Alone in the Crowd Read online

  Only Inspector Ramiro and Detective Welber were with Espinosa in his office. It was starting to get dark when the chief gave them their assignments for the next day.

  “What I’ve just told you is nothing more than a vague suspicion without any real basis, of course, but it’s all we’ve got for now. I want you to go back to the bank, examine the tapes from the security cameras, see who was sitting next to her, who she was talking to, who came up to her, if she went to the bathroom, if someone followed her … everything.… I want you to examine every second she spent inside that bank. And also outside it. See if there are cameras on the sidewalk in front of the agency. Another thing: the cashier who helped her must have been at a window in front of the chairs where people sit waiting their turn. The retirees and pensioners always get their money in the same branch and are almost always assisted by the same teller, who ends up knowing them by sight. Maybe the teller saw Laureta being approached by some stranger.… Anyway … look for anything that might indicate a more concrete instigator than the suppositions I’ve just made.”

  “Why do you think this was more likely to happen in the bank and not in the supermarket, the pharmacy, or somewhere else?” Welber asked.

  “It could have happened anywhere, of course. I just think it’s more likely to have happened in the bank. That’s where she spent the most time, she was in contact with more people, it was easier for her to recognize people and to be recognized herself. In other words, someone waiting like that is more likely to pay attention to what’s going on around them than someone who’s in the aisles of a supermarket or a pharmacy doing their shopping. What the murderer couldn’t do was kill her in the bank or even in the supermarket. In both places he’d be easily taken down by the security guards. He preferred to follow her during the day and wait for a better moment—when she went back home in the afternoon, for example. But when he saw her go into the station and leave ten minutes later, he didn’t think he could wait any longer. What we’ve got on our side is that he doesn’t know if she managed to tell us anything before she left.”

  It was seven at night when Espinosa left the station thinking about passing through the Galeria Menescal to buy some meatballs and pies. From what he remembered of the night before, the only item left in his refrigerator was half of a lasagna that no longer was at the peak of its tastiness. The Arab reinforcements were not meant to be added to the half lasagna but were intended as substitutes, a break from the monotony of the last few days of eating frozen pasta. Lately, he’d been thinking about eliminating dinner. Just that. Decreeing the end of dinner. And therefore decreeing the end of frozen pastas. He’d start eating a little snack: café au lait, black bread, cheese, ham, jelly … something lighter, healthier, less fattening, more appropriate to the tropical climate (though he wasn’t quite sure why), less laborious (he wasn’t sure if that was actually the case), and, finally, a more American and European evening meal (or so he thought). While he walked, he thought about it. The meatball option actually seemed like a compromise: it wasn’t frozen pasta and it wasn’t coffee. Still, the very idea of a snack instead of a dinner sounded more like a capitulation than a change. He’d felt older ever since the idea occurred to him.… Or was he feeling older and that was why the idea had occurred to him? Would the next step be wearing house slippers?

  The route through the Galeria Menescal wasn’t the shortest path to the Peixoto District, where Espinosa lived, but it was still his favorite. When he was a boy, he got off the bus on his way back from school on the Avenida Copacabana, in front of the Galeria Menescal—which also serves as a passageway linking the Avenida Copacabana to the Rua Barata Ribeiro on his way back to the Peixoto District. Even now, as an adult, the enormous gateway flanked by marble columns felt imposing. When he was a boy, before he started walking through, he would stop in the gateway and look up, enraptured by the incredibly high ceiling and the sequence of shops on both sides, with the smaller, odder stores above them. Still a boy, he had been fascinated by the story that because it had been built during the war, the gallery’s underground garage contained a reinforced area that could serve as an air-raid shelter. Though the war had ended almost two decades before Espinosa’s birth, the boy felt a special importance in walking through an air-raid shelter. Halfway through the gallery, absorbed by adventure stories from World War II, he made his customary stop in the Arab take-out place to buy either meatballs or meat pies (one day the one, one day the other) to feed his boyish hunger and the imagination of the future Chief Espinosa.

  The difference was that on that Tuesday he wasn’t coming back from school happily anticipating the passageway and his stop at the Arab restaurant. He was coming from the Twelfth Precinct, of which he was the chief, thinking sadly about what had led Laureta to come looking for him at the end of the afternoon on which she died without being able to speak to him. He walked slowly through the gallery, hands in his pockets, eyes cast downward. Seen from a distance, he stood out from the rest of the crowd because of his above-average height and the almost imperceptible swaying of his upper body, which recalled the motion of a metronome. He went into the little shop without hesitating. He ordered two meatballs and two pies.

  2

  Amid the compact mass of pedestrians moving slowly down the sidewalk like a giant centipede, the man had the feeling that these weren’t people walking but that their legs really belonged to that big urban animal that drags itself heavily through the streets of large cities. Yet that didn’t bother him. He liked crowds, he just didn’t think that now was the right time to enjoy them. At six-thirty that evening he had to be in the bar in front of the Twelfth Precinct, on the Rua Hilário de Gouveia, and it was already past six. That wouldn’t have been a problem with the flow of pedestrian traffic at any other hour of the day, but with the movement on the sidewalks at that hour on the Avenida Copacabana, of people getting off work and the still-bustling shops, the moroseness with which the crowd was moving posed an obstacle to anyone who was in a hurry. He was about to find an easier route when some traffic light somewhere up ahead liberated the flux of people and the block started moving a bit more briskly. Nothing out of the ordinary, but enough of a release to allow him to go down that one block a little quicker. The man let himself be carried along for a little ways in the same rhythm as the crowd, but then he had to get off the sidewalk to speed up, walking between the curb and the cars.

  It was a good choice. Ten minutes later, he was drinking a coffee at the bar in front of the station. He stood at the counter, drinking unhurriedly, watching the people who were going through the doorway of the Twelfth Precinct. He wanted to stay for only a short while, so as not to draw attention to himself. After fifteen minutes, he started walking toward Barata Ribeiro, no more than fifty feet away. The traffic, at that hour, was intense. He crossed the street and stood in front of the window of the shop on the corner, still keeping an eye on the people entering and leaving the station. At seven, he saw the chief come out onto the sidewalk, take a left, and head down the street toward the corner where he was standing. He walked at a leisurely pace, as if mulling something over, without any apparent direction. The man waited to see if the chief would turn onto Barata Ribeiro or if he would keep going all the way to the Avenida Copacabana. He kept going. Even better. From that point on, he could guess where the chief would go. He kept a safe distance until they turned right onto the Avenida Copacabana, at which point, thanks to the number of pedestrians, he could get closer without risking notice, though the chief didn’t seem interested in what was going on around him anyway. After walking two and a half more blocks, they entered the Galeria Menescal, where the crowd of people thinned. About halfway through the gallery, the chief’s gait slowed and he entered the little Arab restaurant, apparently without giving conscious thought to what he was doing. The man knew that the policeman wouldn’t stay longer than was necessary to buy a snack. The shop was full, with people constantly entering and leaving. He himself went in and ordered, just like the chief:
a couple of meatballs and a pie.

  The two left the shop almost simultaneously, after the chief greeted the cashier, the restaurant’s owner. Because the chief was still walking slowly and reflexively, the man overtook him and made his way through the gallery, leaving him behind. He wasn’t planning to stalk Chief Espinosa wherever he went but just to enjoy the secret pleasure of being side by side with him, and even to buy and savor the same Arab delicacies. On Barata Ribeiro, he walked another half block back to Siqueira Campos, almost completing a perfect rectangle since leaving the station. He walked down the street with a firm stride, without looking behind him or to the sides. Unconcerned with the intense pedestrian traffic, he passed the subway station and the cutoff between Siqueira Campos and the Ladeira dos Tabajaras and in the space of a few minutes entered his building, an older construction, small and only three stories high, with one apartment on every floor. He went straight to his room, the same one that for years had been his mother’s, and opened the window to let the hot air that had gathered in the course of the afternoon circulate. The furniture was all the same. Not even the dressing table had been removed. The bed, which his mother had called her widow’s bed and which now was his, was in the same place, in front of the old wardrobe. The only fixtures he’d added to the room were a full-length mirror, attached to the only free wall, and a gymnastic bar he’d installed in the doorway. He took off his clothes and stood in his underwear. He looked at himself from the front, the sides, and the back. He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t good-looking, but he was strong, agile, without any excess fat. He had light eyes, a brown crew cut, and he was meticulously careful with the cleanliness of his body. He did two sets of sit-ups and push-ups and a set of repetitions on the bar. He showered, put on some shorts, and turned on the television. He hadn’t had dinner. He remembered the package he’d left on the living-room table. All he had in the refrigerator was milk, two slices of bread, and a piece of cheese, along with a can of soda. His purchases from the Arab restaurant completed his meal.

  He was satisfied with his tailing of Chief Espinosa. He didn’t expect anything more than that, and that was enough for now. He was more and more convinced that he and the chief had some things in common. They were more or less the same age (he was a year younger), both were public employees, lived alone, had lived in the same neighborhood since childhood (only two blocks away from each other), and they both liked to walk through Copacabana. Maybe he should have also said that neither of them had been very sociable—since childhood. So that might have been why they never became friends. While he was eating his meatballs, he thought he could add another similarity between them: their taste for Middle Eastern food. He imagined the chief seated next to his living-room window, looking in the direction of his building at that exact same moment, also eating the food he’d bought at the same restaurant. He knew that most evenings the chief ate alone. Only on Fridays did he have the company of a woman, much younger than he was and really pretty, who arrived carrying grocery bags. It was always the same one, his girlfriend for years, who’d never moved in with him (he certainly would have noticed if she had). On Friday nights, they seemed to linger longer over their dinner. He’d never seen the inside of the chief’s apartment, but when the French windows were open you could see his living room from the square. It was definitely much bigger than the man’s. Moreover, the chief’s entire apartment was definitely bigger and nicer than his. But that didn’t bother him. He wasn’t interested in things like furniture, decoration, and art objects. He didn’t think the chief was either, since they had so many other things in common. Although, of course, this didn’t apply to the chief’s luck with women, which he didn’t have.

  On certain Friday nights, especially in the summer, he liked to sit on a bench in the square and watch Espinosa and his girlfriend move around the living room. He couldn’t see much of them, except when they came all the way up to the balcony beside the French windows, which was rare. He wouldn’t like to be with them, since that was an intimate moment between two lovers, but he would have loved to be able to lean over that balcony beside the chief and enjoy, with him, the opposite view to the one he had when he was sitting on the park bench.

  All he’d eaten was the meatballs, and he’d drunk the soda. The rest of the meal would have to be eaten with milk, the only drink he had left, besides water. He didn’t drink alcohol or smoke. Not for moral or religious reasons, but because they were bad for your health. He wasn’t religious and he didn’t believe in God; he didn’t have relatives or friends. That’s why he took such care with his body and mind. If one of the two let him down, he wouldn’t have anyone to turn to. And even if he did, he wouldn’t have turned to them. He cleaned the table, washed the few dishes he’d used, and turned on the television, which he’d turned off when the news was about to start. He didn’t like TV news, and he was particularly repulsed by comedy programs. He especially liked when they played films, because then he didn’t have to leave his house, and also because of the pleasure of watching a film without anyone sitting on all sides of him, talking or bumping into him, eating popcorn or sucking on the straw in their soda. On TV, it wasn’t so much the films he was interested in as the absence of people making him uncomfortable from every side. He did like to read, but he didn’t accumulate books. He bought them in used-book stores and got rid of them as soon as he was done with them. He’d even sold off his mother’s books as soon as she died. He didn’t like music, either popular or classical. The only sound equipment he had at home was a little battery-powered radio that had belonged to his mother. He thought he himself was enough to fill his life satisfactorily. Hookers were more than enough for his sexual needs. The world wasn’t complicated in the least. Sometimes there were little problems, which he overcame or solved without much trouble.

  The next morning, on his way to work, the man thought of something else he had in common with Chief Espinosa: both of them worked only a few blocks away from where they lived, and their routes to work were almost the same. But he was sure that the chief had never realized that. If they’d passed each other on the street or even walked side by side on their way to work or back home—and both things had happened—the chief wouldn’t have noticed or cared, simply because he didn’t remember him. They didn’t keep the same hours. The chief’s schedule was irregular; sometimes he didn’t leave the office until late at night, whereas he spent other days entirely away from the station. But despite this, they did occasionally cross paths in one of the predictable trips to and from work or even just walking through the neighborhood, something both enjoyed doing. Their strides were distinct: his was firm, hurried, almost military, while the chief’s was slow, distracted, as if his thoughts were wandering off, miles away.

  When he got to the branch of the Caixa Econômica, minutes before the beginning of his shift, there was already a line of senior citizens waiting for the door to open in order to get their numbers. By one in the afternoon, when he took his lunch break, the policemen he’d seen the day before hadn’t appeared. And there was no reason for them to. There was nothing else to say about it except repeat the words he’d exchanged with the pensioner, all of which he’d already reported to the policemen who had come looking for him. The woman had certainly told them that she’d been in the bank that morning. But besides repeating the conversation between the two, conceding that it was perhaps a bit prickly, all he could have added was that she’d recognized him, since she visited the branch at least once a month. Yes, he would insist if they asked him again, she was nervous, a bit irritated, but that was natural enough, since there were so many people there that day and on the days when pensions were paid out the elderly pensioners had to wait a long while before being helped. Besides, they were slow, they forgot their paperwork, they got distracted and missed their number. When their turn finally came, they were annoyed and complained to the cashier. But just like all the other cashiers, he was used to it. There was no reason the cops would come back looking for him.

 
So he was surprised when he saw the two arrive, right when he was about to go back to work. He hadn’t even managed to reopen his window or press the button to call the next customer. He waited for them to come over.

  “Good morning, sir. I’m Inspector Ramiro and this is Detective Welber. We were here yesterday.”

  “I remember you.”

  “We came in the afternoon today so as not to interfere with the customers.”

  “That, unfortunately, is impossible. Especially during the first few days of the month, one less cashier does make a difference.”

  The policemen showed their IDs to the security staff and went behind the window.

  “It’s better for us to talk over here, so they won’t think we’re breaking in line.”

  “Aren’t you, though?”

  “True enough, but we’re not going to be long. We just want to clear up a few details. On Monday morning, when you were helping the pensioner Laureta Sales Ribeiro, you were working at this same window?”

  “Yes. Whenever possible, we stay in the same place.”

  “So you could see exactly what we can see from here.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And according to what you told us, Laureta was sitting in the third row.”

  “That’s right. In the middle of the third row.”