“I’ve been driving for fifty years, Richard.”
“Yes, but badly. One more thing: the ice is worse on bridges, because they’re colder than the ground,” he added, and with a resigned wave got ready to set off.
Lucia sat behind the wheel of the Subaru, with Evelyn and Marcelo as copilots. She had traced the route in red on the map, because she did not really trust the GPS and was afraid of losing sight of Richard, who had given her instructions to meet up with him at various points on the way if they were separated. They both had cell phones to keep in contact. It was impossible for the journey to be any more secure, she told Evelyn to reassure her. As they left Brooklyn she tailed close behind Richard; there was no traffic, but the snow was an obstacle. She missed listening to her favorite music, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell, but realized that Evelyn was praying in a low voice and so it would not be respectful to distract her. Marcelo, who was not used to traveling in a car, lay groaning on the young woman’s lap.
DESPITE THE GREEN PILL he had taken before they left, Richard was very anxious. If the police stopped him and inspected the car, he was done for. What reasonable explanation could he give? He was in someone else’s possibly stolen car, and in the trunk was the body of the unfortunate Kathryn Brown, whom he had never met. It had been there for many hours, but given the frigid temperatures it was probably stiff. In theory he would have liked to see her face to remember it later on and to examine her body to see how she had died, but in practice neither he nor Lucia, much less Evelyn, had any desire to reopen the trunk. Who really was the woman traveling in the car with him? From what Evelyn had told them about the Leroys, the young woman could have been murdered to keep her mouth shut if she had discovered something that incriminated Frank Leroy. As Evelyn had said, his mysterious activities and violent conduct gave rise to sinister speculation. How had he managed to get fake documents for Evelyn? He must have had illegal ways of doing so. Lucia had told him the young Guatemalan had a Native American identity document.
He wished he could call his father to ask for advice, or more exactly to boast a little, to show he wasn’t a good-for-nothing but could embark on a crazy adventure like this, and yet it would be unwise to mention what he was up to over the phone. He was sure his father would enjoy meeting Lucia; those two would get on very well. “Providing of course we come out of this alive . . . I’m getting paranoid, as Lucia says. Help us, Anita, help us, Bibi,” he implored out loud, as he often did when on his own, as a way of feeling accompanied. “Now I need protection rather than company.
He could sense the presence of Anita so strongly that he turned to see if she was sitting in the seat alongside him. It would not have been the first time she had appeared, but she always came and went so fleetingly that he doubted his own faculties. He rarely allowed himself to be carried away by fantasy, considering himself rigorous in his reasoning and scrupulous in checking facts, but Anita had always escaped those parameters. At sixty, launched on a crazy mission, half paralyzed with cold as he had not turned the heating on to preserve the frozen dead body in the trunk, and with the window wound halfway down to prevent the windshield from misting or freezing over, Richard reflected yet again on his past, with the knowledge that his happiest years had been those with Anita before disaster struck.
He had been truly alive then. By now he had forgotten their everyday problems, the language and cultural misunderstandings they had encountered frequently, as well as the constant interference from his in-laws; the nuisance of uninvited friends roaming his house at all hours; Anita’s rituals, which he considered pure superstition; and above all her explosive reaction whenever he drank too much. He did not remember her in moments of crisis, when her golden eyes turned the color of pitch, or her frenzied jealousy, her blind rages, or when he had to cling to her in the doorway like a jailer to prevent her from leaving. Now he simply remembered her as he first knew her: passionate, vulnerable, and generous. Anita, with her savage love and ready tenderness. They were happy. The fights never lasted long, and the reconciliations went on for entire days and nights.
RICHARD HAD BEEN A SHY, studious boy with chronic stomach ailments. This saved him from having to take part in the brutal sports of American schools and inevitably led him into academic life. He studied political science, specializing in Brazil because he spoke Portuguese, having spent many of his childhood vacations with his maternal grandparents in Lisbon. He wrote his doctorate on the actions of the Brazilian oligarchy and their allies that led to the 1964 overthrow of the political and economic model adopted by the charismatic left-wing president Jo?o Goulart. He was ousted in a military coup backed by the United States following the “Doctrine of National Security” to combat communism, as was the case with so many governments on the continent, before and after Brazil. Goulart’s presidency was replaced by a succession of military dictatorships that lasted for twenty-one years, with periods of harsh repression, involving the imprisonment of opponents, censorship of the press and culture, torture, and disappearances.
Goulart died in 1976, after more than a decade of exile in Uruguay and Argentina. The official version put his death down to a heart attack, but popular rumor had it that he had been poisoned by his political enemies, who were afraid he might return from abroad to stir up the dispossessed. Since no autopsy was ever carried out, these suspicions could not be proven, but years later this gave Richard the pretext to interview Maria Thereza, Goulart’s widow, who had returned to her country and agreed to receive him for a series of conversations. Richard found himself in the presence of a lady with all the poise and self-assurance guaranteed by being born beautiful. She answered his questions but could not shed any light on the doubts surrounding her husband’s death. Even so, that woman, the representative of a political ideal and a period that were already part of history, created in Richard an ongoing love for Brazil and its people.