MAY 24

Thursday

1

Lobo was frowning when I entered her office looking for a little psychological comforting. She was in the habit of saying that any time a detective’s work becomes public, he has failed. “The detective’s work is secret as a matter of principle.”

She couldn’t stand seeing her name published in all the papers around town. It was a significant defeat.

I invited her to have some coffee in order to take her mind off it, but she preferred to go up to the top floor for a few Scotches at the Itália Terrace and contemplate the city from above. After two rounds, accompanied by shelled peanuts, her scowl melted away.

“Well, Bellini,” she said, “the game’s over.” She lit a Tiparillo.

“What’s your conclusion?” I asked.

“There was already a mystery behind everything, even before the murder.” She blew smoke out of her nostrils. “Some of the facts don’t add up.”

“For example?”

“I’ve analyzed the reports.” She gestured with the hand holding the cigarette. “There are certain contradictions: I find it odd that Stone and Fatima didn’t recognize Rafidjian. Look, if Camila or Dinéia really did have a relationship of some kind with the doctor, we could expect they’d have commented about it to the other workers. Rafidjian was too peculiar to go unnoticed in an environment where gossip is a means of bonding.”

She took a sip of the whiskey and gazed pensively at the cigarette in the ashtray. “When he came to me,” she continued, “Rafidjian said he had investigated the Dervish on his own, along with other clubs, interrogating customers and employees about Ana Cíntia’s whereabouts. No one cited that fact, none of the people you contacted mentioned it. The bartender at the Dervish said nothing about it, nor did Fatima or Stone, nobody said a single word.”

“Maybe I was unlucky and investigated the wrong people. After all, my investigation wasn’t all that comprehensive.” I felt a certain pleasure in countering her.

Dora shook her head.

“So what’s your hypothesis then?” I asked.

“I don’t have a hypothesis. I’m just not convinced that Don Quixote was simply a voyeur who fell in love with a hooker from the Dervish.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was murdered.”

 

2

I asked the waiter for two more drinks. We were silent for some moments. When he brought the drinks, even before clearing away the empty glasses, he said: “You’re working on the case of that doctor killed with an umbrella, aren’t you?”

Dora was furious, and I, fearing she would commit some incivility, jumped in: “You read that in the paper?”

“No, I saw it just now on TV, News at Noon.”

“Yes,” I said, “we were. Now it’s in the hands of the police.”

“Could I get your autograph?” He took a pad of paper from his pocket along with the pen he used to write down orders and offered them to Dora. She remained motionless, disconcerted, and I grabbed the sheet of paper and scrawled my signature on it. The waiter went away grateful.

“That’s success, Dora—you have to learn to deal with it.”

“A detective’s success is complete anonymity,” she shot back.

“It’s time for you to stop being so dogmatic and begin enjoying the laurels of glory.”

Dora limited her response to a scathing look.

We took a few sips, and I returned to the subject: “Seriously, do you think the doctor’s death has anything to do with the Tureg brothers or the Mafia?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered distantly.

“Is that it? ‘I don’t think so’? Tell me, Dora, what did I do for you to go so cold on me?”

“Speaking of cold,” she said, assuming that schoolmaster air of hers, “I think it’s best for you to stop drinking, cold turkey.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you stopping drinking.”

“And since when do you decide when and how much I should drink?” I asked, feigning indignation.

“Since now, sonny boy. We’ve got a new case.”

“A new case?”

“Yes. Enough drama. Dr. Rafidjian is a thing of the past, I’ve turned the page, it’s over. Now it’s just something for the media.”

“Are you serious?” She definitely knew how to surprise me.

“Look, Bellini, we’ve got to work. Are you going to disrupt the normal flow of life because Dr. Rafidjian”—she pronounced the name in a playful manner—“was killed?”

I took a generous swallow of whiskey and asked, “What the hell kind of case is it?”

“A piece of cake. All you have to do is follow a guy.”

“Who?”

“A businessman. Pompilio Nagra. His partner, Fabian Fegri, suspects he’s passing confidential information to competitors. Professional betrayal. All you have to do is tail Pompilio twenty-four hours a day and write down where he’s going.”

 

3

It may have been easy, but it was also going to be really boring. Following a businessman who was betraying his partner was as compelling to me as going to the dentist.

We paid our check at the Itália Terrace and went down to the office to discuss details of the case. Before I left, Dora asked, blatantly contradicting herself, “Did Boris make any comment about that foreign partner of Camila’s?”

“Boris didn’t comment about anything,” I replied. “He kept obsessing over the photos of Dinéia and Camila and didn’t even say goodbye when I left. Boris is a little bit unbalanced, isn’t he?”

“Unbalanced enough to be considered the best cop in homicide.”

“Fine, but as far as I recall, he didn’t mention anything about a foreigner. What exactly are you trying to say?” My brain was kind of scrambled from the whiskey.

“I’m saying you need to stop drinking. Concentrate, Remo Bellini.”

When she called me Remo I knew things weren’t going very well.

She went on, impatiently: “Remember your conversation with the informant at the Bisteca d’Ouro? That little piece of shit said the last time he saw Camila she was performing with a foreigner called Miguel or Manuel. He even referred to the show as ‘fabulous.’”

“That idiot probably thinks a yo-yo is the most fabulous thing in the world.”

“No jokes, kiddo.”

“Sorry, but I can’t take a guy seriously who says the drug is ‘real cheap.’”

“I’m not saying you should take Stone seriously, I just want to know if Boris made any comment about that Miguel or Manuel.”

“I do remember. Miguel or Manuel. Boris didn’t say anything about him. Why should he?”

“No reason,” she answered. “The name came into my head, that’s all.”

“I thought you said the Rafidjian case is a thing of the past.”

She smiled and turned on the record player she kept in her office. The room was invaded by one of her symphonies, the signal that our conversation had come to an end.

 

4

I went home and couldn’t get Beatriz out of my head.

What was this—love at first sight? Lack of a woman?

I made a sandwich with the last of the cream cheese and put on a Muddy Waters tape. As he sang “Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl,” I imagined Beatriz innocently walking to class with her law books clutched to the small breasts I had glimpsed in the pizzeria.

What was this, late-manifesting adolescent deliriums?

“Tell your mother and your father, I once was a schoolboy too.”

I checked my watch: 7:45. I decided to call her.

“Hello? Is Beatriz in?”

“No.” The voice sounded like an older woman. “Who’s calling?”

“It’s Bellini. Remo Bellini.” Why did I say Remo? I wasn’t in the habit of doing that, except when I was very nervous.

“I don’t know what time she’ll be back, Bellini. Do you want to leave a message?” The voice suddenly wasn’t that of an older woman, just one who was . . . more mature.

“No thanks. Just say I called. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

I hung up. Every time I fell in love, I wove fantasies about the mother of the woman I was in love with. Since childhood. The woman I had spoken to on the phone was probably Beatriz’s mother, and in my imagination she had already taken on the form of a more experienced Beatriz, more maternal and more understanding. I’ve always had a weakness for older women. I collapsed on the sofa and surrendered myself to daydreams and the sound of Jimmy Reed.

Women are even more of an illusion on the phone, I thought. What would Khalid say if he knew how often I fell in love just by hearing a pretty voice?

 

5

I fell asleep.

I dreamed of a black man in dark glasses, walking through a cane field. He wasn’t Brazilian, he was American.

The phone rang. I picked it up, despite not being fully awake.

“Hello?”

It was a woman’s voice. I thought it was Beatriz, but I wasn’t sure.

“Who’s speaking?” I asked, still half asleep.

It was Fatima. I woke up fully.

“Fatima. It’s been a long time.”

“Right, now you’re famous, you’re in the papers and on TV every day.”

“That’s true, but it’s not good. The clients might lose confidence.”

“No. Publicity’s always a good thing.”

“So then, Fatima?”

“So then, what?”

“Why’d you call me?”

“I called because you owe me one, remember?”

That took me by surprise. I really did owe her one. The problem was finding out what she meant by “one.”

“It’s true, you helped me a lot, except that the doctor died suddenly and we had to abandon the case.”

“Take it easy. I don’t want any money.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

She let the conversation fall into an unsettling silence. Then she finally said: “I want to finish the chat we started.”

“What chat?” I was affecting an unconvincing naïveté.

“The kiss you gave me.”

“What about the kiss?”

“I want to go on with it. That’s how you can pay what you owe me.”

That was what I was afraid of. Not that Fatima wasn’t an attractive woman, and the fact that she was a prostitute did spice the promise of an adventure with tantalizing flavors. But it was a matter of timing; I felt a commitment to Beatriz that I myself couldn’t explain. In any case, if I tried explaining it to someone, that someone wouldn’t be Fatima. I didn’t want to wound her self-esteem, and she actually had helped me at a moment in the investigation when all I’d discovered up to then was that women were an illusion.

And besides that, she had initiated that kiss. Why the hell did I kiss her, in the taxi, when we’d already said goodbye? And since when did the way I kiss become irresistible? No good blaming it on alcohol. My ex-wife would say claiming alcohol was responsible was “very simplistic.”

Could it be that at last a prostitute was reacting favorably to my affection, unlike that first experience at the brothel when I was an adolescent and spent my twenty minutes sitting in a chair, trying in vain to get an erection?

The voice of Tulio Bellini once again echoed in my head with one of his lapidary phrases: The man of integrity accepts the consequences of his acts, whether good or bad.

After the two seconds this reflection took, I asked Fatima: “What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing.” I noted a tinge of victory in her voice.

“Then come on over.”

* * *

I confess to having felt a little anxious about the decision. Not so much because of Beatriz, to whom in reality I had no commitment, nor myself, well accustomed to my own conflicts, but because of a reversal of values I felt taking place. In the final analysis, who was the prostitute—Fatima or me? Who would be paying whom? And paying what?

As I always did when issues became too numerous, I poured myself a generous glass of Jack Daniel’s and played Robert Johnson at full volume. To me, listening to him was like consulting an oracle. His voice took me back to the bookcase in Tulio Bellini’s office. More precisely, to the old Dictionary of Classical Mythology. To be exact, Robert Johnson’s voice took me back to line 51 of the entry for Rômulo.

 

6

 

RÔMULO (Romulus). Romulus and Remus were saved by a she-wolf who had just given birth and took pity on the two children. By suckling them, she prevented their starving to death. It is known that the she-wolf is an animal consecrated to the Roman god Mars, and it is widely believed that that the wolf was sent by the god to care for the children. In addition, a woodpecker (Mars’s bird) helped the wolf feed them. Soon the shepherd Faustulus appeared and encountered the children fed in this extraordinary manner. Taking pity on them, he delivered them to his wife, Acca Larentia, who raised them. Some skeptical mythologists, supported especially by Church fathers, contend that the she-wolf was none other than Acca Larentia herself, whose bad behavior earned her the surname Lupa (Latin for she-wolf), the term designating prostitutes.

 

While Robert Johnson was singing “Me and the Devil Blues,” the lonely old lady next door banged on the wall several times to complain about the noise, but the only sound that made me turn down the volume was the ringing of the doorbell.

It was Fatima.

* * *

I could try recounting here how the events unfolded until the consummation of our sexual relationship. All that ritual that any adult human being knows and that, despite one or another variation, always comprises the same thing: kisses, sucking, hair, friction, penetration, saliva, secretion, ejaculation, spasms, and mixed odors of flowers and urine.

I would like to be able to narrate exactly how the lay took place, but my active and intense involvement in the process prevents me from describing it in detail.

Let’s just say that I remember very well even today her breath hot from a cigarette and the humid texture of her tongue. And the size and opulence of her breasts, to me always the most pleasurable part of the female body. And also the enveloping fragrance, both alluring and repelling, of her vagina, as well as its feverish temperature.

What I can state with certainty is that after my drive exhausted itself in a prolonged orgasm, I was overcome by the desire for her to leave immediately. That desire was suffused with a sense of guilt, as if unconsciously I wanted to blame myself for betraying Beatriz, when in reality I was to blame for betraying myself. But these thoughts didn’t last long; after all, it was just sex, I thought, and a good professional is always a good professional, as Dora Lobo would say.

So I put a full stop on my digressions of conscience and invited Fatima to have something to eat at the August Moon. My thought was that it would be easier to get rid of her there with the excuse that my mother was coming to visit me in the morning, making it impossible for her to spend the night with me.

We sat at the table I usually occupied, and Antonio winked at me in a gesture of male bonding, something he always did when he saw me in the company of a woman.

We almost didn’t talk during the meal, but over coffee I asked Fatima if she knew Miguel or Manuel, the foreigner Dora had mentioned in our conversation in the office that afternoon.

“He’s a Chilean scumbag. His name is Miguel. He performs in sex shows and sleeps with men and women for money.”

* * *

Later, reviewing the events of the night before I went to sleep, I remembered that during our “settling of accounts” (i.e., sexual relations) the phone rang insistently, twice in a row. Though I was occupied with Fatima, I still felt some tugs at my heart thinking about the probable caller.

I was in love with Beatriz. I was in the habit of falling in love with the wrong woman.