Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

“My daughter, Eve. She’s getting married on the twenty-third, as I told you.”

Cavalcante Meier was smartly dressed, like the first time. His hair was neatly combed, parted on the side, not a single hair out of place. He looked like Rudolph Valentino in Camille, with Alia Nazimova.

I asked if he’d seen the film. No, he wasn’t even born when the film was shown. Nor was I, but I liked to go to art theaters.

“Do you have any connection to Cordovil & Meier?”

“It’s my export firm.”

“Then the dead girl was your employee?”

“She was the secretary of my international marketing director.”

A shadow passed over Cavalcante Meier’s face. Few actors can make a shadow pass over their face. Everett Sloane could; Bogart couldn’t. Grimaces are something else.

The telephone rang. Cavalcante Meier answered.

“Leave it to me,” he said.

I heard the noise of a motorcycle. It stopped for a time, and then I heard it again. Cavalcante Meier appeared to attach no importance to the sound and instructed the butler to show in immediately the person who had just arrived.

Márcio, the biker, came into the room, wearing the same arrogant expression I’d seen at Gordon’s. Up close, it looked like a badly fitting mask.

“You said we’d be by ourselves. Who’s this guy?”

“My secretary.”

“The talk’s just between the two of us. Lose him.”

“He stays,” Cavalcante Meier said, controlling his anger.

“Then I’m outta here,” Márcio said.

“Wait, take it easy. I don’t want any trouble. I can wait outside,” I said.

I quickly left for the large hall. From the window I saw Eve sitting on the lawn, the Dalmatian at her side. The sunlight filtering through the branches made her hair even more golden.

The office door opened and Márcio went hurriedly past without looking at me. I heard the noise of the motorcycle. At the same instant the girl rose quickly to her feet.

“Everything’s taken care of,” Cavalcante Meier said, at the door to his office.

“How so?” I asked, without leaving the window. Eve ran across the lawn, followed by the dog, and vanished from my field of vision.

“I came to an understanding with that fellow. I won’t have any further need of your services. How much do I owe you?”

“Who was it said that language exists to conceal thought?” I said, coming away from the window.

“I don’t know and don’t care. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

I turned my back on him. The butler was in the vestibule. He gave the impression of skulking behind doors eavesdropping on all the conversations.

I got my car. There was no sign of Eve. The guard opened the gate for me. I asked him if the biker had stopped along the drive before going into the house.

“He stopped near the pond, to talk to Miss Eve.”

The guard looked at something past the hood of the car. I looked also and saw a pale girl with dark hair standing about twenty yards away. It was the girl I had seen on the back of the motorcycle at Gordon’s. When she saw I was looking at her, she began walking slowly away.

“Who’s that girl?” I asked.

“The boss’s niece,” the guard said. Her name was Lilly, and she lived at her uncle’s house.

The telephone in the gatehouse rang. The guard went to answer it. When he returned, he opened the gate. I approached with the car.

“Has that guy on the motorcycle ever been here before?”

“I don’t know anything,” the guard said, turning away. He must have received orders not to talk to me.

I got home, opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Faísca. There was a note on the table: You could have used Wurtzberg’s gambit. All you had to do was sacrifice the queen, but you never do that. I love you. Berta.

I called Wexler, my partner.

“I’m not coming in to the office today.”

“I know,” Wexler said. “You’re going to play chess with a woman and drink wine. I work my butt off while you lay women.”

“I’m working on a case Medeiros put me onto.” I told him the whole story.

“Nothing will come of it,” Wexler said.

I called Raul. He had set up dinner at the Albamar with the detective handing the Marly case.

“Downtown?” I complained.

“That’s where Homicide is. His name is Guedes.”

Guedes was a young man, prematurely balding, thin, with brown eyes so light they looked yellow. He ordered a coke. Raul drank whiskey. They didn’t have Faísca, so I ordered Casa da Calçada. I prefer something with more age to it, but there are times when a well chilled young wine is just the ticket.

“Marly was wearing a gold Rolex, a diamond ring, and had a hundred dollars in her purse,” Guedes said.

“That helps,” Raul said.

“It helps, but we’re still in the dark,” Guedes said.

“The newspapers say you have a suspect.”

“That’s to throw them off the scent.”

“Have you come across the name of her boss at Cordovil & Meier, the head of marketing?” I asked.

“Arthur Rocha.” Guedes’s suspicious yellow eyes scrutinized my face.

“I saw his name in the papers,” I said.

“His name wasn’t in the papers.” Guedes’s eyes burned into mine. There was no way I was going to bullshit this guy. He seemed like a decent enough cop.

“I did a little job for the president of the firm, Senator Cavalcante Meier.”

“I took down Arthur Rocha’s statement myself. He swore he didn’t know anything about the secretary’s private life,” Guedes said.

“You think he’s telling the truth?”

“We turned his life inside out. The girl was killed on a Friday, between eight and nine p.m. At eleven Rocha was in Petrópolis, at the home of friends. He’s not interested in women; his thing seems to be flaunting his wealth. He had a riding area built at his place in Petrópolis, and I hear he can barely mount a horse. Get the idea? The lesser big shots have their tennis courts and pools. Besides all that, he has a riding area and horses for his friends to use.”

“If a director earns that much, just imagine the president,” Raul said.

“He’s probably not on salary; he must be a partner. We’re on a salary—Raul and me I mean, not you, Mr. Mendes.”

“Hey, no need for formalities. Call me Mandrake,” I said.

“They say you’re a rich lawyer.”

“Don’t I wish.”

“Mandrake’s a genius,” Raul said, already halfway through the bottle of whiskey. “A real sonofabitch. He had my wife. You remember that, Mandrake?”

“I’m still suffering because of it,” I said.

“I forgave you, Mandrake,” Raul said. “And that bitch too.”

“His wife went down for the troops. They weren’t married any longer. That’s the story.”

“The crime, in principle, conforms to the pattern of a crime of passion,” Guedes said, uninterested in my conversation with Raul. “Arthur Rocha is incapable of falling in love or killing for passion, or money, or anything. But I still think he’s lying. What do you think?”

“When I investigate a crime, even my own mother is a suspect,” Raul said.

Guedes was still looking at me, waiting for an answer.

“People kill when they’re afraid,” I equivocated, “when they hate, when they envy.”

“Right out of the Farmer’s Almanac,” Raul said.

“I know he’s lying,” Guedes said.

Alone in my car, I told the rearview mirror, “Everybody’s lying.”

The next day Marly’s death had dropped off the front pages. Everything wearies, my angel, as the English poet said. The dead must be renewed, the press is an insatiable necrophile. An item in the society pages caught my attention: the marriage of Eve Cavalcante Meier and Luis Vieira Souto would not be held next week. Some of the columnists lamented the calling off of the nuptials. One exclaimed, “What will be done with the mountain of presents the once-future couple has already received from every corner of the country?” Truly a grave problem.