Page 103 of The Secret Dinner

4

We sat at that table talking for a long while, but no relevant information emerged beyond what he’d already told me. I stuffed my face with whole-wheat bread and cake, listening to him repeat the same story in different ways. Every now and then, I’d interject with something vague from my arsenal of ready-made lines: “It’s going to be okay” or “Come on, violence doesn’t solve anything.” The truth was, I was scared shitless. If Arthur kept on digging, only one of us was getting out of this alive. It wasn’t easy to keep smiling with those kinds of thoughts racing through my head.

As we were saying goodbye, using the most casual tone I could muster, I asked him to email me Ruth’s article. Arthur agreed without hesitation and sent it from his phone while I was standing there.

“We’re in this together,” he said before shutting the door.

It was already afternoon. In fifteen minutes I was back at the apartment, which was empty and quiet. I was overwhelmed by a sudden and profound fatigue, so I allowed myself a nap under the covers with a playlist on shuffle, but when I woke up it was already the middle of the night. Even after twelve hours of sleep, I felt exhausted. I drank a glass of milk and went back to bed.

I got up early on Monday with a clear objective in mind: to go downtown and get the name of the owner of the Audi and the house in Jardim Botânico. Cora was sitting on the kitchen stool in her nightgown eating a cheese and tapioca pancake. She offered to make me one and I accepted, opening the fridge to help myself to some orange juice. I felt the cold floor on my bare feet.

“You’re up early,” I said.

“Piglet went out and I couldn’t fall back asleep.”

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight … You’re telling me Piglet already woke up, got ready, and left the house?”

It was certainly unusual, worth commenting on, but Cora kept her stony expression.

“He went to meet up with his weirdo friends,” she said, angrily tearing off a paper towel to grab my pancake. “Apparently they found some clues on Vladimir.”

“That’s great.”

“I don’t like it when he hangs out with those creeps, the hackers and stuff. Anyway, we’re going for lunch later in Leblon, at his favorite greasy spoon. Wanna come?”

“I’ve got a thousand things to do today, I don’t know if I’ll have time. But I’ll call you, okay?”

She nodded. I scarfed down the pancake, crumpled up the paper towel, and gave her a kiss goodbye. “I have to go.”

I climbed in an Uber waiting out front. About an hour later, I got out at the DMV on Avenida Presidente Vargas. Traffic was terrible thanks to all the construction. Sometimes I forgot how lucky I was to live near the beach and no longer have to leave the house to go to work every day. I guess God wanted to make up for my stress at being trapped inside the car for so long, because there was barely any line. I made up a story that I’d been in a fender bender with an Audi with that license plate. I had to open a public records request. They’d have an answer for me within a few days.

Next I walked to the nearby property appraiser’s office, where I had to fill out a stupid form and pay a fee to request a title certificate for the Jardim Botânico property. I was free by noon, with no desire whatsoever to go back home. I spent a few minutes browsing at the Travessa bookstore on Avenida Graça Aranha. Their bestsellers display was right by the entrance, but nothing looked good. I saw that Paul Schrader’s new movie was out on Blu-ray, so I bought it. Spending my money on things like that reminded me how nice it was to no longer have to scrimp and save or worry about overdraft fees. I didn’t actually miss being a bookseller at all.

I got hungry around one. It was too late to call Cora, so I decided to grab something quick at a Chinese place nearby. It was packed and the food looked delicious. I was home by two, stomach full, feeling like I’d had an exceptionally productive day. I poured myself a glass of wine and toasted myself in the mirror. I sat at my desk and opened my laptop, hoping the cabernet sauvignon would rev me up to read Ruth’s article. I’d been avoiding it, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.

I skimmed the first few lines, trying to take in all the information at once. It was definitely still a draft: There were sentence fragments, incomplete passages, winding paragraphs. At the end of the document was a transcript of an interview with an unidentified person who claimed to have attended the dinners. Everything was there: the host (who, according to the witness, was a handsome and attentive young man who made guests feel at ease—I was flattered), the number of guests, the price, and the security measures in place to keep the location hidden. Ruth’s source was onto something.

The only name mentioned was Vladimir, three times. He’d been expanding operations and was very careful, very discreet. The most interesting part was that the source claimed to have met an employee at the slaughterhouse who assured him that Vladimir paid his staff well but had never personally made an appearance, which just confirmed Piglet’s theory that Umberto was a fucking liar who’d made Vladimir up.

I was completely focused and nearly fell out of my chair when a crying Cora burst through the door. She wasn’t just crying, she was having a full-on panic attack. Her makeup was a mess and her breathing was ragged like she’d just gotten beaten up or something.

I ran to her and pulled her thin, shaking body into my arms. Cora tried to say something but couldn’t complete a sentence, falling back into heaving sobs. She was scaring me; I tightened my embrace and stroked her hair, hoping she’d calm down. My fingers grazed her forehead and I saw she was bleeding.

“Talk to me … What happened?”

“They took Piglet. They’re going to kill him, Dante!”

My blood pressure plummeted. I lifted her chin so she was looking me in the eye. Cora had two large cuts on her face, one over her left eye and one on her forehead—a trickle of blood ran down the corner of her eye, onto her cheek, down her neck. I had her take a seat and ran to the bathroom to get gauze and saline wash. She talked while I dressed her wounds.

“We met for lunch … on Dias Ferreira … A car stopped and … there were these guys with guns … They put Piglet in the car … I screamed … They hit me with the gun…”

“They took Piglet?”

“First they shot him in the leg … He said he wasn’t going to get in the car, and they shot him in the leg.”

“What kind of car was it, Cora?”

“I don’t remember…”