“Only if she comes looking for me.”
“And is that what’s worrying you?”
“Not too much.”
“But there’s something on your mind, or you wouldn’t be twitching like that.”
“They opened a used-book store a couple of blocks away.”
“Great! What’s the problem?”
“That was what I was going to do if I ever left the police.”
“Sell used books?”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not a businessman. You don’t understand the book market, you don’t have the money to start a business, you don’t know how much rent on a shop is here in Copacabana …”
“You’ve just liquidated my dream of someday leaving the police force to open a bookstore.”
“You’re a romantic.”
“Is that so bad?”
“No, it’s marvelous … for love, not for business.”
“So let’s open the wine.”
4
She didn’t have to do anything besides sign a temporary rent contract; the owner hadn’t made any unusual demands. Since it was the end of the summer holidays, the real estate agency hadn’t had an easy time finding someone interested. And there was the little matter of the defenestration of the last resident. All Serena had to do was pay the first month’s rent in advance.
The doorman immediately recognized the woman from the neighboring building who had previously been asking questions about the apartment.
“You’re not going to trade in that great apartment for this one, are you, ma’am?”
“I’m writing a book and I need somewhere isolated and close to home, and this is perfect. All I have to do is cross the street.”
“I don’t think the doctor left much in the apartment. You can look yourself.”
The conversation between the two filled the time it took the elevator to arrive at the tenth floor.
“The doctor asked me to tell you how the gas heater works and how to turn on the light switches. Let’s open the windows to get rid of the paint smell. The rest is all there. The kitchen has a microwave. If you need anything, just call down.”
“What’s your name?”
“It’s Josualdo, ma’am, but everyone calls me Aldo.”
“Thank you, Josualdo.”
“Aldo’s fine, ma’am, you can call me Aldo.”
“Okay, Aldo. I don’t think I’m going to need anything. The only thing I’m going to bring is my computer, and it fits inside my bag.”
“Did you know Dona Rosita, ma’am?”
“Only by sight.”
A few trips across the street were sufficient to bring the things she needed for her stay in the apartment. The phone line hadn’t been disconnected, which was good. At the end of the afternoon she had set up everything in the bathroom and the kitchen. She’d put a few changes of clothes in the wardrobe and placed her computer on top of the only table in the living room. The apartment would have been nice if all the furniture hadn’t been thrown in there without any coherent decorating scheme. One thing, though, was great: the side view toward the beach. From the wide window you could glimpse a stretch of sea that, even though it was narrow, lent the apartment a certain amplitude. In comparison, the view from her own room was like looking at the sea through a keyhole.
Serena didn’t know what to do. The truth was, she didn’t have anything planned. All she could do was wait for something. She didn’t know what and she didn’t know when. From her new window, she sat looking at the building across the street, looking at her other window. Rosita had probably seen her in her dressing room, trying on a dress for some dinner party. She had the almost crazy feeling that she was about to see herself appear naked in the other window, fresh from the shower.
Guilherme would not be getting back from Washington until the end of the week, which meant that her next five days were completely free. She wouldn’t stop going to her meetings, and she wouldn’t stop going to the shrink, even though she was no longer interested in her analysis. She had nothing else scheduled.
She sat watching the ocean change from light green to deep green until it grew completely dark. Every day she would sit at the window for a while, something she rarely did in her own apartment, where the living room view took in all of Copacabana Beach. In her new window, the important thing was not to see but to be seen.
A few steps from the station was A Polaca Restaurant. The food was good, but it was too close; a little farther was the Italian place, which he preferred to save for his free time, even though he’d used it for the first few meetings. There were also the many food-by-the-pound places, bakeries, places with chickens roasting in the window. There was always McDonald’s, only a block away. He decided to cross the street and get a sandwich and a juice at a little diner, a meal he could eat in the air-conditioned environment of his office.
Every day it became clearer to Espinosa how insufferably predictable routine police work had become. He didn’t know how much longer he would last. He only knew that it was a matter of time. Ten years or ten days: above all, he didn’t want to reach the point at which every day became a kind of anesthetic, transforming pain, sadness, and suffering into a permanent tedium, a tedium present night and day, at work and at home, transforming real emotions into simple indifference. He’d often thought about leaving the police force. At first it had been over ethical matters, but recently he had come to believe that it was the routine that was killing him. Even a decade ago he’d been more interested in the stakeouts and the night shifts, but those activities were reserved for younger men, like Welber and Artur. All he had to do was begin and end investigations and push his pen. He had become an armed desk.
At the end of the afternoon, Ramiro arrived to give his report.
“May I, sir?”
“Come in, Ramiro.”
“I came alone because you wanted us to do this individually.”
“Right. How are things going?”
“Not great. I’m not making any progress. Nobody’s helping, nobody’s telling me anything. When they see me coming, they clear out. And there’s no way anyone will talk to me alone. They want to be sure everyone knows they’re not snitching on anybody else. I still think my hypothesis is correct, but I think we’ll have to shift the focus of the investigation for a while. I’ve been looking so hard that I’ve found something that I hadn’t seen before. Maybe I’ll see where that leads and let the lottery people cool off for a while.”
“What did you discover?”
“That they were also involved with cars. I don’t know exactly how; it could just be a red herring. But I think it’s worth checking out.”
“Fine. Do it.”
That night, at home, he got a call from Welber on the cell phone.
“Chief, can we talk?”
“Sure. How are you? I still haven’t seen you.”
“Great, you’re not supposed to.”
“Did you manage to find anyone?”
“Yesterday afternoon I thought so, but I have my doubts. They drove around the square twice, slowing down every time they passed your building. It was Sunday, so it might have been someone looking at apartments. But they did the same thing tonight. It was dark, so I can’t be sure it was the same person, but it was the same car.”
“A man?”
“A woman.”
“Look familiar?”
“No. I thought it might be Celeste, but I can’t be sure. I don’t even know if the person’s really looking for you, but I’m on the case.”
“Did you get the license number?”
“I did. I asked the transportation department to run it, and they’ll give me an answer in the morning.”
“Are you managing to rest?”
“Of course, sir. You lead a quiet life.”
5
Serena got to the afternoon meeting a half hour early. Dora was the only one in the room when she arrived, her broken leg stretched out onto the chair in front
of her, smoking a cigarette. Her third, Serena guessed from the two butts in the ashtray on her lap. Serena tapped the plaster cast lightly, as if to wake up the broken leg, and Dora patted her head in return. Almost everyone who made their way into the room knew everybody else. With time and practice, Serena had learned to distinguish the different kinds of stories. She knew that the people who spoke most elegantly, in formal, well-constructed narratives, who used the right words in the right places, were the people who had separated themselves the most from their stories. Others, who spoke hesitantly, whose stories were as much about the gaps as about the words, who started and stopped, who seemed still shocked by what had happened to them, were the people who had still not exorcised the horror. Their testimonials were not necessarily truer than the others, but Serena thought their truth was of a different order. Whenever the meeting’s leader asked her to share her story, she tried to focus on the most immediate experiences, those most vivid in her mind. Today, the first person told a long, intense, truthful story, one that touched her deeply. As usual, Serena was seated close to the door; she left before the second person began speaking.
At home, she waited for Guilherme to call. The calls always took place at the same time, and their content never varied. As the years had gone by, those calls had been reduced to electric impulses, devoid of excess content, including affection. For some reason she didn’t understand, they had kept up the habit. She ate a salad and some grilled fish, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, and headed out to her new, temporary apartment. The doorman was still eyeing the new tenant with mistrust.
“Evening, ma’am. Is everything all set up now?”
“There wasn’t much to do.”
“You know, ma’am, if you need anything, just give me a call.”
“Thanks.”
For the second time, the same doorman had made the same offer. The way he did it, the tone of his voice, the look in his eye were all perfectly professional, but she thought there was something more to it. The elevator wasn’t quick and quiet like the one in her building; the open door allowed the noise of the machine to be heard throughout the building as it banged its way upward. But it arrived efficiently at the tenth floor.
She entered the apartment without turning on the light. She wanted to recapture the feeling she’d had a couple of days after the woman’s murder, when she’d looked into this apartment and had the definite feeling that someone in the darkness was looking back at her.
Two other windows in her own apartment faced this way: the one in the bedroom and the one in Guilherme’s study. The same was true of the apartments on the other floors. Surveying the position of the windows—some were farther away, some were on lower floors—Serena realized that she had a good view of what went on in four apartments: twelve windows in all.
She was most struck by the contrast between the movement in the other apartments and the inert darkness of her own. She quickly tired of looking into the other apartments and concentrated on her own window. While she was looking, she kept the light off in her new perch. Even though she knew it was her apartment and her window, there was a new mystery to the darkness, as if something were about to happen. She sat on the sill for a while. She couldn’t see a thing. She knew where the furniture was, but she couldn’t make it out. She shielded her eyes from the light from the streetlamps and the other apartments, making little binoculars with her hands. She secretly expected to see the shadowy assassin in the dark corners of her apartment. She moved away from the window and turned on the light. The room she was in was not a neutral environment. Even with the light on, she was in more danger there than in the room across the street. In this same room, a woman more or less her age, perhaps with a similar past, had fought with someone who’d become, a couple of minutes later, her murderer. Before she’d died, she had thrown her purse out of the window. Whatever the reason behind that action, it had cost her her life.
Serena thought about calling the officer, but she didn’t have a reason to, unless she cut straight to the point. She opened her Filofax and found his card. At that hour, she’d have to call him at home, rather than the station. She dialed the number he’d written by hand. Before anyone answered, she hung up. She closed the window, turned off the light, and left. She crossed the street and entered her building. But instead of going up, she went into the garage, got her car, and headed for the Peixoto District.
What does a single policeman do at night? She didn’t know if he was by himself. She would have liked him to be. He surely wasn’t watching TV; the light in his window was yellow, not blue. Maybe he was reading or listening to music. Did policeman read and listen to music? It was a little after nine. He could have been in the bedroom instead of the living room. She drove around the square one more time but didn’t wait to see if there was any change in his apartment. She headed back to Leme.
An hour after Espinosa arrived at work on Tuesday morning, Welber came into his office with a piece of paper.
“It’s a copy of the car’s registration. The address is written on the back.”
The car’s owner was Guilherme Afonso Rodes, and the address was Serena Rodes’s. Espinosa was completely taken aback. What was Serena doing driving around the square and checking out his apartment? Why hadn’t she called instead? He wanted to pick up the phone then and there, but that would clue her in to the fact that someone was guarding him. He preferred to see what Mrs. Guilherme Afonso Rodes would do next.
“What computer did this come in on?”
“I got it myself from the transportation department.”
“Great.”
“What do you think?”
“This doesn’t fit. She doesn’t have anything to do with the reasons I told you to follow me.”
“But she was after you, I’m sure of it.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.”
“Have you known her long?”
“We only met once. I mean, twice, but the first time she didn’t see me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw her once before, at a bar downtown, but she didn’t notice me. It was the afternoon you called to tell me they’d killed Silveira. It could only be a coincidence.”
“Sir, I don’t want to get personal, but she may be interested in you. There’s no need for a reason. It happens all the time.”
“She’s married.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“She could be interested in you, Chief.”
Espinosa didn’t know what to think. Obviously, nothing before the initial call could justify any personal interest. She could have gotten interested only after the meeting in Leme. There was still the question of the first encounter, downtown, but she didn’t seem to have registered that.
A little after ten, the switchboard passed through a call.
“Officer Espinosa?”
“Yes.”
“I have a message for you from Celeste Cardoso. She’s moved but told me to tell you that she’ll be in touch as soon as possible.”
“Who is this? Hello? Hello?”
Before the end of the morning, there was another call.
“Officer Espinosa?”
“Yes, go ahead!”
“Is something going on?”
“Dona Serena, sorry. How are you?”
“Sir, would you have an hour free before the end of the day, around five?”
“If nothing comes up before then, I think I do.”
“Then let’s hope nothing does. Can we meet at the Largo do Machado, in front of the Cinema Condor, at five?”
“Sure. If I don’t get there until five after, it’s because something happened.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, sir. See you there.”
“See you there, Dona Serena.”
“One more thing, sir.”
“Yes?”
“When we meet, we can get rid of the ‘sir’ and ‘dona,’ all right?”
“All right.”
A lot ha
ppened before the end of the afternoon, but nothing serious. At five on the dot Espinosa left the Largo do Machado subway stop, right in front of the place they’d arranged to meet. He immediately spotted the figure that had attracted him a month and a half earlier. Espinosa returned her wave and reflected that in a few seconds they would be meeting like two lovers going to the theater. Serena gave her arm to Espinosa as if they were old friends, but instead of heading to the movies, she led him into a hallway and onto an elevator. They got off on the next-to-last floor and headed to a room at the end of the hallway. Espinosa had no idea what was going on but thought it was better not to ask.
The spacious area gave onto the building’s inner courtyard and was well lit and ventilated. Besides the chairs arranged classroom-style, there was a table where the teacher’s desk would be. Next to it was a stool. Against the wall was a small table with coffee and water. Serena and Espinosa sat close to the door. Every time the elevator stopped on their floor, someone else got off. It wasn’t the busiest session, so when the meeting started the room was still two-thirds empty.
Until then, Serena hadn’t explained why they were there or what was going on, although the AA decal next to the door hinted at the room’s purpose. That didn’t lessen Espinosa’s surprise; it only heightened his curiosity. Espinosa’s first supposition was that Serena was a member of that organization. There couldn’t be any other reason why they were there instead of watching a movie or having a beer in one of the bars around the square.
The coordinator opened the meeting by taking his seat at the table at the front of the room and reviewing the objectives of AA. Then he invited one of the members to come up to the stool next to him and tell her story. Serena, who still hadn’t loosened her grip on Espinosa’s arm, whispered into his ear:
“Now you know. I like to cut to the chase.”
“That you have,” Espinosa answered.
They didn’t stay until the end of the meeting. Serena said it would go on for two hours and that she wasn’t planning on speaking that day. They listened to the first three people, and Espinosa was introduced to a few members of “the club.” After an hour they left, in the pause between two testimonials. It was six-thirty when they arrived back at the Largo do Machado.
A Window in Copacabana Page 11
