“He was lying. He said that to protect himself.”
“People don’t see through one another, son. Even I can’t tell what you’re thinking. It just so happens that I’m your mother and I’ve been taking care of you for almost thirty years. We’ve lived together longer than I lived with your father.”
Gabriel was still standing in the doorway, stiff as a statue. Only his head moved, following his mother’s movements around the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you say something to me when you found the box of bullets?”
“Because if you’d hidden it from me, you didn’t want me to know about it; but especially because you didn’t want to talk to me about it. And I think you still don’t want to talk to me about it.”
Gabriel was silent. During dinner, he remained thoughtful. He waited for his mother to start doing the dishes.
“Why can’t I remember my father’s death?”
“That happens with some people. They forget traumatic events, so it hurts less.”
“You didn’t forget.”
“I was an adult. You were a child.”
“Who discovered that he was dead?”
“That’s the second time you’ve asked me about your father’s death in the last couple of days. Why are you so interested, all of a sudden? We’ve already talked about it.”
“I need to know these things. Who found his body?”
“I did, when I came home.”
“You weren’t home when he died?”
“No. I’d gone out to the supermarket.”
“And was I home?”
“You were. When I left, your father was in the shower.”
It took Gabriel a long time to fall asleep.
Espinosa wasn’t a big fan of weekends, with the exception of Saturday mornings, when he could take his time with the newspaper and savor his breakfast; he’d have two or more cups of coffee and eat twice the amount of toast he ate on weekdays. He also devoted some attention to his apartment, which didn’t mean that he would actually do anything to alter its state; he would just accumulate promises to himself of future accomplishments.
Alice had moved their visits to Neighbor from Saturday to Sunday. The puppy’s brothers and sisters greeted them happily, but Alice and Espinosa thought that Neighbor knew why they were there.
It was a few minutes before noon when Welber called.
“I’m only calling on Saturday morning because you asked me to.”
“No problem. How did it go with Gabriel?”
“He was clean. He didn’t have any weapon on him, and I didn’t find one in his office. I looked inside his desk drawers and inside the file cabinet. It’s a clean workplace, there’s nowhere to hide anything. I also looked inside the men’s and women’s rest rooms. Nothing. Unless some colleague hid it for him, he’s clean. I checked to see if he’d left his area that morning, if he’d gone to other floors in the building. Nothing, he’d never gone past the door. And he couldn’t have thrown it out of the window—it would have fallen in the middle of the street and someone would have seen him doing it. I confronted him with the fact that I’d been following him on Thursday night and noticed an object in his coat pocket, but he claimed it was a tape player. And I did see a Walkman and earphones in his room.”
“And how did he explain his disappearance just before the Argentine’s death?”
“That he didn’t disappear, that he just went downstairs into the station, took off his coat, and sat and waited for the train. Since I was looking for a guy with a blue jacket, I wouldn’t have noticed him in a white shirt. It’s a good excuse. And he even said that if he’d known that he was being followed he would have asked me to come walk with him.”
“It’s true that his alibis are right on schedule—it’s a very specific period of time.”
“I noticed one thing: he doesn’t look like a stalked animal anymore. Now he looks—not exactly happy, but relieved. That would be understandable after Hidalgo’s death. But the only way he’d know that Hidalgo is dead is if he’s the killer, right?”
“The papers didn’t mention it. Maybe the officer in the Tenth Precinct wanted to keep things quiet for us, since Stella was shouting that I was responsible. I’ll talk to him on Monday. We’re also going to talk to Stella and Gabriel.”
“You’re going to let the people from the Tenth and Nineteenth in on Gabriel’s involvement? After all, nobody else is even aware of his existence.”
“I can’t put it off forever. We’re talking about two murders, and both of them are linked to him. It’s Saturday. We’ve got the weekend to think it over.”
While he was transporting his spaghetti from the freezer to the microwave, Espinosa worked through the theory that Gabriel had killed Hidalgo. First, he’d have to have known the other man’s address, and, except for Welber and himself, nobody had this information. Second, he’d have to have known when he usually came home, to ambush him from his building’s alleyway. These gaps held Espinosa back from coming completely clean with the policeman investigating Hidalgo’s murder. With Olga’s death, there were no gaps: he simply didn’t know anything. The witnesses’ accounts were so divergent that anybody could be a suspect. On the other hand, for someone disinclined to believe in coincidences as striking as those that linked Gabriel to the two deaths, Espinosa thought he was being overindulgent.
The idea of spending the weekend with Irene was frustrated by his first phone call. The message on her machine said that she wouldn’t be home until Monday. His fantasies about Irene were displaced by imaginary scenes involving the murders. The only roles that never changed were those of the victims; everybody else took a turn playing the part of murderer, including Espinosa himself. They weren’t logical exercises, just imaginary constructions, independent of the facts.
Without Irene, the weekend would be even less interesting.
Monday morning. This was the last time that he’d arrange to meet Gabriel outside the station. There was no longer any reason to protect him. Besides, he didn’t even fully understand why he was going to the trouble. Echoes of his distant son, perhaps. Anyway, he wanted to check the guy out one last time before submitting him to official police interrogations.
As with their two other meetings, they used the lunch hour to meet halfway between their workplaces—and once again, as soon as they caught sight of each other, Espinosa started heading toward the Avenida Atlântica.
Neither spoke until they reached the beach. It wasn’t the first time that the Avenida Atlântica had served as a site for confidential exchanges. Gabriel broke the silence.
“Why did you insist on meeting, sir?”
“To tell you that Hidalgo died.”
Espinosa spoke the phrase while looking Gabriel in the eyes, watching for the faintest sign that the news wasn’t new to him.
“He died?”
They were standing face-to-face. Gabriel took a few steps toward the closest bench. It occurred to Espinosa that the gesture could be a defensive tactic to cover up a compromising expression.
“He’s dead?”
“Murdered. Shot in the face.”
“Shot? Murdered? When?”
“Thursday night … just after Detective Welber lost you.”
“So is that why you looked through my apartment and my office?”
“That’s right.”
“So I’m a suspect in the murder?”
“Based on what you yourself have told us, don’t you think that we might have reason to suspect you?”
“The law requires guilty people.”
“The Church likes the guilty. We look for criminals.”
“And you think I might be a criminal, sir?”
“In every investigation, we start off considering everybody who could have possibly done it a suspect, but that doesn’t mean that everybody who could have done it is likely to have done it.”
“What do I have to do to remove myself from the list of possibilities?”
“Technically, yo
u have to give me an irrefutable alibi. Nontechnically, you have to convince me that it wasn’t you.”
“The best thing I can say in my defense is that on the night of the crime I was being followed by your assistant. It’d be comical, even tragic, if I took a short detour from being followed to murder someone you know I hate. Besides, if I was going to kill him, why would I seek you out to talk about it?”
“At the time Hidalgo was killed, you weren’t being followed. Technically, between the moment you disappeared into the subway and the hour you came home there was more than enough time for you to commit the crime. Even more if you consider how close you were to the victim’s apartment.”
“Officer, let’s agree that it doesn’t make sense.”
“As I said, either you give me a watertight alibi, which you’re not doing, or convince me that it wasn’t you.”
“I didn’t like him, but that wasn’t enough to kill him over. Objectively, I couldn’t accuse the guy of doing anything. Why would I kill him? The prediction he made said that I was the threat, not him. And from what you told me, it was only a joke. Why would I want to kill him?”
“And Olga?”
“Olga? What does she have to do with the fortune-teller?”
“With him, nothing. She has to do with you.”
“I’m also a suspect in her death? That’s absurd.”
“Her death was absurd.”
“Olga was the only person I had a close relationship with. She was my friend, my …”
“Girlfriend?”
“Something like that.”
“From what you told me, she thought of herself as your girlfriend. After all, the episode in the hotel could be seen as the beginning of a relationship.”
“Well then. So why would I kill her?”
“The motives are very complicated. I’d rather start with the ‘how.’”
“When Olga died, assuming she was taking the subway to work, I was also leaving for work. I couldn’t be simultaneously in the Zona Norte and in the Zona Sul of Rio de Janeiro, and my coworkers have testified that I got to work at the usual time. It would be almost impossible for me to push Olga under the train at eight-thirty in the morning in the Tijuca subway station and be in Copacabana, inside my office, at nine. Especially not at rush hour. And especially because I couldn’t use the subway, which was stopped because of the accident.”
“All you had to do was come out and get a cab. You could make the trip in a half hour. It’d be tight, but it’s not impossible.”
“Officer, you said that I could technically prove that it wasn’t me or convince you, nontechnically, that it wasn’t me. If you were convinced that I’m a murderer, you wouldn’t have called me to talk about it here on the sidewalk of the Avenida Atlântica, looking out at the sea.”
“Maybe. Don’t count on my being logical, though.”
“What are you going to do with me? Are you going to call me to testify?”
“I’m not going to do anything. The investigations have been opened in the precincts where the crimes took place. It has nothing to do with me. At least for the time being.”
Once again, Espinosa sat on the cement bench, looking out at the sea. He watched seagulls flying into the breaking waves, like surfers in a tube, before darting out just before the waves crashed. Their flights were so precise that the tips of their wings often touched the water. He lost himself in that vision of the green transparency of the curving waves, remembering how, as a child, he used to see schools of fish swimming there. He always hoped to spot a distracted bunch of fish, or a faster-than-usual wave, but he never saw a wave break and surprise a group of fish.
At first, Espinosa had believed that Gabriel was innocent. Maybe he was right. Maybe he still hadn’t done anything; maybe he had only been asking for help; and Espinosa, instead of helping, had just waited for things to happen. And they had.
On his way back to the station, as he ate a double cheeseburger with a double serving of orange juice, he called his colleague at the Tenth Precinct. He informed him that there had been a complaint against the Chilean and described the meeting he’d had with him and his wife in the fast-food restaurant, but he didn’t bring up Gabriel. He said he was perfectly willing to talk further about the case, or to Stella, if she kept insisting that he was responsible for her partner’s death. In exchange, he learned that the police had combed the whole area near the scene of the crime, looking for the weapon; everything seemed to indicate that the murderer hadn’t bothered to get rid of it.
Welber returned at the end of the afternoon with the information that the urban sanitation workers around Hidalgo’s building hadn’t found any revolvers in the trash bags they’d picked up, and they hadn’t seen anything on the street. The trash had been collected between ten and eleven that night, right after the crime. If the murderer had disposed of the gun by throwing it onto the street, there was a good chance that they would have found it. By the next morning, after daybreak, there would have been zero chance of finding it. To make matters worse, nobody in the area had seen anything. Even Stella couldn’t say if the murderer was a man or a woman. And the other people who lived in the building, most of whom had had their televisions blaring at full volume, hadn’t heard the shot.
No witnesses, no murder weapon …
For years, he’d chosen to eat out, for several reasons. He couldn’t stand strangers in his apartment, he was an incompetent cook, he didn’t like supermarkets, and he felt weird about producing and consuming the same product. That Monday night, he wasn’t inclined to go find a restaurant, but he also didn’t feel like warming up the frozen spaghetti in the microwave. Two sandwiches he’d bought on the way home and some leftover red wine would have to do for dinner. One of the disadvantages of living alone was a creeping disregard for the formalities surrounding a meal. If he had to eat by himself, he’d rather do it as simply as possible.
And those were the times when he felt his lack of a partner most keenly. It wasn’t that he missed his ex-wife, or even any specific woman—he just wanted a relationship that lasted longer than a fleeting encounter. He resisted the word “marriage,” but that was the one that occurred to him at times like this. And it was certainly the word that frightened him and led him to postpone until some invisible future the decision to invest in a longer-term relationship, should the possibility appear. In the last few days, he hadn’t been able to think about Irene without being plagued by thoughts of his own broken marriage.
It was after ten. If she hadn’t called by now, she wouldn’t be calling tonight. He knew that it was a stupid way to approach the problem. Why, instead of waiting for her to call, didn’t he call himself? Why only react to her, instead of taking the initiative?
The plate with the sandwiches, the bottle of wine, and the glass were within arm’s reach, as was the phone, on the table next to the rocking chair. He picked up the phone. Irene quickly answered.
“Hey, hon, I’m so glad you called—I didn’t know if you go to sleep early or if I could still call you.”
“How was São Paulo?”
“I had to stay longer than I’d planned. I only got back this afternoon and went straight to the office. I still haven’t eaten anything. Have you?”
“I’ve got two smoked-ham sandwiches and a bottle of red wine here, ready to be devoured.”
“If there are two sandwiches, then we can split them. I’ll bring another bottle of wine.”
After he hung up, Espinosa sat for a while in the rocking chair, facing the little balcony that looked out at the square, gazing at the buildings on the other side and the sandwiches and wine on the table, waiting for Irene. If necessary, they could go down to a convenience store to get anything else they needed for dinner. They didn’t need to: Irene arrived not with only a bottle of wine but with enough bread, snacks, and cheeses for several dates. Espinosa went downstairs as soon as he saw the number of packages she was carrying as she emerged from her car. She looked happy, but he could tell she w
as nursing a worry. He didn’t ask her anything while they walked upstairs; he waited until she’d put down her bags and he could take a good look at her.
“Did something happen?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re not hiding it very well.”
“Nothing more than usual.”
“You still aren’t hiding it very well.”
“It’s ridiculous; I’ve already talked to you about it.”
“About your feeling that you’re being followed?”
“Right.”
“But there was no car behind yours.”
“It’s not a car. I can’t say exactly how or when it happens. But I get the feeling, sometimes, that I’ve already seen a certain face somewhere. The worst thing is that I’m not exactly sure what face. It must be something I notice without even realizing it, but that stays in my memory. A kind of featureless face. It’s an extremely unpleasant feeling. But I don’t want that to ruin our date.”
“Then let’s break out the wine.”
They didn’t need much time or much wine for the hesitations of their previous meetings to give way to tentative touches, followed by longer investigations, culminating in a tangle of bodies.
8
Standing in the doorway, Dona Alzira looked at Gabriel as he sat on his bed, relating what had happened after his conversation with Officer Espinosa, three days earlier, on the sidewalk facing Copacabana Beach. As he talked, she moved closer and closer, until she was sitting down next to him.
“You don’t think it’s time for us to join forces? This isn’t a personal fight you’re involved in. It’s much bigger than that. Evil doesn’t attack evil, there’s no need for that; it only attacks good. It’s your real enemy. It so happens that good is unique and evil has multiple forms. They come at you together, from every side, directly and indirectly—attacking, sometimes so subtly that you mistake it for good. And that’s the toughest form to fight: it makes you think it’s good, so by the time the victim realizes what’s going on it’s too late to defend yourself. That’s why we need to join forces.”
Southwesterly Wind Page 14
