Ramiro called back at six-thirty.
“Chief, I think he went to sleep. There’s only a weak light on in the bedroom. It must be the bedside lamp. The rest of the apartment is dark.”
“Wait another half hour. If it doesn’t seem like he’s going to go out, you can go home. Did you talk to Welber?”
“I did. He’s in the waiting room of a firm in Botafogo. Dona Irene’s been in a meeting for more than two hours. The secretary said that the meeting might last another half hour.”
“Fine. I’m going home. If you need to speak to me, call my cell.”
It was seven when Espinosa left the station. He told the operator to transfer all personal calls to his cell phone and went home. At that hour, it was getting dark, the sidewalks were still packed, and the traffic along Barata Ribeiro was slow. Since he was on foot, he’d be home in a few minutes. He’d have time to shower, get dressed, and pick Irene up at nine.
Welber had already flipped through all the foreign magazines on the coffee table in the waiting room of the ad agency, all of which included pictures of furniture and objects from Scandinavia, Germany, the United States, and Italy, things he had never seen and probably never would, except in photographs. At seven-ten, Ramiro called to tell him about Hugo Breno. They both agreed that they could go home as soon as Irene’s meeting was over. He kept on flipping through a magazine, but the images started growing fuzzy, until he suddenly darted out of the chair, grabbed his phone, and called Ramiro.
“Ramiro, are you sure that Hugo Breno’s at home asleep?”
“I don’t know if he’s asleep, but I know he’s home. I’m in front of the only door to the building, and ever since he appeared in the window nobody’s come out of that door.”
“Ramiro, this is all really weird to me. You’d better check to make sure he really is in the apartment.”
“I’ll go see. The building only has one exit: the one right in front of me. Unless he went out through the service area and jumped over the back wall.… I’ll call you in a minute.”
Ramiro went up to the corner and walked up the short stretch of the Rua Santa Margarida until he reached the back of the building. He jumped over the wall into the service area of Hugo Breno’s apartment. The door that led into the kitchen was unlocked. He went in, and in a few seconds he’d gone through the apartment. Nobody. He immediately called Welber.
“Welber, he ran off. That whole thing about the presents, flowers, that note for Irene was just to distract us. He got rid of both of us and now he’s alone with Espinosa. Where’s the boss?”
“I talked to him a few minutes ago. He was going home. He must be getting there now.”
“He’s going to get the chief! Let’s go!”
Welber told the secretary of the ad agency to tell Irene not to wait for him and to go straight home. Within a minute, the detective was in a cab with his police ID in his hand, ordering the driver to go to the Peixoto District as quickly as possible. He called Espinosa’s cell phone. Nobody answered.
Ramiro left Hugo Breno’s building and walked the two blocks to the Peixoto District wondering if he could get there in time to prevent Hugo Breno’s encounter with Espinosa. He made it to the square in less than a minute; Espinosa usually approached from the other side. To the contrary of what he expected at that hour, there were still people in the square. A group of boys were talking near the fence surrounding the soccer field; there were people sitting on the benches, boys running after a ball near the playground, a candy vendor, an ice-cream seller, people coming home after work. A few feet away, two city security guards were talking. Ramiro didn’t see the boss or Hugo Breno. There was no more light in the sky and the illumination of the square was less than optimal because the lamps were partially blocked by the trees. It was impossible to see the entire square. It was about eighty meters from the place he was standing to the end of the square, and between the two points were the soccer field fence, the playground, and an enormous fountain, almost in the middle of the square, along with trees and bushes. Espinosa and Hugo Breno could be hidden behind any of those barriers. Ramiro moved slowly, concentrating as best he could on everyone he saw and their movements, searching for a point where he could see the entirety of the other side of the square.
Espinosa entered the Peixoto District coming from the Rua Anita Garibaldi. As usual, he walked down the left side of the street and started to cross the square diagonally, heading toward his building. He’d gone around the fountain and felt like he was almost home when he saw Hugo Breno coming toward him. There was no doubt that Hugo was deliberately walking over to meet him. He walked unhurriedly and was carrying a bag. Espinosa wondered if he hadn’t been waiting for him on one of the benches, carrying in the sack some gift, like the ones he’d distributed yesterday. Maybe some of the Middle Eastern food he would know Espinosa liked. Yet as Hugo Breno approached, Espinosa saw that his expression was no longer happy and smiling, as it had been the morning before, when they’d met at the market. Both of them were on the paved part of the square, next to the series of benches lined up along the sidewalk.
Espinosa didn’t veer from his path or alter his pace. When they were three steps away from each other, the bag fell from Hugo Breno’s hand without his making the least attempt to recover it, as if he’d tossed it to the ground on purpose. Espinosa looked at his hand … it was holding a knife. He immediately reached back to grab his gun, even as he tried to get out of the way to avoid the blow. The knife entered him on the left side of his body, with enormous violence. Espinosa had managed to get out his gun and fire, but the shot was too low, hitting the thigh of Hugo Breno, who fell to his knees. Espinosa took one step and fell onto a wooden bench, sliding down the curved back until he reached the seat. Hugo Breno was seated on the ground, next to the same bench, with his knife still in his hand, his pants drenched with blood. Espinosa’s pistol had fallen to the ground, within reach of both of them. With his shirt, Espinosa tried to stanch the bleeding from his wound. He couldn’t breathe, and his vision was hazy, and he had to make an enormous effort not to close his eyes. That was when he saw Hugo Breno seated at his side, one of his hands trying to prevent the bleeding in his leg and the other reaching out toward Espinosa. Espinosa’s blurry vision couldn’t make out exactly what Hugo was trying to do, until he saw that Hugo’s hand was holding the gun he had picked up off the ground. The other man seemed to be saying something, but the sounds reached the chief’s ears blunted and indistinct, and his hazy vision only allowed him to see the movement of Hugo’s lips. Espinosa didn’t have the strength to move his body, much less to attempt any defense. He felt that he was about to faint when he heard a cry that seemed to come from far off in the distance. Ramiro. He couldn’t see the inspector, but he saw the weapon in Hugo’s hand turn against Hugo himself. Ramiro fired. Hugo Breno fired at the same time.
He woke up with a dry mouth, feeling pain when he tried to move and seeing tubes and wires hooked up to his arms. He was obviously in a hospital room. Still a bit confused, he heard Irene’s voice.
“Morning, darling. Welcome back to the world!”
Irene got up from the chair beside the bed, bent over him carefully, and gave him a kiss. Espinosa felt his dry lips.
“I’m going to wet down your mouth. It’s dry.”
“I’m thirsty,” Espinosa managed to say.
Irene pressed the call button for a nurse.
“It hurts.… What happened?” His voice was hoarse and his tongue was still rough.
“You were wounded.”
“I know. What happened to me?”
“They operated on you. The knife went in on your left side, from bottom to top, and perforated your lung. You’ll be fine, but they had to operate to sew you up. Now you’re in a special post-op room. I think that’s what it’s called, and the surgery went well.”
“Is my lung still there?”
“One next to the other, as always. But you lost a lot of blood.”
“Was Ramiro
wounded? I heard him scream …”
“No. He and Welber spent the night here at the hospital. They went home to shower and change clothes. All I know is that Welber got to the square right after the shots were fired. As soon as one of them gets here, they’ll fill you in. I came straight from home; I didn’t even go by the square.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost noon on Saturday.”
“What kind of shape am I in?”
“You’ll be here for a few days and it’ll be a while before you and I can lie on top of each other again.”
“We’ll figure out a way.”
The nurse came in, together with a doctor.
“So, Chief, pretty busy night,” the doctor said.
“How am I doing, Doctor?”
“You’ve got a perforated lung, but we’ve put it back together. You had major surgery. But now you’re in no more danger than if you’d had a tooth pulled. With the difference, of course, that you can chew whatever you want. On the other hand, you can’t move. Your recovery will take longer than if the weapon had only gotten the muscles. In the next few days, you’re going to feel pain whenever you move your torso and you’re going to have a hard time walking. Try to avoid coughing, sneezing, and laughing.”
“What do I have to laugh about, Doctor?”
“The fact that the knife didn’t go a few centimeters higher.”
“What’s a few centimeters higher?”
“Your heart.”
The doctor had finished examining Espinosa when Ramiro arrived. Five minutes later, Welber came in with a bouquet.
“The flowers are from everyone at the station. Everyone wanted to come with me, but I convinced them to come later, in smaller groups.”
Irene took advantage of their arrival to stop by her apartment. She hadn’t been outside that room since the previous night. She agreed to come back at the end of the afternoon to spend the night with Espinosa.
When the three of them were alone, the chief asked Welber to make sure they wouldn’t be interrupted. The detective saw a little door sign reading VISITS PROHIBITED and hung it outside. Espinosa asked them to tell him, once and for all, what had happened.
Ramiro and Welber explained to the boss how they had realized that they’d been tricked by Hugo Breno and how they’d then dashed to the Peixoto District. Since Ramiro was only two blocks from the square, he’d gotten there in time to see Hugo Breno attack Espinosa with a knife, to hear the shot the chief fired, and to see both of them fall side by side. Up until that point, Espinosa hadn’t asked about Hugo Breno.
“He’s dead, Chief. Three shots,” said Ramiro. “Yours hit his femoral artery, so that he would have lost all his blood through that hole; mine pierced his thorax diagonally; and his own went straight through his heart. Any one of those shots would have killed him. I don’t understand why he shot himself, if his idea was to kill you, sir. He could have fired at you right when he was pointing the gun at your head. I thought he was going to fire, so I shot him. I was surprised when I saw that he’d pointed his gun at himself. But by then I’d already fired. We both shot him practically at the same time.”
“I don’t know if he really wanted to kill me just then,” Espinosa said, speaking softly so as not to force his breathing. “I think that when he saw me fading away on the park bench, he thought that I was dying. That was when he pointed the gun at me and ordered me to open my eyes. That was the only thing I heard him say. I don’t think he wanted to shoot me. He wanted me to see him kill himself. That was probably how he imagined the final scene.… That’s what I think, anyway. He was writing his own play.”
“It might not have been the best ending, but …” Ramiro said.
“… but it could have been worse,” Welber finished.
For a few seconds they sat there in silence.
“Play’s over,” Espinosa said. “Time for me to leave the scene myself.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A distinguished academic, LUIZ ALFREDO GARCIA-ROZA is a bestselling novelist who lives in Rio de Janeiro. His Inspector Espinosa mysteries—The Silence of the Rain, December Heat, Southwesterly Wind, A Window in Copacabana, Pursuit, and Blackout—have been translated into six languages and are available in paperback from Picador.
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