A Window in Copacabana Read online

  2

  Welber and Artur paid several visits to the building on Botafogo Beach, looking for Celeste. According to the doormen, she hadn’t come back or been in touch. On Wednesday afternoon, a week after she disappeared, Espinosa doubled back to his office after lunch. Ramiro entered behind him.

  “Chief, Celeste called. She wants to talk to you.”

  “Who answered?”

  “I did.”

  “Why does she want to talk to me? She doesn’t know me.”

  “When I talked to her that time, she said that she knew who you were, that Nestor had mentioned you.”

  “How did she sound?”

  “Confused. She must have been talking from a pay phone, somewhere busy; there was a lot of noise.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wants to meet you.”

  “Meet me or talk to me?”

  “Both. First, she wanted to talk to you, but since you weren’t there—”

  “Did she say what she wanted to talk to me about?”

  “She said she was scared—”

  “Scared of what?”

  “She was really nervous, talking fast and sounding disoriented.”

  “Did you ask her where she was?”

  “That was the first thing I asked her. She didn’t want to say. She said she doesn’t trust the police.”

  “That’s what she said? That she doesn’t trust the police?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If she doesn’t trust the police, why is she calling me at a police station?”

  “It was the only number I left for her.”

  “How did the call end?”

  “She hung up abruptly.”

  “Because of something you said?”

  “I don’t think so. I just asked her one more time to tell me where she was.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I also asked if she needed help.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She hung up.”

  “She’ll call back. If I’m not here, give her my home number. Don’t ask her anything else—she’s probably suspicious and scared. Don’t forget that she was Nestor’s mistress for years; she knows what the police are like and she must have learned to be wary of people, even on the phone.”

  That night, at home, Espinosa didn’t even bother to glance at what was written on the frozen pasta carton: he stuck it in the microwave and went into the living room. Even though he lived alone, he didn’t like to eat too casually, sitting on the kitchen counter, staring at the tiles on the wall a few inches from his nose. He took his plate and a can of beer to the table in the living room and sat down in front of the window, gazing out at the lights on the distant hills. He didn’t turn on the stereo. He did that only on special occasions, not just to provide background noise. He was used to eating in a hurry, and the first bite revealed a surprise: the pasta was delicious, and it wasn’t spaghetti but lasagna. It must have been a survivor from the last time Irene went grocery shopping for him.

  From what Ramiro had learned, the possessions of the dead policemen had not been bought all at once but over the years, which indicated that they had a constant, regular source of income, rather than money that had come in a big lump sum. The mistresses were also long-standing acquisitions. They must have witnessed many meetings, participated in many conversations, listened to many confidential exchanges.

  Of the three women, Espinosa had seen only two of them, and then only after they were dead. Ramiro had given him a rough description of the survivor, Celeste: young, pretty, smart. She had certainly heard about the deaths of the other two and was making every effort to elude the killer. She probably didn’t have much money and, judging from the phone call she’d made to the station, she clearly hadn’t left the city. She’d fled her apartment with only a small bag, and someone who leaves like that leaves a lot of things behind. They forget important things, feel that they have to go back but are afraid to … and eventually have to ask someone for help—and that’s when they slip up. To try to protect her from this possibility, Espinosa asked Welber to get in touch with all her old friends from the time when she was a cabaret dancer.

  After finishing the lasagna, he sat in the dusky light of the living room long enough to enjoy two beers. He was still wearing the clothes he’d had on when he came in; all he’d done was empty his pockets and leave his wallet and his gun on his bedroom dresser. That wasn’t what he usually did. He almost always took a shower as soon as he got home, but that afternoon, for no particular reason, he had changed his habits. After taking his plate, silverware, and cans back to the kitchen, he went back to the living room, settled into his rocking chair, his favorite, and sat looking a little longer at the buildings across the square and the lights on the hills. He still didn’t turn on the stereo, or pick up the book on the coffee table to find out what happened during the hundred and fifty days before the execution. At this rate, the book would unfold in real time. After almost an hour, he realized why he was acting differently this evening: he was waiting for Celeste to call.

  She didn’t. At eleven o’clock, after he’d showered and stretched out to watch a film on TV, the phone rang, and he answered immediately. It was Welber.

  “Sorry about the time, but I thought it was important.”

  “What happened?”

  “I found some of Celeste’s colleagues—that is, Carmem Rios’s colleagues, her stage name before she met Nestor.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a bar in Copacabana.”

  “By yourself?”

  “With Artur. We were about to leave when the girls arrived. The show starts at midnight. We had time to talk to them. I got the address of a girl who is still friends with Celeste.”

  “And?”

  “She doesn’t do the same show and none of them know what bar she works in now, but they had her address. They said that some big shot in the government keeps her in a fancy apartment. Do you want me to go there now?”

  “If she’s working in a cabaret, she won’t be home now; besides, we don’t know who the big shot is. He could make noise about it. We’d better talk to her in the morning.”

  “They sleep in the morning; after lunch would be better. After our lunchtime; they must only eat lunch in the late afternoon.”

  “Fine. Good work.”

  3

  Serena and Guilherme took the elevator down to the garage, got in the car, and started talking only when they reached the street. They’d been silent ever since she’d agreed, even after what she’d seen, to go to the dinner anyway.

  “Look! They still haven’t taken the body away. Let’s go ask what happened.”

  They turned the corner and stopped in front of their own building’s entrance. Guilherme honked twice, and the doorman came over to the car.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sebastião, what happened?”

  “The girl threw herself from the tenth floor, sir.”

  “Did you know her?” Serena asked.

  “It looks like she was the cousin of the woman who lives in 1002. I didn’t get close enough to see, but that’s what the doorman over there told me.”

  “And the purse? I saw they took her purse.”

  “Nobody said anything about a purse, Dona Serena.”

  “But there was a purse … it was thrown out of the window, I saw it.”

  The husband put his hand on his wife’s shoulder as he thanked the doorman and pushed the button to roll up the window.

  “Let’s go, darling.”

  “Guilherme, I saw the purse get thrown out of the window! Just like I saw, afterward …”

  “But it won’t do you any good to talk about this with the doorman. It won’t do you any good to talk to anyone, except maybe the police, and I don’t think you’d want to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s just asking for trouble.”

  “Strange, your idea of being a good citizen.”
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  “Sweetie, this isn’t Washington.”

  “Just our luck.”

  The dinner wasn’t as unpleasant as she had feared, and the women weren’t as blond or blue-eyed as the ones at the earlier party. The only person who was uninteresting and off-putting was Serena herself. The beauty and sensuality that so charmed men were undercut by her glum silence.

  The next morning she looked for some news about the suicide. She told the maid to go buy the tabloids, which were most likely to cover violent events. There wasn’t a single reference. After breakfast, she put on a jogging outfit, to make it look like she was going to run down the Avenida Atlântica, and stopped off to see the other building’s doorman. With the newspaper under her arm, she struck up a conversation. He was used to seeing her every time she left her apartment on foot.

  “Good morning.”

  “Morning, ma’am.”

  “There wasn’t anything in the papers about the girl.”

  “Oh, well, it wasn’t supposed to be.”

  “Why not?”

  “The doctor wouldn’t let them.”

  “What doctor?”

  “Dr. Eliezer, the owner of the apartment.”

  “Eliezer who?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am, I just know his name is Dr. Eliezer.”

  “So Dr. Eliezer’s really as powerful as all that?”

  “I don’t know if he’s powerful, but people seem to do what he says.”

  “Right. And he was the one with the girl when she fell?”

  “Nobody was with the girl; she was by herself.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I am that you’re standing here.”

  “What about her purse?”

  “What?”

  “The purse that fell with her.”

  “There wasn’t a purse, no, ma’am.”

  “Oh, then I was wrong. I thought I saw a purse.”

  “The only thing that fell was the girl.”

  “May she rest in peace.”

  “Amen.”

  “See you later.”

  “Good-bye, ma’am.”

  Serena dumped the paper in the first trash can and, instead of crossing the Avenida Atlântica, decided to go back home. She could think better on a sofa than walking down the street, where there were too many distractions, starting with the sea itself. She didn’t take off her shorts or her tennis shoes and went straight to her husband’s home office. She sat at the desk, pushed his computer aside, took a few pieces of paper and a pencil, and began writing.

  An hour later, she’d come up with a list of names and questions, as well as some charts and a rough sketch of the falling purse and woman. After she’d tossed a few pages into the wastebasket, she was startled by her own conclusion: the woman hadn’t killed herself or fallen accidentally.

  She told Guilherme what she thought had happened.

  “Serena, this doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “The cops were there, they talked to the people, went over the apartment, and everyone agrees that the woman threw herself out the window, and now you’re saying she was murdered. This is really serious. Nobody makes an accusation like that without serious consequences.”

  “I’m not saying I’m sure it was murder. I’m simply suggesting to the police, who, after all, weren’t there very long, that there might have been more to it.”

  “But you can’t just suggest things after a forensic examination has been done. This is no joke, Serena.”

  Serena fell silent once more. She wouldn’t mention again what she’d seen from the window. The woman must have been about her age, and she’d decided that she wouldn’t let the “doctor,” whoever he was, arrange matters for his own convenience.

  Around noon, she noticed, from her dressing room, movement in the apartment across the way. There were several men in work uniforms, and on the street a little moving van was parked next to the sidewalk. Over the next few hours she returned to her observation post several times, until she was sure that the van was gone and nobody was left in the apartment. At the end of the afternoon another set of men arrived. There was no truck on the street. Just before dinner, when she was getting ready to sit down to eat, she saw lights in the apartment and men with ladders and paint rollers, painting the walls. She didn’t mention it during dinner.

  “Are you still thinking about the accident last night?”

  “Of course not. Besides, as the saying goes, ‘A problem you can’t solve is already solved.’ ”

  “That’s better. There’s really nothing you can do about it.”

  When she went to change into her nightgown, the men were still painting the apartment. She slept fitfully and woke up twice during the night. Both times she went to her dressing room. The lights were still on in the other apartment.

  She didn’t have a gun at home. If the murderer came back for her, she would need to be able to defend herself, even though she’d never fired a gun in her life. Guilherme would think the idea of buying a revolver absurd, but he’d think it was even more absurd to buy a revolver for a danger he considered sheer fantasy.

  In the morning, there was nothing at all happening in the apartment across the way.

  Even though he lived on the Avenida Atlântica, Guilherme Afonso Rodes had never set foot on the sands of Copacabana Beach. Since childhood he’d only gone to pools at exclusive clubs, and when he ventured into salt water, it was on beaches in the Mediterranean. He’d been raised to think of public places as probable sources of parasitic infections. Foreign beaches were different. He’d learned to read in English; for years, when he had to do simple mathematical operations in his head, he did them in English rather than Portuguese. That was why everyone was so shocked by the announcement of his engagement and marriage to Serena. But, contrary to his family’s expectations, he hadn’t so much changed Serena as Serena had transformed Guilherme Afonso Rodes’s bureaucratic mind. In his world, prudence reigned; Guilherme’s newfound willingness to live a little more on the wild side was the result of a spell cast by the witch Serena.

  Sunday was her husband’s golf day—the sport the new finance minister favored—and Serena could focus on her research without interruptions. With the classified sections of every paper opened on the dining room table, she looked at the lists of apartments for rent and sale. She searched by neighborhood, type of building, price. She looked one more time through the real estate ads for Leme. Nothing. Maybe they hadn’t finished painting it yet; maybe they were checking the electrical wires and the plumbing; maybe he’d decided to let it sit for a while: people don’t like to live in an apartment where someone killed themselves. The soul might not yet have found peace, and could return to disturb the new residents. For whatever reason, the apartment wasn’t listed for rent or sale.

  She put on her shorts, T-shirt, and tennis shoes and went downstairs. It was almost noon, and the heat was insufferable. She crossed the street and found the doorman.

  “Hi there.”

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Do you know if the doctor is trying to rent the apartment? I have a friend who’s looking for a place.”

  “Oh, ma’am, he’s trying to rent it out short-term.”

  “Is it already taken?”

  “Not yet. Maybe he’ll rent it longer-term.”

  “Right, maybe…. Anyway, thanks a lot.”

  “No problem, ma’am.”

  There was no doubt about it. They were wiping out the traces, making it impossible for her to examine the apartment for clues. This only made Serena more certain that it hadn’t been a suicide. She went back home and sat looking out her dressing room window, trying to conjure up the scene she’d witnessed.

  After half an hour, Guilherme called from the club, asking if she wanted to meet him for lunch.

  “It could be right here, at the club. If you want, I’ll send the driver to pick you up.”

  “No, honey, it’s too hot and I’d rather stay home; I’m trying to tie up some loos
e ends around here.”

  “All right. Take care.”

  “You too.”

  In the phone book, she found the number of the police and asked for the station that included Leme.

  “Twelfth Precinct, ma’am, Rua Hilário de Gouveia.”

  She took down the address and phone number. She thought that the best day to call would be Monday, a normal working day. Policemen must also want a break on Sundays.

  4

  Friday night’s suicide was mentioned to Espinosa only on Monday morning, when the body, after being autopsied, was released to the family.

  “Who went to the scene?”

  “Ferreira. He was on duty at the time.”

  “Who went with him?”

  “Nobody. He went alone. It was dinnertime and he—”

  “Ferreira didn’t talk to any witnesses?”

  “They said there was no need to.”

  “What do you mean there was no need to?! A woman falls from the tenth floor of a residential building and the policeman in charge of the investigation doesn’t think he needs to talk to anybody?”

  “It seems he got instructions—”

  “He got instructions?!”

  The dialogue between Espinosa and Ramiro took place in the chief’s office.

  On the intercom the officer ordered Detective Ferreira to come to his office while Ramiro tried, without much conviction, to soften the blows the detective was about to receive.

  “Chief, Ferreira isn’t very smart. He seems to have gotten a phone call from some authority, he got scared—”

  “What authority?”

  “I’m not sure; it seems to have come from the palace.”

  “Palace? What fucking palace?”