afternoon off and stop by, just to see her like that, smiling, with the kids, before she went home and got drunk.
She usually started at five o’clock in the afternoon. Five o’clock exactly, trying to prove to him that she wasn’t really an alcoholic, just a woman having a cocktail at the end of the day. She’d insist that alcoholics drank in the morning. She didn’t drink in the morning, only at night.
But it was every night. And it was always to excess.
When Silva was on a trip, he’d try to ring home before eight P.M. If he called much later he’d hear Irene’s slurred speech and know she wasn’t absorbing half of what he said. But he’d call anyway, because he knew she needed to hear his voice, even if they weren’t going to have a coherent conversation. He worried about what would happen to her if someone were to kill him. He’d taken to being more cautious. For her sake.
And now, here it was, the eighth of May come around again. On the night before the anniversary of her son’s death, Irene Silva hadn’t gone to bed at all.
At seven-thirty A.M., her husband found her on the couch in the living room, an empty vodka bottle on the coffee table in front of her, clutching little Mario’s teddy bear in her arms. She didn’t wake when he carried her into the bedroom and tucked her in.
At ten, Hector called from Amsterdam. It was five hours later there, and Hector sounded more awake than Silva felt.
“Today’s the day,” were the first words Hector said.
“Yes,” Silva said.
“How’s Tia Irene?”
“Sleeping. I hope.”
“But she didn’t sleep last night?”
“No. Not last night. How was the drug conference?”
Hector knew the signs. His uncle wanted to talk about something else, anything else. “Like being inside a bag full of cats,” he said.
“The Americans blaming the Bolivians and Colombians for growing it; the Bolivians and Colombians telling them that it’s their own damned fault for creating a market?”
“And the other Europeans all ganging up on the Dutch because they think they’re too soft. It didn’t help, either, that the Dutch have cornered the world’s Ecstasy market. These days, they’ve got more labs than windmills.”
“And we import more of it than their cheese and their chocolate. You pick up any promising leads?”
“Not as far as drugs are concerned, but there’s something else. I have to see you.”
“Personally?”
“Personally. My flight from Amsterdam arrives in Sao Paulo tomorrow morning at seven. I’ll catch a connecting flight and come right to Brasilia.”
“It’s that serious?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’d better bring Arnaldo.”
Agente Arnaldo Nunes was about Silva’s age and had been a cop for almost as long. The fact that he hadn’t achieved a lofty position in the hierarchy had nothing to do with being irreverent and sarcastic, which he was, nor to do with his abilities and competence, both of which were considerable. But he’d come from a poor family, married young, and had never been able to raise the money to go to law school. Without a law degree, the statutes governing the federal police blocked him from becoming a delegado, which was the first step to every other position of major responsibility. So on paper, Arnaldo remained a lowly agente. In practice, he wielded far more power and influence.
“What do you mean, bring Arnaldo?” Hector asked. “Isn’t he there with you?”
“He’s in Sao Paulo at the moment. I’ll call him and tell him to meet your flight.”
“It’s Air France.”
“Not KLM?”
“No. I connect in Paris.”
“Number?”
“AF 0454.”
“Consider it done. Now, tell me.”
Hector gave his uncle a rough overview of the situation, and then described his conversation with Montsma and Kuipers. He finished by saying, “There are tapes from Russia and Thailand, too, but the Brazilian ones are the most disturbing. They made me sick, Tio, physically sick. They all have titles in English. One is called Killing the Vampire. The killer uses a sledgehammer to drive a sharp stake through the woman’s chest.”
“Ouch,” Silva said.
“All of them cover the murder in one shot. And they all end with either dismemberment or severe mutilation of the victim. Kuipers thinks that’s to prove to the buyers that what they’re seeing is real, not faked. That it’s proof of death. Another one was entitled The Lumberjack’s Revenge. The killer takes a chain saw and-”
“That’s enough. I get the picture. How can they tell which ones came from here?”
“They’ve all got live sound. It appears that the… clients like hearing what’s going on.”
“Sick bastards. Any luck following the money?”
“None. They were using a bank in Riga.”
“Riga?”
“Capital of Latvia. Apparently, Latvian banks are much tougher to deal with than the Swiss. Montsma says they won’t violate their security for anyone.”
“How about the master tapes? Any fingerprints?”
“Only Schubski’s and Oosterbaan’s. But I got a list of their clients. It was password protected and encrypted, but Oosterbaan gave it up.”
“Any Brazilians?”
“A few.”
“Addresses?”
“Mostly post office boxes and E-mail addresses so they can be advised about new releases.”
“Send them to me. I’ll have Arnaldo lean on the Internet service providers, get us names and addresses for the account holders.”
“The Dutch don’t have a law that makes it illegal to buy the stuff, only to sell it. They can’t prosecute the customers in their own country. It’s got them hopping mad.”
“I’m not sure we can prosecute either. I’ll have to check. How about the killers? More than one?”
“Different in every DVD.”
“You get frame blowups?”
“Being made as we speak. But there’s something more. There’s a Brazilian woman whose phone call was taped. She seems to have been a supplier.”
“The woman. Is her voice in the background on any of the DVDs?”
“The last one. She spoke English with Smit, and Portuguese on the DVD, but they did a voiceprint analysis. Same person.”
“What did she say?”
“It sounded to me like she was operating the camera and directing the action at the same time. She tells the murderer to hold the victim still, because there’s too much movement to zoom in and get a tight close-up of her eyes. Later, she tells him to get out the ax and do what she told him to do.”
“And he did it? Just like that?”
“No. Not just like that. He looks at the camera and shakes his head. He tells her it isn’t worth the trouble, that the woman is already dead.”
Hector paused. His uncle could hear him swallow as he remembered.
“And?” he prompted.
“She told him he was a cretin and to do it anyway.”
