by Paulo Levy
Maria das Graças lowered her eyes, looking for her next words on the floor. She lifted her head and stared at the inspector before continuing.
“My mom and dad met in Minas Gerais. He was a mechanic. Just before I was born a pal at work convinced him to move with all of us to São Paulo to work in an auto factory.
The story of Maria das Graças’ family emerged sadly and painfully, as if it were coming out of an old, dusty trunk that she kept locked in her heart.
“Once he was in the auto industry it was easy for my dad to get mixed up in the union, the worst thing he coulda done” – she covered her face with her hands and began sobbing quietly. “The military dictatorship killed my dad. I never knew him, not even in a picture.”
Dornelas watched her silently. She lowered her hands and dried her moist eyes with the corner of her apron.
“After that,” she went on, “my mom brought us here, far away from all that stuff. And we’ve been here ever since… and now this thing with my brother…”
Dornelas heard the sound of a door banging open in the kitchen and the pitter-patter of little paws moving quickly over the cement floor. A spotted mutt appeared wagging his tail. He went straight for Dornelas who, while the dog nuzzled his head in the inspector’s pant leg, patted him unalarmed. And then he heard footsteps dragging painfully along the kitchen floor.
It took a while for a wrinkled old woman to come through the door into the room. Her hair was as white and as sparse as a cloud, her skin dry and transparent like a papyrus sheet of paper, barely hiding the bluish veins visible on her shins, arms and temples. They looked like ivy winding around a piece of wood. Dornelas got up and put his hand out.
“Nice to meet you. My name is Joaquim Dornelas. I’m a police inspector.”
“Good morning, Inspector,” said the old lady, ignoring his outstretched hand and crossing the room toward the door, which she opened wide.
“I hate this door always being closed. It’s such a small house. I feel cooped up in here,” said the old lady.
She turned to Dornelas.
“Are you who’s taking care of Dindinho?”
“In a way, yes,” he answered awkwardly.
“What do you mean, ‘in a way’?”
‘Crooks are all the same,’ thought Dornelas. ‘They all have a mother who’s not only willing to forgive them, but who more often than not deny their child’s guilt to their death bed, even if he had committed war crimes.’ Out of respect for her Dornelas didn’t want to get right to the point. But he couldn’t dodge the question either.
“The only way I can, finding the person who killed him.”
“What did you say?” replied the old lady, cupping her hand around her left ear. Dornelas noticed the hearing device stuck in it.
“Finding the person who killed him,” he repeated in a loud voice.
“Oh, I see,” she said in a sad but resigned voice.
Maria das Graças got up and went to the kitchen. She returned with another chair that she placed next to the first.
The old lady sat down.
“I’m tired of so much death in this family, Inspector,” she said sorrowfully. “I’m seventy-eight. I’ve lived too long. I’m tired of seeing the people I love being torn out of my life. That’s the way it was with my husband. And now my son. Enough suffering!”
She stretched out an arm and grabbed her daughter’s hands that were clasped in her lap. Maria das Graças had lowered her eyes. Dornelas felt like giving her an affectionate hug, but this was neither the time nor the place. He sat back down on the couch and gave his full attention to the old lady.
“My son had a black heart, Inspector. He was born with it and he died with it. It’s silly to think we choose what we do in life. It’s life that chooses what we do, where we go. My son was born a drug dealer. His fate was sealed in the cradle. When we moved here and that drug gang crossed his path, I knew right away that sooner or later someone from the police was going to come through that door and tell me he was dead. We know. A mother knows. It can’t be explained, you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“The only happiness I had was that he lasted longer than I expected. May he rest in peace. Hallelujah!” The old woman raised her arms, gazed up at the ceiling, lowered her head and was silent. Maria das Graças did the same thing. Dornelas didn’t know what he should do, caught in the embarrassing silence. He didn’t want to seem indifferent to their pain, but he had a job to do.
“Could I ask you some questions, please?” he asked cautiously.
The old lady sighed and nodded in agreement.
“Okay then,” he said as he settled on the couch. “Do you have any document with a photograph of your son, or with his fingerprints?”
Mother and daughter looked at each other doubtfully.
“As far as I know my brother never had an official ID card,” said Maria das Graças.
“But his birth was recorded as soon as he was born, in Minas Gerais,” the old lady completed.
He knew that there are no fingerprints on birth certificates, but with any luck there should be footprints of the newly-born, which, at this point, would be a big step forward for Dornelas. As thin a thread as it was, this could be the first and only concrete indication that it was José Aristodemo dos Anjos who belonged to the corpse on Dr. Dulce Neves’ table.
“Would you have his birth certificate somewhere?”
“I don’t know where it is. In fact, I never saw my son carrying any document, or wallet, or anything.”
“Can you tell me which city he was born in?”
“Aiuruoca.”
Dornelas mentally filed this information away. But as soon as he thought of the bureaucracy he would be up against to obtain the certificate from a small town in another state he became extremely disheartened. He would get the birth certificate no earlier than thirty days from now, if he were lucky. A simple way to avoid this torment would be for the precinct to have the money to test the corpse and the old lady for DNA in order to prove they were mother and son. The lab at the Criminalistics Institute would have the results in a couple of hours, a few days at most. But that was treatment only afforded to celebrities.
“Thank you. What about dental records, or a recent photo?”
Maria das Graças interrupted.
“Nothin’, Inspector. Not recent or old. Only the one I showed you on the wall. He didn’t let anybody take his picture. He’d leave here really early in the morning wearing dark glasses and a cap so no one would recognize him. And he only came back late at night, the same way. If anyone took a picture of him, I never saw it.”
This information matched the evidence in the files. All the pictures they had didn’t show much because they had either been taken in the dark, with no flash, or because he was always partially hidden by his clothes.
“Where did he work?”
“In a shack in the middle of the island, nothin’ but a dark hole. I don’t know where it is, never been there. I only know that he’d lock himself in that shack in the middle of that stinkin’ marsh all day long, seein’ his clients and doin’ his business and leave late at night.”
Maria das Graças’ voice was heavy with contempt. She went on:
“He didn’t always come home. A lotta times he slept somewhere else. My mom and me never knew if he was sleepin’ somewhere else or if he was already dead. We only breathed easy again when he’d finally show up.”
“May I use the bathroom?”
“Sure,” she replied, getting up and turning around behind her chair.
Dornelas followed her through the door that connected the living room to a simple kitchen. In the middle of it were the table and two chairs belonging to the set. The light from a louvered window was shining down on a small sink holding dirty dishes and an empty dish drainer. On one side was a beaten-up refrigerator. On the other, a four-burner stove with two pots on top of unlit burners next to a closed aluminum door. ‘The old lady and the dog pro
bably came in through there,’ he thought to himself.
The dog never left him on the few steps he’d taken from the couch, still sniffing away at his pant leg.
From the kitchen they went through another doorway that opened onto a tiny hall with three doors. The one on the right was closed. The bathroom door in front of him was open. Through the left one, to the bedroom, Dornelas could see the feet of an unmade double bed and an open and messy closet; women’s clothes on the bed, hanging on the closet doors and on hangers gave the setting a surreal hue.
“Is this your room?”
“Yes,” she said, embarrassed.
“May I go in?”
“Don’t mind the mess.”
“Don’t worry.”
Dornelas followed Maria das Graças into the bedroom.
“According to what you told me this is the bed you were in with Raimundo Tavares, correct?”
“That’s right,” answered Maria das Graças, rolling her hands up in her apron. Dornelas hadn’t expected her to react with genuine embarrassment.
On the other side of the bed, half a meter away, there was a window with two sliding wings, both open. The ornaments on the wrought iron grate, commonly found in construction material stores, were different from those on the doors of the house and on the kitchen window. Below the window bricks were still visible down to the floor. They hadn’t been plastered, spackled and painted like the rest of the wall. The smell of bricks and cement he had noticed when entering the house was stronger here.
“Did you remodel in here recently?”
“Just yesterday, Inspector. There was a door there that my clients came in and out of without needin’ to go through the house. My brother didn’t much like my work. So I thought it’d be better if he and my clients didn’t bump into each other. That’s the reason for the door.”
“So why did you close it?”
“I got scared. I didn’t feel safe havin’ an entrance straight from the street to my bed.” She squirmed where she stood. “And you know, Inspector, even though I do what I do deep down I’m really a family girl. I want my clients to feel comfortable in my house, my life. I may rent out my body, but I don’t sell my soul.”
This Maria das Graças was incredible. As if the mysteries of the universe were not enough, life now presented him with a prostitute who had principles and morals. Dornelas liked the woman.
“What does your mother think of your work?”
“As long as there’s a roof over our heads, food on the table and I don’t harm anyone, she couldn’t care less what I do.”
“What do you mean by harm anyone?”
“Inspector, prostitution’s been around for a mighty long time but nobody accepts us openly. When I say harm anyone I’m sayin’ that the profession is looked at around here as a threat to marriages and steady relationships.”
“And isn’t that true?”
“No way. In fact, you might even say we’re like glue what keeps people together and society workin’. But nobody wants to see it that way. They all like to pretend like there’s nothin’ hiding under the rug, down below the surface. But you more than most know that the real world is below the surface.”
“Are you trying to say that you’re a social worker, that without prostitution society would fall apart?”
“I’m sayin’ it would break up. And you cops would have a real hard time pickin’ up the pieces.”
“Isn’t that a little pretentious on your part?”
“Maybe. But there’s one thing I do know: human beings can’t handle monogamy. At first a man wants to be with one woman, just the one. He swears he’ll love her forever and everythin’ is peachy-keen. Then after a while he starts to turn around walkin’ down the street, lookin’ at all the asses on all the hot girls goin’ by, and dreams of getting them all between the sheets. When he gets back home and can’t get his wife to do half the things he’s been thinkin’ about, whose bed do you think he goes to? And if he can’t take out his frustrations in the warm body of a woman who hugs him and stands by him, he drinks, he kills, he does all sortsa bad things.”
“Remember you’re talking to a police inspector.”
“I know that. But before bein’ a police inspector, you’re a man.”
“Well put.”
“But don’t think women are any different. They want a man around to help raise the kids and pay the bills. But when the lights are turned off and she wants a man inside her, it’s ain’t always the cock of the husband snoring beside her that she’s thinkin’ of. Monogamy’s fine and dandy in front of a priest or at a weddin’, but it’s often a livin’ hell in everyday life for a couple. Are you married?”
“I was until a short while ago.”
“So you know what I’m talkin’ about.”
Dornelas knew, but kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to pursue the subject. The pain from the separation was still intense and he didn’t want to take off his police inspector mask and let show how vulnerable the abandoned man was. Maria das Graças was a practical woman, too practical, and it scared him.
“Can you show me your brother’s room?” he asked, in an attempt to change the subject.
Maria das Graças left the room, took two steps and unlocked and opened the door to her brother’s room. He was faced with an inverted copy of her own, only with men’s clothes scattered around, and much less of them.
“If I remember right, you were in your room with your client, with the door closed when the house was broken into. In your statement you said your brother was asleep, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Did they grab him here in the bedroom or in the living room?”
“In the living room. When they knocked on the door he went to answer it. I was busy, you know...”
“I do. But where was your mother during all this? I didn’t know she existed until coming here today.”
Maria das Graças opened her eyes wide in astonishment.
“Oh my God. I forgot all about my mother in my statement,” she said, putting her hands on her head.
“You did, and that’s serious.”
“Sure it is. You want to question her again?”
“I do. But first I really do have to go to the bathroom.”
“Be my guest.”
Dornelas went in the bathroom with the dog still sniffing his legs. He considered getting rid of it with a swift kick, as he didn’t know the animal might react he closed the door with the dog inside. When he unzipped his pants and took aim at the toilet, the animal stopped sniffing him and instead glued its eyes on his dick. Inhibited, Dornelas gave up, put his pecker back in his pants, zipped them up, and flushed to mislead the lady of the house before going out. Maria das Graças was in front of the stove making coffee. As soon as she saw him she yelled towards the living room:
“Mom, the inspector wants to speak to you again.”
There was a light creaking from the chair as the old woman began her shuffling walk from the living room to the kitchen. She entered, put a hand on her back and leaned on the table with the other.
“What is it now?” shouted the old lady.
“Forgive me for bothering you again, but I need to know where you were when they grabbed your son.”
“What?”
“I want to know where you were when they grabbed your son,” he repeated, louder this time.
“Asleep, of course, in my room, out in the back. It’s what I do every night after the soap.”
Dornelas wanted to ask her what had happened in last night’s episode, the one he missed while having dinner with Dulce Neves, but he refrained.
“Could you show me where it is?”
“Are you going to take me to bed, Inspector?’
‘Sweet old girl, Maria das Graças’ mother,’ thought Dornelas.
“If you show me the way it would be my pleasure.”
Totally indifferent, not a muscle moved in her face. Then she raised her arm and pointed her bony ind
ex finger at the inspector.
“Come here,” said the old woman going around the table and heading towards the door next to the stove. She opened it and went out; Dornelas followed.
The room they entered took up half of the little guest house, the left side, under a roof that covered the back part of the property from one wall to the other. The window opened to a small patio between the bedroom and the kitchen.
The old woman went through the side door next to another that appeared to be the entrance to a bathroom, if an electric shower hung over the toilet and with a pot for a sink could really be considered a bathroom. A deep washtub, an empty bucket and an ironing board propped up against the wall completed the scene.
“This is my room.”
Dornelas stopped in the doorway and saw a 29-inch TV on a narrow little table in front of the bed blasting out a live audience show. The old woman went around the bed and got a ball of yarn and two long needles from the top of the night table. She sat down on the edge of the bed and began knitting.
“What else do you want to know?”
“If you heard anything strange the night your son disappeared.”
“Inspector, I can’t even hear my own farts. How can I hear what’s happening on the other side of the house?”
Dornelas sighed in resignation and suddenly felt an immense desire to get out of there.
“Thank you for your kindness,” he said loudly into the room.
Immersed in her kitting, the old woman didn’t answer. Dornelas went back to the kitchen, accepted the invitation to sit down at the table and was offered some coffee. He was immediately impressed with the aroma and taste. As far as coffee went, Maria das Graças knew what she was doing.
“I’m going to need your help to identify the body. Would you do that?” asked Dornelas, already halfway out the door.
“It won’t be easy Inspector, but yeah, I will.”
“Thank you. I’ll have one of my men get in touch and take you to the City Morgue. The two of you can figure out when’s a good time.”
“Okay.”
“Great. One more thing; exactly where was it that you found the syringe you gave me?”
“Right where you’re standin’.”