Winning the Game and Other Stories

by Rubem Fonseca

  “Yes,” she said, refusing to meet my eyes.

  Raul was pacing back and forth in Wexler’s office.

  “Guedes says he’s going to publicly name the senator as the murderer and that he doesn’t care what happens.”

  “Guedes is crazy,” I said. “We can’t let him make that blunder.”

  Raul and I went looking for Guedes. Eve went home. I promised to call her later.

  Guedes was at the morgue, talking to a technician friend of his. He was working on his statement to the press.

  “Cavalcante Meier didn’t do it,” I said.

  “Two days ago you didn’t know the first thing about the case, now you show up with total insight.”

  I told him part of what I knew.

  “If it wasn’t Cavalcante Meier, who was it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a drug dealer.”

  “I went through Marly Moreira’s life with a fine-tooth comb. There’s not the slightest chance she was involved in dealing drugs. And both were killed by the same person. Your reasoning is full of holes.”

  I attempted to defend my point of view. I mentioned Cavalcante Meier’s alibi. After all, the testimony of the Governor couldn’t be ignored.

  “They’re all corrupt. Just wait, when the Governor leaves office he’ll become a partner in one of Cavalcante Meier’s businesses.”

  “Guedes, you’re going to come out of this looking real bad.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What’ve I got to lose—my job? I’m sick of being a cop.”

  “Accusing an innocent man is slander; it’s a crime.”

  “He isn’t innocent. I have my proof.” Guedes’s eyes blazed with rectitude, justice, integrity, and probity. “Did you know that Senator Cavalcante Meier is the registered owner of a .38 Taurus revolver, the same caliber as the bullets that caused the deaths of Marly and Márcio?”

  “Lots of people keep a .38 in their house. When’s the press conference?”

  “Tomorrow at ten a.m.”

  I arrived at the house in Gávea just as night was falling.

  “What happened?” Eve asked. “The look on your face—”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “In his bedroom. He’s not feeling well.”

  “I have to speak to him. It’s important.”

  I got a surprise when I saw Cavalcante Meier. His hair was uncombed, he hadn’t shaved, and his eyes were red, as if he’d been drinking too much, or crying. The look of Jannings, Professor Rath, in The Blue Angel, struggling to hide his shame, surprised by the world’s incomprehension. Lilly was at his side, her face paler than ever, her skin looking as if it had been whitewashed. She held a purse in her hand. Her black dress heightened her phantasmagoric beauty.

  “I did it,” Cavalcante Meier said.

  “Daddy!” Eve exclaimed.

  Cavalcante Meier didn’t ring true. I’ve been to enough movies to know a bad actor when I see one.

  “I did it, I already said I did. Tell your policeman friend to come pick me up. Get out of my house!”

  He came toward me as if to attack. Eve held him back.

  “Go away, please go away,” Eve begged.

  As I left, Lilly went with me. She stopped next to my car.

  “Okay if I come along?”

  “Sure.”

  Lilly sat beside me. I drove slowly through the dark tree-lined gardens and toward the entrance.

  “He’s lying,” I said. “It must be to protect someone. Maybe Eve.”

  Lilly’s body began to tremble, but no sound came from her throat. As we passed a lamppost I saw that her face was wet with tears.

  “It wasn’t him. Or Eve,” Lilly said, so low I could barely make out the words.

  So that was it. I already knew the truth, and what the hell good did it do me? Is there really any such thing as guilty and innocent?

  “I’m listening, you can begin,” I said.

  “I discovered I loved Uncle Rodolfo two years ago, not as an uncle, or father, which is what he’d been to me till then, but as one loves a lover.”

  I said nothing. I know when a person is about to bare their soul.

  “We’ve been lovers for six months. He’s everything in my life, and I’m everything in his.”

  “Is that why you killed Marly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he know?”

  “No. I told him today. He tried to protect me. He loves me as much as I love him.”

  In the half-darkness of the car she looked like a fluorescent statue bathed in black light.

  “I can tell you how it happened.”

  “Tell me.”

  “My uncle told me he was having problems with a girl he’d had an affair with and who worked for one of his firms. She was threatening to cause a scandal, to tell my aunt everything. My aunt is a very sick woman, and I love her as if she were my mother.”

  I had never seen her. Rich families have inviolable secrets, private faces, dark complicities.

  “She never leaves her room. There’s always a nurse at her side; she could die at any time.”

  “Go on.”

  “My uncle received the letter, on a Monday I think. Every night, around eleven, I would go to his room, then leave early the next morning before the maids came to straighten up.”

  “Did Eve know about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “That day Uncle Rodolfo was very nervous. He showed me the letter, said that Marly was crazy, that the scandal could kill Aunt Nora and ruin him politically. Uncle Rodolfo is a very good man, he doesn’t deserve anything like that.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Uncle Rodolfo showed me the letter from that Marly woman and then left it on the night table. The next day I took the letter, found that woman’s phone number, and called her. I said who I was and that I had a message from Uncle Rodolfo. We arranged a meeting for after office hours. I chose a deserted beach where I swim sometimes. She was arrogant and said to tell Uncle Rodolfo not to treat her like dirt. When the old lady dies, she threatened, that bastard will have to marry me. I had Uncle Rodolfo’s revolver in my bag. It only took one shot. She fell forward, moaning. I ran and got my car, found Márcio, and asked him to sell me some coke. I did a few lines at his place, the first time in six months. I was desperate. I dozed off, and Márcio must have gone through my bag and taken the letter while I was asleep. When Uncle Rodolfo told me you were meeting Márcio at Gordon’s, I got there first so you wouldn’t find him. I made up a story that Uncle Rodolfo had sent the police after him.”

  “Please stop calling him uncle.”

  “That’s what I always called him, and I’m not going to change now. Márcio was furious and went to Uncle Rodolfo’s house the next day. You know that part, you saw it all.”

  “Not everything.”

  “I met Márcio in the garden, when he was leaving. He told me Uncle Rodolfo was going to pay him off, but that he wasn’t going to return the letter. I set up a time with him to buy some cocaine; I’d already made up my mind to get him out of the way. Márcio was in an easy chair watching television, already spaced out on coke and whiskey. I went up to him and shot him in the head. I felt nothing, except disgust, as if he were a cockroach.”

  “You didn’t find the letter. It was in Márcio’s pocket.”

  “I searched everywhere, but I’d never look in his pocket. Touching him would make me sick,” Lilly said.

  “What happened to the money?”

  “It was in a suitcase. I took it home. It’s in my bedroom closet.”

  I stopped the car. She was holding her purse tightly between trembling hands.

  “Give that to me,” I said.

  “No!” she answered, clutching the bag to her chest.

  I tore the bag from her grasp. The Taurus was inside: two-inch barrel, mother-of-pearl handle. Her eyes were a bottomless abyss.

  “Leave the gun with me,” Lilly asked.

  I shook my
head.

  “Then take me back, so I can be with Uncle Rodolfo.”

  “I have to find Guedes. Take a cab. And I’d hire a lawyer right away.”

  “Everything’s ruined, isn’t it?”

  “Unfortunately it is. For all of us,” I replied.

  I put her in a taxi and went looking for Guedes. I thought about Eve. Farewell, my lovely. The long good-bye. The big sleep. There was no one inside my body. The hands on the steering wheel seemed to belong to someone else.

  guardian angel

  THE HOUSE HAD SEVERAL BEDROOMS. I asked which of them I was supposed to sleep in. She took me to a bedroom that was close to hers.

  I sat on the bed, tested the mattress.

  “No good, it’s too soft. It’ll kill my back.”

  I tested the mattresses in all the bedrooms until I found a firm one.

  “This one’s good. You got a shirt I can use? I forgot to bring anything to sleep in.”

  The woman came back right away with a white shirt.

  “This is the largest I have. I just wore it once, does it matter?”

  I thanked the woman and said good night. I put on the shirt, smelled the scent in the fabric, a mixture of clean skin and perfume.

  I looked for a position for sleep. My back hurt. I had a lot of broken and badly healed bones scattered around my body.

  The woman knocked on the door so softly that I nearly didn’t hear her.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me. I’d like to speak to you.”

  “One moment.”

  I put on my pants and opened the door.

  She was wearing a robe, and a woman in a robe always reminds me of my mother. In fact, the only thing I remember about my mother is the robe.

  “You’re too far away; I don’t feel protected. I can’t sleep. Can’t you go to the room next to mine? We can take the firm mattress from this bed and exchange it for the other one.”

  I took my firm mattress to the bedroom next to hers.

  I sat on the bed.

  “I think everything’s all right now. I can sleep on this. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  I couldn’t take more than ten minutes lying down. The pain in my spine increased. I got out of bed and sat in an armchair that was in the room.

  Another knock on the door.

  “What is it?”

  “I heard a noise in the garden,” she whispered through the door. “I think there’s someone in the garden.”

  I put on my pants. Opened the door. She was still in her robe.

  “It must be your imagination. You’re very nervous. Where in the garden?”

  “In the magnolia grove. There aren’t any lights there, and I had the impression that I saw a light going on and off.”

  “You have a flashlight?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman gave me the flashlight.

  “Be careful. I’ve told you the horrible things that have been happening with me, haven’t I?”

  “You ought to go to your apartment in the city.”

  “It’s worse there. I had to disconnect the telephone because of the calls in the middle of the night, threatening me. And there are people following me in the street. Here, at least, there are bars on all the windows, and the doors are metal. Take the revolver.”

  “It’s better if you keep the revolver. Lock the door. And don’t go looking out through the window.”

  It was a large country estate. A lawn with flowerbeds ringed the house. In the middle of the grass, a swimming pool. In the rear, the caretaker’s house and the garden. The rest of the estate was woods and large trees, which made the night even darker. Stone benches were scattered among the trees. I sat down on one of them, in the magnolia grove. I waited, with the lit flashlight on the bench.

  Sonya emerged silently from the darkness and sat down beside me on the stone bench.

  “Did you leave the revolver where she could see it?”

  “I left it in her hand. I’m following your plan.”

  “Listen to this noise,” Sonya said, taking a recorder from her purse and turning it on. It sounded like the moan of someone dying. “Doesn’t it sound like a ghost?”

  “You two are lucky there’s no dog here.”

  “There was. We poisoned it. Jorge poisoned it. When’s she going to use the revolver?”

  “She’s scared to death, let’s wait a bit. Who’s Jorge?”

  “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Why do you want the woman dead?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  “I’m going back to the house. Turn off the moans. That’s enough for now.”

  “Don’t forget our agreement,” Sonya said. “This has to be taken care of within three days. If she’s still undecided, you put the bullet in her head yourself.”

  I went back to the house. The woman opened the door, holding my revolver. She was trembling, her eyes wide.

  “What was that noise?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? I heard it. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “No.”

  “I know, I know you think I’m crazy.”

  The woman pointed the revolver at me.

  “Tell me the truth. You think I’m crazy. The caretakers thought I was crazy and ran off one night without saying a word. I’ve just heard a loud moan, the sound of a soul in agony, like mine, and you tell me it was nothing? And this revolver with no bullets? Is that how you were going to defend me? With an unloaded gun?”

  “How do you know it’s not loaded?”

  “I put it up to my head and pulled the trigger six times. Nothing happened.”

  “I forgot to load it. I don’t know how that happened; I’m very careful.”

  “You removed the bullets because you thought I was crazy and would shoot myself.”

  “I’m here to protect you. Go to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll talk.”

  “Don’t speak to me that way. I’m very nervous. Come sleep in my room.”

  “All right.”

  The woman lay down without taking off her robe, covering herself with a sheet. I sat down in the armchair in the room. All the bedrooms had armchairs and their own bathroom.

  She looked at me from the bed, sighing like someone about to cry.

  “Come over here, hold my hand.”

  I held her hand.

  “You have large hands. Did you used to be a manual laborer?”

  “No.”

  “Have you always been a companion for sick people?”

  “When I was young, I spent two years pushing an old man’s wheelchair. It was the best time of my life. I liked to read, he had thousands of books, and I spent all day reading.”

  “I’ve never seen you reading here.”

  “I haven’t had time yet, and your books don’t appeal to me.”

  “I’m sorry. And after you worked in the house with all those books that appealed to you?”

  “Then I took care of the old man.”

  “Was he mentally ill?”

  “No. It was a sickness of old age.” The guy killed himself, with my help, but I wouldn’t tell her that. “Now try to get a little sleep.”

  “Am I crazy?”

  “No. You’re just very nervous.”

  The woman fell asleep. I let go of her hand. I went to the armchair and spent the entire night awake, thinking, smelling the scent of her shirt on my body and looking at the woman as she slept. Primitive man would devour, like a hyena, the remains of dead animals that had been hunted down by other animals. He didn’t become a hunter himself until he invented pointed weapons. I loaded the bullets into the chamber of the revolver.

  The woman in the bed looked like a dead dog that would be easy to kick. I don’t ask questions when I’m hired for a job. But in this case I’d like to know who wanted her to put a bullet in her head. Some scumbag husband terrifying his hysterical wife to make her kill herself so the bastard could keep the mone
y? I’d been through a situation more or less like that once, during Carnival week.

  Dawn broke, birds started to chirp, and the woman woke up. She smiled at me.

  “I feel better today. I think the nightmare is coming to an end. I’m going to do some work in the garden, will you stay close to me?”

  I left her bedroom. In my bathroom, I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I went to the garden.

  The woman was wearing a hat to protect her from the sun. She asked me to accompany her to the tool shed next to the garage. There were pickaxes, shovels, an electric lawnmower, a pump for cleaning the pool. She picked up a pair of shears, the kind used in gardens.

  “My garden is pretty, isn’t it? I planted those flowers myself; aren’t they pretty?”

  I don’t care much about flowers, but I listened patiently as she mentioned the names of the ones growing in the flowerbeds.

  “I have to make a phone call.”

  “The telephone is disconnected.”

  “I’ll go to the village.”

  “Please, don’t leave me by myself.”

  “Then come with me. You can work in the garden later.”

  We took her car.

  “Do you like music?”

  “If you want to listen to music, it doesn’t bother me.”

  She popped a violin concerto into the car’s player.

  “Doesn’t it give you a peaceful feeling?”

  Violin music makes me restless, but I put up with it without saying anything. We arrived at the small square in the village. I stopped at the door of the little market, full of sacks of cat and dog food.

  She got out of the car with me. “I’m going to buy some things. I’m tired of eating frozen food.”

  The man in the market greeted her amicably; the woman had owned the estate for many years. The man asked if I was the new caretaker, and the woman replied that I was a friend.

  Nearby there was a bakery. I called Sonya from there.

  “I’m going to do the job. But first I want to talk to you and Jorge. I want the rest of the money. Tonight, the same place where we met last night.”

  “Jorge won’t go.

  “That’s his problem. If he doesn’t come talk to me, the deal’s off. Nine o’clock.”

  I hung up the phone and went back to the market. I picked up the bag of groceries, and we went back to the car.