Dying Gasp cims-4

by Leighton Gage

  He crossed the street in front of the house, flung open the gate, and ran up the steps, ignoring the family dog, a miniature dachshund named Gretel. Claudia had never once scratched Gretel behind her ears, never once given her food, and yet the animal lavished her with unrequited affection. The dachshund dashed out through the open gate and started to run across the street.

  Her happy barks were cut off with a loud thump and a wail of pain. The car, a black Ford LTD with tinted windows, never slowed down. Whether the driver was a man or a woman would remain a mystery. The cops weren’t about to waste their time trying to hunt down someone who’d done a hit-and-run on a dog.

  Gretel rolled over and over and came to rest in the gutter at Claudia’s feet. She was still alive-barely-but she was bleeding from the mouth and panting for breath. Claudia put a hand on the soft, reddish-brown fur. She could feel Gretel’s heart, fluttering, fluttering. Then, suddenly, it stopped.

  Claudia shuddered. Her head began to spin. She sensed a shortness of breath, a sharpening of her senses, a wetness between her thighs.

  It was… wonderful.

  They buried Gretel in a corner of the back yard. Omar cried at the funeral and planted a cross of two sticks bound together with kite string.

  Claudia squeezed out a tear or two, but more to make Omar feel guilty than from any sense of loss. Head down, hands over her eyes, she found herself thinking… thinking. Would they catch me if I killed the parakeet? How about our cat? How would it be to be present at the death of a human being, instead of a mere dog?

  It was then and there, standing over that little mound of earth, that Claudia Andrade decided what she was going to do with her life.

  She was going to preside over deaths.

  Last moments, for thirteen-year-old Claudia Andrade, were profoundly exciting, more so than boys, toys, parties, pretty clothes, more so than anything.

  She’d never, ever, be able to get enough of them.

  MANAUS

  Present Day

  The door of the aircraft opened to suffocating heat, a strong smell of rotting vegetation, and a weaker one of decomposing fish.

  Arnaldo was waiting in the shadow of the terminal building.

  The three of them shook hands and started walking.

  “It’s Hector’s first visit to Manaus,” Silva said.

  “Lucky bastard,” Arnaldo said. “This is my fifth.”

  Just ahead, facing them, was a tourist, snapping photographs. When the guy lowered the camera Silva caught a glimpse of deep bags under heavy-lidded eyes.

  On the way to the hotel, Arnaldo reviewed his conversations with Father Vitorio. Then he handed them the original rap sheets of Carlos Queiroz and Nestor Porto, the ones he’d lifted from the archives of the Manaus PD.

  The photographs were much more legible than on the faxes received in Brasilia. There was no mistake. They were the same men who’d been seen performing on two of the snuff videos.

  Queiroz and Porto shared two common features: protuberant lower jaws and piglike eyes. They looked like members of some primitive tribe.

  “You take Queiroz,” Silva said to Hector. “I’ll take Porto.” “How about me?” Arnaldo said.

  “You hate those archives, don’t you?” Silva said. “The reception you got from Coimbra and his people, the dust, the heat?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So stick with it. See what else you can come up with.”

  Arnaldo let out a sigh. “This is penance for that Hotel Plaza business, isn’t it?” he said.

  Number twenty-seven Rua da Independencia, Queiroz’s last known address, was five stories of mildewed brick with a shop window on the ground floor. Beyond the glass, which looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in Hector’s lifetime, were religious articles: bibles of all sizes, hymnals, plastic statues of saints, icons of the Virgin Mary, rosaries, portraits of the Pope.

  And, if God couldn’t help, you had only to climb a flight of stairs where you could visit a fortune teller, a homeopathic physician, or a lawyer. The remaining floors in the building were given over to apartments, four opening off each landing. Queiroz’s place was listed as 3C, but the name next to the bell said Cintra. The girl who answered the door wore a red dress with a neckline that plunged to her navel and a hem that ended just below her crotch. She didn’t look to be more than twenty, but it was a hard-lived twenty. The smile on her face faded when Hector asked about Carlos Queiroz and disappeared completely when he made it clear he had no interest in her services.

  “Abilio,” she said, raising her voice just a little.

  A door opened somewhere behind her. Seconds later a mean-looking guy with a single earring pushed her aside and intruded himself into the doorway.

  “What do you want?”

  “I just told your girlfriend. I’m looking for Carlos Queiroz.” “Never heard of him,” the guy with the earring said. He started to close the door, but Hector inserted his foot.

  “What the hell…?” the guy said, blustering.

  Hector waved his credentials in the guy’s face. “Let’s start all over again,” he said. “This is who I am. Who are you?”

  “I don’t want any trouble,” the guy said, backing down.

  “Me neither. Answer the question.”

  “Abilio.”

  “Abilio who?”

  The guy paused for a moment then said, “Sarmento.”

  Hector figured it was probably true. He also figured it wasn’t a name that Abilio normally answered to. Most people in Abilio’s business didn’t use their real names, hence the “Cintra” on the mailbox.

  “Prove it,” Hector said.

  Abilio nodded as if he’d expected that and stepped back from the door. “You can come in,” he said, as if he had a choice.

  Like most places in Manaus, the place stank of fish. And it was hot, hotter even than down on the street. A sweat-stained couch, a folding aluminum table, and a TV set were the only furniture in the living room.

  Abilio was wearing a pair of faded bathing trunks, plastic sandals, and nothing else. The sandals made little flopping sounds as Hector followed him down the hallway into the kitchen. The girl, barefoot, sloped along behind them. A pair of men’s trousers had been tossed in a heap in the corner. Abilio bent over to retrieve them. As he rose a wallet fell out of one of the pockets.

  The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, the stove with unwashed pots. Another girl, who could have been a younger sister of the first, was squatting on the floor, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. She looked at Hector, then down at her bare toes, her brow furrowing as she tapped ash on the floor.

  She’s not just using marijuana, Hector thought. She’s on something stronger. Crack, or maybe heroin.

  Abilio rifled the contents of the wallet and came up with a dog-eared identity card. He handed it to Hector.

  Abilio Sarmento, aged twenty-four, looked ten years older.

  “Who else lives here?” Hector said.

  Abilio said nobody did, said they’d been renting the apartment for the last three months, and that hell, yes, the girls were over eighteen.

  Again, Hector told him to prove it.

  Abilio left the kitchen and returned with both girls’ identity cards. Like him, they were named Sarmento: Aparecida Maria and Maria Aparecida, nineteen and eighteen years old respectively.

  “My sisters,” Abilio said, before Hector could ask.

  “Your parents didn’t have much imagination, did they?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Anyone got a record?”

  All three of them did: the young women for lewd conduct, Abilio for stealing a car and possession of cocaine. He’d pleaded guilty, done thirteen months, and claimed he’d been clean ever since.

  None of them knew Carlos Queiroz. Aparecida Maria, the sister who wasn’t stoned, said the building superintendent probably did. He lived down in 2D.

  Hector told Abilio to show him around the apartment.

  There were t
wo bedrooms and three mattresses, two in one bedroom, one in the other. Clothes and personal effects overflowed cardboard boxes being used in lieu of furniture.

  In the bathroom, shampoos, conditioners, and lotions surrounded the bathtub. Creams and cheap perfumes crowded the glass shelf above the sink. There was no shower curtain. The floor was wet from someone’s recent bath. Nothing suggested that anyone else lived in the apartment.

  Hector said he was going down to talk to the building superintendent, but he might be back.

  Abilio didn’t seem overjoyed by the prospect.

  The Superintendent was a full-blooded Indian, not an unusual situation in a city where there were more natives than on any single reservation. From the way he spoke Portuguese, Hector figured he’d been educated by missionaries in his youth. That youth was gone, but he didn’t have a single gray hair. He could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, and was dressed in a clean blue shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. His living room was well furnished and a good deal cleaner than the one occupied by the Sarmentos.

  “Carlos Queiroz?” he said. “Yes, I remember him. Good riddance.”

  “How long ago did he move out?” Hector asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Hector frowned.

  The Indian shook his head.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “What am I thinking?”

  “That I don’t want to help. You’re wrong. I’m happy to help, but we have a high turnover. It’s easy to lose track.”

  “I don’t need a specific date, just an approximation.”

  The Indian pulled his lower lip. “Look,” he said, “it’s this way: I collect the rent. It’s due on Mondays. I go from door to door, pick up the cash, and take it down to the bank, where I deposit it in Senhor Aquino’s account. Senhor Aquino owns the building, but he only drops by about once a year.”

  “So?”

  “So on a Monday, about nine weeks ago-or it could have been eight or ten-I knocked on Queiroz’s door, expecting to collect, as usual. He didn’t answer, which I thought was funny, because it was about eleven A.M., which is the time he usually got up. I went back the next day and the next. I tried him in the early morning. I tried him late at night. It was always the same. For the whole two weeks he never answered, and I never saw him again.”

  “Two weeks? Why two weeks?”

  “When they move in, everyone pays three weeks in advance. Two of those weeks are the security deposit. Tenants are supposed to pay every Monday after that.”

  “For an additional week, in advance?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, when he missed his payment, Queiroz had a right to stay for an additional two weeks?”

  “Either that, or give us notice, tell us he’s moving out. Somebody does that, we return what’s left of their deposit.” “But Queiroz never did?”

  “Give us notice? Never.”

  “Okay. And when the two weeks were up?”

  “I did what I always do. Used my passkey. He’d left dishes in the sink. There were cockroaches all over the place. Big as that, ” he said, showing how big that was by distancing the tips of his thumb and forefinger.

  “Queiroz left a light on,” the superintendant continued, “as if he’d gone out at night and never come back. Very inconsiderate of him. Electricity is included in the rent, but Senhor Aquino doesn’t count on people leaving lights on twenty-four hours a day. Queiroz’s sweaty and dirty sheets were still on the bed. I didn’t even want to touch them. The man lived like a pig.”

  “What else did you find in there?”

  “His clothes. Everything I ever saw him wear. Some furniture, not much. Just a mattress, a kitchen table, a couple of chairs, and an old sofa.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Left the furniture. Put a sign in the window. It didn’t take long to find another tenant. These places are cheap, and they’re close to the center of town.”

  “What about his personal effects?”

  “I put them in boxes and stored them down in the basement. This Queiroz, he’s…”

  “He’s what?”

  “Well, for want of a better word, mean. Mean and a bully. I didn’t want him coming back here and getting mad because I threw his stuff away.”

  “Can I have a look in those boxes?”

  “Sure.”

  The boxes were of no help. Clothes, some condoms, a few pornographic magazines, toiletries, two bottles of cachaca, one of them full. There was nothing that gave Hector an insight into Carlos Queiroz or suggested where he might have gone.

  “What do you think?” the Indian asked, gesturing toward the little pile of boxes. “Do I have to keep holding on to this stuff?”

  “I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” Hector said. “I can pretty much assure you Senhor Queiroz won’t be coming back.”

  “Nestor Porto lived with his mother and grandparents,” Silva said.

  “And wouldn’t hurt a fly, sang in the church choir, and helped little old ladies cross the street,” Arnaldo said.

  The three federal cops were back at the Hotel Tropical, having a drink at the bar.

  “Not quite,” Silva said. “The grandfather seems like a hard-working guy, an electrician. Nestor was born when his mother was fifteen. Nestor’s father took off when he found out she was pregnant. Nobody’s seen him since. The grandmother was supposed to be taking care of Nestor while his mother finished school, but the grandmother contracted lung cancer and died within a year. The kid got into a bad crowd, dropped out of school, started using drugs, built up a habit, got caught robbing a house.”

  “Same old, same old,” Arnaldo said.

  “They put him away for fourteen months. Third day he was back, he smashed all the dishes in the house and beat the shit out of his grandfather.”

  “The grandfather file a complaint?”

  “No. Nestor apologized, said he was on crack, swore he’d never do it again. After that, they pretty much left him alone, never knowing what might set him off. He started going out at night, coming back at all hours, sometimes not coming back for two or three days. Then he was arrested again. Armed robbery. He got five years, three of which he served with the big boys.”

  “I remember reading that part on his rap sheet,” Arnaldo said. “The three years, I mean. They must have wiped the juvenile charges.”

  “Now, here’s the thing,” Silva said. “Last November, about two months after he got sprung for the second time, he joined his mother and grandfather for breakfast. They were surprised to see him at that hour of the morning. Normally, he didn’t climb out of bed before noon. They asked him what he was doing at the breakfast table. He told them to mind their own business. When he left, he said he’d be home for dinner, but he never came back.”

  “So he disappeared,” Hector said, “just like Carlos Queiroz.” “Indeed,” Silva said. “Just like Carlos Queiroz.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Early on, before she started testing prospects, Claudia had a disagreeable experience. A guy by the name of Pedro Soares told her that if she paid him enough he’d let her photograph him fucking anything on two legs and several things on four. But when it came time for him to perform, he’d proven to be a disappointment. The female lead was deft with both her mouth and her fingers, but her ministrations hadn’t helped a bit. She couldn’t tease an erection out of him. By that time, though, Pedro already knew too much to be allowed to live. Claudia sent him out on the river with Hans and Otto and sent the still unsuspecting girl back to her room.

  A second mishap had been worse. The sex part went off without a hitch, but when it came to the snuff the subject balked.

  “I’m not gonna do it,” he said. “And I’m not gonna let you guys hurt her.”

  He was a big man, bigger than Otto, and accustomed to getting his way. He was already out of the bed and halfway toward Otto when Hans shot him, pam, pam, pam, three times in the chest, then, when he was dow
n, pam, once more in the head. By then, of course, the cat was out of the bag. The girl knew what was going to happen to her, and she was already screaming. Claudia had to tell Hans to put a bullet in her head.

  The camera captured it all, but Arie Schubski refused to distribute it. He said his customers didn’t want quick kills with anonymous bullets coming in from out of frame. They wanted to savor the act. They wanted to see life slowly being forced out of a woman by a man who’d just had sex with her, not a quick execution carried out by an anonymous perpetrator.

  So Claudia had been out the cost of the girl, a set of satin sheets and the time and effort that it took to clean things up. From then on, she preselected people who’d already proven their contempt for human life. That’s where Chief Pinto came in. For a price, he helped her with recruitment. Sometimes the people he proposed were freelance pistoleiros like Carlos Queiroz and Nestor Porto. Other times, the chief might suggest a full-time employee of one of the great landowners. Every large ranch had a few such men. Their job was to keep the other employees in line, making sure they didn’t start bitching about the pittance they earned, making sure they didn’t run off and, when they did, making sure they came back, alive if possible, dead when it became necessary to set an example.

  The man Hans shot had been one of those, a fellow who’d probably killed a dozen people in his lifetime, but who’d inexplicably shied away from strangling a used-up whore. His action demonstrated to Claudia that she could never be absolutely certain how a man might comport himself at the critical moment, so she made every attempt to make the pre-selection as rigid as possible.

  First, a candidate had to demonstrate that he was capable of getting an erection while in the presence of a bank of lights, a woman with a camera, and two other men. The way Claudia did it was to tell their prospective recruit that she had a paying customer, a European in Manaus on holiday, who liked to watch the recording of live sex, and who was willing to pay for the privilege.