The Bardoelias was a shabby establishment with a sign in the front window offering beer for two reais.
Haraldo Goncalves wasn’t about to miss out on a deal like that. He bellied up to the bar and rapped his knuckles on the wood.
“A Cerpa,” he said.
“Beer’s only for folks old enough to drink.” The bartender grinned.
His attempt at humor failed miserably. “Take a good fucking look,” Goncalves said, flourishing his warrant card in the bartender’s face.
“Brahma or Antarctica?” the bartender said.
“I told you. Cerpa.”
“No Cerpa. We only got Brahma and Antarctica.”
“Antarctica, then.”
The bartender reached into a cooler, pulled out a cold bottle, and poured half of the contents into a glass. He set the glass and the bottle on the bar between them.
“You look too young to be a cop,” he said.
“No shit. Elias around?”
“Elias sold me this place back in 1997. I never got around to changing the name.”
“And yours is?”
“Renato Cymbalista, but nobody calls me that. They call me Gordo.” The word meant fatty, and it was appropriate.
“Gordo, huh?” Goncalves said, eying Cymbalista’s vast midriff. “I can’t imagine why.”
He was still miffed about the fat man’s attempt at humor.
“You in my place on business, or pleasure?” Gordo asked.
Goncalves looked around him with distaste and curled his lip. “What do you think?” he said. “Were you working the night Joao Girotti was murdered?”
“Yeah.”
“How well did you know him?”
“I didn’t know him at all. Why he chose my place to drink in, and the alley out in back to get killed in, I couldn’t say.”
“Did you talk with him?”
“Just to take his orders.”
“What was he drinking?”
“Beer with Dreher chasers.”
Goncalves wrinkled his nose. Conhaque Dreher, cachaca flavored with ginger, was just about the cheapest distilled spirit you could buy.
“Got pretty drunk, did he?”
“He got wasted.”
“Think back. Did he talk to anyone else?”
“I don’t have to think back, on account of I already told the story twice. By now, I got it memorized. First, I told it to the uniformed guys who showed up just after Graca found the body. Then I-”
“Who’s Graca?”
“One of the girls.”
“She works for you?”
“None of them work for me. We got an arrangement. They use the place to pick up customers, and the customers buy them drinks. Like that, see?”
“How did Graca find the body?”
“The women’s toilet is out there.” Gordo shot a thumb in the direction of the rear door. “She walked out to use it, and she stumbled over him.”
“This was how long after he left?”
“Ten minutes? Fifteen? Not long.”
“Back to my question: did he talk to anyone else?”
“Just the girl who was sitting at his table, the one he left with.”
“And that would be?”
Gordo shrugged. “Some blond,” he said. “I never saw her before. She shoulda come over and talked to me first, but she didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you talk to her?”
“The guy was buying anyway, and I was busy.”
“Seen her since?”
Gordo shook his head.
His eyes now accustomed to the dim light, Goncalves checked out his surroundings. Standing at the bar, just a few meters away, an old man with bleary eyes was staring straight ahead and nursing a drink.
The other male patrons, seven in number, were distributed between two tables, three at one, four at the other. All of them had given him the once-over when he came in.
Since then, they’d lost interest.
The women, on the other hand, were looking at him expectantly. It was still early in the day, and there were only three of them. One, a would-be blond, winked.
Goncalves turned back to the bartender. “This Graca, is she here?”
The bartender stretched his neck to look over Goncalves’s shoulder.
“No,” he said.
“Is there anyone else here now who was here then?”
“Leonardo was.” Gordo pointed along the bar. “He almost never leaves.”
The old man with the bleary eyes didn’t react, even though he was close enough to hear every word.
“But I wouldn’t waste your time with him if I was you,” Gordo said, not lowering his voice, speaking as if Leonardo wasn’t there. “He doesn’t recognize his own wife half the time.”
“You’re exaggerating, right?”
“I’m not. She comes in three or four times a week to drag him home, and he honest-to-God doesn’t recognize her. I don’t think it’s just the booze. Something is screwed up in his head.” He pointed at his temple and made a circular motion. Maybe it’s that… that…”
Goncalves helped him out. “Alzheimer’s?”
“Yeah, that. I figure there’s a bright side, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Think about it. Every time he takes her to bed, it’s like he’s fucking a different woman. You married?”
“No.”
“Then you have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“I think I do. There are happy marriages, you know.”
“So I hear. Never seen one myself. Want another beer?”
“Not yet. So Leonardo was here, but he really wasn’t. Who else?”
“None of the guys over there, maybe one of the girls. They’re coming and going all the time. It’s tough to keep track.”
“All right. One more question. After this guy Girotti went outside, did you hear a shot?”
Gordo shook his head.
“No,” he said. “And, before you ask, the answer is yes.”
“Yes to what?”
“Yes, I know what a shot sounds like. We hear them all the time around here.”
Goncalves picked up his glass and went over to where the women were clustered around a table. Gordo had called them girls, but they were hardly that. They hadn’t been girls for a long, long time.
They made for a colorful group: one was a mulata, one was black, and one was white.
“Mind if I sit down?” Goncalves said.
“Your mother let you play with big girls?” the mulata said, sizing him up.
“She lets.”
“Then sit,” the black woman said. “I’m Dorothy. This is Amalia”-she indicated the youngest-“and this is Ruby.”
“Haraldo,” Goncalves said.
Amalia was the one who’d winked at him. She reached out and fingered his necktie.
“Nice,” she said. “You a cop?”
“Yeah, I’m a cop.”
“I like cops,” she said. “Want to go somewhere and show me your gun?”
“Not today, thanks. I’m working.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
She took a cigarette from the pack on the table and held it to her mouth, waiting for him to light it.
“Sorry,” Goncalves said. “I don’t smoke.”
Amalia reached into her purse, produced a cheap plastic lighter, and handed it to him. He held the flame to the tip of her cigarette. She put a hand around his, as if she needed to steady it, which she didn’t. When he doused the flame, she released him and took a long drag.
“I hate to break up this little scene,” the black woman said, “but you can do me with handcuffs if you want.”
Goncalves shook his head. “I just want some information,” he said.
“ Caralho, you’re no fun at all,” Amalia said, tipping off some ash.
The white one didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at him. It occurred to Goncalves that she might have been pretty once.
“The least you could do is to buy us some drinks,” Amalia said.
“What are you having?”
She inclined her head in the direction of the bar. “He knows,” she said.
“But I don’t,” Goncalves said.
“Champagne,” she admitted: part of her deal with the bar’s owner, no doubt.
“How much?”
“Has to be a bottle. It goes flat, so Gordo doesn’t sell it by the glass.”
“How much?”
“Sixty reais.”
She blew a smoke ring in his face. The ring was damn near perfect. She must have spent a lot of time perfecting the technique.
“Sixty reais, huh?” Goncalves said.
The champagne couldn’t have been imported, not in a bar like this, not for a price like that. And if it wasn’t imported, it was a ripoff. But Goncalves figured it was worth it to get the girls talking. When he turned in his expenses, he hoped Silva would think so too.
“All right,” he said.
The white woman emerged from her stupor to flash him a smile. It was a surprisingly sweet smile, but it didn’t last.
The black woman lifted a hand and made a gesture to Gordo.
A minute or so later, he bustled over and made much of opening a bottle of Peterlongo, cheap sparkling wine from Rio Grande do Sul. Goncalves could have bought it for less than ten reais in any second-class supermarket. The better stores didn’t stock it.
He waved off the glass that Gordo offered him and pointed at his own. “Give me another one of those,” he said.
“One Antarctica, coming right up.”
Gordo hustled off, smiling for the first time since Goncalves had waved his credentials in his face.
“Wise choice,” Amalia said, grinding her cigarette into the ashtray and taking only the tiniest sip of her wine. The butt continued to smolder. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“You remember that murder a while back? Body found out back?”
“Sure, I remember. Thing like that doesn’t happen every day, not even around here. Besides, a friend of mine stumbled over him when she went out to do xixi. It scared her half to death. She came back screaming.”
“You remember the woman he was with?”
“Sure.” Amalia tipped wine onto the butt. It sizzled and went out.
“Do you know her name?”
“I’ve been working this joint for three years. I thought I knew all the girls, but that one…” She shook her head.
“She been back since?”
“No. You think she had something to do with it?”
“Maybe. Maybe she lured him outside so the killer could get at him.”
“Or maybe she was just trying to turn an honest trick, and when the killer showed up she made herself scarce.”
“That’s possible too. What do you remember about her?”
“She was goddamned fast, for one thing.”
“What do you mean, fast?”
“That Joao, the murdered guy, he wasn’t here two minutes. We’re all still looking at him, waiting for him to make a move. Then she sashays in like she owns the place. She didn’t look around, didn’t smile at anybody; she just made straight for his table and took a seat.”
“You think he knew her?”
“Hell, no. He looked surprised. I thought he was going to tell her to fuck off. But he didn’t.”
“Then what happened?”
“They talked. He drank. The drunker he got, the louder he got.”
“What did you hear him say?”
“Nothing. Just the same crap, over and over. He was shitfaced.”
“Could you hear anything the woman said?”
“Not a word. But she was trying to calm him down. She put a hand on him right here.”
Amalia laid a hand on Goncalves’s thigh.
“After a while,” she said, “she moved it up to-”
Goncalves crossed his legs.
“Hey,” she said, “you don’t have to get all fidgety on me. I was just explaining.”
She took another cigarette out of the pack and put it between her lips. Goncalves picked up the lighter and lit it.
“So she’s got her hand between his legs,” he prompted.
“She’s grabbing his cock, that’s what she’s doing. But does he move? No, he orders another round. And then another one. He was here for hours. Guy like that, guy who just gets out of jail, you’d think he’d be crazy for a woman, right? But no, he just keeps drinking. Around about the time I’m thinking he’s gay, he finally pays the bill. When he stands up, his legs are all wobbly, but I can see he isn’t gay at all.”
“And then what?”
“And then they left. They went out that way.”
Amalia pointed toward the back of the bar. Goncalves followed the line of her finger and saw a single door. On the wall next to it was a crudely painted sign. The sign said SENHORAS.
“Why didn’t Girotti wait here until she got back from the toilet?”
“Are you kidding? There was no way she was going to let him do that, no way she was going to give anybody else a chance to get their hooks into him. She took him by the hand and led him outside. The lady’s toilet opens onto the alley. So does that door. And the alley itself runs between two streets. She never came back.”
“What did she look like? Describe her.”
Amalia took another puff on her cigarette. Some of the smoke rose past her eyes and caused her to squint. Or maybe she was just remembering.
“She was white, and she was blond. Maybe that’s why he let her stay. Guy like him doesn’t get many chances with a white woman. And I’ll bet he never had a blond in his whole life, probably wanted to know what she looked like down there.”
“Tall? Short?”
“Neither. Medium, I’d say.”
“How about her eyes?”
“She was wearing sunglasses, big and really dark. She must have had a hard time seeing anything.”
“Suppose you saw her in a lineup. Would you recognize her?”
“Not in a million years,” Amalia said.