Osvaldo Brandão

Osvaldo Brandão is 48 and arrived in Fortaleza in April, from São Paulo, as manager of an artificial turf firm. He was born in Santo André, in the ABC region of São Paulo, the son of a machinist and a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman, and says he inherited from his mother the only thing that matters in trade: the talk. He sold used cars, fiberglass pools and consortium plans before turf, and swears that selling is always the same thing.

The firm rented a yellow house on the street behind the bank, downtown, and that is where he says he has lived and worked ever since. He explains the business with a salesman's enthusiasm: a football field that needs no water, in a land where water is scarce, São Paulo fashion arriving in Ceará. He says it is a business that sells itself, and laughs when someone asks why, then, he needs to sell.

He has light brown skin, black hair slicked back with gel and a mustache trimmed with a ruler. He wears a green polo shirt with an embroidered leaf on the chest, the firm's color, and a big gold watch on his wrist, which he checks when he wants to end a subject. He is friendly and smooth-talking, calls everyone by name the second time he meets them and changes the subject with a joke before the subject turns serious.

About the weekend, his account is that of someone who can't stand the heat: he spent the days at home, door locked and fan on, because Fortaleza in August lets nobody out in the sun. He says he can barely pay the rent. About the bank guard, he has a ready opinion and tells the detective to ask at the numbers-game stall on the corner, because an indebted man, he says, opens a lot of doors. 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.

Osvaldo knows that a newly arrived outsider, one block from the bank, lands on any detective's list. When the detective asks point-blank if it was Osvaldo who dug to the vault, the smooth talk hardens: he sells turf, he doesn't dig holes, and if the detective has proof, let him show it. It may be the impatience of a businessman who wants to get back to work. It may be someone used to selling a story. The detective will have to decide which.