must know who killed Azevedo.'
'Or thinks he does.'
'Or thinks he does. Either way, we've got to find him before Ferraz does. We'll leave it to Arnaldo. He excels at that kind of street stuff.'
The waiter arrived with two cups of espresso. Hector added some sugar from the dispenser and picked up one of the tiny spoons.
'What do you make of Brouwer?'
'I'm not sure. Remember Father Angelo?'
'The old guy you told me about? The one who lives with Brouwer?'
'Him.' Silva took a sip of his coffee. 'He said Brouwer was incapable of spilling innocent blood. That's the way he put it, 'spilling innocent blood.'
'There's just one problem with that.'
'What?'
Hector drained his cup.
'Suppose Brouwer doesn't think the blood he's spilling is innocent?'
Chapter Twenty-three
The task Silva gave him presented Arnaldo with a dilemma: The only people who could help him find a street kid were other street kids. But trying to start a casual conversation with a street kid wouldn't work. The kid would either clam up or run. And he couldn't just go out and arrest one. Without some kind of a charge that would stick, even a federal cop couldn't get away with that. And, besides, where could he take him? Bringing him to Ferraz's jail would be useless. The kid would be so terrified that he'd never open up. Taking him to the hotel would attract too much attention, and might have fatal consequences if the colonel found out about it.
Arnaldo considered going to a seedy part of town and flaunting his wristwatch and wallet. But, no, that wouldn't work either. He was a big guy, so they'd have to set on him in a group or leave him alone. If they left him alone, he'd be wasting his time. If they set on him in a group, he'd have to pull a gun, but then somebody was liable to get hurt.
Finally, and somewhat reluctantly, he came up with a way to go about it.
The desk clerk at the Hotel Excelsior, the one who looked like an Indian, frowned when Arnaldo asked him the question. 'A boy?' he said. 'You want a boy who-'
Arnaldo didn't let him finish. 'You heard me. And wipe that look off your face. I'm after information, not sex.'
'Information, huh?' The clerk smirked.
'Answer the question. Where do they hang out?'
'I wouldn't have any idea.' The clerk's smirk was carrying over into his voice.
'No?'
'No. Now, if it was a girl you wanted-'
'I told you what I wanted, and I just told you why. And don't tell me you don't know, because this is a small town and everybody knows things like that. Don't make me lose my temper. You won't like it.'
The clerk absorbed Arnaldo's change in attitude, and crumbled.
'The rumor is that they hang around Republic Square,' he said, lowering his voice even though they were alone in the lobby. 'But they're like tapirs. You don't see them much in the daytime.'
Arnaldo thought about it. His first reaction was to go to his room, have a nap, and hit the street after sunset. But, if he did that, Ferraz might find Pipoca first and it would be goodbye Pipoca.
'Where is this Republic Square?'
The clerk gave him directions, adding that it was 'in the old part of town.'
Until he got there, Arnaldo figured that 'old' was a misnomer. Cascatas wasn't really old as towns go, but this part of it sure as hell looked old. The square was as dirty and rundown as anyplace you could find in Sao Paulo, which was almost four hundred years older.
The clerk at the hotel hadn't bothered to mention that there was an open-air market in the square every Tuesday and Friday. That was annoying for Arnaldo, but was a good thing for the businesses that surrounded the square. Because if the market vendors hadn't hosed down the place, as they were doing when he arrived, it might never have been cleaned at all. Unfortunately, the storm drains were mostly blocked with garbage, which meant that the hosing simply served to concentrate the detritus on top of the grates. The air was heavy with the smell of rotted fruit and spoiled fish. The elaborate cast-iron lampposts, once the pride of a new city, were rusting, and in two cases broken off just above the ground. Arnaldo noticed that there was something else about the lampposts: Every single globe was broken. He suspected it had been done on purpose to assure that the square would remain a dark place after sundown.
The buildings surrounding the square were all of a pattern and all four stories tall. Some of the windows on the upper floors bore signs: a homeopathic doctor, a tarot card reader, and several businesses identified only by their names. At ground level, offices were interspersed with a few shops: One sold herbs, small statues and other artifacts for use in the spiritualist rituals of Candombh and Macumba, Brazil's equivalent of voodoo. Another was occupied by an ironmonger. The proprietor had stacked wooden boxes containing horseshoes, and funnels of all sizes, beside his door. The ironmonger was flanked, on one side, by a place heaped with secondhand furniture and, on the other, by a bar.
The bar had only a handful of clients, all wearing the aprons that identified them as vendors from the market. They were seated around a rusting collapsible table and drinking straight cachaca. An old man with a day's growth of beard was hovering nearby, making a halfhearted attempt to sell lottery tickets and trying to cadge a drink. One of the men at the table stood up, offered his almost-empty glass to the ticket seller, and strolled off in the direction of his stall. The old man lifted the mouthful of cachaca to his lips and drained it in one gulp.
The housewives had already bought their fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish and had departed. With the exception of the drinkers, the vendors were packing up. Arnaldo decided to wait it out.
It didn't take long.
Half an hour after he arrived, all vestiges of the market were gone, the bar had closed, and the square was virtually empty. It was almost two o'clock by then and getting into the hottest part of the day. Arnaldo went back to where he'd parked his car, stripped off his tie and threw it on the front seat. He left his jacket on to cover his holster. Then he went back and started trolling, walking around and around the square in a clockwise direction.
He was beginning to think he was wasting his time when he heard a voice: 'Looking for company, senhor?' The voice wasn't brazen. It was soft, young, almost embarrassed. He looked around for the source and spotted a kid looking at him from the alleyway between two of the crumbling redbrick buildings. The boy might have been a teenager, but Arnaldo doubted it. He looked to be eleven, twelve at the most, and had eyes grown large with hunger. The eyes reminded Arnaldo of a character in one of those Japanese cartoons that his son, Julio, liked to watch on television. A dirty sweatshirt from the PUC hung low over the kid's faded jeans. The PUC-The Pontificia Universidade Catolica- was one of Sao Paulo's institutions of higher learning. The shirt was as close to it as the kid was ever going to get.
Arnaldo had been offered the bait. Now he snapped at the hook.
'Sure,' he said. 'How much?'
'Fifty reais,' the kid said.
'Twenty.'
You never agreed to give a whore, any kind of a whore, the first price they asked for. They'd think you were crazy, or stupid, or maybe they'd think you were a cop.
'Forty,' the kid said.
'Thirty,' Arnaldo said. 'And a tip if I like your work.'
'Where?' the kid said.
It was broad daylight, so it wasn't going to happen in the alley. Arnaldo assumed that the kid had a deal with
