Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

Gregório had said that he had eighty men under him in the personal guard, each of whom earned five thousand cruzeiros a month. He earned ten thousand. The monthly outlay of the personal guard came to five hundred thousand cruzeiros. He was sleeping when they called to inform him of the attack. He didn’t attribute the slightest importance to it and went back to sleep. The next day he learned greater details. He had assumed it was a personal matter and not political. It had never crossed his mind that one of his men might be involved, which is why he didn’t bring the fact to the attention of the head of state or General Caiado de Castro. Later, he had been surprised to learn that Climerio had been involved in the attack.

At the end of the interrogation, Gregório had felt ill. He was taken under escort to the Galeão hospital, where military doctors confirmed that his health was good.

THAT NIGHT, when he arrived at the Deauville Building, Pedro Lomagno had the street door opened by a new doorman.

“Please, sir, who are you visiting?”

“You’re new here?”

“I work in the garage. I’m sitting in for Raimundo.”

“Dona Luciana Gomes Aguiar is expecting me. I’m Pedro Lomagno.”

Luciana opened the door with a champagne glass in her hand. She embraced Lomagno tightly, biting his ear.

Lomagno moved his head away. “How long have you been drinking?”

“I feel so happy, so happy. I think the last time I felt this happy was when I was six years old. Remember I told you about it? The time my mother gave me that doll? Didn’t I tell you about that? I didn’t want to wear braces.”

“You told me. How long have you been drinking?”

“Since the time you called me to say the cop thought the Negro — but it wasn’t because of that. I’m happy because I love you. .”

Luciana picked up the bottle and filled two glasses. They were in the spacious living room of the Deauville apartment.

“It’s better if you stop for a while.”

“Everything’s turning out right, my love. Don’t you feel freer? Freer than ever? Oh. . I was forgetting Alice. You poor thing, having to carry all that weight.”

Lomagno took the glass from Luciana’s hand. “Stop for a while.”

“Let’s get Alice out of our way too. In any case, a crazy woman like her won’t be missed. You deserve to be happy, we deserve to be happy. I want to be happy!”

“Don’t cry, Luciana.”

“My father didn’t love me, my mother didn’t love me.”

“No child loves its parents.”

“That’s what I meant to say.”

“Give me that bottle.”

Luciana clutched the bottle tightly. Her face was contorted.

“Crazy people throw themselves under trains, jump out of windows, drink ant poison, set fire to their clothes, slash their wrists, put a bullet in their head. Why doesn’t Alice do any of those things? Do you still love me? Then prove it, go on, fuck me, kill Alice, fuck me first, now.”

The bottle slipped out of Luciana’s hands, shattering on the floor.

Lomagno picked her up in his arms and carried her, moving slowly, carefully climbing the stairs to the bedroom on the upstairs floor.

Before arriving at the bedroom, Luciana had fallen asleep. Lomagno laid her down on the bed. He stood there for several moments, looking at his lover as if she were a stranger.

Leaving the lamp on, he left the bedroom and walked, curious, through the ample apartment. The quarters formerly occupied by servants were empty. None of the help any longer slept at the apartment. “I don’t want anyone watching me,” Luciana had said.

Finally Lomagno stopped, pensive, in a room that had originally been planned as a nursery and now served as a storage area. He opened the window and let in fresh air from the sea.

A good place for a punching bag, he thought.

LATE AT NIGHT, Inspector Pádua entered the precinct lockup.

“Ibrahim Assad,” he shouted.

Assad approached the bars.

“You’re being let go,” said Pádua.

“At this time of night?”

“Your habeas corpus just came down.”

The only ones on duty in the precinct at that moment were Pádua, Detective Murilo, who had worked with Pádua for years, and the lockup guard.

Pádua, accompanied by Murilo, took Assad to the empty Robbery and Theft office.

“Where’s my lawyer?”

“There isn’t any lawyer, no fucking habeas corpus. I’m going to waste you,” said Pádua. “But if you tell me why you wanted to kill Inspector Mattos, I might spare you.”

“You’ll forgive me, but I can’t say, Mr. Pádua.”

The prisoner’s calmness impressed the inspector.

“Why can’t you say?”

“I’d be discredited, sir. I have a name to defend.”

“Ibrahim? That’s a name to defend?” Murilo laughed.

But Pádua remained serious. This guy wasn’t just some two-bit loser.

“Exactly. You understand these things. I’m better known by the nickname Old Turk.”

“ The Old Turk?” said Murilo, admiringly.

“No wonder I suspected something when I saw your ID card. .” said Pádua. “Old Turk. . I’ve always wanted to meet you, Old Turk.”

“Good thing you’ve heard of me. Then you know it’s not possible for me to do what you ask, sir. I can’t, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t rat — and I don’t want to. Please, don’t waste your time.”

“You understand that you’ve got to die, to serve as an example?”

“I do understand, sir. I know how life is,” said Old Turk stoically. “It was written the day I was born that I would die.”

“You killed a lot of people. What’s the fastest and most painless way?”

“In the back of the neck. Holding the barrel steady. What in the old days they called the coup de grace.”

“Good. Shall we have some coffee?”

“Can you do me one favor?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“To call my mother and tell her to pick up a deed I left at the public registry in Caxambu. I bought a small house for her and the dear old lady doesn’t know it yet. It was for her birthday, day after tomorrow.”

“Give me the phone number, and I’ll call her.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Old Turk knew that Pádua would honor his word. The three of them drank coffee from a thermos. Afterward, they left by car.

PÁDUA SPENT THE RAINY MORNING in his office, flexing his arm muscles and thinking. He phoned Old Turk’s mother as agreed. A promise was a promise, even when made to an outlaw.

“You worried, boss?” asked Murilo, who rarely saw Pádua so somber.

“No,” replied Pádua.

However, Pádua was very worried. He regretted having killed Old Turk. In the past he had regretted not having killed someone. But for having killed, it was the first time. It had been a mistake to liquidate Old Turk. Old Turk was an expensive gunman who usually worked for politicians, plantation owners, and others with financial resources. Now it was impossible to find out who had hired him to kill Mattos. There was some bastard in the city with the balls to order a police inspector killed; the fucker had to be identified. How? How? On top of everything, now he couldn’t warn that idiot Mattos, saying “Know who Ibrahim Assad was? The famous Old Turk, the biggest hired gun in the country. Somebody with a lot of green wants you dead.” Mattos was nuts; if he knew that he, Pádua, had killed Old Turk, he’d immediately open an inquiry, saying in that damned way of his, “Very sorry, Pádua, but you broke the law.” What important interests could Mattos be bucking, who had Mattos gotten riled up to cause such a strong reaction? Pádua, mistakenly, lost no time thinking about the arrest of Ilídio. Numbers bigwigs don’t have policemen killed. Someone else was behind it.