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

by Rubem Fonseca

  Next to be presented was João Valente, the former second in command of the guard. On Gregório’s orders he had given fifty thousand cruzeiros to José Antonio Soares to deliver to Climerio for his escape. Valente praised the treatment he was receiving at Galeão; he joked with the officers who accompanied him; stated that he was eating “turkey and sleeping on a spring mattress.”

  The presentation of Alcino was preceded by more detailed information. Before apprehending Alcino, the air force officers had detained his wife Abigail Rabelo, who when taken to the offices of the national aviation authority under orders from Air Force Major Borges, had there confessed her husband’s role in the attack. Air force officers and civilian police had hidden in Alcino’s house at 192 Rua Gil Queiroz, in São João de Meriti, waiting for him to come for his wife and five children as he had promised to do, according to information provided in Abigail’s interrogation. When he showed up to take his family with him in his flight, Alcino was arrested, offering no resistance.

  Alcino stated, in the presentation, that he was being treated well and also praised the high quality of the spring mattress on which he slept in the prison.

  The driver Nelson Raimundo de Souza stated that he desired to remain imprisoned at Galeão, as he feared reprisals.

  The last of the prisoners to be presented was Climerio. The spectacular actions of the war operation leading to his arrest on Tinguá mountain were recalled. Climerio appeared frightened but, when asked by a reporter, said he was being treated well and that, like the others, he also slept on a spring mattress.

  Those charged with the military inquiry stated that José Antonio Soares had not yet been arrested, something they hoped to accomplish in a few days. (In reality, at that moment Soares had just been detained by the police in Muriaé, in the company of his wife and father, with a .38 revolver and thirty thousand cruzeiros in new bills, money that he declared had come from the son of the president of the Republic, Lutero Vargas.)

  Next exhibited at the Galeão base were PTB political propaganda materials found on the prisoners. They were handheld fans bearing the picture of a smiling Vargas with a kerchief around his neck, on which was written the phrase: “The PTB is revolution on the march.” On the fans was also the flag of the PTB, the emblem of the party—an anvil—and the words “Worker, join the Brazilian Workers Party to guarantee your rights.”

  The principal information that the military men in the PMI chose to withhold from the press, on orders from Colonel Adyl, head of the military inquiry, was the accusations made in statements by Climerio and Alcino that it was Lutero Vargas who ordered the assassination. Adyl was convinced that such an assertion was false, a “diversionary tactic” still mysterious in nature and having as its objective the disruption of the investigations.

  AT THE MEETING held at the Military Club, a motion had been made demanding the president’s resignation, but General Canrobert and General Juarez Távora expressed the view that the crime should first be investigated, and then they could discuss the resignation of the president. The suggestion by the two opposition generals prevailed, as everyone believed the results of the inquiry would demonstrate unequivocally the president’s responsibility for the attack. At that same moment, the secretary of war, Zenóbio, had said, backed by seventy-three generals who met with him in Rio, that resignation was a very touchy issue that had to be resolved in an atmosphere of harmony and patriotism. “We are only interested in lawful solutions, to avoid plunging the country into anarchy,” Zenóbio had said. “In defense of the Constitution, I shall act with speed and vigor. This is my role, and I shall fulfill it to the end.”

  Meanwhile, manifestations of protests were increasing against the president of the Republic. The legislatures of almost every state in Brazil were demanding Vargas’s resignation. The Brazilian Bar Association approved a motion, by a vote of 43 to 6, stating that it considered the country leaderless and asking the armed forces to remove Vargas from the Catete Palace and guarantee the swearing in of Vice President Café Filho so that legality could be restored. In military circles, rejection of the president grew continuously. The officer corps of the navy, which until then had maintained a less radical stance than the air force, reacted with outrage to the detaining of Admiral Muniz Freire for having criticized the government in a ceremony aboard the cruiser Barroso. The admiralty, pressured by the younger officers, obliged the secretary of the navy to rescind the punishment. Among the high command of the armed forces, only Marshal Mascarenhas de Morais held a favorable view of the president; but the marshal, though he headed the general staff of the armed forces and was respected for his illustrious past, in reality lacked any real power in that situation of widespread hierarchical subversion.

  Throughout Brazil, candidates of the Lantern Club were registered for the October elections. Student associations from all over the country issued manifestos demanding that Vargas resign. The governmental accounting office, approving a motion by counselor Silvestre Péricles de Góis Monteiro, made public a declaration stating that it could not remain silent in the face of the Tonelero attack, in which the valiant Major Vaz had lost his life, victim of the perversity of murderers and criminals, a fact that had deeply wounded Brazilian society and appalled the national soul. The note further referred to the atmosphere of violence and corruption that dominated the country.

  At the same time, newspapers published the opinion sent to the Chamber by the attorney general of the Republic, Carlos Medeiros Silva, about the congressional inquiry into loans, in an amount in excess of two hundred and twenty million cruzeiros, made by the Bank of Brazil to “firms and individuals lacking financial qualifications,” in this case the newspaper Última Hora and Samuel Wainer and L. F. Bocaiúva Cunha, among others. The attorney general had read the 2,979 pages of the five volumes of the inquiry and finally issued his opinion, which had been forwarded to the Chamber of Deputies through the secretary of justice in response to a request from two deputies, Armando Falcão and Frota Aguiar. According to the attorney general’s opinion, the congressional inquiry had shown the arbitrary and abusive manner in which the president of the Bank of Brazil, at the time Ricardo Jafet, had conducted the business of the society. No law, no regulation, no social statute had constituted effective barriers against the ill-advised objectives of the Bank’s top-level administrators to protect hidden interests. The president of the Bank of Brazil had ignored information from experts about the inadvisability and impropriety of such transactions, effected without reference to standard banking safeguards.

  The text of the attorney general’s opinion was made public by Deputy Armando Falcão through a request to the Chamber’s presiding officer.

  One of the few voices dissenting from the chorus of anti-Vargas invective was that of the leader of the dock workers, Duque de Assis. In his view the sole objective of the movement calling for Vargas’s resignation was to hinder the country’s progress and block the march of the workers’ struggle. “Our adversaries, adversaries of the government and the proletariat, are in the pay of hidden forces,” he said.

  INSPECTOR PÁDUA handed over to the Robbery and Theft division the jewels stolen from the Esmeralda jewelry store: a gold ring with a diamond solitaire; an eighteen-karat gold Swiss watch with diamond insets; a six-facet gold ring, eighteen karats, with three diamonds set in platinum; a six-facet bracelet, eighteen-karat gold, with nine diamonds set in platinum; and other jewels. The apprehension had come about through a tip. The thief hadn’t been found, according to Pádua, but since all the jewels had been recovered, the matter was shelved.

  LEARNING FROM MATTOS that Lomagno wanted to call her, Alice stopped answering the phone that day. The doorbell rang futilely countless times. Alice left the phone on the hook. Thus it was Mattos once again who answered Lomagno’s telephone call.

  “I wanted to speak with Alice.”

  “She’s here beside me and said she doesn’t want to speak with you.”

  Silence.

  “Mr.
Mattos, I’m convinced that you’re keeping me from speaking to my wife. I want to warn you that I’ve consulted an attorney, who after hearing the facts that I told him stated that I can report you for the crime of kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment. According to the lawyer, your crime has an aggravating factor, namely, given her state of health it has probably caused Alice serious physical and psychological suffering.”

  “Do whatever you like. But I advise you to look for a different lawyer. The one you consulted is an idiot. Good night.”

  twenty

  SHORTLY BEFORE NOON, Mattos arrived at the precinct to relieve Pádua. Normally he would get there earlier, to inform himself in detail about the incidents of the evening before with the inspector of the previous shift. But that day he was inclined to have the least possible contact with Pádua.

  Pádua was waiting for him. “I want to talk to you.”

  “It’s enough to give me the blotter.”

  Pádua picked up the book from the desk and placed it under his arm.

  “Five minutes. I’ve got a question to ask you. Not the policeman, the top student in law school.”

  “I wasn’t the top student.”

  “But you were one of the top students. Everybody knows that. Your nickname was Brain.”

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “Morally, we’re obligated to sacrifice our lives, if necessary, to carry out our duty, which is to prevent the commission of crimes. Isn’t that right? Why can’t we, also to carry out our duty, kill an outlaw to prevent him from committing a crime?”

  “I’m going to answer in a simple manner your simplistic question. Because the law doesn’t give us that right. And the law applies to everyone, especially those who have some form of power, like us. A policeman can die in the exercise of his duty, but he can’t disobey the law.”

  “You say my question is simplistic. Your answer is sanctimonious. You chose the wrong profession.”

  “I think it’s you who chose the wrong profession.”

  Pádua tossed the book on the table, flexed his arm muscles, and left the inspector’s office.

  Ipojucan Salustiano, Ilídio’s peg-leg lawyer, appeared at the precinct with a medical statement attesting to his client’s inability to honor the summons he had received. The statement was handed to the recording clerk in the presence of Inspector Mattos.

  Ipojucan liked to talk about his mechanical leg. It was a way of not feeling awkward about his stiff and unsure manner of walking. Now that he was the lawyer of a numbers game banker and made more money, he planned to order a mechanical leg from the United States.

  “I have a mechanical leg,” Salustiano told Inspector Mattos.

  “It doesn’t seem like it,” said Mattos politely.

  “If I may ask, what is the reason for this summons? Has my client committed some crime?”

  “For now, I only want to question him, in keeping with the law. You’re aware, counselor, that it’s a punishable offense to refuse law enforcement demands, solicited with proper legal authority, for data or information concerning identity, marital status, profession, domicile, and place of residence.”

  “Of course, sir. I know the law.”

  “Tell your client that he can’t stay hidden for long in the clinic, and if he doesn’t get well by Tuesday, I’m going to prove that that medical certificate is phony, which is a crime punishable by law. You don’t want to make things worse for your client, do you?”

  Salustiano consulted a small calendar taken from his pocket. “Tuesday, the twenty-fourth. That’s just four days from now. I don’t know if he’ll get well in such a short time.”

  “If he doesn’t, a police doctor will go to the clinic to examine him.”

  IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, the deputy and jurist Bilac Pinto spoke affirming that Vargas would have to sit in the defendant’s chair beside his gunmen. Citing Article 25 of the Penal Code—whoever in any way colludes in the commission of a crime is subject to the penalties imposed thereto—Bilac Pinto said that Vargas, by organizing a band of criminals, killers, thieves, and perjurers as his personal guard, had assumed the risks stemming from his action and choice. His preventive custody must be decreed, and Vargas must be taken into custody and subsequently tried by the Federal Supreme Court. There was no need for the Chamber to agree to a leave of absence, for it was a matter of common, rather than political, crime.

  THE PROCURESS LAURA had told Mattos that Lomagno had a boxing instructor who was black. There were lots of black boxers, and that was the problem. Mattos was looking for one whose name started with F. Many fighters were known only by their nicknames; most were constantly on the move, fighting in arenas in the country’s hinterlands.

  Mattos had asked for the help of the Surveillance division to search the city’s boxing schools for black men who taught boxing. For days no useful information came to his attention. But soon after the lawyer Salustiano left the precinct, an investigator from Surveillance came to tell him that at the Boqueirão do Passeio club there was a black boxing instructor called Chicão.

  Mattos looked up the Boqueirão do Passeio number in the phone book. The guy who answered said they didn’t have any teacher called Chicão, and that their boxing instructor was Kid Earthquake. Earthquake could be found at the club that Friday at the eight p.m. class.

  The Boqueirão do Passeio was on Rua Santa Luzia, near Rua México. It was a boating club; boxing, as well as basketball and yoga, were secondary activities of the Boqueirão.

  When Mattos arrived, there were half a dozen athletes in the gym. One was hitting a speed bag; two others were pounding the heavy bag. Others were skipping rope. In the ring, a pair, in protective headgear, were fighting, oriented by a potbellied old man with a broken nose. Mattos concluded, accurately, that he must be Kid Earthquake.

  Mattos waited patiently for the activities to end, which took over two hours. Then he addressed Kid Earthquake.

  “I’d like five minutes of your time. We could have a beer while we talk.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m from the police.”

  “Having beer with a cop isn’t good for your health.”

  “Sorry, Kid, but you’re going to have to talk to me one way or another. All I want is some information. It’s nothing to do with you.”

  Kid Earthquake appeared to meditate about what Mattos had said.

  “I’m going to change clothes.”

  He returned soon, carrying an enormous bag. “I don’t leave my stuff here. They stole a new pair of gloves last week. There’s thieves everywhere these days. But you know that better than I do.”

  They went to a bar in Lapa that stayed open late. On the round marble tabletop someone had written in pencil: “Marietta, I’m going to drink ant poison because of you.”

  “Ant poison with guaraná is a sure thing,” said Kid Earthquake, who had read the words written on the marble. “I had a cousin killed himself that way, also a woman thing. She put horns on him.”

  Mattos ordered a beer and a glass of milk.

  “All we have is warm milk,” said the waiter.

  “It’ll do.”

  “You don’t drink beer?” asked Kid Earthquake.

  “I have an ulcer in the duodenum.”

  “That’s in the stomach, isn’t it? I’ve got a cousin with that problem.”

  When Kid Earthquake finished his second bottle, Mattos asked him about Chicão.

  “He doesn’t work with me anymore. He was a black man, strong as hell, but he didn’t have good technique. Just brute force. He served in the FEB. He learned to fight from the Americans in the war. Has he fucked up?”

  “No, he hasn’t done anything. I’m looking for him so he can give me information about a guy who was a student of his at the Boqueirão. One Pedro Lomagno.”

  “Then it was that guy who fucked up.”

  “Nobody fucked up.”

  “Then why’s the police interested?”

  “Well, you I can tell
. This Lomagno seduced a girl.” Whenever Mattos needed a pretext for an investigation he always used seduction. It had been that way at the Catete when he visited the quarters of the former personal guard of the president.

  “Seduction. I never much understood that crime,” said Kid Earthquake.

  The crime of seduction—unlike rape—didn’t evoke strong reactions from anyone who wasn’t directly involved, like the victim’s father and mother. Or the accused.

  “The crime of seduction occurs when a man, taking advantage of the inexperience or the justifiable trust of a female older than fourteen and younger than eighteen, has carnal relations with her.”

  “Carnal relations is the guy sticking his knob in the girl, right?”

  “It’s necessary that she trusts him or is inexperienced.”

  “How?”

  “The guy’s engaged, and says they’re going to get married. The girl consents, believing the promise. Or else the girl doesn’t know what she’s doing, because she’s so naïve—”

  “Sir, do you believe that? Women know what they’re doing from the day they’re born. It’s men who don’t know.”