Lunatics

Lunatics · Chap 055 · Losses and gains

THE WAY he scratched his balls might give the impression Sergeant Petronio Alves wished to get rid of them. He used to come and go of Mendonça’s office without asking for permission. Gerard Mendonça was just 38 years old but, because he was a grumpy man, was known as the old fart. Mendonça and Alves had been working together since 2205; they developed a special type of relationship: Alves blindly followed the major’s orders and Mendonça had gotten used to Alves’s intrusions.

Alves silently showed a case filled with documents while keeping his other hand over his own testicles. Mendonça used the chin to point the chair in front of him.

“I did not send her away, Tereza.” Mendonça’s voice sounded controlled but his aide could see his brow frown distastefully.

“You work for the Department, Gerard, you must try harder to find our daughter!”

“To involve the FID? I shouldn’t even comment on that.”

“Helena left on Sunday and hasn’t come back! Don’t tell me you aren’t worried!”

Mendonça combed his right eyebrow with his left fingers.

“Helena’s disappearance had been issued to the 6 and the CMCF…”

Alves grunted something but Mendonça was focused on his ex-wife on the screen.

“You put our daughter on a list of criminal minors? Q’ues-ce que vous avez dans la tête, Gerard?”

“The more people looking for her the more chances we might have to…”

“The Criminal Minors Control Force, Gerard?! These men are known to act like animals! And you set them after Helena?”

Mendonça changed his tone.

“Tereza, I must turn this conversation down, bien?”

He turned his communicator off not expecting for her insults to come through. Alves handed him the case. The major opened it and did not know what to say. Helena’s documents were there. He took the four cards from the case and looked at Alves, who kept silent. Mendonça was dry.

“Where were they found?”

“A city guard took them from a boy trying to purchase fuel with the girl’s IDCard. He told he’d found them docs on the Suzano airport parking lot, yesterday night.”

Mendonça put three cards on his desk and kept the Library card, paying attention to the printed photo. It had been taken two years prior, Helena’s face was clean, without the tattoo that now covered half his body.

When his daughter discovered Tereza used her afternoons to meet with her lovers, Mendonça did not expect Helena to judge him with such mercilessness. She believed he acted as a coward, a half man. She wanted him to go for bats with men who did not deserve such attention.

Their marriage had stopped working quite before Helena completed her tenth anniversary. Mendonça had had his own lovers, beautiful women interested in having real pleasure without asking for any other commitment. They did it all with discretion and lived together because of their daughter.

In vain. The truth was revealed and Helena lost interest in her parents. That saddened Mendonça deeply.

The documents over his desk seemed a jury with copies of Helena, each pointing their piercing eyes over the father they despised.

He was now sure she had thrown them away. She had fulfilled her promise. I’ll disappear one day, for good, for a life without a faint link to you two.