“Look for Detective Friedrich,” Mosquito had instructed me. “He owes me a couple of favors.”
Detective Friedrich was a large, fat German with the expression of someone who had seen everything in life and had no wish to see it all again. He only said “Ha” when I told him I brought greetings from Mosquito. But he let me into the apartment before the bodies were removed and told me everything he knew about the victims. The dead man’s antipoetic name, the identity of the blonde, everything. The neighbors had said a lot, but Friedrich already knew the couple. He told me that the blonde, Cristina, never left the house by herself, only in the company of the man. The rest of the time she stayed locked up in the apartment. That was why the detective knew them. One day when the man wasn’t there, there was a fire in the kitchen. Friedrich had helped the firemen break down the door and rescue the woman. Afterward he had recommended that the man not leave the door locked like that, but the guy ignored him. He said nothing, just grunted. Maybe his species lacked the power of speech.
Friedrich invited me to have a beer at a bar near the scene of the crime. I asked if I could take the poetry manuscript with me and he consented with a gesture of indifference. At the bar he told me that after the fire he had begun an investigation. On his own.
“What led you to investigate that man?”
“Not the man, the woman.”
“Beautiful, huh?”
“And you saw her covered in blood. Imagine what she was like without the blood. Cristina...” The detective spoke the woman’s name reverently, as if summoning her to sit there with us. Her or her hologram. I could be mistaken, maybe fat Friedrich also had the soul of a poet. Bangu might be a hotbed of secret poets for all I knew...
“I discovered everything about the two of them. He already had a criminal record. Petty stuff. He was a nobody. Even his crimes were mediocre. She was the mistress of Nogueira, owner of a chain of butcher shops in the South Zone. Very rich. She lived in an apartment Nogueira had bought for her, in Laranjeiras. That was where they had their trysts. Everybody knew about the mistress in Laranjeiras, including Dona Santa, Nogueira’s wife, and their two sons. In the family, the code name for her was Laranjeira.”
“How did you discover all this?”
“It’s impressive how much people open up when they see a badge.”
“And?”
“And one day Nogueira has a major stroke and is at death’s door. And the suspicion emerges that the old man had made a will leaving everything, including the butcher shops, or a large part of his fortune, to Laranjeira.”
“So?”
“So right now it’s all conjecture. It’s my hypothesis. Which might be wrong, but I think it’s correct.” Friedrich took a dramatic pause, ordered another beer, and continued: “Here’s the hypothesis: this story is like Snow White.”
“Snow White?!”
“Remember the story? The evil queen is jealous of Snow White’s beauty. She asks the magic mirror who’s the fairest in the land, and the mirror, with the frankness that characterizes all mirrors, says, It’s not you, it’s Snow White. The evil queen then hires someone to kill Snow White. A woodsman.”
“A nobody.”
“Right. The woodsman is supposed to take Snow White to the forest, kill her, and bring her heart to the queen, as proof that he killed her. The woodsman takes Snow White to the forest, and what happens? He falls in love with her. He’s dazzled by her beauty. He decides that instead of killing her he’s going to let her go. Or, in the case of our woodsman, stay with her. Get it? The woodsman is a minor character in the story of Snow White. A mere detail, a supporting actor. But without him and without his decision to spare Snow White there would be no story. The woodsman ends up being the most important character of all. A simple woodsman.”
“How does he prove to the queen that he eliminated Snow White?”
“He takes her the heart of some animal or other, as if it were Snow White’s. In the case of our Tadeu, he could even buy a heart from one of Nogueira’s butcher shops; it’d be an ironic touch. Although Dona Santa, who had helped her husband in the butcher shop in the difficult early days, would inevitably recognize a cow’s heart. But our Tadeu doesn’t do any of that. He simply disappears with Laranjeira. Or with Snow White. And hides out in Bangu.”
“According to your hypothesis, then—”
“The evil queen is Dona Santa, who has nothing saintly about her. Snow White is Cristina. The woodsman is Tadeu, who brings Cristina to Bangu and keeps her locked in an apartment, certain they’ll never be discovered, until they are discovered. And executed, at the order of the evil queen. That will be the line of our investigation. I don’t foresee any difficulty in finding the killer. Or killers. Nogueira’s sons do whatever their mother orders. They’re terrified at the prospect of being left out of the will. And they had access to sharp knives. In short: for this story to match Snow White’s, all that’s missing are the dwarfs.”
“Did old Nogueira die after all?”
“Not yet. He’s in a coma. No one knows what’s in his will. He may have left everything to Laranjeira. Even the butcher shops.”
Several beers later Friedrich was relating what his father told him about Bangu, in the days when a famous textile factory and a soccer team that didn’t do badly in the Rio championships were there, where Zizinho, Parada, and even the great Domingos da Guia had played.
“Today people only come to Bangu to disappear,” said Friedrich. “Like me, who disappeared here six years ago and was never seen again.”
Mosquito had warned me that after a few beers Friedrich would start getting maudlin. I considered asking if he’d been the one who fingered the couple’s hideout to Dona Santa. Perhaps as a form of revenge, I don’t know. But I thought it best not to say anything.
I went back to the office, carrying the manuscript. Maybe there was something there I could use in my story. Something about impossible loves or the like. Readers like a bit of poetry with their bloodshed. I thought about Tadeu, the nobody, the mere woodsman, who one day finds himself the owner of the most beautiful woman in the world, who owes him her life but whom he must lock inside the house. I imagined how the break-in of the apartment by the butchers must have gone down. Perhaps they arrived in late afternoon, the time of long shadows. Perhaps Tadeu feared the time of long shadows every day, and what they could bring. Later I thought about what I would tell Mosquito.
“You were right, it did lead somewhere. It’s basically the story of Snow White. Minus the dwarfs.”
About the contributors
Tony Bellotto is author of the best-selling Bellini mystery novels, which have been released as major feature films and translated widely, establishing him as the preeminent writer of Brazilian detective fiction. He is also a guitarist and songwriter for the famed Brazilian rock band Titãs (The Titans), which has released twenty albums and sold over six million albums. Bellotto also writes for the newspaper Globo and hosts a television show.
MV Bill (a.k.a. Alex Pereira Barbosa) is a rapper, writer, and activist. In 2005, with his coauthor Celso Athayde, he launched Cabeça de Porco. The following year he published a best-selling nonfiction work, Falcão: meninos do tráfico, which inspired a documentary. In collaboration with Celso Athayde, he created the NGO Unified Central of Favelas (CUFA). He is host of the programs Aglomerado on Brazilian TV and A voz das periferias and O som das ruas on FM radio in Rio.