Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

Mattos arrived at the precinct shortly after eleven in the morning.

Pádua turned over the blotter to Mattos.

“Anything important?”

“Nothing. Just routine.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I’ve got a slight headache. Oh yeah, I was forgetting. I released that itinerant peddler that you arrested.”

“What peddler?”

“That guy that entered your apartment. A third-rate burglar who got the wrong address. I think he learned his lesson.”

“He wasn’t some shitass burglar. I’d like to know more about him. Did you ask HQ for his record?”

“I asked for the information by phone, like you do. The guy was, is clean.”

“Did you draw up the concealed weapons charge?”

“No. You’ve done the same thing with me. Releasing crooks I arrest. See how annoying it is?”

“This case was different. He was caught in the act.”

“But I let the guy go. It’s too late now.” Pause. “Too late now.”

Mattos perceived lies and bitterness in his colleague’s voice.

“How are things going?” asked Pádua.

“What things?”

“Work.”

“Nothing new.”

“You never told me why you want info on Senator Vitor Freitas. Anything I can help with?”

“No. Thanks.”

“If you need help, you can count on me, okay?”

After Pádua left, Mattos went to the lockup. He told the jailer to open the cell.

“Odorico, come to my office.”

The cell boss followed Mattos to his room.

“Remember that tall guy who was arrested two days ago?”

“I remember him, sir. A guy with the face of a Syrian. I didn’t like him. He kept to himself in a corner, without speaking to nobody. I figured I’d have problems with him. He got out.”

“Who let him out?”

“Inspector Pádua.”

“Did you see it?”

“Uh-huh. At night Inspector Pádua showed up at the cell and called the guy. Said he was getting out.”

“Anything else?”

Odorico thought it very strange for Pádua to release a prisoner. But a cell boss’s job was to maintain order in lockup. Anybody who talked a lot was a gossip.

“After the man was let go, I went back to sleep, sir. Everything in order.”

Mattos summoned Rosalvo.

“Call all the precincts and tell them we’re looking for a dark-skinned man with a mustache, named Ibrahim Assad. Born in Caxambu, Minas Gerais, in 1912. Call the morgue and ask them to notify me if a corpse matching that description shows up.”

Mattos remained in his office listening to the radio while he signed poverty papers and proofs of residence.

Brigadier Eduardo Gomes had denied that an uprising had taken place at the air base at Santa Cruz, where the Brazilian Air Force fighter planes were housed. There was an atmosphere of apprehension in the city, according to the newscast. Families were taking their children out of schools.

Radio Globo spoke of a second attack on Lacerda, kept secret till then. On Sunday, August 8, Lacerda was arriving by boat to the island of Paquetá for a rally, accompanied by a Radio Globo reporter, Raul Brunini, and other persons when, amid the popping of fireworks launched by voters in welcome, they heard a loud blast underfoot. It was a stick of dynamite that had exploded near the hull. No one had been hurt. The vessel had begun taking on water, without, however, sinking. Lacerda’s party attempted to downplay the fact and returned to the mainland on a different boat.

Downplay the fact? Did anyone believe that? thought Mattos. A cherry bomb had probably gone off near the launch, and some joker must have suggested, “Why don’t we say we were under attack?”

News from everywhere in Brazil was transmitted by the radio, emphasizing the atmosphere of agitation among students, politicians, the manufacturing class, and professionals, because of the assassination of Major Vaz.

The ASA agency distributed statements by Federal Deputy Otávio Mangabeira, offered at the Hotel Bahia, in Salvador. Mangabeira said the nation was exhausted from so much humiliation and suffering. However, everything had limits. Only the armed forces could come to the aid of the country. “Let us unite around them as one, placing in them our complete confidence, obeying their command as if we were at war.”

What could be expected of a guy, thought Mattos, who as a sitting federal deputy had subserviently kissed Eisenhower’s hand in Congress when the American general had visited Brazil after the war? What could be expected from an old enemy of Vargas? From one of the founders of the UDN?

Mangabeira said he had no doubts about the responsibility of the government and of the president himself for the monstrous attack that was having such an effect on public opinion in the nation. Until then, it was the unprecedented levels of embezzlement, the immorality that corrupted with incredible insolence. The people, driven to hunger by the cost of living resulting in great part from acts of the government, were clearly and calculatingly being led toward anarchy, to the benefit of the administration itself. But now came the effort to eliminate the unvanquished denouncer of the scandals, who had escaped only by a miracle. But the bullets intended for him had killed an officer of the air force, an exemplar of devotion to his kind, who was accompanying the intrepid Lacerda. What was operating in the country under the name of legality was the negation of legal order, even greater now that it had stooped to murder. The wretch who had committed the crime was, in this case, the least responsible. The one most responsible, the one truly responsible occupied the Catete Palace, though ready, if necessary, to shed tears. Mangabeira preferred to see Brazil attacked and bravely expelling the foreign aggressor than to see what he said he was seeing: the country sapped, undermined, and corrupted by the enemy within, ensconced in power.

At seven p.m. Mattos told Rosalvo he was going out. “I won’t be long. If anyone comes looking for me, I’ll be back around nine.”

“Can I ask where you’re going?”

“No. It’s official.”

He took a cab. “Sixty Rainha Elizabeth,” Mattos told the driver. Had Rosalvo been lying or mistaken José Silva’s address? Number sixty was a luxury apartment building.

“Which is Mr. José Silva’s apartment?” Mattos asked the doorman.

“Five-oh-one,” the doorman said.

Mattos took the elevator. One apartment per floor.

He rang the bell. A little girl, with her hair in two long braids, opened the door.

“Daddy,” the girl shouted, “it’s for you.”

The man who came forth appeared to be about forty-five, with light brown hair, beginning to go bald. He was holding a newspaper.

“I’m looking for Mr. José Silva.”

“That’s me.”

Mattos identified himself. “I’m investigating the murder of Paulo Gomes Aguiar.”

“I don’t know how I can be of any help.”

“May I come in?”

“Uh. . Yes. . Please.”

The girl was still in the living room, staring at the cop with curiosity.

“Go inside there, with Mommy,” said José Silva.

José Silva folded, then unfolded the newspaper. He put it on a table.

“Please have a seat.”

“I have information that you knew Paulo Gomes Aguiar.”

“Yes. But I haven’t seen him for many years.”

“Could you be more precise?”

“We were classmates in the first years of high school, at the São Joaquim. I never saw him after that.”

“What about Pedro Lomagno? Were you also a classmate of his?”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen Pedro Lomagno?”

“Also no. They weren’t friends of mine. Just classmates. In fact, they left the school before graduating.”

The girl appeared at the door and stared at the policeman.