“The father of the boy is Marnix Kloppers.”
“What the fuck kind of a name is that?”
“It’s of Dutch origin, I believe.”
“And the priest?”
“Dennis Clancy.”
“And the last guy?”
“Darcy Motta.”
“Oh, yeah, Motta.” Luis Mansur chuckled.
Silva picked up on the reaction. “You know him?”
“Know him? Hell, no.”
“You didn’t sit down next to him?”
Mansur bristled. “He tell you that? Tell you I sat down next to him? If he did, he’s lying.”
“He hasn’t told us anything. We’re still looking for him.”
“You found me. How come you haven’t found him?”
“His ticket was purchased with cash. We’ve been unable to uncover any credit cards. He has no driver’s license, no telephone, no cell phone, no criminal record. It’s possible that Darcy Motta is an alias, that his real name is something else.”
“Hmmm,” Mansur said. He sounded pensive.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Silva asked.
“No.”
“Does the name Girotti mean anything to you? Joao Girotti?”
“Not a thing. Why?”
“He, too, was murdered. The method of killing, and the bullet used, matched the others.”
“But he wasn’t on the plane?”
“No, he wasn’t. Listen, Senhor Mansur, I’d like to speak to you personally. Could we meet on Tuesday morning? About ten?”
Mansur did a noisy flip through of his desk calendar.
“Make it nine,” he said. “I’ve got a busy day, but I’ll shuffle my schedule around.”
“Nine, then. In the meantime, be careful.”
“Let me tell you something, Senhor Chief Inspector Silva. I’ve got a Taurus. 38 and, before you ask, yes, I do have a permit to carry it. I was robbed one time on the street; a little punk threatened me with a knife. I gave him my wallet, and my watch, and the little fucker cut me anyway. It took six stitches to close the wound, and if I’d raised that arm up a fraction of a second later, I would have gotten it right in the face. I’m not about to let anything like that happen again. Anybody, man, woman, or child, who threatens me is gonna eat a bullet.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Customs agents who’d nabbed Junior Arriaga were Fausto Mainardi and Douglas Caetano. Mainardi, who seemed friendly enough, was a veteran in a baggy suit. Caetano, new to the service, was surlier but a better dresser. They brought Goncalves to the windowless room where they’d interrogated the teenager.
A television camera was mounted high in one corner, a monitor in another. A microphone protruded from the ceiling. The only source of illumination, a fluorescent tube, was protected by a metal grate.
Goncalves, preparing to take notes, tried to move his chair closer to the table. It wouldn’t budge. He looked down and saw it was bolted to the cement floor.
“Why are we interested in this kid?” Mainardi said.
The we was a reminder. The Customs Service was a division of the Federal Police. Mainardi and Caetano fell into the category of colleagues. They expected Goncalves to tell them the whole story.
Which he did, starting with the murder of Juan Rivas and emphasizing the director’s personal interest in the case.
When he told them about young Arriaga’s murder, neither man seemed shocked-or even interested.
“Sounds unrelated,” Mainardi said.
“Probably no connection at all,” Goncalves agreed, “but my orders are to follow up on it. Tell me what you remember.”
“Start with the old system,” Caetano said to his partner.
Mainardi nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Time was,” he said, “we asked people with taxable goods to fill in a form. Those that didn’t, they’d go straight to nothing-to-declare. There was this button they had to push, and a sign right next to it, all in lawyer’s language: By pushing this button I affirm yadda, yadda, yadda and so forth and so on. If an arrow in front of the pusher went green, it would be pointing left and they were home free. But if the arrow went red and pointed to the right, and a loud fucking buzzer went off, they’d have to go to the tables and start opening their bags. Way I heard it, some cousin of some higher-up sold us this system and cut a nice deal for doing it. Way I heard it, it was the most expensive buzzer-and-light system in the history of the world.”
“Not to be impolite,” Goncalves said, “but what’s this story got to do with-”
“Hold your horses. I’m getting there.”
“You gotta hear the whole thing,” Caetano said. “Otherwise you’re not gonna get it.”
Mainardi waited until Goncalves nodded. Then he continued. “A lot of us were pissed off about the changes. We figured we were better than any random system. We lobbied for an override, a little transmitter we could keep in our pockets and use to buzz anybody who looked suspicious. In the end, the higher-ups agreed.”
“Uh-huh,” Goncalves said. He started to drum his fingertips on the table.
“Almost there,” Mainardi said. “So we used the hybrid system, random and override, for a couple of years, until the guy who had it installed retired to his villa on the French Riviera, or some such place, and the new regime took over. That’s when we switched.”
“To what?”
“Now everybody has to fill in the form, whether you have goods to declare or not. We stand there and collect them. Anybody looks suspicious, we shake ’em down. Back to square one, you know what I mean? But it wasn’t square one, because working with the other system taught us something.”
“Which was?” Goncalves said, still drumming.
“Which was that no matter how good we think we are, we’re still gonna make mistakes. The random system picked up people we would never have expected. And we chose to stop people who, no matter how shifty they looked, weren’t trying to get away with a thing.”
“And that’s what happened on this flight, the one the kid was traveling on?”
Mainardi pointed a finger at Goncalves as if it was a gun. “You got it,” he said. “There we were, young Douglas and me, working the flight in question and collecting the forms. First thing that happens is, I pull a guy name of…”-he consulted the file he’d brought with him-“Darcy Motta.”
“Why did you pick on him?” Goncalves asked, his interest quickening.
“Same reason I pick on anybody. He looked shifty. But no, I’m wrong. The guy’s carrying hand luggage and a small suitcase, that’s it. Inside the suitcase there’s a pair of pants, a couple of dirty shirts, ditto underwear. In the hand luggage, there’s a carton of cigarettes, a pack of chewing gum, some condoms, and a couple of girlie magazines. Meanwhile, young Douglas here decides to shake down Arriaga, an innocent-looking fresh-faced kid, somebody you wouldn’t suspect in a million years.”
“But if you wouldn’t suspect him, why-”
“Let me finish. Turns out the kid is carrying three plastic containers. They’re pretty big, about the size of a jar of mayonnaise. On the outside, it says they’re multiple vitamins.
Under the caps are foil seals. At least there are on two of them. The seal on the third one is broken. And what’s inside that one really are vitamin pills.”
“Kid’s eyes got real big,” Caetano said, “and he started to stammer. Claimed he’d never seen those containers before in his life. I picked up one of the sealed ones and rattled it. It sounded like it was full of pills, just like it’s supposed to be. But then I ask myself what kind of pills. I break the seal, and guess what?”
