struggle for economic and political justice.''
'Struggle?'
'That's the word they use. Struggle.' Father Gaspar lifted a forefinger like a teacher anxious to make a point. 'They maintain that there are two kinds of Christianity: their kind, liberation theology, which proposes radical change, and another kind, one that favors the status quo.'
'And by the `status quo,' they mean?'
'The current distribution of wealth, more specifically of land.'
'What's land got to do with theology?'
'For them? Everything! They maintain that rural people who don't own at least a small piece of land are doomed to live as an underclass. On the other hand, they say that the ownership of vast tracts of land defines membership in a group that exploits and oppresses the poor.'
'And you, Father? Do you subscribe to that?'
The priest looked shocked, as if Hector had just accused him of something morally repugnant. 'Of course not! But all liberation theologians do. They also believe that priests who defend the status quo, priests like Dom Felipe and myself, are lackeys to the rich. They say we're brainwashing the poor.'
'Brainwashing?'
'Brainwashing. Their phrase, not mine. They accuse us of convincing the landless that they should be patient here on earth because that's what God wants. Then, when they die, they'll get their reward in heaven.'
'Land in heaven?'
Hector smiled, but the priest didn't.
'Unfortunately, some of the simpler people interpret it exactly that way. It's a lie! We don't teach them that. We teach that paradise awaits for all good men, both rich and poor. Liberation theologians, on the other hand, postulate that everyone has a God-given right to a certain degree of wealth in this life. They want to force radical change. They propose redistribution of wealth, redistribution of land, here and now.'
'Sounds like Marxism.'
'Similar, but different. The concept of sin is alien to Marxism, but not to liberation theologians. To them, not overthrowing the ruling class, not fighting to redistribute wealth, is a sin, a sin of the gravest nature, perhaps the gravest one of all.'
'So they basically advocate some kind of a holy war, a crusade, a Christian jihad?'
'Exactly. And they embrace anything it takes to achieve their ends.'
'Even violence?'
'Even violence. There was a classmate of Gutierrez, a priest by the name of Camilo Torres. He was killed fighting with the guerillas in Colombia. When they found his body he had a weapon in his hands.'
Hector shook his head. 'How can the church tolerate something like that?'
'The church doesn't. Not anymore. Liberation theology has been condemned.'
'Condemned?'
'By the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the body that rules on such things.
'And Dom Felipe…'
'Devoutly carried out the dictates of his superiors.'
'Which brought him in direct conflict with the liberation theologians?'
'Exactly. But he welcomed the conflict. Dom Felipe saw it as his duty to bring them to heel. He made it clear that priests who were liberation theologians had to renounce the doctrine or leave the Church.'
'Which wouldn't have made him popular with the people from the Landless Workers' League.'
'Just so. Simple people-and most landless farmers are simple people-interpreted his action as a rejection, by the Church, of everything that the league stood for. The good Catholics among them became concerned that they might be doing something wrong, even impious. They quit the league in droves.'
'Which gave the league a good reason to dislike Dom Felipe.'
'Exactly.'
'Enough to kill him, do you think?'
'Perhaps, but that's not my point.'
'What is your point, Father?'
'There are still priests out there who ignored Dom Felipe's clear instructions. They're recruiting for the league, battling the landowners, planning the occupation of fazendas, doing all the things that Dom Felipe expressly told them to stop doing.'
'And what, Father, does all of this have to do with the murder of Bishop Antunes?'
Father Gaspar looked surprised.
'Isn't it obvious? I'm trying to tell you, Delegado, that the man who killed Dom Felipe could have been a priest.'
Chapter Seven
The door to Orlando Muniz junior's bedroom, a door he kept locked and bolted, shattered. Most of it crashed to the floor. What was left flew back on its hinges. Orlando rolled onto his left side and reached for the revolver he kept in the drawer below the lamp, but before he could close his hand around the grip a heavy body fell on top of him.
'Somebody get the lights,' a voice said.
Somebody did, and they dazzled him. He opened his mouth to call for Anselmo, and shut it again when he felt cold metal against his forehead. The muzzle of his own revolver. He heard the weapon being cocked and stopped struggling. They stripped off the sheets that covered him and dragged him out of bed.
Orlando was tall with blond hair and blue eyes and had once been handsome. Once. These days, he had a thick waist, a veined cherry of a nose, coarse skin, and permanently bloodshot eyes.
Some said his early good looks had been passed down from his paternal grandmother, a German immigrant to Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state. Others, less charitable, ascribed Orlando's Teutonic genes to a schoolteacher named Ernst Koppel, who'd been beaten to death under mysterious circumstances some six months before Orlando was born. Those same people offered, as support for their argument, the comportment of Orlando's mother, Solange, who'd been seen to shed more tears at Koppel's funeral than anyone else including Koppel's wife of almost a decade. Solange's husband, Orlando Muniz Senior, didn't attend the funeral. While it was taking place he was seen in the bar just across the square from the church. He'd seemed to be having a very good time.
Whatever the truth of his origins, one thing about Orlando Muniz Junior was certain: He was a drunk. Not just an ordinary drunk, but a world-class drunk. He started the day with a tumbler full of cane spirit and an ice-cold beer. He had more beer and more cachaca for lunch, often to the exclusion of anything else. And he consumed at least two bottles of wine at dinner, usually following them with multiple doses of Madeira, a Portuguese brandy to which he was partial, a case of which never lasted him more than a month.
Orlando seldom went to bed before 2:00 in the morning, and often found himself awake at 4:00 or 5:00 AM, his body craving more alcohol. Recently, to assure a good night's sleep, he'd taken to consuming a healthy dose of a sleeping potion that his doctor had refused to prescribe, but that one of the local pharmacists was all-too-willing to provide. So it might have been the alcohol, and it might have been the drug, but one or the other had dulled his wits and slowed him down just enough to prevent him from getting his hand around the grip of that revolver. And either one or both also caused him to stare stupidly around him, shaking his head to clear it, blinking his eyes in confusion and trying to absorb what was happening to him.
The room was filled with men, all of them wearing hoods, a few of them holding guns and most of them clutching makeshift weapons: mattocks, pickaxes and machetes. The man who had Orlando's Taurus. 38 pointed it in the air and slowly released the hammer, demonstrating that he knew how to use a revolver.
There was a commotion at the door. Anselmo, his face bloody, his holster empty, was hustled into the room. The man behind him, hooded like all the others, was wearing a red T-shirt bearing the logotype of the Landless Workers' League. While Orlando watched, the man threw a loop of white cord over Anselmo's head. There was a wooden toggle at either end.
