The Silence of the Rain

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  “Inspector, as I told you then, Rose not only didn’t bring me anything, but she didn’t even meet me. The last time I saw her was at Ricardo’s funeral.”

  The morning light—clean, fresh, and shining—came through the wide window. Espinosa put the coffee cup on the desk in front of him and ran his hands through his hair, as if that gesture closed off an idea. He got up and wished Bia Vasconcelos a nice day. She was disconcerted by the sudden and dry end to the meeting.

  “You don’t have anything to add to what I’ve said?” she asked.

  The question was intended more to prolong the encounter than to find out anything else.

  “Just that she doesn’t have much hope of getting out of this alive.”

  And when he was already on the external staircase that led back down, he added:

  “Don’t forget to send the mangoes you promised me.”

  He walked toward the gate, hands in his pockets, as if he were ending a Sunday visit to an aunt.

  He got to Planalto Minerações at ten-thirty.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Inspector. Would you like to speak with Dona Carmem?”

  “If I may.”

  “I don’t think she should be busy—Dr. Lucena hasn’t gotten in yet.”

  “Dona Carmem, that inspector wants to talk to you.” After a pause, the receptionist added: “She’s coming, Inspector. Won’t you take a seat?”

  No, he wouldn’t. The last time he’d taken a seat, he’d waited for forty minutes. The situation now was different—more urgent. He had to find that letter—if he didn’t, Rose’s life would be absolutely worthless. So he didn’t have time to sit and wait. He was about to say this to the receptionist when Carmem appeared in the hallway.

  “At least this time you came at a different time. Now we won’t have to sit in the cafeteria.”

  The sentence was accompanied by a well-meaning smile.

  They talked in the space that had belonged to Rose, directly in front of Ricardo Carvalho’s office. Espinosa briefly summed up what had happened since they’d last spoken.

  “As you can see, Dona Carmem, Rose’s life depends on a letter I need to hand over to someone after ten o’clock tonight. I don’t have any idea where this letter might be. I had two ideas—the first one wasn’t right, and the second is that Rose left the letter with you or hid it here.”

  “She didn’t leave anything with me, Inspector. As for hiding it here before she left, I don’t think so. In any case, if you want to, we can look around in here. I don’t dare go through Dr. Ricardo’s office. I could only do that with the permission of Dr. Weil.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy, I just want to find the letter, which is Rose’s only hope of coming out of this alive.”

  The space wasn’t very big. It was the waiting room for Ricardo Carvalho’s office, separated by an internal door, next to which Rose’s desk sat, alongside a computer table. The mail piled up on top of the desk bore witness to the amount of time Rose had been gone. In the drawers, nothing that wasn’t strictly necessary to her job; in the last one, a few personal-hygiene products and a face towel wrapped up in a plastic bag. Espinosa unrolled the towel, opened and examined every one of the maxipads, made sure there wasn’t anything stuck underneath the drawers. Deep down, he agreed with Carmem that it was pretty unlikely that Rose had hidden the letter in that room or in any other at Planalto Minerações.

  He left wondering if he should go to the apartment in Tijuca, but decided against it. It wasn’t any more likely that Rose had gone to her mother’s apartment than that she’d gone back to Planalto Minerações. The letter must have been with her while she was in hiding and she’d decided to stash it somewhere else when she went out to meet Espinosa. Or—the worst-case scenario—the letter had been with her the whole time: in her purse, inside her blouse, in a false pocket, somewhere so close to her own body that the kidnapper hadn’t thought to look there. Even when forced to make those phone calls, she hadn’t said anything because she didn’t want to end her own life.

  He went into a stationery store and bought a regular envelope and a brown envelope of the required size. He put one inside the other and stuck them in his jacket pocket. He had a little more than ten hours before the time dictated by the kidnapper, and he couldn’t make any plans because he didn’t know what he’d have to arrange.

  It was no use talking to Max’s sister. Welber was his final hope.

  6

  They hadn’t removed the sign prohibiting visits; Welber was still being monitored. His roommate was gone; Espinosa didn’t want to know where. In the hall, the carts passed, full of used lunch trays; inside the rooms, the patients took advantage of the moment to nap before the afternoon session: temperature, blood pressure, shots, pills, therapy, and everything else that fills up what remains of the lives of the ill.

  As soon as Espinosa came in, Welber’s eyes opened with surprising immediacy.

  “Espinosa, how great to see you. Seems like my roommate couldn’t resist all the good treatment. There’s people like that—mistreated their whole lives, and when they’re treated well they die. Must be so they don’t have to go back to the way things were before.”

  “Welber, just listen. Don’t talk, except at the end.”

  Welber didn’t have his oxygen mask on, but it was still hard for him to talk. Espinosa went over the events of the last forty-eight hours, omitting only the part about Alba. When he mentioned the letter, Welber’s eyes sparkled.

  “So the reason for all this is a letter,” he said in a low voice, to himself.

  Espinosa interrupted.

  “I don’t know if it’s the reason for all this, but at least it’s the reason for the latest events. I’m not sure what the motive was for the murder of Ricardo Carvalho.”

  Welber appeared slightly agitated.

  “Espinosa, day or night I can’t stop thinking about that ghost who shot at us.”

  “Don’t try to force yourself to remember—that’s worse. Suddenly, when you least expect it, you’ll remember. But please, if that happens before ten o’clock tonight, call me.”

  Espinosa called the precinct from the hospital. No news. They kept reiterating that it was an isolated kidnapping, not related to the “normal kidnappings in the city.” Espinosa was stunned by the phrase: how could cops talk about “normal kidnappings”? Were there normal kidnappings and abnormal kidnappings?

  What Espinosa wanted more than anything was to slow down and think intelligently about how to save Rose. Slowing down wasn’t such a problem—he was already paralyzed. As for thinking intelligently, that was what he’d been trying to do since the beginning of the case. If at the stipulated hour he still didn’t have a concrete plan, he was prepared to go to the meeting with the empty envelope. Really, he didn’t have a choice; if he revealed to the kidnapper that he didn’t have the letter, the kidnapper would know Rose had been bluffing. The kidnapper would get it out of her by torture. And once he had it, there wouldn’t be any reason to let her live. Rose’s only hope was the kidnapper’s belief that Espinosa had the letter. He’d already killed at least two people; he wouldn’t hesitate to kill a third, especially to save his own skin.

  He left Gávea and drove around for a while at random. Passing through Copacabana, he reflected that if he didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do he might as well stay home near the phone. On the way, he wolfed down something—ten minutes later he wouldn’t be able to remember what. When he got home, the machine’s blinking indicated there was only one message. From the bank, inviting him to come learn about different ways to invest the money in his checking account. He didn’t feel like it. Besides, the money wouldn’t be there long. He erased the message, called the station to let them know he’d be at home, sat down on the living room sofa, and began his wait. Two minutes later, he got up. He couldn’t just sit there when Rose’s life was in danger. He’d never seen any movie star sitting at home, staring
at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen. The kidnapper had said that he’d call after ten. So it didn’t do any good to sit around and wait at two.

  His colleagues, in a situation like this, would be assiduously interrogating suspects, putting their informants into action, doing what every policeman was trained to do. The only action he’d taken so far was to detain a suspect he’d then immediately released because he “didn’t look like a killer” and who, almost certainly, was sleeping the eternal sleep in a cabinet at the Forensic Institute. He knew how rarely the police did anything effective to solve a crime. Ninety percent was a cynical game, and since he wasn’t in the mood for that there remained the 10 percent of activity—which he was now performing on the living room couch.

  He removed the envelopes he’d bought from his coat pocket, inserted a twice-folded piece of paper into the small one, and placed it inside the brown envelope, which he didn’t seal. He left it on the coffee table, with a 9 mm pistol as a paperweight. That was all he could do for the time being.

  That day, Carmem had spent her free moments (she had a lot: Cláudio Lucena was out of the office) thinking about Rose and reflecting that she hadn’t always been so nice to Inspector Espinosa. She’d only collaborated exactly as much as he had asked, and there was no reason for her to act that way: Rose was her only friend in the company, and the policeman had always been nice and polite.

  While she was thinking, she examined Rose’s work space again, imagining where she herself, Carmem, would have hidden a letter. It wasn’t in her desk, or in the rolling file cabinet her colleague always kept close by when she was working. She took the accumulated correspondence and started to separate out the business letters from the personal letters for Ricardo Carvalho. Among the correspondence addressed to Rose, one envelope especially stood out. It had no return address. What intrigued Carmem was that the handwriting was Rose’s own.

  Carmem was probably the only person in the company who knew about the affair between Ricardo Carvalho and his secretary. She knew how it had started around two years ago; she knew they met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, even though they hadn’t talked about it very openly. If Dr. Daniel Weil had found out about it, Rose would have been fired instantly and Ricardo Carvalho’s own situation would have become difficult. Carmem hadn’t worried about him, but she had been concerned for her friend. She knew that Ricardo Carvalho was worthless, and she knew that if the word “ethics” was removed from the dictionary, Cláudio Lucena, for one, wouldn’t miss it. But she liked Rose, who was a highly competent secretary yet as naive as a newborn babe when it came to Ricardo Carvalho. She had no doubt that the death of Rose’s boss and lover had taken her by surprise. And now there was that envelope, apparently sent to herself, appearing at the exact moment Espinosa was asking about a lost letter.

  The fact that the handwriting on the letter was Rose’s own made Carmem decide to call the inspector. He was the only one in the midst of all the confusion who seemed to be worried about her. He’d left a card with his numbers at work and at home. She tried the first and was informed that Espinosa was out on a case and hadn’t come back yet. She tried his home and got the answering machine. She left a message. It was six in the evening and the employees of Planalto Minerações were starting to leave. She thought it would be better to take the envelope with her in case the inspector wanted to see her. It had been a peaceful day with Cláudio Lucena away.

  While he was walking through Copacabana, Espinosa was thinking about the confrontation with the kidnapper. At a certain moment, he would trade what the kidnapper thought was the letter for Rose. It was the moment of greatest exposure for both sides. The so-called kidnapping industry had even inspired the birth of firms, domestic and international, specializing in resolving kidnappings—negotiating the amount of the ransom and the conditions under which the hostage would be liberated. In this case, there was no money, only a letter. It was a simple exchange: a prisoner for a letter. Espinosa didn’t think things would happen that way. Unless the kidnapper took extreme measures to conceal his identity, he would have to kill Rose. And Espinosa would have to be killed at the moment of exchange as well.

  Without realizing it, Espinosa had cut around the Peixoto neighborhood, down a block of Rua Santa Clara, and now found himself directly in front of Júlio’s building. Six in the evening. Time for a professor to be home. The parking spot in front was empty, and there was a weak light upstairs. Some people liked to leave a lamp on when they went out, to give the illusion that someone was home. In Espinosa’s opinion, the only thing that accomplished was to light the way for the burglar. All the houses on the street were lit up, and in all of them he could make out the bluish light of the television. He shyly rang Júlio’s bell, as if he were walking into a church in the middle of Mass. The second time he pressed harder. The door to the house next door opened and a middle-aged woman appeared, looking extremely tired.

  “The professor’s gone. If you’re delivering anything you can leave it with me.”

  The voice seemed to emerge from a warped wind instrument, devoid of modulation.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “No. Or when he’s coming back. I just know that they didn’t take much with them.”

  “They?”

  “Yes, him and his girlfriend. Do you work with him?”

  “I do. Thank you for your help.”

  Espinosa walked back down Rua Santa Clara to Peixoto on Rua Tonelero. The neighbor’s phrase was still echoing: “him and his girlfriend.” An absurd idea passed through his mind. He went back home shaking his head, saying no to an invisible interlocutor. He listened to the message on the machine: “Inspector Espinosa, it’s Carmem from Planalto Minerações. I found something that might be what you’re looking for. Call me at home; I should be there around six-thirty.” It was six-twenty. He dialed the number and no one answered. He called back, at intervals that varied from two to five minutes, until six forty-five, when he began to fear that what had happened to Rose had just happened again.

  7

  Around six-thirty, Welber suddenly became extremely agitated. He pressed the buzzer on his headboard and called out for the nurse. Every time he shouted it hurt a lot, but he kept shouting all the same. It was a long time before someone responded. When a nurse entered the room, Welber was trying to get up and yelling:

  “It’s him! It could only be him!”

  “What are you talking about, son, are you crazy? You can’t get up or shout like that.”

  “It’s urgent that I speak with Inspector Espinosa right now.” His dry mouth made it even harder to speak. “Call him.”

  “Calm down, kid. Everything’s okay. Relax.”

  Welber grabbed the nurse by the sleeve of her uniform.

  “He’s going to kill Espinosa, just like he killed the others and almost killed me.”

  “Nobody’s going to kill anyone, son. Just calm down.”

  “I saw it, I saw it like in a dream, I saw it perfectly.”

  “There, there. You must have had a nightmare.”

  “God damn it, don’t you get it? I saw who shot me and who’s now going to kill the girl and Espinosa. I must speak to the inspector. It’s urgent.”

  The more determined Welber was to convince the nurse, the more excited he grew, and the more intent she became on convincing him that it had been nothing more than a nightmare.

  “What nightmare? You’re telling me that getting shot was just a dream?”

  The nurse rang the bell and asked for the on-duty doctor to come in. When he arrived, the nurse and her assistant were trying to get Welber to lie down while he kept screaming. They thought they should give him a sedative, but they wouldn’t do anything without an order from the doctor. Welber said that if they put him to sleep they would be ordering the death of two people. The doctor proposed that they would get him a phone to plug into his headboard if he would promise to remain calm.

  While someone came in with the phone, the nurse hooked bac
k up the serum that had come undone when Welber had started jerking around. The phone connection wasn’t direct; it had to pass through the receptionist. Welber gave her Espinosa’s home number and said it was a matter of life and death. The operator reported that no one was answering. Welber asked that she keep calling every minute.

  “Sir, I can’t do that, I have to answer the other calls.”

  “Miss, if you keep trying you could save two lives. Please.”

  “All right, I’ll alternate the other calls with yours.”

  After a few minutes, Welber was about to embark on a new crisis when the operator called back.

  “Sir, now it’s busy. I’ll keep trying; as soon as I get through I’ll call back.”

  Even before she opened the door to her apartment, Carmem could hear the phone ringing. It was a quarter to seven. It had to be Inspector Espinosa. That day it had taken her longer than usual to get home. She didn’t open the door in time to answer. In her hurry, she left the door open and still had her purse across her chest and two loose bags from the supermarket in the middle of the living room. She immediately called the number she had memorized. Espinosa answered.

  “Thank God!” they both said at once.

  Carmem told him about the envelope and her certainty that it was addressed in Rose’s handwriting. She hadn’t opened it. It seemed to have another envelope inside it; and she couldn’t read it holding it up to the light.

  “Where do you live?” asked Espinosa.

  “In Laranjeiras, near Cosme Velho.”

  Espinosa wrote down the address.

  “I’ll be there in a half hour, max.”

  And when he was already hanging up:

  “Don’t open the door for anyone until I get there.”

  When the hospital operator finally got through, she only reached Espinosa’s answering machine. The tranquilizer they’d put in the IV still hadn’t taken effect. Welber was wide awake and under the impression that the difficulty he was having in getting through to Espinosa was a scheme of the operator in collusion with the doctor. Only the older nurse had stayed in the room. Welber made himself comfortable in the bed, yawned a few times. The nurse turned off the overhead light, leaving on the little lamp on the headboard. Welber closed his eyes and seemed to be fast asleep within a few minutes. As soon as the nurse left, he removed the needle from his hand, sat up, pushed the little ladder away from the bed, and got up to look for a phone in the hall. He fell, taking with him everything on the bedside table, as well as knocking over the metal stand that held up the IV. The noise must have awakened the whole floor.