A Window in Copacabana

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  “We don’t see any reason to hold the meetings anywhere else. Certain things don’t need to be dealt with as carefully anymore.”

  “Such as?”

  “Celeste. She’s no longer hiding, and everyone knows what she did. We don’t need to go somewhere else to talk about her.”

  “Which doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s thrown off the murderer.”

  “We don’t think he’ll try anything else.” Ramiro paused. “But there’s something else, sir. Our investigation no longer makes sense. Our colleagues are saying that if she really has this dossier, it’s because she knows who was getting money but isn’t going to say. They say the secret’s safe as long as she’s alive. And that she’s your friend, since she had lunch with you yesterday—they also say you had lunch with her last week—which means that you agree with what she’s doing.”

  “And?”

  “And so what are we investigating?”

  “You’re investigating six murders: three of our colleagues and three people associated with them, deaths that you yourself have linked to the underground lottery.”

  “That was before Celeste did what she did, sir.”

  “No. Absolutely not. Celeste did something to save her own life. She was the next victim of the murderer. The only reason she wasn’t killed already is that he got the two women mixed up. The pact between her and the murderer has nothing to do with anyone but her. They could tell the murderer to finish her off today, and we have to protect her. Let’s make a couple of things clear: first, Celeste is the victim. If she did what she did, it’s only because we couldn’t guarantee her safety by getting the killer. Second, I don’t have any dossier or any list. Third, I didn’t agree to do anything with anyone. Finally, I didn’t tell you to call off the investigation. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ramiro answered.

  “Anything else?”

  “We learned something about the car ring.”

  “What?”

  “I thought it was a red herring, but it wasn’t. It looks like Nestor, Ramos, and Silveira really did have a car business, and it wasn’t legit: they stole cars and defrauded insurers. Interestingly, the people who gave me this information were the same ones who wouldn’t say a word about the lottery money.”

  “Which means that the information doesn’t threaten them.”

  “We’re trying to learn more.”

  “Then get back to work.”

  Espinosa’s evening walk home was plagued with doubts about the police force. Why work for an institution whose members viewed honesty as a manufacturing defect similar to those that plagued automobiles? He imagined a department whose duty was to purge the force of those members whose ethics were out of sync with the rest of the company.

  As he walked into his apartment the phone began to ring.

  “I thought you’d be getting in about now.” It was Serena.

  “You were as precise as a Swiss watch.”

  “How terrible!”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, but yesterday when we spoke I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “What was the matter?”

  “Insecurity. I was insecure about you, so I made that nice polite call to show you that I accepted that I might have made a mistake, that I might be a little flaky … that sort of thing.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’d like you to forget everything I said yesterday. I might have been wrong about seeing someone smoking in my apartment—I’ll admit that the conditions weren’t so favorable and I was really high-strung—but there was nothing like that on the night I saw the woman thrown out of the window. I was perfectly calm, and I saw the woman fighting with someone else. I agree that I couldn’t see the other person so well, but he was there. And he saw me. He saw that I was watching. If the guy thinks I saw him throw the woman out of the window, he’ll want to get rid of me. I didn’t rent the apartment because I’m off my rocker, I rented it because I thought I was safer over there than in my own home. Especially when Guilherme’s traveling. So I’m calling to say that I’m sticking to the story I told you when we first met.”

  “I never doubted that. I still think everything you said was very important.”

  “You’re so sweet … and I miss you. Maybe we could have another meeting.”

  5

  That night, he picked up his book again; he hadn’t made it past the third chapter over the weekend. He wasn’t sure he could focus on it. He was still thinking about Serena’s phone call. Not just the last one either, but the disconnect between the last two, which so vividly illustrated the conflict between the two Serenas. He liked her, though he was a little put off by her impulsiveness. She seemed to deal with reality through fantasies. Serena wasn’t a dreamer, and she didn’t seem to believe in happiness; for her, the real danger wasn’t so much unhappiness as boredom.

  He went back over the events that had led him to Serena, searching for the improbable relation between the first call, when she wanted to discuss the dead woman, and the deaths under investigation. One coincidence bothered him more than anything else: Serena in the bar downtown and Serena calling to discuss the so-called suicide.

  He didn’t believe in coincidences like that, especially when it was a question of six murders. On the other hand, only an extremely paranoid mind could think that a random encounter in one of the busiest places in Rio could foreshadow six crimes. Even more improbable: five crimes and a suicide. He couldn’t imagine what the connection between the two meetings could possibly be. Except for Celeste, the murderer’s target. Serena had declared that the suicide was actually a murder; but only Celeste could tell them, as in fact she had, that the murderer had killed the wrong person. The logic of the crime made it easy, even imperative, to eliminate Celeste. Without her, the connection between the two series of murders disappeared, along with the last witness to the illicit activities of the three dead cops.

  Sitting in his rocking chair, he looked out at the nearby hills. He saw the buildings across the square, and behind them São João Hill, where the lights ran all the way to the top of the Ladeira dos Tabajaras. It wasn’t the most stunning view in the world, but during the day he enjoyed the sight of the green hills and the blue sky. Now, though, it was night. It was a little windy, but he didn’t want to close the windows and he didn’t feel like getting up. The next day was Wednesday, the maid’s day. If the wind brought a few leaves inside, she would be able to sweep them up; she was very proud of her professional competence and felt useless when the house was overly clean.

  He turned back to his book, but his concentration didn’t last long. He couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering him. It wasn’t a thing, or a person, but a breakdown in logic. He sat in the rocking chair, with his open book resting on his lap, until he started to nod off. Then got up and went to bed. His eyes were tired, but it took him a long time to fall asleep.

  Back at the station, things were still uneasy. Ever since the investigations had begun, the other cops had proven extremely defensive in their conversations with the task force. The three were ostracized not only in their own precinct but everywhere else as well. They received absolutely no help at all. There was some pro forma cooperation in each precinct, but the police force as a whole offered the same polite nonhelp. This second level included the chief of police, the secretary of security, and even the state governor. But what was happening in Espinosa’s own precinct was up to him to fix. He called a general meeting of every policeman under his command, including those who weren’t on duty that day, and ordered them to appear at five that afternoon.

  At five on the dot, when the chief walked in the room, there were about thirty cops lounging around waiting for the meeting to begin. Only the couple of people working reception had been excused. As he walked to the front of the room, the chatting died down.

  “This is not a general assembly,” he began. “It’s not a debate club. I called you here to say one thing. You all know that th
ere is an investigation under way, conducted by Inspector Ramiro with the assistance of Detectives Welber and Artur. The goal of this investigation is to discover who murdered three of our colleagues and three of their friends. This investigation has already gone on for over a month, and if it was up to you people it’d go on for a year. The investigators have come across the same difficulty in other precincts. What matters to me, though, is what happens here. Obviously, the noncooperation they’ve faced is linked to facts the investigation has turned up about corruption in this station. I would like to make something perfectly clear. There is no such thing as a ‘tip.’ It is not an addition to your salary. Tips are corruption. And corruption, besides being a legal problem, is also an ethical problem. When it prevents us from discovering who killed your own colleagues, the problem is extremely critical. I don’t know who among you is on the take, and I’m not going to turn myself into an inquisitor. But I’m not going to let things stay the way they are. As of today, even the tiniest sign that you’re on the take will unleash an immediate investigation, during which time you will lose your badge and the right to bear arms until the conclusion of the investigation. I won’t hesitate to call in the attorney general’s office, or to send the cases up to the higher authorities. Whoever is upset by this decision has forty-eight hours to solicit a transfer to another precinct. During this time all requests for transfers will be processed and forwarded to the relevant authorities. Get in touch with everyone who’s not here and tell them what I have said. That’s it. Dismissed.”

  In the first twenty-four hours, there was talk of getting the whole precinct to ask for transfers, citing the chief’s recent dictatorial behavior. At first the movement seemed to have some momentum, but by the end of the second day only half a dozen supporters remained. Once the grace period was over, the few requests for transfers were immediately processed.

  Over those two days, Ramiro spoke to the widows once again and heard references to certain garages where their husbands used to spend time. They didn’t know the addresses. They knew only that the shops were in the sprawling, ramshackle Zona Oeste. With that information, Ramiro turned the screws on a couple of dealers in imported car parts and learned that the three cops had been supplying such parts for a long time. From people who dealt in shady cars in Rio and São Paulo, he learned that the cops weren’t just weekend dealers: their business was international. The next week was entirely dedicated to discovering where their garages were located.

  Espinosa thought that Celeste could help with this matter without breaking her code of silence, but Celeste had vanished. Welber and Artur’s visits to her apartment in Botafogo met with the same response from the doormen: Dona Celeste had come back only once. She hadn’t stayed more than half an hour and had left carrying a medium-sized leather bag.

  “Was she alone?”

  “She was.”

  “Did she seem nervous?”

  “She seemed like she was in a hurry.”

  “Did you see if there was any car parked nearby, waiting for her?”

  “No, sir. From here we can only see cars parked right in front of the buildings, and there’s so much traffic around here that it’d be hard to say.”

  “What did she say when she left?”

  “That she was going to be traveling for a few days.”

  “And how did she look?”

  “Tough to say, sir, but not very comfortable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She kept looking at the door.”

  The chief told the two young detectives to search for her in every one- and two-star hotel in the Zona Sul.

  Espinosa suspected that the vague unpleasantness he’d been feeling all week had something to do with Serena. Right before the end of the day, he called her.

  “Espinosa, darling, you guessed!”

  “Guessed what?”

  “That I wanted to talk to you. Well, I wanted to be with you. I mean, I also want to talk to you, but I want to do more than talk.”

  “And I want to talk to you,” Espinosa answered.

  “Did something else happen?”

  “I hope not. Where do you want to talk?”

  Serena said, “We could try the other apartment. I’m alone until Friday.”

  “I’ll come by at six-thirty.”

  Daylight savings time had ended the day before. It was starting to get dark when Espinosa left the station and headed toward Leme. He had twenty minutes and decided to walk down the Avenida Copacabana. He liked walking with all the people going home from work.

  He arrived five minutes early. He was welcomed with a long, tender hug and a more than tender kiss. He felt like a newlywed arriving after work to a greeting from his young spouse. He didn’t like the idea, but he did like the feeling of Serena’s body against his. She was wearing the same dress she’d had on last time, and Espinosa remembered the wonderful shamelessness with which she’d let it fall to the ground. Before that scene could be repeated, he walked her over to the window. They stood watching the sea as if waiting for a ship to come in. There weren’t any ships; it was dark; and Espinosa wasn’t the least bit interested in the view. He just wanted to take control of the situation.

  “I wanted to talk a little about something you said last time.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Are you sure you saw someone here besides Rosita?”

  “Rosita?”

  “The woman who lived here.”

  “Sure! I mean, I saw that someone was there, but I didn’t see who it was; the lighting was bad. Even the woman, I wouldn’t recognize her.”

  “Try to focus on the person who was with her. Close your eyes and describe the scene.”

  Serena sat down, closed her eyes, and waited silently. Then she began to speak.

  “Two people talking in loud voices. No. Only one of them is talking. While they’re talking, she’s pacing across the room.”

  “You’re sure she’s talking?”

  “I am. I could hear the voice. I just couldn’t make out what she was saying.”

  “It couldn’t have been the TV in someone’s apartment? You said the first soap was on.”

  “Hmm … I don’t think so…. She was moving her lips.”

  “You could see her lips moving?”

  “I think so.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I saw a purse fly out the window.”

  “If you couldn’t see the people very well, why are you so sure it was a purse?”

  “It wasn’t a small purse, and I saw the strap perfectly in the light; I watched it fall to the ground. That’s why I didn’t see the murderer throwing the woman out. I was looking at the street, trying to see where the purse landed.” Serena opened her eyes to look at Espinosa.

  “That’s fine. Close your eyes again. About this other person: what can you tell me about him?”

  “The only thing I can say is that he was a little taller than the woman and was wearing a cap.”

  “You saw the cap?”

  “I did. Against the light, the brim was easy to make out.”

  “What else?”

  “I think he was wearing a jacket.”

  “Any other details?”

  “After the woman fell, I looked up and thought he was looking at me. I looked down at the woman. When I looked back up, nobody was there. Why are you asking me all this again? To see if I’ll contradict myself? You think I made it all up? You think the woman really killed herself? Is that it?”

  “The more details you can give me, the stronger your story becomes.”

  “Fuck, Espinosa, it’s not my story! I didn’t make up something like that.”

  “All I have is your story. Nothing else.”

  “My big mistake was renting this apartment. Both you and my husband think it was crazy. You think I’m losing my mind when I say I saw the murderer again. The way you and Guilherme talk, you make me wonder what I really saw.”

  “Which is a good sign.”


  “I have no doubts about the basic story line.”

  “You do. You didn’t see the man push Rosita out of the window, you aren’t sure if they were talking or fighting, you don’t know who threw out the purse, you don’t know if the murderer really saw you…. The only thing you’re sure about is that you saw the woman fall. And even there, you’re not sure if she fell, if she jumped, or if she was pushed.”

  “Fell?”

  “Why not? What if, during their discussion, one of them threw the purse at the other one, missed the target, and the purse fell out the window? Then Rosita ran to try to get it, slipped, and also fell out the window.”

  “You prick!”

  “I’m not saying that’s what happened, I’m just trying to show you that even though it may not be probable it’s certainly possible.”

  “And they call me crazy.”

  “Sometimes reality can seem crazy.”

  “Fuck, Espinosa, you’re not my shrink.”

  “Nor do I want to be.”

  6

  It was already dark when Guilherme Rodes arrived home to find Serena in her dressing room, sitting in his swivel chair with the light out, staring at the building across the street. He’d thought it was just a passing phase, but it had become an obsession that occupied almost all of her time at home. He was no psychologist, but he knew that she was acting compulsively. He’d heard from the maid that Serena spent her afternoons in the other apartment, watching her own dressing room with binoculars. When she wasn’t in one of the two apartments, she was at an AA meeting; she had started going every day.

  His wife was going crazy, and he had to do something before it was too late. Her behavior reminded him of the old days, when she was trying to quit drinking. The experience had taught him that interventions at times like these were difficult and delicate.

  He took off his coat and tie, rolled up his sleeves, and entered Serena’s observation post.

  “So, honey, any news from across the street?”

  “I don’t like ironic questions.”