The policeman nods and accepts the bribe. He checks his watch, “The guys should be heading out to lunch in a couple of minutes. Just hang back until then.”
This pervasive culture of corrupt officials sure does make things easy. Viktor steps aside, leading you to the parking lot, to an unassuming white sedan, tiny like many foreign cars.
“This was hers,” he says. “So that means she was here at some point, but why? Sometimes she would park it here and take the bus so we could go out drinking, but—”
“Look!” you shout, spotting a phone on the ground near the car. “Is that…?”
The police investigators flood out of the apartment to lunch. The cop who was guarding the barricade signals you; it’s time.
“Yes! That’s her mobile—incredible. Grab it and let’s go!”
Pocketing the phone, you head inside with the young policeman as your escort. The apartment is small, and it’s the living room—where a coffee table sits midway between couch and television—that captures his attention. There on the table sits a stash of cocaine, several lines laid out neatly as if the party was just getting started.
“What’s all this?” Viktor asks.
“Most likely a drug deal gone bad,” the cop says. “Put that in your article.”
You snap a photo with your digital camera. “You think she was taken from here?”
“Looks like it,” the cop shrugs.
“We’ll just have a quick look around, and then we’ll be out of your hair,” Viktor says with a warm smile. As soon as he turns away from the cop, his smile disappears and his jaw clenches. “This is all lies. My Jane would never…”
“And why would her phone just be ‘dropped’ in the parking lot?” you add.
He nods. “It’s a setup.”
Viktor moves on. Around the corner is an office nook. It’s the kind of space-saving technique that an apartment like this, which can’t be larger than 300 square feet, has to employ. You scan that area, but it doesn’t look like Ms. Nightingale used that space much either. She doesn’t have a computer, at least not here, and it seems like her main purpose for this nook was to display pictures.
Viktor reaches out for a photo of Jane; a picture of her up at the Cristo Redentor statue with her arms volant as if she’s preparing to fly away. He pockets the picture and keeps walking. The rest of the house is nearly barren and nothing else interests him.
“She kept this apartment as her home-of-record for work, but she lived with me,” he explains in a whisper.
Thanking the cop who let you in, you head back outside. The heat of the day is fully present now and the summer sun is warm and embracing. It’s the kind of day meant for lounging poolside, not solving cases. You feel like it should be dark and drizzling, maybe with the occasional thunderclap.
“May I see the phone, please?” Viktor asks, interrupting your thoughts.
After he looks it over, he says, “It’s off. We should check her messages and call log, but if they’re tracking the number, then we probably only have a minute or two.”
You nod and follow him over toward the dumpsters, a protected area behind the apartments. They’re way in the back because, after all, who wants to look at dumpsters? So you’re relatively hidden here.
“Here goes…” he sighs, powering the phone on.
It starts up, gets a signal, and synchs with the network. After waiting a few moments, a message comes through from a number called EMBASSY:
Format One Recall. Please Report To Nearest US Consulate Immediately. Call Back To Confirm.
Yesterday, 7:17pm
“Check her outgoing messages,” you suggest.
There’s one sent to him:
I HAVE WHAT WE NEED, BUT I THINK THEY KNOW. DATE FIRST.
Yesterday, 9:24pm
“The last message I got from her,” Viktor says though a lump in his throat. “After that, I ditched my mobile because I knew they’d be tracking us.”
“What did you need?” you ask.
“Evidence.”
You wait a moment, but it appears as if he’s not going to elaborate. “Of…?”
Deep in thought, he doesn’t respond right away. “I just realized what this means. She said ‘date first.’ It’s code: when we first met, my English was not so good. In Portuguese you say the descriptor after, so our ‘first date’ I called our ‘date first.’ She always liked that… I think she might have left something for me up on the hilltop where we had our first date. It’s funny, I might have gone up there even without this message—simply out of longing for her.”
“Viktor, how did you end up in that warehouse? Did you know she would be there?”
A sad smile appears on his face. “I got an anonymous call. I thought they might want to meet. Blackmail me, maybe. But I never imagined…”
Then, with a renewed determination, he separates the phone from its battery and tosses it into the trash.
“We’ve been here too long already,” Viktor says.
He steps out from the refuse enclosure, but stops in his tracks. There, bearing down at you from across the parking lot, is death himself.
He’s tall, well-built, his black hair close-cropped like a combat soldier’s. Clean-shaven, but there’s a thick scar along the front of his chin like you’d expect to see on someone who flew over the handlebar of a motorcycle. He wears aviator-style shooting-range glasses and his face is as pale as a skull sun-bleached in the desert. He wears all black—combat boots, tactical cargo pants, a vest to match, and skin-tight long-sleeved under-armor. He has dual-holstered handguns on the sides of his vest and wears black motorcycle gloves.
In short, he’s terrifying.
“Jesus Cristo,” Viktor mutters.
The young policeman you bribed runs out toward this Man in Black, calling out to him in Portuguese, but to no avail. The man removes one pistol—and turns one eye—toward the cop and shoots him twice.
The other eye stays fixed on you, while the man goes for the second pistol with his other hand.
“Run!” Viktor shouts.
The brick enclosure near you explodes under the impact of a bullet from the man’s gun—an impossibly close shot from that distance, especially with both shooter and target on the move. There’s a declivity on the other side of the apartment building and Viktor sprints down it toward the next avenue below.
Back on the streets, you rush into traffic and crowds of pedestrians.
Viktor gets onto a bus and bids you to follow. With one final look back, you see your would-be assassin melt again into the shadows of the warehouse, his pistols still trained forward.
• Get on the bus, quickly!
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Eavesdropped
Irma leans over the roof further, but stops abruptly when tiny bits of tar and pitch start to crumble over the edge. You both hold your breaths, but no one looks up. Once the cops are certain the payoff has left, they talk to one another in hushed tones.
“They’re arguing about letting him go,” Irma explains. “The younger cops seem to think they should track him down and kill him, but Lucio says the joke is on him. He just paid for the name of an informant where Elite Squad’s doing their raid. If they’re lucky, he might even get killed.”
“He’s headed toward Agent Danly?” you ask. “But why?”
“I don’t know. He obviously has cash; he might be delivering hush money.”
It makes sense, in its own corrupt and craven way. The Shadow Chiefs own that slum, they have the final say over who lives or dies. So if you kill someone on their turf—you have to pay for the privilege. And now the perp is headed straight for Danly. Hell, this might be the final part of his cover-up! All he has to do is square up with the Shadow Chief Mafiosos and he’s in the clear. If only you had some way to warn Agent Danly…but would he even listen?
Irma nudges you, interrupting your woolgathering by drawing your attention towards the cops. Their sub rosa meeting over, they leave the scene.
&nb
sp; “They mentioned something about a body. We can follow, but I’m not sure we should. This is starting to become very dangerous. Give me the revolver. I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
• “Okay. I’m ready to leave.”
• “We’ve come this far… why stop now?”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Elitist
“It shouldn’t be all that bad,” she says. “Elite Squad kicks down the front door—they go in with guns blazing. The drug traffickers probably won’t even notice us with all they’ll be dealing with.”
“We do what? Investigate from the sidelines? Stay out of the line of fire?”
“Sure. Don’t you want to see what Agent Danly sees, instead of waiting for him to tell you what he wants you to know in the morning?”
You don’t respond.
“Give me a minute to change,” she says. “I’m going plainclothes.”
“Undercover?”
“Drug traffickers think of cops the same way young boys with rocks think of windows. If we get caught, we’re going to pretend we’re lost tourists.”
You remember the role of lost tourist all too well. “And then they’ll let us go?”
She smiles again. “No, but this way they won’t torture us before they kill us. Be right back.”
While she’s gone, you find the restroom. Suddenly your stomach’s not feeling very “strong and brave.” After you come back, you see she’s now wearing tight-fitting jeans, running shoes, and a banana-yellow Brazilian soccer jersey, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Time to head out.
* * *
From afar, the favela has a certain beauty. It lights up the hills like starlight, similar to the effect of photographs showing Earth at night as seen from space. It’s too dark to make out individual houses, but the lights—white, green, yellow, blue—belie the presence of humanity on these jungle hills.
The favela itself is all brick and concrete. Detective Irma Dos Santos parks on the outskirts and together you head in on foot. The night is warm, and though the slums are never silent, there are no sounds of combat. Your heart thumps and your palms sweat from nervousness.
You don’t see or hear a single person, but radio music fills the air. You look at graffiti-emblazoned homes, expecting one of the ramshackle doors or partitioned curtains to fly open at any minute to reveal a gang of thugs.
“Isn’t it a little too quiet?” you ask in a whisper.
“Elite Squad announces which favela is scheduled for pacification. It’s possible the tide is turning and the traffickers are starting to flee when warning is given.”
Then there’s a distant crack, like someone slapping a broomstick against a brick wall—the crack, crack, crack of gunshots. “Or not,” she says. “Come on, let’s go!”
With that, she’s running down the alleys of the favela. The path between the houses is thin, made thinner by abandoned wooden pallets, heaps of trash, abandoned scrap, and other detritus. The slum is bathed in a ubiquitous orange from the cumulative glow of lights. Irma’s running shoes scrape pebbles and dirt against the concrete as she flies toward the noise. You struggle to keep up, taking in deep breaths of foul air.
She suddenly takes a step back and slaps her arm against your chest to prevent you from going any further. With a great crack followed by a whining ping, brick gravel explodes out from the wall across the alley, the ricochet hitting you in the face. Images of a cruel child hurling sand on the playground are conjured up.
“Come on,” Irma says, doubling back from the gunfire.
She pauses in the alley, looks up, and examines the nearest house. Satisfied, she turns back to the alleyway, claims a wooden pallet, and props it against the house as a makeshift ladder. One step up and she’s pulled herself onto the roof of the building in a seamless, impressively athletic move.
She turns back to you with her hand extended. “Hurry!”
You scramble your way onto the rooftop as well, then follow her, squatting down and ducking past a wash basin and plastic chairs. She goes prone by the roof’s edge and you lie on your belly next to her, looking out over the main street where the action unfolds.
What’s spread out before you is something out of a war zone. The Elite Squad armored vehicle lumbers down the street, its metal surface singing out with rejected bullets. There are tiny portholes on the sides, just big enough for the barrel of an assault rifle to fit through. The portholes are presently being filled by the guns of Elite Squad members, who are firing haphazardly at the drug traffickers engaging them from the street.
Gunshots light up darkened doorways and windows. Two traffickers are perched on a rooftop across from you, but they’re too focused on the armored vehicle to notice you. A lone young man, maybe a teenager, wearing a tank top and shorts and carrying an AK-47 sprints across the road toward you and into the nearby alley.
“Want to catch that one? Ask him some questions? Or stay here?” Irma asks.
Decide quickly; he’s getting away.
• Grab the boy and question him.
• Stay where the action is.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Employees Only
“Okay, just give me your driver’s license and I’ll annotate it on the computer.”
You know you can’t do that, so your brain scrambles for a solution. “I…uh…that’s in the car too.”
“Are you new here? You don’t look familiar.”
“Yes! I’m totally new. Still figuring things out, making mistakes—like this one. Oh, you know, a typical new person and making mistakes. Yup, that’s me!”
His eyes narrow. “Okay, give me the name of your immediate supervisor and I’ll have him come out and vouch you in.”
“No, no. Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because…I don’t want to get in trouble.”
He picks up a handheld radio and keys in the transmitter.
“Wait!” you shout. “The truth is….”
He stops, looking to you, waiting for your explanation.
• “I don’t actually work here… but I met somebody who does at a club last night. Can I give you $100 to leave a note on the car for me?”
• “My friends dared me to see if I could sneak in. We’re here on spring break, sorry. I’ll leave now….” Time to steal a motorcycle and force my way in!
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Endangered
You blast into the sugarcane just as the swaying grasses touch the barrel of your shotgun. The intruders scream out in animal screeches—literal animal screeches. A golden lion tamarin, a small jungle monkey with bright orange-red fur, and your would-be intruder, is instantly killed by the barrage of lead pellets. His family screams in fear and outrage.
“Jesus, Hotshot, cool the jets,” Bertram says.
“They run from the fire,” Maria explains. “Animals like this are endangered because over 85 percent of their forests have been destroyed.”
You swallow, lower your shotgun, and take a deep breath. Then a new disturbance rushes through the sugarcane; this one is a much larger primate. Agent Bertram and Maria turn to face the new threat.
You pump your shotgun to load a new shell into the breach, but before you can decide whether or not to blind-fire again, the sugarcane erupts in gunshots. Your thigh explodes with stinging pain; you’ve been shot. Bertram and Maria fire into the darkness as you fall to the ground.
With a groan, Bertram falls to the earth next to you, motionless. Maria blasts round after round from her revolvers, until both of them suddenly click empty.
Now the grileiros arrive—more than a dozen of them—their hunting party has homed in on your shotgun blast. You can’t be sure how many of them were shot and killed in the confrontation, but as they arrive to finish the job, you can be sure how many in your party died. Three.
THE END
Energetic
“If you go to the Energy Summit, you go as a private citizen, not as part of the US investiga
tion team,” Danly says, his voice stern.
“I know that.”
“As in—you go there because you like science, and not because you’re looking for a killer. Got it?”
“Yeah, I said I got it.”
“You’ll still have to walk through Carnaval to get there,” Bertram says. “All the main roads are open to foot-traffic only. If I had to bet, you’ll spend ten minutes at the conference, get bored, and then go party.”
“Maybe. I’ll take that chance.”
Bertram grins. “One more piece of advice. If you’re out there dancing samba and some sexy stranger wants to take you somewhere private, remember this: If it has an apple up above, it has a banana down below.”
“Ummm, wow. Thanks…”
“Just go. Try to have fun,” Danly sighs.
* * *
Bertram was right: it’s a madhouse out here. Like Mardi Gras and Halloween rolled into a public party at the Playboy mansion, Rio during Carnaval is like no other place on earth. And the freak-flags fly like the color guard of an invading army.
Many of the revelers look as if they go to the gym all year just so they can show off their toned and sculpted bodies for these five days. Those who were born with more than their share of confidence now show it off in abundance.
The route is slow-going, but you’re in no rush. It’s the perfect opportunity to take in the scenery with your digital camera. You snap a picture of twenty people in green, scaled body paint as they snake through the crowd in a conga line meant to embody the visage of an anaconda.
The crowd makes way for the massive serpentine dance party, and you walk in their wake, traversing the crowd faster than you could snaking your way on your own through the multitudes. Eventually, you make it to the mega-conference grounds of the Energy Summit.
Once inside, you’re greeted with a security line reminiscent of LAX or JFK. People are slowly shepherded through and you join this much-less-jovial conga line to wait your turn.
MURDERED: Can YOU Solve the Mystery? (Click Your Poison Book 2) Page 10
