Every Bitter Thing

by Leighton Gage

  Hector and Gonçalves held theirs over their heads, slowly rotating their wrists so people pressing around them could have a look.

  Two tough-looking guys appeared from nowhere and pushed their way to the front of the crowd. One of them, an oaf with a short forehead and a single gold earring, waved at Silva as if they were old friends.

  “I know this guy,” he said, lifting his voice so the crowd could hear. “He is what he says he is, and I don’t want any trouble with him. Anybody who doesn’t back off is going to have trouble with me.”

  The brunette put her pistol away, took a few steps backward, turned, and ran. Prostitution isn’t a crime in Brazil. Being a transvestite isn’t a crime either. But carrying a concealed weapon without a permit is.

  Silva nodded his thanks to the thug with the earring and got a nod in return. Then he put his Glock away and got back behind the wheel.

  Eudoxia’s identity card identified her as Alvaro Moura, twenty-seven years old, male, one meter sixty-two in height, seventy-seven kilos, black hair, brown eyes, and a native of Caxias, a town in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

  He was still one meter sixty-two, but he’d adopted a Carioca accent, looked a good deal older than twenty-seven, had put on weight since he’d gotten his card, and was using green contact lenses. Under the platinum wig, his hair had been tinted to a dirty blond.

  He was high on adrenaline and crack, so before interrogating him, they put him under a cold shower and plied him with coffee.

  When Moura finally started talking, he was well-spoken and seemed to have total recall of the events. He’d been standing in front of the Jockey, he said, for quite a while when he’d spotted Mansur.

  “That was his name, huh? Luis Mansur? Told me he was Raul Chiesa, but, hell, who am I to talk, right? Far as I’m concerned, anybody can call themselves anything they want. What’s in a name, anyway?”

  “A rose by any other….” Arnaldo said.

  “What?”

  “Ignore him,” Silva said. “The rest of us do.”

  “Hey!” Arnaldo said.

  Silva kept his eyes on Moura. “How long were you out there trolling before he picked you up?” he said.

  “More than an hour. And I had to piss like a stallion. That’s the first thing I did when I got to the motel. Good thing he wasn’t one of those guys who gets his jollies from watching girls peeing. I couldn’t have stopped him. He was much bigger than me, and the bathroom door was flimsy.”

  “He still thought you were a woman at this point?”

  “Must have.”

  “Why ‘must have’?”

  “The way he was talking dirty while we were in the car. It was sorta … explicit. And I kept thinking brother, have I got a surprise for you.”

  “So you went into the bathroom, and….”

  “And I was sitting on the toilet when I heard knocking on the door. Not the bathroom door, the door we’d both come in by. I figured it had to be that asshole from the gate, the one who was with you when you picked me up, figured there might be something wrong with the john’s credit card or something. Anyway, I’d already flushed and was turning around to wash my hands when I heard him open the door. Not the bathroom door, the one to the room.”

  “‘Him’ being your customer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then?”

  “And then there was a sound.”

  “What kind of a sound?”

  “Hard to describe.”

  “Try.”

  “Sort of halfway between a pop and a spit.”

  Silva took that to be a silenced pistol.

  “And then,” Moura said, “the john, what’s his name again?”

  “Mansur.”

  “Mansur starts to scream, but he doesn’t finish it because it’s cut off by this other noise.”

  “What kind of a noise?”

  “Like a crunch, but squishier. Maybe like a hard splat.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I bent over and looked through the keyhole.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing. I couldn’t see Mansur, and I couldn’t see the person who’d come in. But by that time, I was convinced that someone was beating him.”

  “Why? Why were you convinced?”

  “The sounds. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Like that. They went on and on.”

  “No voices?”

  “The john screamed a couple of times, begged whoever was doing it to stop.”

  “And before that?”

  “He said something when he first opened the door, and the person outside said something back, but I couldn’t hear what it was.”

  “Can you remember Mansur’s words?”

  “He said, ‘What the fuck is it?’ or something like that. He wasn’t at all polite.”

  “How about the voice of the person who knocked on the door. Any accent? Any speech defect?”

  “I told you. I couldn’t hear him.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I got the hell out of there, that’s what! I grabbed my shoes and purse, climbed through the bathroom window, jumped the wall in back, ran down to the road, and hightailed it back to town.”

  “How? How did you get back to town?”

  “Stuck my leg out and my thumb in the air and hitchhiked. The guy who picked me up was interested in a program, but my head was all fucked up by what had happened. I gave him a quick blow job, and he dropped me where I could get a taxi.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “Me? Call the police? Just because somebody got beat up? Get real.”

  “When did you find out Mansur was dead?”

  “When I got up this afternoon. I saw it on the news.”

  “And you still elected not to come forward?”

  Moura squirmed in his chair.

  “No,” he said. “You got it all wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “A beating is one thing. Murder? That’s like, like really serious. I was going to do it. I was going to talk to the cops first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure you were,” Silva said.

  “You don’t have to take that tone with me, Chief Inspector. I’m not a criminal. You may disapprove of my lifestyle, but what I do isn’t illegal, and I’d never, ever hurt anyone.”

  Moura was indignant, and if he wasn’t sincere, he was a damned good actor.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  WHEN THE VIDEO DISC arrived from Miami, Gonçalves was at Guarulhos airport waiting for it. It was almost two in the morning by then, but Mainardi and Caetano were there, too, working the midnight to eight shift. By two thirty, they were all huddled in front of a television screen.

  “Nope,” Mainardi said, after the first group of passengers filed by the camera.

  “I backed it up to the previous flight,” Gonçalves said. A new group of travelers started passing in review. “This is it. Pay attention.”

  Half a minute later, Mainardi sat bolt upright in his chair.

  Gonçalves reacted by freezing the image.

  Caetano put his finger on the screen, pointing out a man with a brown birthmark on his cheek. “Motta,” he said.

  The image was sharp and clear, ideal for lifting a photo. Gonçalves made a note of the timecode so he could locate it again with ease. “All right,” he said, “now let’s find the priest.”

  SILVA, ANXIOUS to see the video, got up at six in the morning. By seven, he was at the São Paulo field office, where a yawning Gonçalves was waiting for him.

  “You look like you could use some sleep.”

  “I’ll get my second wind any time now,” Gonçalves said.

  Silva believed it. Gonçalves, he knew, could spend an entire night clubbing and put in a full day thereafter.

  “Ah, youth,” he said.

  “Practice too,” Gonçalves said.

  Silva rubbed his hands in anticipation. “All right,” he said, “let’s get to it. Who’s first?”
>
  “Motta.”

  “Play it.”

  Gonçalves did, freezing the image as he’d done with the Customs agents.

  “I had time before you got in,” he said, “so I lifted the best frame. No hits on the database.”

  “Damn. You put it in circulation?”

  Gonçalves nodded. “Every border control point, every field office, and every delegacia.”

  “Good. Who’s next?”

  “The kid.” He unfroze the image. They watched in silence for a while, then: “There. That’s him.”

  “Doesn’t look nervous at all,” Silva said. “Why did they pick on him?”

  “One of them took a dislike to him,” Gonçalves said.

  “Just that? No good reason at all?”

  “No good reason at all.”

  Silva ran a hand through his hair. “Canalhas,” he said. “Where’s the priest?”

  “Coming up. I didn’t bother with the timecodes. All the business-class people boarded together. It’s just as fast to let it run.”

  They went through an eerie parade of the dead: Juan Rivas, Professor Paulo Cruz, Victor Neves, Jonas Palhares, Luis Mansur, and then….

  “Clancy,” Gonçalves said.

  The priest was a handsome man, young, with an open face, dressed entirely in black. A sweater was draped over his shoulders; a small valise was clutched in his right hand.

  “You give him the same treatment?” Silva asked.

  “Same treatment. The e-mails went out about two hours ago.”

  “Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” Silva said.

  THEY GOT lucky.

  The first call came in at three minutes past nine and by then Hector was there to take it. The call was from a delegado in Santo André, a satellite town southeast of the capital.

  “You one of the guys who’s looking for Abilio Sacca?”

  “Who?” Hector said.

  “You got him tagged as Darcy Motta, but that’s wrong. His name is Abilio Sacca. I got a rap sheet on him as long as my arm. Better yet, I got his ass in a cell. All you gotta do is come over here and pick him up.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Got something to write with?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Avenida Duque de Caxias, 384, in Santo André. It’s a gray building. You’ll be able to park right in front. Ask for me. In case you didn’t get it the first time, the name’s Carillo, with two l’s. I’m the delegado titular.”

  “With two l’s. Got it. I really appreciate the call, Delegado.”

  “Don’t mention it. You have something on him you can make stick? I got enough problems in this district without Abilio Sacca running around loose.”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES later another call came in. This one was routed to Gonçalves.

  “Agent Gonçalves? Ricardo Vasco speaking. I’m the day manager at the Hotel Gloria. You dropped by a while back—”

  “Yes, Senhor Vasco. I remember you.”

  “The guest you asked about? Dennis Clancy?”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s back. He and his wife just checked in.”

  “His wife? Clancy is a priest!”

  “Yes, I know. Distressing, isn’t it? I regret to say it happens quite often.”

  “Tell your people to stay away from the room. Where will I find you?”

  “At the reception desk.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Gonçalves hung up and dialed Hector’s extension. Silva answered.

  “Don’t go alone,” Silva said when Gonçalves finished talking.

  “You don’t want to be in on the bust?”

  “Hector and I have a line on Darcy Motta. We’re going to Santo André. Take Arnaldo and bring in the priest.”

  IN THE days when the Avenida Ipiranga was the jewel of São Paulo’s thoroughfares, the Hotel Gloria was the jewel of the Avenida Ipiranga.

  But those days were long gone.

  The lobby still boasted silver-plated chandeliers and faux-Aubusson carpeting, but brass had begun to shine through the silver and the carpeting had worn thin.

  The Gloria’s restaurant had never managed to find quite the right chef or maitre. It had closed for renovation in the late eighties. More than two decades later, it was still closed, and the renovation was no further along than the sign on the door. Management put up a new one every six months (sooner if someone swiped it), to sustain the illusion of a future reopening.

  All the rooms in the Gloria were, with one exception, small. Smaller, certainly, than they should have been in a hotel that charged the prices the Gloria did. The exception was the private suite designed for the owner’s personal use. That particular accommodation occupied the entire top floor of the hotel and featured an open-air terrace as big as a parking lot. Their first look at that terrace never failed to engender squeals of delight from the impressionable young ladies the owner had been fond of entertaining there. And that, of course, had been the purpose behind its construction in the first place.

  When the owner died in the early seventies, the suite had been taken over by a personality whose real name was Meyer Katz, but whom all of Brazil knew as Bobo.

  The television program that made Bobo a household name billed itself as a talent hunt. But in reality, performers were chosen not because they had talent, but because they lacked it. Bobo, dressed in a clown suit and a stovepipe hat with a flower pinned to it, would receive them with great fanfare and give them a big buildup. Then they’d sing, or dance, or tell jokes, or do whatever they thought they could do well—and generally did very badly—until the studio audience would begin to groan and boo. At that point Bobo, feigning surprise and disappointment, would squeeze the rubber bulb on his horn. Honk. Honk. Honk. And the unfortunate performers would be forcibly removed from the stage with a long hook resembling a shepherd’s crook. The mere sight of that crook creeping in from offstage was enough to throw the five hundred people in the studio audience, and millions more watching throughout the country, into paroxysms of laughter.

  Add to the formula the occasional performer who introduced an element of surprise by demonstrating true talent, add seven scantily clad women who danced to canned music, and you had a recipe that made Bobo a household name for a generation.

  And things might have gone on for still another generation if fate hadn’t cancelled Bobo’s act. One night, returning from dinner with one of the more lissome of his dancers, Brazil’s most famous clown had had a fatal heart attack. He collapsed and expired right there in the Gloria’s lobby.

  This lent cachet to the hotel where he’d lived and died. Many were the tourists who wanted to spend a night in the same place Bobo had spent his nights. And many were the tourists who wanted to see the spot where he’d breathed his last.

  The widow of the Gloria’s original builder, the woman who’d become the hotel’s sole proprietress, recognized that Bobo’s fading fame wouldn’t sustain the place forever. But at the moment it still did.

  And thus it was that the Hotel Gloria went on, providing small, relatively clean, overpriced rooms at an occupancy rate that sometimes exceeded eighty percent.

  THE TWO cops followed each other through the revolving doors, skirted the easel with the black-bordered photo of Bobo, and headed for the hotel’s reception desk.

  Ricardo Vasco, as promised, was there to meet them. He was a white-haired gentleman in his mid-sixties, somber and thin. Gonçalves introduced Arnaldo. Arnaldo took the lead.

  “We appreciate your call, Senhor Vasco.”

  “I’m pleased to be of service. You don’t intend to take Senhor Clancy and his wife out of here in handcuffs, do you?”

  “Hopefully not.”

  Vasco looked relieved. “I’m glad to hear it. It wouldn’t be a scene we’d relish. Such things have a way of upsetting the guests.”

  “You sound like it’s happened before.”

  Vasco smiled a sad smile. “The Gloria has been here a long time. For that matter,
so have I.”

  “Where’s our man?”

  “Sixth floor. Room 666.”

  “Six sixty-six,” Gonçalves said. “But that—”

  “Is the number of the beast,” Vasco said. “Yes, I’ve heard that one before. Silly, isn’t it?”

  But Gonçalves didn’t think it was silly at all. He was already turning pale.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ABILIO SACCA’S CRIMINAL HISTORY was such that it would have caused even the most dedicated of social workers to throw up her hands in defeat.

  Still only forty-two, Sacca had a criminal record going back thirty-three years, more than two thirds of them spent behind bars. First arrest: age nine. Shoplifting. Charges dismissed. First conviction: age eleven. Armed robbery. It was Sacca’s debut in that particular specialty—and his last performance in it.

  He’d the misfortune to choose a plainclotheswoman for his victim. When she’d drawn her gun, the woman reported, the kid had dropped the shard of broken glass he’d been threatening her with and started to cry.

  Since he either didn’t know, or wouldn’t admit to, the whereabouts of his parents, Abilio was committed to the FEBEM, a reform school where no reform ever took place. The judge gave him five years, partly to get him off the streets, partly in the hope he’d get an education. The judgment was successful on both counts. It kept him away from honest citizens, and it taught him a great deal about breaking the law.

  It was true that he’d never become a successful criminal, but that stemmed from Abilio’s own shortcomings and had nothing to do with the excellent instruction he’d received from his fellow delinquents. He was a pathetically bad liar, and he liked people, commendable attributes in an honest citizen but two major drawbacks for a criminal. He was, furthermore, a practicing alcoholic. Of all things in life, he was most fond of getting drunk with a few convivial companions.

  São Paulo’s underworld being what it was, it stood to reason that not all of those convivial companions had Abilio’s best interests at heart. Sometimes they were police informers; sometimes, even, cops. That had led to a number of charges, some proven, some not, but Abilio never seemed to learn. Within a week of being released, he would be back in one bar or another, shooting his mouth off all over again.