop’s observation pass.
“I’m not talking about judging like a magistrate. Judging like a man of integrity,” said Fraga.
“Those who consider themselves men of integrity aren’t always good policemen.”
“But you’re a man of integrity, aren’t you, inspector? You’re not going to tell me that the turpitude, the corruption, the sea of mud that covers our Brazil doesn’t worry you?”
“Colonel—”
“Major.”
“Major, the only thing that worries me is doing my job well.” The inspector’s stomach began to ache.
Captain Ranildo entered the room.
“May I have a word with you, Major?”
“One moment, I’ll be right back,” said Fraga, leaving the room with Ranildo. In the corridor.
“I’ve got the guy’s dossier. When he was in law school, he was arrested twice. First in 1944, during the dictatorship. Then he was arrested again in ’45, after Getúlio was deposed, during the we-want-Getúlio campaign, when the commies went over to the ex-dictator’s side, that disgusting business of Prestes supporting the man who’d been his torturer and the executioner of his wife. It seems that our inspector follows the communist party line.”
“I spoke with him,” said Fraga. “He has some . . . strange ideas. He’s not stupid.”
“How do they let a guy with his background into the police?” continued Ranildo. “When all this is over we’re going to have to clean house in the police.”
“The guy may really be investigating Gregório’s possible participation in the murder of a civilian.”
“The story that inspector tells is too fantastic to be true. Do you think Gregório is a homosexual? He’s a cynic, a thief, a killer, but not a homosexual. The information we have is that he’s a womanizer,” said Ranildo.
“Then what’s the inspector’s motive?”
“To stir up the Police/Military Inquiry. I think the police want us to board a leaky canoe. They accuse Gregório falsely, with our collaboration, of having committed a crime, then they declare the black guy innocent, involving us one way or another. Then Última Hora screams in banner headlines that just as Gregório was wrongly accused of that crime invented by the inspector, he also had nothing to do with the assassination of Major Vaz, et cetera, et cetera,” said Ranildo.
“That strikes me as very . . . far-fetched,” said Fraga.
“My theory or his?”
“Both.”
“Major, the inspector may even be here in good faith, which I don’t believe. It wouldn’t be good for our investigation, now, to accuse Gregório of anything not linked to the crime of Rua Tonelero. It can get in the way. We haven’t even had time to interrogate the man properly. The important thing is to prove that Gregório ordered Lacerda killed under orders from a group that includes Benjamim, Lutero, Lodi, and Getúlio himself.”
“And what if Gregório committed the murder mentioned by the cop?”
“I understand your scruples, Major, but that can wait till later.”
“Later may be too late.”
“What’s the problem? In any case, Gregório’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
“I think it best for us to speak to Colonel Adyl.”
The two men stopped in front of the door to Colonel Adyl’s office.
“Wait out here,” Fraga said, entering the room.
Fraga didn’t take long.
“Ranildo, go tell the inspector that for now Gregório can’t be interrogated. Colonel Adyl is going to start the military operation to catch Climerio and instructed me to personally speak to the superintendent of police about that inspector.”
“Does Colonel Adyl trust Paulo Torres?” the captain asked.
“Torres isn’t some crooked cop. He’s an army colonel, a hero of the Italian campaign.”
Ranildo returned to speak with Mattos.
“The colonel said that at the moment, Gregório Fortunato cannot be interrogated by the police. He’s incommunicado.”
“Can I ask a favor of you, Captain?”
“You can ask. I don’t know if I can do it.”
“It’s a simple thing: could you tell me if Lieutenant Gregório is wearing a gold ring on his left hand?”
Ranildo, surprised, looked at the inspector. “A gold ring?”
“Yes. It’s very important to the investigation I’m undertaking.”
Ranildo went to the window and looked pensively at the troops outside at the ready.
“I’m going to do what you ask, but then I’ll ask you to leave. I have many problems that need to be resolved.”
Ranildo left the room. An armed corporal, in battle gear, entered and stood stiffly by the door.
Ranildo returned.
“Yes, he’s wearing a ring.”
“Gold?”
Ranildo held out his hand. “This one.”
“May I see it?”
Ranildo handed the ring to the inspector. A gold ring, similar to the one the inspector had in his pocket, a bit wider, without any letter engraved inside.
The inspector returned the ring to Ranildo.
“Thank you, Captain. We can go now.”
Ranildo escorted the inspector back to the van and stood watching as the police vehicle left the base.
Ten minutes later, the sound of growling motors of trucks and jeeps, the metallic whir of helicopters and Tomahawks was heard. The war operation to apprehend Climerio had begun.
Back at the precinct to relieve Pádua, Inspector Mattos asked his colleague if he would come to an agreement with Anastácio.
“It’s not enough for that son of a bitch to return the jewels. He’s got to testify against the guy.”
“That he won’t do.”
“We’ll put the squeeze on him.”
“I don’t want you to use violence on him. The guy’s sorry about what he did.”
“He’s scared. Are you going to let Ilídio off the hook?”
“No. But I’m in no hurry. Old Turk turned up dead in Tijuca Forest.”
“Oh yeah? When?”
“Yesterday.”
“I didn’t know. How about that, I did him a favor by letting the bastard go, and somebody capped him.”
Mattos stared at Pádua, who held his colleague’s gaze.
“I think you killed Old Turk.”
“I don’t want to argue with you, Mattos.”
“It was a stupid crime.”
“We’re not going to burn a candle over some cheap loser.”
“I’m very sorry, but I’m going to have to pursue this to the end.”
“Do whatever you like.”
When Pádua left, Mattos ordered the jailor to release the prisoners in lockup for questioning. There were two. Then he called the clerk Oliveira, to whom he gave instructions to summon the numbers boss Ilídio to appea
r at the precinct for clarification.
AT THE MOMENT the military troops were beginning their hunt for Climerio, the superintendent of the Federal Department of Public Safety, Colonel Paulo Torres, was declaring to the press that the former head of the president’s personal guard, Gregório Fortunato, was not being held prisoner but was merely at the disposal of air force authorities. The superintendent of police added that only the former second in command of the personal guard, Valente, was under arrest, and that the driver Nelson Raimundo was in voluntary custody, evincing no desire to accept any habeas corpus on his behalf.
Colonel Paulo Torres stated further that his office had taken over the police inquiry of the Rua Tonelero affair with the objective of making the process more efficient and that every resource would be made available to Sílvio Terra, director of the Technical Police, chosen to head the new investigations.
“This measure in no way diminishes the work done till now by Inspector Pastor, about whom I have the most positive references.”
Pastor had been removed because of pressure from the military and from UDN leaders stemming from Lacerda’s accusations of bias on the part of Pastor, a Vargas supporter, in conducting the investigation of the attack. Sílvio Terra enjoyed the confidence of Lacerda, the military, and UDN politicians, and nothing could shake that confidence. By all indications, however, none of them had read the book he had written in 1939, coauthored by Pedro Mac Cord, a hefty 464-page volume entitled Politics, Law, and Culture. In that book, which featured immediately after the title page a full-page official portrait of Vargas in profile, in tailcoat and wearing the presidential sash, was an interesting chapter on the New State, on page 103.
“The legislative branch, represented by the Federal Congress, that is, the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate, did not constitute a legal safeguard of the interests of the people,” said Terra. “For these reasons, President Getúlio Vargas, on December 10, 1937, excised in timely fashion the cyst forming in our national democratic system. With the New State was born a strong democracy. President Vargas bestowed upon the nation a new constitutional charter. In reinforcing central power, he extended his democratic prophylaxis to the system, impracticable among us, of universal suffrage. The constitutional charter of November 10, 1937, is a document of great historical value. It will be for posterity a symbol of national grandeur.”
THE UDN HAD ORGANIZED in order not to let a day go by without offering anti-Vargas speeches in the Chamber and Senate.
Deputy Herbert Levy began his speech by saying the country was witnessing at that moment the final act of a tragedy initiated in 1930. “Honest men, impeccable citizens like the incorruptible Carlos Lacerda, the symbol of what Brazil could offer as the best of moral resistance, were threatened by assassins protected by the holders of power. It mattered little that those directly or indirectly responsible who had pulled the strings of the killer puppets were individuals linked more or less intimately to the president of the Republic; it was already definitively known that the moral climate making possible an attack that had outraged public opinion had been created by the president of the Republic.”
THE SHACK where Climerio Euribes de Almeida was hiding was used by his friend Oscar only to store wood that he gathered in the forest. The best wood was used by Oscar to make posts, which he sold to neighbors to repair their barbed-wire fences. The poor-quality wood went into the wood-burning stove in his house. The Tinguá forest had lots of good timber.
That day, Climerio left his hideout and descended the hill to have lunch with his friends. After lunch Climerio and Oscar went to the banana grove, leading two mules with yokes, to haul back the stalks of bananas that Oscar had cut that morning. They had just finished loading the mules when Oscar heard a noise coming from the sky.
“What’s that noise, my friend?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Listen careful . . . Over there, what’s that?”
Oscar had never seen a helicopter.
“What’s what?”
“Something strange, way over there. It’s gone.”
As they had only a machete and a sickle with them, Oscar suggested that Climerio take the mules to unload while he stayed behind to cut more bananas.
Climerio took the mules and unloaded the banana stalks in a bin in the rear of Oscar’s house. After this labor, Climerio was very tired and asked Honorina for a cup of coffee.
“It looks like it’s going to be cold today,” Honorina said.
Oscar would cut stalks of green bananas and leave them beside the banana trees. He worked quickly, as he wanted to cut the largest number of stalks possible before nightfall. When the day began to darken, he picked up the sickle and the machete and headed home.
He was walking along a dirt road when he was suddenly surrounded by armed soldiers, some of whom were leading dogs on leashes. Startled, Oscar dropped the sickle and the machete.
“What’s your name?” asked an officer who detached himself from a group of soldiers.
“Oscar, yessir, at your service.”
“Is there a man living in your house?”
“No, sir.”
“Simplício Rodrigues, who runs a store in the village, said your brother-in-law Climerio is staying at your house.”
“Oh, my friend Climerio. Yes, he was here, sir.”
“Your friend is a wanted killer,” said the officer. Two soldiers grabbed Oscar by the arms, one on each side, and the officer ordered the farmer to show where his house was.
Honorina watched the soldiers search her house without saying a word.
“Where’s the man?”
“He ran away,” said Honorina. She said that Climerio had fled half an hour earlier, when he sensed the arrival of the soldiers.
The officer, on his radio, mobilized the remaining groups taking part in the operation.
All the highways in the region were closed off. No vehicle crossed the barriers without being searched, its passengers identified and searched.
Night fell. More and more soldiers and equipment poured into the command post set up in Tinguá.
At ten o’clock that night, operations were suspended and scheduled to resume at five a.m. the following day.
In his flight through the woods toward the cabin on the hillside, Climerio had ripped the blue pants he wore and destroyed his shoes. In the cabin, he took off the torn pants and donned another pair. In place of the destroyed shoes, he put on a pair of clogs. He ate spaghetti and beans heated in the cabin’s wooden stove. Before plunging into the woods he grabbed the .38 revolver, loaded with six bullets, and the fifty thousand cruzeiros delivered to him by Soares at Gregório’s orders.
After running and walking, disoriented, in the darkness that quickly enveloped the forest, lashed and at times injured by tree branches, Climerio, a fat man, sat down, fatigued, by a tree, resting his back against it. He was trembling from fear and cold; he ran his chilled hand over his pockmarked face.
The night was thick, without even moonlight to dissipate, however slightly, the absolute darkness that enveloped him.
seventeen
THAT TUESDAY MORNING, as troops of the army, air force, and navy, supported by planes, helicopters, and military vehicles, closed the circle around Climerio, on the Tinguá mountainside, Colonel Adyl, accompanied by a heavily armed escort, taking prisoner João Valente, second-in-command of the now-defunct personal guard of president Vargas, invaded the Catete Palace and headed for the guards’ former lodgings, where they broke open desk drawers and filing cabinets and apprehended all the private correspondence and other papers of Lieutenant Gregório Fortunato, along with close to three hundred thousand cruzeiros in cash. The mission was fast, lasting only about ten minutes. The invasion would be made public in the Chamber and the Senate, by the opposition, as proof that “the government no longer governed.”
A short time later, the secretary of war was honored by the commander and other officers of the First Cavalry Regiment of the D
ragoons of Independence, in the São Cristóvão barracks.
In addition to that homage to Zenóbio, one more was scheduled for that Tuesday. Beginning at 2:30 p.m., black cars carrying high-ranking army chiefs and the upper ranks of officers of the Rio de Janeiro garrison, led by General Odilio Denys, commandant of the Eastern Military Zone, began arriving at the War Office. They were to demonstrate to General Zenóbio his comrades’ solidarity for his decisive action in maintaining the elevated prestige of the army and the nation. Responding to the greeting of General Denys, General Zenóbio said, “Comrades! Trust me, as I trust you!”
IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, the majority leader, Capanema, constantly interrupted by asides and clamors of protest from the minority deputies, said that Getúlio’s resignation was not a demand from the people; it was a demand from a political party, the same political party that had tried to prevent his taking office with the celebrated argument of the absolute majority, that had recently attempted to remove him from the Catete by a groundless impeachment. That episode, that exploitation of the death of Major Vaz, was one more step in the struggle begun almost four years ago to remove the president in any way possible, whether by instigating the people, instigating the press, or instigating the armed forces.
From the floor came shouts of “murderer, dictator, criminal,” pronounced against Vargas. Led by members of the UDN, opposition deputies began a chant that echoed loudly in the Chamber: “Res-ig-na-tion! Res-ig-na-tion! Res-ig-na-tion!”
The president of the Republic, Capanema continued amid the hubbub from the floor, could not resign because he needed to defend, for the good of the people, the essential works of his administration and constitutional stability. Capanema reiterated an argument he had used repeatedly. Now he responded to Deputy Bilac Pinto to tell him not to hypothesize the peaceful succession of Vice President Café Filho, not because Capanema lacked confidence in the serene and correct expectation of the armed forces but from fearing and foreseeing that resignation as demanded by a passionate minority against the majority of the people, thrown in the face of the poor, the workers, the laborers, the soldiers, would subvert public order, and be so upsetting to tranquility and order, that the nation from one moment to the next might face a conflagration of disastrous and unpredictable consequences; because, once the spark of revolution was struck, who could any longer assure the preservation of institutions?
Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series) Page 24