December Heat Read online

  The boy thought it was especially lucky that the cop lived only four or five blocks from the man. It would make it easier, if necessary, to go from one to the other. This was the cop Clodoaldo had said you could count on. He really didn’t seem dangerous; he seemed distracted and inoffensive; but the boy knew that an inoffensive policeman was like a white vulture. He wasn’t in the habit of confiding in anyone, but occasionally you had to, like the time Clodoaldo saved him from a lynching when someone mixed him up with another kid who had slashed a woman’s face at a stoplight.

  Seated on the bench in the square, he saw a light come on in the window. He thought the cop must live alone; if there was someone else, the light would have been on before he got home. He probably didn’t have a wife or kids. Actually, he realized then that he never thought of any cop as having a wife and kids; when he heard the phrase “policeman’s family” he thought of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, but never imagined the cop himself as the head of the family. He kept his eye on the illuminated rectangle. He didn’t know why he was sitting on a park bench watching the window of a cop’s apartment, but that was probably all he could do: watch, snoop, follow, just like he was doing with the other man.

  The square started to empty as the kids went home to take their baths before dinner. While a few mothers and nannies took the little ones away, other moms shouted at the older ones from the windows. It had been nearly a month since he had last been home. His mother had stopped worrying about him and eventually learned that he always dropped out of sight when things in the city were more threatening than usual. He thought about taking her half of the money he’d found in the wallet, or even all of it, since that money worried him more than it helped him; but he might need it when he was following the man.

  After a short while, the Venetian blinds opened, revealing a silhouette. The silhouette stood up and stretched his arms, yawning, before immediately heading back toward the interior of the apartment. The boy didn’t see any reason to keep sitting there watching someone for no particular reason; in any case, the idea that people were going home to eat made his hunger more acute. He got up and stretched out his arms, imitating the silhouette, then turned toward the Avenida Copacabana; along the way, he would get a roasted chicken at a luncheonette. He walked away thinking about the cop’s funny name; he’d never heard of anyone named Espinosa. Before long he’d have to take up another vigil; the man tended to begin his nocturnal wanderings around ten.

  “If it’s to eat and not for drugs, fine,” said one of the ladies in the luncheonette, “though I should think a whole chicken would be a lot for a kid like you.”

  “Don’t put the money in his hand,” said the other one. “Pay the cashier so he can’t use the money for anything else.” She spoke like someone deeply versed in the most intimate corners of the human soul, not to mention the world of street kids. He wondered if they’d examine the chicken to make sure it wasn’t stuffed with pot or cocaine.

  At ten, after he’d devoured the chicken, he was sitting on the sidewalk across the street, waiting for the man to come out. Maybe the old lady was right: it was a lot of chicken for a small body, and it was weighing on his stomach. After a while, he started to get a little stomachache. If it got any worse, he couldn’t stay there on the sidewalk. The man appeared at the door of the building at a quarter to eleven. He looked around as if trying to decide where to strike next and fixed his eyes on the kid sitting across the street. He seemed to be searching his mind for a bit of information while his eyes memorized the face. By the time it looked like he’d remembered something, the kid had already gotten up and disappeared.

  The boy knew the look. He’d come across others like it, and he didn’t intend to wait around to see if the consequences would be the same. That man would do anything to get rid of anybody who got in his way, and he would stop at nothing to take personal advantage of anyone or anything. The boy knew that for that kind of man there was no line between legality and illegality: robbing and killing were activities as normal as breathing, eating, and living. The boy could be sure of only one thing: the man knew of his existence.

  The hearse left the coffin at the gates of the cemetery as if dropping off a package sent through the post. Besides Vieira—for whom death had long been contaminated by bureaucracy—and Flor—who attempted to cry—there was no one in the way of friends. Before closing the coffin into a drawer in the concrete wall, they waited awhile for the night doorman from Magali’s building, who had kept track of her comings and goings, but he didn’t show up. The body was buried (or drawered) without anyone bothering to make a note of the number of its location. Flor and Vieira left the cemetery arm in arm, like relatives. They split up in Copacabana, planning to meet again that night. Vieira headed for the restaurant where he had dined with Magali.

  “Sir, great to see you here again.”

  “Thanks, Chico.”

  “Is it true what they say? That Dona Magali died?”

  “She didn’t die, Chico. She was killed.”

  “And who did that, sir?”

  “That’s what I want to know, and in order to find out I need to find out other things. One of them is what happened to my wallet.”

  “Here in the restaurant nothing happened, sir. I waited on your table; when I brought the check you got your wallet out of your pocket and handed over the checkbook for Dona Magali to fill out; then you signed and put the checkbook and the wallet back in the back pocket of your pants.”

  “Are you sure I put the wallet in my pocket?”

  “Absolutely. You’d had a little to drink and it took you a while. I was waiting to pull out the chair to help you up.”

  “And outside? Who was the parking attendant?”

  “The same as always. If you’d like, I’ll have him come over.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll speak to him on the way out.”

  Vieira knew there wasn’t necessarily any link between the disappearance of the wallet and the death of Magali, but without interfering in Espinosa’s investigation, it was all he had to start with. The fact was, he couldn’t sit home watching TV while the police were gathering evidence against him. He declined the drink he was offered on the house and went to talk to the attendant.

  “Yes, sir, I was the one who helped you into the car. You were on the other side of the street when I saw you almost fall on top of the kid, and I ran to help.”

  “What kid, damn it? I didn’t have a kid with me.”

  “The kid wasn’t with you, sir. I’m talking about the kid who usually sleeps there on the sidewalk, right in front of where your car was parked.”

  “And what’s the deal with the kid?”

  “Nothing, sir. It’s just that you were a little tipsy and almost fell on top of him; maybe the noise woke him up.”

  “Noise?”

  “From the box.”

  “What goddamn box are you talking about? What does a fucking box have to do with it?”

  “The refrigerator box, sir.” He hastily added: “He was sleeping inside a refrigerator package someone had left on the sidewalk; you almost fell on top of him.”

  “And where’s the kid now?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Since that day he’s disappeared. The other gentlemen also asked about him; one of them told me to call them when he shows up.”

  “What other gentlemen? Who the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Your colleagues, sir. They also asked me about the wallet, and I told them the same thing.”

  “What was the number they gave you?”

  “Only one of them gave me a number. The one who was here first left his card.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and extracted several bits of paper that looked like they’d been there for years: sports betting tickets, a doctor’s prescription, and, in the middle, Espinosa’s card.

  Vieira didn’t know whether to be satisfied or scared. And he didn’t know what had put Espinosa onto the kid. What excuse could he give for arriving a
fter someone else from his team had already come? He looked at the man, at the place on the sidewalk where the boy had been, at the place where he must have parked his car, forcing himself to try to recall anything about those scenes. Useless: it was as if nothing had happened, and he was sure it would stay that way.

  Monday, late afternoon: the only pleasant feeling in his soul was the promise of Flor’s body. He wasn’t in a hurry. The memory of Magali, with time, had become softer and softer, until only random fragments remained. He missed her, but he knew that as the years went by he would miss her in ever smaller degrees, until even remembering his old suffering would cease to pain him. But maybe that wasn’t how Flor felt, and he didn’t want to rush her. He needed, moreover, to protect himself from Espinosa’s suspicions, and Espinosa wouldn’t be sympathetic to a romance between the only two people linked to the dead woman, especially if one of them was the prime suspect. On the other hand, he and Flor were free, unattached adults; no one needed to know what went on between them, even though Espinosa might not see it that way.

  His first night with Flor deserved a special celebration. They would eat at a restaurant by the beach; the moon wasn’t bright and the sky was overcast, but at least it didn’t look like it was going to rain. He still didn’t have his car. After dinner they’d go to her place; he didn’t like to take women to his apartment because he felt his ex-wife’s ghost still spying on everything. Besides, he liked to preserve his personal space. The only woman who had entered his apartment since Maria Zilda’s death was Magali.

  He decided to take a long bath; he would use a cologne Magali hadn’t given him, and he would wear white pants, white shoes, and a colored shirt, though he wouldn’t unbutton it too far, so as to cover the white hairs on his chest. He had learned that hair goes gray from top to bottom, and nothing was more pathetic than white body hair. He had thought of dyeing his hair light brown to produce a color something like mahogany, but he’d never gotten around to it.

  He arrived home out of breath; it had been a nice walk. Before getting in the bath, he laid out his clothes. He still hadn’t decided between the colored shirt and the white linen guayabera with white embroidery. Dressing all in white, like a groom, would really impress her. He decided not to take a bath: too much work. He took off his clothes and lay down in bed to relax.

  When he awoke, it was two-twenty in the morning.

  The news didn’t take long to arrive at the station: an unknown police officer was shaking down homosexuals, prostitutes, drug addicts, drunks, and foreigners. His description didn’t match that of any known officer, and the general opinion was that he wasn’t from another precinct, either: in other words, that he wasn’t a cop. Espinosa concluded immediately that someone had found Vieira’s I.D. The first reports came from the managers of bars and clubs located around the Praça do Lido; the next, from the beachside, suggesting a route down the beach toward Ipanema. If the guy was smart, he’d only stick around for a few days, then lie low before defensive measures were taken, not starting up again until a few weeks later, once everybody had forgotten about him. Espinosa doubted this first wave would last more than five days, which gave his team only a couple of days to intercept him—if the people he was robbing didn’t intercept him more definitively. Judging from the order of events, Espinosa figured the next place he’d hit would be a club that used to be mixed but was now a gay cruising ground. The plan was simple: two young detectives would serve as bait. He didn’t want to go himself or send more experienced detectives, because they might be recognized. His goal, more than simply recovering Vieira’s I.D., was to get the man. If he showed up, the detectives had orders to grab him as soon as he completed the first transaction.

  At ten-forty, Espinosa sat watching the partygoers’ movements attentively from a car parked almost directly in front of the club. He wanted to be one step ahead of the detectives inside and identify the man before he could go in; or, if he managed to get in, to protect the exit in case anything went wrong inside.

  He didn’t like stakeouts. He had a lot of trouble concentrating on a single point: he could focus his gaze, but his attention would wander; his eyes would stay fixed on the scene, but his mind would stray so far that he might as well be blind. Watching a door, he would fall into intense imaginary dialogues with someone he knew, often talking to his ex-wife about their son, losing track of time, completely unaware whether the suspect had come or gone. Other times, the shine off his bumpers would evoke the ’52 Chevrolet Hydra-Matic that his father had kept in perfect condition until the day he’d died. The three of them had died together: mother, father, and car. He was the only survivor. The presence of his grandmother had been a crucial factor in his life, but a grandmother wasn’t the same as a mother and father.

  He concentrated on the movement around the door again. Though names and fashions had changed, he could still see, shining on the facade in red neon, the name Bolero, evocative of the mysterious interiors like those he had seen in American films. Twelve-fifteen. The mist, almost imperceptible when they’d arrived, now formed a compact mass that blocked his view of the waves on the other side of the street behind him. Maybe the man had decided to interrupt his forays—he’d been too active in the first couple of days—or maybe he’d chosen another bar. The description they’d been furnished didn’t help much. At one o’clock, Espinosa saw the two detectives come out of the club and walk toward the car.

  “Chief, we don’t think he’s coming. There aren’t a lot of people in there, and it’s thinning out. It’s not a good night.” Both pairs of eyes were red with smoke and beer.

  “Let’s keep at it another half hour; after that we’ll go home.”

  It was almost two in the morning when they called it a night. They’d try again the next day. All they could do now was go home and sleep.

  Stretched out in bed, Flor looked at her own feet and examined what little there was of her apartment beyond her big toe. The bathroom had the necessary equipment, but it was all so crammed together that even lathering up her hair in the shower required synchronized arm movements: if one arm was bent upward, the other had to remain flat against her side.

  Though she received very few clients at home, and though these were all carefully selected, Flor figured it would be hard for her to move up in the world while living in that cubicle. She couldn’t even offer them a proper chair; the client opened the door and bumped immediately into the bed. Neither could she invite them to enjoy the view: the only window looked out at a narrow space surrounded by hundreds of similar windows. The rent and the maintenance were paid by her Pernambucan benefactor. “Only until I can afford it myself,” she’d said to him at the time, but she’d never had to worry about that detail. As for improving her situation in life, she knew she’d moved quite a long ways up from the stud-and-mud house in Recife, but not enough: from TV she’d learned that an artist could do much better, and she considered herself an artist. “Josias could hook me up with a bigger apartment, one compatible with my future.” She was still looking at her big toe when it occurred to her that it wouldn’t be long before Josias would show up with Junior and say: “I want you to make him a man, Flor.” She switched the position of her legs. Now the other big toe moved into focus. The view of the room stayed the same, but the toe was different. She liked her slender, elegant feet; she hated puffy feet with clubby toes. Josias didn’t like for her to paint her nails. “I hope Vieira doesn’t like it either; I can’t walk around with the nails painted on one foot and not on the other.” She considered herself taken care of. On the one hand, there was the financial security Josias offered, which would certainly be enhanced when Junior arrived on the scene; on the other hand, she had a new protector in Vieira. The fact that he was retired didn’t change anything; once a cop, always a cop—the only difference was that the older ones needed more love. She wouldn’t have any problems if she could handle these two. She liked Vieira; she thought she even liked him more than Josias, which she attributed to his not bein
g afraid to walk arm in arm with her on the street. Josias had only taken her to dinner once, but in a restaurant so far away, on the side of a highway, that it felt like they were in another state. Magali had told her that once she had gone to visit Vieira in the hospital when he was recovering from an operation. When she entered the room, he was with two colleagues from the precinct and a third man she figured was a relative. He introduced her to all of them as an old and dear friend. When he complained about his cold feet, she got a pair of socks out of the wardrobe and put them on him, in front of everyone, a clear proof of their intimacy. The scene she described became Flor’s paradigm of all loving relationships. Flor imagined the scene and the almost sacred intimacy of the gesture of putting on someone’s socks for them. She looked back at her own feet. And once again she was happy to find them thin and elegant. Her hands, with long, narrow fingers, matched her feet. She didn’t wear rings because she thought they distracted from her own beauty. She avoided all kinds of accessories. “Only ugly girls need baubles” was one of her favorite sayings. She thought, moreover, that the only function of clothing was to reinforce forms and allude to whatever was hidden. All her considerable wisdom was placed at the service of her body’s powers.

  That was the body Vieira was thinking about when he called.

  “Flor, my dear, I’m so sorry about last night; I went to rest before our date and fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until the middle of the night.”

  “Don’t worry about it, love. We can go out tonight; I don’t have plans.” And even before Vieira could think about what her plans might entail, she went on: “Because now I’m your flower and you’re my gardener.” As usual, the phrase produced the intended effect.