“Officer, the girl’s not home, no one was around to give me any information, and her downstairs neighbor didn’t see when she left. I’ve been here since five; she could have gone straight to the Avenida Atlantica without stopping off at home.”
“Meet me on the Avenida Atlântica.”
There wasn’t a service car available, and he didn’t have time to borrow one; he got a taxi on the corner. It was still light outside and the traffic coming from downtown was heavy, but there weren’t many people on the sidewalk and none of the salespeople had yet arrived. There was no sign of Kika. Espinosa looked in the garage where she stored her metal stand, glanced into the nearby bars and checked the benches and coconut stalls by the beach, but the people around were completely different from the ones, who showed up after seven. The heavy traffic meant that he had to wait quite a while for Maldonado.
“Stay here,” he told the younger cop when he arrived. “I’m going to my apartment to see if she’s left a message on my machine. If you need to call, use the pay phone across the street. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“It’s still early, Officer. She could be on her way.”
“But from where? She always comes from her house. She wouldn’t have been walking around all day carrying the paintings she shows at night. It’s strange that she didn’t stop off at home.” He said the last sentence while hailing a taxi.
He opened the door to his apartment with his eye set on the answering machine; it blinked, indicating more than one message. None was from Kika. He called her answering service again, leaving an urgent message. He got his car and headed for the Rua do Catete. Most of the traffic was traveling in the other direction, but it was still slow going. He parked in front of the house at six-ten, even though a sign indicated that curb-side parking was allowed only after eight. The window of Kika’s apartment was open, and there was a light on on the third floor. He had to ring the bell a few times before someone buzzed him up. Espinosa ran up the three flights of stairs; when the girl opened the apartment door he was gasping.
“Espinosa … Officer Espinosa … friend of Kika’s.”
“Calm down. I know who you are. Take a deep breath. What happened?”
“Is Kika here?”
“No. She should be on the Avenida Atlântica.”
“I’ve just come from there. Do you know if she came by here?”
“I don’t know. I only got here about fifteen minutes ago.”
“And the other friend of yours?”
“She’s on duty tonight.”
“Can you look in Kika’s room to see if her pictures are there?”
“Sure. Did something happen to her?”
“No. I hope not.”
The girl didn’t invite Espinosa in. He thought it might have been because of the tiny proportions of the hot pants she was wearing, or perhaps because of the mess prevailing in the house, which he could see from the doorway. She left the door open while doing what he asked. She returned immediately, shaking her head.
“They’re all there. The ones she shows are wrapped up. What are you worried about? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No, nothing. It must be my imagination. I don’t think anything happened. It’s just that things have happened in the last few days. Any idea where she might have gone?”
“The week before Christmas she wouldn’t go anywhere but the Avenida Atlântica. She’s got high hopes of selling at least three more paintings.”
“If she comes back, tell her to call my house immediately.”
He returned to the Avenida Atlântica convinced that she wouldn’t show up that night. The first vendors were setting up, and Maldonado was standing by the door to the garage where Kika kept her stand. When Espinosa got there, he was talking with the building’s doorman.
“Nothing, Officer. She hasn’t been here.”
“She didn’t go home to get her pictures, either, or leave me a message.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any idea. The only thing that reassures me is that the guy who attacked me didn’t mention her name. Though, in fact, he didn’t mention anyone’s name. She must have gone to an opening, a party, or run into an old flame, or gone to visit some relative …”
“Definitely.”
“There’s something else. The man who attacked me didn’t waste his energy. He didn’t take advantage of my being tied up to assault me or do anything unnecessary; he was extremely economical with his actions.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because if he didn’t see Kika with the kid—and she was only with him once—there’s no reason to try anything on her.”
“Definitely.”
“You already said that.”
“It’s all I’ve got for now, Officer.”
“All right, Maldonado, sorry. Let’s try to find the girl.”
It was eight; there was still time for Kika to arrive, but neither of the policemen believed that would happen. Espinosa left a note with the garage doorman, expressly ordering him to give the note to the girl with the pictures and not to leave her side until putting her in the first taxi that appeared. They decided that the only possibility was her apartment. Before heading there, however, they stopped by Espinosa’s to see if there were any messages.
The machine was blinking. The message was from Kika. “Shit, you never pick up…. I’m home…. I’m scared.”
It took them only about ten minutes to reach the house in Catete. Her friend opened the door, making sure that it was them and no one else. Both of the girls were frightened. The reality of all the recent deaths and their implicit threat had suddenly sunk into Kika’s mind. She was seated on her bed, dressed, shoes on, anxiety written on her face, as if she was prepared for immediate danger. When she saw the two detectives, she smiled, relieved, but didn’t get up from the bed.
“What happened?” Espinosa asked as soon as he walked into the room.
“When I came home to get the pictures, my downstairs neighbor told me that a big, tall man had come looking for me, talking in a commanding voice. From his description, it was nobody I knew. I immediately remembered the message that you left about the guy who broke into your apartment. I also remembered the kid. I called the station, but you’d already left; I called your house, but the machine picked up. I was scared to go back home. If he had been looking for me, he surely would have come back. So I started walking through the streets, killing time until you got home; when I realized that you still weren’t there, I went to a movie theater and waited there. I changed places several times, but nobody was behind me; when the lights came back on, I exited with everybody else, left a message for you, and came back home. Do you think it was the same guy who broke into your apartment?”
Her description left no room for doubt. It was the same man. Espinosa didn’t want her to panic, but he also didn’t want to downplay the situation and allow her to let down her guard.
“I’m not sure. But just in case, let’s pretend it was. Until we get the guy, you’re not going anywhere without protection. If it’s the same guy, we’re dealing with a pro. We can’t make it any easier for him.”
“What great timing.”
“We’re going to try to make sure that you have a safe Christmas.”
The fact was, Espinosa had no idea how to do that. He decided to spend the night at her house. He told the girls that he would sleep on the sofa in the living room and dismissed Maldonado until the next morning.
The three of them sat talking until almost midnight. After Kika and her friend went to their rooms, Espinosa settled down on the sofa, his pistol next to his body. On a little round table in front of him, there was a fake Christmas tree, ornamented with two strings of blinking colored lights. As soon as the lights were out and silence fell in the apartment, he realized that he wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if he’d wanted to. He thought of it as “silence” only because no one was talking; th
ere were plenty of strange noises: creaking boards, slamming doors, different sounds coming from the ceiling; and the traffic on the Rua do Catete didn’t ease up even in the wee hours. For someone used to Peixoto, the apartment seemed like a room of special sound effects. Sleep was impossible. Whenever he managed to nod off, he always awoke with a jerk, fumbling on the sofa for his gun.
When the third roommate arrived in the morning, she came face-to-face with a pistol lying on the sofa next to a man’s overcoat. Espinosa was in the kitchen trying to hook up the coffeemaker. He had a little bit of trouble explaining what he was doing there, but since the girl had already heard about him and was coming off her night shift (just like Espinosa himself) and they were both so drowsy, they saved the explanations for later.
When Maldonado got there at eight in the morning, the three girls were asleep. Espinosa decided to stay in the apartment until the first of the girls woke up; after that, he and Maldonado would change places, alternating between the apartment and the sidewalk near the building’s entrance, where they could react quickly. The only access to the second and third floors was via the wooden staircase that led directly to the door on the street; it groaned terribly beneath the slightest weight, like an alarm.
For Vieira, reclaiming his I.D. was like reclaiming his identity as a police officer. Nobody is an ex—police officer, he thought. A police officer is like a general or a president: even after they leave office, people still call them General or President—sometimes even General-President. The comparison did not imply in any way that he was equating those offices; it was simply an acknowledgment that certain jobs bestowed a permanent title. The first precaution he vowed to take the morning after he recovered his wallet was to have a color copy made of the card; he would leave the original at home. Neither the original officer nor the original wallet would be out on the streets.
He finished reading his newspaper but stayed in bed waiting for Flor; though he no longer needed her to help with his medicine, she still came by every morning to tend his wounds. She had her own key and entered without having to ring the bell. The neighbors wondered if she was the officer’s new wife. She looked more like his daughter. Not because they looked alike—she was too cute—but because of her age. Flor feigned ignorance of their curiosity, slipping the key in the door and walking inside with confidence. In order to reach the same status that Magali had had, all she was missing was a joint checking account, but that was just a matter of time.
The goal of the compresses and the creams was to diminish the horrible reddish yellowish color of his bruises, but for Vieira, Flor’s administration was much more loving than nursing, an activity that she extended far beyond the call of duty. His genitals had not been wounded by the attacker’s blows, but very often a little oil or a compress would be applied to activate his blood flow. It was rather common for the nursing to stretch out for more than an hour.
“Let’s have lunch together,” Vieira proposed.
“Sure, love.”
“This afternoon, I’ve been thinking about going to buy your Christmas present.”
“Wow!”
“Do you want to come with me to choose it?”
“No, baby, that would ruin the surprise.”
“But you’d be sure I wouldn’t buy the wrong thing.”
“There’s no such thing! It’d be a present from you, and that’s what matters.”
“So you don’t want to come with me?”
“It’s not that, sweetheart, it’s that a Christmas present has to be a surprise. You have to find it at the foot of the bed when you wake up.”
“That’s for people who still believe in Santa Claus. We’re grown-ups, we can go have lunch and choose your present.”
“I can’t today, sweetheart.”
“Goddamn it, don’t tell me you have to work this afternoon.”
“It’s just that Junior’s coming by today.”
“Who?”
“Junior. It’s his first time. His dad made the date.”
“Junior? Who the fuck is Junior? Is Junior a name, or what? Junior, to me, is someone who has the same name as his father.”
“That’s exactly it. He has the same name as his father, except he has ‘Junior’ at the end of it.”
“Whose junior is this Junior, damn it?”
“His father’s! Who else’s?”
“And who the fuck is the father?”
“The guy who brought me from Recife to Rio. He’s helped me a lot. He’s the one who rented my apartment for me. I promised him that Junior’s first time would be with me.”
“Motherfucker! You’ve been promised to him? Who’s getting off here, you or him?”
“You’re overreacting, darling. He’s just a kid.”
“And he’s going to stay that way, damn it—at least as long as his father has to grab his dick and stick it in a woman’s cunt.”
Vieira was storming through the apartment. The clothes he had planned to wear were thrown on the ground; his screams gave way to coughing, and his anger made his bruises even redder.
“You’re all wound up.”
“Wound up? Wound up, me? Wound up? You’ve never seen me wound up. This is just the beginning.”
“And what’s the end like, huh? Do you end by killing women?”
Vieira stopped short. He looked at Flor as if she were a stranger. He kept quiet long enough for his blood to resume its normal flow. With difficulty, he picked up the things that he had thrown on the floor. He took his shirt and started getting dressed.
“Sorry … I didn’t mean …”
Flor approached him with outstretched arms.
Vieira continued to button his shirt slowly; he tucked it into his pants—the belt was the one that Flor had bought him to replace the one that had been found tied around Magali’s legs—then picked up his wallet and keys from the dresser and started moving toward the door.
“Darling, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that you were the one who killed …”
Vieira didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at her. He walked toward the door, checked to make sure that he had his keys, and left.
He went down the Rua Francisco Sá, turned left onto the Avenida Copacabana, and walked several blocks. He needed to do something, and since he didn’t know what to do he kept walking. After strolling for a while, he remembered the plan to make a copy of his I.D. card. Even though, after Flor’s behavior, it no longer mattered to him. He didn’t want to think about Flor’s words; if he did, he would have to do something, and he didn’t want to do anything, so he didn’t think about it. It occurred to him that he no longer walked the way he used to: his strides long, his chest puffed out, his head erect, his expression set, even when he wasn’t looking for anything or anyone in particular. He had walked only about five hundred meters now and could already feel the muscles in his legs tiring. He’d passed more than one print shop, but none of them made color copies. If it wasn’t color, the word POLICE, in red, wouldn’t stand out the way it needed to. In one of the places, they informed him that there was a stationery shop that made color copies two blocks farther along.
“Front and back?” the guy in the stationery shop asked. It was a rhetorical question, so much so that he didn’t even wait for the confirmation.
Vieira didn’t answer. He stood staring at the photocopier, one machine looking at another. Once the lamination was complete, he paid without even glancing at the finished product. He put the original document in his back pocket together with the copy and kept walking. He thought about Flor again only when his muscles started to hurt. More specifically, he thought about what Flor had said. In normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have worried about it, or he would’ve screamed loud enough to burst her eardrums. But he was paralyzed by the possibility that what she’d said was true, and the fact that it had been Flor who’d said it, and in such an aggressive way. He liked Flor as much as he had liked Magali. They were both so different from Maria Zilda. He walked slowly. He attri
buted his fatigue not to the distance he had covered but to the weight of the ideas in his head.
He entered his apartment hoping to see Flor. Until he opened the door, he didn’t know what he would do or say if he found her there. He couldn’t stay angry for long; he just needed a catharsis. He wasn’t a resentful person, even though Flor’s accusatory phrase had struck him deeper than most. His own reaction had been unusual; he didn’t usually answer with silence. He couldn’t even call it a reaction: it was more of a nonreaction. He had been paralyzed and had chosen to run away, something he had never done before.
Flor was no longer there.
Kika emerged from her room wearing an oversized T-shirt that nearly reached her knees, with only a pair of panties underneath. She was surprised to see Maldonado on the same sofa where she’d left Espinosa the night before. Even though she liked the detective, she had to control her expression in order not to reveal her disappointment. But she was relieved not to encounter a stranger.
“Morning, Kika. Sorry about barging in like this.”
“Good morning, Maldonado, I wasn’t expecting—”
“Espinosa went home to sleep a little; from the way he looked when I got here this morning, he hadn’t slept a wink. Are you feeling any better?”
“I am. Maybe I was overreacting, maybe it wasn’t the same guy, maybe—”
“In situations like this, a maybe means a possibility, and you can’t take chances with a possibility like that.”
“But … how long is this going to last?”
“This what? The threat or the protection?”
“I don’t know…. It’s an exceptional situation. Why don’t we have a cup of coffee to clear our minds … my mind, I mean.”
“Mine too. I’d love some coffee.”
Kika was taller than Maldonado, and together they looked like a Hollywood comedy team. But there was no amusement in their faces this morning. He was one of the few—maybe the only—officer in the precinct Espinosa trusted to guard Kika, and he was aware of this.
December Heat Page 18