“I figure it was when she turned off the tap,” he said, “that she heard something. Or maybe she looked up and saw something.”
“With her back to the door?”
“There was a full moon last night. If Doctor Whathisname-”
“Setubal.”
“Setubal is right about the time they were shot, the moon would have been”-Lefkowitz pointed-“right about there. If anyone opened the door, it would have flooded the kitchen with moonlight. Clara would have noticed, even if she’d been facing the sink.”
That clinched it for Hector. He smiled in admiration.
“Lefkowitz,” he said, “you are so good at this stuff.”
“Tell my wife,” Lefkowitz said. “She thinks she’s got all the brains in the family.”
Chapter Four
Haraldo “babyface ” Goncalves was looking around for a sign that would identify the building-and not finding one.
“You sure this is it?”
“I’m sure,” Arnaldo Nunes said. “I used to come here on Saturdays for lunch.”
“The Argentinean Club for lunch? Why?”
“They serve good meat.”
“They serve good meat in lots of places. But you came here. What’s the real reason?”
Arnaldo mumbled something.
“Can’t hear you,” Goncalves said. “Speak up.”
Arnaldo turned to face him.
“I said my oldest sister married an Argentinean.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“You poor bastard.”
“I think it was a sex thing. He must have been hung like a bull.”
“She’s still married?”
“She finally came to her senses. But, in the meantime, I went through hell. The wedding was in June of ’78.”
1978 wasn’t the only year Argentina won the World Cup, but it was the first. And it was a year in which Brazil, already a three-time champion, had finished an ignominious third. The defeat still rankled, even for people like Goncalves who were too young to have experienced it personally.