Every Bitter Thing Read online

  After almost a full minute’s harangue, Pontes stopped to draw breath.

  Sampaio leaped into the breach. “I have to tell you, Minister,” he said, “that I’m truly shocked.” His voice, if not his expression, carried complete conviction. “I’ve just arrived at the office. This is the first I’ve heard of this.” Sampaio was a consummate liar, a fact he didn’t bother to conceal from his subordinates. “His apartment, you say?”

  The minister droned on. Like Sampaio, he’d rather talk than listen.

  “I’ll give it first priority,” Sampaio said when the droning stopped, “and put my best man on the case.” Sampaio didn’t mention Silva by name. He never did. “And I’ll go there personally to give impetus to the investigation. Give me an hour or two, and I’ll call you with a firsthand report.”

  Sampaio seldom missed an opportunity to rub shoulders with the Great and Powerful, even if the shoulder rubbing was only via telephone.

  The minister dealt out more advice, this time about ten seconds’ worth.

  “Yes, Minister. Of course, Minister. Goodbye, Minister.”

  Sampaio’s scowl was back before the telephone hit the cradle.

  “You’ll do the grunt work, of course,” he said to Silva without missing a beat, “but I’ll be giving you my full support. You have my cell number. If you need advice, feel free to call, twenty-four seven.”

  Silva let his eyes drift to the window. A cloud, harbinger of an oncoming storm, was just emerging from behind the Ministry of Culture.

  “Ana has the address,” Sampaio concluded. “We’ll go separately.”

  He stood and went into his private bathroom. The audience was over.

  In the outer office, Ana Tavares, Sampaio’s long-suffering personal assistant, was extending a sheet of paper.

  “Crime-scene address,” she said. “I called Arnaldo. He’s on his way to your office.”

  “Thanks, Ana. Efficient as always.”

  She ignored the compliment.

  “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “You can ask,” she said. “I may not answer.”

  “Do you always make Sampaio jump through hoops, make him talk to the minister’s secretary first? I can’t recall a single occasion—”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ana Tavares said.

  Chapter Four

  LUCIO COSTA HAD PROJECTED Brasília as a city of two hundred thousand people and not a single traffic light. Brazil’s brand-new federal capital was to be a city designed around the automobile, a place where roads fed into roads, and where the flow of vehicles would never stop.

  Six decades later, the population was pushing three million, there were traffic lights galore, and the city’s traffic problem was a national scandal.

  “Goddamn it,” Silva said, as his car bumped over a pothole.

  Arnaldo, accustomed to both the condition of Brasília’s streets and the asperity of Silva’s complaints about them, ignored the outburst. “How come Sampaio didn’t offer us a ride?” he wanted to know.

  “Steals his thunder,” Silva said, signaling a left turn and glancing in the rearview mirror.

  They were in Silva’s twelve-year-old Fiat. Agente Arnaldo Nunes was Silva’s longtime sidekick. Silva had just finished telling him the little he knew about the case.

  “You figure Sampaio tipped the media?” Arnaldo asked.

  “Tipped them, or knew they’d been tipped,” Silva said. “No reason for him to put in an appearance otherwise.” They rounded the corner. “Look.”

  “Jesus,” Arnaldo said. “So that’s why you took your time getting here.”

  Two television vans were pulled up in front of the murdered man’s building. Their masts were extended, their dishes pointed at some faraway satellite.

  A barrier of yellow crime-scene tape, supported by stanchions, ran in a wide arc around the front door. A crowd of reporters flocked like pigeons fighting for crumbs. Nelson Sampaio, bathed in the light of sun guns and camera strobes, stood in their midst. If Silva had arrived ten minutes earlier, those reporters would have been surrounding him.

  Silva parked between the director’s BMW and a Ford sedan with a staff of Asclepius affixed to the license plate. A young cop came over to shoo them away, but Arnaldo flashed his badge, and the youngster backed off.

  On their way to the front door, the two federal cops passed within a few meters of Sampaio’s impromptu press conference. They were close enough to see the expression on the director’s face, one of indignation mixed with sympathy, which even Silva had to admit was a neat trick. Sampaio was calling the reporters by name as he fielded their questions.

  Arnaldo held up the tape, Silva ducked under it, and they headed for the duo stationed in front of the entrance. One was sporting a red-and-gold uniform, a high-brimmed hat, and white gloves. It reminded Silva of costumes he’d seen at a performance of The Merry Widow.

  The other guy, in sharp contrast, wore a rumpled suit with a badge pinned to his lapel. For some reason, both of his shoes were untied. Silva and Arnaldo offered their warrant cards, but the guy in the suit waved them aside.

  “Good morning, Senhores,” he said. “Third floor front.”

  Silva nodded his thanks. The guy in the uniform did what he was there to do: he opened the door. The two cops stepped into a marble-lined foyer. As they made for the elevator, the detective behind them murmured something into his radio.

  “Calling ahead,” Silva said.

  “Sartorially challenged,” Arnaldo said, “but well trained. What’s with the shoes?”

  “Looked new,” Silva said. “Probably hurt his feet.”

  The elevator was descending, but he pushed the button anyway. The doors opened and Lucio Cavalcante, Brasília’s chief medical examiner, stepped out. The ME was carrying an aluminum case.

  “All done up there, Lucio?” Silva asked.

  “What are you guys doing here?”

  “Political implications,” Silva said.

  “Son of a friend of The Clown, right?”

  “Right. What can you tell us?”

  “I just briefed Pereira. I’m busy. Get it from him.”

  “When’s the autopsy?”

  “Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.”

  “I don’t think so,” Silva said.

  One of the ME’s eyebrows moved toward his hairline. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re going to get a call from someone. He’ll want you to finish this one before dinnertime.”

  “The hell I will. Rivas waits his turn, just like everyone else.”

  “Not if the guy who’s calling is the minister of justice, he doesn’t.”

  “You think that’s likely?”

  “I think it’s more than likely. He spent ten minutes on the telephone talking to my boss about this.”

  “Fuck Pontes.” The ME bristled. “And fuck your boss.”

  “What a lovely thought,” Arnaldo said.

  “Your buddy, the ME in São Paulo,” Cavalcante said, addressing Silva. “What’s his name again?”

  “Couto. Paulo Couto.”

  “Him. I’ll bet he doesn’t have to put up with all this political shit.”

  “Perhaps not,” Silva said. “You considering a move?”

  “To São Paulo? Ha! Besides, that’s where Pontes is from.”

  “True, but now he’s here.”

  “He’s here, all right, but there are thousands more like him back where he comes from. São Paulo is a fucking nest of vipers.”

  “Hey,” Arnaldo said. He also stemmed from São Paulo.

  But Cavalcante wasn’t listening. He hurried out the front door, ducked under the tape, and headed for his car. Some of the reporters broke off from the group surrounding Sampaio and followed, shouting questions as they went. Cavalcante waved them off. The last they saw of him, he was disappearing behind the pack of newshounds.

  Silva and Arnaldo boarded the elevator. The doors slid shut with scarcely
a whisper.

  “Nice,” Silva said, looking around at the burnished wood, beveled mirrors, and polished brass.

  “This elevator? Or the fact that Sampaio just lost half his audience?”

  “That too,” Silva said.

  The doors slid open to reveal a slight man with a big moustache. Delegado Walter Pereira headed up the homicide division of Brasília’s civil police.

  “Morning, meninos,” he said. “Caught the hot potato, did we?”

  “I’m afraid so, Walter,” Silva said.

  Independent of the mayhem surrounding him, Pereira customarily wore a ready smile along with his loud sports jackets. This morning, he was wearing a frown.

  “What’s with you?” Arnaldo asked.

  “Your goddamned boss is what’s with me,” Pereira said. “He’s doing his dog and pony show as we speak. There’s a television in one of the bedrooms. Want to have a look?”

  “Not on your life,” Arnaldo said.

  Silva bent over to look at the damage to the apartment’s front door.

  “Perp did this?” he asked.

  Pereira shook his head. “We did.”

  Silva studied the floor. A trail of blood stained the carpet.

  “Let’s not get off the subject,” Pereira said. “Your goddamned boss—”

  Silva waved a dismissive hand. “You don’t have to tell me, Walter. I work with the man.”

  “The way I heard it, the filho da puta doesn’t work at all. The way I heard it, you guys do all the work, and he takes the credit. He is, by the way, currently positioning himself to do just that. He’s live on Channel Five.”

  “Of course he is,” Arnaldo said. “His public demands it.”

  “His public doesn’t know shit. They think the blowhard is a twenty-first-century Eliot Ness. What kind of a background does Sampaio have in law enforcement, anyway?”

  “None whatever,” Silva said. “He was a corporate lawyer. He made a substantial contribution to the president’s election campaign. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “Watcha got?” Arnaldo asked.

  “Just answer me this: is he, or is he not, a filho da puta?”

  “He’s a filho da puta of monumental proportions,” Arnaldo said. “Watcha got?”

  Pereira finally broke into a grin. The teeth under his moustache were movie-star white.

  “I got it solved, is what I got,” he said.

  Silva sensed a weight being lifted from his shoulders. “Solved?” he said.

  “Ninety-nine percent.”

  “You make an arrest?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Who did it and why?”

  “Allow me my little moment,” Pereira said. “First, come and have a gander at my body.”

  “Can’t wait,” Arnaldo said, looking him up and down.

  “The corpse, Nunes. The corpse.”

  “Very proprietary,” Silva said. “My body, indeed.”

  “We still have jurisdiction, Mario. Until somebody tells me otherwise, the civil police still have jurisdiction.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Silva said. “And you’re welcome, I’m sure.”

  Pereira pointed. “In there.”

  Following the trail of blood, they advanced into the living room.

  The place was a slap in the face to minimalism. Every square meter of wall space was occupied. Where there wasn’t a window, there was a tapestry, or a case of books, or a painting, or a shelf. Many of the shelves contained images of saints—antique ones, by the look of them. And there were bigger images too, freestanding and scattered about the floor, some of them almost as tall as a man. The décor reminded Silva of stately homes he’d visited in Europe; it was totally incongruous in the heart of a city only six decades old. He wrinkled his nose. The room was warm. Juan Rivas was beginning to get ripe.

  “What did this guy do for a living?” Arnaldo said. “Run a pawnshop?”

  “He was a student,” Pereira said.

  “A student? And he owned all this stuff?”

  “‘Student’ is a polite euphemism for ‘playboy.’ The guy never did a lick of work in his life. And there’s an explanation for the stuff.”

  “Which is?”

  “His old man is a friend of the clown who runs Venezuela.”

  “We know that. So what?”

  “Being a friend of The Clown is akin to owning your own oil well. Old man Rivas, if he wanted to, could buy half the politicians in this town. Can you imagine the pressure we’d get on this one if I wasn’t about to ride in on my white horse and finger the perpetrator of this dastardly deed?”

  “Your histrionics are ruining my morning, Pereira,” Arnaldo said.

  “I’m glad, Nunes. Ruining your mornings is one of my few joys.”

  “Who found the body?” Silva said.

  “His cleaning lady.”

  “Still here?”

  “Nah. I let her go home. She’s a little thing, maybe a meter thirty, maybe fifty kilograms. Name of Carmen Fonseca. There are twelve-year-olds bigger and stronger than she is.”

  “What’s big and strong got to do with it?”

  “You’ll know when you see my body. Anyway, she didn’t have much to tell, said she was surprised the front door was only on the latch, not dead bolted as usual. She locked it behind her, walked around the couch, spotted the body, and fainted. A little while later, she came to, crawled to the phone, and called it in.”

  “Why did you break down the door?”

  “Her legs gave out. She couldn’t get up to open it. When the first guy came in, she crawled over to him, grabbed his ankles like he was a rock and she was being carried out by the tide. Hysterical, he said, would be an understatement.”

  “Young woman?”

  “A hag. Fifty-four, according to her identity card.”

  “Not old at all,” Arnaldo bristled.

  “Not for one of the few remaining dinosaurs in law enforcement,” Pereira said, “but if it makes you feel any better, she looks even older than you do. In her case, I put it down to a hard life. You? Well, I don’t know. All that sitting around on your ass and those long lunches, maybe?”

  “It comes from nailing bad guys, Pereira. What’s your conviction rate? Two percent?”

  They were walking as they spoke. The trail of blood ended behind one of the couches, and there they stopped. The victim wore pajamas and a bathrobe. The bathrobe was up to his waist, the pajamas down to his ankles.

  “Found like this?” Silva asked.

  Pereira shook his head. “Cavalcante stuck a thermometer up his ass.”

  “Okay to approach the body?”

  “Go ahead. We’re done with him.”

  Rivas’s feet were bare, the toenails enameled red. Both legs were bent at unnatural angles. His cheekbones were caved in, his forehead indented, the top of his skull crushed. Silva’s overall impression was that of a broken doll. In almost thirty years of law enforcement, he’d never seen a more brutal beating.

  “Ouch,” he said.

  The corpse was still wearing a wristwatch, or rather the shattered remnants of one: a Cartier, with a gold case and wristband.

  “You find his wallet?” Silva asked.

  Pereira nodded. “In his bedroom, out in plain view, full of money. We left a few small bills.”

  Silva wasn’t entirely sure he was kidding.

  Arnaldo walked around the body. “It computes,” he said. “A guy beats anyone that bad, it’s not robbery. It’s personal.”

  “Sometimes, Nunes,” Pereira said, “your deductive powers amaze me.”

  “I gotta admit,” Arnaldo said, “that such a reaction is not uncommon, even among highly experienced operatives.”

  “What’s Cavalcante’s estimate on the time of death?” Silva said.

  “Between 10:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M.”

  “Murder weapon?”

  “Good question. Look here.”

  Pereira bent over and pointed. Only then, amid all the gore, di
d Silva see the bullet hole. It was a palm’s breadth above Rivas’s groin.

  “Cavalcante thinks the shot came first,” Pereira said, “and it probably would have killed him. But the murderer decided not to hang around and wait. The other wounds were inflicted by some kind of blunt instrument. There’s nothing in the apartment that fills the bill. No gun either.”

  “You notice those red toenails?” Silva asked.

  “Hard to miss. How often do you see a guy with painted toenails? Was Rivas gay?” Arnaldo asked.

  “He was,” Pereira responded, “and I’ll get to that in a minute. So, what’s your take on the shot? If it wasn’t meant to kill him, why shoot him at all?”

  “You put a bullet into a man’s abdomen,” Silva said, “it’s like giving him a punch in the gut. He’s going to bend over forward.” Silva extended his left hand as if he was shooting a pistol, and raised his right as if he was holding a club. “Then the perp hits him on the back of the head to bring him down.” He brought down his right arm, matching action to words. “Once he’s on the floor, there’s no escape. And the killer can see him suffer while he finishes him off at leisure.”

  Pereira rubbed his chin. “Makes sense,” he said. “But how come Rivas just let him stroll in with a club in one hand and a gun in the other?”

  “Maybe the little he was able to see through the peephole didn’t seem like a threat.”

  “Anyone in the building hear a shot?”

  Pereira shook his head. “No one we talked to, and that’s all the adjoining neighbors except for the guy downstairs. He isn’t home.”

  “According to you,” Arnaldo said, “you have the case ninety-nine percent solved. How about sharing? It would be really nice to get out of here before lunch.”

  “Let’s start with a motive,” Silva said.

  “I have one,” Pereira said. “Sexual jealousy.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Plenty. I have …”—he paused for effect—“letters.”

  “Did I hear a fanfare of trumpets just before you said ‘letters’?” Arnaldo said.

  “What kind of letters?” Silva said.

  “Let’s move on to the next exhibit, shall we? Right this way, gentlemen.”