“Boceta,” the director filled in.
“. . is full of shit, I mean that there’s no justification for him to assume, as he does in his report, that the deaths are linked to a satanic cult.”
“Not necessarily, no,” Silva said.
The minister leaned back and nodded.
“The minister,” Sampaio said, “is concerned about the repercussions of the satanic-cult theory.”
“Repercussions?”
Cavalcante saw the puzzled look on Silva’s face. “Let me explain it to him, Nelson. You can’t expect him to see the big picture unless we show it to him, right?”
“Right,” Sampaio said.
“My concern,” Cavalcante said, turning to Silva, “is to make this country an attractive place for tourism. That’s the mandate given to me by the president. What kind of attrac-tion is there, I ask you, in a satanic cult that murders people?” The question was rhetorical. Cavalcante had no intention of ceding the floor. He continued with hardly a pause. “Now a serial murderer is another matter entirely. Serial murderers don’t seem to have a negative effect on tourism. Look at America. Look at all the serial murderers they’ve got, and people still flock to Disney World and Las Vegas by the mil-lions. And France. And the UK. Even little Belgium for Christ’s sake. You see all of that shit that went on with those kids in Belgium?”
Silva nodded. He kept up on international developments, particularly anything that involved crime. Cavalcante took the nod to be an agreement with his thesis. “There. You see? Madmen can sprout up anywhere. Eventually the guy is cap-tured, or dies, and that’s it. End of story. If he hasn’t been captured, and the crimes have stopped, isn’t it logical to assume that the guy who’s responsible for that cemetery in the Serra da Cantareira is dead?”
“There have been cases when a killer goes dormant-” Silva didn’t get any further than that. The minister cut him off.
“Now a cult, that’s something else,” he said. “A cult is lots of people. A cult doesn’t stop doing what it’s doing just because one member died. If it was a cult they’d still be at it, right?”
“It’s possible, but-”
“But nothing. You just got finished saying there are no recent bodies in those graves. Nothing from last week, or last month, or last year. The killer is out of business. No doubt about it. People who do things like that never stop, do they? Not as long as they’re alive. So he’s dead. That’s the only log-ical conclusion. I’ve read the books, seen the movies. The last thing the tourist industry in this country needs is for a fucking academic theorist like this. . this. .”
“Boceta?”
“. . to come up with some crazy theory that there’s a gang of madmen out there waiting to snatch people off the streets. The Americans would panic. They’d never come near us.”
“Any more than we can be sure it’s a cult,” the minister said.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” Arnaldo said an hour later. “Since when does the minister of tourism get involved in murder investigations?”
“Since the director invited him in,” Silva said.
“And what’s his problem with a line of inquiry that links them to a satanic cult?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out.”
“So what do we do now?”
“After Cavalcante left, Sampaio called in Boceta and had a go at him, told him he didn’t think much of his theory.”
“Uh-huh. And how did Boceta react to that?”
“You know of any other organization in this country that hires criminal profilers?”
“No, just us.”
“So how do you think Boceta reacted?”
“The little weasel stressed it was just a theory? Said he’d give it some more thought?”
“Uh-huh. And he asked the director to thank the minis-ter for bringing the lack of continuity, the absence of more recent murders, to his attention.”
“I don’t know why I bothered to ask. What now?”
“Now, Sampaio wants us to get back to what he calls the important stuff and leave the investigation of the graves to the people in Sao Paulo. Only he wants me to call them first and suggest that the line of investigation involving a possi-ble cult is a dead end.”
“And by the important stuff you mean?”
“Trying to dig up some dirt on Romeu Pluma.”
“Okay. That’s what the director wants. But what you’re really going to do is follow the cult thread and maybe look into why Cavalcante doesn’t want to investigate it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So how are we gonna do it without Sampaio-”
“Or Cavalcante.”
“Or Cavalcante getting wise to what we’re up to?”
“We’re going to tell Hector to go ahead, but to keep it out of his written reports, and I’m going to have a chat with Tarcisio Mello.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tarcisio Mello was a private investigator who’d retired from the federal police after a thirty-year career. He’d been a vigorous fifty-five at the time, and had been casting around, trying to find something to do with the rest of his life.
One day, after being turned down for a security job, he got a call from a childhood friend who was running for office in Tarcisio’s native state of Santa Catarina. The friend asked him to look into the background of his political rival, a long-standing federal senator. The senator was a born-again Christian, a moral pillar of the community, and an odds-on favorite for reelection.
Mello’s investigation uncovered that he was also carrying on an affair with his personal assistant. Brazil is a tolerant place, and the senator’s love life might well have been per-fectly acceptable to the electorate, if the senator hadn’t been married and the assistant had been female.
Mello’s friend was elected. Word got around. Mello let it be known that his services were available to others, but that he’d only accept work from one candidate for any given office. Homosexual liaisons weren’t the only things that Brasilia’s politicians wanted to hide. Some hired Mello because they hoped to repeat the success of the new senator from Santa Catarina. Others hired him out of fear, hoping to avoid the fate of the new senator’s predecessor. Within a year, Mello had opened an office in Brasilia; within five, he had a staff of sixty-three and representation in five state capitals.
Mello received Silva in a book-lined office. Back when he was a federal cop, he’d been in the habit of bringing paperback novels along on stakeouts. Two of the shelves were lined with books of that type, their well-thumbed spines contrasting sharply with the expensive jacaranda wood. When Silva came in the door, his old friend came around his desk, gave him a firm embrace, and led him to the couch in the corner.
“How have you been, Mario?”
Mello knew about Silva’s wife, Irene. He knew about her drinking problem, about the long-standing depression that had plagued her since the death of her only child.
“Good, Tarcisio, good,” Silva said, knowing exactly what Mello was getting at by asking the question.
“She’s better, then?”
“Oh, yes, much better.”
She wasn’t, but it was sometimes kinder to lie.
