The Club Dumas

“What’s the matter with me?”

“Have you ever seen yourself smile? You look like an old

soldier.”

He shifted slightly in his seat, embarrassed. “I don’t know how an old soldier smiles.”

“Well, I do.” The girl’s eyes darkened. She was searching in her memory. “Once I knew ten thousand men who were look­ing for the sea.”

Corso lifted an eyebrow in mock-interest. “Really. Is that something you read or experienced?”

“Guess.” She stopped and looked at him intently before add­ing, “You seem like a clever man, Mr. Corso.”

She stood up, taking the book from the table and her white sneakers off the floor. Her eyes brightened, and Corso recog­nized the reflections in them. He saw something familiar in her gaze.

“Maybe we’ll see each other around,” she said as she left.

Corso had no doubt that they would. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to or not. Either way, the thought lasted only a moment. As she left, the girl passed Amilcar Pinto at the door.

He was a short, greasy little man. His skin was dark and shiny, as if it had just been varnished, and his thick, wiry mus­tache was roughly trimmed. He would have been an honest policeman, even a good policeman, if he didn’t have to feed five children, a wife, and a retired father who secretly stole his cigarettes. His wife was a mulatto and twenty years ago had been very beautiful. Pinto brought her back from Mozambique at the time of independence, when Maputo was called Lourenco Marques and he himself was a decorated sergeant in the paratroops, a slight, brave man. During the course of some of the deals Pinto and Corso did from time to time, Corso had seen Pinto’s wife—eyes ringed with fatigue, large, flaccid breasts, in old slippers, and her hair tied with a red scarf—in the hallway to their house that smelled of dirty kids and boiled vegetables.

The policeman came straight into the lounge, looking at the girl out of the corner of his eye as he passed her, and sank into the armchair opposite Corso. He was out of breath, as if he’d just walked all the way from Lisbon.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Nobody important,” answered Corso. “She’s Spanish. A tourist.”

Pinto nodded. He wiped his sweaty palms on his trouser legs. It was something he often did. He sweated abundantly, and his shirt collars always had a dark ring where they touched his skin.

“I have a bit of a problem,” said Corso.

Pinto’s grin widened. No problem is insoluble, his expression said. Not as long as you and I still get along. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” he answered.

It was Corso’s turn to smile. He’d met Amilcar Pinto four years ago. Some stolen books had appeared on stands at the Ladra Book Fair—a bad business. Corso came to Lisbon to iden­tify them, Pinto made a couple of arrests, and ‘en route back to their owner a few very valuable books disappeared forever. To celebrate the beginning of a fruitful friendship, Corso and Pinto got drunk together in the fados bars of the Barrio Alto. The former paratroop sergeant reminisced about his time in the colonies, told how he’d nearly had his balls blown off at the battle of Gorongosa. The two men ended up singing “Gran-dola Vila Morena” at the top of their voices on Santa Luzia. Illuminated by the moon, the district of Alfama lay at their feet with the Tagus beyond it, wide and gleaming like a sheet of silver. The dark shapes of boats, moving very slowly, headed out toward the Belem tower and the Atlantic.

A waiter brought Pinto the coffee he had ordered. Corso said nothing until the waiter left. “It’s about a book.”

The policeman bent over the little low table and put sugar in his coffee.

“It’s always about a book,” he said gravely. “This one’s special.” “Which one isn’t?”

Corso smiled a sharp, metallic smile. “The owner doesn’t want to sell.”

“That’s bad.” Pinto drank some coffee, savoring it. “Com­merce is a good thing. Goods moving, coming and going. It generates wealth, makes money for the middlemen...” He put the cup down and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Products have to circulate. It’s the law of the market, of life. Not selling should be banned: it’s almost a crime.”

“I agree,” said Corso. “We should do something about it.” Pinto leaned back in his chair. Calm and confident, he looked at Corso expectantly. Once, after an ambush in the mato in Mozambique, he had fled, carrying a dying officer ten kilo­meters through the jungle. At dawn he felt the lieutenant die, but didn’t want to leave him behind. So he went on, the corpse over his shoulders, until he reached the base. The lieutenant was very young, and Pinto thought that the man’s mother would like to have him buried back in Portugal. They gave him a medal for it. Now Pinto’s children played about the house with his old tarnished medals.

“Maybe you know the man: Victor Fargas.” The policeman nodded. “The Fargases are a very old, very respectable family,” he said. “In the past they had a lot of influence, but no more.”

Corso handed him a sealed envelope. “This is all the infor­mation you need: owner, book, and location.”

“I know the house.” Pinto licked his upper lip, wetting his mustache. “Very unwise, keeping valuable books there. Any un­scrupulous individual might get in.” He looked at Corso as if saddened by the irresponsibility of Victor Fargas. “I can think of one, a petty thief from Chiado who owes me a favor.”

Corso shook some invisible dust from his clothes. It had nothing to do with him. Not in the operational stage, anyway. “I don’t want to be in the area when it happens.” “Don’t worry. You’ll get your book and Mr. Fargas will be disturbed as little as possible. A broken windowpane at the most. It’ll be a clean job. About payment...”

Corso pointed at the unopened envelope that Pinto was hold­ing. “That’s an advance, a quarter of the total. The rest on delivery.”

“Fine. When are you leaving?”

“First thing tomorrow morning. I’ll get in touch with you from Paris.” Pinto was about to get up, but Corso stopped him. “There’s something else. I need an identification. Tall man, about six feet, with a mustache and a scar on his face. Black hair, dark eyes. Slim. He’s not Spanish or Portuguese. He’s been lurking around here tonight.” “Is he dangerous?”

“I don’t know. He followed me from Madrid.” Pinto was taking notes on the back of the envelope. “Does this have anything to do with our business?”

“I’m assuming it does. But I don’t have any more infor­mation.”

“I’ll do what I can. I have friends at the police station here in Sintra. And I’ll take a look at the files at central headquarters in Lisbon.”

He stood up and put the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. Corso caught a glimpse of a holstered revolver under his left arm.

“Why don’t you stay for a drink?”

Pinto sighed and shook his head. “I’d like to, but three of the kids have the measles. They catch it off each other, the little swine.” He said this with a tired smile. All the heroes in Corso’s world were tired.

They went to the hotel entrance where Pinto had parked his old Citroen 2CV. As they shook hands, Corso mentioned

Fargas again.

“Make sure that Fargas is disturbed as little as possible. This is just a burglary.”

Pinto turned on the engine and the lights. He looked at Corso reproachfully through the open window. He seemed of­fended. “Please. You don’t need to tell me again. I know what I’m doing.”

after pinto left, corso went up to his room to sort out his notes. He worked late into the night, his bed covered with papers and The Nine Doors open on his pillow. He felt extremely tired and thought a hot shower might help him re­lax. He was on his way to the bathroom when the phone rang. It was Varo Borja, wanting to know how he had got on with Fargas. Corso gave him a general idea of how things were go­ing, including the discrepancies he had found in five of the nine engravings.

“By the way,” he added, “our friend Fargas won’t sell.”

There was silence at the other end of the line. Borja seemed to be thinking, although there was no way of telling whether it was about the engravings or Fargas’s refusal to sell. When he spoke again, his tone was extremely cautious.

“That seemed likely,” he said, and Corso still wasn’t sure which thing he was referring to. “Is there any way of getting around the problem?”