Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series) Read Online Free Page B

Mattos’s back. His chest, his belly, his pubis. “Turn around and face me,” Salete said.
    She seemed to have become more beautiful. She had undone the bun in which she wore her hair, now wet at the ends.
    “How old are you, really?”
    “You know perfectly well how old I am,” said Salete, lifting one of Mattos’s legs, causing him to fall backwards in the tub. “You need to cut your toenails.”
    “You told me twenty-one, but I think you’re eighteen.”
    “You think I’m younger, because you consider me dumb.”
    “You’re both clever and intelligent.”
    “The other day you called me stupid.”
    “You’re illiterate, that’s what I said.”
    “I know how to read very well. I’ll show you, when we get out of the tub.”
    “Why don’t you show me your ID ?”
    “So you won’t see my photo; it’s very ugly.”
    From the tub they went to the bed. For a time he forgot the wretched fucked-up criminals and the fucked-up victims and the fucked-up dirty cops and the fucked-up honest cops.
    “Want me to read to you now? How about that book that you never put down?”
    “Okay.”
    “Article 544. The abandoned riverbed of a public or private river belongs to the riparians on the respective banks, without owners of the lands through which the waters may open new channels having the right of indemnification. It is understood that the—”
    “Enough. You read like a grown-up.”
    “You lawyers have a very odd way of talking to each other. I don’t know how you can stand reading that book.”
    “I hate that shit.”
    “Riparians. What’s that?”
    “The dwellers on the banks of a river.”
    Salete laughed. “Rivers can change their course?”
    “Doubting is a sign of intelligence. Not finding answers is a sign of stupidity. That’s the way you are.”
    “I may be stupid, but I don’t sleep on a cheap sofa bed.”
    Realizing she had irritated the inspector, Salete said he needed to buy a decent bed. “They don’t cost that much. Know something? I’m going to give you a bed.”
    “Did your sugar daddy stand you up today? Is that why you came here?”
    “He’s not my sugar daddy.”
    “Then what is he?”
    “I don’t like that word.”
    “Then what is he?”
    “A person who helps me.”
    “Room, food, clothes, money to spend at the hairdresser’s, in stores, in nightclubs.”
    “If you want me to, I’ll dump him and come live here.”
    “What about the evenings at the Night and Day, the Beguine, the Le Gourmet, the Vogue, at Ciro’s? You’re going to want to live with an honest cop instead of a rich crook?”
    “Magalhães isn’t a crook.”
    “Not a crook? Where does a government employee get all that money? He gave you an apartment by the beach and an automobile, took you to Europe, found an expensive dentist to fix your teeth.”
    “It’s not my fault that your teeth are so bad they’re beyond repair.”
    “The guy’s a rat.”
    “I don’t like hearing you talk about him like that. Luiz is a good person.”
    “Then leave. You’re here because you want to be.”
    Salete got out of bed. She stood up, nude, beside the bed, not knowing what to say. She was in the habit of saying that she didn’t have on her hips the “two extra inches that cost Marta Rocha the Miss Universe title.” The beauty of Salete’s nude body made even more painful the displeasure that Alberto Mattos saw in her face.
    The inspector closed his eyes. He heard Salete say “I’m leaving”; heard her getting dressed; heard her say “Why do you do this to me?”; heard the door slam.
    He opened his eyes.
    There was a dark stain on the ceiling of the bedroom, probably infiltration from the floor above. It had been there for a long time, but this was the first time he had noticed it.
    He got out of the sofa bed. He looked for the notebook with telephone numbers that he had picked up at Gomes Aguiar’s apartment. He recognized some of the names. Under the letter G, Gregório Fortunato. The letter