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

by Rubem Fonseca

  Mattos closed his eyes again. He was still sweating profusely. But his stomach didn’t ache. He didn’t even feel heartburn.

  “Get the disk on top of the record player, please, and put it on. It says Elixir of Love on the cover. I feel like listening to a bit of it before we leave for the hospital.”

  Salete went to the living room and did as Mattos had requested. She turned the volume up to a level that the inspector could hear in the bedroom.

  At that instant the front door opened and a tall, powerfully built black man entered the room.

  “Is Inspector Mattos in?”

  “He’s back there. Who are you?”

  “He doesn’t know me,” said the black man, closing the door.

  Salete ran to the bedroom, followed by the black.

  “Alberto,” shouted Salete, “there’s a man here looking for you.”

  Mattos opened his eyes.

  “Are you Inspector Mattos?” the black man asked softly.

  “Yes,” said Mattos, sitting up with difficulty. He felt, along with strong vertigo, a sensation of euphoria. He had finally found the Negro.

  “Inspector Alberto Mattos?” the other man insisted.

  “I have something that belongs to you,” said the inspector.

  Mattos, with great effort and closely watched by the black man, stuck his hand in his pocket and took out the gold ring.

  “Take it. It’s your ring.”

  Chicão took the ring, checked the letter F engraved on its inside. He put the ring on his finger.

  “I’d lost this ring. I know where you found it.”

  “In the bathroom of the guy you killed at the Deauville Building.”

  Mattos got up, leaning on Salete.

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Paulo Machado Gomes Aguiar on the first of August.”

  Chicão calmly fingered the ring.

  “Are you sick?”

  “He has a stomach ulcer,” said Salete.

  “I had an uncle die from a perforated ulcer,” said Chicão.

  Supported by Salete, Mattos left the bedroom and went to the living room table where the telephone was. He picked up the phone. Hesitated. I’m not a cop anymore, he thought. I’m going to go back to being a lawyer, when I get out of the mess I’m in. I should tell this guy, Go away, Francisco Albergaria, and if you need a lawyer look me up.

  Suddenly the volume of the record player increased powerfully.

  Mattos turned and saw Chicão beside the record player pointing a revolver at him.

  “Say goodbye to your girl,” shouted Chicão, to be heard above the sound of the record.

  Mattos looked at Salete. She was the last thing he saw. He fell to the floor, killed by Chicão’s shot.

  “Alberto, Alberto!” Salete kneeled beside Mattos’s body.

  “I hate killing a beautiful woman,” said Chicão.

  Salete looked at the assassin, surprised. “Do you think I’m beautiful? Really?”

  Both spoke loudly in order to be heard over the music and singing coming from the record player.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to your face.”

  “Thank you,” said Salete, closing her eyes.

  Chicão placed the gun barrel over Salete’s left breast and pulled the trigger.

  He turned down the sound on the record player. He identified the singers’ Italian words. He recalled the songs he’d learned during the war. He hummed “mamma son’ tanto felice” for a few seconds; then he stopped and listened to the opera. Music, any music, always moved him. There were times during the war when he cried listening to Neapolitan songs.

  It was a pity, but he had to leave; he couldn’t stay for the record to finish.

  Without looking back at the dead bodies, he left, leaving the music playing.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, the gunman Genésio, brother of Teodoro of Senate security, arrived at Mattos’s apartment.

  The door was ajar, and from inside came the sound of singing, which made Genésio hesitate, not knowing what to do. Then the music suddenly stopped. Genésio took his old but reliable Parabellum from his belt, and cautiously opened the door.

  Seeing the bodies on the living room floor, the first thing he did was to shut the door. Then he verified that both the man and the woman were dead.

  He searched the coat hanging on a chair and found the police ID of Inspector Alberto Mattos. He checked the photo on the ID against the features of the dead man. He put the ID back in the coat.

  Genésio left the apartment, shutting the door.

  He caught a taxi and went to the Hotel OK on Rua Senador Dantas, downtown.

  Teodoro and Senator Vitor Freitas’s aide Clemente were waiting for him in the hotel bar, drinking.

  “Did you do the job?” Teodoro asked.

  “Alberto Mattos is dead. I checked his identity card. I also had to kill a girl who was with him. But I’m not gonna charge for that.”

  “Want a whiskey?” asked Clemente.

  Genésio looked around. “I don’t drink that crap. Does this place have a good cane rum?”

  “I don’t know. I can ask.”

  “Let it go. I want my money. I’m gonna hit the road.”

  Clemente handed Genésio a bundle wrapped in brown paper.

  “A hundred thousand. You can check it.”

  “No need. Goodbye, brother.”

  “The senator’s going to be happy, isn’t he?” said Teodoro after Genésio left.

  “Of course. And you’re going to call him now and give him the good news. He must be at this telephone.” Clemente gave Teodoro a piece of paper with the number.

  “Me?”

  “Tell him you saw me hand over the hundred thousand to your brother for the job. I don’t want him to think I kept the money. There’s a phone booth over in the corner. Tell the senator that I’ll stop by the Seabra later to give him the details.”

  twenty-six

  IN THE GÁVEA CLINIC, Ilídio received the visit from an emissary of Eusébio de Andrade. The numbers game high command wanted to know whether he was involved in the death of the inspector. The emissary added that the peg-leg lawyer had been let go and that Eusébio de Andrade’s personal lawyer, Mr. Silva Monteiro, a member of the Brazilian Bar Association and professor at the National Law School, was taking over the case and had met with Commissioner Ramos that morning, who had assured him that with the death of Inspector Mattos the investigations would be suspended. Ilídio could relax.

  Ilídio thanked Andrade’s emissary. He ordered his bodyguard Alcebíades to phone his driver to come for him. The clinic was situated at the top of a hill, in a beautiful isolated location surrounded by trees. In the days that Ilídio had been in the clinic, Alcebíades had slept in his room, which was permissible under the hospital’s rules.

  Alcebíades had been recommended by Moscoso, who had told Ilídio that it was time for him to have a bodyguard “from the first team.”

  Ilídio felt protected with Alcebíades at his side. Unlike his old bodyguard, Miro Pereira, a lair and a braggart who talked too much, Alcebíades was a quiet man, attentive and polite, as the best bodyguards are. He never uttered a swear word. He could frequent Ilídio’s home without offending his wife and children with vulgarisms and gutter language.

  “We should leave here in two cars,” Alcebíades said. “You would go in the second one.”

  “It’s not necessary. That goddamn cop who was after me already bit the dust. All the other cops are on my payroll. All of them. Uniforms, detectives, investigators, commissioners. If it wasn’t for me, the wives and daughters of most of them couldn’t buy a new dress for their birthday.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Ilídio, caution and chicken soup never hurt anybody.”

  “Believe me, Alcebíades. There’s no danger.”

  Ilídio’s driver arrived with his boss’s Packard.

  Ilídio had taken to the clinic only a small bag with some
undershorts. He didn’t mind wearing the same shirt or pants for several days, but shorts he had to change at least twice a day. He felt repugnance at the smell of what he called the pudenda.

  The three men got into the Packard. In front, the driver and Alcebíades. Alcebíades had said, “I should go in back with you.” But Ilídio believed that an important numbers man shouldn’t ride in his Packard with his bodyguard in the same seat.

  In the middle of the highway, a Chevrolet sideswiped Ilídio’s Packard. Alcebíades managed to take out his revolver and fire at the occupants of the Chevrolet before he was killed by a bullet to the head. The same man who killed the bodyguard shot and killed the driver. The attackers’ actions had been very fast. No car had passed them on the road during the slaughter.

  Ilídio had crouched down on the floor of the car as soon as the shooting began.

  He felt himself being grabbed by the collar and yanked from the car. A man put handcuffs on him.

  “Murilo, take their car to that valley near the brook. I’ll follow you.”

  Murilo grabbed the two dead men from the Packard and put them in the back seat. He got behind the wheel, turned on the ignition, and left.

  Ilídio was dragged inside the Chevrolet by the man who had handcuffed him.

  The Chevrolet followed the Packard.

  “Know where I was this morning? The morgue. I went to visit my friend Mattos and his girl, who you ordered killed,” said the man driving the Chevrolet.

  “It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me, by the light of my eyes.”

  “Having Mattos killed because he gave you a kick in the ass, that I can understand. But why did the girl have to be eliminated?”

  “May I see my mother dead if it was me. Listen, sir, I’ll give you anything you want if you let me go.”

  “Do you know me?”

  “You’re Inspector Pádua.”

  “Then you ought to know, I don’t take numbers money.”

  “I’m innocent, I swear it.”

  “What about Old Turk?”

  “I canceled the order. Mr. Andrade and Mr. Moscoso commanded me to cancel the order, and I did. But I couldn’t locate Old Turk in time. Ask them.”

  “I don’t talk to numbers kingpins.”

  “Nothing happened to the inspector.”

  “So you hired another guy. Who did the job? We know it was a black man, he was seen by a neighbor of Mattos’s leaving his apartment. I want his name.”

  “How should I know? It wasn’t me.”

  The two cars were now in a deserted wooded area near the brook.

  Murilo came to the Chevrolet. The three men sat in the back seat.

  “I don’t like hurting people, isn’t that right, Murilo? But I’m going to break all your teeth, one by one, starting with the front ones, of course, until you tell me who did the job on Mattos and the girl.”

  Pádua got a flannel cloth from the car’s glove box, wrapped it around his knuckles and, after flexing his muscles, began to pound Ilídio in the mouth.

  Ilídio moaned so loudly that it seemed to reverberate through the forest.

  Pádua took a handkerchief from his pocket. “You got a handkerchief, Murilo?”

  Murilo took the handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to Pádua.

  “Later I’ll buy you a new one. Now stuff them both in the fucker’s mouth,” said Pádua.

  Murilo stuffed the two handkerchiefs into Ilídio’s bloody mouth.

  Pádua hit him again.

  Now the moan emerged hoarse and muffled.

  Ilídio desperately tried to remember the name of a black man to give Pádua, but in his panic he couldn’t recall even one, despite knowing many. When he took another traumatic punch to the mouth, he remembered a name. He nodded his head frantically.

  Pádua took the bloody cloths from Ilídio’s mouth.

  “What’s the name?”

  It took Ilídio a moment to regain his breath. He first spat out the broken teeth. “Sebastião Mendes, nicknamed Feijoada Completa.”

  “You know the guy, Murilo?”

  “There’s a Feijoada Completa who works for the smugglers at the docks.”

  “Is it him?”

  Ilídio moaned that it was, while he spat blood.

  “You could’ve given me the guy’s name right away. You didn’t need to cause us all that work. You’re a stubborn man, Ilídio. But your suffering is over.”

  Pádua removed the revolver from its holster. He rested the barrel against the back of Ilídio’s neck. “You’re lucky, Our Lady of Good Death is protecting you.”

  Ilídio shuddered, a brief convulsion, when Pádua’s weapon fired.

  Pádua grabbed the body by the legs, Murilo by the arms, and they carried it to the Packard, placing it next to the other corpses.

  “Isn’t it better to take off the cuffs?” Murilo asked.

  “Leave the cuffs. So the son of a bitch’s friends’ll know it was a police job. To teach them they can’t kill a cop just like that.”

  They went back to the Chevrolet. On the trip back Murilo asked when they would pick up Feijoada Completa.

  “Day after tomorrow, Saturday. The day for feijoada.”

  THE CITY EXPERIENCED A DAY OF CALM. Business was considered very good by the Federal District Shopkeepers Union. Government offices, banks, factories, and commercial offices also functioned normally. Movie theaters enjoyed a great influx of customers, more than usual for a Thursday.

  The one thousand and seven hundred tourists who had disembarked from the ship Santa Maria visited the main touristic spots of the city and all enthusiastically agreed that Rio deserved its title of Wonderful City.

  The fifth group of participants in the cultural excursion to Europe, organized by the Touring Club of Brazil, was preparing to embark the first days of September. The tourists would travel on the ship Augustus and visit the principal cities of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Switzerland. Everyone was quite excited about the trip.

  In the São José maternity hospital, in Rio de Janeiro—as well as in other maternity wards in the country and in residences attended by midwives—that day more girls than boys were born. The males received blue clothing and the females pink. The majority of the parents had already chosen names for the newborn. José was the name preferred for boys, Maria for girls.

  It was a sunny, pleasant day. At night the temperature dropped slightly. The high was 87 degrees, the low 63. Moderate winds from the southeast.