Rubem Fonseca: Crimes of August

To the good fortune of the investigators, the man with whom Manhães worked in Marília, São Paulo, went to Galeão, accompanied by a lawyer, to try to effect the prisoner’s release. Manhães’s patron, the Japanese Iassuro Matsubara, was immediately arrested by the military men.

Manhães stated that Matsubara had financed the campaigns of candidates to the Chamber and Senate. Matsubara had contributed half a million cruzeiros to the campaign of Roberto Alves for federal senator from São Paulo. That money had been diverted by Gregório to deliver to Climerio for his escape. In exchange for his contributions, Matsubara received financing and special privileges from the Bank of Brazil and other public entities, as well as favorable treatment from state government for the purchase of land in São Paulo and Mato Grosso.

ALL DAY LONG, wherever he went Lomagno heard the rumors that were flying around the city. There was talk of a military coup deposing the president; of the scabrous scandals discovered in Gregório’s secret files — Vargas’s cellar was said to be like the Borgias’; all the military garrisons were supposedly at the ready, the tanks at the military compound were prepared to go into action; it was claimed that Café Filho had been called to the Catete Palace to take the oath of office. To Lomagno the comments he heard from rumormongers seemed little different, in mood and confusion, from those generated months earlier by the lubricious details of the murder, out of jealousy, of the bank teller Arsênio by Air Force Lieutenant Bandeira. To him, the prestige of President Vargas and his government had for months been suffering a continuous process of attrition and had, in that month of August, hit its lowest level of popular approval. And Getúlio Vargas being deposed by the armed forces was not exactly anything new.

Lomagno had reasons to worry. In the secret files taken from the Catete, on the list of import firms that bribed Gregório with twenty percent of the value of the import licenses obtained from the Cexim without providing the hard currency reserves required by law, was the name of Lomagno & Co., along with that of other firms, like Brasfesa, Cemtex, and Corpax. The news was in all the papers. Only the Diário Carioca mentioned the circumstance of the president of Cemtex, Paulo Gomes Aguiar, having been murdered at the start of the month, saying that the police seemed to have given up finding the killer. Lomagno had reasons to worry about revelations that involved his firm, but he didn’t. Lomagno had reasons to worry in case a military coup deposed the president. But he didn’t. His father, in a hospital bed days before his death, probably recalling the failures he had suffered thinking he could change the country by working as a militant in the fascist Integralist Party, had told him: “Son, don’t think you can change Brazil. The French, an intelligent people, invented the perfect maxim, which becomes more true the older it gets: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose .”

But his lack of concern with developments resulted mainly from the fact that a greater anxiety occupied his mind. It included a plan for which he would need the aid of Chicão.

“Zuleika gave me your message. I also needed to talk to you. The inspector was with Kid Earthquake, at the Boqueirão, looking for me. I don’t know how he managed to find me. Fingerprints, maybe. But I wore a glove. The ring I forgot there—”

“You left your ring in Paulo’s apartment?”

“I forgot it somewhere, when I took a bath. The fucker bit me in the chest, got his filth all over me, even my hands were dirty, I had to take a bath. But it was a ring like any other, without any identification. . It has an F engraved on the inside. I made a lot of sacrifices to buy it, as soon as I got back from the FEB. I was really pissed when I lost the ring.”

“That cop already knew it was a black man who killed Paulo. He was here and told me that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to. But he was following a red herring thinking that the Negro was Gregório, Getúlio’s bodyguard.”

“But now he knows it was me, Francisco Albergaria.”

Lomagno heard with satisfaction what Chicão told him, despite the grave personal risks that Mattos’s investigations could cause him. Chicão was being cornered. It would be easier to convince him to defend himself.

“What did you want with me?”

“I want you to kill that son of a bitch.”

“Not me, sir. I’m going to leave for Bahia. I’ve always wanted to get to know that good land.”

“I know that cop. He’ll go after you even in hell. He’s obsessive, crazy.”

“Bahia’s a big place and full of black people like me. It’ll be hard for him to find me.”

“I’m telling you: he’ll end up finding you. You’re going to live terrified, hounded, afraid to let anyone know you’re from Rio, afraid to say you were a soldier, those things he already knows about you. One day you drop your guard, and he catches you. Do you want to live in a hole, hiding like a rat?”

“Is that inspector a queer like Mr. Paulo?”

“No.” Pause. “It’s going to be a more difficult job.” Pause. “Alice—”

Lomagno was about to say that Alice had abandoned him to live with the cop but stopped. He didn’t want to humiliate himself before Chicão.

“If you kill that dog, which will be even more useful to you than to me, I’ll give you whatever you want. Money to buy a beachfront house in Bahia. A stipend every month, for expenses, for the rest of your life.”

“You’ve already given me a lot. I’ll do this for you for free.”

“By killing that bastard you’ll give me such great pleasure that I insist on those gifts.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“Does Dona Luciana know about this?”

“No. I don’t have anything more to do with Dona Luciana. We fought.”

SALETE CALLED MATTOS. Alice, irritated, stopped writing in her diary to answer the phone.

“Alberto isn’t in.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“He’s working.”

“Didn’t his shift end at noon today? I called the station, and he wasn’t there.”

“What do you want, Salete? I’m very busy.”

“I wanted to know if Alberto wanted to go to São Paulo with me. I’ve already bought two plane tickets. There’s going to be in São Paulo, in Ibirapuera Park, it’s here in the paper, a glorious fireworks festival to inaugurate the exposition of the city’s four hundredth anniversary.”

“The celebration’s going to be postponed. Everything’s being postponed.”

“It’s here in the paper that Governor Garcez of São Paulo said that only an earthquake will stop the festival.”

“Alberto telephoned to say he’d be arriving late. It’s better for you to go by yourself.”

“Oh. . What a shame. . Wouldn’t you like to go with me?”

“Me?!”

“You.”

“No, thank you very much. I’m very busy. Excuse me, I’m going to hang up. I’m very busy.”

ALZIRA VARGAS DO AMARAL PEIXOTO discovered her father, as she herself said, the day she lost him for the first time. It was the year 1923, and her father had left for a revolution that never seemed to end, the first among many others in his life. He seemed very tall, and powerful, in his blue colonel’s uniform of the Provisional Auxiliary of the Military Brigade with black boots and baldric, a black revolver in a holster attached to his belt, his head of thick dark-brown wavy hair covered by a wide-brimmed hat. Alzira would never forget the light caress of her father’s mustache brushing against her cheek in a goodbye kiss. Since that time, she had come to see him, always, as the central figure in great deeds. The moments of simple happiness, as when he had taught her how to play billiards in the game room of the governor’s palace in Porto Alegre, were less significant, though still pleasant to remember. The memories that dominated her mind and filled her dreams were of the moments of tension and heroism they had experienced together. Such as in May of 1938 when Integralists invaded the Catete to arrest the president, with the collusion of the commander of the guard, the Marine Lieutenant Júlio Nascimento. The invaders were beardless and inexperienced youths; attackers and defenders were matched in their grotesque and fatal ineptitude, she could see today, coolly. But Alzira remembered, without that memory having been deformed by time, the epic figure of her father remaining calm amid the general commotion. Earlier, in 1930, on that railroad platform, she had listened emotionally to her father, no longer a colonel but just a soldier dressed in khaki leading the revolution that would place in his hands, for many years, the destiny of a people and a country, utter his unforgettable command: “Rio Grande! Arise, for Brazil!” In 1932, on July 9, she was at a dinner dance at the country club in Rio de Janeiro, the first truly elegant party she had ever attended, when they came to take her back to the palace because an insurrection had broken out in São Paulo. Her heart pounded with excitement as her father said that the constitutional allegations of the Paulistas were a simple pretext for an uprising, for over a month earlier he had named a commission to draw up the proposal for the new Brazilian constitution. These reminiscences came, sometimes, mixed with the sweet aroma of the cigars her father smoked. Oh, how she had suffered that twenty-fifth of November in 1935, away from Brazil and unable to be at her father’s side as he commanded the resistance to the rebels at Campo dos Afonsos or in the Third Infantry Regiment when the communists with their revolt engendered a senseless and bloody comedy of errors identical to what the Integralists would repeat three years later. She had sworn she would never again leave her father. In the treason of ’45, she was at his side; defeated, he had maintained his courage; an exile in his own country, he had comported himself with exemplary dignity.