next time. You won’t catch me slacking off again.”
Catch me.
If he hadn’t said that, Silva might have let it go with a reprimand. He hated to ruin a man’s career.
Mara Carta stuck her head into Hector’s office and said, “Aline emptied her savings account.”
“When?” Hector said.
“Yesterday afternoon, just before two o’clock. She had over twenty thousand reais saved up, and she took every centavo.”
“And Brasilia? Did she go there around the time Rivas was killed?”
Mara stepped into the room and leaned against the doorjamb.
“If she flew, she didn’t do it under her own name. Her credit card receipts show no expenditures, not in Brasilia, not anywhere along the route.”
Hector was about to ask her who’d been assigned to the surveillance team when the phone rang. It was Goncalves, calling about the murder of Abilio Sacca.
Dudu Fonseca ’S offices were on Rua Major Sertorio in Cerqueira Cesar, just across the street from Sao Paulo’s most elegant bar for meeting high-class prostitutes, a place called La Bamba.
The people in the lawyer’s wood-paneled waiting room fell into two categories: felons, and the friends or families of felons. On observation alone, it was difficult to tell the difference.
The arrival of two federal cops caused them, as might have been predicted, not a little discomfort.
Fonseca didn’t keep them waiting. Not, Silva thought, because he was particularly concerned about the delicate sensitivities of his clients, but rather because he didn’t want those clients to panic, go running off, and give their money to a rival attorney.
With some effort, because he was very fat, Fonseca rose to greet them.
“Chief Inspector Silva. And Agent Nunes. What a pleasant surprise.”
“Pleasant surprise, my ass,” Arnaldo said.
Fonseca’s smile faded. He dropped back into a chair that groaned in protest.
“I’m sorry to hurry you along, gentlemen, but you arrived without an appointment, and you’ve seen my waiting room.
What do you want?”
“Abilio Sacca,” Silva said.
“What about him?” Fonseca said.
“We want to know who paid you to get him off.”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t trifle with me, Dudu.”
“I’m not, Chief Inspector. I can’t imagine Senhor Sacca ever becoming a regular client, so I’d be perfectly willing to tell you. If I knew. Which I don’t.”
“Explain.”
“The woman who came to see me paid cash. She gave the name Batista, but I somehow doubt she was telling the truth. She called herself Senhora, but she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. What she was wearing was a blond wig. It was a good wig, but it was a wig. She used dark glasses, glasses so large that they effectively concealed all features above her nose, including her eyebrows.” He raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I’d like to be of more use to you, I really would. But I can’t. If I were to pass her tomorrow on the street, and if she wasn’t wearing the same wig and the same glasses, I wouldn’t recognize her.”
“Maybe not, but tell me this: had you ever seen her before, blond hair, dark glasses, and all?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“This wasn’t Senhora Batista’s first visit. She had come to me a while back about another man she wanted released.”
“Joao Girotti?”
One of Fonseca’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Yes. Girotti. How did you know?”
“It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to confirm it was Girotti.”
“Well, indeed it was. The felon’s friend, this woman. I don’t understand it.” Fonseca shrugged. “Maybe she has a passion for bad boys.”
“Here’s another name for you, Dudu. Do you remember a woman named Arriaga? Aline Arriaga? Came to you about her son?”
“Yes, of course. Her boy had a fatal… fall. He died in police custody. Doesn’t say much for our law enforcement community, does it? The people who are supposed to be protecting us, I mean.”
“Don’t get snotty with me, Dudu. Just answer the questions. Did Senhora Arriaga look anything like this blond?”
“Senhora Arriaga is a brunette.”
“And the blond, as you pointed out, was wearing a wig. We can, therefore, surmise that her natural hair color was not blond. I ask you again, could Senhora Arriaga have been that blond?”
Fonseca shrugged. “She could have been,” he said, “but there is no way I’d swear to it. So that’s a dead end for you there, Chief Inspector.”
“How much did you charge her for springing Sacca? Something like that must have been expensive, huh? I mean, after all, they had the little punk dead to rights.”
Fonseca frowned. “What I did was perfectly legal, Chief Inspector. Judge Miranda was kind enough to stipulate a bond, and my client paid it. As to my charges for the service, that information is strictly confidential. If you want the numbers, you’ll have to subpoena me. Furthermore, I resent the implication-”
“That’s enough, Dudu. Get down off your high horse and tell me exactly what the woman said.”
“She said that an acquaintance of hers, that’s what she called him, an acquaintance, was being held in Santo Andre. She wanted him out. I made a few phone calls. She sat where you’re sitting while I did it. Once I’d analyzed the problem, I gave her a price, my fee plus
… expenses. She opened her purse, took out a roll of banknotes, and started counting them out.”
“What was going through your mind?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Tell me the thoughts you had at the time. It doesn’t matter if they were pure speculation. Just tell me.”
Fonseca leaned back in his chair, put his elbows on the armrests, and touched the tips of his fingers together.
“This is a little embarrassing,” he said, “but I’ll be frank with you. When I saw that roll, I thought I should have set a higher fee. I think she would have paid it. I think she would have peeled off every note and given it to me. There was a kind of quiet intensity about the woman. She desperately wanted Sacca released, God knows why. And God knows what they have in common. She was a woman of some class. From my experience of him, he’s an ignorant buffoon.”
“What else?”
“That’s it. That’s the extent of it. I was kicking myself about that money. And now”-Fonseca, with the same difficulty as before, rose from his chair-“you’ll have to excuse me. Please be careful not to let the door hit your asses on the way out.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The scene of Abilio Sacca’s murder was already crawling with reporters. Goncalves wisely kept his lip buttoned until all four of them were within the perimeter of crime-scene tape and away from attentive ears.
“The landlady is a widow,” he said then. “Lives alone, works nights in a hospital. Over there”-he pointed toward the home of the closest neighbor-“we’ve got an old lady. She hasn’t been out of her place in two days, but didn’t see anything, and she didn’t hear anything.”
“Where’s the body?” Silva asked.
