Southwesterly Wind Read online

  When he looked at the coffee, he noticed that it had gone cold. If he gave it back to his mother untouched, she would take that as a slap in the face, and he didn’t want to add anything else to the slightly hostile climate created by his late arrival. He was twenty-nine; he shouldn’t have to make excuses to his mother for being a few minutes late. But then again, it wasn’t all her fault. If he hadn’t always been so punctual she wouldn’t have gotten used to waiting for him at the window every afternoon. And in any case, he was the one who had led her to expect a phone call whenever he was running late. He couldn’t just take away the security he’d given her. He opened his bedroom door, trying not to make noise, went to the bathroom, dumped the coffee into the toilet, and flushed. Before he could close his door again, he heard his mother’s voice from the neighboring room:

  “The coffee wasn’t good, son?”

  Espinosa lived only a few blocks from the station, which allowed him to walk to work. He took different routes: one, more direct, if he was in a hurry; others, if there was something he wanted to check out along the way. Tonight he left the station later than usual—he’d had to make up for the time he’d spent with the guy. It was already dark when he passed the reception desk on the ground floor and said good night to the people on the night shift. The heavy traffic on the Rua Barata Ribeiro, only a few feet away, made no impression on him; it was just the audiovisual background to his thoughts.

  He started walking home without paying attention to what was going on around him, automatically weaving his way through the people approaching from the opposite direction. Moments like this were taken up by intense mental activity; his body worked like an automaton. Shoulders stooped, hands in pockets, he kept his eyes on the ground. He thought of himself as intelligent, but not brainy. His fantasies were just as important to him, if not more important, than his thoughts, and the two frequently got confused. His rational thoughts were often transformed into a series of flickering images.

  He was most impressed by the guy’s character: both absurd and truthful. To ask the police to investigate a murder that he himself would commit at some unknown date—a murder of an unknown victim—was completely absurd. And that was precisely what made the story ring true. Nobody would do something like that otherwise, unless they were crazy or acting in bad faith. And the boy’s anguish seemed real enough. Espinosa had decided not to do anything, in case the kid wanted to keep the case private. He was a police sergeant, not a private investigator. Besides, how could he justify an investigation based on a pure fantasy, without a single fact to its name?

  Espinosa had managed to transfer one of his old colleagues to his precinct. His colleague had been seriously wounded during an investigation they had jointly conducted, and now he was back on duty. The doctors had suggested that he refrain from violent encounters for a while. Welber was a cop Espinosa believed in completely. Maybe Gabriel’s case would be a way for Welber to ease himself back into the service. But for that, there would have to be a case, and he wasn’t at all convinced there was.

  He turned left onto the Rua Anita Garibaldi, heading toward the Peixoto District, where he lived. Even though it was called a district, it was in truth only a small neighborhood, a few blocks of low-rise buildings around a central square, right in the middle of Copacabana. It would be a nice way to put his friend back to work. If Welber hadn’t headed toward the door to intercept the kidnapper, Espinosa himself would have taken the bullet that almost cost his friend his life. He stopped to buy some beer and smoked ham, to give himself another option for dinner. He wasn’t sure why he believed the kid. Even if he did believe him, that didn’t mean that anything was going to happen, or that the psychic’s prediction was going to come true. He’d never heard of a birthday-party clairvoyant making a prediction that came to pass, except when they said things like “You will travel abroad” or “You will soon meet the woman of your life.” A trip abroad was an old psychic standard; and Espinosa thought that every woman in one’s life could turn out to be the woman of one’s life. It was true, however, that he’d never heard of a spiritualist making a prediction involving murder. Especially at a party. It must have been some pervert who hated birthdays. One advantage of giving the case to Welber was that he and Gabriel were the same age, which would facilitate communication between them. That is, if the detective felt like taking the story seriously.

  At that hour, the square was practically deserted. Espinosa kept walking down the sidewalk, avoiding the earthen pathways through the square. He crossed the street that surrounded the square and entered the three-story building where he’d lived since he was ten years old, when his parents were still alive. He went to the top floor. He’d speak to Welber the next day. It wasn’t exactly a case, but it was an opportunity for Welber to familiarize himself with the kind of people who show up at the Twelfth Precinct. He went up the two flights of stairs carrying the beer bottles, the ham, and a loaf of bread. There were still enough TV dinners in the freezer, but there wasn’t enough variety: tagliatelle Bolognese, spaghetti Bolognese, or lasagna Bolognese. Everything else had already been eaten.

  He had always been fond of the French window in the living room, which opened onto a little balcony with a cast-iron railing. The Venetian blinds, which extended from the floor almost to the ceiling, were a holdover from days when buildings were built to be pleasant to live in. He left his shopping bag in the kitchen, opened the blinds, closed the windows to keep out the cold, turned on a lamp, and sat softly on the sofa. Since leaving the station he’d tried not to move too abruptly, as if that would help keep his ideas from bumping into one another.

  He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d agreed to meet with the guy, and he was even less sure why he’d already given the case semiofficial status. It didn’t do any good to sit on the sofa, staring at buildings and contemplating the landscape. A series of tasks, like taking a shower, making sandwiches for dinner, sorting his clothes for the wash, would divert his attention from the story for a while.

  An hour later, though, his mind was still on the same questions; of the jobs he had laid out for himself, the only thing he’d done was take a shower. Then he remembered he hadn’t put the beer in the refrigerator. He got dressed and went out to eat somewhere with better service.

  Gabriel knew that his mother wouldn’t listen in on his phone calls while the evening soap was on. And he knew that Olga would be home because she’d left work early, claiming to have the flu. Maybe she was sick and already asleep. He dialed, paying close attention to make sure his mother wasn’t lifting her phone off the hook. There was no click on the line, and Olga herself answered.

  “Gabriel … what a surprise …”

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’ve got a little fever and my body aches, but I think I’ll be able to make it in to work tomorrow. Thanks for calling.”

  “Olga?”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you feel better …”

  “Gabriel.”

  “Huh.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “No … nothing…. Get well.”

  “Thanks.”

  Olga had witnessed the scene with the clairvoyant. She had arrived at the bar with another coworker just as the psychic was being introduced to the group. At the time, she’d thought his prediction was extremely aggressive and in astonishingly bad taste; she’d decided the guy was drunk. Before she’d said her good-byes, she’d noticed how upset Gabriel was and tried to dismiss the whole thing. That was the only time they’d ever mentioned the subject. And it was precisely the excessive emphasis she’d placed on the incident that had intensified Gabriel’s concern. Exorcisms, like demons, are excessive, he thought.

  Olga’s testimony might help convince the sergeant that the story was true, but Gabriel couldn’t picture Olga at the police station. She was as fragile as a tightrope walker. Not physically—her body was strong and healthy, her current cold notwithstanding—but emotionally she seemed
on the verge of slipping. Judging from her caution around other people, a fall would no doubt be fatal. A meeting between Olga and Espinosa would only be possible outside a police setting.

  The birthday party had been the only time they’d met outside the office, and he thought she hadn’t gone for him, but for another colleague. Even at work, he didn’t see her as often as he’d like; they worked in different departments—he was technical, she was administrative. Olga had joined the company more than a year before, and they hadn’t spoken often enough to have developed a real friendship. This was the first time he’d ever called her.

  “Did you need to talk to someone, son?” His mother’s voice, coming from her room and confused with the sound of the television, caught him as he was entering the bathroom.

  “Nothing important, Mom, except that I’m going to kill someone.”

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “Nothing, Mother.”

  Nobody at the party had paid any attention to the psychic’s words. At least, nobody had brought up the subject later. They seemed to write it off as nothing more than simple bad taste. He saw it differently, though. It wasn’t a question of the truth or falsity of the statement. What mattered was its effect. After the initial impact, the idea had slowly taken hold. Now, with only a little less than two months to go before his birthday, his body and soul were completely dominated. He went to sleep thinking about the seer’s sentence, and it was the first thing that came to him when he awoke. In the last few months, he hadn’t had a single conversation that wasn’t affected by the idea; he hadn’t had a single thought that wasn’t corrupted by it; he hadn’t had a single feeling that wasn’t polluted by it. He wasn’t afraid of going crazy: for all he knew, he already was crazy. He was afraid of succumbing to exhaustion. His mother had certainly already noticed that something extraordinary was going on, but she would never be able to guess exactly what. She probably suspected that he was madly in love with someone, and that would lead her to redouble her pleas to the Lord to put her son back on the right path. At night his fantasies became even more menacing, but he went to sleep, thankful that at least his dreams were still immune.

  Even though Olga hadn’t completely recovered from her cold, she headed back to work with a new curiosity: what had Gabriel meant by his phone call? His voice had sounded like someone asking for comfort, not offering it; he, not she, was the sick one. The subway train was full that morning, which didn’t help her physical state. She couldn’t find a seat, and she had worn too many layers to protect herself against the very slight chill in the air. She lived in Tijuca, and working in Copacabana meant she had a long commute. A few times, she and Gabriel had run into each other on the train; he got on at Catete. It was rare, but when it happened she noticed that he seemed to be pleased to see her. At the Uruguaiana station, downtown, the trains spit passengers out like an assembly line expelling finished products. Olga found a seat next to the window. When the train stopped at Catete, she scanned the platform; no sign of Gabriel. During the trip to Copacabana, she couldn’t stop thinking about the curse hanging over his head. She was sure it was the reason he had called her.

  The Copacabana subway station was just over three blocks from her office. It wasn’t much for a winter day in Rio de Janeiro. No matter what the weather, Olga liked the walk because it gave her a chance to see what the women in the Zona Sul were wearing, even though she knew that the area wasn’t the city’s most fashionable and she herself could rarely afford to shop in the nicer stores. She didn’t think of herself as pretty, though she knew she had a nice body and an attractive stature, and that her black hair caught the occasional eye.

  The office they worked in was small, but it tried, at least from an aesthetic point of view, to imitate American companies. There weren’t offices, only a big room filled with linked cubicles that housed three to five people each. It was easy to see if someone was in yet. And Gabriel wasn’t. Since he was always the first one in, she was used to the morning ritual of waving and smiling on her way through what he called his stable. The company had around thirty employees; it wouldn’t be long before they would run into each other at the coffeemaker or on the way to the bathrooms, which were at the far end of the room.

  When a half hour had passed and Gabriel still hadn’t appeared, she called his house. A voice answered that could only belong to his mother. She hung up without a word. It was almost ten when he finally arrived; he was slightly out of breath and seemed to be having trouble looking anyone in the eye. He tossed his coat on his desk and, after mumbling something incomprehensible, headed straight for the bathroom. When he emerged a few minutes later, he seemed to be calmer. His hair was wet and combed. Olga approached his desk.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I am…. I was a little late…. I needed to take care of a personal matter.”

  “You don’t need to explain. I just want to know if you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine, it’s just that I came running from …”

  “Did something happen?”

  “No, thanks, nothing happened. I didn’t sleep well.”

  “Right. If you need any help, just tell me. And thanks for calling last night.”

  “No problem. Thanks.”

  They went back to their respective workstations. Gabriel avoided Olga’s gaze. There was no longer any doubt about the phone call the night before. It was hard to believe that he was still troubled by the incident with the clairvoyant. She knew it was ridiculous, but she was truly afraid he would carry out the prophecy. She’d known Gabriel ever since she’d started working in that office, and the idea of him killing someone deliberately was entirely absurd. And yet some people were impressionable enough to interpret such a prediction as a call of destiny. And if Gabriel wasn’t the kind of person to kill someone, he was clearly someone who was very impressionable.

  She tried to concentrate on the technical manual she was editing. Before long she was completely focused on the task of removing an uncomfortable cuticle with her fingernail and thinking back to the birthday party. She wondered whether a prediction could really create an irrepressible impulse. Sensitive people were probably more susceptible to such impulses, and Gabriel was a sensitive person. She liked him. He was the only person in the company she could imagine sleeping with.

  “I still don’t get what you want me to do with the boy, Espinosa.”

  “He’s not a boy; he’s almost thirty.”

  “But you make him sound like a boy.”

  “He seems as vulnerable as a child.”

  “But this child is announcing a murder.”

  “He’s not the one who’s announcing it. It was announced for him.”

  “And he believed in the prediction to the point that he’s asking the police to keep him from pulling the trigger.”

  “You mean to say that I believe in the prophecy as well.”

  “You must have a good reason for it.”

  “Thanks, Welber. I don’t have reasons, exactly; I have a feeling about it. Of course I don’t believe in astrologers, but I do believe in the power of words, and I have the feeling that this guy is going to get himself in trouble. See what you can do for him. If you think he’s crazy and that it’s all a fantasy, we’ll send him to another precinct.”

  “The problem is that the only way to know for sure is to wait and see if he kills anybody.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to come to that. He’d warn us. If he was really going to kill somebody, he wouldn’t have asked.”

  “I don’t like the fact that you gave me this case. He and I are the same age; I think he’d prefer dealing with someone older.”

  “Welber, I’m not that much older myself. It’s not like I’m old enough to be his father.”

  “It’s not your real age that matters. It’s what you represent for him. A police sergeant is an authority figure, just like a father.”

  “Are you dating a psychologist?”

  “No, but that’s not a bad idea.
”

  Gabriel had left the station a few minutes earlier. From what Espinosa and Welber could make out, the only reason for his visit was reassurance that the officer was taking him seriously. Espinosa’s attempt to pass the case on to an assistant hadn’t met with Gabriel’s favor. He’d been visibly agitated, though he’d done his best to keep a grip on himself; the result of his effort had been a pantomime of random gestures and movements. When Welber was introduced to him, he sat silently for a while, looking at a point between the two officers. Finally he let out a sigh and made a head movement that could have been interpreted as acquiescence. Then, turning toward Espinosa, he asked: “You aren’t going to help me anymore?”

  “I’m here whenever you need me. I trust Detective Welber completely, and he’ll have more time to dedicate to your case. As a sergeant, I’m involved in everything that goes on in this precinct. So he’ll be able to help you better than I can.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  His departure had been almost comical, a mix of hesitation, hurry, and—above all—tension.

  The two policemen had exchanged glances, certain that, no matter what they thought about prophecies and psychics, Gabriel’s behavior indicated that the prediction was exerting its effect. The question was where it all was heading. Even though Espinosa was interested in the drama of the story, he was still doubtful about how true it was. Not that he doubted Gabriel’s suffering: there was no conceivable reason for him to be faking it. But there also was no guarantee that it wasn’t just the ravings of a madman, which in no way diminished the possibility of a murder being committed. And he still wasn’t sure that Welber was taking any of this seriously. Maybe it was time to start checking out some of the facts the guy had provided. That was an ideal opportunity for Welber to get out of the bureaucratic trap he’d been in for the past year and hit the streets for a real investigation, even though it might just be an investigation into a neurotic’s extravagant fantasy.