I shouldn´t have said that this installment would be called the Frankie and Marcelo incident. It is more like a saga.
It begins 5 or 6 years ago when Frankie and Aida were still living in LA, but were in Brasil on a visit. Somehow they encountered Marcelo, a man in his middle twenties at the time, who was friendly and helpful to them. They remained in contact and looked him up again on subsequent visits. I don´t know this, but I rather suspect that the reason Frankie lives where he does is because it is on the same street where Marcelo lives. After Aida died and he decided to move into the heart of São Paulo, Marcelo was probably even helpful in finding an apartment for him. The three of us live in separate buildings, all within a block of each other.
I first met Marcelo the same day I met Frankie at Fabio´s hair salon. Fabio ran down to the store to get a six pack of beer for Frankie, and I carried it home for him. He could have carried it, but only awkwardly with his walker. While we were having a beer in his apartment, Marcelo popped in, sort of like Kramer into Jerry´s place. He is probably about 30 years old now, more than pudgy, soft, and incredibly unctous, unlike Kramer. He also had a fanny pack around his waist, which probably contributed to my almost immediate dislike of him. Yes, I can be that superficial. But he seemed very solicitous of Frankie´s welfare and it appeared obvious that he ran a lot of errands for Frankie. I learned later that he was out of a job, which explained his having so much time available during the day. He lost his job from a local bank because he tried to get his boss´s job while said boss was on vacation, or in some way used his boss´s absence from the office to circumvent the process for promotion.
Heitor and I had a few tiles that needed to be replaced in our kitchen at that time, and we had a repairman scheduled to do the work, but he needed us to purchase the tile, the cement and the grout. I guess the repairman was also doing some work for Frankie, and because of that Marcelo found out about the work at our place. Marcelo insisted on going with me to the store to buy the materials. He wanted to do everything. I asked for them to deliver the stuff sometime after 3:30 pm, when I would be home from my class. (Yes, stores routinely make deliveries. Even grocery stores deliver.) At one point I realized Marcelo had given his telephone number for them to call when they were ready, later that afternoon, to deliver the materials. I let it go, because I hate talking on the telephone in Português, unless it is with someone I know. When I came home later that day from my class, I found Marcelo in the lobby of my apartment buidling waiting for the delivery. The store had called, and the delivery should arrive any minute. I thanked him and expected him to leave but, no, he kept hanging around. I finally told him that he could go now, because I could handle it from there on. But he insisted on waiting for the delivery. When the delivery finally arrived, I thanked Marcelo again and said I could handle it now. But, again, no, he insisted on following the delivery all the way up to our door on the 9th floor, where he then inventoried item by item the delivery to make sure everything was included, as if I couldn´t do that. Finally, when the stuff was inside the apartment, he left. I think he just wanted to get a look inside our apartment.
When I was describing this scenario to Heitor later that day, he summarized Marcelo up instantly as a "mala." A mala is, literally, a suitcase, but it is also Brasilean slang for a person you can´t get rid of, someone who wants to stick by your side at all times. The next time I saw Fabio, he also referred to Marcelo as a "mala sem asas," a suitcase without handles.
I soon came to know that Frankie, too, found Marcelo a bit too cloying at times. Marcelo did many little odd things for Frankie, and Frankie always paid him for his time and work. But Marcelo was always hanging around, wanting to do more things, even suggesting things he could do that Frankie didn´t want. He was a mala for Frankie too. Frankie had found it helpful early on to give Marcelo the key to his apartment building and to his apartment. Sometimes it was awkward for Frankie to get to the buzzer to let visitors into the building, and that system is turned off at 6 pm every day. After 6 o´clock the tenants have to go down to the lobby to let visitors into or out of the building. This was all so inconvenient that Frankie gave Marcelo the keys. But Marcelo misused them. He would come over unannounced whenever he felt like it. Frankie had to tell him more than once that it was rude, and that he wanted Marcelo to call before coming over. Things would get better for a while, but then Marcelo would start abusing the system again, and Frankie would have to admonish him again.
One day about six weeks ago Frankie told me that he thought Marcelo was stealing from him. Frankie had a huge, Costco-sized, container of Tums that I had brought back for him in May. He hadn´t consumed very many of them, but he would think now and again that the bottle was getting emptier. One day the contents dropped dramatically, and he knew Marcelo was taking them. On that particular day, Frankie had had a doggie bag from his favorite lunch spot, and he didn´t want to return home right away. Usually in those situations he drops the doggie bag off with the doorman and picks it up later when he gets home. But this time Marcelo happened by and asked if Frankie would like him to take the bag up and put it in the refrigerator, which Frankie agreed to. He put two and two together when he got home and saw the dramatically lowered Tums contents and knew that the only person who had been in the apartment was Marcelo.
It was then that Frankie asked me if I could help him view his two bank accounts on line. He doesn´t have a computer in his apartment so we went to the nearby lanhouse and took care of it. A quick look at the transactions of the few previous days quickly showed that Marcelo was stealing more than Tums. It also showed me that Frankie was more naive than I had realized. Many of the errands that he paid Marcelo to do for him involved trusting Marcelo with his ATM/Debit cards from two different banks, and not even requiring receipts. Frankie also didn´t even bother to verify his monthly bank statements.
In this case we were able to spot transactions that were only two days old, and which were related to incidents still fresh in Frankie´s memory. In the first instance, he had given one of his ATM cards to Marcelo to withdraw R$150 in cash. The on-line record showed that Marcelo had actually withdrawn R$200. The second instance involved the other card. Frankie had given it to Marcelo to get a 12 pack of beer at the local market. We found that, within 30 minutes, the card had been used at 5 or 6 area stores for a total of more than R$175. For all of that Frankie had received 12 beers. We were looking at these records on Friday, and the activity all occurred on the previous Wednesday. There was no mistaking the fact that Marcelo was dishonest.
Next time: The Solution
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