[Excerpt]: A Window in Copacabana

Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from the book A Window in Copacabana
by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Published by Henry Holt; January 2005;$23.00US/$32.95CAN; 0-8050-7438-4
Copyright © 2005 Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

1

At the end of the afternoon, the big digital clock on the corner announced
that it was one hundred degrees. Day or night, it was all the same, and
inside the car it was invariably sweltering. For hours, they'd been inhaling
a nauseating mixture of odors: sweat, half-eaten sandwiches, and bus
exhaust. It didn't matter whether they drove faster or slowed down; in the
middle of rush hour, the air entering through the window didn't camouflage
the stench or take the edge off the heat. The wet burden of sweat clung to
the body like the cold skin of a reptile. They were almost happy when the
call came from an address only a few blocks away.

The building was old and the hallway leading to the elevators had seen its
original shops divided into little stalls, where unkempt entrepreneurs sold
bric-a-brac and offered their services as plumbers, gas repairmen,
electricians, manicurists, tailors, or card readers. Even though the
building was located on a busy section of the Avenida Copacabana, the stalls
inside were almost exclusively patronized by the residents of the more than
one hundred apartments in the building itself. Only two of the four
elevators worked, and the floor-indicator lights were broken or turned off
on both.

They exited on the tenth floor and went down one flight of stairs. They
didn't want to be surprised. They didn't know exactly what they were
protecting themselves against, but they'd learned to be careful. The man in
front moved slowly down the dark hallway, eyes focused on the strip of light
emerging from the door to apartment 910. One of his hands aimed his gun at
the ceiling and the other felt the way along the wall. A voice emerged from
the half-opened door, but the breathing of his colleague just behind him
obscured the words. The call had mentioned murder with a firearm. He thought
about how well those words applied to his everyday life. Ever since he'd
been sent back to regular duty, he'd seen nothing but violence, and murder
with a firearm wasn't even the worst of it. In the little training he'd had
before hitting the street, they hadn't allowed him to fire more than half a
dozen times -- to save ammo, they'd said -- but the training had included
something they called psychological preparation. The girl who taught the
classes used the word "psychology" like she used lipstick: to pretty up her
mouth. The kid didn't know anything about psychology, but he did understand
violence. He'd lived with it since the day he was born. His twenty-two years
of life, all spent in the favela, had accustomed him to all kinds of
violence, from criminals and drug runners as well as from the police force
itself. He'd moved out less than a month before. Cops were being killed; the
precinct had, in fact, taken him out of there. Slums were no place for a
policeman. There, the law of God was the only law above the drug dealers.

Now he was less than two feet from the door and he could hear a man's
crackly voice, the tone never varying, like a child reciting a lesson to his
teacher. He felt the sweat running down his neck: sweat from nerves, not
heat. He didn't hear any other voice; maybe the man was talking on the
phone. The door was only slightly ajar, and before he stuck his head into
the light, he cupped his hand around his ear to listen more closely. Behind
his back, he pushed away his partner -- the breathing was too loud. He
risked a quick glance. He could see only a small corner of the living room.
On his first try he made out part of a wall, the end of a small table, and
something that looked like an old man in a wheelchair. He waited a few
seconds and looked again. The old man was still talking. It was indeed a
wheelchair, and he wasn't talking on the phone but with someone sitting in
front of him, outside the policeman's field of vision. He made a sign to his
partner and pushed open the door, hoping that it wouldn't make a sound. The
few inches yielded a wider opening into the room. Now he had an unobstructed
view of the old man and the wheelchair, but he still couldn't see his
audience. He knocked softly on the door with his knuckle. The old man didn't
move or change his tone of voice; he just kept talking. The old man was, in
fact, talking to someone seated on the sofa. The other man's shirt was
stained red.


Copyright © 2005 Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza


A distinguished academic, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza is a bestselling novelist
who lives in Rio de Janeiro. A Window in Copacabana is the fourth book in
the Inspector Espinosa series; the previous three titles -- The Silence of
the Rain, December Heat, and Southwesterly Wind -- are available in
paperback from Picador.

For more excerpts and information, visit www.garcia-roza.com