Alphaville, a series of upper-middle-class residential communities spanning two municipalities, was some twenty kilometers outside the city of São Paulo.
“The guy I sent was Manoel Dias,” Prado said. “Old Dias isn’t the brightest bulb in my chandelier. Matter of fact, he’s downright lousy at clearing cases. I don’t even let him ask questions any more. They’re always the wrong questions, and he never gets any useful answers.”
“So why do you keep him on?”
“Because Dias has one thing he does better than anyone else: he’s everybody’s favorite grandfather, a master at breaking bad news. And in this town, I’ve got a lot of bad news to break.”
Just then, Prado’s cell phone rang. He held up a palm, put his hand over the microphone, and mouthed the word “Dias.”
He uh-huhed his man three or four times, then said, “Check with the guys at the gate on your way out. They’ll have records. If she left during the night, call me. I want to talk to her personally. Tell her she can expect a visit in about an hour.”
He flipped his phone closed and said to Silva, “Dias. Calling from Mansur’s house. I’m going out there.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Dias is prepared for the usual tears and hysteria. He puts one hand on the package of paper handkerchiefs he keeps in his pocket, keeps the other hand ready to break her fall in case she faints. Then he hits her with the news. She looks at him for a couple of seconds and then, instead of turning on the waterworks, all she says is, ‘Where did they find the bastard?’”
“Hard,” Silva said.
“Harder, even, than my mother-in-law,” Prado agreed. “Want to come along?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WHERE THE WAITRESS FROM the windmill had told them to expect a road, they found a rutted track, half-hidden behind a stand of bamboo.
“You think?” Arnaldo said.
“Take it,” Samantha said. “We can always come back.”
They bounced along through potholes, coating the car with red dust. Farther on, a sprinkler system was irrigating green shoots. Drops peppered the windshield. Arnaldo switched on the wipers and caught his first glimpse of the house through streaks of red mud.
No faux-Dutch architecture here. The place looked like most other farmhouses in the state, whitewashed walls surmounted by a roof of red tiles. The windows and doors were trimmed in blue.
Arnaldo parked between a tractor and a dusty pickup truck.
“Somebody’s coming,” Samantha said.
Arnaldo turned his head and saw a man emerging from a little outbuilding. He was tall, in his late fifties or maybe early sixties. When he saw them looking toward him, he doffed his broad-brimmed hat in a curiously old-fashioned gesture. His smile of welcome showed good teeth.
Samantha rolled down the window.
“We’re looking for Hans Kloppers,” she said.
“That’s me.” Kloppers clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Like to have a cup of coffee before we get started?”
“We’re not the people you think we are,” Samantha said.
The smile faded.
“You’re not the brokers from São Paulo?”
“Federal Police,” Arnaldo said, taking charge. “I’m Agent Nunes. I spoke to you on the phone. This is Delegada Assad, who is going to leave all the questions to me.”
Samantha glared at him. Kloppers simply looked glum.
“What do you want?” he said.
“For starters,” Arnaldo said, “I want that cup of coffee you just offered.”
“Follow me,” Kloppers said, no longer making an effort to be cordial.
Inside, he called out something in Dutch. A woman answered and fluttered into the living room. She looked at Arnaldo and Samantha with big eyes.
“My wife,” Hans said. “Greetje.” And to her he said, “They’ll have coffee.”
Arnaldo was struck by the multitude of family photos. They were on the piano, on the television set, on both of the bookshelves, on the end tables flanking the couch, on the walls; they were everywhere.
“Why are you here?” Kloppers said.
Apparently, they’d come to the end of the social chitchat.
“Let’s wait for the coffee—and your wife.”
Silence fell, punctuated only by the regular ticking of a mantelpiece clock. Liars, Arnaldo had often observed, became uncomfortable with silence. Over the course of the next few minutes, Kloppers didn’t stop fidgeting, cleared his throat at least five times, and assiduously avoided Arnaldo’s eyes.
Greetje Kloppers came back with a tray and served them very decent coffee, the rich odor of which filled the room. Arnaldo took an appreciative sip and zeroed in on one photo in particular.
“Nice-looking boy,” he said. “Is that him? Is that Jan?”
“Yes,” Kloppers said, and swallowed. “Yes, that’s our grandson.”
“Uh-huh,” Arnaldo said. “And that’s another picture of him. And so’s that one over there. The man with his hand on Jan’s shoulder, that’s your son, Marnix?”
“Marnix, yes.”
“And there, and there, and there too.”
Kloppers let Arnaldo’s words hang in the air. The silence continued until Greetje broke it.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’ve errands to run.” She stood up. “You don’t need me. Hans can answer for us both.”
Samantha started shaking her head from side to side.
“Nice to have met you, Senhora Kloppers,” Arnaldo said. “Have a good day.”
Greetje picked up a purse from a side table and left the room.
Arnaldo waited for an exasperated snort from Samantha, reveled in it, and turned back to Hans. This time, he put an edge in his voice. “How stupid do you think I am, Senhor Kloppers? Do you expect me to believe that a man who has as many pictures of his son, and grandson, as you do has no idea of their whereabouts?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Like hell it is! Where are they?”
“I told you. I told you on the telephone. They went to the United States.”
“You know what you’re doing, Senhor Kloppers? You’re obstructing justice. There are penalties for obstructing justice.”
“I’m not—”
“How about you take me on a tour of the house?”
“What?” Kloppers gaped like a fish.
“A tour. Of your house. I want to have a look in the bedrooms.”
“No.”
“Why not? You have something to hide?”
“No. I simply don’t want you poking around my home.
Now I think it’s time for you to leave.”
He stood up and pointed at the front door.
Arnaldo, without a search warrant, had no other choice but to stand up and walk through it.
“WHAT NOW, wiseass?” Samantha said when they were off the rutted dirt track and back onto the tarmac.
“I’m thinking,” Arnaldo said.
“Thinking? Is that what you call it? Don’t make me laugh. Hey, goddamn it, what are you doing?”
Arnaldo had stepped heavily on the brakes. Now he was pulling onto the shoulder of the road.
“Look at that,” he said as they came to a stop.
“Kids kicking a ball around,” Samantha said. “So what?”
“Towns of this size, how many teams have they got? My guess is one. Those kids are all about Jan’s age. Go and talk to them.”
Samantha stood on the sidelines for a while, long enough for them to get used to her, and then sidled over to the bench. A minute later, she was talking to one of the kids, a boy of nine, maybe ten, with red hair and freckles. At a given point, he turned around and pointed.
A minute after that, Samantha was back at the car.
“Drive,” she said. She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “I’ll tell you where to turn.”
“Jackpot?”
“Those are the Holambra Juniors, and Jan Kloppers is t
heir best striker. Five minutes ago, the kid was there, kicking ass, and his father was watching him do it. Then his grandmother, the old biddy you allowed to leave the house, drove up. They called the kid in from the field and took off, all three of them. You screwed up, Nunes. You should never have let her out the door.”
“If I—”
“Shut up. I’m talking. Fortunately for us, Greetje made a mistake. She told Jan she was taking him to his aunt’s place, and then let him say a quick good-bye to his friends.”
“And he told them where he was going?”
“Exactly.”
“And one of them told you how to find the place.”
“Uh-huh. And now that we’re no longer talking to the old folks, my orders from Hector no longer apply. I’m gonna take the lead. So kindly keep your mouth shut when we get there.”
“You’re a vengeful person, Samantha, a vengeful person. Maybe that’s why the other girls in the office don’t like you.”
“They’re not girls, they’re women, and I couldn’t care less about whether they like me or not. I can’t wait to get back to São Paulo and tell everybody how you screwed up.”
“See what I mean?” Arnaldo said. “Vengeful.”
Arnaldo caught sight of it first: the same dusty pickup they’d seen at the Kloppers’ house.
“There,” he said.
The truck was nosed up to the garage of a modern villa. He pulled into the driveway behind it.
They tried the doorbell. There was no response.
“Knock,” she said.
“They heard us. They’re just not coming to the door.”
“Knock anyway.”
He did. There was still no response.
Samantha opened her shoulder bag, produced a Glock, and took a stance to the right of the door.
“Break it down,” she said.
“What?”
“You got a hearing problem, Nunes? I said break down the goddamned door. Then get out of my way.”
Arnaldo shook his head and sighed. Then, leaning into the door and raising his voice, he said, “Listen to me, Kloppers. We need to talk, and we know you’re in there. You want to get your mom and dad in trouble? If you do, just keep on doing what you’re doing.”
Samantha put her mouth next to his ear and hissed: “Are you out of your mind? You think a guy who’s going to all this trouble to avoid us cares about—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Come on, Kloppers,” he said, “play it smart. I’m not kidding. If you don’t open this door right now, I’m gonna have your parents up on a charge of obstruction of justice. Is that what you want? Huh?”
Samantha pursed her lips and shook her head.
And Marnix Kloppers opened the door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
MAGDA MANSUR LIVED IN Alphaville Nineteen. Like the other twenty Alphavilles, Nineteen was surrounded by a high wall surmounted by fragments of broken glass. The glass was anchored in concrete and crowned by electrified razor wire. Situated to either side of a low brick guardhouse were two gates. The one on the right was for visitors.
When Prado rolled his van to a stop, a guard with a revolver on his hip approached the vehicle. “Here to see Magda Mansur,” Prado said.
The guard nodded.
“Police, right?”
“Right.”
“She’s expecting you. Still gonna have to see some ID.”
Everyone reached for their credentials. The guard went through them, making notes on a clipboard as he went.
When he was done, he lifted his arm and signaled to another guard behind the bulletproof glass. That one picked up a telephone. Seconds later, the gate in front of them was opening and a security car was rolling up to lead them to the Mansur home.
“Seems pretty tight,” Hector said.
“Believe me,” Prado said, letting out the brake and putting the van in gear, “they pay for it.”
The gate closed behind them and they started rolling through the streets of the community. The security car kept the speed down to a little less than twenty-five kilometers an hour. Even without the car, they wouldn’t have been able to go much faster: there was a speed bump every fifty meters or so.
“Once you’re in here,” Prado said, “you’re safe. The problem is getting here. The bad guys cover the approach roads like old-time highwaymen, put out sharp stuff to perforate tires and make people stop. And that’s just one of their ploys. Another one is they dress whores in designer clothing, make ’em look like housewives, put ’em next to a car with a flat tire, and then—ah, this is it.”
A hand protruding from the security vehicle was pointing at a red brick house set between two tall palms. Prado pulled into the driveway. The rent-a-cops made a U-turn and drove off.
Senhora Mansur was an attractive woman in her mid-to-late thirties, casually dressed. Pale blue jeans were topped by a baggy sweater. Her hair was drawn back in a severe bun, making a no-nonsense impression. She did not appear to be in any way devastated by her husband’s death. Once they were all seated inside, Prado kicked off the interrogation.
“I apologize, Senhora, for intruding on you at a time like this.”
It was a formula. Every one of the cops present had said it to a bereaved person at one time or another. Silva had probably said it over a hundred times. But he’d never gotten a response like the one Magda gave Prado.
“No, Delegado, I’m the one who should apologize. I’m afraid I shocked that nice man you sent. Tell me, do you think I murdered my husband?”
Silva found her forthrightness refreshing.
“It did cross our minds,” he said, making a bid to take over the interview. Prado sat back in his chair, a sign that he had no objection.
“Of course it did,” she said.
“And did you?” Silva asked.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I thought about it often enough.”
Silva had come prepared to dislike the woman. Instead, he found himself warming to her.
“So you’re not terribly displeased that someone else did it for you?” he said.
“I should have left him years ago. If he was still beating me, I would have. But after I walloped him with one of his golf clubs, a seven iron as I recall, he stopped. We have no children. I’ve got money of my own. So why did I stay with him?”
“Indeed. Why did you?”
“I’d become little more than an object to Luis, something he owned, like a car or a house.” She leaned forward, folded her hands and put her elbows on her knees. Evidently, it was important to her that Silva fully understand what was coming next. “But he didn’t abuse me any more. He paid the bills. He wasn’t jealous. He let me do the things I wanted to do. He was almost never home, and the time he did spend at home he mostly spent sleeping. When I’d tell the women around here that I was considering leaving him, they’d look at me like I was insane.”
“They didn’t think it was important that you no longer loved him? Or that he no longer loved you?”
She smiled and leaned back in her chair. “You don’t know my neighbors, Chief Inspector. Most of the people who live in Alphaville, men and women alike, have another perspective. For them, earning money isn’t a necessity of life, it’s the purpose of life. Love doesn’t enter the equation. The husbands, by and large, are workaholics, and the wives are work widows. They see each other on weekends and not always then. Mind you, I’m not saying all the men are like Luis. They could be loyal husbands, for all I know.”
“Luis had other women? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes, Chief Inspector, Luis had other women. Luis chased skirts like dogs chase cats. He couldn’t help himself.”
“You weren’t jealous?”
“You’ve got to feel attraction, or love, or … something to be jealous. What I felt for Luis was disgust. It’s viscerally repulsive to have your husband come home smelling of another woman’s perfume, smelling of sex. He could at least have had the decency to take a b
ath before he got here. But he never did. He wasn’t a decent man.”
“You were … estranged?”
“I suppose that’s a delicate way of asking me whether I was still sleeping with him. The answer is no. I have my own bedroom now, and I lock the door at night. But he didn’t start whoring around because I’d stopped sleeping with him; I stopped sleeping with him because he was whoring around. And I didn’t want to catch anything worse than the dose of gonorrhea he gave me once.”
“Did he ever mention any of his women by name?”
“He denied they existed. When I was diagnosed, he said I must have picked it up from a seat in a public toilet. I told him it didn’t work like that. So he got his cousin, a medical doctor, to call me up and assure me it was common. I believed him for a while. That was back when I cared, and I wanted to believe it. Now, Chief Inspector, can I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why would a prostitute want to kill him?”
“You’ve been frank with us, Senhora Mansur—”
“Magda.”
“Magda. So I’ll be frank with you. There is a possibility that the person he brought to that motel room murdered him; but that person wasn’t a woman.”
“A man? I don’t believe it. Luis was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a homosexual.”
“The person was a transvestite. By all accounts, your husband was drunk. He took her for a woman.”
A smile creased her face, but she immediately repressed it.
“What a surprise for Luis,” she said.
“Do you think your husband would have reacted violently?”
“It’s hard to say. He had a fear of ridicule. He wouldn’t have wanted to make a scene.”
“But if they were alone in a motel room? Just the two of them?”
“Provided the transvestite was considerably smaller and weaker, Luis would have beaten the crap out of him. The operative words, Chief Inspector, are smaller and weaker. My late husband was a coward.”
“There is another possibility,” Silva said. “If you’ll bear with me for a moment, I’d like to tell you about it.”
“By all means. Please, go ahead.”
“Over the last several weeks, there have been other murders, all committed in essentially the same way. The victims were first shot and then beaten to death. The same weapons, as far as we can determine, were used in all cases. Yesterday, I called your husband. I told him about the other killings, and I warned him that he might be in danger.”
Every Bitter Thing Page 17
