Detective Bonita - Chapter Two

Just about every street corner in the district known as ‘down-town’ Santo Amaro had an establishment where you could get a beer, a coffee, an empada or a bread roll. Some offered an ultra contemporary setting and were the choice of advertising executives and secretaries from banks and law firms in the financial district nearby. Pastelaria do Rosário, by contrast, was a stalwart of the heroically unfashionable type of enterprise, and would be considered acceptable by more or less everyone else. The shop and office workers, corpulent taxi drivers and elderly ladies with statuesque hair who together comprised Dona Piedosa’s loyal brigade of regulars would congregate there every day, knowing exactly what to expect and expecting that nothing would ever change.
Detective Bonita preferred O Rosário in particular because it was open when she needed it to be, because it had the sort of clientele that did not include senior police officers, lawyers’ secretaries or people who wafted their faces when she lit a cigarette. Most importantly, it was because anything that Dona Piedosa hadn’t heard about wasn’t worth knowing. She arrived today to find large groups of men and women filling the air with morning-after gossip, smoke and overwrought cheerfulness and condensation on the windows was denying everyone the possibility of seeing either out or in. Nodding a greeting to Dona Piedosa’s son, Detective Bonita shook the water carefully from her umbrella, looked around and found a space in a corner booth where she could go, light a cigarette and wait for Agent Demario to arrive.
Dona Piedosa brought over a coffee and placed a plump hand to steady herself on Detective Bonita’s arm. Detective Bonita described the situation in the Rio Pinheiros. Had Dona Piedosa heard any rumours? She had not closed all night, the old woman exclaimed, her capacious bosom swelling with every breath. She had not heard anything about a foreign man in the river! But she would keep her nose to the ground.
‘Like a bloodhound, filha. Nothing happens in this neighbourhood without me knowing. You’ll be the first to find out.’
Less than five minutes later, Agent Demario was negotiating his way through the knot of customers standing around the high tables next to the bar.
‘I hate this place,’ he said, slumping down at the very end of the booth and signalling for two coffees. ‘I have Italian blood. I want a latte in stylish surroundings, not a média in a lanchonete.’
‘I know,’ replied Detective Bonita. ‘But I’m paying.’ As he had chosen to sit so far away from her, she had been forced to shout her reply. He always did this; she did not know why. She cast her eyes sideways to see small white teeth tearing lumps off the buttered bread roll in his hand. Short for a man of twenty-five, he had narrow but pronounced shoulders, a muscular neck and short black hair with a perfectly straight parting. His face was clean shaven but grey; his thick brows had locked the contours of his forehead into a steep and permanent scowl that opened only when he laughed which, fortunately, was fairly frequently, but generally only when he said something he considered funny himself. His dark eyes sat deep and slightly askew to either side of a long and rather patrician nose; his blink was frequent and laboured, particularly when required to create more than one whole sentence in front of the open and unflinching pale green gaze of Detective Bonita.
She would not thank him for coming in, she would not! It was his job! She ripped open a packet of sugar with a shaking hand and tipped it into her cafezinho. He had still been in bed, he explained, when she had called him, having not returned from a party until five a.m. He would not have been there at all, he continued, winking, if his scheme to conclude the New Year’s festivities connected to some heavenly inner part of his cousin’s friend Ana-Paula had worked out as he had planned.
‘Well,’ said Detective Bonita, shuddering slightly at the thought, ‘your scheming didn’t work and you’re the only agent in São Paulo available for work, so too bad.’ She paused to light another cigarette. ‘Our dead body is foreign, Eduardo, and Cidade Alerta! already has the story. Because he’s foreign you can expect the global news networks to want to join the party too. It feels to me like we’re in a race with the media to discover who this man in the river is, and how he died. If we don’t find out first, I will be on the six o’clock edition explaining why.’ Agent Demario was studying his mobile phone. Detective Bonita continued: ‘So I expect it will be a long day. If you’ve got a problem, talk to Captain Lourenço.’ She realised her tone had become sharp. ‘Look,’ she continued, ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get your girl. But I can’t do this by myself.’
‘OK, boss,’ conceded the young man, shrugging. ‘You know me. Fearless by name, fearless by nature.’ Detective Bonita sighed.
‘Where do you want me?’ he asked.
‘Go and have a conversation with the guy who made the call. Get every detail. The Military Police will have his address. They might even accompany you to clear the reporters out of the way.’
‘Do you think he’s involved?’ She shook her head.
‘I shouldn’t think so. Just unlucky that the body got stuck at the end of his condo. He may want to speculate of course. Don’t worry about his niece if she’s not there. I’ll call Missing Persons and some of the Consulates.’ She drained her coffee and put five reais on the table. ‘Meet me at the morgue at about eleven.’ Putting her hands on the table to push herself up to her feet she added: ‘Don’t talk to any journalists, Eduardo. Tell them we’ll issue a statement tonight.’
‘What if they have information for us?’
‘Then listen to what they have to say. But don’t trade. Just don’t talk Eduardo! I can’t be clearer.’
Detective Bonita knew that reporters would be waiting for her outside the station and guessed that they would also have a pitch where the body was found. Could she trust her subordinate to stay silent? For her, for now, the task was easy. She would drive straight down to the underground car park and avoid the cameras. And, fortunately, Sergeant Henrique Yamamoto of Missing Persons had a number of options he considered worth exploring.
‘Ah! I have many missing male persons from foreign lands,’ he explained to Detective Bonita when she called.
‘But very few Caucasians of European origin registered missing in the last few weeks. Now – of the ones I can recall from memory, one is from New York. Let me locate the file. New York is a city in the United States of America, detective....’
‘I know,’ said Detective Bonita.
‘...so it is possible he has European ancestors. But – oh – I have his file with me now. He is a black man. You want a white skin and white hair, don’t you? So we’ll put him to one side. The second is a businessman from Buenos Aires and – looking at the photograph – is probably of northern European descent...he has very yellow hair. A possibility, don’t you agree, for your man?’ Detective Bonita remained silent. ‘Now, the third…,’ continued Sergeant Yamamoto. ‘No. Not interesting at all.’ She sighed.
‘Can you tell me who it is anyway, Sergeant? I don’t really have a lot of time.’
‘He is a French Hotelier. CEO of La Côte d’Or in Rio de Janeiro. Born in 1939. Went missing on the eve of a huge reception to celebrate one hundred years of French hotels in Brazil. But he has black hair. A lot of very black hair. More than you would expect, in fact, in a man of his age.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant, you have been most helpful. I would like to see the files on the second and third individuals. Do you have someone you can send round?’
‘On New Year’s Day, Detective? Why don’t I fax them? The photos won’t show but you will at least have the details.’
‘That sounds good. Thanks again.’
Detective Bonita’s ‘office’ comprised three shoulder-height screens, a desk, computer and phone in the middle of the fifth floor of a dingy seventies-built block situated at one corner of the Largo 13 de Maio. Her internal location was probably about as far from any source of natural light as it was possible to be, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that in summer she was protected from the sweltering heat of the sun and in winter from inhospitable draughts which forced those situated near the windows to keep their coats on. There were only three other individuals, all men, working in her section today; she knew their names but did not know them well enough to exchange small-talk and, after a brief greeting, sat down at her desk to get on with the task of identifying her corpse. She was not permitted to smoke inside the building so, when she heard the first pages of Sergeant Yamamoto’s files grinding through the fax, she stepped out onto the fire escape and lit a cigarette.
As she suspected would be the case, the Missing Person files gave her little of substance but lots of questions that she hoped the forensic pathologist would be able to answer when they met later that morning. She put calls, nevertheless, into the Argentinean, British and French Consulates, but in every case the telephone service was for emergencies and the individuals concerned promised that they would check the information and call her back. The British Consulate was not aware of anybody reported missing; the blond man was not Argentinean, but his business was based in Buenos Aires and the French Consulate confirmed that M. Camille Bleu of the Côte hotel group had been reported missing but no further information was available. She phoned Eduardo Carlos.
‘How are things, Eduardo?’
‘The place is crawling with cameras, boss. This guy is media mad. He’s a lawyer with his own practice. I think he sees it as an opportunity to promote his business. He’s getting on really well with Tatiana. She’s the journalist from Cidade Alerta. She’s really nice. Honestly, boss, he’s told her everything.’ Detective Bonita sat back in her chair and covered her eyes.
‘What have you said to her?’ Agent Demario did not reply.
‘Eduardo?’
‘Just that… Nothing. I haven’t said anything to her.’
‘Well, then, what information does your witness have? You have talked to him, haven’t you?’
‘Of course. He described what he saw. It sounds completely repugnante, boss. He saw a bloated corpse with no face. He said he will have nightmares about it for the rest of his life. He is telling the media he thinks he knows who the man was but he’s going to make some checks first.’
‘What?’ Detective Bonita couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘What’s his name?’
‘João Augusto Magalhães.’ ‘Put Dr. Magalhães on the phone, Eduardo.’
Detective Bonita and Agent Demario met less than an hour later just inside the main door of the city morgue. Both were full of disquiet and both knew that what they were about to see would burn an image on their memories they would take to their graves. Eduardo Carlos asked if he could be excused the task; they didn’t both need to see the body, did they? Detective Bonita shook her head.
‘This is a crucial part of the investigation, Eduardo,’ she said, already overwhelmed by waves of cleaning fluid and decomposing human remains rolling towards them down the long, gloomy corridor, ‘and you have much to learn.’ Both officers showed their passes to a desk clerk who smiled amiably and directed them to Lab.101.
‘The last room on the right. At the very end.’ As they walked, Agent Demario asked to know what Detective Bonita had said to Dr Magalhães.
‘That he should think carefully about what he disclosed to the media. That he would know, of course, that anything he might say to them before speaking to us would be viewed as an attempt to distort the course of our enquiries. Which would lead to his arrest. In actual fact, he has no idea who the dead guy is. But like you said, he wants to keep the media interested. We should keep a very close eye on him, nevertheless, Eduardo. Now,’ said Detective Bonita, pushing through the heavy plastic curtain of pathology laboratory 101, ‘you must meet my friend Dra Angélica do Amaral.’
The two women embraced warmly, the surgeon turning next to shake the hand of Agent Demario, who smiled. He felt he might faint at the sight of a dead cockroach, let alone a dead human, but he would never let these women see a weakness, never!
‘Before we take a look at our two friends,’ the surgeon explained, lifting a black plastic file with handwritten notes attached off a nail above her desk, ‘I will tell you what I know.’
‘Wait, Angé,’ said Detective Bonita, grasping her friend by the arm. ‘Two bodies?’
‘Two, querida. Both came in last night. Both from the Rio Pinheiros. Both foreign and-’
‘No!’ cried Rita Bonita. ‘We’re investigating one suspicious death. Not two! Where was the second pulled out?’ The Medical Examiner twisted round her poise-angle desk lamp and invited the policemen to study a city map on the wall.
ends