The Silence of the Rain

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  Spring had begun a week ago. For Rio de Janeiro, that meant that any and all residues of cold had been banished; for Meier, that meant that summer had begun. The little low-roofed room with a window you could barely get a breath through wasn’t the best place to ponder the situation. In spite of the pain he was in, he had liked walking in Flamengo Park the week before. It was far. But he had felt good. The sand, under the rain, had made a moist, slightly hardened cushion, and the part underneath had still been dry. It reminded him of himself: dry and empty on the inside.

  8

  When he decided to call, it was already eleven at night, but Aurélio answered on the second ring.

  “How ‘bout another round of beer and sandwiches? I’ve got a few little pieces to add to the puzzle.”

  “Espinosa, I’ve been thinking about you.” Aurélio’s voice was happy, though he sounded a little tired.

  “What about tomorrow at one—same place?”

  “Fine, but unless you want me to stay up all night worrying, give me something to chew on till tomorrow.”

  Espinosa explained that the crime weapon had been found, but omitted any reference to Max or the story he’d told about Rose. They agreed it would be better to talk about the details the next day.

  He wasn’t tired; he was hungry. The icebox didn’t offer much besides some old freezer-burned vegetables, little pieces of cheese accumulated throughout the last decade, three slices of bread of unknown age, and a few bottles of beer. He decided to grab a beer and order a pizza.

  What concerned him the most was that Max’s story made perfect sense and that he wasn’t giving it the importance it deserved. The secretary is seen fleeing the crime scene and hiding the gun in a pile of trash, the ballistics tests confirm that the bullet that killed Ricardo Carvalho was fired from that gun, the secretary’s mother suggests that something was going on between her daughter and the businessman. It was enough to mix those ingredients and come up with a crime of passion. The fact that Max was there at exactly the right place at exactly the right time was a coincidence. It was just tough to believe in that kind of coincidence.

  He went to bed late and got up late. When he arrived at the Praça Mauá it was ten-thirty in the morning. He passed the time until his meeting with Aurélio writing reports, filling out forms, and answering the phone. The day was nice, even seen from a window in the Praça Mauá. At a quarter to one, he headed toward Rua da Quitanda.

  He arrived at the same time as Aurélio. Much of what Espinosa knew he’d learned from him, and he didn’t feel right about hiding information from his old colleague. So as soon as they sat down he got to the point.

  “Aurélio, I didn’t tell you everything last night.”

  “I know—that’s why we’re here.”

  Espinosa told him what he knew about the death of Ricardo Carvalho. Locating the weapon thanks to his informers in the underground lottery, Max selling the gun, who Max was, Rose’s disappearance, the conversation with her mother, the possible affair between the secretary and the executive, and, finally, Max’s story about how he’d found the gun. Aurélio heard him out without a word. At certain points he suspended his sandwich in the air, gaping and waiting; it looked like the scene had been frozen.

  “What do you think about this Max?” he asked when Espinosa had finished the story.

  “I don’t think he committed the crime,” Espinosa replied. “He’s not a known criminal. He’s probably carried out his share of misdemeanors, but I haven’t heard that he’s ever threatened anyone’s life. According to the lottery people, there are rumors that he sticks people up in parking lots with a toy gun. I think he’s relatively harmless.”

  “Espinosa, nobody who robs people is harmless. Even with a toy gun.”

  “He’s a small-time thief, Aurélio. He’s never hurt anybody and has never taken more than some unsuspecting shopper’s pocket money.”

  “And that doesn’t seem like much to you?”

  “Compared to murder?”

  “I’d like to see him, to make up my own mind.”

  “I can take care of that easily,” said Espinosa.

  “And what about his story?” asked Aurélio.

  “That’s the point. I don’t believe a word he said. And that makes him a suspect—I’m just not sure of what crime.”

  “Do you think he could have been the secretary’s accomplice?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s not qualified. He’s never shot a gun, and there’s no sign that he knew her, but I don’t discount the possibility that they met after the murder.”

  Aurélio picked at his teeth and put the broken toothpicks on the plate.

  “Tell me something, Espinosa. Did anyone check to see if there was any powder residue on the executive’s hand?”

  The question was asked without emphasis. Espinosa would have said that the emphasis came from not being emphasized. It jolted him, maybe because he’d been asking himself the same question for a while, without stating it so clearly.

  “Suicide? You’re not saying that because it’s a convenient answer for the insurance company? After all, it’s your daily bread.”

  “Maybe,” said Aurélio. “But I wouldn’t eliminate the possibility.”

  “Aurélio, nobody kills himself and then runs off with the gun …” He kept looking at his friend as he completed his sentence: “Unless someone else did that for him. As for examining his hands,” he went on, “of course they didn’t, because it didn’t occur to anyone that it was a suicide. It was an obvious murder scene—at most, a robbery and a murder.”

  “It still is,” Aurélio said. “I’m just tossing in a few more ingredients.”

  Espinosa was convinced that Rose was the solution to the puzzle. As long as she didn’t turn up, Max’s flimsy story was all they had to go on. The idea of suicide was supported by very tenuous evidence and posed almost insurmountable problems. In any case, whereas last week they were at square one, now, at least, they had a few leads. With a little luck, they could figure it all out in another week. His conversation with Aurélio, as always, had been highly useful. For both sides, he figured. They said good-bye around three.

  Since he’d been transferred to the Praça Mauá station, he’d fallen into the habit of going downtown to a bookstore every Friday afternoon. Since he was only a block away, he decided to stop by the used-bookstore on Rua do Carmo. He was taken with an old illustrated edition of Moby-Dick. It wasn’t anything rare or expensive, but it struck his fancy.

  Another Saturday was upon him, and he had once again resolved to organize the books in his apartment. He was looking forward to a rainy day. Nothing better than a rainy Saturday to inspire him to arrange his books. The biggest problem was that he had a lot of books and no bookshelves. Friday ended without any more news.

  He liked Saturday mornings. While he ate breakfast and read the literary supplement of the paper, he decided to continue organizing his books into a kind of “living bookcase.” The section he’d done the Saturday before was still standing, which encouraged him to keep going as high as he could reach. At lunchtime he figured he hadn’t made much progress—the first chapter of Nicholas Nickleby being responsible for the delay. At four, when the phone rang, his progress was virtually nil. It was Welber.

  “Inspector, they found Rose’s mother dead. Murdered. The experts already went over. I’ll come by and get you.”

  The ride to Tijuca was quick, but long enough for Welber to convey what little he knew. The old lady had been killed by hanging, but a preliminary investigation hinted at something more. It had happened at lunchtime. The doorman saw her come back from the market around eleven in the morning. A little before three, he rang the bell—he’d promised to fix the flusher on the toilet. He waited a few minutes and rang again. Since no one answered, he used the key to the service door Dona Maura had left with him. The body was seated and tied to one of the dining room chairs; one of her arms dangled free. She was gagged with a scarf. The cause of death was determ
ined as strangulation, by means of the nylon rope removed from the clothesline.

  Before he even entered the room, Espinosa smelled blood mixed with ammonia. There was blood on the table, on the woman’s body, and on the floor. The detectives shuddered when they saw the dangling arm. Three fingers had been cut off with the meat shears now lying on the table along with a little bottle of ammonia … and the fingers. The bottle of ammonia added an extra note of perversity to the horrific scene.

  “It’s exactly what you’re thinking,” said the investigator, who was watching Espinosa examine the scene. “It was used to wake her up every time she passed out.”

  She’d surely been tortured to reveal something she didn’t know. They didn’t need to cut off three fingers to figure that out.

  9

  When they sealed the door it was already dark. In spite of their fatigue, neither wanted to eat. Before heading back to the station, they looked for a place nearby to have a beer. They couldn’t get rid of the image of the fingers on top of the table.

  It took them a few beers to calm down. During the first one, they didn’t talk; during the second, they made a few comments about the bar, whose tables had invaded the narrow sidewalk; when the waiter brought over the third, Espinosa addressed his colleague.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “About the number of beers or about the lady’s fingers?”

  “About the beers—about her fingers I don’t need to ask.”

  “I feel okay—as well as can be expected.”

  During his twenty years on the police force Espinosa had seen a lot—almost everything, he thought—but it was impossible not to be shocked by the sight of a lady whose fingers had been cut off with shears before she was hung. When they’d walked into the living room, as he was still trying to pull himself together, he had seen Welber run toward the bathroom. The idea that this was the work of a fellow human being was as repulsive as the scene itself.

  “I’m okay,” Welber said again.

  “So drop me off at home. I don’t think you want to spend Saturday night drinking in a bar with a policeman.”

  Welber looked as though he was considering doing just that, if Espinosa was inclined to a personal conversation—which would be extraordinary—but the inspector didn’t follow up. Not that Espinosa had secrets anyone would eagerly discover—he couldn’t imagine anything of interest to his coworkers—but, as far as he was concerned, he was happy for his personal life to stay that way. Right now a serious conversation and a little attention might be good for Welber, but Espinosa didn’t feel up to the role of shepherd of souls. Before the beer could become a pretext for confidences, he asked for the check and got up from the table. On the way back to Copacabana, the conversation never strayed to personal matters.

  Espinosa had been a policeman for almost as long as Welber had been alive. He’d lost a lot of his old preconceived notions. He hadn’t arrived at any visible truth and was constantly enlarging the part of his mind where he stored doubts.

  He reached home wondering if he had one history or several. Depending on the response, he could be one or several different people. Before he turned on the lamp in the living room, he decided it was a stupid question, even though he dragged a little uncertainty with him into the bathroom.

  His married life was so far in the past, so far removed from his present life, that it seemed to belong to someone else, in the same way the present man had little to do with the boy in Fátima. His own son, because of the time he’d spent abroad, seemed like someone else’s.

  His relationship with his first wife had gotten sticky even before they were married. They met when they were law students, when she was a freshman and he was an upperclassman, and fell madly in love. The little announcement on the school bulletin board announcing a test for admission to the civil police was like a poster advertising a movie with a happy ending. He could work as a night watchman, finish law school, and still intern at a law firm. Green light for marriage. She pointed out at least a dozen reasons why he shouldn’t join the police. Notwithstanding her objections, he took the test and got in. They got married. A year later, their son was born. The marriage lasted until she finished law school. Four years.

  While he was reminiscing, he turned on all the lights in the apartment, for no apparent reason other than to shed some literal light on himself. Then he did the same in reverse—turning them all off one by one, leaving on only the lamp in the living room. He took a long bath, unwrapped a sandwich that was sitting in the refrigerator, opened a beer, stretched out on the sofa, and started thinking about death—not about the abstract idea of death but about specifically how much time he had left. Aged forty-two, on a Saturday night, in a bachelor pad in Copacabana. He decided he was already dead. He went to bed.

  PART II

  October

  1

  I opened my eyes, in no hurry to wake up. The memory that started off my Sunday was Dona Maura’s fingers on the table. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. It didn’t work. It was after eleven and I’d slept enough. The light that worked its way through the venetian blinds was weak, almost nonexistent, and was accompanied by the sound of rain, which I wasn’t sure if I really heard or just imagined. After a few minutes struggling with reality, I decided to get up and make coffee. While I was waiting for my morning gurgle I picked up the newspaper at the door and went to brush my teeth. The vision that greeted me in the mirror was of a man whose hair and general demeanor recalled one of the Marx brothers. The recollection was more disturbing than amusing. I decided to go downstairs to the kiosk and pick up O Dia, probably the only paper that would cover the story. In the Jornal do Brasil there was nothing about the murder. They hadn’t filled the press in on the severed fingers, which certainly would have made the story stand out; without that detail, the death of an old lady in an apartment in the Zona Norte didn’t really deserve to be noticed by a newspaper of the upper-middle class. On the way back, walking up the stairs, I found the little item on an inside page of O Dia. The coffee was ready. It smelled good, but my mouth held a bitter taste.

  Minutes earlier, when I was preparing to get up, even before I’d opened my eyes, an image had tried to force its way out of the confusion of sleep, but was chased off by the gray light of the day and the sound of the rain. While I was brushing my teeth, it tried to insinuate itself again, but was cut off by the melancholy vision of Harpo Marx. Now it erupted with greater force: Bia Vasconcelos seated by my side for breakfast, walking through the living room, picking up a book at random, choosing a song. The vision only lasted a few seconds. Bia disappeared, and in her place came Júlio, my ex-wife, Alba, Rose (although I’d only seen her in a picture). I tried to recall the image of Bia, but in vain. Maybe the problem was the living room. The difference between our apartments was striking. The clean sophistication of the designer and the baroque heaps of the book-buying cop. I got up from the table and went to look at myself again in the mirror, then returned to the living room. The colonial table, the sofa, and the armchairs with their stray cushions (inherited from my parents and retaining the original upholstery), the pictures, and the so-called decorative objects, together with the image in the mirror, suggested that Bia and I inhabited completely different universes.

  My living room has a little balcony about a foot wide and six feet long. The advantage of this little detail is that, instead of a window, the living room has glass doors and venetian blinds facing the street. I opened the blinds and the doors, at the risk of letting rain in on the carpet, to see if my spirits would be lifted by the fresh air. All that resulted was an encounter between the day outside and my own inside, both gray. I got another cup of coffee in the kitchen. I’d quit smoking a while ago, but now was the moment I missed it the most. According to Bia’s testimony, her husband had also stopped smoking a few months earlier. But there had been a cigarette in the ashtray and an open pack in the glove compartment. Some people still keep a pack around even after quitting. Obviously,
the murderer wouldn’t be smoking while he was shooting the businessman—and he’d be even less worried about putting the butt out in the ashtray. The person who smoked that cigarette was someone Ricardo knew or Ricardo Carvalho himself. In that case, either he’d decided to start smoking again, or he no longer needed to worry about the bad effects of smoking.

  The books piled up against the wall bore witness to my efforts to cooperate with the cleaning lady. There was probably some charm in the mess of the apartment: the disorder did not simply reflect the lack of order; it distorted normal ideas of order. But even though such ideas reassured me, I felt absolutely sure that Bia Vasconcelos would never live in a place like this, which meant that we weren’t compatible. I still had the strong desire to smoke; I served myself a third cup of coffee.

  Who could have cut off the poor lady’s fingers? The violence of the mutilation was even more shocking than the murder itself. It was obvious that the two crimes were connected, just as it was obvious that the disappearance of Rose had involuntarily provoked the death of her mother. If the same person had killed Dona Maura and Ricardo Carvalho, I could eliminate some suspects, especially Rose. I couldn’t see her torturing and killing her own mother. Bia and Júlio had already been taken off the first list of suspects, now even more reasonably. Cláudio Lucena could have given the order, but couldn’t have carried out the crimes, especially the second. Of the known suspects, Max was the only one left. There wasn’t any reason to go look for an “evil son of a bitch who tortures and kills little old ladies.” That wasn’t the crime of an evil son of a bitch but of a cold-blooded psycho. And everyone and anyone could be the psycho.