Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

“I like another man.”

“Right. But don’t tell him about what we did here today.”

“You said you’d kill me if I liked another man.”

“When I get back, we’ll talk about it. You can’t lose that key, you hear?” Seeing the disappointment on Salete’s face, Magalhães added, joking, nervously, “I still like you a lot. When I return, I’ll kill you.”

“You don’t like me at all. It was all a lie.”

“I have to go. I deposited a lot of money in your bank account.” Magalhães kissed the girl on the cheek and withdrew, almost running, his footsteps echoing on the marble floor of the lobby.

Salete stood there, the key in her hand.

“It was all a lie,” she murmured.

THE PRINCIPALS INVOLVED in the Tonelero attack were exhibited to the press, at Galeão air base, at ten a.m. During the presentation certain information was provided by the military officers. The statements by the accused, although requested, were not furnished to the press, and the journalists had to be content with the sparse information given them during the presentation.

The first marched past the journalists was Lieutenant Gregório. In coat and tie, as always, he remained silent, his brow furrowed. His participation in the attack was known to all. The high decoration he had received from the army, the Maria Quitéria Medal, had been rescinded. His confession, according to the military, had been complete, claiming responsibility as the mastermind. It wouldn’t be until two days later, in another interrogation, that Gregório would say Deputy Euvaldo Lodi had visited him in his room at the Catete Palace and proposed “bombarding” Lacerda, so the military men did not mention the deputy’s name in the presentation. Nor did they mention, for the same reason — they were still unaware of the fact — that on the eve of the dissolution of the personal guard on August 8, upon learning that the president had told his adjutant Major Accioly to summon to the palace his brother Benjamim from Petropolis, Gregório had jumped the gun and had met Benjamim in that city; and that upon his return to Rio, traveling in the same car, Gregório had confessed to Benjamim that he had given orders to murder Lacerda. (This last item of information would come to serve as fundamental to the conviction on the part of the military officers of the PMI that the president, since August 8—in other words, three days before the attack — already knew that the head of his personal guard was behind the assassination, for surely Benjamim would have told his brother of Gregório’s confession.)

Next to be presented was João Valente, the former second in command of the guard. On Gregório’s orders he had given fifty thousand cruzeiros to José Antonio Soares to deliver to Climerio for his escape. Valente praised the treatment he was receiving at Galeão; he joked with the officers who accompanied him; stated that he was eating “turkey and sleeping on a spring mattress.”

The presentation of Alcino was preceded by more detailed information. Before apprehending Alcino, the air force officers had detained his wife Abigail Rabelo, who when taken to the offices of the national aviation authority under orders from Air Force Major Borges, had there confessed her husband’s role in the attack. Air force officers and civilian police had hidden in Alcino’s house at 192 Rua Gil Queiroz, in São João de Meriti, waiting for him to come for his wife and five children as he had promised to do, according to information provided in Abigail’s interrogation. When he showed up to take his family with him in his flight, Alcino was arrested, offering no resistance.

Alcino stated, in the presentation, that he was being treated well and also praised the high quality of the spring mattress on which he slept in the prison.

The driver Nelson Raimundo de Souza stated that he desired to remain imprisoned at Galeão, as he feared reprisals.

The last of the prisoners to be presented was Climerio. The spectacular actions of the war operation leading to his arrest on Tinguá mountain were recalled. Climerio appeared frightened but, when asked by a reporter, said he was being treated well and that, like the others, he also slept on a spring mattress.

Those charged with the military inquiry stated that José Antonio Soares had not yet been arrested, something they hoped to accomplish in a few days. (In reality, at that moment Soares had just been detained by the police in Muriaé, in the company of his wife and father, with a.38 revolver and thirty thousand cruzeiros in new bills, money that he declared had come from the son of the president of the Republic, Lutero Vargas.)

Next exhibited at the Galeão base were PTB political propaganda materials found on the prisoners. They were handheld fans bearing the picture of a smiling Vargas with a kerchief around his neck, on which was written the phrase: “The PTB is revolution on the march.” On the fans was also the flag of the PTB, the emblem of the party — an anvil — and the words “Worker, join the Brazilian Workers Party to guarantee your rights.”

The principal information that the military men in the PMI chose to withhold from the press, on orders from Colonel Adyl, head of the military inquiry, was the accusations made in statements by Climerio and Alcino that it was Lutero Vargas who ordered the assassination. Adyl was convinced that such an assertion was false, a “diversionary tactic” still mysterious in nature and having as its objective the disruption of the investigations.

AT THE MEETING held at the Military Club, a motion had been made demanding the president’s resignation, but General Canrobert and General Juarez Távora expressed the view that the crime should first be investigated, and then they could discuss the resignation of the president. The suggestion by the two opposition generals prevailed, as everyone believed the results of the inquiry would demonstrate unequivocally the president’s responsibility for the attack. At that same moment, the secretary of war, Zenóbio, had said, backed by seventy-three generals who met with him in Rio, that resignation was a very touchy issue that had to be resolved in an atmosphere of harmony and patriotism. “We are only interested in lawful solutions, to avoid plunging the country into anarchy,” Zenóbio had said. “In defense of the Constitution, I shall act with speed and vigor. This is my role, and I shall fulfill it to the end.”

Meanwhile, manifestations of protests were increasing against the president of the Republic. The legislatures of almost every state in Brazil were demanding Vargas’s resignation. The Brazilian Bar Association approved a motion, by a vote of 43 to 6, stating that it considered the country leaderless and asking the armed forces to remove Vargas from the Catete Palace and guarantee the swearing in of Vice President Café Filho so that legality could be restored. In military circles, rejection of the president grew continuously. The officer corps of the navy, which until then had maintained a less radical stance than the air force, reacted with outrage to the detaining of Admiral Muniz Freire for having criticized the government in a ceremony aboard the cruiser Barroso . The admiralty, pressured by the younger officers, obliged the secretary of the navy to rescind the punishment. Among the high command of the armed forces, only Marshal Mascarenhas de Morais held a favorable view of the president; but the marshal, though he headed the general staff of the armed forces and was respected for his illustrious past, in reality lacked any real power in that situation of widespread hierarchical subversion.

Throughout Brazil, candidates of the Lantern Club were registered for the October elections. Student associations from all over the country issued manifestos demanding that Vargas resign. The governmental accounting office, approving a motion by counselor Silvestre Péricles de Góis Monteiro, made public a declaration stating that it could not remain silent in the face of the Tonelero attack, in which the valiant Major Vaz had lost his life, victim of the perversity of murderers and criminals, a fact that had deeply wounded Brazilian society and appalled the national soul. The note further referred to the atmosphere of violence and corruption that dominated the country.