Chapter Fourteen
Silva and Hector Dedicated the day following their conversation with Luiz Pillar to the procedural ritual. They visited the murder site, spoke with the medical examiner, and interviewed the members of the bishop's reception committee. Nothing brought them closer to a solution.
They were back at the hotel, and Silva was nursing a cold beer, when his cell phone, the one for which only the director had the number, started to ring. He fished it out of his breast pocket.
'Good evening, Director.'
'Silva?'
It wasn't the director.
'Who is this?'
'Orlando Muniz. One of your superiors should have talked to you about me. Did he?'
'Yes. How did you get this number, Senhor Muniz?'
'Never mind that. I've arrived. I'm in suite nine hundred at the Excelsior. Where are you?'
'In my room. The same hotel.'
'Good. Come up.'
'Right now?'
'Something wrong with your ears?'
'I assumed you'd be staying at your son's place.'
'It's not his place. It's my place, and it has two broken doors. I'll move out there when they're fixed. Suite nine hundred. Make it quick. I'm waiting.' Muniz hung up.
'And good afternoon to you, too, Senhor Muniz,' Silva said. Then, to Hector, 'How about another beer?'
Thirty minutes later, a flinty-eyed man wearing an empty shoulder holster answered the door of Suite 900. A pistol, a Glock. 40 just like the one Silva was wearing under his jacket, was in his right hand, pointing at the floor.
'Senhor Muniz?' Silva said.
'Who wants him?' the bodyguard said.
'Costa and Silva, Federal Police.'
'Took your own sweet time getting here,' a voice grumbled from inside the suite, and then, giving an order, 'Let 'em in, Jair.'
Jair stepped aside. After they walked past him he stuck his head into the corridor, looked left and right, and then locked the door behind them.
Muniz's suite was a good deal larger than Silva's, but it was on the top floor of the hotel, just under the roof, so the airconditioning wasn't equal to the task of cooling the place. It was uncomfortably hot. If Muniz had shown him a bit more courtesy, Silva might have told him that the hotel had other, cooler, alternatives.
But Muniz hadn't and Silva didn't.
Muniz had another visitor and, by the look of things, he'd already been in the suite for some time. Both men were stripped down to their shirtsleeves, had opened their collars, and had circles of sweat under their arms. There was a full ashtray on the coffee table. The same table held a number of empty glasses, an ice bucket, and a bottle of Logan's Twelve Year Old. The bucket was transparent. It only had a few slivers of ice in the bottom and about a centimeter of water. A strong smell of tobacco was in the air and enough haze to make Silva's eyes burn.
Muniz stood. He was a short, swarthy man, with a wart to the left of his nose. Earlier in the day, Silva had received photos of his son. There was no physical resemblance.
The other man also stood. Muniz introduced him. 'Judge Wilson Cunha.'
The judge offered his hand, first to Silva and then to Hector. He was short and his erect posture and protruding chest reminded Silva of a pigeon. His hair, moist from perspiration and immaculately coifed, was somewhat long for a man of his age and station. It hung slightly over his ears.
The other two men in the room, the fellow who'd opened the door, and another who could have been his younger brother, apparently didn't rate introductions.
Muniz wiped his forehead on his sleeve, snapped his fingers, and pointed to the chairs surrounding a dining table. 'Put two of those'-he pointed to a spot on the opposite side of the coffee table-'right there.'
The men with the flinty eyes did what he'd told them to do and then retreated to opposite corners of the room.
'Sit down,' Muniz said, making it sound more like a command than a courtesy. He sank back into his seat on the couch.
Cunha adjusted his armchair to form a united front. He was obviously going to be on Muniz's side, whatever it was.
Silva expected to be offered a drink. It didn't happen.
'You find my boy?' Muniz began without preamble. In Brazil, where manners dictate that virtually every conversation open with some kind of chitchat, it was a clear discourtesy.
'Not yet, senhor,' Hector said.
'I was talking to your boss, not you,' Muniz said, sharply. 'What about the note?'
'No prints,' Silva said. 'Written with a ballpoint pen in block letters.'
'Get it. I want to see it.'
Silva shook his head. 'I sent it to Brasilia for analysis. Maybe there are fingerprints. We may learn something of interest from the ink or the paper, but I doubt it. We may be able to confirm the identity of the writer if we catch him, but then again-'
'Maybe, maybe, maybe. That's all you've got? What's the matter with you people? How many of those agitators have you questioned?'
'League members, you mean?'
'Who else would I mean? Do you know what happened last night?'
'The occupation of your son's, sorry, your fazenda?'
'So you're not completely uninformed? Good for you. You think that threat was bullshit, or is my boy really dead?'
'They made no demands. I'd expect the worst.'
Judge Cunha nodded sagely, as if he'd already made the same point. Then he reached over, used his fingers to extract some of the remaining ice from the bucket, put it into his mouth, and cracked it with his teeth.
'Why haven't you arrested some of the bastards?' Muniz went on.
'As Judge Cunha here will undoubtedly be able to tell you, there's the issue of proof-'
'Proof?' Muniz exploded. 'Those maggots are crawling all over my fazenda. Do you think it's a coincidence? Haul the bastards in on a trespassing charge. I'll be happy to question them myself.'
Silva's jaw tightened, but he kept a close rein on his temper. 'It's possible we may be dealing with two unrelated issues,' he said.
'It's possible that the blessed Virgin Mary had two balls and a cock,' Muniz said, 'but I doubt it.'
The judge looked shocked. But then he reached out, tentatively touched Silva just above his kneecap and cleared his throat. 'You have to understand, Chief Inspector, that my friend Senhor Muniz is justifiably upset. He's worried about his son, as any father would be, and he's outraged that those… people had the effrontery to invade his property.'
He paused, and appeared to be waiting for Silva to respond. When Silva didn't, the judge continued. 'Before you arrived, we were discussing Senhor Muniz's legal recourses with respect to the occupation. The situation seems very clear to me.'
'Does it? I'm told that Senhor Muniz's son wasn't using that land.'
'What the hell has that got to do with it?' Muniz snapped.
'The law states,' Silva said, 'that the government can appropriate uncultivated land by paying a fair price for it. The law further states that the government can grant land thus appropriated to landless farmers. If you, judge, would entertain an act of appropriation, I'm sure the league people could be convinced to leave the property until
