Gilded Lily Read online

  Still, lunch must have been a tense affair for Lily, who was not in agreement about the divorce. “I know that Lily did not accept the divorce,” said Maria Consuelo. “Lily didn’t want to separate from Fred.”

  Indeed, Lily, who had spent her life trying to land a rich man, was now faced with the prospect of losing everything. No good could come of this divorce for Lily and her entire family.

  Although they were by no means destitute after Wolf’s company folded, the Watkinses relied on their monthly stipends from Ponto Frio to continue the comfortable lifestyle to which they had all become accustomed when Wolf’s business was at its most profitable during the Second World War.

  While it is not clear what took place at the luncheon, Alfredo seems to have emerged from the meeting with a headache. Instead of heading straight back to work, he decided to return home for a short nap. Alfredo appears to have headed straight for the second-floor master suite, and told one of the servants to wake him at three in the afternoon, which would allow him enough time to return downtown for an afternoon business meeting.

  Alfredo was so tired that he didn’t bother to change his clothes when he reached the bedroom. He removed his jacket and his shoes, pushed aside the satin-covered pillows Lily was so fond of clustering on the bed, and appears to have casually flipped through the pages of Time before drifting off to sleep, according to police reports.

  Downstairs, the servants had gathered in the kitchen for a hearty lunch of rice, beans, and manioc. Their animated conversation, and the transistor radio, which played the latest sambas, must have drowned out the two loud pops on the second floor when the gun was fired.

  Alfredo was already dead by the time Laurinda began calling the extension in the master suite.

  “I thought he had a headache and had gone upstairs to lie down,” said Laurinda. “But I knew when he didn’t answer the phone that something bad had happened.” It was just after three in the afternoon when Laurinda began to make the calls to the private extension in Alfredo’s bedroom. Moments before Laurinda began to call the extension, Lily had called to say she was still at the Copacabana Palace hotel, just finishing up with Alain, her hairdresser.

  Where was Seu Alfredo? Lily asked. Laurinda didn’t find the question strange. Whenever she went out to the hairdresser or to her boutique in the afternoons, Lily called the servants to tell them where she would be, just in case someone needed to speak to her. She sometimes did this several times a day. Lily had already called his secretary Maria Consuelo, who had told her that he was expected back at the office for a meeting.

  Laurinda only knew he had retreated to his bedroom for a nap because Djanira Nascimento, one of the other housekeepers, had seen him arrive. Laurinda found it strange that he had not come through the servants’ quarters as he usually did to have a chat.

  After repeated attempts to reach Alfredo on the telephone, Laurinda walked up the stairs, through the second-floor office and hallway alcove, and knocked loudly on the door.

  “Seu Alfredo? Seu Alfredo? Are you there?”

  No answer.

  What was he doing in his locked bedroom? Had he mixed his medications with the Mandrax that he was so fond of taking, especially when he needed a deep sleep? Mandrax, a powerful sedative, was initially marketed as a sleeping pill but became extremely popular as a recreational drug in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in Brazil. The drug, which was a precursor to Quaaludes, could send the user into euphoric states. One pill a day for a month was likely to cause physical dependence, severe headaches, irritability, and mania. Alfredo, of course, suffered from all of those symptoms, and the Mandrax, upon which he had become so dependent, seemed to exacerbate all his physical and mental problems.

  Laurinda knew firsthand the effects of Mandrax. When she was having trouble sleeping, she decided to help herself to a bottle from Alfredo’s collection. One pill had been enough to convince her that nothing good could come of taking the drug. The Mandrax knocked her out so completely that days before his death, she flushed the rest of the pills that she had swiped from his bedside table down the toilet.

  “When Seu Alfredo had one of his headaches, he didn’t talk to anyone,” said Laurinda. “He just went upstairs to lie down. I thought he must have been suffering from another headache, or he had fallen asleep.”

  When Alfredo was in the grip of one of his headaches, the servants were warned to tread lightly, the caged macaws in the garden were covered with towels or blankets so that they wouldn’t screech, and the children were told to keep quiet.

  As she walked down the stairs to the main floor, Laurinda was convinced that something awful had happened to her boss. Panic-stricken, she grabbed nine-year-old Carlinhos. Laurinda hoisted him up outside the second-floor bedroom window, which was wide open. Straining to reach the windowpane as Laurinda held his legs, Carlinhos shouted, “My father’s sleeping!”

  And then, as he had a better look, and perhaps noticed the blood staining the satin bedspread, he screamed, “My father is dead. He’s angry. He’s dead!”

  Terrified, Laurinda tried to calm herself as she called for Waldomiro to fetch a ladder and climb in through the open window to investigate. Waldomiro leaned a ladder against the wall and climbed up to the window.

  “Everyone in the house stopped working at that point,” said Laurinda. “We all knew that whatever had taken place with Seu Alfredo, it was nothing good.”

  Waldomiro stepped over the window ledge and entered the room where Alfredo lay on his back on the bed, his head propped up on a pillow, thick, dark blood oozing from his open mouth.

  Stunned, Waldomiro moved as if in slow motion to unlock the bedroom door as he tried to take in the scene in front of him. Alfredo’s jacket was neatly folded on one side of the bed; his shoes were also neatly placed near the bed on the polished wooden floor. Alfredo was in his stocking feet. Waldomiro could still make out the sweat marks on the soles of his dark-gray socks. There were various bottles of medication on the bedside table, and the latest issue of Time magazine. Rolled-up towels from the bathroom were placed underneath the doors. With his left hand, Alfredo appeared to be pulling at his shirt collar. His mouth was slightly open. If it hadn’t been for the blood, Waldomiro might have easily imagined that Alfredo was in a deep sleep.

  Just as Waldomiro took in the scene, he heard Lily rushing up the stairs followed by Laurinda. As she passed through the study that led to the bedroom, Laurinda saw Lily stop to open the drawer of the cabinet that stood in the hallway alcove just outside their bedroom. Was she checking for their revolver, which was kept in the drawer of the hallway cabinet?

  It’s not clear why the Monteverdes kept a revolver in the house, especially since it was well known that Alfredo suffered from manic depression and had tried to kill himself in the past. But everyone who worked for him seems to have known where it was stored. Perhaps Alfredo was concerned about his family’s security. After all, he was one of the twenty richest men in Brazil. But the Brazil of Alfredo Monteverde was a relatively calm, safe place, under the iron grip 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.

  “I’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 that was 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.

  “Eventually, 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.

  “I wanted to know how she knew he was dead, and what she was doing 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 placed it neatly on the bedside table, where the officers assigned to the investigation would find it later.

  The Ponto Frio executives who assembled at the house immediately began the process of carrying out Lily’s orders. Alfredo’s will, which was drafted a year after their marriage, put her effectively in control of the company, and divided his assets between Lily and Carlinhos. Regina was mentioned in a separate legacy, but her take was relatively minor. Alfredo had left his mother a handful of shares and the sprawling apartment she occupied in Copacabana.

  Although grief-stricken at her husband’s sudden death, Lily was completely in control, especially when it came to consolidating Alfredo’s financial holdings around the world. Securing Alfredo’s fortune became the first order of business.

  For except for Abitbol, who rushed out to get help, nobody at the house on Rua Icatu thought to call an ambulance or the police, even though under Brazilian law a suicide must be reported to authorities immediately.

  It would be several hours after they found the body that Conrado would be dispatched to the local police station to report the death. Conrado calmly drove to the Tenth District Precinct in nearby Botafogo to file a report. According to that report, Conrado showed up at the police station at 9:45 p.m. to inform the duty officer that Alfredo had killed himself in his bedroom at approximately three in the afternoon—nearly seven hours earlier.

  In his initial report, Mario Cesar da Silva, the police constable who recorded Conrado’s version of events as well as Alfredo’s medical history when the lawyer showed up at the police station on that fateful Monday night, notes that Alfredo was undergoing regular treatments with a psychiatrist named Dr. José Leme Lopes, whose office was around the corner from Rua Icatu. Conrado told the officer that Alfredo was a manic depressive, and a possible suicide.

  But Conrado didn’t tell the police the whole truth about Alfredo’s personal life. For it was from Conrado’s testimony that the officer concluded that Alfredo’s “family life was tranquil.” Perhaps Conrado was not aware that Alfredo was planning to divorce Lily, even though it was common knowledge among his business associates. If everyone from Ponto Frio’s accountant, secretary, and chief director were already making provisions for the divorce, then it seems highly unlikely that Conrado, the company’s chief counsel and Alfredo’s personal attorney, did not know.

  It’s not clear why Conrado left out important details about Alfredo’s personal life in his report to police. Perhaps he realized that following his boss’s death, his new allegiance needed to be to his widow, who would inherit Alfredo’s staggering fortune, valued at almost $300 million. Perhaps he felt that the widow would not appreciate a messy police investigation, especially if it appeared that Lily herself had a motive for wanting one of the richest men in Brazil dead.

  The police themselves were among the last visitors to arrive at the house on Rua Icatu. Detectives knocked on the door close to midnight, and hauled metal cases full of equipment—cameras, notebooks, measuring tape, and fingerprint kits. As they climbed the stairs to the second-floor bedroom, they had every reason to believe that they were off to investigate a suicide, not a homicide.

  Nevertheless, they spent hours analyzing the room where the body was found. They seemed meticulous in their investigation, stripping Alfredo and affixing plastic arrows directly onto his body to show the wounds and the trajectory of the bullets. They took copious black-and-white photographs—of the body, the bedroom, the neatly folded suit jacket on the left side of the bed, the satin-and-brocade bedroll that appeared to have been thrown diagonally across the width of the bed. There is a photograph of Alfredo’s shoes placed neatly under the bed. They even photographed the Time magazine carefully placed on the bedside table along with several bottles of medication.

  They also photographed the weapon, which they placed on the floor just under the right-hand side of the bed, according to Maria Consuelo’s description of where she had originally found it.

  They demanded that Laurinda, Waldomiro, and Djanira remain in the house during the investigation, since they were important witnesses. They had been present at the time of the shooting, and police interrogated each of them separately about the day’s sad events.

  In the police report, handwritten on lined paper in a tight scrawl, da Silva described the corpse of a forty-five-year-old white male, wearing a white shirt, charcoal gray trousers, white underwear, gray socks, and a black and brown striped tie. “The first five buttons were open on his shirt and his tie was loosened with the knot to one side, and the left sleeve rolled up,” noted the report. “On his mouth, on the left side, blood was flowing, and had coagulated on the pillow and the bed.”

  Alfredo Monteverde had been shot twice with a .32-caliber, Brazilian-made Taurus revolver. A bullet entered Alfredo’s body at close range on the left side of his chest, leaving a circular wound that measured five centimeters in diameter. According to the report, the first bullet seems to have traveled through his body, exiting on the left side of his back.

  “On or about three o’clock in the afternoon, he locked himself in his bedroom, and committed suicide with two shots to his chest on the left side, with both of the two shots entering the same orifice and exiti
ng in different directions,” said the police report. “One of the shots was piercing, with the bullet traveling through the right side of his back and embedding itself in the mattress of his bed. [He] committed suicide lying down and holding the revolver against his chest.”

  Yet no one who was at 96 Rua Icatu had heard the shots “because of the vast dimensions of the house,” noted the officer after questioning the three servants. Since there were no signs of forced entry, and the servants had not reported anything unusual—the Irish wolfhounds Sarama and Barbarella would surely have alerted them if a stranger had attempted to break in—the police concluded their investigation.

  But there were obvious gaps in their report. The police failed to interrogate any of the neighbors who may have heard the gunshots, even after one of the next-door neighbor’s servants volunteered that she had indeed heard the gunshots. Similarly, the police did not seek out Artigas Watkins, who had been at the house earlier that day.

  “He wasn’t there when we discovered the body, that’s for sure,” recalled Laurinda. “He had disappeared, without informing anyone that he was leaving.”

  There were other elements missing from the police report. Why had the detectives not recorded their observations about the bedroom and the rolled-up towels they found under the doors, even though Laurinda and the other servants overheard them discussing all of these amongst themselves while they were at the house? As they gathered in the kitchen to drink cup after cup of sugary cafezinho, police puzzled over why Alfredo would have taken all the fresh towels from the en suite bathroom, rolled each of them up, and placed them underneath the door and the other openings in the room.