“One hundred percent. What else did Babyface find out?”
“The guards at the gate are all moonlighting cops. They keep a list of day workers and the people who employ them. Turns out all of the ladies Clarice works for knew about the wedding, and all of them agreed to give her time off. None of them could give him a contact address or a tele-phone number.”
“Not surprising. I can’t imagine any of them would call her for a chat.”
“Samantha didn’t have any contact information either. It wouldn’t have made any sense. She can’t write, and she doesn’t have a phone. You want us to keep asking around?”
“Probably a waste of time. Same thing applies to involv-ing the cops in Pernambuco.”
“Yeah. By the time you get anything out of those yokels, you’ll be long retired,” Hector said. “Hell, come to think of it,
“I don’t think we have any choice. You left word for them to get in touch?”
“With Samantha, at the condominium gate, and with every woman Clarice works for. Babyface also slipped a note under the door of the Portellas’ shack.”
“How about that detective, Danilo? The guy who helped Tanaka bust the thug? You talk to him?”
“He’s dead.”
“He’s what?”
“Dead. The PCC killed him the night before last.”
The PCC, Primeiro Comando Capital, was another of Sao Paulo’s gangs, one that had its roots in prisons. Originally, they’d dealt exclusively with the interests of prisoners, lob-bying and threatening in an effort to get better food, more living space, less brutality from the guards.
They’d gone on to resolving grudges with the law.
There were now thousands of them, inside prisons and out. Over the past few years they’d killed almost a hundred cops and prison guards, shooting them down on the streets and even staging full-scale assaults on delegacias. Their weapons of choice were AK-47s and hand grenades, but they’d also been known to use light machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. It was another step toward turning Sao Paulo into the most dangerous urban environment on Earth.
“The PCC, huh?” Silva said. “Are we sure?”
“We’re sure. They got the guy who did it. Took him alive and he confessed. Seems Danilo killed his brother in a fire fight about a year and a half ago. I don’t think there’s any relationship between what happened to Danilo and what happened to Tanaka, unless someone in the PCC also had a grudge against Tanaka. But, if there was, the guy they nabbed doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Alright. So where are you going to take it from here?”
“I’m going to talk to Tanaka’s wife. Sergeant Lucas said she’s the one who wore the pants in the family. If that’s the case, and if Tanaka was up to something-”
“Which it sure as hell looks like he was.”
“Which it sure as hell looks like he was,” Hector repeated, “then there’s a good chance Senhora Tanaka knew about it. I figured I’d better bring a search warrant along just in case. I’d be over at her apartment right now if I wasn’t waiting for it. Soon as I have it in hand, I’ll be on my way.”
Chapter Twenty-two
In 1957, a young architect named Lucio Costa was given the go-ahead to start constructing Brasilia. He pro- jected his country’s new capital as a metropolis for the auto-mobile age, a place where roads and avenues flowed through tunnels and over viaducts, never once meeting at intersec-tions. The way he imagined it, there’d be five hundred thou-sand inhabitants and not a single traffic light.
Half a century later, the population of Brasilia was two and a half million, there were traffic lights galore, and the dream of free-flowing traffic was dead, suffocated under a cloud of gasoline and diesel fumes.
It took Silva forty-two minutes to cover the eight kilo-meters from his office to his home, a two-bedroom affair in a government-owned building. The apartment had been part of Costa’s original project and was considered ancient by Brasilia standards, but Silva liked the high ceilings and ample terrace.
His parking slot was close to the service elevator, so he went up that way, letting himself in by way of a laundry room that divided the kitchen from the maid’s quarters. The quar-ters were entirely occupied by shelves lined with books. Silva and his wife, Irene, didn’t maintain a full-time domestic servant.
They did, however, employ a faixineira. She invariably arrived after Silva had left for work, and left before he returned home. He was, therefore, surprised to find her sit-ting at the kitchen table.
He was even more surprised to find his wife completely sober. It was almost ten minutes to eight, and if Irene had been running true to form, she would have downed enough
Silva kissed his wife, smiled at the faixineira, walked to the stove, and sniffed at the coffeepot. The coffee smelled fresh, but the pot was only lukewarm. He lit the gas.
“Maria de Lourdes,” Irene said to his back, “has a problem.”
The faixineira was a small woman, perhaps in her fifties, perhaps younger, a native of one of those states to the south of Sao Paulo-Parana or Santa Catarina. Silva couldn’t remember which. Her full name was Maria de Lourdes Krups. If it had once been Krupps, which Silva suspected it had, the spelling had fallen victim to an ancestor’s illiteracy or per-haps to the ministrations of some careless clerk in a public registry office.
And if her name-giving forebears had been Caucasian (like their illustrious namesakes, the armaments barons of Essen), Maria de Lourdes had lost that, too. She was a
Silva’s coffee was now warm enough to drink. He shut off the gas, poured out a cupful, and took it to the table.
“How can I be of assistance?” he said, somewhat formally.
He’d been raised with servants and was comfortable with them as long as it didn’t involve sitting down for a chat. On the rare occasions like this one, he found it difficult to bridge the social gap, especially with women. Gardeners and drivers were easier. With them, you could always talk about soccer.
Maria de Lourdes looked at her lap.
Silva drained his beverage, and waited.
“Go on,” Irene said to her cleaning woman.
Maria de Lourdes looked at Irene and bit her lower lip.
“It’s about her son,” Irene said. “He’s missing.”
“That’s a matter for-”
“No, it isn’t, Mario. I know what you’re going to say, and it’s
Maria de Lourdes took a deep breath, and then started talking in a rush.
“I didn’t intend to trouble you, Senhor Mario, but I was talking to Dona Irene about it, and she said you might be able to help.”
Irene reached out and offered Maria de Lourdes a sup-porting hand. Maria de Lourdes took it and squeezed. Unlike her husband, Irene had no problem befriending servants. Maria de Lourdes was squeezing hard. Silva could see his wife’s knuckles going white.
“He always wanted to go to America,” Maria de Lourdes continued, speaking more slowly now, her eyes still on her lap, “always been crazy about American things: American music, American movies, even that stupid game where they throw the ball with their hands and knock each other down.”
She stopped talking, as if she’d lost the thread. After a few seconds of silence, Silva gave her a prompt.
“And?”
“And that’s why he decided to sneak into the United States.”
Silva got up from the table and went to the attache case he’d left on the kitchen counter. Maria de Lourdes looked up when she heard the snap-snap of the latches, watched him as he took out a yellow legal pad, and followed him with her eyes as he returned to the table.
