It was a cold but sunny day, with a blue sky that played at being spring in the middle of winter. From the other side of the car window, colorful stores decorated with the festive season’s motifs inspired people circulating, going on with their lives alone or in groups. They did not see him, strolling about unaware that their freedom was apparent, an offer from those who had the power to do so. They were unbound, not free. They were blind, in their seeming contentedness but not entirely happy. He, handcuffed and in the car, was well aware that he was a prisoner. He was as available to those in charge as those walking about unrestrained, but under austere conditions and closer at hand. Or might he know nothing, just being so contaminated by his father’s conspiratorial thoughts and so disappointed with the depressing experience of prison that he could not now see that intangible value of freedom, when he saw it audaciously presented outside of a police car window? Would this be his life? Would he be old when he got out of prison? Would he ever get out? Hadn’t his mother warned him to be like a water bird and leave prison unaffected, continuing to be who he was when and if they freed him? Without always carrying a prison within himself? He had to become that swan, untouchable in his soul no matter how contaminated the lake was. For a few moments, he experienced the miracle of being who he was once again and, then, his previous struggles lost their meaning, seeming like negligible crumbs in the face of the immense pleasure that it is to be free.
The police car stopped at the first traffic light, just short of the alley. He noticed an old taxi parked at the door of the small street and, incredibly, the driver was the almost albino crook who’d tried to attack him at his house. Next to him was the black guy with the cap. Lucas looked at them. Driving a taxi? The thieves got out of the taxi and, when they saw him, turned toward the police car and quickened their pace. The light turned green and the police took off. They began to run, and Lucas now had his head turned to the rear. Thieves now chase the police? he thought. The police noticed the movement and asked “What’s up?” while they turned around. They saw the two muscular operatives break their stride in the road.
“Back up,” shouted an agent and the SOG turned the car like a top that barely had enough space. The bandits entered the taxi and accelerated as if they were possessed, at great speed, aiming at the patrol car. The police had to swerve to avoid a head-on collision, spinning again in order to chase the taxi. The other SOG had an Uzi submachine gun, but it was as much in hand as in vain. The old limousine accelerated as if it were a ruse, like a Porsche or a Ferrari, and disappeared in the traffic. The police never had a chance.
“Did you see that?” the cops said to each other. They advised headquarters and went to the Judiciary building. Arriving there, Lucas was called by the Chief Inspector who, this time, was accompanied by a deputy public prosecutor he’d seen at the courthouse and who, in elegance, was on par with Judge Ponces Branco.
“Who were those two individuals? When had you seen them? Why didn’t you tell us about the attempted assault in your room? And the taxi?” The inspector had a grave air about him, different from the all-powerful, subtly blasé air of their previous encounters. The magistrate remained silent. Things had taken an unexpected turn.
Lucas didn’t know that the problem had been detected the evening before. That was why SOG was reinforcing the Judiciary Police. A review of security cam videos from a store on the main thoroughfare facing the alley had shown a black car with false diplomatic tags enter the alley but it had never come out. The police reviewed the footage innumerous times: the car was enormous, the tag was from a country that did not have an embassy in Lisbon, and it had never left the alley. It had simply evaporated.
Lucas’s treatment in prison had become pleasanter. Officials liked him and the guards didn’t distinguish him from other prisoners. Some even tried to get closer to him, but he kept himself closed off.
Seven days later, he went before the judge again. His lawyer had appeared the prior evening to tell him three things. His coach’s time of death had been estimated as occurring before he was arrested and, therefore, he was a suspect. The police had surveillance camera footage from a store on the main avenue facing the alley and it had shown no one coming out, other than Lucas. Physically, it was evidence against him. The person who called 112, emergency services in Portugal, had been located and she had cleared him, but her testimony was strange, which diminished its value.
When the session began, a witness was called, a thirty-nine-year-old woman who maintained that she’d been in a room on the fourth floor and had clearly seen the entire scene, without turning on the light in the window. She was a professional babysitter who was working in an apartment in the building that evening. The young men had fought and the big one had fallen. The small one had spit in his face and then immediately left, entering the main thoroughfare. A door across from the gym’s entrance had opened and a good looking fellow, with white hair and a small case, had appeared. He kneeled near the large young man on the ground, opened the case and took something out, but the young man stood up suddenly and ran toward the gym. The man raised his left arm and the kid fell face down. She thought it was a shot, although she had heard nothing. The man then approached the inert fighter, turned him over and did something to his face, closed the case, and went in the door he had come out of.
The witness had a concrete problem in terms of facts: other than the one to the gym, there was no other door in the alley. There were things in his favor. On the 112 recording, she said the two men had fought and, afterwards, a third seemed to have shot the one on the ground and then fled through a door across from the gym. Lucas had already referred to a new, public toilet in the alley in his deposition.
The judge interrogated her, but she insisted firmly on what she’d seen. Confronted with the nonexistence of the door, she confirmed that even though there was no other door, that night there had been one. Questioned if it could have been a porta-potty, she said it did not seem to be. She remembered a door.
Regarding the supposed public bathroom, the police peremptorily refuted its existence. Municipal authorities denied placing that equipment; there was neither water nor a sewer in that location, no one had seen it, and video in the authorities’ possession did not reveal the entrance of any similar structure into that alleyway. Worse yet, on that same night, there were multiple photographs of the crime scene and there was no lavatory, much less a door. Nevertheless, not considering that detail, the police seemed less convinced that Lucas was the murderer. They still presented that thesis, but perfunctorily, out of duty, without passion. The public ministry’s magistrate spoke in a monotone to assert that he saw no reason to change the investigation’s position. The prosecution stood by idly.
Lucas’s lawyer defended him eloquently. He took the facts and constructed the most favorable version that was still believable. The elderly gentleman with a necktie surprised Lucas with an instrument of war of which he was unaware: words. Pronounced calmly and in their entirety. Having arrived at a point, the next one was as clear as water. Achieving one level, the next was evident to everyone. Along the way, he slipped grains of sand into the police’s version. Small grains, but they jammed the judicial machine’s gears. Whoever arrived at this point and heard him would have been surprised that anyone could have had the idea of looking for the young man, leaving the true assassin loose on the streets. His lawyer highlighted this: there is a murderer loose on Lisbon’s streets and judicial authorities were wasting resources in vain with his client. Lucas was convinced of his own innocence, until he’d awakened to the fact that he knew very well he hadn’t killed anyone. He just wasn’t sure that he’d go home free that day because the judge maintained a serene face, immune to the web his lawyer had knit.
Ponces Branco declared a recess.
“The longer the recess, the better,” explained his lawyer. “He’s reading. The more he reads, the better,” his lawyer said.
Three hours later, he returned to declare that Lucas would be held un
der house arrest, with an electronic ankle monitor and police stationed at his door. He would not be free, but his happiness was so great it was like gliding on the wind, like seagulls on the Tagus River or the smell of the breeze from the sea while fishing early in the morning. He breathed in the entire day in just one gulp—free, yes, without guards, chamber pots, schedules, anonymity dissolved in the prisoners’ soup filling the jail’s large pots. He went home in his lawyer’s car. His brother ran to him, leaping into his arms, with a small Tyrannosaurus in his hand, shouting, “Brother, brother, you escaped, good.” His mother received him, intensely, repeating, “I knew, Lucas, I knew.” His father, his eyes brimming with liquid, gave him a strong, quick hug. He put his hands on Lucas’s face and said to him, “We have to figure this out, boy. You and I.”
They’d set up their nativity scene and had outdone themselves. To compensate for the lack of a Christmas tree, which his father wouldn’t let in the house, “neither that nor Coca Cola,” the manager at Lucas’s house had more than one hundred figures. Little houses with their own lights and small creeks with real running water that moved water wheels. Lucas looked at the small Aramaic village delighted with the colors, less bright but more diverse than the Christmas pines.
Night fell and the living room table was set with his favorite foods: Portuguese Pork with Clams, homemade pickles, and Sericaia (Alentejo Portuguese province Egg Pudding) for desert. He had died and gone to heaven. He spoke excitedly with his parents, something he hadn’t done for years. Lucas felt protected, like when he has a young boy. After supper, he took a cup of hand-dripped coffee with a cube of brown sugar and, while sipping it, looked out the window to see the lights on the street. Out there, the sight of a police car was five cold fingers slapping him in the face. He was still a prisoner.
* * *
He took his leave of his parents, stilling the palpitations and tightness of his heart. Lucas lay down. His spirit turned the last few weeks’ events over and over. How could he escape the steel grip that was dragging him down a bottomless hole? Why had this happened to him? He quit feeling guilty about the beating he’d given Quiroga. It had nothing to do with the rest. No, it had nothing to do with his having acted against the giant without one drop of sportsmanship. That was another story. It was not the expiation of a failure; it was a machination against him.
Revulsion came over him—he was thinking like his father, imagining traps and cabals executed by occult forces. Who’d waste a second on him? It was merely chance. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time and the judicial machine that has to find the guilty had found him and was not going to let him go. It was like a bulldog’s bite: even if the judiciary wanted to release him, after screwing him over, it couldn’t. His guilt was the other side of the coin of the system’s pacification. They had hunted someone bad to explain the evil. They could move on to another dossier and store his on a shelf. Just he, and perhaps that woman, had seen the small bathroom that didn’t appear in the police photos but out of whose door the murderer had left. The good judge must have twisted about to swallow that testimony. But, in fact, where had that bathroom gone? he thought. At this time, the police must be questioning all of the neighboring houses to see if anyone could have taken it from there. Perhaps they’ll find some clue that will prove they pulled in the wrong fish and leave me alone. With that thought, he went to sleep.
But his nightmares wouldn’t let him. A thousand and one terrifying ideas filled his mind. Lucas felt deep nausea and a pain in his shoulders as if Quiroga had resuscitated with two more palms of width and was now squeezing him in a bone breaking embrace. To the left, it was an iron grip. He couldn’t even breathe. Without enough time to get up, he vomited on the bed. Oh no. He cleaned his face on the sheet and then sat down. It’s cold. He jumped quietly from the bed to not awaken his mother or Luís. He saw things out of focus. Lucas rubbed his eyes but it didn’t help. The window was open. Again? What is it this time? It’s like ice. He turned on the lamp and leaped back—on his chair, there was an envelope and on the envelope was a pistol with a silencer. The gun from the crime.
Chapter 5
The Machination
Lucas opened the envelope. Photographs of the dead body of the woman who’d testified on his behalf. A small orifice in the forehead, just like he’d seen on the neck of the giant’s dissected body, which explained how the evil deed had been committed: a bullet in the brow. More photos of the woman in the street and the woman dead. Finally, a picture on heavier paper came on and showed a film in which his witness was murdered by someone unknown. Lucas breathed rapidly; he had cramps in his hands and a pain installed itself in his head over his eyes. He felt hot. He threw up again, as silently as possible. There was a smell of gas in the air and his vision was slowly becoming cloudy. He was lost.
“You’re lost, Lucas,” agreed the gun, in a metallic voice.
Was he seeing things? Had he been drugged? Suddenly the photographs erupted in spontaneous combustion. They burned like newspaper. Lucas quickly smothered the fire with a bedspread. The pistol, hoarse, laughed at the young man’s bewilderment. Lucas rubbed his sore eyes once more. This was not happening. The pistol said nothing but raised its eyebrows and rolled its eyes upward and to the left, as if saying, “Puedes no creer en brujas, pero que las hay, las hay,” Spanish for “You may not believe in witches, but they exist, yes, they do.”
He now had no witness. He had to flee. But where to? Where to? There was nowhere to go. The police and countries are made one for the other. Interpol would never let him go, there was neither refuge where he wouldn’t be wanted, nor memory that would be lost, no matter how many years or decades went by. Maybe he could hide on an island in the Pacific or in a village in the Amazon. No, no. They would immediately recognize the stranger and immediately surf the Internet using facial recognition software that Interpol made available on its site. A better alternative would be going to a big city, he thought. He could pass by unnoticed in a large metropolis in Latin America, in Mexico City, in Buenos Aires or in São Paulo. Suddenly, he was hit by a lightning bolt: Mother, Father, Luís. If he successfully escaped Lisbon, he would never see them again. He fell to his knees. His projects and the people he loved were going to disappear. He was going to terminate them, cut his umbilical cord in order to be free. Lucas bent over until his head touched the ground. Is this war? Is this the price of victory, if I am able to achieve a victory by fleeing? He was going to burn everything, incinerate his heart and soul in order to be free, in a law of eternal return in which the flames that killed his parents in his old life returned by his hand, for him to be the incendiary of his own immolation. He bit the mucous membrane in his mouth until it bled. He could be like that other mother, Lara, who was sleeping, who had combed his hair on a soft colored rug, but he wasn’t. What alternative do I have? None. That dawn, he had no time to turn the other cheek. Lucas stood up. He was going to abandon everything. He would leave, but the ankle monitor. He sat in the chair. The ankle monitor. There had to be a solution. He looked about the room: in a corner, on the window’s parapet, a closed paper box. He opened it. A ringed cutting instrument, with instructions. It was easy. He synchronized it with the apparatus, cut it, and inserted it in the ring while a light at the antenna’s base blinked. He looked at his ankle, free of the monitor. They had put that in the window for him to go out onto the street. But who?
“It was Quiroga,” the pistol said. “He’s vindictive.”
His father was right. It was a trap. But why? He was insignificant. A small fry in the order of things. He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote two lines: Mother, you know I’m innocent. I love you. Dad, you were always right, nothing is what it seems. Take care of Luís. I will survive. Love. Sweat dropped from his forehead onto the paper. He tried to dry it, but he smeared the ink. He took a second sheet and wrote, Luís, I have to go far away. Behave yourself and study hard. I love you. Take care of your dinosaur. One of these Christmases, I’ll come back for you. He turned
off the light and locked the door to his room, slipping the two letters under the door and blocking it with an inclined chair, from which he had removed the wheels.
Lucas thought about taking the pistol but was afraid it would be his undoing by talking out loud and attracting the police’s attention. He tried to clear his mind. No, the pistol’s not talking. Nevertheless, it was better not to carry it. It’s not careful and its voice can easily be heard, he thought. He slipped a jacket over his pajamas and slipped on his shoes without socks. Lucas took a scarf that he’d never used. He went out the window and carefully closed the shutter from the outside. He knew he was covering the route that he had been pushed upon. He was a piece in someone else’s game. A hamster going down a tunnel he couldn’t see. Livestock. But for now, he had to be livestock with feline slippers.
Peace will come later. He moved away in the supplemental darkness of the roof’s eaves, to the right of the window until he reached the back of the house because the police who were watching the door and the monitor’s signal were to the left. Lucas did not see the gray eyes awaiting him, silently, but another image imposed itself upon him. His father was going to force the door and his mother was going to see the pistol with the silencer. She would never again be at peace. He went back but couldn’t get into his room: the window latch had fallen when he closed the shutters, locking it from inside. He looked again to the left. The police car had an agent inside, immobile. Were there others?
Perpetual Winter: The Deep Inn Page 4