“My husband and I are immensely in your debt,” the baby’s mother went on, “yours and Dr. Bittler’s.”
“And we’re immensely pleased that we were able to save Raul,” Claudia lied, going through the motions.
“I have to tell you, though, that the doctor’s attitude toward the other children, the Indian babies, was something my husband and I found. . well. . shocking.”
“I hope you haven’t been talking about that, about where we got the heart for Raul.”
“No, no, of course not,” Ana Carmen said, wringing her hands. “Not even to my mother. Clovis wouldn’t permit it.
Wise,” Claudia said.
“You can trust us. We’ll never tell.”
There was a door in one corner of the living room. It opened and Clovis came in. He caught sight of Claudia and his face turned pale.
“No,” Ana Carmen said quickly. “He’s fine. Doctor Andrade stopped by on her way home. She’s going to give us a progress report.”
Clovis’s color returned, and some of the stiffness seemed to go out of his body. He looked down at his feet. He was wearing a tattered pair of his wife’s slippers. One of them had the remnants of a pink bow.
Claudia saw it and smiled.
He caught her look and forced a smile of his own. “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty ridiculous, huh? But we don’t have a carpet in the bedroom.”
As if that explained it.
Ana Carmen put a hand on Claudia’s arm. “I’m being such a bad hostess,” she said. “How about some coffee? You
“Coffee would be nice,” Claudia said.
Clovis pointed at one of the four chairs in the tiny dining alcove.
“Why don’t we sit there?”
Claudia reached into her bag and removed a metal box that had once held English chocolates. “I brought some cookies. They’re to die for,” she said, and almost smiled.
Clovis pulled out one of the chairs for her and took one on the opposite side of the table. A vase of wilting flowers stood between them. He moved it aside.
“I’m glad you came,” he said. “I find it easier to talk to you than I do to Dr. Bittler.”
“Many people do. He’s a shy man. Sometimes it comes across as arrogance.”
“Yes,” he said. He picked up a dead petal from the table and distractedly rolled it between a thumb and forefinger. “The two of you have been doing this for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Doing what?”
“Stealing organs.”
Claudia crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.
“Wherever did you get an idea like that?”
“I don’t know. I just. . I. . well, frankly Dr. Andrade, I’m finding it very difficult to live with what I’ve done.”
“Pangs of conscience?”
“Call it whatever you like, but now that Raul’s procedure has been successful. .” His words drifted off.
“Surely, you’re not thinking of going to the authorities?”
“No, of course not,” he said, his voice totally lacking in conviction, “but I’m not inclined to help you with any fur-ther kidnappings out of the Xingu reservation.”
“You do recognize that Dr. Bittler only wants those Indians so he can save other lives?”
“I. . I’ve been discussing the issue with my wife. .”
“And?”
“You needn’t look at me like that. I know I agreed to the scheme, but I feel differently now.” He gave her what Claudia interpreted as a sly look. “I’d find it a lot easier to keep quiet if we just forgot about any future plans for the Indians.”
Claudia removed the lid from the metal box, and pushed the cookies across the table to rest in front of Clovis. “We should discuss that in more detail,” she said, “as soon as your wife comes back with the coffee.”
There was a chance that one, or both of them, would refuse a cookie. Claudia was prepared for that. She had a 6.35 mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol in her purse.
The weapon proved unnecessary.
Chapter Forty-four
“We got a break, ” Danusa Marcus said. “No line on anyone we can bust, not yet anyway, but there’s some indi-cation that your namorada’s hypothesis is correct.”
“I already told you,” Hector said. “She’s not my namor-
Whatever,” Rosa Amorim said. “Have you got a few minutes?”
Hector studied the two women who’d burst into his office without as much as a courteous rap on the door.
“For you two?” he said. “Always. Sit down.”
Rosa sank into a seat.
Danusa remained standing, leaned over, opened the
“I saw this on the way to work this morning,” she said. “The murdered couple are the Oliveiras, Clovis and Ana Carmen. Their names rang a bell. They were on our list of people to interview, but we hadn’t gotten to them yet.”
Hector took a moment to scan the article.
“Suspicion of poison, huh?”
“What it doesn’t say,” Danusa continued, “is that they had a baby boy, and that the kid needed a heart transplant. I spoke to one of the homicide guys assigned to the case. He told me Senhora Oliveira’s mother had a key to their apart-ment. She was accustomed to talking to her daughter by tele-phone at least twice a day. Last night, after no contact since early morning, she went over there and let herself in. They were in the dining alcove, pitched over the table, dead. Her daughter was clutching her husband’s hand.”
“You go to see the mother?”
Danusa looked pained. “Had to, right? I didn’t enjoy it.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t.”
“She lost her only daughter, and her only grandchild, and she’s a widow to boot. Her husband died not six months ago, killed in a holdup for twenty reals in cash and a thirty-real watch. Sometimes, I hate this town.”
“Her grandchild is dead, as well?”
“I was getting to that. Raul, his name was, born at Albert Einstein, up in Morumbi. Kid was less than two hours old when he was diagnosed with something called dilated car-diomyopathy, whatever the hell that is.”
“Fatal?”
“Without a heart transplant, yes.”
“And?”
“And Ana Carmen, that’s the baby’s mother, told
“The plot thickens.”
“Goddamned right it does. Now, get this: we can’t be ab-solutely sure the kid’s dead, but it seems like a safe assumption. We can’t find any trace of him. We’ve called every single hospital and clinic known to be able to
