A Vine in the Blood

by Leighton Gage

  Gonçalves had the feeling that he’d been judged and found wanting. Instead of saying I know, his customary response to someone telling him he didn’t look his age, he said, “What difference does it make?”

  “After thirty-five,” Marques said, “the camera becomes a hard mistress. She’s crueler to women than to men, but still …”

  “I’m not here for a modeling job, Senhor Marques.”

  Marques smiled an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” he said. “Of course you’re not. But when a fine-looking young man like you walks in here, my professional instincts kicked in. You’re not at all what I expected.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Some grizzled veteran, I suppose. You know how it is. When your secretary says you have a visitor from the Federal Police …”

  “I’ve don’t have a secretary, Senhor Marques, so I really wouldn’t know.”

  “No. No, of course not. But tell me honestly, Agent Gonçalves, have you never considered a career in modeling?”

  “Never.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Perhaps you should have. Not now, but certainly when you were younger. Even now, you must still be quite a hit with the girls, or the boys, if your preference goes in that direction.”

  “Girls.”

  “I’ll bet you have to beat them off with a stick.”

  “Well … not really.”

  “No need to be modest. I’m an expert on these things. Coffee?”

  “No, thank you. I had one just before I arrived.”

  “Then what can I do for you, Agent Gonçalves?”

  “You can talk to me about your client, Cintia Tadesco.”

  “Ex-client,” Marques said, the smile vanishing from his face. He looked like he’d just taken a mouthful of something sour.

  “A recent development?”

  “We parted ways a month ago.”

  “Amicably?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Two of my colleagues met her yesterday. They found her … difficult. Would you concur with that assessment?”

  Marques leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his grey waistcoat.

  “In my line of work, Agent Gonçalves, difficult goes with the territory. I often take on demure young beauties and mild-mannered young Adonises only to see them evolve into raging egomaniacs. It happens all the time and no longer surprises me.”

  “But, with Cintia Tadesco, you got something that did surprise you?”

  The agent stuck out his jaw, as if Gonçalves had questioned his judgment.

  “I’m good at reading character. Ask anyone. But for her, purely out of spite, to kill a goose that was laying golden eggs?

  Well, that, I confess, I never expected.”

  “The goose being?”

  Marques’s belligerent attitude vanished in the wink of an eye. He broke into a sheepish grin.

  “The goose being me, I suppose.”

  His self-deprecation showed another facet of the man; Gonçalves began to like him.

  “It’s this way,” Marques said. “I don’t expect my clients to become intimate friends, but I do expect a modicum of loyalty.”

  “And you didn’t get it from Cintia?”

  “No, Agent Gonçalves, I didn’t. Do you read Fofocas?”

  “I’ve seen it around.”

  “It’s trash, and it’s full of lies, but I find it a useful tool. I’m only asking because there was a recent article about Cintia’s new agent and his stable of clients. All of those clients, until last month, were clients of mine. Cintia was quoted as saying I’d been a good agent once, now become but an aged shadow of my former self. She went on to state that anyone truly concerned about their career shouldn’t consider employing me.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Ouch, indeed.”

  “Do you think she believed what she was saying?”

  “I do not.”

  “Why, then, would she do it?”

  “I have a supposition.”

  “Nothing concrete?”

  “No. Simply a supposition.”

  “Something to do with money?”

  “Money?” Marques scoffed. “No, Agent Gonçalves. Nothing at all to do with money. Cintia is greedy. She loves money. She can never get enough of it. But, as far as our relationship is concerned, it’s no longer a factor. She has achieved what physicists call critical mass. She’s hot and getting hotter. She no longer needs external impetus to fuel her growth. Despite her disagreeable personality, Cintia is getting more offers of work than she can possibly accept. Money she could make with me or with any other agent. Money wouldn’t be a motive for her to switch.”

  “What then?”

  “I could be wrong, but I suspect a romantic liaison with her new agent.”

  “If that’s so,” Gonçalves said, “she’s being discrete about it.”

  Marques smiled. “You’ve been talking to Caio Prado.”

  “How did you know?”

  “After that damned article appeared in Fofocas, the Artist’s mother came to see me. By that time, it was apparent there was no love lost between me and her potential future daughter-in-law. Juraci wanted to know if I had any dirt to dish, told me she’d hired a detective, told me it was Prado. Not a bad choice, by the way.”

  “He doesn’t make much of an impression.”

  “That’s one of his strengths. People don’t notice him; he fits in anywhere; he’s never perceived as a threat. Prado is a sly old fox. Lots of people in the entertainment industry use him, and he knows a good deal about it. Juraci could afford the best. In Prado, she got it.”

  “So you told Juraci your supposition about this new agent of Cintia’s?”

  “Actually, I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I was still in a state of shock, still trying to understand why Cintia did what she did. Since then, I’ve given it a great deal of thought. Frankly, I can’t come up with any other explanation.”

  “Who is this guy?” Gonçalves asked. “This new agent of hers?”

  “A young man by the name of Tarso Mello. Actually, his name isn’t Mello, or even Tarso, but it’s the one he goes by, a stage name, one that was chosen for him.”

  “What’s the name he was baptized under?”

  Marques scratched his head. “I’m not sure he was baptized. I think he’s Jewish, but that’s beside the point. He never uses his original name. Tarso Mello is the only name you’ll need to locate him.”

  Gonçalves made a note of it and said, “Okay, go on.”

  “He was an actor once, a bad one, but he was extraordinarily good-looking when he was younger, and he had a reasonably good run as a photo model. But then, when he started pushing thirty-five …” Marques held out two hands palms upward.

  “His bookings started to dry up?”

  “Indeed they did, and he was without a single prospect of a role in television or cinema, so he started casting about for another career.”

  “And that’s when Cintia and Mello started a relationship?”

  Marques nodded.

  “That’s not a fact, mind you,” he said, “only an assumption. All I can tell you with certainty is that Cintia came to me and asked me to take him on as an assistant. I said I didn’t need an assistant. What I didn’t tell her was that, even if I had needed an assistant, I would never have considered Mello. To be a good agent you have to have a modicum of sensitivity, and you have to be intelligent. Mello has no sensitivity at all, and he’s astoundingly stupid.”

  “Cintia took it badly? Your refusal to hire Mello?”

  “She got nasty, as she always does whenever she doesn’t get her way. But I stood firm. I thought, and I continue to think, that Mello would do me more harm if I accepted him than if I rejected him, even if Cintia did get her nose out of joint.”

  “Even if you lost her as a client?”

  “That aspect of it didn’t enter into my deliberations. I thoug
ht the storm would blow over.”

  “Had you known then what you know now, would you have acted differently?”

  “I would have acted in exactly the same way. My days have been less lucrative since Cintia left, but they’ve been far more peaceful. At this stage in my life, peace is of more value than money.”

  “From everything I’ve heard of the woman, I can understand why you’re happy to be rid of her. But I detect a certain inconsistency.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re telling me she switched her business for emotional reasons. That doesn’t sound like the Cintia Tadesco I’m learning about. From everything I’ve heard, she’s nothing if not calculating. She doesn’t let emotion get in the way of her goals.”

  Marques leaned back in his chair. “We humans are complex creatures, Agent Gonçalves. We’re hardly ever one hundred percent this or that. Cintia Tadesco may be largely a calculating bitch, but she’s still capable of an emotional act. In this case,” he said, “I think she’s committed two of them. I think she did what she did to favor Mello—but also to spite me.”

  “To spite you? Simply because you wouldn’t give her what she wanted?”

  Mello nodded, and a lock of mane tumbled in front his eye. He lifted a hand and brushed it aside. “When Cintia Tadesco doesn’t get what she wants, she reacts like the spoiled child she is. She’s extraordinarily impulsive. I’ve seen her turn on people in a heartbeat. One moment she loves you, and the next she’s ready to destroy you. It happened to me. In time, it will happen to Mello.”

  “Convinced of that, are you?”

  “I am. And for Mello it will be worse than it was for me. She brought him all of his clients. When she takes them away, it will destroy him.”

  “Could she do that?”

  “Of course she could.”

  “Doesn’t he have them under contract?”

  “Big clients, Agent Gonçalves, the ones that really matter, resent signing contracts. It makes them feel constricted. They want to be free, at the drop of a hat, to distribute their largesse to whomever they wish.”

  “Do you continue to manage Marco Franco, Cintia’s former boyfriend?”

  “I do. Not that it’s doing either one of us any good. He’s quite unemployable at the moment.”

  “Took it hard, did he?”

  “Terribly hard. And with good reason. She hurt the poor bastard in just about every way she could hurt him. He not only gave her his heart, he also gave her a BMW, one of the big ones, and a house. She kept the car and the house, stabbed him in the heart and went on to torpedo his reputation.”

  “I think I know the answer to this, but let me ask you anyway.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why is Cintia Tadesco hanging around with the Artist? Do you think she loves him?”

  “Certainly not. She’s with him for what he can do for her, and for what she can take from him.”

  “Do you think she might be involved in this kidnapping business?”

  “I think not.”

  “Why?”

  “Why would she be? She can get everything she wants from the Artist without involving herself in a crime.”

  “Just bear with me for a minute. Suppose Juraci had the goods on her. Suppose she could prove that Cintia was betraying Tico, and she was planning to go to him with the information.”

  “Then you’d have to assume that Cintia knew ahead of time that Juraci was going to do it.”

  “Okay, assume that as well.”

  Marques reflected for a moment. “Perhaps. But …”

  “But what?”

  “But I hope, for the Artist’s sake, that Cintia Tadesco had nothing to do with the disappearance of his mother.”

  “You hope? Why?”

  “Because, if Cintia is involved, I’d virtually assure you that we’re not going to see Senhora Santos again in this life. And that’s the truth.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I’M GONNA NEED YOUR guns,” Captain Miranda’s chief bodyguard said. “Nobody who’s carrying gets in to see the boss.”

  Silva and Arnaldo were in an anteroom accessible only through two steel doors. One led to the elevator, the other to Miranda’s inner office. The bodyguard was a tall black man wearing a single gold earring and a blue pinstripe suit of impeccable cut. His number two was a thug with a low forehead, nowhere near as well dressed, and missing an ear.

  Arnaldo and Silva surrendered their pistols.

  “And now,” the black man said, “my partner here is going to frisk you.”

  “We’re federal cops, for Christ’s sake,” Arnaldo said. “You saw our goddamned IDs.”

  “If you are who you say you are, then you know how easy it is to fake IDs. The rule is I gotta frisk you. You don’t want to submit to it, that’s okay. But then you leave without seeing the boss.”

  Arnaldo turned to Silva. “I think he’s outsmarted us. This calls for a change in plan.”

  “What plan is that?” the black man said.

  “We were gonna walk in here, shoot your boss and go to lunch.”

  The black man smiled. “Never gonna happen,” he said. “Not on my watch. Put your hands on the wall and assume the position.”

  “Been with him long?” Silva asked as the guy without an ear frisked him.

  “Eleven years,” the black man said.

  “Good job?”

  “Boring. The boss hardly ever sends me out to kill people any more.”

  “I can understand how you’d miss it,” Arnaldo said. “Why not do it in your spare time? Kind of like a hobby?”

  “I only do it for money.”

  “Like your mother?”

  The hands playing over Silva’s body stopped moving. They remained on his left leg, motionless, during a long silence—and only finished the act of frisking him when the black man started speaking again.

  “You calling my mother a whore?” he said.

  There was no change in the inflection of his voice. But, somehow, Silva knew he was furious.

  “I thought we were talking about killing,” Arnaldo said, a hint of satisfaction creeping into his voice. Obviously, he’d sensed the same thing Silva had. “But, come to think of it, there used to be a black slut working the Rua Aurora who looked just like—”

  “Can be really fucking dangerous telling jokes like that. Could be you need a tour of the collection.”

  “Collection?”

  The bodyguard inclined his head toward a glass-fronted cabinet butted up against one wall.

  The thug who’d been doing the frisking stepped back and said, “Clean.”

  Arnaldo strolled over to the cabinet. The black man came to stand beside him.

  Beyond the glass, and distributed over three shelves, were several dozen instruments of torture.

  “Some of this stuff is almost five hundred years old, was used during the Inquisition.” The black man pointed. “See those pincers? How they’re blackened at the tips? That’s because they used to heat them up red hot before they used them. That thing over there? It’s called a thumbscrew. Supposed to hurt like hell, but I wouldn’t know, would I? Me and Luis, we never use any of this stuff, do we Luis?”

  Luis gave an appreciative chuckle. Their little joke.

  “Some of the people I show this stuff to,” the black man said, “get really scared.”

  “Which ones do you use on people who tell bad jokes?” Arnaldo said.

  “Like you?”

  “I never told a bad joke in my life,” Arnaldo said. “You must have a lousy sense of humor.”

  “Wrong,” the black man said. “I got a great sense of humor. Sometime, maybe, I’ll get a chance to show you a few things I think are funny.”

  The exchange of pleasantries was cut short by a voice emanating from a speaker in the ceiling.

  “When you two comedians are finished with your act,” the voice said, “maybe the lot of you might like to step in here.”

  There was a click, and the d
oor to the inner sanctum opened. It turned out to be a square room, not particularly large, with no windows and only the single door.

  Miranda got up to greet them. He was a handsome man in a pink short-sleeved shirt. “You guys want coffee?” he asked.

  “No,” Silva said.

  He despised people like Miranda. He didn’t want anything from the man except information. The bicheiro seemed to sense Silva’s hostility.

  “Sit,” Miranda said, managing to make it sound like he was giving orders to a dog.

  “How about if your two colleagues here go and stand where we can see them,” Silva said. “I don’t like them breathing down my neck.”

  “Do it,” Miranda said. And they did, taking positions behind him, leaning against the wall.

  Silva took his time sinking into one of the two chairs Miranda used for guests. Arnaldo waited a beat and followed suit.

  Last of all, Miranda reassumed his seat.

  “So what do you want?” he said.

  “What can you tell us,” Silva said, “about the kidnapping of the Artist’s mother?”

  Miranda’s voice took on an edge. “I can tell you that it was a fucking unpatriotic thing to do, and if the bastards who did it fall into my hands, I’ll have Gaspar here string them up by the balls.”

  Arnaldo looked at Gaspar. The black man was smiling at him.

  “That your name? Gaspar?”

  “That’s my name,” he said. “And stringing people up by the balls is one of the things I think is funny. Hard to do, though, to people as fat as you are, on account of the fact that their scrotums rip right out.”

  “You know what?” Arnaldo said. “If you were doing the ball-stringing to one of the guys who snatched the Artist’s mother, I’d stand by and let you do it. I wouldn’t even take out my handcuffs until you were finished.”

  “First sensible thing you said since you came in here,” the black man said. “Now you know my name. What’s yours?”

  “Arnaldo Nunes.”

  “Huh,” Gaspar said, as if he was storing the name away for future reference.

  “I hate to break up this little love fest,” Miranda said, “but I’m busy. Is that all you came for? Just to ask me that question?”

  “Not just for that,” Silva said.