Flor headed toward the door against her better instincts; she didn’t like to answer the doorbell without knowing who it was first. The intercom hadn’t buzzed; new doorman, she thought. These people aren’t used to modern technology. She opened the door.
“Officer, what a pleasant surprise. Could it be that my attempt to seduce you worked after all?”
“You’re seductive. You don’t need to seduce anyone. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Really?”
“Yes. May I come in?”
“Of course. Excuse me. Come in.”
As always in her presence, Espinosa’s sense of discomfort only grew.
“Today it’s your turn to ask what I’m doing here.”
“Unfortunately, it’s never for the reason I want. But now that you ask, Officer, what are you doing here?”
“I came to find out what you were doing last night in my apartment.”
“But I already spelled it out for you: I went to try to seduce you.”
“That’s what you said. And what didn’t you say?”
“What are you trying to find out? It’s not the first time you’ve come into my apartment to ask accusatory questions.”
“I’ve never accused you of anything, and I’ve never come into your apartment without your consent or without being invited in.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what you were hoping to accomplish in my apartment last night,”
“Besides getting in the way of your plans with that girl?”
“Besides getting in the way of my plans with that girl.”
“Why are you hung up on this?”
“Because we both know that you didn’t come over to seduce me. Or rather, you did, but that wasn’t the main reason. Just like we both know that you didn’t seek out Vieira because Magali asked you to. She never asked you a thing like that. And it wasn’t that you were her legacy to Vieira; Vieira’s the one who’s been inherited by you, your guarantee of a possible future.”
“Officer, if I invited you in, now I’m inviting you to leave.”
“Fine. But remember that you still haven’t answered my question.”
Vieira woke when the telephone rang, not immediately sure whether the phone was part of the movie he was watching. He stared at the television while realizing that the phone was still ringing. He answered.
“Hi, sweetheart. It took you a while to answer.”
“Flor.”
“Vieira, I’m scared.”
“What happened? Did they do something?” Vieira’s hand patted the bed in search of the weapon as he snapped to full wakefulness.
“Nothing new. It was your friend Espinosa who came over here again. He scares me. He shows up without warning, undresses me with his eyes, and asks questions that make me uncomfortable, questions about Magali.”
“But what? He just called me to say that we needed to protect you. He was worried about you.”
“Maybe that’s really why he called, or maybe he was calling to make sure you were home and that he could come over here without the risk of running into you?”
“Flor, Espinosa’s my friend. He’s a serious guy.”
“Serious friends also have dicks, and it wouldn’t take much to get his hard.”
“Did he try something? Proposition you?”
“No. He was only asking me questions to scare me. But you’ll see, I bet that’s what he wants, to scare me so he can come save the day.”
“I don’t think that’s it, Flor. I’ve known Espinosa for a long time, and he’s always been trustworthy.”
“Darling, when there’s a woman or money involved, no man is completely trustworthy.”
“Flor, get in a cab and come over here.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Because of what I said?”
“Espinosa’s not the one who worries me. There’s a guy who’s making threats. They might try something on you, just to shake you up. I don’t want anything to happen.”
After he hung up, Vieira sat wondering whether the threats Espinosa had invoked were real. After all, when there was a woman involved, no man was completely trustworthy.
From Flor’s building to the Rua Hilário de Gouveia was less than ten short blocks. In spite of the heat and the time of day, Espinosa preferred to walk. As anticipated, he was already sweating when he reached the entrance to the station, and he still had to walk up a flight of stairs. No sooner had he set eyes on the second floor than a detective announced that Vieira had been calling nonstop for the past half hour. Before anything else, though, Espinosa found an air conditioned room and waited a few minutes, until he had dried off a bit. Apparently, Vieira had called every ten minutes. He hadn’t left any messages, only demanding urgently to speak with Espinosa. When Espinosa called, Vieira answered on the first ring.
“Espinosa, I think we’ve found the guy.”
“How? Who is it? Where?”
“Wait. Call me from a public phone.”
Espinosa took the stairs much more quickly than usual and found a public phone that wasn’t directly in front of the station. Once again, Vieira answered instantaneously.
“The guy didn’t let us have the tip for cheap. We had to release his boyfriend, who was being held at the station. Listen closely before you go running off after the son of a bitch. He’s staying in a hotel in Catete, near the palace. The informant didn’t know the name, but he said it was two blocks from the Museum of the Republic, which gives us four likely addresses, two on the Rua do Catete and two on a side street. I know what you’re thinking—that the bastard’s only a few feet away from your friend that girl the painter and we’ve got to act fast. The guy isn’t a cop, but he was hired by a group of cops that includes two sergeants, which means that we can’t count on anyone besides your friend Maldonado, who I really hope is on our side, ‘cause if he’s not we’re fucked. Flor’s here with me and is going to stay locked in here; I’ve told her not to open the door to anyone while we’re looking for the guy. I’m going to get a taxi. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes on the corner of the Avenida Copacabana.”
Espinosa had left his suit coat to dry in front of the air conditioner; his pistol was in a desk drawer. He went back upstairs, got the gun and an extra cartridge clip, put on his jacket, and announced that he was going down to the Forensic Institute to meet one of Clodoaldo’s relatives. Before ten minutes were up, he was on the corner Vieira had indicated; in five more, a taxi drove up, blinking its lights at him.
They went straight to Kika’s apartment to make sure she was all right and to draw up a plan with Maldonado. They found the kid sitting on the staircase landing between the first and second stories of the building. From where he was sitting, he could see anyone coming up the stairs and could also keep an eye on the girls’ door. He looked suspicious when he saw Espinosa approaching with someone he didn’t know. The paper bag covering his right hand was pointed straight at Vieira’s chest. Espinosa introduced them to each other and the hand emerged from the paper bag grasping an automatic pistol, which he shifted to his other hand while he greeted the retired officer.
They went up to Kika’s apartment. She opened the door wearing her painting clothes; her T-shirt looked like an abstract canvas. The courtesies were quick, as was the decision to leave one of them to guard Kika while the other two went to investigate the likeliest hotels. For Vieira, there was no question that the kid would keep an eye on the girl; for Maldonado, who didn’t like to be treated like a kid, it seemed risky to let an old man run after a murderer; Espinosa preferred to leave Kika with the kid rather than with the old man. The conversation, between just the three of them, took place in the living room. The closed blinds filtered the intense light of an early-summer afternoon through the room. They decided to leave Kika with Maldonado while the two officers visited the hotels.
They started with the one closest to Kika’s apartment. It was a pretty colonial building, recen
tly renovated, and, while not luxurious, was certainly attractive. The manager guaranteed that none of her guests met Espinosa’s description. Espinosa’s emphasis on the importance of the information she was giving didn’t alter her certainty. The hotel didn’t have many rooms; many were occupied by permanent guests, and she remembered the short-term occupants perfectly. The next hotel was just down the block, less than a hundred meters away. It was much more modest, unattractively designed for less refined tastes. The manager fit the establishment: he wasn’t very clean or welcoming and was made visibly uncomfortable by the presence of the police. He spread a pile of registration forms over the counter. They appeared to have been filled out when the hotel was first opened; he seemed to hope that that would fulfill his duties toward the law. When Espinosa asked for some more recent paperwork, he mumbled something unintelligible and started rummaging through the papers on the counter. The scene would probably have gone on for some time if Vieira hadn’t thought to speed things up by pulling the guy across the counter, scattering the papers on the ground, and sticking the barrel of his revolver under his cheek.
“I’m gonna count to ten, to give you time to think, and if I’ve gotten to ten and you haven’t told us everything we want to know, this motherfucking gun’s gonna accidentally go off inside your mouth, ripping out your brain on its way out, which would be a terrible loss. One, two, three …”
They left absolutely convinced that the guy they were looking for wasn’t there, though they did learn the names of all the lowlifes who occasionally took shelter in that cave. As they walked out the door, Vieira noticed his colleague’s disapproving stare.
“Sorry, buddy, but we’re in a hurry.”
“I can tell.”
The next hotel took a lot more time to get through. It was much bigger than the previous two, boasting a few stars on the plaque by the door, comfortable and distinguished. The registry was up-to-date, but there were a lot of single male guests, any number of whom could have matched Espinosa’s description. After asking a few maids, doormen, and waiters, he was pretty sure that there were no one-hundred-percent matches. Of the few who had something in common with the description, two were now in their rooms. Only after protesting did the manager allow them to fake a room service order so that Espinosa could see them. Both were annoyed to be awakened from their naps. The two who weren’t in had stayed in the hotel before; Espinosa and Vieira agreed that they weren’t suspects.
The fourth hotel was smaller and less formal, and most of the guests were Spanish speakers, which made them easier to dismiss as suspects. Even so, they wasted another hour confirming that the man wasn’t now and had never been a guest there. They decided to try one more hotel, on the corner of Flamengo Beach. Its location didn’t match the informant’s description, but it was the only one left in the area.
As they were walking back to Kika’s building, silent, tired, and disappointed, they both reached the same conclusion at the same time. The man had never been in a hotel in the vicinity. While Espinosa ran up the stairs to tell Maldonado, Vieira called his apartment. No one answered.
He had instructed Flor not to leave under any circumstances whatsoever; he had even told her not to answer if someone rang the doorbell, or if the phone rang—the guy could be calling to see if anyone was home. She wasn’t answering.
He met Espinosa coming down the stairs with Maldonado behind him, asking questions.
“Well?” asked Espinosa.
“I don’t know what’s going on at home; I told Flor not even to answer the phone, so there’s no point in calling. I’m going there now. Someone has to keep watch over the painter girl … and God help the rest of us.”
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Maldonado no longer knew what he was protecting or against whom.
“It’s simple.” Vieira was the one who answered. “The fucking informant was planted by the police. I did think he got back to us pretty fast; we contacted him one day and two days later he was already back with all the information we needed. He sent us over here, while the guy we’re looking for is taking his time getting ready somewhere else. They’ve been playing with us the whole time, while they kill people they consider dispensable.”
“Why go to so much trouble?”
“Because they want to show us how powerful they are, because they want to scare us, because they think we’re trying to take away their business.”
Flor didn’t like being alone in Vieira’s apartment; she felt the eyes of Maria Zilda and Magali watching her. Nothing in that apartment was familiar to her; even the TV dated back to the dead wife. She bet he hadn’t even changed the toilet seat; she probably had to sit where the old bitch had stuck her ass. Fantasies and imaginary dialogues occupied her waiting time. She didn’t have the slightest curiosity about looking through the closets, the drawers, the shelves, the kitchen: nothing interested her. To her mind, the past was a bunch of debris awaiting removal.
Vieira had been gone for more than an hour when the doorbell rang. She remembered what Vieira had said. She went to the door and looked through the peephole. There was a man in a suit looking at her. She shrank back, holding her breath, looking for another door, which didn’t exist. She thought about going to the window and screaming for help. She started to move away when she heard a voice.
“Dona Flor, I’m Detective Marcos. Sergeant Vieira sent me to protect you.”
Flor went back to the door and, moving slowly, looked through the peephole once again. The man was there. He looked normal enough, was decently dressed, and wasn’t trying to force his way in. He was waiting for her to make up her mind.
“Show me your badge,” she said, her mouth stuck to the door, as if to lend her words the necessary touch of drama.
The man took a wallet from his pocket and held it up to the peephole. Flor saw something shiny that looked like a police I.D., but even so she hesitated to open the door.
“Dona Flor, I know that Officer Vieira told you not to open the door to anyone until he got back, but he didn’t know he was going to run into me.”
“He never mentioned any Marcos to me.”
“I’m not a friend of his, I’m a friend of Officer Espinosa’s.”
Flor thought the two references were good enough. She undid the latch, turned the lock, and removed the chain, pulling open the door. The man greeted her, asked if he could come in, and waited patiently for her to lock the door again. After they’d examined each other for a few seconds—during which time Flor decided that she’d made the right decision—the man took one of the chairs from the dinner table, placed it with its back to the window and its face to the door, then sat down himself to make sure it was where he wanted it. He got up, slid one of his hands inside his jacket, and stuck the other into the outside pocket. The first returned with a revolver, the second with a roll of nylon rope. With the gun pointed to Flor’s head, he said in a clear, sharp voice:
“Sit down, please.”
Flor shrank back and looked toward the door.
“Don’t try any nonsense. If you try to scream, I guarantee that I’ll blow your brains out before the sound leaves your mouth. Sit down and place your arms behind the back of the chair.”
The man secured her wrists with the nylon rope and taped her mouth shut with duct tape. He tied her legs to the chair. The only thing that remained relatively free was her neck, allowing Flor to nod and shake her head. His work done, the man walked toward the door, where he stood for a few seconds observing the scene.
“If you try to jerk the chair onto the ground, you’ll stand a good chance of breaking your neck. I suggest you don’t experiment.”
He turned around, unlocked the door, looked into the hallway in both directions, and, slamming the door, left. Only after she heard the noise of the elevator door could Flor convince herself that she wasn’t dead. Her eyes filled with tears, but she tried desperately to restrain herself from crying; if her nose got clogged up, she wouldn’t have any way to breathe. With
the effort and the panic, she wet her pants. She tried to cheer up: at least she was alive. Vieira would come back and free her. She thought about dragging the chair over to the window to put herself in sight of the people in the building across the street, but the man had tied her feet high enough off the ground that she didn’t have any support and would fall over. The urine leaked through her clothes and the wicker seat of the chair and formed a puddle on the floor. She thought that if it had been feces instead of urine she might have vomited, in which case she’d be dead. Every thought deepened her panic.
When Vieira found her, an hour and a half later, she had almost fainted.
“Espinosa, I’m going to kill the son of a bitch! I will kill him myself! I’m going to rip off—”
“Hold on. What happened?”
“What happened is I’m going to rip the balls off the son of a bitch.”
After a few attempts, interrupting himself with exclamations, Vieira managed to provide a rough outline. His anger far surpassed what he had felt when he himself had been attacked. He was drooling with rage and spitting into the telephone. His sentences were punctuated with obscenities and couldn’t convey the indignation that had overtaken him.
“Espinosa, the faggot came into my apartment, tied my woman to a chair, and vanished without a word, just leaving the scene set up to show what he could do—”
“Did he hurt Flor? Did he do anything to her?”
“Nothing more than gag her and tie her up to a chair like a mummy. The guy is fucking with us. He tied you up inside your own home, and now he’s tied up Flor inside my apartment. Damn, Espinosa, we’re sure looking like idiots.”
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