“Detective,” she said.
“Yes, Dona Candy?”
“I just wanted to thank you for the treatment you gave me there inside. You can imagine it’s not the first time I’ve been in a police station, but it was the first time that I didn’t feel attacked just for being... who I am.”
I remained silent.
“Your sensitive treatment was super important for me to get out of that mega-embarrassing situation.” The four hundred milliliters of silicone heaved beneath the black mesh. “Although young, you’re a man of experience. You surely saw that Lipe wasn’t some casual client who was disappointed when he found out I had... that extra something that you men are ashamed to admit you like. The two of us have had a serious relationship for seven months, see? I think he’s the man of my life.”
At this point my silence must have been quite eloquent, because she felt the need to reply.
“It’s serious! And I think he feels the same way about me. So mentioning a men’s penitentiary was a masterful stroke on your part. He must not have been able to bear the thought. I’m not a woman to tolerate all that.”
Candy made a significant pause.
“He loves me, but he still doesn’t have the psychological strength to come out — you know what lower-middle-class families are like. And he also doesn’t have the financial fortitude to support me. So I go on having to hook to pay for a tiny place on Laranjeiras, near Rua Alice, you know it? Much better than the tenement in Lapa that, praise God, I managed to get away from. But Lipe goes crazy with jealousy about me sleeping with other men.”
Candy Spears paused again. I asked myself whether she actually was a believer or merely invoked His holy name in vain.
“Would he be bothered if I went to bed with a woman?” she wondered aloud.
I reinforced my silence. The whole thing seemed like more information than I would ever need to know. I have to admit that sometimes smoking is bad for one’s health.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I noticed a pack of cigarettes on your desk and so I waited here till you came out to smoke, just to say thank you. I don’t think I can even dream of someday repaying your kindness, but who knows? Keep my phone number and address. I don’t know, maybe I can be your informant. We see everything that goes on at night in the streets... Ciao.”
Candy Spears came closer, stuck a folded piece of paper in the pocket of my jacket, kissed me gently on the cheek, and walked away, without swinging her hips much, in the direction of Glória. I looked to both sides. The door to the precinct was empty, the cold light falling on the sidewalk. If anyone had witnessed that, I was fucked. I’d be mocked to death.
The cigarette is almost burning the filter, and Aguiar is nearly asleep, sitting on a step, when we hear the dragging of chains, as if the ghosts who lost their lives on this mountain were returning from hell — or on their way to hell — and had come to avenge themselves with the first survivors they met. We turn around, but it’s just the firemen tasked with retrieving the body of the blonde. Soldiers drag ropes, belts, snap hooks, harnesses, a stretcher. Behind them comes a lieutenant.
“Lieutenant Vaz, at your command.” He shakes our hands.
Although they’re military, I’m in charge of the operation. But Aguiar takes the lead and complains about the delay. The lieutenant replies that it wouldn’t have helped to come before the fog dissipated. Aguiar grumbles something that’s muffled by the noise of the soldiers setting up the materials for the rappel. I bring the lieutenant up to speed on the situation, take him to the wall and point to the body, now fully exposed, at the edge of an almost cloudless sky. He asks if we plan to descend. Aguiar breaks in again and says no, that it’s a matter of suicide and that our presence down there would make no difference to the case.
The lieutenant agrees and goes to join the troop, while I again contemplate the cadaver of the blond woman in the black dress. Her shoes can’t be seen from this angle, though it’s unlikely she ascended the mountain barefoot. Only if it was to honor a vow, but obviously there was no grace achieved there to be grateful for. Then I finally understand what bothered me from the first moment I saw her there. Not the most obvious thing, the thick legs in an impossible position even for a boneless ballerina. It’s something else, a bit more subtle. I call Aguiar, who is watching the firemen. I point to the cadaver again.
“Look, could hitting the rock leave her head twisted like that?”
“You think it’s weird? Maybe the impact broke her neck and turned it a bit... Maybe she wears a wig that came off in the fall... Hard to say without examining it up close. Let’s wait for them to bring her up.”
I think about all the possible consequences of what Aguiar, the forensics expert, has just told me. Now he contemplates the landscape, glorious in the pristine light of winter.
“I’m going down,” I say.
It takes a moment for Aguiar to digest the information. “Are you nuts, man? What for?!”
“The scene of death wasn’t up here. It was down there. Or not. But we’re only going to find out if we go down. Letting the firemen get the body, strap it to the stretcher, and hoist it vertically can displace things even further. And displacement can completely change the direction of our investigation.”
“Shit, these guys are profes—” Aguiar starts to argue, but then notices the we in my previous sentence. I take his silence as consent. If I descend he’s obliged to do the same.
I go to the team of firemen and announce I’ve changed my mind. Not only changed my mind but that we want to descend before any of them. Lieutenant Vaz doesn’t attempt to conceal his surprise, but orders are orders, and orders come down the chain of command, however circumstantial. He orders a soldier to give me one of the safety harnesses. Aguiar also accepts one, wordlessly. A second soldier hands us helmets and gloves. A third checks the equipment and gives us rapid instructions. I take a deep breath. The smell of smoke is still in the air, though the mist has dissipated. I touch the folded paper in the pocket of my jacket. I begin the descent.
Blind Spot
by Victoria Saramago
Tijuca Forest
Annie was recovering. Slowly, said some friends who obviously had no idea how much time a long and painful recovery process takes. Precisely because they thought Annie’s world should have the same smell and texture as before, she found no solution other than to leave her life in Kansas and go somewhere far away. A place not totally unknown and that had some appeal for what others understood as tourism, perhaps, but that didn’t recall the snow, the open fields where you could walk for hours without seeing a tree. Some city, maybe one in South America, about which she knew very little — I’ll always be a foreigner, she reminded herself — but a city that would welcome her anyway. A place whose language I’m not going to speak, because that will be easier, a city full of trees. Like those long-ago days of childhood walks in Central Park where certain dense areas of bushes gave the impression of being far, far away in some forgotten land where the horizon of New York buildings could no longer be seen.
So Annie, upon arriving in Rio, had rented a room very close to the Tijuca Forest and indulged in long walks to the lakes and peaks. People passed by the trails and cascades with children and bottles of water, appearing to not have a care in the world. Annie envied them: they would return home after a few hours and not have some scowling guy offering them more blow.