“So am I. I think the way you talk is fucking amazing.”
“Thank you. Moving along. If the guy checked into two hotels it’s because he’s going to use one of them as a perch and the other for the scene he’s concocting. Here he’s given a new name, there he’s made a dinner reservation. Let’s go back to the Meridien. What worries me is that the reservation was made for two people. Who’s his guest?”
“Shit, Espinosa, even criminals fuck and celebrate Christmas. He must have found a woman.”
“I doubt it. As meticulous as he is, he’ll play only after his work is done, and I suspect his work’s not yet done.”
The rain was letting up, and the leaden gray of the sky had given way to light gray, offering hope that they could walk around the city that night unprotected. The manager of the Meridien didn’t offer the brightest of smiles when he saw the two return. He would prefer a quiet thug to two loud cops. Until now, however, no one outside of the security staff had noticed Vieira or Espinosa.
“So, Officer, you didn’t have any luck?”
“I did. And it brought me back to your hotel.”
“Officer, you don’t want to let my men take care of this? They know the house like the back of their hands; they’ve all been trained for emergency situations. It would save you gentlemen some work, and help avoid putting our guests at unnecessary risk.”
Espinosa couldn’t say he’d had a lot of rest in the last two days: he’d slept for a total of less than three hours, his few moments of pleasure had been tense and nerve-racking, he’d been running after a suspect who was always one step ahead, and he was worried that someone was going to die before the night was over. It could be someone very close to him; it could be he himself.
“Sir, the man we’re after has killed, this month alone, two children and two men; he’d kill your pretty boys one by one and pile them up on the reception desk for you to distribute as Christmas favors to your foreign visitors. So stop talking nonsense and try to help us before I have to put someone from my team on reception.”
The mere idea of a cop acting as chief of reception was enough to transform the man into the most cooperative being imaginable. Espinosa and Vieira returned to their post upstairs and one of the hotel’s security agents stayed behind at reception; everyone had walkie-talkies. Since they could be in for a long wait, Espinosa ordered some sandwiches and fruit juice, along with a thermos full of coffee.
They were sitting only a few meters from the elevators. If word came of the man’s arrival, they could intercept him without much effort. They were separated from the ground floor by escalators, and from the reception by only one flight of stairs. The man would have to pass through reception. When he requested his keys, the hotel security guard would identify him and warn Espinosa as soon as he picked up his suitcase and headed for the elevators. Espinosa had ordered them not to even think of doing anything else; the thought of trying to arrest him forcibly should not cross their minds. They were to leave everything to him and Officer Vieira.
The possibility that the man would arrive before dinnertime was remote, unless he’d decided to reconnoiter the area first. The receptionist at the other hotel had also been instructed to inform them immediately if he put in an appearance, but Espinosa considered that improbable as well. Should they split up, each guarding one hotel? The idea passed through his mind before he immediately discarded it. Vieira was determined to capture the man for the sake of his self-esteem, but in a confrontation between the two the man could destroy Vieira. Vieira might act impulsively and lose everything, including his own life.
Espinosa didn’t think of waiting time as time he could use for mental activity. He was doing something specific, which was waiting, and that meant that the time spent waiting was spoken for until the awaited object arrived. Thinking, for Espinosa, wasn’t a matter of articulating concepts logically; it was a mortal clash between pure reason and a limitless imagination. His imagination accounted for almost all the action he considered to be real mental activity. Though he knew that people thought of him as a cold rationalist, he recognized that in fact he was more of a semidelirious fantasist.
Vieira’s mood visibly veered from excitement and anxiety to near exhaustion. Sometimes he even nodded off. Vieira was old enough to be Espinosa’s father, and when Espinosa was with Vieira he felt a kind of nostalgia for his own lost father—which made the incident earlier that morning even more problematic. These ideas didn’t enter his mind clearly; instead they worked their way into his head vaguely, between confused thoughts and feelings, while Vieira catnapped, trusting completely in his comrade’s alertness—a trust that made Espinosa even more uncomfortable.
He thought back to his encounters with Flor, wondering what he’d done to provoke her latest offensive. No woman in the world would offer herself that way, unless she was a hundred-percent sure she’d get what she wanted. And she could have that certitude only if he’d given her some unmistakable hint. He couldn’t recall anything in particular. Such signs were not always obvious, he knew, and he was aware that women could pick up signals invisible to others—especially a woman whose ability to pick up on them served as the basis of her career. But still there was something else, something beyond good and evil: Flor’s combination of beauty and sensuality. No man alive would have thought of his friend when a woman like Flor burst into his bedroom completely nude just as he was coming out of the shower. And she knew that.
The crackling of the walkie-talkie brought him back down to earth. It was just static. They had to pace around a little to keep their legs limber. They had enough space to stretch, and the innumerable cups of juice and coffee they downed often forced them down the short path to the bathroom.
Espinosa left messages for Kika at regular intervals, including the number of the hotel. The longer they waited, the more he felt that the whole thing was a delusion: there was no gunman staying in two hotels at the same time (itself an absurd idea). All they had was a name, which wasn’t even the same at the two hotels. From there, his delirious mind had created a fiction that he was now trying to lure back to reality: the idea that there was a police plot against him was persecution mania, pure and simple …
It was nine-thirty at night when a kid from reception approached with a piece of paper. Beneath the printed word “Message” he’d written: “Dona Kika asks me to inform you that she will arrive at the hour agreed.”
“What? What hour agreed? Why didn’t you call me?”
“She said she was calling from a pay phone, that it was raining, and that it would ruin her hair.”
Espinosa was completely mystified. Vieira, wide-awake, looked at him, at a loss.
“What happened?”
“Kika called saying she’d arrive at the time we’d arranged.”
“Arrive where?”
“It can only be here. If she called here to leave a message like this, it’s because she got the messages I left, and the fact that I was here didn’t seem strange at all—Of course! She’s the one the guy’s made a date with for dinner!”
“What do you mean, made a date with? Kika can’t recognize your voice?”
“She doesn’t have a phone; she uses a beeper. The messages are taken by an answering service and transmitted by an operator. Anyone can leave a message. He must have gotten Kika’s number when he was in my apartment. He had enough time to go through everything.”
“What does the fucker want with her?”
“If it’s what I’m thinking, we’re going to find out within half an hour.”
Judging from the evidence on the street, the rain had completely stopped; the night would boast a sliver of moon. After receiving Kika’s message, the quantity of adrenaline in Espinosa’s blood had increased considerably. Vieira paced in front of the leather chair. It was five minutes to ten when a voice came over the walkie-talkie: “Attention, Officer, the man just took his key and is heading toward the elevator; he didn’t pick up the suitcase. Repeat, man in elevator, not carr
ying suitcase.”
A single brief reply: “Understood.”
“Let’s go.”
Guns in hand, they pressed the buttons for all four elevators. In his hurry, Espinosa had forgotten to ask which elevator the man had taken. All they could do was wait to see which door would open first. Two bells rang almost simultaneously, and the up arrows flashed above the doors of two facing elevators. They were a two second dash apart. At the first sign that one of the doors was opening, Espinosa and Vieira, wielding their weapons, ran toward it; the elevator right behind them made the same noise at the exact moment they realized that the first one was empty; they turned toward the second elevator just as a lone man took a weapon from his overcoat. The two officers had their shots lined up by the time the door began closing; the stranger still hadn’t had time to aim. They leaped inside, the man pressing himself against the control panel while Vieira and Espinosa bumped into the other two walls, attempting to keep their guns pointed toward him. And then the doors closed completely and the lights went off. Espinosa heard the muffled sound of bodies falling onto the ground. The darkness was complete.
The floor of the spacious elevator, with enough room for another dozen people, was thickly carpeted and absorbed every sound. Espinosa was the only one still standing; Vieira and the man huddled in corners to reduce the exposed surface area of their bodies. Espinosa and Vieira couldn’t shoot because there was a risk of hitting the other; the man didn’t have to worry about that, but as soon as he fired he would announce his whereabouts. There were thirty-seven floors between the lounge and the restaurant, and Espinosa figured it would take less than a minute to reach the top floor. As soon as the elevator started climbing, the weak green light on the display, a coveted landmark in the surrounding murk, began to glow more intensely, but the light still wasn’t strong enough for the occupants to make one another out. Espinosa tried to listen for Vieira’s breathing. Nobody dared to move; the first movement any of them made would be to pull a trigger. The man was the safest of the three. If he fired quickly, he could get off two or three bullets, and the odds were good that he’d be able to take out the cops. In that case, Espinosa and Vieira would have to act with extreme speed and precision, because if they didn’t the man would keep firing until he was certain he’d made both his targets.
In the darkness, smells—from bodies, textiles, metals—grew more intense, but it was hard to discern the sources. Espinosa felt something brush against his pant leg—a shoe, another pair of pants, perhaps even a breath. It was quiet, with the hum of the elevator blotting out all less prominent sounds—muscles contracting, hearts beating, mouths breathing. Espinosa was sure of one thing: before the doors opened, the unknown man would fire. Espinosa kept his gun pointed down toward a point he assumed was the corner, basing his assumption on the location of the little green light. As the elevator rose, the light became brighter and brighter, but still without in any way diminishing the darkness. The number 11 blinked in front of Espinosa’s eyes, but he couldn’t let himself be distracted by the tantalizing green light: he had to focus entirely on the other light, the light that would come out of the barrel of the man’s gun before the number 37 flashed onto the display. His gun was pointing toward the corner where he’d last seen the man, but he realized that if he’d been the one who’d turned off the light he wouldn’t have stayed in the same position.
Once again, he felt something brush his pant leg, this time a little more firmly. It had to be Vieira. The other man would have opened fire as soon as they made contact, sure that his first shot would hit his target, before firing into the rest of the car; Espinosa waited two, three seconds and there was no shot, which confirmed his suspicion. A few bodies could fit in the remaining area; if he fired blindly, the probability of hitting the man on the first shot was low enough that a misstep would turn them into sure targets. Number 19—more than halfway there. Espinosa figured he wasn’t the only one looking at the bright numbers: perhaps the man had already decided which number would be his cue to start shooting: 30, 32—no higher than that. Espinosa and Vieira had ten floors to decide who would fire first.
The cold surface behind Espinosa’s back chilled the sweat coming through his jacket; the contact with his pant leg disappeared and the smell of lubricated metal grew more intense, but he couldn’t tell if it was coming from the weapons or from the elevator. He’d have to take at least one bullet. He didn’t know where he’d get hit, or whether it would kill him; he didn’t want to die. He could fire first, but he’d hit Vieira; in the small space it was as difficult to hit the target as it was to miss it; 26: the sweat on his forehead threatened to cloud his vision, and even though that didn’t make much difference in the darkness, he hoped the shot would hit his leg; 29: he lightly increased the pressure on the trigger, taking it to the limit; 31, 32: a flash accompanied by a roar followed by four, five, six reports—no scream, only the thudding of a body against the metal wall. The elevator shaft rang with the noise of the shots; when the door opened at the top floor, the gunman’s body fell onto the soft carpet of the hallway, his legs still inside the elevator, holding the doors open. In one of his hands was the pistol he’d stolen from Espinosa. Vieira, huddled in the corner of the elevator, was daubing at his face. Espinosa, leaning against the back wall, was covered with thousands of shards of glass; one of his legs was soaked with blood. The gunman had two holes in his stomach and one in his leg. There had been eight shots in all: one had hit Espinosa’s leg a few inches below his knee, another had grazed Vieira’s face and taken off a piece of his ear; three had hit the man; two had hit the metal wall; and another had broken the mirror Espinosa was leaning against.
A guest made a tourniquet for Espinosa’s leg and another was applying a wet napkin to Vieira’s cheek and ear when the doors to one of the other elevators opened and out stepped Kika. From his seat on the ground, Espinosa looked up at her. It no longer mattered what the guy had planned to do. He was just happy they were all alive.
Early on the morning of the twenty-fifth, after the emergency room doctors at the Hospital Miguel Couto were through patching them up, and after the officers were through taking depositions, the three sat down to Christmas dinner: a few sandwiches Kika had picked up. Then the same taxi dropped Vieira at home and took Espinosa and Kika to the Peixoto district. It had rained again, the remains of yesterday’s late-afternoon storm. They walked up the three flights of stairs, Espinosa grasping the handrail and leaning on Kika. They’d never been so physically close.
“You spent the night in my apartment to protect me, so now it’s my turn.”
At the hospital Espinosa’s pant leg had been cut above his knee; there were bloodstains all over the clothes Kika had picked out for the dinner at the Meridien.
More than anything, Espinosa wanted to bathe. The doctors had left a hole in the cast, above the bullet wound. Kika wrapped the injured leg in a plastic bag, carefully closing it with masking tape. Then she undressed him.
The night was part pain, part pleasure, the latter predominating, even though the anesthetics wore off rather quickly. Espinosa awoke to find Kika snuggling against the part of his body that wasn’t in a cast and the phone ringing in the living room. When he tried to disentangle Kika’s leg from his own, she awoke, jumping up immediately, stark naked, and looked for the phone. It was Vieira.
“So, how was my buddy’s night?”
“I don’t know about him, but mine was marvelous.” And she handed the phone to Espinosa.
“Vieira, how are you?”
“Like van Gogh.”
There followed a silence, no more than five seconds, in which Espinosa heard only the old policeman’s breathing.
“Vieira, I’d like to talk to you and Flor. The conversation might take some unpleasant turns. It’s important for all three of us to be there; it wouldn’t do to talk to you first, and it’s best to get it over with as soon as possible.”
“She called saying she wanted to see me. She’s coming over. If yo
u want, we can have our talk as soon as she gets here. Can you move around?”
“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”
Kika came back from the bathroom wiping her face, wearing only panties and a frightened expression.
“Are you going out?”
“Yes.”
“But the doctor—”
“It’s not over yet.”
“My God, Espinosa, something else is going to happen?”
“Not to us. You’re out of danger.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I still don’t know exactly.”
Espinosa began getting dressed. He called for a taxi; Kika helped him down the stairs. They said good-bye.
He didn’t have any problems at Vieira’s building. There were only two small steps between the street and the elevator. Flor opened the door without greeting Espinosa. It wasn’t hard to guess that the two had been arguing. Vieira steered them to chairs arranged in a triangle and pushed a little footstool toward Espinosa, to support his leg. Flor sat with her back toward the bedroom door, Vieira in front of the living room’s lone window and Espinosa in front of the door to the outside hallway. There was a moment of silence, during which they tried to figure out who would speak first, but all eyes were on Espinosa. When he started talking, his tone of voice made it clear that this was not going to be a friendly conversation. Espinosa spied the revolver used the night before on the table closest to Vieira. Perhaps it had been there ever since the officer had returned the previous night.
“The reason for this conversation, as you’ve probably guessed, is Magali’s murder.”
Espinosa’s voice was slightly distorted by pain. His leg was throbbing.
“This is not an interrogation, and it’s not even an official conversation; I only want to present a few conjectures based on clues gathered over the last few days. I want to see if they have the same meaning for you that they do for me.”
Flor and Vieira glanced at each other and shifted positions. The heat in the living room was almost unbearable.
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