by Paulo Levy
“Here it is, Raimundo Tavares. Can you write it down?”
Dornelas picked up a pen and paper; as soon as he saw the name on the little screen he remembered having heard or read about him someplace. He wrote everything down, intrigued.
“Please, you gotta be discreet. He’s married.”
“I have no intention of discussing the reasons why he hired your services, which I’m sure are of great value.”
Maria das Graças brightened up. The smile and the twinkle in her eyes came back.
“Tell me one last thing: did your brother have a nickname?”
“That’s easy. He was always Dindinho at home.”
“And on the street?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You’ve never heard of White Powder Joe?”
“I have, but I never thought it had anything to do with my brother.”
Dornelas let out a resigned sigh.
“Okay, here’s what you’re going to do: take my card and call me if you hear anything.”
She put the card in her purse.
“I’ll take you to the clerk’s office so he can take your statement.”
It was going to take Hildebrando, the man in charge of the sector, the whole night to write down that story.
“And thank you for coming in. Where do I find you if I need to talk to you?”
She smiled provocatively, opened her purse, took out a violet-colored card and gave it to Dornelas.
“Twenty-four hours a day, Inspector. Hablo español. I get by in English. I’m available to travel. All you gotta do is call,” she said, batting her eyelids like the children’s kissing- butterfly game his daughter used to play with him.
*
Dornelas went back to his office with Solano, Lotufo and Caparrós right behind him. They had been so taken by Maria das Graças that all three of them squeezed together in the doorway to see who would get in first. After a long day his investigators’ Three Stooges nonsense amused him and made him think how much he enjoyed working with them. It was a close-knit team that had built a very respectable record of solved crimes; one that would be worthy of envy in much bigger cities.
“So who is she?” implored Solano, in a conspiratorial tone.
“The dead guy’s sister,” said Dornelas, sitting down in his chair.
“No kidding. And who was he?”
“Exactly what I was going to ask. Were you able to identify him?”
Solano scowled as he sulkily dropped his eyes to the floor.
“Not yet. There’s no record of him on file around here. He must have come from somewhere else. I’m still looking.”
Differently than in many capital cities around the country, where the records system had already made great advances into the IT era, Palmyra was still dragging itself out of the industrial revolution, with yellowed index cards and records done by typewriter.
With just a hint of meanness – there was no poison drooling down his chin yet – Dornelas slowly took a pencil out of the drawer, picked up a notebook next to the phone and slowly began scribbling something. The other three watched him like chicks waiting for their mother to shove a worm down their throats. He lifted the notebook up and showed them what he had written on it: José Aristodemo dos Anjos.
A questioning look remained on all three faces.
“White Powder Joe?”
“You’re shitting me, Inspector,” exclaimed Lotufo, throwing his hands up.
“I already knew it before talking to her. Councilman Nildo Borges told me.”
The three of them came closer to the desk. Solano and Lotufo took the chairs, with Caparrós standing behind them.
“And how did he know?” asked Solano.
“That’s what I don’t get. He says a constituent told him. It appears that José Aristodemo dos Anjos, or White Powder Joe, or Dindinho – his family nickname according to his sister – was killed in a drug war. But one thing’s for sure: if he were a nobody, a councilman and his supposed sister would not have shown up so quickly to identify him and tell us how he died.”
Silence followed for several seconds. Then Lotufo’s eyes lit up as he ran to his office and ricocheted back like a bullet with a slip of paper in his hands.
“Did you say José Aristodemo dos Anjos, sir?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I found a record of that name at the hospital. The guy had an A1c test yesterday afternoon.”
“In plain language, for God’s sake!”
“It’s a test that measures the level of glycated hemoglobin.”
Dornelas remained in the dark. Lotufo continued:
“It’s how you measure the average amount of sugar found in the blood for up to three months before you take a blood sugar test. The blood sugar test only tells you the glucose level on the day the blood was collected.”
A bright light went on in Dornelas’ head, so bright that Lotufo was able to read his mind.
“That’s right Inspector. The man was a diabetic.”
In a flash Dornelas grabbed the phone.
“Marilda, call Dr. Dulce, please.”
“Right away, Inspector.”
While waiting for Marilda to put the call through, Dornelas gave his deputies orders to comb through the pasts of both Nildo Borges and Marina Rivera, and to immediately send the syringe found by Maria das Graças to the crime lab people.
“I want this Raimundo Tavares guy here in the precinct first thing in the morning.”
The phone rang. Dornelas put it on speaker phone so everyone could hear.
“Inspector, Dr. Dulce.”
“Put her through.”
“Joaquim, my love, is tonight the night you’re going to take me out to dinner?”
His mind, spinning frantically, smashed full steam into a concrete wall; in a flash Dornelas ripped the phone off the hook, disconnecting the conference call.
Dulce Neves, the Chief Medical Examiner at the morgue, nurtured an ill-concealed passion for him ever since Dornelas had gotten married. When she heard of his separation she could hardly contain her joy. It didn’t take her long to offer a friendly, and affectionate, shoulder to lean on, which was politely declined.
“Nine o’clock, at Vito’s bar?” replied an embarrassed Dornelas.
“Nine-thirty. I have to finish up with this stiff you sent me and go home to shower and put on some clean clothes.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up. His men had watched the scene dumbfounded.
“Is today the day you’re going to go through Dr. Dulce’s autopsy?” asked Solano ironically. He was close enough to Dornelas to be able to poke fun at him.
Scowling, Dornelas stood up, got his cell phone from the desk and put it in his pocket.
“And one more thing: anyone says even one word to the press, I’m going to ship him to Rio with a foot up his ass.”
The three looked at him like dogs that had just been beaten by their owner.
He left.
*
“What time is low tide?” the Inspector asked his friend, an experienced fisherman who lived on Monkey Island and owned an old, beat-up fishing boat. The name of the boat was Janua. Whenever he could Dornelas would go fishing with him to catch anchovies and barracudas outside the bay.
“This time of the year, around eight,” answered Claudio.
“Is five o’clock good for you?”
“Up to you, Inspector.”
They shook hands and Dornelas went home.
Chapter 5
It was after eight when Dornelas turned the key and heard Lupi whining on the other side of the door. By now the hem of the sofa would be drenched, no doubt about that.
He dropped his keys on the hall table and turned on his answering machine to hear his ex-wife’s voice complaining about something he didn’t want to know about; he cut it off while she was going on about support payments, or at least that’s what it sounded like.
He picked up the phone and called
her house. It was worth the risk of having to listen to the sermon once again just to be able to speak to his children, Roberta and Luciano, aged twelve and ten. On the second ring an electronic voice instructed him to leave a message. He hung up.
He poured himself a glass of cachaça aged in the miniature jequitibá rosa wood barrel, with the wooden tap and copper bands, that he had inherited from his grandfather, and dropped onto the couch.
The dog had his head on his lap. Neither Lupi’s pee nor his anxiety about having dinner with Dulce Neves could keep him from nestling into the cushions and immediately slipping into a deep sleep.
*
Around ten he felt something crawling up his left leg, a cockroach, or maybe a spider, and he jumped off the couch flaying wildly around as if he were part of an electrifying circus act. It took him a while to realize that his cell phone was vibrating non-stop in his pants pocket.
Embarrassed and feeling like an idiot for the show he’d put on luckily – only seen by the dog – he answered it.
“You’re a shithead, Dornelas,” said Dulce Neves scornfully on the other end of the line.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Order the grilled fish for me.”
He hung up and, still woozy, banged into the doorframe with his shoulder on the way out.
*
“You look beautiful,” Dornelas said rather lamely to Dulce after greeting her with a kiss on the cheek and sitting down across from her at the restaurant.
“Thank you,” she replied sweetly. “I ordered a grilled fillet of sole with broccoli cooked in garlic and olive oil for you.”
“Perfect, thank you. And I’m sorry for being late, it’s been a helluva day. I didn’t sleep well last night and this crime today is going to keep me working overtime...”
Dornelas didn’t want to go straight to the point by asking questions about the crime for fear she might not want to answer. The best thing to do was to throw out the bait bit by bit, get her to start nibbling around the edges until she got hooked.
“It’s been a long time since we last saw each other,” she said, resting her chin on her hands and looking at him tenderly.
“Centuries, by my count,” Dornelas answered looking over her shoulder at the TV in the corner of the bar.
“You were still married.”
“I think so,” he mumbled, eyes on the screen.
She had lost his attention.
“Are you all right?” she added, trying to get it back.
“Getting along.”
“How’s life as a bachelor?”
“Hmmm.”
“If you want to watch TV just say so and I’ll leave.”
“The soap is down to the last few episodes. It’s going to wind up at the end of the week and I want to know who killed the big shot and took off with the money!”
“You watch the soaps now, Joaquim?”
“There’s not much to do at night when you’re a single man like myself.”
“If it’s action and excitement you’re looking for, maybe I can help.”
There she was trying to seduce him again. Out of consideration and respect for his friend it was time for Dornelas to come clean about his feelings, even if it meant running the risk of Dulce getting offended and leaving.
“I really appreciate that, but I’m just not ready to enter into another relationship. Not yet, anyway. My marriage didn’t end well and I miss my children terribly. I want to hug them day and night and they’re not around. It doesn’t mean I don’t care for you, just that now’s not the right time. I’m really sorry.”
His words, frank and direct, ended Dulce’s pipe dream with Dornelas but introduced the chance for a kind of relationship she hadn’t expected. As a woman who dealt daily with the rawness of life and death, Dulce was able to take the blow with dignity.
“Thank you for being candid with me,” she said unhappily. “You want to know the cause of death for the corpse you sent me, right?”
Dornelas felt like he was standing naked in a public square. Shamed down to his bones, he didn’t even have the gall to nod his head.
“Would you like some wine?” he asked, hoping to get out of the embarrassing situation.
“White, please.”
Given his ham-handed behavior he felt he deserved to do penance; offering her a good bottle of wine was the least he could do. He called the waiter and asked for the wine list, then chose the grape, the year and the brand – keeping his wallet in mind – and added two bottles of mineral water. Glancing at the TV for the last time, he turned his attention to Dulce.
“The man was diabetic, Joaquim, that’s why he died. But what’s weird is that I found a very high dose of insulin in his blood, enough to knock over a horse. With the excess of insulin, all his glucose vanished and he went into a hypoglycemic coma, identical to an alcoholic coma. His state of unconsciousness was so deep that his brain activity was paralyzed, leaving him with only his breathing and circulation functioning. Without a glucose shot in the vein he passed from this world to a better one.”
“Did you find any other substance, any drugs?”
“Only residues of marijuana.”
“What time do you think he died?”
“Between two and five in the morning.”
“After how long in this state of coma you mentioned…?”
“Hypoglycemic.”
“That’s it. How long afterwards do you think he died?”
“It’s difficult to say. A couple of hours. It depends on how deep the coma was, which would be directly proportional to the dose of insulin he had in his blood, which, I repeat, was enough to kill a horse.”
“Do you know how long it took?”
“It was quick, between one and three hours.”
“Suicide?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“He had a purplish mark on his back, probably where the insulin was injected. Large doses usually leave a bruise where the needle goes in. Besides, if you want to commit suicide with insulin, you don’t give yourself a shot in the back. It’s a lot easier in the arm, leg or even your buttocks, which are the places most used by diabetics.”
“Thank you.”
Dinner arrived. Dornelas seasoned the fillet of sole with lemon and poured olive oil on the broccoli with a heavy hand. Dulce had the penne al pomodoro pasta sprinkled with basil leaves, one of Vito’s wife’s specialties, and close to the divine according to his friend. They ate in peace, caught up with each other, and emptied the bottle of wine.
“You’re still a shithead, Joaquim. But a shithead I can’t help liking,” she said when they were out in the street.
“Can I take you home?”
“No need. I’m going to stop somewhere else before going home.” Dulce went up to him and kissed his cheek.
“Good night and take care of yourself Inspector Joaquim Dornelas”; the sugar-coated words were thrown out lightly.
“Thank you. You take care too.”
And then when she turned to leave;
“And you really are beautiful.”
“And I’ll pretend I believe you.”
*
Dornelas felt as if he were at the bottom of the sea when the alarm went off at four in the morning. His head was pounding and his body felt like it didn’t belong to him, as if he was some kind of strange mannequin.
He pushed himself out of bed clumsily and went stumbling into the bathroom. Lupi, rolled up in a ball on the rug next to the shower, didn’t move when the inspector came in to relieve himself and get a drink of water straight from the tap by cupping his hands together. Thirst quenched and partially revived, Dornelas put on old clothes and rubber boots, picked up a cap and a flashlight, checked the batteries and went out.
He would be back after sunrise to take the dog for a walk.
*
A fresh breeze was blowing lightly, causing the boats anchored in the bay and tied up at the dock to rock lazily. When seen from far a
way they looked like little cradles rocking to a never-ending lullaby. The gently rippling waves reflected the moon’s fading light; by then it was already low on the horizon and ready to dive into the ocean and go to sleep. The scene had everything; the shape, movement and content of an immense sleeping pill.
Dornelas moved jerkily, like a disjointed doll, to the small beach that led to the pier, further down from where the body was removed the day before. They had agreed to meet there.
The inspector pulled himself up awkwardly and sat on the sea wall, back to the ocean, his body feeling heavy. Then he threw his legs over so he was facing the sea and was taken by surprise to see a man gliding toward him. Had he had so much to drink that he was now seeing a prophet walking on water? He rubbed his eyes, struggled to clear his mind and recognized Claudio, standing upright in the skiff and paddling towards him from Monkey Island.
“Good morning, Inspector,” said his friend, jumping onto the beach.
Dornelas muttered an answer and stepped down onto the sand. Claudio dragged the skiff out of the water and asked:
“Where we going?”
“Up the canal, beyond the curve in the mangrove.”
Dornelas was making an effort to overcome his tiredness and not sound disagreeable. Not wanting to fall sprawling into the water at that time in the morning, he got in the boat carefully and sat down on the floor. His friend pushed the little boat into the water, jumped in and began paddling. Claudio had the dexterity and lightness afoot of an acrobat on a tight-rope.
“Where did you learn that,” asked Dornelas in admiration.
“Learn what?”
“To paddle standing up.”
“My father, Chief.”
“Have you ever fallen?”
“Two or three times...those damn motorboats!”
With his curiosity satisfied, the inspector decided to keep his mouth shut and turned his attention on the water he had just noticed in the back of the boat. With each stroke of the paddle it went rolling back and forth along the bottom, drenching his pant legs.