The Goat shook his head.
“Never heard of her.”
“Or her friend Andrea either, I suppose.”
“You suppose right.”
Silva leaned over the bar, getting into The Goat’s face.
“You had a girl working here,” he said, “who called herself Topaz.”
The Goat recoiled slightly. “No,” he said.
“Where is she?”
“I run a legitimate business here. I don’t employ minors-” “Who said Topaz was a minor?”
The Goat swallowed.
“You did,” he said.
“No, I didn’t,” Silva said. “Listen to me, you piece of garbage. I know you’re running a house with underage girls. I know you kidnap them and make them prostitute themselves, and I think that’s disgusting, but I’m after an even bigger fish. You help me, and I might be inclined to overlook a few things.”
“What do you mean by an even bigger fish?”
“I mean a psychopath. I mean somebody who makes videos of people being murdered.”
“Yeah, Roselia said you guys were looking for somebody like that. But I’m not him.”
“I didn’t say you were. Matter of fact, I just said you weren’t. How about it? Are you going to help me or not?”
“I got no idea what you’re talking about,” The Goat said. “Yes, you do,” Silva said.
He took a card out of his pocket and put it on the bar. “I’m at the Hotel Tropical,” he said. “If I get some cooperation, I’ll see what I can do for you. If not, I’m going to make sure they throw the book at you. Think about it.”
The Goat wet his lips. For a moment, Silva thought he was going to say something, but then he shook his head.
Silva gave it up for the moment.
The door to the boate had barely closed behind them when the music reverted to its original volume.
“ Psychopath?” Claudia said.
The Goat nodded. Once again, they were in her kitchen. It was two o’clock in the morning. She’d been sleeping soundly when he’d pounded on the door, but now she was wide awake. The Goat took another belt of Claudia’s cachaca.
“Or maybe it was sociopath. I don’t remember. One or the other. Anyway, he said that anybody who makes videos like that has to be crazy. And you know what? I agree with him.” Claudia thought The Goat was sounding more and more like someone who was about to spill his guts to the federals. The temptation to call Hans and have him put a bullet in The Goat’s head right then and there was strong. They could weight him down and throw him in the river, just as they’d done with Andrea, just as they’d done with so many others. Out near the end of the dock, the bottom was twenty meters down. They’d been feeding the fish there for more than a year. Dorsal fins converged on the spot whenever there was a splash.
But, no.
Roselia knew as much as The Goat did, and if anything happened to him she’d be pissed. To keep her quiet, they’d have to kill her as well. And if she disappeared, there’d be no one to make sure the girls kept their mouths shut. There was no telling what they knew, so, to be safe, they’d all have to be killed as well. And there was no way she could get away with a massacre like that. It would attract far too much attention.
Claudia bit her lip. “So what are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to make myself scarce for a while.”
“Where are you going?”
“You don’t have to know that. But Roselia will. If you need to get in touch with me, send a message through her. My suggestion is that you get out too, keep your head down until all this blows over.”
“Maybe I will,” she said.
“The Malan girl. You still got her?”
“Only for another day or two,” Claudia said.
Chapter Twenty-two
None of Father Vitorio’s neighbors had ever heard of a kid called Lauro Tadesco, and his name wasn’t in the telephone book. No surprise there. Telephones were expensive. Most poor people didn’t have them.
“How about I try the churches?” Joaquim said to the woman he knew as Carla.
“Are you crazy?” Claudia said. “It would get right back to that priest. Do this: go back to Pinto. Ask him to trace the kid through his national identity card.”
“He’s gonna ask me why I want to know. He’s gonna want more money.”
“We need him. I’ll pay Pinto. It won’t come out of your pocket.”
So Joaquim contacted the chief, and the chief responded as predicted: “How come you want to know about this Tadesco guy?”
“That job of Carla’s. She added a couple of people.”
“How many is a couple?”
“A couple. Two.”
“Gonna cost her more. You too.”
“She’s only paying me thirteen all up.”
“Sure she is. You tell her to call me.”
“Uh, maybe it was fourteen she said. Fourteen or thirteen. I can’t remember.”
“Just tell her to call me.”
The first thing the chief said to Claudia when she got him on the phone was “You know who keeps those records? The federal cops, that’s who.”
“They get hundreds, maybe thousands, of requests like that every day,” she said. “Why should they notice one inquiry?”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already,” he said, “but it’s extra work for me. How much you agree to pay Joaquim?”
She told him.
“Lying filho da puta,” he said. “Okay, you’re not gonna pay him anyway. Me you’re gonna pay an extra two thousand.”
“Two thousand? For something that’s gonna take one of your men no more than five minutes and isn’t costing you a centavo?”
“Maybe you know some other place you can get the information? Two thousand.”
Claudia sighed, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been expecting it. “I’ll send it over,” she said.
By ten o’clock the following morning, she knew that Lauro Alexandre Tadesco, age eighteen, son of Maria Lourdes Tadesco, father unknown, had listed his address as number thirteen, Rua Barbosa, in the bairro of Sao Conrado.
There was, of course, no guarantee that he still lived at the same address. But, according to one of the neighbors, he did. It turned out that Lauro was one of his mother’s seven children, neither the oldest nor the youngest, and they all lived at number thirteen, Rua Barbosa, in the bairro of Sao Conrado.
According to the same neighbor, a talkative old crone with only a few teeth, the mother took in washing, and the kids did all sorts of odd jobs to keep the family afloat. They were poor, but they were decent churchgoing folks, and they never caused anyone any trouble.
But if Joaquim was to follow Carla’s instructions to the letter, he still needed a visual of the kid. Fortunately for him, there was a bar just across the street. He settled in with a drink and watched the house.
About an hour later, when he was already feeling the effects of his sixth cachaca and was thinking of switching to Guarana, a kid of about the right age came out of the front door of number thirteen and started walking
