Part 39 (1/2)

”I promise.”

As soon as he received the blotter and Padua left, Mattos called Rosalvo's house and ordered him to come immediately to the precinct.

Rosalvo arrived quickly.

”I'm going out on an a.s.signment. I don't know how long I'll be gone. Take care of things here.”

ALZIRA VARGAS, in the suicide's room, was searching through the pockets of the navy-blue suit her father had worn at the cabinet meeting the night before, when she was told the forensic experts had arrived.

”Let them wait,” said Alzira, now nervously searching the pajama pockets of the body lying on the bed.

What she was looking for was finally discovered under the president's cadaver: a key to the Fichet safe in the bedroom.

Alzira opened the safe and rapidly placed the contents from its drawers into a briefcase she had brought from the governmental palace of the State of Rio, in Niteri, and which till then contained only a revolver.

THE CONFUSION at the Catete Palace was so great that Inspector Mattos had no difficulty in entering; he didn't even have to show his police ID. The reception area was deserted. Behind the doorman's counter was only the bronze statue of the Indian Ubirajara grimacing in rage.

The furniture was being removed from the office of General Caiado de Castro, on the ground floor. Someone told the inspector that this was where the body of Vargas would lie in state. The inspector climbed the twenty red-carpeted steps of the first flight of stairs, flanked by the handrails of decorative wrought iron and gilded cherubs. He stopped on the first landing. Where would the president's body be? His stomach ached. He put three antacid tablets in his mouth. He needed to see Getlio's body.

People were hurriedly going up and down the stairs. The inspector climbed another seventeen steps and arrived on the second floor. He had the habit of counting the steps of stairs he ascended.

In the large formal salon, whose windows opened onto Rua Catete, he encountered an attendant wearing a navy-blue suit.

Mattos displayed his police ID.

”Police. Where's the president's body?”

”You should've taken the elevator,” the attendant said.

”Where is it?”

”From here it's better to take the stairs, in the rear, to the right.”

A door concealed the stairs leading to the residential area of the palace. The inspector climbed three flights of stairs, each with nine narrow marble steps, and came to the residential floor. In front of the president's bedroom was a group of people, among them an army captain with the gilded braid loop worn by aides-de-camp. The inspector showed the captain his police ID.

”I'm from the office of the superintendent of police. Have the forensic people arrived yet?”

”They're inside. Is there anything?” The captain held the doork.n.o.b. ”You want to go in?”

”I'll talk with them when they come out.”

The inspector descended the stairs to the ground floor, where the confusion had increased. The number of people moving to and fro, yelling incomprehensible orders, was greater. In the gardens could be seen hurriedly placed light machine gun nests. There were no soldiers behind the few haphazardly piled sandbags, which imparted a melancholy and fragile appearance to that improvised war apparatus.

The inspector noticed at the third-floor windows a woman wearing dark gla.s.ses, who seemed to be crying. It was the wife of the president, Darcy Vargas. She had married Vargas when she was fifteen years old.

Mattos contemplated the pair of bronze birds on the platbands of the rear of the palace roof, leaning forward as if about to take flight. In the shade of the enormous trees in the garden, the silence was broken only by the soft gush of water from a small fountain of white marble.

A man whom Mattos recognized as Lourival Fontes, head of the civilian cabinet, was placing a pile of papers in the trunk of a car. Fontes closed the trunk and looked around stealthily to see if he was being observed. When he saw the inspector, he walked quickly back into the palace. Mattos followed him.

In the midst of the confusion on the ground floor, the inspector lost sight of Fontes. He ran up the stairs, counting the thirty-seven steps to the third floor. He approached the president's bedroom. Through the half-open door, Mattos saw what he was looking for. There he was, Getlio Vargas. Dead, sitting on the bed, held up by his wife and others who were trying to removed the bloodstained pajama jacket. Beside them, someone was holding a dark suit on a hanger. The movement of the people prevented Mattos from seeing the president's face.

A visibly uncomfortable man who was taking notes put away in his pocket the pad on which he was writing. Seeing the inspector's inquisitive gaze, he said: ”My name is Arlindo Silva. I'm a journalist. This scene will never vanish from my mind.”

The reporter, obviously ill at ease, moved away from the door and disappeared.

The forensics team finished its work and stored instruments and papers in small black cases. The first to come out was Vilanova.

Normally good-humored, Vilanova was frowning and worried. He knew the inspector and considered his presence at the scene natural.

”I confirmed a large blackened area around the orifice made by the projectile in the pajama, and also nitrite on the hand. There can be no doubt that the president killed himself. Jesse and Nilton agree with me,” said Vilanova.

The medical examiners Jesse and Nilton had undertaken only a superficial examination of the corpse. The superintendent of police had given orders to the experts of the GEP and the morgue to hand over the body; there was no way, in that location, to perform an autopsy as the law required. The two medical examiners had merely removed the bullet lodged in the thorax and injected formaldehyde into the veins of the cadaver. This was related to Mattos by Nilton Salles.

The inspector descended to the ground floor, where countless persons had gathered, lamenting and clamoring. In a corner, under the large statue of Perseus, a colonel in uniform was saying that General Zenbio had expressed the desire to go to the palace, but Vargas's family had forbidden him to enter. ”They didn't take into account the fact that in 1950 Zenbio had opposed another coup attempt by the UDN when Eduardo Gomes was defeated by Vargas in the presidential elections,” the colonel kept repeating.

Genolino Amado and Lourival Fontes distributed to the journalists arriving at the Catete an official note about the death of Vargas. Along with the note, they handed over two doc.u.ments ”found in the president's bedroom”: the text of the letter, badly typed, which they called Vargas's testament, and the text of a note that Major Fitipaldi said was found in the president's bedroom, despite Lourival Fontes having verified that it was not in Vargas's handwriting.

Major Fitipaldi, upon learning of Vargas's suicide, had locked himself in the military advisers' room, on the ground floor, and hastily written a note at the end of which he signed the name of Getlio Vargas.

Now, Fitipaldi, Genolino, and Fontes read the note to the journalists arriving at the palace as having come from the president.

”I leave to the ire of my enemies the legacy of my death,” began the note, which ended by saying: ”The answer from the people will come later . . .”

Mattos left the palace. He made his way through the crowd gathered in front of the palace. He needed to get back to the precinct.

AT THE FINAL STOP of the streetcar line at Carioca Square, the inspector caught a streetcar and went to the precinct.

Automatically, he began signing the certificates of poverty on his desk. Rosalvo came into the office.

”Those military guys are really stupid. That's the crux of it. If they'd left Getlio alone, the senile old man would've died in disgrace, having his hair combed in public by the Black Angel, drowned in the sea of mud. But the military backed him up against the wall, without giving him a chance to save face. They played Lacerda's game; he's a maniac who doesn't know when to stop. The people had already taken the old man's picture down from the wall, now everything's going to start all over. The old man's become a saint, like every politician who dies in office in this s.h.i.+thole of a country.”

”Weren't you a Lacerdist? Against Getlio?”

”I've changed sides.”

Rosalvo began singing a song from the 1951 Carnival: ”Put the old man's picture back up, put it in the same spot, the old man's smile makes us work.”

”Shut up,” said the inspector.

”The UDN is through,” said Rosalvo. ”It'll never be the government in this country. That boat has sailed.”

”Call the jailer and the guard on duty.”

Rosalvo and the policemen on duty, the investigator who was serving as jailer and the guard, came into the inspector's office. Mattos ordered them go with him to the Robbery and Theft section.

”Put your weapons on top of this table,” the inspector said.