Blood of the Wicked Read online

  The crowd was horrified.

  Walter Abendthaler was ecstatic. He was damned near positive he’d captured the very moment of the bullet’s impact.

  Chapter Two

  “UGLY,” SAID MARIO SILVA, Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters.

  “Ugly is right,” Nelson Sampaio, Silva’s boss and the Director of the Brazilian Federal Police, agreed.

  He pushed another photo across the burnished mahogany of his desktop and tapped it with his forefinger.

  “Here. Look at this one.”

  The photo, like all of the others in the stack, was in color. The bishop was staring down at the red hole in his chest. His miter had tumbled from his head and the camera, clearly working at a high shutter speed, had caught it frozen in the air. Silva couldn’t see the prelate’s eyes, but he could imagine the look of mingled shock and horror that must have been written there. When the death was quick, as it was in this case, such looks often remained on the face of the corpse.

  “We’re on the spot,” the director said, dealing out another photograph as if he was manipulating a deck of oversized playing cards. The photo would have slid off of his desk and onto his thick green rug if Silva hadn’t caught it with his fingertips.

  This time the bishop was already prone, and the top of his head was partially obscured by the bloody red mist that ensues when a high-velocity bullet penetrates a human body. Silva had seen the same effect before but never in a photograph.

  “That’s the last one in the sequence,” the director said. “Did I mention that the Pope called the president?”

  Twice, Silva thought. “Really?” he said.

  At that moment, Ana Tavares, the director’s gray-haired secretary, came in without knocking. Silva had known her for fourteen years, thirteen longer than the director had. She put some papers into one of the elegant hardwood trays situated to her boss’s left.

  “Good morning, Director,” she said.

  “You can’t just murder a bishop,” Sampaio went on, ignoring her. “This is Brazil, for Christ’s sake. Brazil, not some little Central American pesthole.”

  Ana raised her eyes to heaven and walked out, gently closing the door behind her.

  Central American pesthole? Then Silva remembered: A bishop, murdered while he was celebrating a mass. Salvador? Nicaragua? One of those places. They’d made a movie about it.

  “And this guy wasn’t just any bishop, either. This guy was on a fast track for promotion to cardinal.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because the president told the minister of justice and the minister told me. And for all I know, the Pope told the president. Now look, Mario, I don’t care what else you’re doing—”

  The director broke off abruptly, his attention caught by a hangnail on the forefinger he was pointing at Silva. He opened his top drawer, rooted around until he’d found a nail clipper, and applied himself to the offending digit. Silva crossed his arms and waited. About ten seconds later the director tossed the instrument back into the drawer and took up exactly where he’d left off.

  “—but whatever it is, drop it. From now on, and until you catch the filho da puta who did it, this is your first priority.”

  Sampaio sounded as if Dom Felipe’s murder had been an offense to him, personally.

  Silva knew that was unlikely.

  The director, an appointee without a single qualification in law enforcement, had the politician’s gift of being able to hide his true emotions behind a fog of words. In this instance, the fog probably concealed an underlying nervousness. And with good reason: If the murder of the bishop went unsolved, Sampaio’s enemies would smell blood. They’d be all over him like piranhas on a wounded tapir and they’d pressure him to kiss his political ambitions goodbye.

  Not, Silva thought, that there was any chance whatsoever of the director doing that.

  Anyone who really knew Nelson Sampaio also knew that the director reserved his kisses for his mistresses, photo opportunities with babies, and even occasionally his wife. His ambitions were another matter. As far as Sampaio was concerned, being Director of the Federal Police was just another step on his Long March to the Presidency and woe betide anyone who got in the way, including his top cop.

  Silva reflected upon that and winced.

  “Why are you doing that?” the director said.

  “What?”

  “That thing with your face. What do they call it? Wincing?”

  “It was that last photo,” Silva said, glancing out the window at the façade of the Ministry of Culture, “All the blood and brain matter. It got to me.”

  The director narrowed his eyes and said nothing. He wasn’t buying it.

  “So who took the photos?” Silva asked, in an attempt to get the conversation back on track.

  “Some goddamned Swiss photographer,” Sampaio said, after a pause just long enough to let Silva know that he wasn’t fooling anyone. “He sold the lot. They’ll be in tomorrow’s papers.”

  “And how did they wind up with you?”

  Sampaio’s lips took on the aspect of someone who’d just been sucking on a lemon.

  “Romeu Pluma dropped them off. Personally.”

  Romeu Pluma was the Minister of Justice’s press secretary. He’d been a journalist and when the minister’s term was done he might well go back to being a journalist. But one thing was for certain: He sure as hell wasn’t going to serve in any ministry headed by Nelson Sampaio. Sampaio hated his guts.

  “So the minister—”

  “Knew all about it before I did. That’s right. And is that supposed to happen? Is the Minister of Justice supposed to know about crimes before the Director of the Federal Police does?”

  “No, Director, he’s not.”

  “Damned right, he’s not. You should have seen the look on Pluma’s face. It was . . .”

  Sampaio sought for the right word.

  “Condescending?” Silva offered.

  “Supercilious. It was downright supercilious.”

  Silva imagined the scene and decided he rather liked Romeu Pluma. He tried not to let it show.

  “He got all of these little snapshots,” the director continued, “from one of his newspaper-editor buddies. And then he went right in and showed them to the minister. And what do you suppose happened next?”

  “The minister called you?”

  “Wrong. What he called was a press conference.”

  “Oh,” Silva said. Merda, he thought. His concern showed on his face.

  “You’re not pleased?” Sampaio asked, picking up on it immediately. “Well, I wasn’t either. I don’t suppose I have to tell you what he said?”

  “Let me guess.”

  Silva had been in Brasilia for a long time. He probably could have written the speech himself. “Promised that the whole business was going to get his personal attention?” he hazarded.

  “Right. Go on.”

  “Said something about applying the ‘considerable resources’ of the federal government?”

  “Right again. What else?”

  Silva sighed. He could feel a headache coming on. “Something about assuring the public that the perpetrators would be swiftly brought to justice?”

  “Actually,” the director said, “the word he chose was ‘quickly,’ not ‘swiftly,’ ‘quickly brought to justice.’ And here’s something you’re really going to like: The ‘considerable resources’ part includes you. He mentioned you by name.”

  Silva’s headache took a turn for the worse.

  The director lowered his eyes to the desktop and stared at the last of the photos, the one that showed the destruction of Dom Felipe’s cranium. It seemed to hold a morbid fascination for him. He put a hand to the side of his head.

  “Is it always like that?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “If someone’s shot in the head, does it always do that much damage?”

  “Not always. Depends on the weapon. A .22, even at close range, usually ma
kes a hole no bigger than the diameter of a pencil. And the bullet stays inside the skull.”

  The director shuddered and focused on another aspect of the photo.

  “Dom Felipe had just climbed out of a helicopter. He was going to consecrate a new church. Look, you can see it in the background.”

  Silva leaned over and scrutinized the shot. “The church?”

  “The helicopter. It was owned by that fertilizer company, Fertilbras. They must have loaned it to him.”

  “Umm,” Silva said, nodding. He turned the photo over. There was nothing on the back.

  “Where did it happen?” he asked.

  “Some little hick town called . . .” The director consulted a paper on his desk, “Cascatas do Pontal, wherever the hell that is.”

  “State of São Paulo, far western part. Not so hick. Population must be almost a quarter of a million by now.”

  “For me, that’s still hick,” the director said.

  He proudly hailed from São Paulo, the capital of the state of the same name. It was a city boasting a population ten times larger than that of Brasilia and at least sixty times larger than Cascatas do Pontal.

  “How the hell do you know about Cascatas doWherever?”

  “Pontal.”

  “Right. Pontal. I never even heard of it,” the director said. “There were some killings. A month ago, maybe a little more.”

  “Killings? What killings?” the director asked and leaned back, awaiting an explanation. It was Mario Silva’s business to know about such things.

  “An agricultural worker, his wife, and their two kids. A nasty business.”

  “Was it in the newspapers?”

  “A couple of paragraphs, no more.”

  “A couple of paragraphs, eh?” The director leaned forward. “It doesn’t matter how little there was. If it was in print at all, that bastard Pluma will know about it and you can bet your ass he’ll mention it to the minister. Fill me in.”

  “I don’t think it could possibly have anything to do with what happened to the bish—”

  “Fill me in, I said.”

  “As you wish. Ever hear of Luiz Pillar?”

  “Who in this town hasn’t? What’s Pillar got to do with it?” Luiz Pillar, the spokesman for the Landless Workers’ League, was a notorious gadfly, a major critic of the government’s policy of land reform and a thorn in the side of Brazil’s big landowners. He was not one of the director’s favorite people.

  “Seventy-five years ago—”

  Silva got that far before the director cut him off.

  “I don’t care about history. I asked you what Pillar had to do with it.”

  “Bear with me. I’m getting there.” Silva waited for a nod of assent before he picked up the thread.

  “Seventy-five years ago,” he repeated, “ninety-five percent of the land around Cascatas was owned by the government. These days, less than two percent of it is. The rest is in private hands, all concentrated into big estates.”

  “So?”

  “So, Pillar claims that it was all done with fraudulent documents. He wants the landowners to give it back, and he wants the government to redistribute it to the poor.”

  “Give it back?” Sampaio said. “Ha. Fat chance.”

  Big landowners were also big contributors to election campaigns. Their political clout far outweighed that of the poor and landless.

  “A lot of that land isn’t cultivated,” Silva observed.

  That brought the director up short.

  The Brazilian government had a constitutional obligation to appropriate untilled land and distribute it to the landless. In practice, however, local politicians and a corrupt judiciary were almost always successful at blocking any attempt to break up the great estates. Populist presidents, ministers— and politically ambitious directors of the federal police— didn’t like to be reminded of that fact.

  “So this agricultural worker, he was some kind of an activist?” Sampaio asked, picking up a pen and tapping it impatiently on his desk.

  “As I understand it, yes.”

  “Worked with Pillar.”

  “Probably. Most of them do.”

  “And some landowner had him killed?”

  “Maybe a single landowner, more likely a group of landowners. That would be my guess.”

  The director dropped his pen and raised his hands in the air. “So why don’t you do something about it?”

  Silva held his ground. “With respect, Director, I think you know the answer to that.”

  The answer was that the federal police, except in rare and very specific cases, had no mandate to investigate murders unless they occurred on federal property. The director knew that as well as Silva did.

  “You’re my man for criminal matters, and this is clearly a criminal matter. Put a stop to it,” the director said, just as if Silva could, and should. “I have no sympathy for Pillar and his crowd, but we can’t just stand idly by while people go around killing people. Where the hell do those landowners think they are, Dodd’s City?”

  Silva thought Sampaio probably meant Dodge City, but maybe not. Maybe there actually was a place called Dodd’s City.

  “The minister’s going to call the Governor of São Paulo,” the director went on, “and he’ll talk him into requesting our help in the investigation of the bishop’s murder. And while you’re there, you’d better sniff around and see what you can learn about who killed that activist. It might help to keep Pillar off our backs.”

  While you’re there? Silva didn’t like the sound of that. “Can I keep those?” he said, reaching for the photographs and rising to his feet.

  “Not so fast,” the director said.

  Silva withdrew his hand.

  “Sit down.”

  Silva sank back into his seat, knowing what was coming, knowing he wouldn’t like it.

  “The first man you should talk to when you get there,” Sampaio continued, “is a colonel in the State Police” —he consulted the same paper he’d looked at before—“called Ferraz. He’s the man in charge.”

  “Are you suggesting I go personally?” Silva said it innocently, as if he hadn’t seen it coming all along.

  The director’s eyes rounded. He leaned back in his chair, his face transformed into a perfect expression of surprise. He would have made a first-class thespian.

  “Are we on the same page here?” Sampaio spoke as if he was addressing someone who wasn’t fluent in the language. “I told you. We—are—on—the—spot. This is top priority. It has to be perceived that we regard it as such. I’m not suggesting anything. I’m telling you. You can use that hotshot nephew of yours, what’s his name?”

  “Costa. Hector Costa.”

  “Yeah, him, and anybody else you think you might need, but you’re going too, Mario. I’m supposed to call the minister at noon, and I’m going to tell him that.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  Silva caught the signal for dismissal. Once again he rose to his feet but the director held up a hand.

  “I want a report twice daily, at noon and at six, and I want to be able to get through to you anytime. Take a new cell phone, don’t use it for outgoing calls, keep the number confidential, and tell Ana what it is.”

  “Understood,” Silva said, trying not to let his irritation show. And, if I feel like it, I may even pick it up when you call, he thought.

  Cell phones in Brazil were notoriously unreliable. The director might suspect that a lack of response was intentional, but he could never really be sure.

  “And make sure you answer when I call,” the director said, fixing his subordinate with a steely gaze. “By the way, did I tell you that the Pope called the president?”

  Chapter Three

  IN THE LARGEST CITY south of the equator, springtime is generally too warm for comfort and the spring of 1978 was no exception. In those days, automobile emission standards had yet to be established. To make it worse, a thermal inversion persisted over the city for twenty-
nine of October’s thirty-one days. The resulting smog reduced visibility to less than 500 meters. Eyes stung. People buried their noses in handkerchiefs and addressed each other with gravelly voices emerging out of irritated throats. In Liberdade, the Japanese neighborhood, residents took to wearing surgical masks. The black waters of the Tietê, the river that flowed in a sluggish crescent around the city’s western boundaries, generated vapors strong enough to bring nausea to queasy stomachs. Socks, clean and white in the morning, were peeled off at night, begrimed with black soot so fine that it penetrated shoe leather. The smell of rotting garbage hung in the air. It was a typical springtime in São Paulo.

  Back in those days, long years before the bishop’s murder, Mario Silva was at peace with the world. His legal training was behind him. So, too, was the exam that admitted him to the OAB, the Brazilian Bar Association.

  In the week before his world fell apart, he’d spent his days setting up a law practice. Nights were reserved for courting Irene Camargo, a petite brunette he’d met in law school.

  The twelfth of October, Irene’s twenty-second birthday, was an event her parents had insisted she celebrate at home. The young couple reserved the night of the thirteenth for themselves. Friday the thirteenth. Silva didn’t give the portentousness of that a second thought until much later.

  The evening began well. They dined at the Ca d’Oro, one of São Paulo’s finest restaurants, and one that Mario Silva avoided forever after. Next, they drove out onto the Rapouso Tavares, a highway lined with high-rotation motels. Silva and Irene had to wait in a long line before they could pass through one of the dimly lit kiosks. They put the car into the enclosed garage, ordered a bottle of champagne, and frolicked in the whirlpool bath while the tiny sauna came up to temperature. Afterward, they lingered in bed to talk.

  It was almost 4:00 by the time Silva dropped her off, approaching 4:20, when he arrived at the house he shared with his parents. In the driveway, where his father’s big Ford Galaxy should have been, was a black and white sedan. Leaning against it, puffing on cigarettes, were two men in uniform. They squinted in the glare from Silva’s headlamps and then stood upright. In the seconds before he cut the lights, Silva noticed the seal of the city of São Paulo and the words POLICIA MUNICIPAL painted on the car. The lamp over his front door was dim, but it cast enough light to read their expressions. Those expressions were grim.