Gilded Lily by Isabel Vincent Page B

of the military junta that ruled the country. The urban violence that is associated with Rio de Janeiro today was almost nonexistent in the late 1960s.
    Laurinda recalled that Lily visibly stiffened when she rifled through the drawer. Perhaps she realized that the revolver wasn’t there. Dressed in a black dress with thin shoulder straps, her blond hair beautifully coiffed and smelling of hairspray, she entered the room where Waldomiro was standing as if momentarily frozen.
    â€œI’m afraid it’s not good news, Dona Lily,” said Waldomiro, as Lily tried to get past him. “Seu Alfredo is dead.”
    It was the elevator operator at the Ponto Frio offices on Rua do Rosario in downtown Rio who informed Vera Chvidchenko, a secretary at Ponto Frio, that her boss was dead. Vera was rushing back to the offices for a meeting with Alfredo when she heard the news thatwas spreading throughout Rio’s business district like a brush fire in a dry forest.
    At the office, people were weeping.
    Shot himself in bed?
    But he was just here! He was in a good mood!
    A stone-faced Maria Consuelo was gathering her things and preparing to go to the house on Rua Icatu to help Lily with the funeral arrangements. Geraldo, the director of the company, had offered to drive her. Company lawyer Conrado Gruenbaum would drive himself to the house later. Felix Klein, another executive who would prove invaluable to Lily in the future, began the process of sorting through Alfredo’s complex financial arrangements in Brazil and Switzerland immediately after receiving instructions from Conrado.
    â€œEventually, everyone left the office. I just couldn’t bring myself to go to the house,” recalled Vera. “It was too painful. I was too upset.”
    Alfredo’s friend Abitbol was among the first to arrive at the house. “I saw him lying on the bed, but I only took it in for a split second, because I rushed out to get help,” recalled Abitbol years later. “It was so strange because we had played poker the night before, and he was in great spirits.”
    Trotte, the accountant, showed up soon after, accompanied by Geraldo and Maria Consuelo. “I saw Fred stretched out on the bed with blood covering his chest,” he said.
    In the space of a few hours, dozens of friends, business associates, and family members began arriving as news of Alfredo’s death spread throughout the city. “I came as soon as I found out about his death on the news,” said Victor Sztern. “The house was full of people.”
    Anita, the fired servant, appeared up at the house ahead of the police. “Is he really dead?” she asked Laurinda as she made her way to the servants’ quarters.
    â€œI wanted to know how she knew he was dead, and what she wasdoing at the house,” recalled Laurinda. “But she just kept repeating the question with a mad look in her eye: ‘Is he really dead?’”
    Anita didn’t need to see the body to know her former boss was dead. The distraught strangers crowding the living room and back garden must have immediately answered her question.
    Carlinhos was dispatched to a friend’s house, and the other children, who had been at the Copacabana Palace, were picked up by one of the chauffeurs and taken to the home of a family friend.
    Maria Consuelo and Geraldo made their way to Alfredo’s second-floor office where Lily was lying on a couch, attended by one of the servants, and speaking on the phone.
    Maria Consuelo gingerly entered the bedroom. Perhaps it was the severe shock mingled with a deep sorrow at seeing her beloved boss splayed on the bed, the blood still oozing out of his mouth, or perhaps it was her meticulous secretarial instinct that propelled Maria Consuelo to do what she did next. Whatever the reason, she was hard-pressed to explain to police why she picked up the revolver that was lying on the floor on the right-hand side of the bed and