Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

After seven years in the reserves, the marshal had been appointed by Vargas as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that capacity he conferred weekly with the president, as well as presiding at the meetings of the JCS.

At the meeting requested by Neto dos Reis, the marshal was told that Vargas was said to be thinking of handing over the reins of government to General Zenóbio, according to information leaked from the palace.

The one who answered the deputy and the generals there to sound out the marshal was General Castello Branco, a short man who, like his superior Mascarenhas, seemed to lack the minimum height demanded by military regulations to serve in the army. Castello Branco said, and none of his interlocutors had the courage to disagree, that if the president resigned, it would not be a general who should assume the office but the legal replacement, the vice president.

IT WAS SHORTLY PAST MIDNIGHT when Chicão asked his friend Zuleika for the keys to her car.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up for me.”

“You didn’t tell me what you’re gonna do.”

“I’m taking a big shot to get his rocks off with a girl at the Hotel Colonial, on Avenida Niemeier. He tells his old lady he’s going to São Paulo and heads there to get some strange. I think he’s afraid to go to that neighborhood by himself. I don’t know if he’s planning to spend the night with the woman. If he does, I won’t be back till morning, I’ll be waiting in the car for him. Satisfied? Later, me and you’ll split the money the guy’s giving me. I’m taking the black suitcase. The barbells are for him.”

“The guy needs barbells to screw the woman?”

“The world’s full of rough people, love.”

At the wheel of Zuleika’s old Armstrong, Chicão stopped in front of the Deauville. Raimundo was in the reception area. It was still too early to do the job. Chicão started the car and went to Machado Square, parking near the trolley stop.

He walked to the Lamas restaurant, crossed the long room among tables almost entirely occupied, toward the rear where the pool tables were.

No pool table was vacant. Kinda busy for late Wednesday night, thought Chicão. For a time he watched the players and the kibitzers. He liked watching people, they were so much alike and at the same time so different. During the war he had lived for a long time among men wearing the same olive drab uniform, using the same slang, cracking the same jokes, seeking the same pleasures, feeling the same fears, and yet he’d been able to perceive that the differences among them were greater than the similarities. He’d spoken with Lieutenant Lobão, but the lieutenant had replied that all men were basically the same. The lieutenant didn’t know anything. He was like Zuleika, who after listening, without understanding the first damned thing he said about it, had replied, “The habit doesn’t make the monk.”

He asked one of the kibitzers loitering around one of the tables if he wanted to play.

“I’m broke,” the guy said.

“I’ll pay for the hour.”

They played, without betting.

“You play good,” said Chicão, who, his mind on the job he was going to do, had paid little attention to the game and even so had won one match.

“I once beat Carne Frita. You know who Carne Frita is, don’t you?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“I swear, the same one. It came down to the seven ball. People crowded around to watch.”

“Was that here, in the Lamas?”

The guy hesitated.

“Uh. . No. . Downtown. . At the pool hall on Tiradentes Square.”

Chicão placed his cue on the green felt of the table.

“If you beat Carne Frita, I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

Carne Frita’s phony opponent looked at Chicão as if about to say something, but then desisted. The black man was very large, and beneath that soft voice lurked something very bad. He lowered his eyes and chalked his cue.

The clock on the wall read 1:15. It’s showtime, thought Chicão.

He got in the car and returned to the street where the Deauville was located. He chose a spot distant from the lampposts. He took from the glove box a wide strip of cloth that he wrapped around his neck. He stuck his right arm inside the strip.

He got out of the car. He knocked on the building’s glass door. Raimundo, the doorman, came to open the door, indicating that he had recognized him.

“I’ve got a suitcase in the car for Dona Luciana. You could be a big help by grabbing the suitcase for me. I can’t take my arm out of the sling. I think it’s broken.” He grimaced. “It’s hurting like hell. I’m going from here to the emergency room for the doctors to take an x-ray.”

Raimundo followed Chicão to the car.

“It’s on the back seat.”

Raimundo looked at the suitcase inside the car.

“It’s better if you get inside to grab the suitcase.”

Using his left hand, Chicão awkwardly opened the car door.

“If I had to earn a living using my left hand, I’d have to be a beggar.”

“You could be a doorman. To be a doorman all you need is more patience than a whore working a retirement home.”

They both laughed. Raimundo felt like telling the black man that the police were after him, but why get involved?

Raimundo bent over and got into the car. Chicão entered behind him.

Throwing his heavy body on top of the undernourished, fragile skeleton of the Northeasterner and grabbing him forcefully by the neck, Chicão immobilized him. If anyone had passed by at the moment, they would not have heard even a moan or noticed any movement of dark shadows thrashing about in the car. The only sound heard seemed to be that of a popsicle stick snapping. It was Raimundo’s neck bones being broken in the hands of Chicão.

The street was empty. The windows in the buildings, dark. Chicão had killed Raimundo in less than two minutes.

Leaving the dead man’s body in the rear seat of the car, Chicão leaped into the front seat and set out on the journey he had planned for that night. Part of the trip could be made more quickly on a stretch of the Rio-São Paulo highway, but he didn’t want to risk being stopped by a routine highway patrol inspection.

So he chose a route that was more roundabout but safer. He filled the gas tank at a gas station on Avenida Brasil. The station attendant saw the dead man lying on the back seat and thought he was sleeping. Chicão drove through São João de Meriti, a city where he had lived for so many years, then to Nilópolis, and from there to Mesquita.

In Mesquita the car stalled and was slow to restart. In Nova Iguaçu a tire blew and changing it with the motor running took enormous effort. When he arrived in Queimados, Chicão stopped outside a tire repair shop with the intention of fixing the blowout but preferred to go on; it was better if his presence were not noticed in those areas.

He arrived in Engenheiro Pedreira and at once saw the river. It was four a.m. He stopped the car in a vast deserted plain, partially covered by low scrub vegetation. He turned off the lights, leaving the motor running. When his vision adapted to the darkness, he took the body from the car, tossing it onto a pile of grass. He got the suitcase and placed it on the ground beside the corpse. From inside the suitcase he removed a long flashlight, turned it on, and stuck it in his mouth, clutching it between his teeth; he needed his hands free for the work he was about to do. From the suitcase he removed a small hatchet, a canvas bag reinforced with metal eyelets, a rope, and a small cloth sack.

He stripped the body and examined it to see if it had any birthmarks or scars. Discovering nothing, he used the hatchet to cut off all the dead man’s fingers, without feeling the slightest pity, for the son of a bitch was causing a lot of problems. He placed the fingers, counting them one by one, in the small cloth sack. He prudently counted the fingers again, having no wish to lose one of them at that spot. With all ten fingers secured in the sack, Chicão stashed them in his pants pocket. He took off his shirt, placed the canvas bag around his neck like a gigantic napkin, and kneeled beside the cadaver.