The Paradise Prophecy

exactly speaking at a conversational level, so her attention was caught before she’d even closed her wallet.

Zack was still in the middle of his pitch, the girl starting to come around, weakening at the prospect of not having to sleep in an alley or a junkie dive, when the woman turned and said, “Bobby, get the fuck out of here before I call the police.”

Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense.

Zack wheeled around, annoyed by the interruption. But his demeanor changed the moment he realized who she was. Apparently, he and this woman had a history.

Jenna frowned at him. “I thought you said your name was Zack?”

“Middle name,” he said, and of course he was lying. Everyone in Hollywood was trying to reinvent themselves. “And I don’t like it when people call me Bobby.” He shot a look at the woman now.

The woman didn’t back down. “And I don’t like when you prey on girls who are nearly a decade younger than you are. I mean it, Bobby, go now or I really will call the police.”

She pulled out her cell phone to punctuate the threat. Zack looked as if he were about to get all hot and bothered, maybe go postal on her, but after a moment he merely glanced at the two women, muttered the word bitch and slinked out the door.

Jenna looked dismayed. “Who was that guy?”

“Nobody you want to get involved with, dear. He hangs around the shelter sometimes, harassing the girls, and I’m always having to chase him away.”

“Shelter?”

“I run a homeless shelter down the street.” She glanced at Jenna’s knapsack. “We’ll probably be full up tonight, but it’ll be dark soon and if you need a place to stay, I’ll be happy to put a sleeping bag on my office floor.”

“Really?”

“Really. But you’ll have to decide before my Americano comes, because there are a lot of other girls out there who could use that space.”

A moment later the woman’s order was ready, and Jenna hefted her knapsack and went with her out the door.

He considered following them but didn’t think it was necessary. Jenna would be in capable hands tonight, and that was all that mattered. Zack the pretty boy was bound to be a complication-he had a feeling Jenna hadn’t seen the last of him-but he could handle that in due course.

As the two women disappeared from view, he could still hear the siren song of Jenna’s soul. Those high, sweet notes that told him he had finally found the one he’d been looking for for so many years.

What a shame she had to die.

14

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL

What you are about to experience, senhors and senhoritas, is the Wild West of Sampa.”

Callahan had crowded into the back of the ancient tour van, finding herself pressed up against a fat American tourist and his wife.

Their driver and tour guide was a middle-aged Brazilian woman who wore a wireless headset that piped her voice over speakers mounted throughout the van. She gave her spiel only in a thickly accented English, so if you didn’t speak or understand the language, you were shit out of luck.

“Keep your cameras ready,” she said. “This is a sight you will want to remember.”

Callahan had spent the previous afternoon and part of the morning reinterviewing witnesses-Gabriela Zuada’s crew, her bandmates, her security team-leaning on them with questions about the pop star’s potential enemies, especially those who might be involved in Satanic worship. But the only name that consistently came up was Jose de Souza. The drug lord Gabriela had once worked for.

Which only confirmed that, dangerous or not, the man needed to be questioned.

And Callahan would have to do the questioning.

So here she was, feeling the bump of the road beneath her as the van rolled along the highway at the edge of the city.

Off to their left were the beginnings of Favela Paraisopolis, a ramshackle shantytown, its multicolored, dilapidated metal-and-plywood shacks lining the highway, looking as if they might collapse at any moment.

The favela was located in the heart of the Sao Paulo suburb of Morumbi, one of the richest in Brazil. The contrast between unapologetic wealth and abject poverty was stark, visceral and depressing. Callahan wondered what it must be like to live in the shadow of such wealth, waking every morning and looking out at the glass-and-steel high-rises knowing they represented a world you would never be invited to enter.

She had to give Gabriela credit for managing to pull herself out of this rat hole. It couldn’t have been an easy thing to do.

The van made a turn, pulling onto a narrow, debris-strewn street. There was a dumping ground off to the right, mounds of rubble and trash piled several feet high, blocking the view of the highway.

They rolled past it and stopped as a pack of teenagers on battered mopeds buzzed by, shouting obscenities and flashing what Americans would think of as the “A-okay” sign. In Brazil, however, it meant something quite different.

Ahead, the street was teeming with favelados-residents of the favela-young and old alike, some parked in rickety metal chairs, others looking down onto the street from second-story windows, still others standing in front of crude storefronts, hawking candy and bottled drinks to passersby.

Two boys, who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, stood near an open doorway, passing a joint between them in blatant disregard of authority. Assuming there was any around here.

Laundry hung from windowsills. Bundles of frayed electrical and telephone lines were strung between the buildings, crisscrossing the sky above the street like multicolored spiderwebs. The street itself was littered with old car tires, chunks of loose cement and overflowing garbage cans, one of which had been overturned by a mangy dog, hunting for food.

Overall, it looked to Callahan like a war zone, and probably was from time to time.

The driver rolled slowly forward through it all, weaving past the debris, giving the passengers a taste of what it meant to live in a country that was ill-equipped to handle its poverty.

“Each year, Sao Paulo’s middle class becomes poorer and poorer,” she said, “and the favelas grow in response. Many favelas have their own schools and day-care centers, but most of the children grow up in the streets, and must learn to be quick-witted and stealthy if they are to survive. Some people call this the Devil’s playground.”

God’s dirty little secret, Callahan thought. The forgotten people, left to rot in their own waste, with little or no chance of ever moving beyond this hole they called home. They were born, grew up and died here-often violently- barely a blip on heaven’s radar screen.

The van’s driver would likely tell you that Barbosa Tours was helping these people by bringing visitors with cash to the slums. But the truth was, the tour companies who had come up with this hefty rationalization for their greed were nothing more than traffickers in human misery. These weren’t tourists, but voyeurs. And Callahan didn’t doubt that a large percentage of every dollar spent went into some fat cat’s pocket.

The van turned a corner onto a slightly wider but no less desolate street, then pulled to the side and stopped next to an open storefront. Inside, the store’s shelves were lined with cheap manufactured and home-crafted trinkets, along with a selection of local sweets like beijinho de coco, brigadeiro and olhos de sogra.

The favela’s version of a tourist trap.

The driver set the brake and stood, calling for the passengers to exit the van, explaining that they’d be