“I did it,” Cavalcante Meier said.
“Daddy!” Eve exclaimed.
Cavalcante Meier didn’t ring true. I’ve been to enough movies to know a bad actor when I see one.
“I did it, I already said I did. Tell your policeman friend to come pick me up. Get out of my house!”
He came toward me as if to attack. Eve held him back.
“Go away, please go away,” Eve begged.
As I left, Lilly went with me. She stopped next to my car.
“Okay if I come along?”
“Sure.”
Lilly sat beside me. I drove slowly through the dark tree-lined gardens and toward the entrance.
“He’s lying,” I said. “It must be to protect someone. Maybe Eve.”
Lilly’s body began to tremble, but no sound came from her throat. As we passed a lamppost I saw that her face was wet with tears.
“It wasn’t him. Or Eve,” Lilly said, so low I could barely make out the words.
So that was it. I already knew the truth, and what the hell good did it do me? Is there really any such thing as guilty and innocent?
“I’m listening, you can begin,” I said.
“I discovered I loved Uncle Rodolfo two years ago, not as an uncle, or father, which is what he’d been to me till then, but as one loves a lover.”
I said nothing. I know when a person is about to bare their soul.
“We’ve been lovers for six months. He’s everything in my life, and I’m everything in his.”
“Is that why you killed Marly?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know?”
“No. I told him today. He tried to protect me. He loves me as much as I love him.”
In the half-darkness of the car she looked like a fluorescent statue bathed in black light.
“I can tell you how it happened.”
“Tell me.”
“My uncle told me he was having problems with a girl he’d had an affair with and who worked for one of his firms. She was threatening to cause a scandal, to tell my aunt everything. My aunt is a very sick woman, and I love her as if she were my mother.”
I had never seen her. Rich families have inviolable secrets, private faces, dark complicities.
“She never leaves her room. There’s always a nurse at her side; she could die at any time.”
“Go on.”
“My uncle received the letter, on a Monday I think. Every night, around eleven, I would go to his room, then leave early the next morning before the maids came to straighten up.”
“Did Eve know about this?”
“Yes.”
“Go on,” I said.
“That day Uncle Rodolfo was very nervous. He showed me the letter, said that Marly was crazy, that the scandal could kill Aunt Nora and ruin him politically. Uncle Rodolfo is a very good man, he doesn’t deserve anything like that.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Uncle Rodolfo showed me the letter from that Marly woman and then left it on the night table. The next day I took the letter, found that woman’s phone number, and called her. I said who I was and that I had a message from Uncle Rodolfo. We arranged a meeting for after office hours. I chose a deserted beach where I swim sometimes. She was arrogant and said to tell Uncle Rodolfo not to treat her like dirt. When the old lady dies, she threatened, that bastard will have to marry me. I had Uncle Rodolfo’s revolver in my bag. It only took one shot. She fell forward, moaning. I ran and got my car, found Márcio, and asked him to sell me some coke. I did a few lines at his place, the first time in six months. I was desperate. I dozed off, and Márcio must have gone through my bag and taken the letter while I was asleep. When Uncle Rodolfo told me you were meeting Márcio at Gordon’s, I got there first so you wouldn’t find him. I made up a story that Uncle Rodolfo had sent the police after him.”
“Please stop calling him uncle.”
“That’s what I always called him, and I’m not going to change now. Márcio was furious and went to Uncle Rodolfo’s house the next day. You know that part, you saw it all.”
“Not everything.”
“I met Márcio in the garden, when he was leaving. He told me Uncle Rodolfo was going to pay him off, but that he wasn’t going to return the letter. I set up a time with him to buy some cocaine; I’d already made up my mind to get him out of the way. Márcio was in an easy chair watching television, already spaced out on coke and whiskey. I went up to him and shot him in the head. I felt nothing, except disgust, as if he were a cockroach.”
“You didn’t find the letter. It was in Márcio’s pocket.”
“I searched everywhere, but I’d never look in his pocket. Touching him would make me sick,” Lilly said.
“What happened to the money?”
“It was in a suitcase. I took it home. It’s in my bedroom closet.”
I stopped the car. She was holding her purse tightly between trembling hands.
“Give that to me,” I said.
“No!” she answered, clutching the bag to her chest.
I tore the bag from her grasp. The Taurus was inside: two-inch barrel, mother-of-pearl handle. Her eyes were a bottomless abyss.
“Leave the gun with me,” Lilly asked.
I shook my head.
“Then take me back, so I can be with Uncle Rodolfo.”
“I have to find Guedes. Take a cab. And I’d hire a lawyer right away.”
“Everything’s ruined, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately it is. For all of us,” I replied.
I put her in a taxi and went looking for Guedes. I thought about Eve. Farewell, my lovely. The long good-bye. The big sleep. There was no one inside my body. The hands on the steering wheel seemed to belong to someone else.
guardian angel
THE HOUSE HAD SEVERAL BEDROOMS. I asked which of them I was supposed to sleep in. She took me to a bedroom that was close to hers.
I sat on the bed, tested the mattress.
“No good, it’s too soft. It’ll kill my back.”
I tested the mattresses in all the bedrooms until I found a firm one.
“This one’s good. You got a shirt I can use? I forgot to bring anything to sleep in.”
The woman came back right away with a white shirt.
“This is the largest I have. I just wore it once, does it matter?”
I thanked the woman and said good night. I put on the shirt, smelled the scent in the fabric, a mixture of clean skin and perfume.
I looked for a position for sleep. My back hurt. I had a lot of broken and badly healed bones scattered around my body.
The woman knocked on the door so softly that I nearly didn’t hear her.
“Yes?”
“It’s me. I’d like to speak to you.”
“One moment.”
I put on my pants and opened the door.
She was wearing a robe, and a woman in a robe always reminds me of my mother. In fact, the only thing I remember about my mother is the robe.
“You’re too far away; I don’t feel protected. I can’t sleep. Can’t you go to the room next to mine? We can take the firm mattress from this bed and exchange it for the other one.”
I took my firm mattress to the bedroom next to hers.
I sat on the bed.
“I think everything’s all right now. I can sleep on this. Good night.”
“Good night.”
I couldn’t take more than ten minutes lying down. The pain in my spine increased. I got out of bed and sat in an armchair that was in the room.
Another knock on the door.
“What is it?”
“I heard a noise in the garden,” she whispered through the door. “I think there’s someone in the garden.”
I put on my pants. Opened the door. She was still in her robe.
“It must be your imagination. You’re very nervous. Where in the garden?”
“In the magnolia grove. There aren’t any lights there, and I had the impression that I saw a light going on and off.”