Death at the Book Festival

By Paulo Levy

A new Inspector Joaquim Dornelas adventure. The Palmyra International Book Festival, one of the most charming literary events in the world, is about to begin. At this tenth edition of the Festival, and with the city jam-packed, Inspector Joaquim Dornelas is split between feeling happy and worried. To him, the more people and celebrating there was meant the greater the chance for trouble. And of course, the unexpected happens, moments before the inaugural show. Dornelas is faced with a scene that puts him and his team in a state of high alert. A crime is committed in the middle of the night. Pressured by his boss and by the press in this new and delectable adventure, Dornelas finds himself involved in a complex network of facts and intrigue that attempt to detour the investigation and confuse the police. Excited with his friends-with-benefits relationship with Dulce Neves, with his shots of cachaça rum, with his ability to be a father from a distance, and with his baby cereal porridge, Inspector Joaquim Dornelas once again uses his keen intuition and incredible police instincts to solve yet another complicated crime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paulo Levy
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9788562969478

Paulo Levy

Before entering the publishing business, I was a “former“ in a number of fields: squash professional, ad/ advertising agency editor, ad agency owner/principal, and at one point I even owned a bar on a São Paulo beach/on the São Paulo shore. Next I worked with books at the Editora Objetiva publishing house and with magazines at Editora Horizonte, a content communication company. In 2011 I began my career as a writer. My first novel, Requiem for a Killer, as well as the second, Death at the Book Festival were both published by Editora Bússola.

Book preview

Cover Death at the book festival

Death at the book festival

Paulo Levy

Copyright© Paulo Fernando Prada Levy 2015. All rights reserved

All rights to this edition reserved by

EDITORA BÚSSOLA EIRELI.

[e-mail]

www.editorabussola.com.br

No part of this edition may be used or reproduced – in any medium or form, be it mechanical or electronic, photocopy, recording, etc. – nor appropriated or stored in a data bank without the express written permission of the publisher.

Cover Photo

123rtf

Cover Art

Dora Levy [cj31] e João Carlos Heleno [cj31]

English Translation

Steven Mazzetti

CIP-BRASIL. CATALOGAÇÃO NA PUBLICAÇÃO

SINDICATO NACIONAL DOS EDITORES DE LIVROS, RJ

L65d

Levy, Paulo Fernando Prada, 1967-

Death at the Book Festival [recurso eletrônico] / Paulo Fernando Prada Levy;

tradução Steven Mazzetti. - 1. ed. - São Paulo : Bússola, 2015.

recurso digital

Tradução de: Morte na flip

Texto em inglês

Formato: epub

Requisitos do sistema: adobe digital editions

Modo de acesso: world wide web

ISBN 978-85-62969-47-8 (recurso eletrônico)

1. Ficção policial brasileira. 2. Livros eletrônicos. I. Mazzetti, Steven. II. Título.

15-27414 CDD: 869.93                CDU: 821.134.3(81)-3

20/10/2015

A murderer is one who wants to force others to blessedness, since he kills his own growth.

Carl G. Jung

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Author's Notes

Keep in touch with the author

Other books by Paulo Levy

Chapter 1

Police report, inquiry, new regulation, work order, forensic requisition, notifications, summonses, depositions, arrest warrant, communiqué, request for remand, requisition for the purchase of air-conditioning. Dornelas stopped here. He put down his pen, picked up the phone and dialed three numbers.

Anderson! he said, annoyed.

What is it, sir?

The price for this air-conditioning is too high. Do we really need this much power in the IT area?

No, not now in winter. But when the summer heat comes you know what happens to the servers, warned Anderson, the office nerd.

Can’t you get a better price?

I’ll try.

Thank you.

He slammed the phone down. As if all this bureaucratic work weren’t bad enough, on top of it he also had to keep the precinct on a tight rein while counting pennies.

Dornelas arrived at the last sheet, signed it, put down his pen and pushed the pile of paper to a corner of his desk. Done. His hand ached. He sat back in his chair, opened the desk drawer and spotted his little piece of paradise: a chocolate bar. He carefully unwrapped one little square of it and put it in his mouth; with his tongue he proceeded to move the soft, melting substance from one side to the other, like a ball in a tennis match. Small reward for such boring work.

Through the window he saw the lights of the street lamps and of the shops and the supermarket across the street. The day had ended and he hadn’t even had time to notice. He looked at his watch. It was past seven thirty.

He put away his pen and put one more little square of milk chocolate in his mouth. He locked the drawer and stood up. He got his jacket from the back of the chair and put it on. He turned out the lights and left.

*

There was the usual activity going on in the new part of Palmyra: people browsing in the small shops, moving about on foot and by bicycle, cars here and there; a line outside the lottery kiosk, little tables on the sidewalk in front of the bakery and bar-coffee shop, the heavy drinkers playing cards loudly; little spits of mystery meat being barbecued on small portable grills; lots of tourists with maps in their hands looking for help.

A day like any other.

Dornelas, walking along, jumped over the heavy chains that barred automobiles from entering the Historical Center and returned, as he always did, to an unfinished image of the past. But on that day it was also weird. The heavy movement in the usually calm streets gave him a shock. The Historical Center was packed with people who looked alien to the inspector.

A tumult of people were tramping through the pé de moleque cobblestone streets, moving elbow-to-elbow between the Brazilian colonial style houses. They were coming and going, entering and exiting in a frenzy that had neither purpose nor direction. Dornelas was astonished by the shops teeming with customers, the tourists taking pictures, buying, eating, smiling, having a good time.

From one moment to the next he watched Palmyra be transformed into an immense seventeenth century theme park.

This was the signal that the months of preparations for the event that would begin that night had reached their culmination. The results could actually be calculated in numbers. The population of the city would practically double from one day to the next. Hotel vacancies were nonexistent. In some cases daily rates were more expensive than a night in New York City. Shops open, lights on, inventories overflowing. Houses that were either occupied by their owners or by renters who paid exorbitant prices to stay for a mere five days. Lines were forming at the doors of all the main restaurants.

The quality of service would certainly fall in the small city that usually received such intense activity only half a dozen times a year. Prices had already skyrocketed.

The International Book Festival, held annually in Palmyra for the last nine years, was going to begin that night with a concert by the famous rock group Skank. This edition of the event was to honor Fernando Sabino, one of Brazil’s greatest authors.

Dornelas continued on, turning left on Abolição Street and passing behind the Matriz church. Then he crossed over the river on the bridge decorated with pennants of the event that fluttered in the cold and salty breeze blowing in from the sea.

From there and all along the river mouth until the sea a complex of huge white dome-like structures came into view. The first pavilion – the principal one, for the authors – looked like a gigantic polar caterpillar with gaping mouths at each end ready to swallow the people passing by.

Dornelas entered the extremely high ceilinged pavilion and looked over the exposition of Sabino’s life and works while observing the movement around him: two men were removing plastic bubble wrapping from the panels; behind the counter receptionists were organizing the material for the event; six men were unloading rows of seats from a truck and taking them inside the auditorium where authors from the four corners of the world would read, recite and debate over the next four days.

The inspector kept going. A troop of young men was taking piles of books from cardboard boxes; they had almost finished arranging the tables, towers, showcases and shelves of the official Festival bookshop. A skinny and obviously tired fellow was disassembling, one by one, the empty boxes piled up in the entrance.

Crunching through the gravel, Dornelas arrived at the next pavilion. Down a long corridor carpenters, painters and electricians were applying the final touches to the rows of stands. Walking now on the outside along the broad sidewalk, he watched the hustle and bustle to the sound of hammering, shouting and the crackling of radios. The display windows of the official Festival store were being set up and decorated as final adjustments were made.

On the one hand he was pleased to have Palmyra host a festival that promoted books and reading. He had a special appreciation of books; they reminded him of his childhood when his father would read to him. What shall we read today, Quinie? his old man would ask before putting him in bed, ready to read by his side. On the other hand, more people and more festivities meant more chance of problems arising.

The Military Police were ready to maintain order in the streets. But the event’s security guards – bouncers wearing black suits and unfriendly expressions – were an unknown quantity, and the cause of the inspector’s added worry.

Given the civil police’s judicial and investigative nature, Joaquim Dornelas had no option other than to wait and see. In order for him and his team to act something would have to go wrong first. They would be on the alert.

He arrived at the last pavilion, an immense dais facing a sea of chairs, and watched a team of workers connecting the equipment on the stage. He heard a, sound: one, two, three from the enormous speakers as he continued walking toward the sea. He passed next to a giant screen and then jumped up on the first rock in the long sea wall that protects the estuary of the Pedras River from being clubbed by the ocean’s waves.

He left the bright lights of the Festival and, behind it, of the city, jumping from rock to rock until he reached the end almost two hundred meters ahead, now out in the open sea. He stopped at the last one and let his eyes try to pierce the darkness. Dornelas wanted to see the mouth of the bay on the horizon and the islets scattered along the way.

Able only to see little luminous dots here and there held captive against the dark backdrop, he took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of the salty air and then turned around to admire the circus-like scenario in front of him: the illuminated pavilions; the shining lights on the seaside footbridge; the excursion whalers anchored by the river bank; the coming and going of the visitors over the bridge; the activity in the square in front of the Matriz church on the opposite bank; shops and bars jam-packed. The view delighted him.

He felt the cold wind on his body and raised his eyes to the sky. Heavy clouds were hiding the moon and stars. It wasn’t raining.

From that spot, away from the event and the city, in the dark and enveloped by the sound of the sea, Dornelas felt detached from himself, as if he was observing his life from the sidelines, from some place outside himself.

With the sound of the waves hitting the rocks, the cold wind against his clothes and body, and the din of the Festival as background, he thought about the time he had devoted over the course of his life to solving crimes committed for reasons that were, at best, stupid, although human: money, power, jealousy, envy, greed, pure evil. And in the best case, if this is in fact possible; for love. ‘Human beings are a weird breed,’ he concluded.

He thought of his children and how much he missed them even after spending the last weekend with them in Rio de Janeiro. With this thought still in his mind, he took his cell phone from his pocket and called his ex-wife’s house. The phone kept ringing until the answering machine came on the line. He hung up without leaving a message. And then an unexpected movement broke the charm of the moment.

One of the small excursion boats had broken away from the riverbank and was slowly moving toward the estuary under the cold light from the footbridge. Dornelas, following it with his eyes, thought to himself, ‘where the hell is that boat going at this time of night?’ He looked at his watch: 8:37 p.m.

What happened next made no sense to the inspector. If he were asked about it later he wouldn’t have any idea how to explain it. But he felt, for some unknown reason, that there was something wrong with the scene he was watching: a man sitting underneath the canvas canopy and the boatman standing at the helm in the stern. And it wasn’t simply because the boat was sailing out to sea on a dark night. There was something else puzzling him.

He decided to go back. He wanted to warn the sailor that something was wrong, something that he, the inspector, could not define. Maybe order him to return under the pretext of examining the boat’s documents, or the number of life preservers onboard, or ask him where he was going, anything to not let him keep going. He went, jumping from rock to rock, back the way he had come.

Navigating in calm waters, the boat soon reached the middle of the river. At that point the crackling sounds from the engine came quicker and the small boat accelerated. Dornelas quickened his pace too.

Afraid of tripping in one of the black troughs between the rocks, and with his attention alternating between the uneven surface and the boat that was getting further and further out in the ocean, far from the footbridge lights, heading toward the darkness, Dornelas yelled out:

HEEEY, arms waving in the air.

Dressed in a dark suit, his shouts drowned out by the crashing waves, Dornelas was invisible to the passenger and the crewman who were looking straight ahead. Not knowing what else to do, he concentrated on making out the name crudely written in small letters on the bow. He couldn’t do it.

Shit!

The boat bounced over the breakers and reached the open sea. Dismayed, he focused on memorizing the boat’s yellow and white hull with the horizontal blue band and the white cushions with the navy blue or black stripes.

Under the moonless overcast sky the small boat continued on a little further and then was swallowed up by the darkness.

*

Dornelas reached the little beach and took his cell phone from his pocket. He wanted to let Solano know that a boat had gone out to sea at that time of night. He pressed a few keys and stopped. He could imagine the dialogue they would have and his subordinate’s suppressed laughter on the other end of the line. Boats go out to sea all the time, sir, the detective would say.

For the police, intuition is not justification for any type of action. For Dornelas it was a valuable work tool. The manner in which that scene had unfolded he felt could lead to a crime being committed. Or not. At this stage he couldn’t do anything but wait. The forced inactivity gnawed at his insides. Only the Port Authority could avoid a tragedy, if there actually was one in the making. But Dornelas didn’t want to alert them without something more tangible in his hands. He also didn’t want to do nothing. He decided to call, even at the risk of being tagged a rattlebrained fool.

Where are you? he immediately fired at Solano.

At home. I just got in. Did something happen? replied Solano.

Not yet, but it’s about to.

The detective was silent. Dornelas knew why. He continued:

I know it doesn’t seem like much, but an excursion whaler, one of the small ones, just sailed out to sea from the river in front of the Festival.

Is that a problem, sir?

As if he were watching a movie for the second time Dornelas could sense his subordinate’s indifference on the other end of the line. He was undoubtedly thinking: ‘Here comes the inspector with his crystal ball again.’

No. But tell Caparrós and Lotufo to be ready. I don’t want to call the Military Police or the Port Authority yet. It might be nothing. But if it turns into something serious I want to be first on the scene. Is that clear?

Crystal, sir.

Where’s Peixoto?

He’s probably taking care of his move or walking around town looking for a TV camera.

Dornelas thought of his deputy inspector and his passion for the spotlight.

Leave him out of it. If he opens his mouth it’ll most likely give me a headache tomorrow.

Copy that, sir.

But this move of Peixoto’s caught his attention.

You mean Peixoto’s moving to a bigger house because of his newborn son?

You didn’t know? He moved out yesterday, left his wife and the baby.

What do you mean? he asked, shocked.

He left them, sir. Packed his bags and left. Said he couldn’t handle all the baby stuff, all the crying and dirty diapers.

Dornelas was furious. But all he said was:

Keep your phone on. And have a good night.

Same to you, sir.

They hung up. Dornelas went home brooding over the small boat, the sailor, the passenger. He replayed the scene back and forth in his mind searching for some detail he might have missed. But he couldn’t think clearly. The anger that Peixoto’s cowardice had caused clouded his thoughts.

*

He opened the door and turned on the lights. ‘Lupi’s been up to something’ he thought when the dog didn’t come to greet him as usual. Suspicious, he inhaled deeply and was pleased when there was no smell of dog shit in the air. He whistled and heard the patter of little paws on the stairs.

The dog appeared, squirming all around. Dornelas understood immediately. He got a plastic bag and the leash from the cupboard by the door and went outside with Lupi.

His cell phone rang.

Have you had dinner yet? asked Dulce Neves on the other end of the line.

Not yet. I just got in.

Want to have it with me? I’m near your house.

"I do, but we’ve got to go to the supermarket first. Unless you want a goró.

Baby cereal with milk? Don’t even think about it!

Dornelas let out a loud laugh.

Vito’s Bar in ten minutes?

It’s a date. See you there. Big kiss.

Same to you.

He hung up happy, his heart warmed. It had been two days since he’d seen her. He missed their friends-with-benefits relationship, something he hadn’t felt about a woman in a long time.

*

It’s happened, sir, said Solano on the other end of the line. He sounded depressed.

When? Where? shot back Dornelas sitting up in bed, still bleary-eyed from sleep.

The clock showed 5:42. It was cold and dark. The early morning light still hadn’t appeared through the cracks in the shutter. He turned on the lamp.

On Brava Beach. The guy who watches over the bar, he’s also the caretaker of the house behind it, found a body against the foot of the bar. According to him, stabbed to death. It’s full of holes.

A man?

Don’t know.

Why do you think this has something to do with the boat that I saw?

Was it a yellow and white boat with a blue band?

That’s the one.

It’s half sunk at the end of the beach. The waves tossed it against the rocks.

Any other bodies?

No. Just the one.

‘Was it the passenger or the boatman?’ wondered the inspector.

How’d you find out about this?

I spent the night at the precinct. I switched shifts.

Dornelas was pleased not only with the commitment his right-hand man had shown, but especially with the trust Solano placed in his intuition.

Have you called the Fire Department, Forensics, the Medical Examiner? And advised Peixoto?

Not yet, sir

Leave Peixoto out of this, he growled. I’ll be there in twenty. Call the Fire Department and Forensics, make sure you get Chagas himself… but only after I arrive.

And the Medical Examiner?

Don’t worry about that. I’ve got it covered.

Dornelas put the phone back on the hook and again thought about his deputy’s cowardice in leaving his wife and baby. But at that early morning hour he just shrugged his shoulders and thought, ‘What fault does a son have if his father’s a total asshole?’ He’d get back to that later.

He looked to his side. Dulce Neves, head coroner at the Medical Examiner’s office, was sound asleep, her head buried deep in the pillow. Even with her eyes closed she emanated serenity. He stroked her hair, kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear:

Duty calls.

Chapter 2

The sunlight was trying