Winning the Game and Other Stories

the blotter

1.

Detective Miro brought the woman to see me.

“It was her husband,” Miro said, uninterested. In that precinct in the outskirts, husband-and-wife squabbles were common.

Two of her front teeth were broken, her lips injured, her face swollen. Marks on the arms and neck.

“Did your husband do this?” I asked.

“He didn’t mean to, sir, I don’t want to file a complaint.”

“Then why are you here?”

“At the time I was angry, but not now. Can I go?”

“No.”

Miro sighed. “Let the woman leave,” he said between his teeth.

“You’ve suffered bodily harm; that’s a prosecutable crime independent of your lodging a complaint. I’m going to send you for questioning to see if a crime has been committed,” I said.

“Ubiratan is high-strung but he’s not a bad person,” she said. “Please, don’t do anything to him.”

They lived nearby. I decided to go have a talk with Ubiratan. Once, in Madureira, I had convinced a guy to stop beating his wife; two others, when I worked in the Jacarepaguá precinct, had also been persuaded to treat their wives decently.

A tall, muscular man opened the door. He was in shorts, shirtless. In one corner of the room was a steel bar with heavy iron rings and two weights painted red. He must have been doing exercises when I arrived. His muscles were swollen and covered with a thick layer of sweat. He exuded the spiritual strength and pride that good health and a muscle-packed body give certain men.

“I’m from the precinct,” I said.

“Ah, so she did file a complaint, the stupid bitch,” Ubiratan grumbled. He went to the refrigerator, took out a can of beer, opened it, and started drinking.

“Go tell her to come home right now or there’s gonna be trouble.”

“I don’t think you understand why I’m here. I came to ask you to make a statement at the precinct.”

Ubiratan threw the empty can out the window, grabbed the barbell and hoisted it overhead ten times, breathing noisily through his mouth as if he were a locomotive.

“You think I’m afraid of the police?” he asked, looking admiringly and affectionately at the muscles in his chest and arms.

“There’s no need to be afraid. You’re just going there to make a statement.”

Ubiratan grabbed my arm and shook me.

“Get the hell outta here, you lousy cop, you’re starting to get on my nerves.”

I took my revolver from its holster. “I could arrest you for insulting an officer of the law, but I’m not going to do that. Don’t make things worse; come down to the precinct with me, you’ll be out of there in half an hour,” I said, calmly and politely.

Ubiratan laughed. “How tall are you, midget?”

“Five-eight. Let’s go.”

“I’m going to take that piece of shit outta your hand and piss down the barrel, midget.” Ubiratan contracted every muscle in his body, like an animal making itself bigger to frighten the other, and extended his arm, his hand open to grab my gun. I shot him in the thigh. He looked at me, astonished.

“Look what you did to my sartorius!” Ubiratan screamed, pointing to his own thigh, “you’re crazy, my sartorius!”

“I’m very sorry,” I said, “now let’s go or I’ll shoot the other leg.”

“Where you taking me, midget?”

“First to the hospital, then to the precinct.”

“This isn’t the last of it, midget, I got influential friends.”

Blood was running down his leg, dripping onto the floor of the car.

“You bastard, my sartorius!” His voice was more piercing than the siren that opened a path for us through the streets.

2.

A warm summer morning on São Clemente Street. A bus struck down a ten-year-old boy. The vehicle’s wheels ran over his head, leaving a trail of brain matter several yards long. Beside the body was a new bicycle, without a scratch on it.

A traffic cop caught the driver at the scene. Two witnesses stated that the bus was moving at high speed. The site of the accident was carefully roped off.

An old woman, poorly dressed, with a lit candle in her hand, wanted to cross the police line, “to save the little angel’s soul.” She was stopped. Along with the other bystanders, she contemplated the body from a distance. Separated, in the middle of the street, the corpse appeared even smaller.

“Good thing it’s a holiday,” a cop said, diverting traffic, “can you imagine if it was a weekday?”

Screaming, a woman broke through the barrier and picked the body up from the ground. I ordered her to put it down. I twisted her arm, but she seemed to feel no pain, moaning loudly, not yielding. The two cops and I struggled with her until we managed to pull the dead boy from her arms and place him on the ground where he should be, waiting for the coroner. Two cops dragged the woman away.

“All these bus drivers are killers,” said the coroner, “good thing the scene is perfect, it means I can do a report that no shyster can shake.”

I went to the squad car and sat in front for a few moments. My jacket was dirty with small remnants of the victim. I tried to clean myself with my hands. I called one of the uniforms and told him to get the prisoner.

On the way to the station I looked at him. He was a thin man who appeared to be about sixty, and he looked weary, sick, and afraid. An old fear, sickness, and weariness, which didn’t come from just that day.

3.

I arrived at the two-story house on Cancela Street and the cop at the door said, “Top floor. He’s in the bathroom.”

I climbed the stairs. In the living room a woman with reddened eyes looked at me in silence. Beside her was a thin boy, cringing a little, his mouth open, breathing labored.

“The bathroom?” She pointed me toward a dark hallway. The house smelled of mold, as if the pipes were leaking inside the walls. From somewhere came the odor of fried onion and garlic.

The door to the bathroom was ajar. The man was there.

I returned to the living room. I had already asked the woman all the questions when Azevedo, the medical examiner, arrived.

“In the bathroom,” I said.

It was getting dark. I turned on the living room light. Azevedo asked for my help. We went into the bathroom.

“Lift the body,” the M.E. said, “so I can undo the rope.”

I held onto the dead man by the waist. A moan came from his mouth.

“Trapped air,” said Azevedo, “funny isn’t it?” We laughed without pleasure. We placed the body on the wet floor. A frail man, unshaven, his face gray, he looked like a wax dummy.

“Didn’t leave a note, nothing,” I said.

“I know the type,” said Azevedo. “When they can’t take it any longer, they kill themselves fast; it has to be fast before they can change their minds.”

Azevedo urinated into the toilet. Then he washed his hands in the basin and dried them on his shirttails.