Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

Awkwardly, Teodoro related the conversation he’d had with Rosalvo.

As he spoke, his listeners began to display signs of growing nervousness. Clemente went to the bar and brought back a bottle of whiskey. He and the senator served themselves several times. The senator’s expression turned gloomy. Drops of sweat covered his forehead.

“Can we believe what that Rosalvo says, his promises?” asked Clemente.

“I think he’d do anything, anything, to get transferred to Vice,” replied Teodoro.

“But first he’ll have to hand over the merchandise. Tell the cop those are my conditions. He’s the one who’s got to trust me, not the other way around.”

The senator’s voice sounded slurred. Saliva had accumulated at the corner of his mouth, which he wiped as it began running down his chin. “Did the cop by any chance mention my involvement in the corruption of minors?”

“No, sir,” said Teodoro vehemently.

Clemente noticed that the senator’s intoxication might lead him to commit other imprudent acts. Whenever he drank a bit too much, Freitas lost control.

“You may go, Teodoro. We’ll talk later,” said Clemente, taking Teodoro by the arm and leading him out of the room.

Freitas was pouring himself another shot of whiskey when Clemente returned.

“I don’t give a shit about the Cemtex case,” said the senator. “My worry is that murder investigation. Could it be the thing with the super?”

“I don’t know. It might be. . and it might not be. It might be the death of Paulo Gomes Aguiar. Inspector Ready-to-Wear is investigating that case.”

“What the shit is this Inspector Ready-to-Wear business?”

“It’s because he buys his clothes off the rack.”

“You made that idiotic comment before. You have the habit of underestimating people. It would be ideal if the murder Teodoro mentioned were that of Paulo. I wasn’t even in Rio that day; I was in the North making political contacts. It would be ideal, ideal.” Freitas filled his glass nervously, without putting ice in the drink.

“The inquiry into the super was shelved,” said Clemente.

“But not closed. One of these days someone will reopen it. .”

“They’re looking for a robber.”

“It was a blunder to kill that old fool.”

“It was your idea, dear man.”

“Mine? You’re crazy!” shouted Freitas.

“Want me to remind you how it all happened, Vickie?”

“Don’t be sarcastic. Who are you to be sarcastic with me?”

“You came home drunk late one night from your garçonnière in Copacabana with a friend, and in a burst of passion, inside the elevator, knelt to venerate Priapus.”

“Bastard!” Freitas tried to strike Clemente, who pushed him away violently, causing him to fall onto the sofa. Freitas sat there, gazing stupidly at his shirt wet from whiskey spilling from his glass.

The incident to which Clemente referred had occurred more than a year earlier. The superintendent of the building had entered the elevator and caught Freitas in his libidinous act. Disgusted, he said he was going to call a meeting of the owners and ask that Freitas be expelled from the building for indecent behavior.

“The son of a bitch was watching me,” lamented Freitas as he tried to dry his shirt with a handkerchief he took from his pocket.

Freitas had telephoned Clemente saying he was ruined politically and that they had to do something. Clemente had gone to the superintendent’s apartment, saying that he worked with the senator, asking that nothing be done; he guaranteed that Freitas would move out the next day. The superintendent had replied that Freitas was scum, a disgusting pederast whose sinful behavior had transformed a family building into Sodom. Clemente had offered him money to forget what he’d seen. The old man had indignantly refused Clemente’s “filthy proposal,” saying he was a Protestant pastor and that Freitas had to pay for his sins. As soon as the superintendent said he was a preacher, Clemente had killed him, strangling him.

“I never told you to kill the guy.”

“You faggot, I did the dirty work you didn’t have the courage to do, and now you want to wash your hands of it and toss me into the fire? I’ll take you down with me.”

“I don’t want to hear it. Shut up.”

The old man lived alone. After killing him Clemente had turned the place upside down so that the police would think the crime had been committed by a robber. He had taken the man’s Bible with him, filled with notes in the margins. When he got home he had urinated on the book’s pages, for several days, until the ink of the words scribbled by the pastor had become illegible blots. Clemente’s father, whom he hated in life and went on hating after he was dead, had also been a Protestant pastor.

“I still have the super’s Bible, all shitty. I’m going to bring it here and rub your nose in it.”

“You’re a blasphemer, a nihilist, a monster.”

“That’s not what you said that day. You took my hands and said I had strong hands, and then you kissed and licked my hands like a bitch. I let you do it in spite of the disgust I felt: the pleasure of witnessing your debasement was greater than my repugnance.”

“That’s enough, Clemente, please, I’m going to end up fighting with you.”

Along with the spilled drink, sweat was soaking Freitas’s shirt. His flushed face had taken on a grayish pallor. “We have to kill that inspector. You can do that, I know you can.”

“The super was an old man of eighty. It was easy. That son of a bitch, besides being a cop, is probably younger than I am.”

“Younger? Then he’s still a boy. .”

“Suck-up.”

“You look like a teenager. . I swear it! You don’t have a wrinkle in your face.”

Clemente went to the bar, served himself a liqueur of pitanga, a specialty sent from the North by a rancher, boss of the senator’s largest bloc of voters. He took a small mirror from his pocket and looked at his face, enraptured.

“Don’t exaggerate. . Teenager is overdoing it. .”

Freitas rose from the sofa with difficulty, walked unsteadily to the bar. He tried to hug Clemente, who with a movement of his body evaded his embrace, causing Freitas to fall.

The senator rolled on the floor, his eyes closed, seeking a less uncomfortable position. In a short time he was snoring with his mouth open, before the disapproving gaze of his adviser.

AT EXACTLY THAT HOUR, 2:15 a.m., when Senator Vitor Freitas was starting his alcoholic sleep on the floor of his residence, the journalist Carlos Lacerda was arriving at the Cavalry Regiment of the Military Police, on Rua Salvador da Sá, accompanied by an enormous retinue that included lawyers, reporters, the chief of police, Inspector Pastor, and various army, naval, and air force officers. Army Colonel Florêncio Lessa, commanding officer of the regiment, was waiting for Lacerda and his group.

Lacerda was there to identity his attacker from among the members of the personal guard. Or attackers, as he stated, contradicting Inspector Pastor’s conclusions. Lacerda disliked Pastor and had written in his newspaper that the police, and the inspector himself, who headed the investigation, had floated the hypothesis that it had been he, Lacerda, who killed Major Vaz. One of the questions the inspector had asked the garage man at the building was whether there had been an argument between Major Vaz and Lacerda. To the journalist, the authority leading the inquiry was duty-bound to examine all hypotheses, but given the evidence of the crime having been perpetrated by third parties, with witnesses and strong clues, such “monstrous speculation” was unnecessary and the inspector’s suspicion was incomprehensible.

Pastor also disliked Lacerda. The tense relationship between the two was ceremonious but hostile.