A Window in Copacabana Read online

  When he left the restaurant, the rain had stopped and the sidewalk was dry. The best route home was a few blocks down the Avenida Atlântica and then a perpendicular approach to the Peixoto District. He hadn’t been walking ten minutes when he was once again struck by the feeling that he was being followed. Since it had been raining, there were fewer people out, which made it easier to isolate a possible stalker. He walked a little farther, looking for a dry bench. He sat down and studied the stream of people who followed, checking to see if any of them slowed down. Just like the first time, he found no candidates. He waited a few minutes, got up, and went home.

  He considered Saturday mornings special, as opposed to Sundays, which, as far as he was concerned, had no reason for existing. While he read two newspapers—instead of the one he looked at on weekdays—he drank two cups of coffee and allowed himself a double helping of toast, which he smeared with excess jam. The main thing he did on Saturday mornings was concoct extremely detailed and ambitious plans for his life or his home, none of which were fated to leave the drawing board.

  When he and his wife had split up, she’d taken the furniture and all the domestic utensils. He himself had insisted on it. Since she was taking their son, it didn’t make sense to divide things up. Except in Solomonic parables, it didn’t make sense to divvy up a kid. He’d kept the apartment where he’d lived since childhood—first with his parents, then with his grandmother, who’d taken care of him until he was grown, and, eventually, with his wife and son. His parents had been killed in an automobile accident when he was fourteen, and his only living relative was his maternal grandmother. She had stayed with him until he was nineteen, at which point she’d returned to her own apartment, which she hadn’t been able to rent out during the intervening years because of the enormous quantities of books, which threatened to devour any tenant. From her, Espinosa had inherited his taste for reading. Neither of them were intellectuals. They simply liked books. She, because she was a translator; he, because he liked good stories. In the careful mess that now reigned in his apartment, great literary classics shared space with the old Coleção Amarela crime novels he’d inherited from his father. The current austere look of his apartment was not an aesthetic choice but the result of a decision to keep only the bare minimum of things required for the function and comfort of the place’s only inhabitant. Shelving was thus unnecessary, even for someone with more than a thousand books piled up against the living room wall.

  The Saturday morning sky was serenely blue, and the heat was not unpleasant. Whenever he could, he preferred not to use the air conditioner. Not to save money, although that was occasionally necessary, but because the machine dried out the air and set up an artificial barrier between him and the outside world. Air-conditioning placed a city in parentheses: it might as well be Paris or New York as Rio de Janeiro. Air conditioners all had the same temperature, the same smell, and the same opaque noise that neutralized any local sounds. He pushed his rocking chair over to the French window, facing the mini-balcony, and rested his feet on the cast-iron rail. He was finishing up the first newspaper when the telephone rang. Normally he’d let the answering machine get it, but on Saturday morning it was always possible that it might be a pleasant call.

  “Sir, I apologize for calling at this hour—”

  “No problem.”

  “—but they got Nestor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They killed him. Like the other two.”

  Nestor was found dead in a small apartment on the Rua Ministro Viveiros de Castro, near the Avenida Prado Júnior, at the far edge of Copacabana. When Espinosa arrived at the apartment, Freire, the researcher from the Criminological Institute and an acquaintance, was talking to Welber.

  “Freire, Welber…. Anything?”

  “Just like the other one,” the researcher answered.

  “What’s like the other one?” Espinosa asked.

  “A shot in the neck, gun fired from a few inches away.”

  Freire rarely spoke, and when he did his delivery was staccato. Welber, seeing that Freire had run out of things to say that day, added the details he’d managed to piece together.

  “Nestor was seated with his back toward the door, watching TV and drinking beer. He was already on his second bottle. There were two cups on the coffee table, but only one had been used. The phone rang, he picked it up, and was talking when he was hit in the neck. The phone fell and dangled next to his arm. The money in his wallet, his ID, and his weapon are all on the bedside table. Apparently nothing was stolen. He also had a cell phone on the table; we checked the last call dialed and got the apartment phone number. The murderer must have been standing outside the apartment door, talking to Nestor on the cell phone. With Nestor distracted by the noise of the television and the phone call, the murderer came in and shot him.”

  “We definitely have a pattern: a cop, a single point-blank shot, no witnesses,” answered Espinosa.

  Like the other two victims, Nestor had been practically a stranger to his colleagues. Little or nothing was known about his private life, and his service record was barely enough to fill half a page. One glance was enough to take in the whole apartment.

  This was clearly not someone’s home. The only businesses in the area were a few bars and sleazy hangouts, and most of the apartments were studios. Surveillance of comings and goings in the area was nonexistent. Nestor’s apartment had the advantage of looking out onto the street. The view was not one of the city’s more spectacular, but it made the interior feel a little less cramped. The kitchenette, which was barely larger than a wardrobe, contained a small refrigerator with a bottle of water and a few beers. There was no food and only one jar of coffee crystals and one bottle of liquid sweetener; in the single closet were some sheets, two towels, and a change of clothes hanging from a solitary wire hanger; nothing in the bathroom indicated that anyone lived there. The apartment was as impersonal as a hotel room.

  “It seems like a meeting place,” Espinosa said after looking around and opening a few drawers. “His weapon wasn’t close at hand; to get it, he’d have had to get past the bed. Not where he would have left it if he’d been expecting a dangerous visitor. Like the other two, he was expecting a friend or acquaintance.”

  “There’s only one more item on the checklist,” Espinosa said to Welber.

  “What’s that?”

  “Find the mistress.”

  Freire was packing up his working materials.

  “There are no fingerprints on the phone or on the doorknob. The lock wasn’t forced. When the forensic people get the bullet, I’ll be able to tell you if it’s from the same weapon as the other two. As soon as I’ve got something, I’ll let you know.”

  “What do you think?” Welber asked as soon as Freire left.

  “One member of the club is bumping off the rest of the team.”

  Both of them were looking at the cadaver when the cell phone rang. Espinosa answered.

  “Hello!” a young voice said. “Cíntia?”

  5

  The interview didn’t last fifteen minutes, and if it had been up to Espinosa it wouldn’t have lasted fifteen seconds. But the secretary of security had recommended that officers make themselves available to the press to showcase the government’s efforts to wipe out police corruption.

  “Sergeant, were the murdered cops part of the so-called bad apples?”

  “Was this one bad apple killing others?”

  “Do you think we’re seeing an attempt to destroy evidence?”

  “Do you think the police department has finally found a way to clean itself up?”

  Espinosa had a sense of humor, but he didn’t appreciate irony. As far as he was concerned, the sooner the interview ended, the better. Besides, it was hard to be friendly on a Monday morning. He agreed to let himself be filmed at the entrance to the station, in front of the arch with the words “Twelfth Precinct” on the facade. After a few minutes, Welber rescued his boss and sent away the
reporters.

  “You did well, sir…. They were trying to provoke you, but you stayed calm. I was afraid they’d tick you off.”

  “Do you have an aspirin?”

  Espinosa answered a few more phone calls from reporters wanting to know if there was a serial killer murdering policemen or if the force was cleaning house. Then he went to lunch. Not because he was hungry, but because he didn’t want to answer any more calls.

  He headed toward the beach, thinking back to the afternoon when Nestor had approached him. He remembered noting more curiosity than fear in the detective.

  He left McDonald’s holding a bag with a burger, a milk shake, and fries. Welber’s girlfriend would have disapproved. He sat down on a sidewalk bench on the Avenida Atlântica and got ready for a lunch with a sea view. In fact, he neither ate lunch nor looked at the sea: this wasn’t a proper lunch and he wasn’t paying attention to the view, though he seemed to be staring right at it. He tried to remember Nestor’s words: “I haven’t done anything to make anyone want to kill me.” He’d seemed quite certain that more people would die. What the detective didn’t seem to suspect was that he’d be the next victim. “I haven’t done anything to make anyone want to kill me” was ambiguous: it implied that he’d done something, but nothing that deserved the death penalty.

  The problem with eating lunch on a public bench was that you were invariably forced to share your space. A boy who must have been about six years old but didn’t look older than three or four stared at Espinosa before leaving with the fries. “I haven’t done anything to make anyone want to kill me.” That’s where you were wrong, son. You had indeed; you just didn’t know what. The boy came back with another kid as small as he was, who left with the Big Mac. “More people are going to get killed,” Nestor had also said. What Espinosa wanted to know, seeing the two boys walk off, was who, and when.

  He sat looking at the ocean, finishing his milk shake. The shade of the almond tree was pleasant, and the view was included in the price of the lunch. His reverie was interrupted by someone sitting down on the bench. It was Welber.

  “Sir, I thought you’d be out here somewhere.”

  “Welber, if you’d gotten here a couple of minutes ago you could have eaten with us.”

  Welber didn’t understand the reference and didn’t try. He knew his boss.

  “I didn’t come here to eat with you,” he said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Besides the three murders, nothing. For now.”

  “If there’s one more murder, every cop in town is going to be walking around with an itchy trigger finger.”

  “More or less.”

  “What are we going to do to avoid that?”

  “Get the murderer.”

  “The problem isn’t the murderer,” Espinosa said.

  “No?”

  “I think he’s been hired to do the job. He’s just a tool, not the real cause of the deaths. Or, if you like, he’s the immediate cause but not the ultimate cause. He could be replaced by someone else.”

  “Why are you saying that?”

  “Because the three murders were too clean. Someone who’s killing for hate or revenge riddles the body with bullets and spits on top of it. These murders were clean, silent, surgical; there was no passion, revenge, emotion: cold as ice. Whoever killed them was hired by someone. And furthermore, the real criminal is trying to send a message to other potential victims, a message that only they can understand. The ones who didn’t get the memo, including Nestor, died. There’s a pattern to the killings and there’s a pattern to the victims. They’re all cops who never stood out, who lived hidden lives, and who were as invisible and silent as their deaths.”

  “A lot of people seem to think the message is meant for them.”

  “Then they have some idea of the motive.”

  “What are we going to do to stop the rumors?”

  “We’re going to examine the lives of all the dead men and try to get anything we can from the crime scenes. Of course it will take more than just one investigator. We’ve got to set up a team. I’ll leave the technical aspects to Freire.”

  The two sat looking at the sea in silence until they rose to return to the station.

  “Who did you eat with, sir?”

  “No one you know.”

  Espinosa settled on three cops. Ramiro, the inspector: twenty years on the job, head of the detectives, a link between the chief and the rank and file, skilled at interrogation, and an able investigator. It would be a mistake not to include him. The second choice was Artur, a detective who’d just gotten out of the police academy, intelligent and still untainted by corruption. The third was Welber, his assistant and colleague of several years, whom Espinosa trusted completely. The operational aspects would fall under the purview of Inspector Ramiro.

  The first meeting was held behind closed doors on Thursday afternoon. The chief laid out the plan of action.

  “We don’t know why they’re killing cops. If the murderer is killing at random, any one of us could be next, and if he thinks that our investigation could disrupt his plans, he could turn against us. I want to know every step you take. I want a daily report of all your activities. Orally—don’t write anything down. Don’t use your computer to store data or for e-mail. If you need to interview, remember that you can be followed. You are absolutely prohibited to make any comment, no matter how insignificant, to anyone besides the people in this room. That includes your father, mother, colleague, friend, wife, girlfriend, priest, pastor, or rabbi: when you pray, do it silently and without moving your lips. If you need to make notes during your investigation, destroy anything you don’t absolutely need; hide the important stuff where it won’t be found. Keep this in mind: from now on, your lives depend on following these rules. This isn’t going to be a team investigation. Forget about the normal procedures. At a certain point you’re going to investigate your own colleagues. It won’t be fun. If anything happens to me, the group is disbanded.”

  “What do you mean, if anything happens to you?” Artur asked.

  “I don’t feel endangered, but they may decide to shut down the investigation. Discretion is our best protection. If they know what we’re up to, they’ll be able to anticipate our next move. You will be more exposed than I am.”

  “When do we start?”

  “Tomorrow. First of all, I want you to find out everything possible about the victims: property, real estate, family, wives, mistresses, friends, trips, hobbies, gambling, debts, health … everything.”

  “Are the meetings always going to be held here?”

  “Your individual reports can be given here, but we’ll hold our meetings at different places outside the station.”

  The three were getting up to leave when Espinosa made a final suggestion.

  “Whenever possible, I want Artur to work with Ramiro or Welber, at least for a while. One more thing: your colleagues, here and in other precincts, are going to find out about this investigation. In other words, they’ll know you’re investigating them.”

  It was after seven-thirty by the time he got home. While he was getting undressed, he listened to the messages on his answering machine. There were days when he felt more intensely than others that his skin had been used, over the course of the day, as a trap for every pollutant in the atmosphere, and it was nice to send the day’s residue down the shower drain. He was still wrapped in his towel when he returned Irene’s call. Her machine picked up.

  He’d met Irene during a murder investigation. She and the victim had been close. Once the investigation was over, he and Irene became friends, and as time went by they became a little more than that. She was a graphic designer, financially independent, and lived alone in a pleasant apartment in Ipanema, two blocks from the beach. They often met up, but they never planned their next date. Irene worked in São Paulo as much as in Rio, so they simply saw each other whenever they could. Irene was undemanding, which somehow bothered Espinosa, even though he sincere
ly preferred to keep things as they were. But he couldn’t help thinking that more than a decade of living alone was a sign that something wasn’t right. He sometimes wondered whether it would be better either to commit to celibacy consciously or to move in with someone, once and for all. He liked Irene, but he didn’t doubt that their relationship had reached a perfect balance, and that any attempt to shift the scales would mean the end.

  Irene thought of cops—him in particular—as sleazy. And that was what made Espinosa special for her. Irene balanced her serious professional life with romantic eccentricities. The lesbian relationship she’d had with her murdered friend was one such eccentricity; sleeping with a cop was another.

  He took off the towel, put on some shorts, and started pacing around the living room. He didn’t feel like listening to music and felt even less like watching TV. He didn’t want to eat frozen food, and he didn’t want to do the dishes. He made two sandwiches out of black bread and cold cuts, which he took with a bottle of beer to the living room couch. On the coffee table was the book he’d started the week before. He picked it up again, but abandoned it before the end of the chapter. He turned on the TV. Sometimes that worked.

  The following hours were marked by a nervousness he rarely experienced. Eventually, the real reason for his anxiety rose to the surface. He was unsure if his resistance to a more stable relationship with Irene had something to do with the homosexual episode in her past. Or episodes: he couldn’t be sure there hadn’t been others. A few years had passed since then, but certain things are reluctant to leave us, or for us to leave them. Perhaps she still engaged in sporadic relationships of that kind. Or was the relationship with Espinosa the sporadic one? Consciously, he wasn’t bothered by Irene’s past. Or her present. She was a beautiful woman, deliciously feminine. Her experience with the other woman, or other women, was not a result of too little femininity but of too much of it. That’s what she’d told him once, at least. But the fact was that he couldn’t get over the prejudices he’d accumulated as a child, in the neighborhood of Fátima, downtown, before he’d come to live in Copacabana. Back then everything was simple: boys were boys, girls were girls, and everyone acted according to the patterns of their sex. There was no confusion. Or at least that’s what he’d thought. How much of the boy from Fátima was still alive in him?