“Watch your mouth,” the gorilla said. “Otherwise I’ll put a foot in it.”
“She wanted you dead,” Joaquim said, sounding like he thought having them dead was a good idea.
“How about the priest,” Silva said. “Where’s he?”
“Luis did him,” Joaquim said.
FATHER VITORIO’S ancient yellow truck was parked near the front door. The priest was inside the house, lying on a carpet in the living room, his throat slit from ear to ear.
Arnaldo braced Joaquim against the wall.
“Luis, huh? Not you?”
“Luis. I swear.”
“You’d swear to anything, you little prick.”
“Go look at his shirt. Luis washed the blood off his hands, but he couldn’t get it off his shirt.”
“His shirt isn’t going to tell us anything,” Arnaldo said. “Luis managed to get his own blood all over it.”
“Talk about killing the priest,” Silva said, “How did it go down?”
“He pounded on the door like he was the fucking chief of police. Soon as we let him in, he started shooting his mouth off. Kept going on and on about exportation of little girls.”
“Exportation? You mean exploitation?”
“Exploitation, exportation, whatever. He screamed until Luis took out his knife. Then he kept on screaming, only different.”
“This woman who hired you, where is she?”
“I think that gorilla broke some of my ribs.”
“Then you sure as hell don’t want me to break any more, do you?” Arnaldo said.
Joaquim’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “She’s got a house on the river.”
“She live alone?” Silva asked.
Joaquim shook his head.
“With two capangas. Big guys. Not from here. They talk funny. Must be from down south somewhere.”
Silva looked at Arnaldo.
“Three of them,” he said. “Looks like we’re going need help from Pinto.”
Joaquim’s eyes went wide. “Chief Pinto?”
“And your point is . . .” Silva said.
“Keep him away from me,” Joaquim said.
“Why?”
Joaquim spit it all out. He told the federal cops about the Mainardis, about the chief letting them out, about the deal with the woman.
“Pinto will kill me if he gets a chance,” he said. “You take care of me, lock me up safe somewhere, and I’ll sign anything you want.”
“It won’t be worth much,” Silva said. “You’re not exactly a pillar of the community.”
“A what?”
“This woman? What’s her name?”
“Carla.”
“Carla what?”
“Merda, I don’t know. Just Carla.”
“Describe her.”
“Classy. No dummy. Nice tits and ass. Black hair. Good-looking, except for a big nose.”
The nose part brought Silva up short. He fished out his wallet, rifled through it, took out the photo he carried of Claudia Andrade, held it under Joaquim’s nose.
“Is this her?” he asked. “Is this Carla?”
Joaquim squinted as if he needed glasses. Then he looked up at Silva.
“Yeah,” he said.
DELFIN FIGUEIREDO didn’t trust boats. One little hole, that’s all it took. One little hole, and the damned thing would fill up with water and sink. Then where’d he be? At the bottom of the Rio Negro, that’s where.
Somebody had once told him that this part of the river was a hundred meters deep. He didn’t know if it was true, but he knew it didn’t have to be more than two meters deep to drown him. Delfin wasn’t a little guy, far from it. He stood exactly one meter ninety in his bare feet and weighed almost ninety-five kilograms, only a little of it fat. But the one meter ninety wouldn’t do him a damned bit of good in a hundred meters of water, and the absence of fat would only make him sink faster.
Problem was, Delfin didn’t know how to swim. He’d been raised on the river, but it had been farther downstream, below where the Rio Solimões flowed in, and where the water was as dark as chocolate. He’d seen the things with teeth that fisherman pulled out of that water, things longer than he was tall and with mouths that could engulf his head.
Just the thought of one of those creatures lying under the surface, waiting there in the dark, had always petrified him. Neither his family nor the kids he’d grown up with had ever been able to lure him, or to taunt him, into immersing himself in that water.
So, when the woman told him the video was going to be shot on a boat, he’d balked.
“Fuck her, okay,” he’d said. “Kill her, okay. But no boat. There’s no way I’m gonna do it on a boat.”
“Why not?” the woman said. “What difference does it make?”
“It just does.”
“Big guy like you, afraid of boats?”
“Afraid? Me, afraid? Hell, no. I just don’t like them, that’s all.”
But then she’d offered him more money, and more money, and finally they were up to double the price he’d agreed upon in the first place. It was more than he’d ask if somebody wanted him to kill the mayor, or a senator. And how often did he get asked to kill the mayor or a senator? Never, that’s how often. The truth was, Delfin Figueiredo had never been paid more than three thousand Reais to kill anyone in his entire life.
Delfin was a man of modest tastes. With what she was offering he could live for a year, screwing all the whores he wanted, drinking all the cachaça he wanted, only climbing out of a hammock to get another smoke, or another drink, or something to eat.
It was just too tempting.
It wasn’t like she wanted him to get into the water. He didn’t have to get his feet wet at all. All he had to do was get into a fucking boat. And the boat looked pretty solid, and there was another little boat she was going to tow behind, meaning they’d all have someplace to go if the big one sank, and the day, like most days in the dry season, was all sunshine and just a few fleecy clouds. There weren’t going to be waves. There wasn’t going to be wind. So Delfin had agreed, and he told her he wanted half the money in advance, and she’d said no problem, and he’d stuffed it into the trunk of his car near the spare tire, and here he was, out on the river in the cabin of a fucking boat.
Delfin looked across at the girl he was expected to kill. She had one ankle fastened to a brass ring. They were using a pair of handcuffs for that. The rest of her was trussed up like a tapir ready for roasting. She was gagged, too, which was a good thing, because she had a mouth on her like a sewer. Delfin had heard her spouting off before they left the house, before the guy with the bags under his eyes stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth and secured it in place with another one. Delfin wondered where a girl with a classy accent learned language like that. Maybe in one of those fancy schools, maybe all the girls talked like that when they were in the bathroom. Now that would be the beginning of a good porno movie, girls in a bathroom talking dirty. Not this, not being out on a fucking boat.
The girl didn’t know about the killing, of course, but she must have figured out the rest. Funny thing was, she didn’t look scared. She looked angry. They’d warned him she was going to fight him. Well, as far he was concerned, that was fine. Delfin liked the rough stuff, but they wouldn’t let him get away with it in the boates, so it’d been a while since he’d had a chance to beat a woman into submission. Not that this was a woman. She didn’t look to be more than sixteen. She was a virgin, too, or so they said. Delfin found it hard to believe. Most of the girls he knew didn’t carry their virginity beyond the age of eleven, twelve at the most.
He tried to concentrate on what was coming, not on the sloshing of the water outside.
And found himself getting hard.
WHILE SHE was setting up the lights, Claudia kept one eye on Delfin, studying him, as he studied Marta. He’d started out the trip nervous as a scalded cat, and she’d been worried about his ability to perform, but now he seemed to have adjusted
to the situation. Claudia gave a little smile of satisfaction when she saw him open his legs and rub his crotch, displaying for the girl like the animal he was.
Marta turned her head aside in disgust.
“Getting close,” Otto said, his voice coming through the companionway.
Claudia clambered on deck and looked over the bow. Hans was already up there, seated on the cabin roof, one hand on the anchor. The shoreline was about a hundred meters away. She relieved Otto at the wheel, took a ninety-degree turn and steered parallel to the bank. Over here on this side of the river there wasn’t much to see, just the occasional fisherman’s shack, surrounded by dense vegetation. Now and then, they heard the screech and saw the flash of a passing macaw. Occasionally they caught sight of a monkey leaping from branch to branch.
Claudia couldn’t anchor in midriver. It was too deep, the current too swift. But she didn’t need the middle of the river. Here, in the shallower water near the shore, they were thoroughly isolated and unlikely to be disturbed. It would have been a different matter if there’d been a bridge. Then the city would have spilled over to this side. But there was no bridge, not here, not for eight hundred kilometers upstream, not for more than sixteen hundred kilometers downstream all the way to the sea.
She motored along until she came to a little cove. The cove had a high bank shielding it on three sides and thick vegetation growing right down to the water. Above the scrub, above the high-water line of the rainy season, trees, some with trunks as high as thirty meters, towered upward and spread their branches to form a canopy. The land rose beyond that and the canopy seemed to go on forever.
Claudia threw the twin throttles into neutral, waited until the forward motion had stopped and told Hans to heave the anchor overboard. She put the boat into reverse, and he paid out line. Thirty meters from shore, she cut the engine and told him to snub the line on the cleat. The boat stopped with a gentle jerk, the nylon cord rising from the water like a long white snake as the hull adjusted to the wind and current. When she thought the process was complete, Claudia took a step forward, lined up a stanchion with a tree on shore, and verified that the anchor was holding. Then she went below and started to unpack her camera from its padded case.
Chapter Twenty-four
“LOOK WHO’S HERE,” ARNALDO said, pointing toward the driveway.
Silva turned his head. A uniformed man with a protruding stomach was strutting in their direction.
“The chief?” Silva asked.
“In the flesh,” Arnaldo confirmed. “Kindly note how much of it there is. Is that guy fat, or what?”
Summoned by a telephone call from the federals, half a dozen local cops were already on the scene. The senior man, a sergeant, had attempted to assume jurisdiction and confiscate their weapons, but Silva had told him to go to hell. He figured him for the one who’d called the chief.
Pinto stopped in front of Arnaldo.
“What the fuck is going on?” he said.
“And good morning to you too, Chief,” Arnaldo said.
“Who’s this?” He pointed at Silva.
“My boss, Chief Inspector Mario Silva.”
Pinto turned his back on Arnaldo.
“So maybe you’re the one who can tell me what the fuck happened here?”
“A couple of thugs killed Father Vitorio Barone,” Silva said, “and a young friend of his, name of Lauro Tadesco.”
“What a shame,” the chief said, without a trace of regret. “Who did it?”
“The Almeida brothers.”
“Luis and Joaquim? They’re scum. If both of them were dead, this town would be better off.”
“Then it’s half better off already,” Arnaldo said.
Pinto blinked, but he didn’t turn his head. “You killed one?”
“Luis,” Silva said. “Shot while resisting arrest.”
“Where’s the other one?” Pinto said.
“Down the road a bit, in a car.”
“Hand him over,” the chief said. “He’s mine.”
“In your dreams,” Silva said. “We’re holding on to him.”
“The hell you are. Murder is state, not federal. You can’t hold him. I can.”
“We’re charging him with something else.”
The chief’s features drew together, as if he’d just tasted something nasty.
“What?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s confidential.”
“Confidential? That’s a load of crap.”
“Is it?”
“You’re gonna need a place to keep him.”
“We have a place to keep him. The Tropical.”
“You’re gonna put a scumbag like Joaquim Almeida in the Hotel Tropical?”
“We’re thinking of getting him the Presidential suite,” Arnaldo said.
“Something else,” Silva said. “According to Joaquim this was a contract hit. The woman who hired them calls herself Carla something, has a house down by the river, lives there with a couple of capangas, big guys from down south. Ring any bells?” “Not a one,” the chief said.
“We’re going over there to arrest them, gonna need some of your men.”
“Yeah? Well, you can’t have any. Any arresting has to be done, we’ll do it ourselves.”
Arnaldo said, “You recall getting calls from the mayor and the governor? Something about full cooperation?”
The chief glared at him.
Arnaldo pulled out his cell phone.
“Maybe a call would help,” he said. “Who do you want to hear it from? The governor, or the mayor?”
Pinto ignored Arnaldo, addressed Silva.
“How many men you need?”
“Ten should do it,” Silva said. “Ten with automatic weapons and a forensic team. Have you got one?”
“Of course we’ve got one. This isn’t the sticks, Silva.”
“Could have fooled me,” Arnaldo said.
IF LOOKS could kill, Joaquim would have been dead the minute the chief set eyes on him. He cringed to one side of the back seat, keeping Hector between himself and Pinto. The chief spoke to him through the open window.
“Where’s this house, you little shit?”
Joaquim played along, just as the federals told him he should, acting as if he hadn’t spilled his guts about the chief and as if the chief wasn’t the prick who’d dropped him into all this shit in the first place.
LIKE EVERYTHING else in Manaus, the assault team took a while to assemble. But when they got there they turned out to be surprisingly well-equipped. They also looked like people who knew what they were about. Silva was impressed.
The house, too, impressed him. It was reminiscent of something built in colonial times: thick walls, small windows, a red tile roof. It stood in the middle of a clearing, providing a clear field of fire on all sides. If defended, it would be a hard nut to crack. The federal cops stood well back and let the team get on with it.
They hit the main door in a frontal assault, blowing it off the hinges with a small explosive charge and tossing in some flash-bangs before they went in themselves. It was all over in less than a minute.
The leader of the assault team appeared in the doorway and motioned the others forward.
“Clear,” he said.
The federal cops crossed the threshold, dragging the surviving Almeida brother with them. It only took two minutes to confirm that the place was empty.
“Where did they go, Joaquim?” Silva said.
“How the fuck should I know? I told you, I only seen her once.” Arnaldo was already balling his fists when the punk added, “But her boat’s gone.”
“Boat?”
“Yeah, she had a big fucking boat tied up to that dock behind the house.”
“She might have taken her boat,” Silva said to the chief. “Have one of your men check with the navy. Maybe they can get us the registration number and a description.”
“If she isn’t really stupid,” the chief said, “she’s gonna paint over the number
, maybe even paint the whole goddamned boat.”
“But maybe not yet,” Silva said. “She doesn’t know we’ve nailed Joaquim. She might just be out for a cruise on the river. Get your men out of sight in case she comes back.”
The chief turned and gave some orders to a guy with a little moustache and sweat stains under the arms of his shirt. The guy ran off toward the house, shouting instructions, being self-important.
“Then too,” Silva said, “maybe she didn’t take the boat at all. There are only two roads out of this town, right?”
“Wrong,” Pinto said. “There are three. You got one road that runs north, up to Roraima and on to Venezuela. You got another road on the other side of the river. That one runs from Careiro down to Porto Velho in Rondônia. The third one, the short one, is on this side of the river. It goes to Itacoatiara.”
“Okay, three roads. That’s it?”
“Christ, Silva, in case you hadn’t noticed, that’s the Amazon jungle out there.” The chief threw out his hand like he was grabbing a piece of it. “Three is pretty impressive, if you ask me.”
“The road to Itacoatiara, where’s it go from there?”
“Nowhere. But it’s a road. Anybody trying to get out of town could use it, then switch to a boat.”
“And they’d also need a boat to get to Careiro and go south, right?”
“Right.”
“So we have to cover the river.”
“Forget the fucking river. We only got three boats. We’ll never be able to stop everybody. You got any idea how much traffic there is, how many boats are out there?”
“A good reason not to try, right?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“I want people covering the airport as well.”
“We can’t go stopping every woman in a car, on a boat, or getting ready to board an airplane.”
“You don’t have to. You only have to stop one. I’ve got a picture of her. I’ll let you copy it. I want it back.”
“Where did you get a—”
Silva didn’t let him finish.
“She might be traveling in the company of a fifteen-year-old girl. I’ve got a picture of her too. You gonna get on board with this, or you want to hear from the mayor and the governor?”
Dying Gasp Page 19
