Free Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series) by Rubem Fonseca Page B

you say.”
    Rosalvo opened the door.
    Mattos began to read the papers the clerk had put on his desk.
    “But it’s important,” said Rosalvo, grasping the doorknob.
    The inspector continued his reading.
    This cop’s soul of mine is what fucks me, thought Rosalvo. “It’s very important.”
    “If it’s all that important, out with it, right away.”
    Rosalvo closed the door and sat down in the chair beside the inspector’s desk.
    He leaned forward conspiratorially.
    “Paulo Gomes Aguiar was expelled from the São Joaquim in high school. I mean, he wasn’t expelled, the priests are scared shitless of confronting the powerful, and Gomes Aguiar’s family was very important, so the priests merely invited him to leave the school. Know what happened?”
    “Go on.”
    “Paulo Aguiar and two classmates grabbed a kid from the elementary school in an empty room and cornholed him by force. A beadle heard the boy’s moans and caught the bastards in the act. Know who the beadle was?”
    “Your brother-in-law.”
    “The boy was kinda gay, but he was like the Chinaman in the joke. His family found out about the incident and made a federal case out of it, and there was no way to keep Paulo Aguiar’s name out of it.”
    “Chinaman?”
    “A guy was at a lumber camp in the middle of the jungle, and he went to the foreman and asked how he could find a woman to dip his wick. The foreman said there weren’t any women, but there was a Chinaman. The guy didn’t go for it, what he wanted was a woman. A few months later he went back to the foreman and said: Look, fix me with up with that Chinaman, but nobody can know about it. He didn’t wanna get known as a fairy. That’s not gonna be easy, the foreman said, I’m gonna know, the Chinaman’s gonna know, and the four guys holding him down so you can cornhole him are gonna know . . . You didn’t know that joke?”
    “I remember now. If the boy was the Chinese, there was someone holding him down.”
    “There was. Claudio Aguiar, the cousin of Paulo, who was murdered, and one Pedro Lomagno. The three took turns cornholing him.”
    “What was the boy’s name?”
    “It’s incredible, but the name of the boy was José Silva, page after page in the telephone book. It won’t be easy to find his whereabouts now.”
    After Rosalvo left, Mattos took Gomes Aguiar’s address book from his pocket. He looked for the name of Pedro Lomagno and the telephone number.
    A feminine voice answered.
    Mattos remained silent.
    “Hello,” the woman repeated.
    The inspector hung up the phone. That one short word had been enough for Mattos to identify the person who had answered the phone.
    It was Alice.

five
    COMPACT GROUPS OF PEOPLE began coming out of the São José school. Neither Climerio nor Alcino, who carefully scrutinized everyone’s face, succeeded in spotting the journalist Lacerda. Finally, the school’s doors were shut.
    Climerio gestured to Alcino, and the pair returned to Nelson’s taxi.
    “Goddamn! The man had already left. See what you did?”
    “I didn’t get the message till nine o’clock.”
    “Let’s go to Rua Tonelero, in Copacabana. That’s where the Crow lives. Let’s see if we get lucky this time and catch up with the son of a bitch,” said Climerio. He couldn’t go back to Gregório and confess another mistake; he feared his boss’s reaction.
    “That’s the man’s building there,” said Climerio when they arrived at Rua Tonelero.
    Alcino got out. Climerio told Nelson to park nearby, on Paula Freitas, near the corner of Tonelero. “Wait here. Keep your eyes open.” He got out and went to meet Alcino.
    “The fucker maybe already got here,” said Climerio, “but anyway we’re gonna wait a while.”
    Climerio and Alcino talked for some fifteen minutes. They were about to give up when a car stopped at the door of the journalist’s building, at forty minutes after midnight. Three people got out: Lacerda, his fifteen-year-old son Sergio, and Air Force