December Heat Read online

  Flor remembered that period as she paced back and forth across the building’s entry hall. Without realizing how absurd the situation was, she had brought her dead friend a little bunch of violets, which she clasped with both hands. She had said something to the doorman, in an attempt to justify the anomaly, but he couldn’t even make out what she was saying, her voice was so choked up by tears. When Vieira got there, she threw herself into his arms, flowers and all.

  “Vieira …”

  “Flor, you shouldn’t have come here by yourself.”

  “Vieira, I lost the only friend I had … I lost my sister.”

  “Let’s go, Flor. There’s nothing for us to do here.”

  On the street, people had their Sunday-night faces on. The two walked in silence. Flor clutched the flowers with one of her hands and took Vieira’s arm with the other. They looked like they were walking behind a hearse.

  After he chose the place where he would spend the next nights and hid his change of clothes, he decided to follow the new owner of the wallet. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but something told him that it was a way of protecting himself. Since he was so young, they knew he couldn’t use the credit cards or the policeman’s I.D., but they could accuse him of selling them to someone. He was only three blocks away from the man’s building and had the whole Sunday ahead of him. Not that it made a difference if it was Sunday or a weekday; he was sure that, like him, the man didn’t have a job. He had seen him a few other times on the streets of Copacabana. One occasion, around the time that he’d found the wallet, stood out in his mind. He had seen the man hit a woman, and someone who hits a woman wouldn’t hesitate to hit a child.

  Later, he’d been the one to find the wallet. The boy felt like he had handed it to him, and every minute the idea tormented him more. When he tossed the wallet onto the pavement, he thought it didn’t matter to him who picked it up, but now he knew he was wrong. When he’d thrown it onto the street he had been gambling on who would find it, and now he was paying the price. As he saw it, he had to get it back or render it useless. Not out of a sense of justice. He knew only his own justice, which could be described simply: what was good for him was just. And this whole thing had been bad for his soul. He decided to stick behind the man and follow him all through Copacabana, every bar, restaurant, dive, crack house, gambling parlor; to make a note of every person, man or woman, he met up with. This was betting that he wouldn’t leave the district, where both of them spent all their time.

  The afternoon was starting. The man had clearly slept during the day in order to be awake and operate at night. Maybe he would go out to eat something nearby, maybe one of those chickens that spin around in the windows in front of luncheonettes, and take it home to eat. He thought that, just like him, the man must eat by himself.

  Sometimes an insignificant event can prove to be the beginning of a crusade. For the boy, the discovery of the wallet had been such an event: that man simply could not be allowed to benefit from his discovery. Before the afternoon ended, the idea had assumed epic proportions, occupying his entire brain, transforming it into a holy war, the existence of which he alone was aware. The war was nothing more than a struggle between two people, but it had attained cosmic dimensions. It didn’t matter that one of the two people involved had no idea he was in a battle at all.

  “Vieira, I want to say something…. Magali always said she had a debt of gratitude toward you….” A couple of seconds passed. “Now that she’s no longer here … the debt is mine.”

  Her voice was as solemn as the silence she had broken. Vieira didn’t say anything; they kept walking, Flor with one hand on Vieira’s arm and the violets in the other. There was no visible reaction on his part, but she felt a slight increase in tension in his arm and an almost imperceptible reduction in their pace. Even though they hadn’t stopped walking and life went on around them as always, they felt that they had somehow stepped out of time.

  “You are a flower.”

  They found themselves walking from Magali’s building to Flor’s. It wasn’t far, and they were already close when Vieira suggested they get something to eat in one of the nearby restaurants. They chose the one with the fewest people. While they ate, Flor talked about the time when she’d lived in Recife.

  Her business sense had shown itself early, before she turned fourteen. She lived with her mother and three siblings, two older brothers and a nine-year-old sister, in a stud-and-mud house in the poor section of town. Her mother worked late into the night as a cook in a greasy spoon; the two brothers worked during the day and, when circumstances permitted, studied at night. She took care of the house, cooking and babysitting her younger sister. The street where they lived was (or so she thought) right on the way to the Jesuit boys’ school in the next neighborhood. The boys said her street was a shortcut. When she noticed that the path didn’t shorten the distance in the least and was, to the contrary, the cause of repeated tardiness at the school, Flor realized that she was the real reason for the changed itinerary. The realization didn’t do much for her vanity (they were a bunch of brats), but it did open her eyes to the possibility of an innocent but lucrative business. She let a few of the boys know that for a small fee, no more than the price of a soft drink, they could watch her change clothes through her bedroom window. All they had to do was stop by the window—one at a time, so as not to arouse suspicion in the neighborhood—put their money on the windowsill, and witness the quick scene of Flor taking off and putting on her clothes. Soon she had to establish a schedule, so that the boys wouldn’t all show up at the same hour on the same day.

  The little shows were a big success. But soon enough the boys were no longer content to watch; they wanted to touch. One Sunday, when the family went to the beach, Flor began to envision wider possibilities. The job as a nanny and the subsequent move to Rio were on the new paths she saw open before her.

  Vieira thought it was surprising that Flor didn’t blame the world or anyone else for her misfortunes. Moreover, she didn’t consider herself unfortunate; she saw her early poverty as something entirely accidental and fleeting, which in fact it was. She didn’t think prostitution was a job like any other. She thought it was better. “Look at all these maids, washerwomen, supermarket checkout girls: they’re slaves. I work at home, whenever I want to; I don’t have a boss and I don’t have to please anyone.” She concluded, “Besides, they say it’s the oldest profession in the world, and if it’s been around for so long it must be good.” Vieira, fascinated, looked at her silently, contemplating her beauty just like the boys in Recife.

  Magali’s death was fresh, and he was still confused. He left Flor at home and walked back to his own apartment. It was the second night in a row that he’d crossed all of Copacabana on foot. This time his steps were a little lighter.

  As soon as the chief had finished reading the file on the crime, his thoughts had turned to Espinosa. At least that’s what he said when he interrupted Espinosa’s weekend rest with a phone call.

  “I thought of you for two reasons: because you live nearby and because an ex-cop you know is involved.” Espinosa didn’t really like Vieira’s manners, but he knew Vieira was an honest fellow; all he had to show for himself upon retirement was a one-bedroom apartment on a rundown street in Copacabana. This second quality amply made up for the first, if only because they didn’t have to see each other socially.

  So Espinosa had his weekend interrupted, which didn’t imply much of a sacrifice, given his aversion to Sundays.

  He recalled the bedroom scene, and saw Vieira paralyzed in the doorway, eyes glued to the horrifying mask of the suffocated woman. Unshaven, wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before, his few white hairs askew, belly spilling out over his waist, posture beaten down by emotional and physical shock, Vieira was the second victim in that room. The circumstances—the car parked in front of the building, the can of Mace—plus the alcoholic amnesia put him in a delicate situation. Though the scene was at odds with Espinos
a’s image of him, the clues he had to work with weren’t at all to Vieira’s advantage. The main thing in his favor was his lack of a motive. There wasn’t much to support the hypothesis that it was a crime of passion; it didn’t have the characteristics of that sort of murder. Espinosa didn’t doubt that Vieira was capable of committing a crime, but he doubted that he had committed this crime. The suffering he showed during his deposition wasn’t the desperation of someone passionately in love or the chilliness of a pervert but the pain of someone who had lost something dear to his heart. In an age usually marked by little daily pleasures, Magali had appeared in his life like the promise of the thousand and one nights. He knew she was a prostitute, and he knew that no man could hope to control her. Vieira had taken care of the only one who had tried to exploit her. So at first glance he didn’t seem to fit the role of the murderer. What Espinosa didn’t understand, though, was how his belt had ended up around the dead girl’s legs.

  It was almost four in the morning; the officer on duty hadn’t paid much attention to the crime (a hooker’s murder doesn’t make it into the news), and the next day the chief would hand the file to Espinosa with only one comment about Vieira: “He’s a good guy.”

  The exhaustion that had overflowed from Vieira invaded the beginning of Espinosa’s Sunday as he walked home. After taking the deposition, he didn’t feel like going to bed. More than his sadness, the ex-officer’s loneliness struck him. While he tried to force himself to go to sleep, at five in the morning, he was overcome by images of himself in the not-too-distant future being courted by young prostitutes hoping to be protected from the rigors of the law—which was rigorous only when it was looking after someone’s personal business. He tried to convince himself that in his case things would be different; he wasn’t a fat boor like Vieira, he liked books, he had good taste, he wouldn’t end his life running after hookers. But this reflection—which he thought was fair—notwithstanding, he couldn’t fall asleep. He knew that he couldn’t force it, and since he didn’t use sleeping pills he just let his imagination quiet down, which happened when the sun was already in the sky. He fell asleep without having rid himself entirely of the image of Magali.

  When he woke up, half of Sunday was already behind him; but the other half still loomed, and while he had his coffee, he thought about ways to try to shorten it. Vieira had given him a list of the restaurants he frequented. There weren’t many, and he had told Espinosa which ones were the most likely. The first was on the Rua Santa Clara, a few blocks from Espinosa’s apartment; a walk there could be a pleasant way of passing the afternoon.

  He usually spent entire days interrogating people in the hope of getting a single bit of useful information, so he was delighted to hear from the manager that he knew Officer Vieira and that on Friday he had been here with a blond girl, departing around one in the morning.

  “Were they here by themselves?”

  “They were.”

  “Was he agitated, aggressive, rude?”

  “No. Officer Vieira is an old customer. When he drinks the only thing that happens is he talks too loud, but he never gets aggressive.”

  “Do you remember how he paid?”

  “With a check, but she filled it out. He just signed; his hand wasn’t very steady.”

  “He didn’t forget anything on the table?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His wallet disappeared; he could have left it behind here.”

  “If that had happened, you can be sure we’d keep it for him and let him know.”

  “Do you know if they met anyone when they left?”

  “That I can’t tell you, but maybe the parking attendant might remember.”

  “Is it the same one every day?”

  “Yeah. He should be out there now.”

  “Thanks. If you hear anything about the wallet, call this number.”

  Since he’d arrived on foot, the parking attendant hadn’t paid him any attention. There weren’t many people in the restaurant and accordingly few keys in the lockbox. When Espinosa flashed his badge, he thought he perceived a subterranean tremor in the man. He pretended not to notice. The attendant remembered perfectly well the back-slapping policeman who gave good tips. On the night in question he had been so full of whiskey that he’d almost fallen on top of the boy who slept on the sidewalk and had to be helped into the car. It was just him and the woman; no one had met up with them. The two of them left in the car by themselves, with her at the wheel. He hadn’t seen a wallet; the officer had gone straight from the door of the restaurant to the car parked right across the street, and if anything had fallen he would have seen it. Espinosa reminded him that the wallet could have fallen out when Vieira got into the car.

  “I personally helped get him into the car and can promise you that no wallet fell out.”

  “There was nobody else around?”

  “It was already late; at that time the only other person on the street was the boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “The one who sleeps under the marquee sometimes. On that night, he was inside a refrigerator box someone had left on the sidewalk.”

  “And where is the boy now?”

  “He hasn’t shown up since that night.”

  “Does he always sleep here?”

  “Sometimes. He waits until the restaurant’s closing to get his hands on a plate of food.”

  “If he comes back, try to keep him around and call me.”

  Espinosa left thinking that this Sunday hadn’t been so bad. Instead of taking the same route home, he walked a few feet to the Avenida Atlantica. There was still a little bit of light left in the sky. The ocean was a mixture of green, blue, and gray, with the white of the waves giving light to the colors; the mountains were bluish masses, living curves against the sky. Espinosa thought that if the world had been created by God, he had used his best material and all his inspiration to create that landscape. He went back home convinced that some Sundays were better than others.

  There wasn’t much to do until tomorrow. He called Vieira but there was no answer. Maybe if he knew which restaurant he had been to that night it would help jog his memory. Unless it wasn’t in his best interests to remember anything. He had heard of traumatic amnesia as well as the alcoholic amnesia Vieira alleged; what he didn’t know was whether you could recover the lost memories. Espinosa felt sympathy for his ex-colleague; he wouldn’t like to see him accused of Magali’s murder. But he recognized that there were a few details pointing in that direction and that the alleged amnesia was awfully convenient. He decided not to leap to conclusions.

  A cup of coffee and a slice of toast was not enough to keep him on his feet all day. Rather than resort to the frozen lasagnas at home, he decided to eat on the street, in spite of the parents and little kids who invaded the restaurants at that hour on Sunday.

  The Peixoto district is really an enclave of Copacabana, one block square with a plaza in the middle, surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the beach on the fourth. It was a survivor of the old Copacabana, before the area had been transformed into a compact mass of buildings squeezed between the ocean and the mountains. The buildings, mostly three or four stories high, are of simple design; the only architectural variations consist in the presence or absence of little balconies. Few buildings have a garage or an elevator. Espinosa’s apartment, on the top floor of a building of only three stories, had French windows and a wrought-iron balcony with a view onto a little square that wasn’t quite pretty but couldn’t be considered ugly, either; in any case, it was one of the trademarks of the neighborhood.

  He didn’t inhabit this privileged locale because he longed for the bucolic. Espinosa was actually drawn to big cities, even to the point of wondering, when he stopped to think about it, whether his urban ideal wasn’t something out of Blade Runner—a fact that struck him from the rosters of normal, healthy people.

  He hadn’t chosen the place, at least not at first; he’d inherited the apartment fr
om his parents. He had decided to stay on after their deaths, when he was fourteen, and his grandmother had come to keep him company, remaining until he turned nineteen. Why nineteen, and not eighteen or twenty-one, he had never quite understood. He owed his taste for reading to her. At first, with the hunger of the dispossessed, he’d read anything and everything. Slowly he’d begun directing his interest toward English-language writers. In spite of his intimacy with books, he didn’t much care for intellectuals. He liked to read, but he nurtured a secret disdain for criticism and literary theory. His reading included not only Melville, Chandler, and Hemingway but also a healthy serving of authentic pulp fiction. This interest often led him to abandon Copacabana for extended visits to the used-book stalls downtown. It was important to him to draw out these expeditions, to create a whiff of adventure that doubled the pleasure of the find.

  When he was transferred from the downtown precinct to Copacabana, he gained something priceless: a commute he could cover on foot in no more than ten minutes. He had two different routes, one down Tonelero and the other down Barata Ribeiro. They were the same distance, but the Barata Ribeiro option took a little longer because he was always distracted by the shop windows, the pedestrians, and the cars. He was not interested in window-shopping because he was a compulsive consumer; he was simply in the habit of memorizing every environment—a room, a segment of a street, a shop window. He noticed even the slightest alteration: the habit, refined over the years, had earned him the reputation of being a meticulous observer. Depending on the hour he returned home, he sometimes took a third way: leaving the station, he went down the Rua Hilário de Gouveia and turned right on the Avenida Copacabana, following the human masses streaming down the sidewalks; after a little more than two blocks, he entered the Galeria Menescal, which connects the Avenida Copacabana to the Rua Barata Ribeiro, in order to enjoy a kibbeh at the Arab’s stand in the middle of the Galeria.