Dying Gasp
Page 24
“I can’t believe that bitch got away again,” Arnaldo said.
“She didn’t,” Silva said. “Not yet.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
HANS HAUSER PULLED THE visor of his blue cap low over his dark glasses and struck a pose in front of the mirror.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Claudia said.
“Into town. I’m going stir-crazy on this fucking boat.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Claudia said.
“Hell,” Hans said. “It’s dangerous just sitting here.”
He was right about that. By now, she must have heard the helicopter a half dozen times, flying around in circles up there like some demented insect. One of those times it had passed directly overhead. She’d sat on her bunk, her palms sweating, until the sound of the motor had vanished in the distance.
“Besides,” he said, “it isn’t like I’m leaving you without protection. Otto’s gonna be here.”
“Yeah,” Otto chipped in. “We got it covered. Tonight it’s him, tomorrow me. We decided.”
The boat was moored to two trees, in a minor tributary, some thirty kilometers east of the city. The location was decked over by a canopy of vegetation that made it invisible from the air.
“I don’t think you get it,” she said, looking from one to the other. “I don’t want either of you going anywhere.”
Hans reached for a bottle of cheap cologne. “Stop wasting your breath,” he said. “I’m going.”
“And I’m going tomorrow,” Otto said.
“I pay you to—”
Hans didn’t let her finish.
“You don’t pay us at all,” he snarled, catching her eye in the mirror. “Once you start dishing out the money, you can start giving orders again.”
“I told you,” she said. “I have the money. I just don’t want to run the risk of going to get it. I promise—”
“Your promise,” Hans snarled, “is the only reason we’re still here.”
He splashed some aftershave into one armpit of his shirt. The stuff smelled like cloves.
“You could at least make an attempt to change your appearance,” she insisted. “Cut your hair. Shave off that moustache.”
Hans splashed the other armpit.
“I like my moustache,” he said.
And he left.
THE HULL heeled and began to rock as someone climbed aboard the boat. Claudia awoke with a start. Footsteps sounded on the deck overhead. She grabbed her pistol and pointed it at the door.
“Who’s there?” she said, when the footsteps reached the main cabin.
“Who the fuck do you think?”
Hans’s voice. He sounded drunk.
She glanced at her watch. It was six-thirty in the morning, time to get up. Claudia had always been an early riser. She climbed out of bed and unlocked the door to her cabin. There he was, standing in the saloon, smelling of cachaça, staring at her out of a pair of bloodshot eyes. His hat was turned around, the visor projecting over the back of his neck.
“Point that gun somewhere else,” he said.
She lowered the Glock, put it on the table and started making coffee. Otto, who slept in the saloon, sat up in his bunk, rubbed his eyes, and yawned.
“What time is it?” he said.
“Six-thirty,” Claudia told him. “Time to get your fat ass out of bed.”
An early riser, yes, but not a morning person.
“I thought the first bus was at eight,” Otto said, sleepily.
Claudia saw Hans’ eyes flick toward her pistol. She made a grab for it, but wasn’t fast enough. Hans snatched it up, took a step backward, and pointed it at her chest.
“The Goat was looking for us,” Hans said, talking to Otto, not to Claudia. “He had two capangas with him. Get some rope.”
“The Goat? Jesus Christ! He must be pissed,” Otto said.
“He is pissed.”
“What did he say?”
“Get the fucking rope, and I’ll tell you.”
THE GOAT showed up an hour later. He was alone.
The first thing he did was to rip off the tape they’d put over Claudia’s mouth.
It stung like hell. She licked her lips and tasted blood.
“You got any idea what you did to my life, you lying bitch?”
“It wasn’t me,” she said. “It was that prick, Silva. He’s the one to blame, not me.”
“I don’t see it that way. What you did with all those people in São Paulo, that was just sick.”
The story was all over the media by now. She’d heard it on the boat’s radio. The Goat must have seen it on television. She wasn’t Carla Antunes any more, she was Claudia Andrade, accused of mass murder and organ theft. There was no use denying it.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “What I was doing in São Paulo was—”
He didn’t let her finish. “What you did to the girls I sold you, that was sick too. Silva was right to go after you. You deserve everything you’re gonna get, you crazy—”
Hans cleared his throat.
The Goat turned to face him.
“What?” he said.
“The rest is between you and her, right? You got the money you promised me? The ten thousand? Me and Otto, we got to be going.”
“Oh, yeah,” The Goat said, “what I owe you. I got it right here.”
He reached under his shirt. But when his hand came out again it was holding a pistol. In one flowing movement he raised it and shot Hans through the heart. Otto was still standing there with his mouth open when The Goat put a bullet into his forehead just left of center.
Claudia’s ears were ringing from the reports. Her nose filled with the acrid stench of gunpowder. The Goat turned on her, still holding the pistol.
“No,” she said. “Don’t. You don’t want to shoot me. I’ve got money. We can make a deal.”
The Goat shook his head.
“Fuck your money,” he said. “And shooting is too good for you. I got something else in mind.”
He put the pistol down and peeled off his shirt.
Next to the empty holster on his belt dangled a silk cord.
Chapter Thirty
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, A little after seven, the telephone rang in Silva’s suite. It was Lefkowitz. He told Silva that Claudia Andrade was on a slab down at the morgue. Silva called Hector first, then Arnaldo.
“It couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl,” Arnaldo said.
THE MORGUE turned out to be a single-story concrete building, appropriately located on a dead-end street. There was one of those electronic keypads on the front door. Lefkowitz was standing next to it.
“Body was wrapped up in plastic sheeting tied with clothesline,” he said, punching numbers on the pad.
The lock clicked. He pulled on the door and ushered them inside. They started walking along a dim corridor, lit at intervals by round globes. The place smelled like morgues everywhere—and of something else too. Silva thought it might be mold.
“You guys know Yamaguchi?” Lefkowitz asked.
“No,” Arnaldo said, “but hum a few bars, and I’ll try to fake it.”
“That joke,” Lefkowitz said, “was old when my grandfather was a boy. Yamaguchi is the medical examiner, and I gotta warn you: the woman has no sense of humor.”
“Perhaps not with your tired routines, Lefkowitz, but with outstanding wit like my own—”
“Where did they find Claudia?” Silva cut in.
“Somebody dumped her at your hotel,” Lefkowitz said. “The night clerk saw it happen, right through the glass of the front door. He was behind the reception desk when this white Volkswagen van pulls up. The side door opens. Bang, she’s on the sidewalk. Slam, they close the door. Vroom, the van takes off. It’s gone by the time he gets outside.”
“What time was that?” Silva said.
“A little after four this morning.”
“Present for me?”
“Could be. Somebody kills someb
ody around here, they usually drop them in the river. According to my wife, who knows about such things, there are more than six hundred species of fish out there. That’s more than they’ve got in the whole Atlantic Ocean. They make short work of any kind of meat.” “And the people in this town eat those fish?” Arnaldo said. “It’s enough to make a man sick.”
“You can say that again,” Lefkowitz said. “You try the Recanto Gaúcho, that joint I told you about?”
“Yes, we did. That Gaúcho saved my life. I’m gonna remember him in my will.”
“Tell me more about the body drop,” Silva said.
“I took a couple of photos in sitio, then I had her brought back here. I unwrapped her right on Yamaguchi’s table. She was nude.”
INSIDE, DOCTOR Yamaguchi and her diener—the morgue assistant—were bent over Claudia’s corpse. The diener was a woman, raven-haired, attractive, and pregnant. She looked to be at least eight months along. Her appearance clashed with the surroundings.
The medical examiner, on the other hand, blended in perfectly. She was a short Asian woman in her midforties with a studious expression. Under a disposable paper cap, her hair was pulled back in a severe bun. When she heard the door, she looked up, and light reflected off the thick lenses of her eyeglasses.
“You’re the federals, right?”
She had no trace of a Japanese accent.
“We’re the federals,” Silva agreed.
“Stand over there,” she said, gesturing with a scalpel, “and stay out of my way.”
Hector, Arnaldo, and Silva went to stand in the place she’d indicated. It brought them within three feet of the table. Yamaguchi’s surgical gloves were smeared with blood. She’d already made the Y-incision and was palpating the liver prior to cutting it out for weighing. Claudia’s lids were open, the whites of her eyes shot with so many petechiae that they appeared to be red.
“The ligature marks around her neck are consistent with death by strangulation,” Yamaguchi said. “She was also stabbed, once, through the heart. She’s been dead about twelve hours. The stab wound was probably post-mortem, the killer making sure his victim was dead. There was considerable bruising around the genitals and anus. She was penetrated in both places by something at least eighteen inches long and at least three thick.”
“Sounds like me,” Arnaldo said. “But I didn’t do it.”
Yamaguchi straightened up and looked at him through her thick lenses. Then she looked back and forth between Hector and Silva.
“Who let the comedian into my autopsy suite?” she said.
“Thank you, thank you,” Arnaldo said. “This is my last show in Manaus. Don’t miss me in Brasilia and as soon as possible I’ll appear in São Paulo. I hope to be there for the rest of my life.”
“Semen?” Silva asked.
Yamaguchi nodded. “That also. But the bruising was caused by something else.”
“I’ll need a DNA analysis of the swabs.”
“Who pays?” she asked.
“Send them to Brasilia. We’ll do it there.”
“Five will get you ten,” Arnaldo said, “The Goat did it.”
“No bet,” Silva said.
“Who’s he?” Yamaguchi asked. She must have been one of the few people in Manaus who’d never heard of The Goat.
“A boate owner with a score to settle,” Silva said. “We had a score too. I expect he thought he was doing us a favor.”
“And he was,” Arnaldo said. “Let’s hear it for The Goat.” “What kind of a cop are you?” Yamaguchi said. “This is a murdered woman we’ve got here.”
“She was a tough person to love,” Silva said.
“But somebody did, in a matter of speaking,” Arnaldo said. Yamaguchi speared him with her eyes. “You are a disgusting man,” she said.
When the three federal cops left the autopsy suite, Lefkowitz was gone. Side by side, they walked down the dim hallway toward the front door.
“Normally,” Arnaldo said, breaking the companionable silence, “I hate these places.”
“So do I,” Silva said. “Normally.”
He paused next to an overflowing barrel of trash, took out his photo of Claudia Andrade, and tossed it on top.
Then he led the way out of the gloom and into the sunlight.
Author’s Note
THIS IS A WORK of fiction based on some sad realities.
In Brazil, the prostitution of children has reached epic proportions, and the country has become one of the world’s premier destinations for men seeking sex with minors. The trade is often carried out with the enthusiastic support of local law enforcement.
Visitors to cities in Brazil’s north and northeast are often surprised to find eleven- and twelve-year-olds sitting on curbs, playing with dolls, while they wait for clients.
In January 2006, the Brazilian federal government completed an investigation of the police department of Manaus. It resulted in more than a hundred officers being expelled from the force and charged with crimes ranging from theft and extortion to kidnapping and murder.
In Belém, up until recently, seventy-seven of the one hundred and fourteen houses of prostitution were offering children from eleven to seventeen years of age. Five houses specialized in children exclusively.
At the same time, in Arapina, the “services” of girls as young as eight could be bought for ten Reais, about five American dollars.
Recent estimates suggest that at least a half million Brazilian girls under the age of eighteen are currently working as prostitutes. As for snuff videos, despite evidence to the contrary, some people continue to regard them as nothing more than urban legends.
They aren’t.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Author’s Note