Winning the Game and Other Stories (8 page)

I stood there looking at the door the girl had gone through, fingering the scar on my forehead, which time had not erased.

“Please come with me,” the butler said.

We went through an enormous room with a large round table in its center, surrounded by velvet chairs. Then another, with armchairs and large paintings on the walls.

Cavalcante Meier was waiting for me in his book-lined office.

“Who's the girl with the dog?” I asked. “The pretty blonde.”

“My daughter, Eve. She's getting married on the twenty-third, as I told you.”

Cavalcante Meier was smartly dressed, like the first time. His hair was neatly combed, parted on the side, not a single hair out of place. He looked like Rudolph Valentino in
Camille,
with Alia Nazimova.

I asked if he'd seen the film. No, he wasn't even born when the film was shown. Nor was I, but I liked to go to art theaters.

“Do you have any connection to Cordovil & Meier?”

“It's my export firm.”

“Then the dead girl was your employee?”

“She was the secretary of my international marketing director.”

A shadow passed over Cavalcante Meier's face. Few actors can make a shadow pass over their face. Everett Sloane could; Bogart couldn't. Grimaces are something else.

The telephone rang. Cavalcante Meier answered.

“Leave it to me,” he said.

I heard the noise of a motorcycle. It stopped for a time, and then I heard it again. Cavalcante Meier appeared to attach no importance to the sound and instructed the butler to show in immediately the person who had just arrived.

Márcio, the biker, came into the room, wearing the same arrogant expression I'd seen at Gordon's. Up close, it looked like a badly fitting mask.

“You said we'd be by ourselves. Who's this guy?”

“My secretary.”

“The talk's just between the two of us. Lose him.”

“He stays,” Cavalcante Meier said, controlling his anger.

“Then I'm outta here,” Márcio said.

“Wait, take it easy. I don't want any trouble. I can wait outside,” I said.

I quickly left for the large hall. From the window I saw Eve sitting on the lawn, the Dalmatian at her side. The sunlight filtering through the branches made her hair even more golden.

The office door opened and Márcio went hurriedly past without looking at me. I heard the noise of the motorcycle. At the same instant the girl rose quickly to her feet.

“Everything's taken care of,” Cavalcante Meier said, at the door to his office.

“How so?” I asked, without leaving the window. Eve ran across the lawn, followed by the dog, and vanished from my field of vision.

“I came to an understanding with that fellow. I won't have any further need of your services. How much do I owe you?”

“Who was it said that language exists to conceal thought?” I said, coming away from the window.

“I don't know and don't care. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

I turned my back on him. The butler was in the vestibule. He gave the impression of skulking behind doors eavesdropping on all the conversations.

I got my car. There was no sign of Eve. The guard opened the gate for me. I asked him if the biker had stopped along the drive before going into the house.

“He stopped near the pond, to talk to Miss Eve.”

The guard looked at something past the hood of the car. I looked also and saw a pale girl with dark hair standing about twenty yards away. It was the girl I had seen on the back of the motorcycle at Gordon's. When she saw I was looking at her, she began walking slowly away.

“Who's that girl?” I asked.

“The boss's niece,” the guard said. Her name was Lilly, and she lived at her uncle's house.

The telephone in the gatehouse rang. The guard went to answer it. When he returned, he opened the gate. I approached with the car.

“Has that guy on the motorcycle ever been here before?”

“I don't know anything,” the guard said, turning away. He must have received orders not to talk to me.

I got home, opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Faísca. There was a note on the table:
You could have used Wurtzberg's gambit. All you had to do was sacrifice the queen, but you never do that. I love you. Berta.

I called Wexler, my partner.

“I'm not coming in to the office today.”

“I know,” Wexler said. “You're going to play chess with a woman and drink wine. I work my butt off while you lay women.”

“I'm working on a case Medeiros put me onto.” I told him the whole story.

“Nothing will come of it,” Wexler said.

I called Raul. He had set up dinner at the Albamar with the detective handing the Marly case.

“Downtown?” I complained.

“That's where Homicide is. His name is Guedes.”

Guedes was a young man, prematurely balding, thin, with brown eyes so light they looked yellow. He ordered a coke. Raul drank whiskey. They didn't have Faísca, so I ordered Casa da Calçada. I prefer something with more age to it, but there are times when a well chilled young wine is just the ticket.

“Marly was wearing a gold Rolex, a diamond ring, and had a hundred dollars in her purse,” Guedes said.

“That helps,” Raul said.

“It helps, but we're still in the dark,” Guedes said.

“The newspapers say you have a suspect.”

“That's to throw them off the scent.”

“Have you come across the name of her boss at Cordovil & Meier, the head of marketing?” I asked.

“Arthur Rocha.” Guedes's suspicious yellow eyes scrutinized my face.

“I saw his name in the papers,” I said.

“His name wasn't in the papers.” Guedes's eyes burned into mine. There was no way I was going to bullshit this guy. He seemed like a decent enough cop.

“I did a little job for the president of the firm, Senator Cavalcante Meier.”

“I took down Arthur Rocha's statement myself. He swore he didn't know anything about the secretary's private life,” Guedes said.

“You think he's telling the truth?”

“We turned his life inside out. The girl was killed on a Friday, between eight and nine p.m. At eleven Rocha was in Petrópolis, at the home of friends. He's not interested in women; his thing seems to be flaunting his wealth. He had a riding area built at his place in Petrópolis, and I hear he can barely mount a horse. Get the idea? The lesser big shots have their tennis courts and pools. Besides all that, he has a riding area and horses for his friends to use.”

“If a director earns that much, just imagine the president,” Raul said.

“He's probably not on salary; he must be a partner. We're on a salary—Raul and me I mean, not you, Mr. Mendes.”

“Hey, no need for formalities. Call me Mandrake,” I said.

“They say you're a rich lawyer.”

“Don't I wish.”

“Mandrake's a genius,” Raul said, already halfway through the bottle of whiskey. “A real sonofabitch. He had my wife. You remember that, Mandrake?”

“I'm still suffering because of it,” I said.

“I forgave you, Mandrake,” Raul said. “And that bitch too.”

“His wife went down for the troops. They weren't married any longer. That's the story.”

“The crime, in principle, conforms to the pattern of a crime of passion,” Guedes said, uninterested in my conversation with Raul. “Arthur Rocha is incapable of falling in love or killing for passion, or money, or anything. But I still think he's lying. What do you think?”

“When I investigate a crime, even my own mother is a suspect,” Raul said.

Guedes was still looking at me, waiting for an answer.

“People kill when they're afraid,” I equivocated, “when they hate, when they envy.”

“Right out of the Farmer's Almanac,” Raul said.

“I know he's lying,” Guedes said.

Alone in my car, I told the rearview mirror, “Everybody's lying.”

The next day Marly's death had dropped off the front pages. Everything wearies, my angel, as the English poet said. The dead must be renewed, the press is an insatiable necrophile. An item in the society pages caught my attention: the marriage of Eve Cavalcante Meier and Luis Vieira Souto would not be held next week. Some of the columnists lamented the calling off of the nuptials. One exclaimed, “What will be done with the mountain of presents the once-future couple has already received from every corner of the country?” Truly a grave problem.

I got the car and went to Cavalcante Meier's house. I stopped a hundred yards from the gate. I put a Jorge Ben cassette in the tape deck and kept time with him on the dashboard.

The first to show was the Mercedes. Cavalcante Meier in the back seat. The chauffeur in navy blue, white shirt, dark tie, black cap. I waited another half hour until the gates opened, and a Fiat sports car came roaring through like a shot.

I followed it. The car took the curves at high speed, tires squealing. It wasn't easy to keep up with it. This is the day I die, I thought. Which one of my women would suffer the most? Maybe Berta would stop biting her nails.

The Fiat stopped in Leblon, in front of a small building. The girl got out of the car, went in a door marked
Bernard—Aerobics for Women.
I waited two minutes.

A carpeted waiting room, walls covered with reproductions of Degas ballerinas and dance posters. A bleached, heavily made-up receptionist in a pink uniform said hello from behind a metal-and-glass table and asked if I wanted something.

“I'd like to enroll my wife in the aerobics class.”

“Certainly,” she said, getting a card.

I scratched my head and said I didn't want my wife going to just any class, maybe I'm old fashioned but that's my way.

The receptionist smiled with her whole mouth, the way only people with all their teeth can, and said I'd come to the right place, an academy frequented by ladies and young women from society. She emphasized the word “society.” Her nails were long and painted dark red.

“What is your wife's name?”

“Pérola … Uh, er, is the teacher a man or a woman?

A man, but there was nothing to worry about, Bernard was very respectful.

I asked if I could see a little of the class.

“Just a tiny bit,” the blonde said, getting up. She was my height, with a willowy body, small breasts, really solid.

“Do you work out too?”

“Not me, this is the body God gave me. But it could be Bernard's work; he can perform miracles.”

She glided in front of me till she came to a door with a mirror on it, which she opened slightly.

The women were following the pounding rhythm of music from speakers spread around the floor. In quick succession they bent their trunks forward, their heads down, stuck their hands backwards between their knees, then straightened their bodies, raised their arms again, and began to repeat the entire process.

There were about fifteen women, in leotards. Most were blue but there was also red, pink, and green. In the middle of the room stood Bernard, also in a leotard, holding a swagger stick. He must have been a ballet dancer; he was certainly proud enough of his firm buttocks.

“Don't bend your knees, Pia Azambuja! Pull in your buttocks, Ana Maria Melo!”

Smack! The swagger stick rapped Ana Maria Melo's fanny.

“Follow the rhythm, Eve Cavalcante Meier! Don't stop, Renata Albuquerque Lins!” Bernard used the students' full names; they were the names of important fathers and husbands.

The receptionist closed the door.

“You've seen everything, haven't you?”

“Does he always hit the students?” I asked.

“It's just a tap, it doesn't hurt a bit. They don't mind. They even like it. Bernard is marvelous. When they come here the students are full of cellulite, flabby, have bad posture, awful skin, and Bernard gives them the body of a beauty queen.”

We filled out my wife's card.

“Pearl White?”

“My wife's an American. Pearl means Pérola.”

I don't know what I see in making jokes nobody gets, but I do it all the time.

I paced back and forth in front of the Fiat, playing White, controlling the center:
K3, Q3, KB4, K4, Q4, QB4, KB5, K5, Q5, QB5, K6,
and
Q6
. Power and focus of action. Gioco Piano. Sicilian. Nimzo-Indian.

Eve came out with her hair wet, wearing long cotton pants and a knit blouse, her arms bare. She carried a large handbag.

“Hello.” I planted myself in her path.

“Do I know you?” she asked coldly.

“From your father's house. He hired me as his lawyer.”

“Oh … ?”

“But he already fired me.”

“Oh … ?” She spoke brusquely but made no move to leave. She wanted to hear what I had to say. Women are curious as cats. (Men are like cats too. Whatever.)

“Someone was trying to involve him in the death of Marly Moreira, the girl they found in the Barra with a bullet in her head.”

“Is that it?”

“A blackmailer named Márcio claims he has papers that incriminate your father.”

“Anything else?”

“The police suspect him. I have more to say, but not here in the street.”

When the waiter came she ordered mineral water. God, Bernard, and Strict Dieting had created that marvel. I ordered Faísca. We sat there in silence.

“If my father is in danger, you should speak to him. I don't see what good it does to talk to me.”

“Your father released me from his service.”

“He must have had some reason.”

I told her of the interviews I'd had with Cavalcante Meier, my trip to Gordon's, the meeting between her cousin Lilly and Márcio the biker. Her expression remained unreadable.

“Do you think my father killed that girl?” A scornful smile.