“I think it’s more than likely. He spent ten minutes on the telephone talking to my boss about this.”
“Fuck Pontes.” The ME bristled. “And fuck your boss.”
“What a lovely thought,” Arnaldo said.
“Your buddy, the ME in Sao Paulo,” Cavalcante said, addressing Silva. “What’s his name again?”
“Couto. Paulo Couto.”
“Him. I’ll bet he doesn’t have to put up with all this political shit.”
“Perhaps not,” Silva said. “You considering a move?”
“To Sao Paulo? Ha! Besides, that’s where Pontes is from.”
“True, but now he’s here.”
“ He’s here, all right, but there are thousands more like him back where he comes from. Sao Paulo is a fucking nest of vipers.”
“Hey,” Arnaldo said. He also stemmed from Sao Paulo.
But Cavalcante wasn’t listening. He hurried out the front door, ducked under the tape, and headed for his car. Some of the reporters broke off from the group surrounding Sampaio and followed, shouting questions as they went. Cavalcante waved them off. The last they saw of him, he was disappearing behind the pack of newshounds.
Silva and Arnaldo boarded the elevator. The doors slid shut with scarcely a whisper.
“Nice,” Silva said, looking around at the burnished wood, beveled mirrors, and polished brass.
“This elevator? Or the fact that Sampaio just lost half his audience?”
“That too,” Silva said.
The doors slid open to reveal a slight man with a big moustache. Delegado Walter Pereira headed up the homicide division of Brasilia’s civil police.
“Morning, meninos,” he said. “Caught the hot potato, did we?”
“I’m afraid so, Walter,” Silva said.
Independent of the mayhem surrounding him, Pereira customarily wore a ready smile along with his loud sports jackets. This morning, he was wearing a frown.
“What’s with you?” Arnaldo asked.
“Your goddamned boss is what’s with me,” Pereira said. “He’s doing his dog and pony show as we speak. There’s a television in one of the bedrooms. Want to have a look?”
“Not on your life,” Arnaldo said.
Silva bent over to look at the damage to the apartment’s front door.
“Perp did this?” he asked.
Pereira shook his head. “We did.”
Silva studied the floor. A trail of blood stained the carpet.
“Let’s not get off the subject,” Pereira said. “Your goddamned boss-”
Silva waved a dismissive hand. “You don’t have to tell me, Walter. I work with the man.”
“The way I heard it, the filho da puta doesn’t work at all. The way I heard it, you guys do all the work, and he takes the credit. He is, by the way, currently positioning himself to do just that. He’s live on Channel Five.”
“Of course he is,” Arnaldo said. “His public demands it.”
“His public doesn’t know shit. They think the blowhard is a twenty-first-century Eliot Ness. What kind of a background does Sampaio have in law enforcement, anyway?”
“None whatever,” Silva said. “He was a corporate lawyer. He made a substantial contribution to the president’s election campaign. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“Watcha got?” Arnaldo asked.
“Just answer me this: is he, or is he not, a filho da puta?”
“He’s a filho da puta of monumental proportions,” Arnaldo said. “Watcha got?”
Pereira finally broke into a grin. The teeth under his moustache were movie-star white.
“I got it solved, is what I got,” he said.
Silva sensed a weight being lifted from his shoulders. “Solved?” he said.
“Ninety-nine percent.”
“You make an arrest?”
“Not yet.”
“Who did it and why?”
“Allow me my little moment,” Pereira said. “First, come and have a gander at my body.”
“Can’t wait,” Arnaldo said, looking him up and down.
“The corpse, Nunes. The corpse.”
“Very proprietary,” Silva said. “ My body, indeed.”
“We still have jurisdiction, Mario. Until somebody tells me otherwise, the civil police still have jurisdiction.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Silva said. “And you’re welcome, I’m sure.”
Pereira pointed. “In there.”
Following the trail of blood, they advanced into the living room.
The place was a slap in the face to minimalism. Every square meter of wall space was occupied. Where there wasn’t a window, there was a tapestry, or a case of books, or a painting, or a shelf. Many of the shelves contained images of saints-antique ones, by the look of them. And there were bigger images too, freestanding and scattered about the floor, some of them almost as tall as a man. The decor reminded Silva of stately homes he’d visited in Europe; it was totally incongruous in the heart of a city only six decades old. He wrinkled his nose. The room was warm. Juan Rivas was beginning to get ripe.
“What did this guy do for a living?” Arnaldo said. “Run a pawnshop?”
“He was a student,” Pereira said.
“A student? And he owned all this stuff?”
“‘Student’ is a polite euphemism for ‘playboy.’ The guy never did a lick of work in his life. And there’s an explanation for the stuff.”
“Which is?”
“His old man is a friend of the clown who runs Venezuela.”
“We know that. So what?”
“Being a friend of The Clown is akin to owning your own oil well. Old man Rivas, if he wanted to, could buy half the politicians in this town. Can you imagine the pressure we’d get on this one if I wasn’t about to ride in on my white horse and finger the perpetrator of this dastardly deed?”
“Your histrionics are ruining my morning, Pereira,” Arnaldo said.
“I’m glad, Nunes. Ruining your mornings is one of my few joys.”
“Who found the body?” Silva said.
“His cleaning lady.”
“Still here?”
“Nah. I let her go home. She’s a little thing, maybe a meter thirty, maybe fifty kilograms. Name of Carmen Fonseca. There are twelve-year-olds bigger and stronger than she is.”
“What’s big and strong got to do with it?”
“You’ll know when you see my body. Anyway, she didn’t have much to tell, said she was surprised the front door was only on the latch, not dead bolted as usual. She locked it behind her, walked around the couch, spotted the body, and fainted. A little while later, she came to, crawled to the phone, and called it in.”
“Why did you break down the door?”
“Her legs gave out. She couldn’t get up to open it. When the first guy came in, she crawled over to him, grabbed his ankles like he was a rock and she was being carried out by the tide. Hysterical, he said, would be an understatement.”
“Young woman?”
“A hag. Fifty-four, according to her identity card.”
“Not old at all,” Arnaldo bristled.
“Not for one of the few remaining dinosaurs in law enforcement,” Pereira said, “but if it makes you feel any better, she looks even older than you do. In her case, I put it down to a hard life. You? Well, I don’t know. All that sitting around on your ass and those long lunches, maybe?”
