Leonor Siqueira

Leonor Siqueira is 41 and for twelve years has been Teodoro Bastos's shadow, the executive secretary of the man who rules everything and does nothing without consulting her. Born in Ribeirão Preto, the daughter of an accountant and a primary school teacher, she studied secretarial work in São Paulo and started at the agency as a receptionist. She handles the schedule, the trips, the clients and even the birthday gift for her boss's mother, and says that if he breathes, she knows at what time.

She lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Paraíso, in an exposed-brick building, with a living room with a gray sofa, a shelf of management books, a small kitchen with a white Formica counter and a balcony with ferns and a notebook always open. She wakes at 6, has coffee with toast and reaches the agency before her boss. She speaks fast, writes everything down and forgets little.

She is thin and tall, white, with straight brown hair in a low bun and carefully applied makeup that today shows smudged around her eyes. She wears pearl earrings, a black pencil skirt, and carries a leather planner pressed to her chest, like someone protecting a child. She is efficient, controlled, speaks in short sentences and gets irritated with anyone who makes her repeat. She knows her boss's life by heart and doesn't hide her pride in it.

About the agency, she says she has been Doutor Teodoro's secretary for twelve years, that every Tuesday he leaves at 6:30 p.m. to dine with a client and that those who know the time are she, the driver and administration, and half of Higienópolis, if they pay attention. About late afternoon, she notes Gerson: at 6:20 he phoned from the garage phone, speaking low, and hung up when she passed, and keeps asking her to read her boss's messages, as if not wanting to leave a trace.

Leonor knows the secretary who knows every minute of the schedule is the one asked whether she told anyone one. When the detective says she gave the schedule to the kidnappers, she presses the leather planner to her chest and her steady voice falters: it's twelve years looking after the man's life. The wounded loyalty of someone who works for her boss, or cold efficiency as a shield: the closed planner keeps both.