Crimes Of August Part 1

Crimes of August.

RUBEM FONSECA.

TO READERS OF.

crimes of august.

IN ENGLISH:.

THE NOVEL BLENDS historical fact (the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt against Carlos Lacerda, resulting in the death of Air Force Major Rubens Vaz; the political plot to depose President Getlio Vargas) with a fictional murder (the death of entrepreneur Paulo Gomes Aguiar). It takes place in Rio de Janeiro, then the nation's capital, during the period of August 125, 1954.

THE THREE POLITICAL PARTIES OF THE ERA WERE:.

PSD (Social Democratic Party): Vargas supporters.

PTB (Brazilian Workers Party): Vargas supporters.

UDN (National Democratic Union): the major opposition party.

HISTORICAL FIGURES.

FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.

Getlio Vargas, president of Brazil.

Carlos Lacerda ("the Crow"), Vargas's archenemy Gregrio Fortunato ("the Black Angel"), head of the president's personal guard.

Alberto Mattos, a police inspector.

Alice Lomagno, Mattos's onetime girlfriend.

Salete Rodrigues, Mattos's current girlfriend.

Pedro Lomagno, Alice's husband.

The political figures depicted are real, with the exception of Senator Vitor Freitas and Luiz Magalhes, who are composites. Cemtex, Brasfesa, and Corpax are fictional firms.

one.

THE NIGHT DOORMAN of the Deauville Building heard the sound of footsteps stealthily descending the stairs. It was one a.m. and the building was enveloped in silence.

"Well, Raimundo?"

"Let's wait a little," the doorman replied.

"n.o.body else is coming. Everybody's already asleep."

"One more hour."

"I gotta get up early tomorrow."

The doorman went to the gla.s.s door and looked out at the empty, silent street.

"All right. But I can't take very long."

On the eighth floor.

The death took place in a discharge of pleasure and release, expelling excremental and glandular residue-sperm, saliva, urine, feces. He backed away in disgust from the lifeless body on the bed, sensing his own body polluted by the filth excreted from the other man's dying flesh.

He went into the bathroom and carefully washed under the shower. A bite in his chest was bleeding a little. In the medicine cabinet on the wall were iodine and cotton, which he used to make a quick bandage.

He picked up his clothes from the chair and dressed without looking at the dead man, acutely aware of his presence on the bed.

No one was at the reception desk when he left.

THE MAN KNOWN TO HIS ENEMIES as the Black Angel entered the small elevator, which he filled completely with his voluminous body, and got out on the third floor of the presidential residence, the Catete Palace. He walked some ten steps in the dimly lit hallway and stopped in front of a door. Inside the modest bedroom, wearing striped pajamas, sitting on the bed, his shoulders bowed, his feet several inches from the floor, was the person he protected, an insomniac, pensive, fragile old man: Getlio Vargas, president of the Republic.

The Black Angel, after listening to detect any sound coming from the bedroom, withdrew, resting against one of the Corinthian columns laid out symmetrically on the iron tetragonal bal.u.s.trade that surrounded the central area of the palace hall, silent and dark at that hour. He must be sleeping, he thought.

After making sure there was nothing abnormal on the residential floor of the palace, Gregrio Fortunato, the Black Angel, head of president Getlio Vargas's personal guard, descended the stairs toward the military advisers' office on the ground floor, checking en route that the guards were at their posts and that all was peaceful in the palace.

Major Dornelles was chatting with Major Fitipaldi, another adviser, when Gregrio entered the room.

After examining the security plan for the president's visit to the Jockey Club on Sunday, the day of the Brazilian Grand Prix, with the two military advisers, the head of the personal guard went to his room.

He removed the revolver and dagger he always carried, placed them on the small table, and sat down on the bed, where several newspapers were strewn.

Apprehensively, he read the headlines. The year had begun badly. In February, eighty-two colonels, supported by the then secretary of war, General Ciro do Espirito Santo Cardoso, had issued a reactionary manifes...o...b..cking a coup, criticizing the workers' strikes and speaking craftily about the cost of living. The president had fired the treacherous secretary, without having a trustworthy replacement. Gregrio knew the president didn't believe in the loyalty of anyone in the armed forces since General Cordeiro de Farias, who had always eaten out his hand like a puppy, had stabbed him in the back, figuratively, in 1945. But he had ended up having to appoint as secretary of war a man in whom he also had no confidence, General Zenbio da Costa, accepted unconditionally by the military because he had been one of the commanders in the FEB, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force that fought beside the Americans in World War II. To appease the military, he had been obliged to remove his friend Joo Goulart as labor secretary. All of that had happened before the end of February. Yes, the year had begun badly, thought Gregrio. In May the conspirators had tried to impeach the president, and the traitor Joo Neves had helped spread lies about a secret agreement between Pern and Getlio. Gregrio hadn't forgotten what Neves, when he was still secretary of foreign affairs, had told him: "Don't stick your nose in where you don't belong, you dirty n.i.g.g.e.r"-all because he, Gregrio, had attempted to establish a direct contact between the president and the emissary of the president of Argentina, Juan Pern. Still in May, the funeral of a journalist, beaten to death by a cop known as Mule Kick, had been used as a pretext for an anti-government demonstration by fanatic followers of the Crow, a band of conspirators who met at the so-called Lantern Club, supported by an a.s.sociation of hysterical women. In July, the rabble, always aiming at a coup, had fabricated a communist conspiracy. Behind everything loomed the sinister figure of the Crow.

On the bed was a copy of ltima Hora, the only important newspaper that defended the president. On the front page, a caricature of Carlos Lacerda, the Crow. The artist, accentuating the journalist's dark-framed gla.s.ses and aquiline nose, had drawn a sinister crow sitting on a perch. The Black Angel raised his arm and plunged his dagger into the drawing. The blade pierced the paper and the bedding, perforating the mattress and emitting a horrible sound when it sc.r.a.ped one of the steel springs.

Gregrio returned the revolver to its holster at his waist and the dagger to its leather sheath. He put on his coat and left the bedroom.

EARLY IN THE MORNING OF AUGUST 1, 1954, police inspector Alberto Mattos, tired and feeling pain in his stomach, popped two antacid tablets in his mouth. As he chewed the tablets, he leafed through the book on civil law that lay on the desk. He had always been an awful student of civil law in college. He needed to put in a lot of study in that subject if he hoped to pa.s.s the judges.h.i.+p examination in November. He turned on the small radio he always kept by his side. He stopped rotating the dial when he heard a voice saying: "I was denied access to television by Mr. a.s.sis Chateaubriand, to whom the government is now allied with the same ease and cynicism with which they earlier branded him a traitor."

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," said the inspector.

Investigator Rosalvo, who worked the same s.h.i.+ft as Mattos, entered the office. The inspector believed Rosalvo wasn't on the take from the bosses of the numbers game, a popular but illegal lottery, or from the Spaniards who ran the prost.i.tution trade. Actually, however, Rosalvo was "under wraps," in police slang, a cop whose corruption was unknown to his colleagues.

"Listening to Lacerda, sir? 'The sea of mud grows more and more.' Did you see the word the guy invented? Kakistocracy-government by the worst elements in society. The kakistocrats are going to lose the elections. Sarazate is going to win in Ceara, Meneghetti in Rio Grande do Sul, Pereira Pinto in Rio, Cordeiro de Farias in Pernambuco. People don't trust Getlio anymore. Did you see the scheme Etelvino set up for the presidential election? A Juarez-Juscelino ticket, a shoo-in."

"What do you want?"

"The prisoners' breakfast arrived," Rosalvo said. "You wanted me to let you know."

In the lockup, in two cells intended for eight prisoners, were thirty men. Cells in every precinct in the city were overcrowded with prisoners awaiting s.p.a.ce in the penitentiaries, some still to be tried, others already found guilty.

Mattos considered the situation illegal and immoral and had tried to organize a strike in the Federal Department of Public Safety: the police would stop working until all those prisoners were transferred to penitentiaries. The inspector had gotten no support from his colleagues. The penitentiaries were also packed, and the strike proposed by Mattos would have no practical effect other than to cause negative repercussions. Mattos stated that this was the preliminary objective of the strike, to get the attention of public opinion and force the authorities to find a solution to the problem. "A wacky utopia," Inspector Padua had said. "You're in the wrong profession."

The counsels of the DPS had orders to find a legal way to get rid of Mattos, but the most they'd been able to do was to suspend him for thirty days. Commissioner Ramos, who headed the precinct where Mattos worked, had prevented, through his friends.h.i.+ps with higher-ups, his being transferred to the remote Bras de Pina precinct as the dirty cops in the office wanted in order to punish him. Besides being remote, Bras de Pina had precarious facilities and a crime rate second only to the Second Precinct, Copacabana.

But Ramos didn't wish to protect the inspector; he used Mattos's name to cow banqueiros, the men financing the illegal lottery. On one occasion, Rosalvo, the investigator, had caught Ramos telling a banqueiro in an intimidating tone: "I'll have Inspector Mattos shut down all your betting sites, you hear?!" When the banqueiro left, Rosalvo had told Ramos, "Alberto Mattos will kill you if he finds out you're using his name."

Ramos turned pale. "How's he going to find out? The banqueiros aren't crazy enough to tell him. It'd have to be you."

"Me, sir? An old dog doesn't stick his nose in a meat grinder."

Every precinct had a cop who collected the money from the numbers bosses to distribute to his colleagues. That policeman was known as the "bagman." The money collected-the boodle-varied in accordance with the business at betting sites and the greed of the commissioner. Rosalvo, discreet to a fault, wasn't part of the split because he received his directly from the numbers bosses, who desired to stay in the good graces of Inspector Mattos's a.s.sistant; the inspector's honesty was considered by the lawbreakers as a threatening manifestation of hubris and dementia.

Policemen a.s.signed to the chief's office also partic.i.p.ated in that venal conspiracy. Periodically, some numbers racket counting house, known as a "fortress," was raided by the police, always provoking the same headline: POLICE BUST NUMBERS FORTRES. It was a way of satisfying the scruples of certain rarefied sectors of public opinion; the majority of the population openly practiced that modality of contravention. Journalists, judges, college graduates in the justice department, of which the Federal Department of Public Safety was part, were also bribed by the banqueiros. The vice squad, which had as one of its princ.i.p.al goals the suppression of illegal gambling, was the recipient of the largest number of bribes.

BEFORE DAWN ON AUGUST 1, Zaratini, the butler at the presidential palace, who customarily awoke early, opened a window facing the garden and saw Gregrio sitting on a bench near the small marble fountain. The head of the guard, hearing the sound of the window being opened, looked up and saw the butler. Without acknowledging the greeting Zaratini gave by nodding, Gregrio rose and walked toward the building housing the personal guard, next to the palace. It was five a.m.

Gregrio knocked at the door of the room where the chef, Manuel, slept. Looking drowsy, he came to the door.

"Make me some mate tea, real hot."

Gregrio sat down at a table in the empty dining room. Manuel brought the tea. At that moment, Climerio Euribes de Almeida, a member of the president's personal guard and a friend of Gregrio's, arrived. He had left his house, in a distant suburb, in the middle of the night to be able to get there at that hour.

"Any orders, chief?"

"Come to my room," said Gregrio, noticing the proximity of Manuel, who was setting a table beside him. He didn't want to discuss the matter in the presence of others; Lacerdism was like a contagious disease, worse than gonorrhea or syphilis. It wouldn't surprise him if there was infection among the guard.

Alone with Gregrio, behind closed doors: "What the h.e.l.l? Where's that reliable man of yours? We should've done the job in July and it's already August."

Gregrio was tired of waiting for some victim of the Crow's slanders to do something. They all claimed to be friends of the president, but other than cursing the Crow in futile rants, the most they did was foolishness like Oswaldo Aranha's son, who with a gun in his hand had merely punched the defamer in the face; with the opportunity to kill the Crow he had been content to break his gla.s.ses. None of them wanted to sacrifice the comfortable life they enjoyed thanks to the president, drinking whiskey in nightclubs and chasing wh.o.r.es. Nothing much could be expected of those cowardly a.s.s-kissers. They had all gotten rich in government, but few were grateful to the president.

Climerio, nervously: "Leave it to me, chief."

Actually, Climerio had no such reliable man to do the job. Gregrio didn't want it to be anyone connected to the palace, much less the personal guard, and the only person Climerio had found, a guy named Alcino, an unemployed carpenter and friend of the snitch Soares, was certainly not qualified. Some days earlier, Climerio had gone with Soares and Alcino to a rally held by the Crow in Barra Mansa. Soares's car had broken down and they got to the rally late. "That's the man there," Climerio had said, pointing to Lacerda, who was giving a speech. Alcino had hesitated when he saw that Lacerda was not some good-for-nothing like Naval, a guy Soares had asked him to kill because he suspected he was his wife's lover. Naval was standing at the Pavuna train station; Alcino shot and killed a stranger near Naval, who wasn't hit. Climerio was convinced that Alcino wasn't right for that undertaking, but in order not to lose the confidence of his boss, he didn't relate the fiasco at Barra Mansa when he returned to Rio. He had won Gregrio's confidence when he told him the names of Lacerda's armed bodyguards, all or almost all of them majors in the air force: Fontenelle, Borges, Del Tedesco, Vaz. There was also one Carrera, who Climerio thought was in the army, and a Balthazar, in the navy. They were rabid Lacerdists and carried large-caliber weapons. Then the Black Angel had said that if Lacerda's gunmen used .45s, the man chosen by Climerio would have to do the same. "Don't worry, chief. Leave it to me," Climerio had replied.

Now, rubbing the smallpox scars on his face, which he always did when nervous, he repeated the same phrase: "Leave it to me, chief."

"But make it fast," said Gregrio.

"I'm going to see the man immediately." Maybe Alcino, if instructed well, could do the job right.

IN THE LOCKUP, Inspector Mattos watched the prisoners having breakfast and listened to their complaints. That day was the Day of the Incarcerated. At the initiative of the Brazilian Prison a.s.sociation a patron saint had been inst.i.tuted for the prisoners. The choice of saint, at the suggestion of Cardinal Jaime de Barros Cmara, had been the apostle Peter, who, in the words of the prelate, had suffered in life the horrors of prison. The inspector thought about joking with the prisoners, "You're all the time complaining on a full belly, you've even got a patron saint and you still want more," but the disgust he felt upon entering the cells had changed his disposition. If he weren't self-centered, a cowardly conformist, he would take advantage of the Day of the Incarcerated to set all those poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds free. But he merely jotted down the complaints and returned to his office.

At eleven o'clock he looked at his watch, anxious for the sixty minutes remaining in his s.h.i.+ft to end. But at that instant a patrol car arrived. Central dispatch had received word of a homicide. Alberto Mattos called Rosalvo to accompany him to the scene.

"It's after eleven already, why don't you leave it for Inspector Maia?"

"It's not noon yet."

They got into the precinct's old van, dirty from the prisoners' breakfast that it had transported earlier that morning. When they pa.s.sed by a bar, Mattos told the driver to stop, got out, and drank a gla.s.s of milk. The acidity went on gnawing at his stomach.

The patrol car was waiting for them at the door of the Deauville.

The two policemen went up to the eighth floor. A guard was in the hallway, along with the investigator in charge. The apartment door was open. Mattos and Rosalvo went into a small living room where two elegantly and expensively dressed men were. In a wall mirror, the inspector saw his face with a day-old beard, his wrinkled s.h.i.+rt, his crooked tie, the cheap suit he was wearing. Still in the mirror, he recognized one of the men, the shorter and stocky Galvo, the famous criminal lawyer. When he finished his law degree, before he joined the police force, Mattos had gone to work as an a.s.sistant public defender and had once represented a poor devil involved in a counterfeit ring. Galvo was the lawyer for the leader of the ring. Mattos's client had been the only one acquitted.

Galvo and the other man addressed Rosalvo, who was better dressed than the inspector.

"I'm Investigator Rosalvo," he said, realizing the mistake. "This is the inspector, Mr. Alberto Mattos."

"Galvo," said the lawyer, extending his hand. He showed no sign of having recognized Mattos. A heavy voice, polite but full of authority. "I'm here as a friend of the family. This is Mr. Claudio Aguiar, the victim's cousin."

"Who informed you?"

Mattos's abruptness didn't seem to bother Galvo. Without losing his composure as the great jurist, he replied that it had been the maid. She had called the police and then Claudio Aguiar.

"I thought the police would get here before us."

"What's the dead man's name?"

"Paulo Machado Gomes Aguiar."

"Profession?"

"Industrialist."

"Single? Married?"

"Married."

"Where's his wife?"

"At the country home in Petropolis. She hasn't been informed yet . . ."

"She hasn't been informed?"

"We wanted to spare her the horror of seeing her murdered husband, from the brutality of the criminal investigation . . . She's a very delicate person . . . They were very close . . ." answered Galvo.

"Where's the body? I hope nothing's been moved."

"We haven't even gone into the bedroom."

"I believe you have nothing further to do here, Mr. Galvo. Or you, Mr. -?"