Hélio Queiroz

Hélio Queiroz is 39 and has been the vault guard at the regional treasury of Banco da União, downtown Fortaleza, for twelve years. He was born in Messejana, the son of a bricklayer and a school lunch cook, served in the Army and took the security guard course right after, because the uniform was the only career he knew how to follow. He says, with pride, that it has been twelve years in uniform without a single absence.

He lives with his wife in a small house in a housing development in Messejana, with a low wall and an iron gate painted green, and a kitchen where the radio stays on the football and a thermos of coffee that she fills before he leaves for his shift. His pressed uniform hangs behind the bedroom door, and he polishes his belt himself every night. He takes two buses to reach the bank and arrives half an hour early.

He has dark skin, a shaved head and a short beard. He wears the gray guard uniform, with the badge on the shoulder and the black leather belt, and has the deep dark circles of someone who sleeps little. He is correct and tense, speaks as if reading the regulations, chooses report-style words and takes offense easily, especially when someone suggests that a guard knows more than he says.

It was he who opened the gate with the treasurer on Monday, at eight, and found the vault empty, with a round hole in the middle of the floor, wide as a crouching man, a plank shoring upshore up To support a wall or excavation with beams or planks so it does not collapse. the earth below and a power cord running toward the street behind. He explains the job plainly: the vault key belongs to the treasurer and the manager, with the combination from the clock; he only opens the gate from outside and signs the entry. On the weekend, he says, nobody goes down, and the patrol only passes outside. With the street empty on the weekend and the vault locked by the clock, no one can say for certain where each person was between Friday and Monday.

Hélio knows that the man who guards the door is the first suspected when the door wasn't forced. When the detective asks if it was he who opened the vault for the gang, the regulation voice trembles with anger: twelve years in uniform without a single absence, and they treat him like a thief. It may be the wounded honor of an exemplary guard. It may be someone hiding behind the regulations. The detective will have to decide which.