She smiled and leaned back in her chair. “You don’t know my neighbors, Chief Inspector. Most of the people who live in Alphaville, men and women alike, have another perspective. For them, earning money isn’t a necessity of life, it’s the purpose of life. Love doesn’t enter the equation. The husbands, by and large, are workaholics, and the wives are work widows. They see each other on weekends and not always then. Mind you, I’m not saying all the men are like Luis. They could be loyal husbands, for all I know.”
“Luis had other women? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes, Chief Inspector, Luis had other women. Luis chased skirts like dogs chase cats. He couldn’t help himself.”
“You weren’t jealous?”
“You’ve got to feel attraction, or love, or… something to be jealous. What I felt for Luis was disgust. It’s viscerally repulsive to have your husband come home smelling of another woman’s perfume, smelling of sex. He could at least have had the decency to take a bath before he got here. But he never did. He wasn’t a decent man.”
“You were… estranged?”
“I suppose that’s a delicate way of asking me whether I was still sleeping with him. The answer is no. I have my own bedroom now, and I lock the door at night. But he didn’t start whoring around because I’d stopped sleeping with him; I stopped sleeping with him because he was whoring around. And I didn’t want to catch anything worse than the dose of gonorrhea he gave me once.”
“Did he ever mention any of his women by name?”
“He denied they existed. When I was diagnosed, he said I must have picked it up from a seat in a public toilet. I told him it didn’t work like that. So he got his cousin, a medical doctor, to call me up and assure me it was common. I believed him for a while. That was back when I cared, and I wanted to believe it. Now, Chief Inspector, can I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why would a prostitute want to kill him?”
“You’ve been frank with us, Senhora Mansur-”
“Magda.”
“Magda. So I’ll be frank with you. There is a possibility that the person he brought to that motel room murdered him; but that person wasn’t a woman.”
“A man? I don’t believe it. Luis was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a homosexual.”
“The person was a transvestite. By all accounts, your husband was drunk. He took her for a woman.”
A smile creased her face, but she immediately repressed it.
“What a surprise for Luis,” she said.
“Do you think your husband would have reacted violently?”
“It’s hard to say. He had a fear of ridicule. He wouldn’t have wanted to make a scene.”
“But if they were alone in a motel room? Just the two of them?”
“Provided the transvestite was considerably smaller and weaker, Luis would have beaten the crap out of him. The operative words, Chief Inspector, are smaller and weaker. My late husband was a coward.”
“There is another possibility,” Silva said. “If you’ll bear with me for a moment, I’d like to tell you about it.”
“By all means. Please, go ahead.”
“Over the last several weeks, there have been other murders, all committed in essentially the same way. The victims were first shot and then beaten to death. The same weapons, as far as we can determine, were used in all cases. Yesterday, I called your husband. I told him about the other killings, and I warned him that he might be in danger.”
“He had a gun. He always carried it. One time he got robbed on the street-”
“He told me about that. The gun was in his attache case. The case was in his car when the attack took place. He couldn’t get at it.”
“What brought you to Luis? What did he have in common with the other victims?”
Perceptive woman, Silva thought.
“Most,” he said, “were fellow passengers on a flight from Miami to Sao Paulo. One was a stewardess on that same flight. The flight arrived here early on the morning of the twenty-third of November. Does that date ring any bells?”
She shook her head. “Luis was always going back and forth between here and Miami. He had some clients there, probably a girlfriend or two as well.”
“Let me try some names on you.”
“The other victims?”
“Yes. Bruna Nascimento?”
“She was the flight attendant?”
“Yes.”
“No. I’ve never heard her name.”
“Paulo Cruz?”
“ Professor Cruz? The one who wrote those pseudo-studies on sexuality?”
“Yes.”
“I read about his murder, which is more than I can say for the trash he wrote. But, no, I didn’t know him, and I know nothing else about him.”
“Victor Neves?”
“No.”
“Jonas Palhares?”
“No.”
“Juan Rivas?”
“I’ve heard of a Jorge Rivas.”
“Juan’s father. He’s the former ambassador to Brazil from Venezuela, currently his country’s foreign minister.”
“He must have his hands full, what with that idiot running his country. No, I never heard of his son.”
“Dennis Clancy?”
“No.”
“Darcy Motta?”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said yes. Luis mentioned a man by the name of Darcy Motta.”
“When and in what context?”
“He got home from the airport two or three flights ago, maybe on the twenty-third of November, but I’m not sure. He came into the house very pleased with himself, saying he’d closed a deal with a patsy on the plane. That’s the term he used, a patsy.”
“But you’re sure this patsy was a man.”
“Yes, because later in the conversation, he used that name.”
“Darcy Motta?”
“Yes. He said the deal didn’t amount to much, but it more than paid for his ticket.”
“And?”
“And that was it. I knew he wanted me to ask him more, to give him a chance to show how smart he was, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I told him I was on my way to play tennis, which I wasn’t, and I left.”
“Did he describe this Motta fellow?”
“No.”
“Ever return to the subject?”
“No. May I ask another question?”
“Ask away.”
“You said Luis was beaten.”
“Very badly.”
