Every Bitter Thing Page 5

  There was a soft knock on the door. Silva opened it.

  “What is it, Safira?”

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Senhor Jorge Rivas is here.”

  Silva grimaced. “Already?”

  “Sim, Senhor.”

  “Let’s go, Walter,” Silva said. “Think about what I said.”

  “I’m thinking,” Pereira said. “Goddamn it, I’m thinking.”

  IN THE living room, Rivas had his hand on the shoulder of a weeping Tomás Garcia and was studiously ignoring Detective Vargas. The young cop’s cheap suit had classified him as a man of no importance. No importance, at least, to the Foreign Minister of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

  The minister was a diminutive man, a fact about which he must have been sensitive, because he was wearing shoes that added about four centimeters to his height. His eyes were dry and clear, those of a man who’d learned to sleep comfortably on a first-class airline recliner, those of a man who’d done just that.

  His striped dress shirt was starched and unwrinkled, certainly changed since his arrival. An Hermès tie, firmly knotted, was pulled up to the limits of his collar and held in place by a gold pin. Otherwise clad in a splendid example of the Italian suitmaker’s art, he exuded an air that reminded Silva of someone else he knew: Nelson Sampaio. Rivas’s first words added weight to that impression.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  “This is Delegado Walter Pereira,” Silva said, “head of Homicide here in Brasília.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters, Federal Police.”

  “Your boss went to the airport to meet my flight.”

  “Did he, Senhor?”

  “If he’s an ass-licking shit called Sampaio, he did.”

  “That’s him,” Arnaldo said.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him you said that. Who the fuck are you?”

  “Agent Haraldo Gonçalves, Senhor,” Arnaldo Nunes said without missing a beat. “Federal Police.”

  “Two of you, huh? Two federals and”—he glanced back and forth between Vargas and Pereira—“two civils. Well, you’re not stinting on the manpower, at least. What do the Federal Police have to do with this?”

  Silva formulated his answer with care: “Consideration for your position, Senhor.”

  “You know what it looks like to me? It looks to me like your ass-licking boss stuck his nose into my son’s case so people would pay attention to him. He may have thought I didn’t notice him at the arrival gate, but I did. When he wasn’t fawning on one of his betters, he kept trying to stick his head into the shots so he could get on camera. When we got to the VIP lounge, away from the reporters, he button-holed me. Told me you people were going to crack this case in short order. Have you? Have you cracked the case?”

  Silva looked at Pereira.

  “What?” the Venezuelan said, shifting suspicious eyes from one to the other.

  “No, Senhor,” Pereira said at last. “We haven’t yet cracked the case.”

  “Well, what are you doing hanging around here? Get out and solve it. Leave me and my friend alone. We have grieving to do. Christ, I wish I was in Caracas where the cops know their jobs.”

  Pereira flushed and opened his mouth for a sharp retort, but Silva surreptitiously stepped on his foot. “We’re finished here, Senhor,” he said. “But before we move along …” Tomás Garcia, with the mien of a dog fearing a blow, took a step away from Rivas and lowered his head between his shoulders. “… I’d like to offer you my heartfelt sympathy on the death of your son.”

  “Thank you,” Rivas said stiffly, then turned his back on the four cops and led Garcia off toward the bedrooms.

  “HOW THE fuck do you do it?” Pereira whispered, when the door closed behind them.

  “Do what?” Silva asked.

  “Keep your patience with a blowhard like that.”

  “We get a lot of practice,” Arnaldo said.

  “Reminds me of that filho da puta, your boss.”

  “Like I said. Practice.”

  “All right, Mario,” Pereira said, “I still think you’re wrong, but I’m gonna go along for the ride. What do you expect me to do while you’re checking that database of yours?”

  “Talk to the other doormen. Find out when Rivas came home for the last time. Find out if he was alone. Find out if he had any visitors. Continue looking for the murder weapon. Believe me, Walter, you have nothing to lose by playing it this way. You might even uncover something that will strengthen your case against Garcia.”

  “Or absolve him completely,” Arnaldo said.

  Pereira stuck out his jaw. “Somebody teach a course in ballbusting at that federal police academy of yours, Nunes?”

  “You’re looking at him,” Arnaldo said, exuding false modesty.

  “Gustavo Fernandez,” Silva said, thinking aloud, “is a Cuban exile, probably an American citizen now. Either way, he would have needed a visa, which means we’ll have a record of his address in Miami. I can get a friend, an American cop, to do a background check.”

  “For all the good that’s going to do,” Pereira said.

  “Stop being so damned negative, Walter. We may just come up with something.”

  “When pigs fly,” Pereira said.

  Chapter Seven

  ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MURDER. It was very early in the morning. The sun was just coming up. Pereira was standing near the body, making notes, when a young patrolman touched him on the shoulder.

  “A telephone call, Senhor, patched through on the radio.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Chief Inspector Silva, Federal Police.”

  Pereira went to his car and grabbed the microphone. “It’s not a good time, Mario. I’m busy.”

  There was a crash of static, then Silva’s voice. “This will only take a minute. Can you hear me okay?”

  “I can. So can half the cops in Brasília.”

  “I’m aware of that. You recall your remark about airborne pigs?”

  Pereira thought for a moment, and then said, “Yeah. What about it?”

  “I’ve found others in the database.”

  “Others? As in more than one?”

  “Four. All with the same characteristics.”

  “Four? Jesus Christ! Where are you?”

  “In my office.”

  “I’ll come to you. Give me half an hour.”

  “Ask for Arnaldo.”

  Pereira groaned. “Not Nunes again! What a crummy day this is turning out to be.”

  ARNALDO MET Pereira in the reception area at Federal Police headquarters and led him to a windowless conference room. The furnishings consisted of a round wooden table, four chairs, and nothing else. There was a hole in the ceiling where some kind of repair had taken place to the pipes or conduits. A notebook computer was plugged into a socket halfway up one of the walls. The only other objects on the table were an overloaded ashtray and a pad of paper with a few notes. The stench of ten thousand dead cigarettes hung in the air.

  “Christ,” Pereira said, “what a dump.”

  “This is the VIP room,” Arnaldo said. “You should see the new one.”

  “Worse than this?”

  “It will be. The coffee staining of the carpet and the filling of the ashtrays are scheduled for tomorrow.”

  “Why aren’t we meeting in your office, Mario?”

  “Security reasons.”

  “Hiding from your boss?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So you’re still keeping him in the dark?”

  “If Sampaio was a portobello,” Arnaldo said, “he’d be the size of this table.”

  “Have a look at this,” Silva said. He moved the mouse, and the computer’s screen came to life. It showed the image of a horribly mutilated corpse.

  “Jonas Palhares,” Silva said, “petroleum engineer, thirty-four years old, divorced, no children, lived alone.”

  “Lived where?”

>   “Rio de Janeiro.”

  Silva clicked the mouse. The next photo was also of Palhares, taken from a slightly different angle.

  “When did it happen?” Pereira said.

  “About two weeks before Christmas.”

  “Suspects?”

  “One. His girlfriend, Chantal Pires.”

  “You sound like you doubt it.”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  Silva pointed at the screen. “Look at him. Women are into poison and pistols; they don’t do things like that.”

  “Depends on the woman.”

  “For once,” Arnaldo said, “I agree with Pereira. Take my mother-in-law.”

  Pereira ignored him. “No chance it could have been a robbery?”

  “No,” Silva said. “Palhares’s wallet was still in his pocket, his watch was still on his wrist. There was no sign of a break-in.”

  “Just like Rivas.”

  “Just like Rivas.”

  “That girlfriend you mentioned. She live-in?”

  “No. And she’s one of the few people he knew in Rio. He’s from Belo Horizonte originally, only been in Rio for about a year.”

  “She a local?”

  Silva nodded. “They met on the beach.”

  “She have a key to his place?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this guy … what’s his name again?”

  “Palhares.”

  “Palhares was also shot in the gut?”

  “He was.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “The girlfriend. And long after the murder.”

  “Another reason to believe she didn’t do it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You guys going to talk to her?”

  “We are. I sent a man from São Paulo.” Silva glanced at his watch. “He should be arriving there as we speak.”

  “Why? You’ve got a field office in Rio, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Arnaldo said. “But we haven’t got Babyface.”

  “Babyface?”

  “Haraldo Gonçalves,” Silva said. “We call him Babyface.”

  “I’ll bet he loves that.”

  “Hates it,” Silva said. “But that’s beside the point. When it comes to females, he’s our secret weapon. Women open up to him.”

  “In every way you can imagine,” Arnaldo said.

  “You got a dirty mind, Nunes.”

  “It comes,” Arnaldo said, “from excessive association with homicide detectives.”

  Silva chose another file on the computer’s desktop and opened it. The image on the screen showed the body of a young man. His blond ponytail looked like a mop used to soak up blood. The blood was his; it had dried and was more brown than red.

  “Victor Neves,” Silva said, “twenty-six years old, exporter of leather goods, lived in Campinas, engaged to the same woman for over three years. Murder was”—he checked his notes—“almost a month ago. The vic’s mother found the body. He was her only child. She’s been under sedation ever since.”

  “Suspects?”

  “The cops in Campinas like Neves’s partner for it. He has no alibi, and they say there’s something shifty about him.”

  “You sending someone?”

  “I am.”

  “Okay. Number three?”

  Silva clicked the mouse. “Paulo Cruz.”

  “That Paulo Cruz?” Pereira said. “The guy who wrote the sex books?”

  “That Paulo Cruz. He lived in Brodowski. It’s a little town near Ribeirão Prêto.”

  “I know where Brodowski is. Everybody does. Portinari came from there. You ever read any of Cruz’s stuff?”

  “No. You?”

  “Every single one.”

  “There were only three,” Arnaldo said.

  “So I read three.”

  Again, Silva clicked the mouse. The upper part of Cruz’s body now filled the screen.

  “Are those little white things what I think they are?”

  “That, Walter, would depend upon which little white things you’re referring to.”

  The next photo was even tighter. It framed the victim from the middle of his chest to the crown of his head. Some of Cruz’s teeth were lying on the rug. There were smaller objects as well, not quite as white.

  “Maggots,” Silva said.

  Pereira pinched his nose, as if the smell was there in the meeting room with them. “Yuck,” he said. “Took a while before they found him, huh?”

  “Over a week. He was working on a book. His girlfriend was away in Bahia.”

  “No maid?”

  “He had one, but she was on vacation.”

  “Live-in girlfriend?”

  “She wasn’t live-in. But they did have three kids.”

  “And he never married her? Betcha she did it. Hell hath no fury and all that.”

  “She didn’t do it,” Silva said. “I told you. She was in Bahia.”

  “She got any proof of that?”

  “Plenty.”

  “If it was me, I’d take a closer look at that proof. She’s a natural for it.”

  “The cops in Brodowski thought so too. But her alibi is rock-solid.”

  “No other suspects?”

  Silva shook his head. “And Brodowski isn’t exactly an epicenter of violent crime. The locals are well out of their depth. They’d already filed a request for help.”

  “You said four. Who’s the fourth?”

  Silva frowned. “That one confuses me.”

  He clicked the mouse. A black man in knee-length shorts was staring at the camera with one eye. The other was mashed to a pulp. His bloodstained polo shirt bore the Lacoste crocodile emblem.

  “Nice shirt,” Pereira said. “Who’s he?”

  “He’s The Man Who Doesn’t Fit. João Girotti, a thug with three convictions, one for armed robbery, one for burglary, one for auto theft.”

  “A man still in search of his vocation,” Arnaldo said.

  “Good riddance,” Pereira said. “Where did this punk end his days?”

  “In an alley, in back of a bar, in Brasilândia.”

  “Brasilândia?”

  “A suburb of São Paulo,” Silva said. “A slum. Girotti lived there whenever he wasn’t a guest of the state.”

  “Was he gay?”

  “Not as far as we know.”

  “And the other three you just showed me all had girlfriends. How do we tie four straights to a gay like Rivas?”

  “I don’t think we can. I think we’re going to have to discard your original hypothesis of homosexual jealousy as a motive for Rivas’s murder.”

  “I’m still gonna find out if Tomás Garcia was here in Brasília when these people were killed.”

  “And you should. But I’m now convinced he’s not our man.”

  “Okay, okay, I have to admit, it’s looking pretty thin. But tell me this: what’s a lowlife like Girotti have in common with four respectable citizens?”

  “Maybe they were only apparently respectable citizens,” Arnaldo said.

  “Okay, so how do we connect Girotti to four apparently respectable citizens?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Silva said. “I don’t have an answer.”

  “Any ballistics results on the bullets?”

  “Not yet. But….”

  “I know, I know, don’t even bother to say it. The MO is just too similar. It’s the same killer. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the victims are connected. We could be dealing with some sick bastard who picks them at random.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “But you don’t think it’s likely?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “São Paulo, Campinas, Ribeirão Prêto, Rio, and Brasília; one killing in each city. That’s almost too random to be random. I think the killer had a reason to go to those places, and I think that reason was that he wanted to kill those specific people.”

  “Who was the first?”


  “Girotti, the thug.”

  “And when was that?”

  “Back at the end of November.”

  “So it’s been going on for over two months?”

  “It has.”

  “All right, Mario, I admit it. You were right, and I was wrong. You saved my ass, and I owe you one. Thanks.”

  “De nada.”

  “What about that guy in Miami?”

  “Gustavo Fernandez.”

  “We rule him out?”

  “Not just yet. I’ve got a friend, a cop in Miami. He’ll talk to Fernandez.”

  “When?” Pereira said.

  “Today, when he gets up. It’s three hours earlier in Miami.”

  Chapter Eight

  THE BUILDING WAS THREE stories tall, ugly, and painted flamingo pink. A concrete sign to the left of the door identified it as the Ocean View.

  Detective Sergeant Harvey Willis glanced at the opposite side of the street. “Bullshit,” he said. The building over there was considerably taller and effectively blocked any possible view of the North Atlantic.

  But view or no view, the three-story monstrosity he was standing in front of would command healthy rents. The Miami Beach of picture postcards, Bermuda shorts, and tourist-pale knees was only four blocks to the north.

  Pierre “Pete” André, Willis’s partner, looked at his watch.

  “If he’s a night owl,” he said in his soft Creole accent, “he’s not gonna be happy.”

  It was a quarter to ten, still very early by Miami Beach standards.

  THE MAN who answered their ring was wearing a light blue T-shirt, darker blue pajama shorts, and an attitude.

  “Gustavo Fernandez?” Willis asked.

  “What’s it to you?” the man said.

  “Detective Sergeant Willis, Miami Beach PD. This”—Willis jerked a thumb toward the black man standing next to him—“is Detective André.”

  The man ran a hand through his unkempt hair and stared at them out of bleary, brown eyes. He didn’t seem in the least intimidated.

  “Cops?”

  “Cops.”