Cláudio Ribeiro

Cláudio Ribeiro is 44 and an outsourced metalworker on the museum's maintenance staff. He was born in Itaquera, in the east of São Paulo, the son of a steelworker and a seamstress, and learned to weld at 14, in an uncle's workshop, amid sparks and chains. He has made house grilles, factory gates, spiral staircases and stage frames. He says a real metalworker is one who can fix what another metalworker did badly.

He works in a cramped metal shop in Itaquera, a shed with an asbestos-tile roof, steel plates leaning against the wall, an iron bench and an old welding machine. There sit the bars, the trestles and the tools lined up on a wooden board. He eats his packed lunch sitting on a toolbox and listens to pagode on the radio. The neighbors on the street know him by the smell of hot iron and the mixed-breed dog that sleeps at the workshop door.

He has short black hair shaved at the sides, brown skin and a thin mustache. He wears a blue metalworker's coverall with the zipper open over a white T-shirt and holds a battered cap in his hand. He is friendly on the surface, speaks softly and smiles when he feels cornered. His hands are marked by years of iron and fire. When he hears a hard question, he returns another, preferably about someone nearby.

About the museum, his account is that he repaired the steel entrance door in October: tired spring, bent track, a two-day job, invoice and all. When asked who has been talking about the museum's security around town, he tells them to look for the gentleman with the glasses and recalls that in November the newspaper said the place has no alarm or insurance. He asks if the detective thinks a thief doesn't read the paper. About the night of the robbery, he says only that he was asleep.

Cláudio knows that the man who repaired the steel door is the first one asked how it gave way. When the detective says he stole the paintings, the smile tightens: a metalworker from Itaquera, with a multimillion painting under his arm? Without proof, he warns, you are talking to my cap. It may be the humor of a worker used to being suspected by trade. It may be someone who uses a smile so as not to answer. The detective will have to decide which.