“Sudden infant death syndrome.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, sounding surprised that he knew. She exhaled another cloud of smoke, this time taking care to blow it toward the window and not at her latest lover. “My parents got up one morning and he was cold in his crib. He slept right there in the same room with them. My father hated that, him sleeping in the same room I mean, but my mother insisted. One of the only times I ever saw her put her foot down. Told my father that if he’d get up to feed him she’d move him into another room, but otherwise he was going to stay right there. The poor little tyke died and never made a sound. My mother was devastated. We all were, except for my father. I didn’t see him shed a tear, not that morning, not at the funeral, not ever. The baby was named after him, too. Little Caio.”
“Jesus,” Babyface said.
“But now, now that he’s getting old, and I’m not little any-more, and my mother is dead, he’s changed. Now he’s getting worried about who’s going to take care of him when he gets frail and who’s going to cry at his funeral. He’s got the rest of my brothers and sisters under his thumb. At least he
She took another puff, let the smoke drift out of her mouth as she continued.
“Me? I wouldn’t have it. I wouldn’t take his fucking job. I never let him get his hooks into me. I went out and made it on my own. He respects that, in a way, but he hates it, too. Now he’s on a whole campaign, sending me stuff I don’t need or want, calling me almost every day. He’s driving me nuts.”
“About what?”
“Everything. My job, my love life, my friends, my religion.”
“Religion? You’re not Catholic?”
Smoke was making her eyes water. She waved her ciga-rette back and forth to disperse it.
“No,” she said. “I’m not. I’m a Wiccan.”
“No kidding?” Babyface said, propping himself up on his pillow.
She looked at him in surprise. “You know what a Wiccan is?”
“Sure,” he said. “The Rede, the Ardanes, the Virtues, the Law of Threefold Return.”
That was enough to set her off.
* * *
Pleading an early-morning staff meeting at the broker-age house where he’d said he worked, Babyface left Miranda Cavalcante’s apartment at 6:30 am. He went home to his place in Vila Madelena, showered, and set the alarm for nine fifteen. After two hours’ sleep, and two strong cups of coffee, he called Silva at his office in Brasilia.
“We’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“She’s not a bad-looking girl. Thin, with small tits, but she has a nice-”
“I didn’t ask you for a critique, I asked you to find out about this Wicca business.”
“Okay. Well, first of all, your hypothesis about her old man is right. He
“How can you be sure?”
“Because she told me flat out, said her father called her up and told her that if she and her friends were killing people they had to stop it right away because the cops were on their trail.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. She treated it as a joke. Said that if her father knew anything about her religion at all, he would have known they weren’t hurting anyone, much less killing them. A couple of years ago, she tried to tell him about the Wiccan Rede, but he obviously wasn’t listening, so she gave it up.”
“Wiccan Rede?”
“I thought you said you looked all this up on the Internet.”
“I did, but I must have missed that one. What is it?”
“It’s a sort of maxim. The basic idea is that if you do no harm to anyone, you can do anything else you damn well please. When she was talking to her dad, she stressed the not doing harm part. Wiccans, she told him, use magic for things that are positive and good. She’s a touchy-feely kind of per-son. Has four cats, a poodle, a cage full of birds, and a pair of sugar gliders named Romeo and Juliet. We had to lock the cats and the poodle outside of her bedroom so we could get it on. The damn poodle kept scratching at the door and the cats-”
“Get back to the point, Babyface.”
“The point is, this girl isn’t killing people. No way. And the fact that her father thinks she’d be remotely capable of it just goes to show what an unfeeling blowhard he is. He apparently didn’t listen to a word she said.”
“Unfeeling blowhard?”
“Well. . yeah, in a matter of speaking.”
“You liked her, didn’t you?”
A pause. Then Babyface said, “Yeah, I kinda did.”
“Going to see her again?”
“Uh. . maybe.”
“Fine. Your private life is none of my business. But don’t let me catch you bitching the next time I need you for an undercover assignment.”
Silva had no sooner hung up with Goncalves when Sampaio stuck his head through the doorway to his office.
“Any news on the Pluma investigation?” he asked, com-pletely ignoring the presence of Arnaldo.
“No, Director. Nothing yet.”
“Stick with it, Mario. There’s got to be something there. There always is.”
Sampaio wandered off.
Arnaldo lifted his eyebrows. “So now it’s the Pluma Investigation, is it? Makes it sound like something impor- tant. Who’ve you got working on it?”
“It’s a highly confidential inquiry.”
“Meaning you’re supposed to be working on it yourself?”
“Exactly.”
“And are you? Working on it, I mean?”
Silva shook his head. “Of course not. Pluma continues to bad-mouth Sampaio to the minister, and the way I figure it, that’s God’s work.”
“Amen,” Arnaldo said.
Less than ten minutes later, Hector called from Sao Paulo.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said.
“I have seen many wonderful things in my long life, Nephew. You’d be surprised at what I’d believe. Try me.”
“You’re hanging around a lot with Arnaldo, aren’t you?”
“As a matter of fact I am. Why?”
“Because you’re beginning to sound like him, except you’ve got a bigger vocabulary.”
“Fuck you, Hector,” Arnaldo said.
“I neglected to mention,” Silva said, “that you’re on the speakerphone. So what did you think I’m going to have a hard time believing?”
“Fuck you, too, Arnaldo. Remember that Jap delegado, Tanaka?”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead. Blown up by a bomb somebody put in his car. It could be entirely unrelated to our investigation, but. .”
“You’re going to check it out.”
“His delegacia, first stop. I’ll keep you posted.”
