Every Bitter Thing Read online

  “Got any ID?”

  “Sure.”

  Willis had his badge ready.

  The man fish-eyed it. “Something with a picture,” he said.

  Willis turned the badge case over and let Fernandez scrutinize his warrant card.

  “What do you want with me?” Fernandez said, finally admitting to Willis’s identity. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I didn’t say you did,” Willis said. “May we come in?”

  “Carajo, do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s about ten.”

  “Middle of the fucking night.”

  “Can we come in?”

  “Wait,” Fernandez said and shut the door in their faces.

  They heard voices from within, Fernandez and another man.

  “Ah,” André said. “Like that.”

  A minute later, the door opened again. The apartment had been pitch-black. Now the overhead lamp was on.

  “I hope you’re going to make it quick,” Fernandez said and stepped aside.

  The place was a studio, a single room with a kitchenette in one corner and a king-sized bed in the other. Beyond a door on their right, someone flushed a toilet.

  Fernandez pointed at a table encircled by four chairs. “Sit there,” he said.

  He walked to the window and pulled aside a heavy blackout curtain, revealing the wall of an adjoining building.

  “Ocean view, my ass,” Willis whispered to his partner.

  On his way back to the table, Fernandez switched off the overhead lamp. “What’s this all about?”

  Willis took the lead. “You were an acquaintance of Juan Rivas, right?”

  “What’s with the were shit? We’re still acquaintances.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “It was in the Herald, him being the son of the Venezuelan foreign minister and all.”

  “I don’t read the fucking Herald. Where are you going with all this?”

  “Juan Rivas is dead.”

  “No shit?” Fernandez didn’t look devastated or even concerned, just curious. “What happened to him?”

  “He was murdered.”

  “Huh.”

  “The way we hear it,” André said, “you and he—”

  Fernandez looked at the door to the bathroom, held up a hand, and lowered his voice.

  “He was a friend. That’s all, just a friend.”

  “Uh-huh,” Willis said. He reached into his pocket, took out his notebook, and glanced at a page. “According to our information, you also know a guy by the name of …”—he found what he was looking for—“Tomás Garcia?”

  “That old fart? Yeah, I know him. So?”

  The shower in the bathroom went on; it made a lot of noise. Fernandez looked relieved.

  “According to Garcia,” André said, “you and Rivas were an item.”

  “That’s a load of crap,” Fernandez said.

  “Is it? The Brazilian cops have Rivas’s telephone records. They told us the two of you spent a lot of time chatting with each other.”

  Fernandez cast another glance at the bathroom door.

  “Okay, okay: at one time. But no more. That’s history.”

  “So the two of you haven’t spoken for a while?”

  “What did I just say? History.”

  “What happened?”

  Fernandez shrugged.

  “I moved on,” he said.

  “You broke up?”

  “There was nothing to break. Casual sex, that’s all it was. What have you guys got to do with any of this? Juan was murdered down in Brazil, right?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You mean he was here?”

  “No. It happened in Brazil, all right.” Again, Willis consulted his notebook. “There were three occasions when you didn’t exchange telephone calls for over a week. The first was from the tenth to the eighteenth of August.”

  “I was in Brazil.”

  “And from the third to the thirteenth of October?”

  “Again, Brazil.”

  “That the last time you were there?”

  “Yeah. Last time.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Hell, yes, I can prove it. I’ve got the stamps in my passport.”

  Willis turned the page. “The third time period in which the two of you weren’t calling each other,” he said, “was from the fourteenth to the twenty-second of November.”

  In the bathroom, the sound of the shower stopped. Fernandez lowered his voice. “He was here.”

  “He stayed with you?”

  “No, I mean here in Miami. He took a hotel suite. He was after a good time. I showed him around.”

  “Did you stay with him? There in the suite?”

  “What if I did?”

  “When did you first meet him?”

  Fernandez thought for a moment. “July. It musta been the first or the second. I remember taking him to the fireworks on the Fourth. You done?”

  “Just a few more questions. What did he tell you about his relationship with Garcia?”

  “That the old fart wouldn’t let go, couldn’t get it through his head that Juan was finished with him. He kept slipping letters under Juan’s door.”

  “Did Juan show any of those letters to you?”

  “He read a few when we talked by phone. We laughed about them. Hey, you think the old fart killed him?”

  “Do you?”

  Fernandez shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “Did Juan talk to you about any of his other relationships?”

  “No.”

  “Did Juan ever tell you about anyone he was afraid of?”

  “No.”

  “Anything you can think of that might lead to finding his killer?”

  “No,” Fernandez glanced at the bathroom door. “How much longer is this gonna take?”

  Willis stood up and André followed suit.

  “We’ll be out of here,” Willis said, “just as soon as you show us those stamps in your passport.”

  “HELLO, BABYFACE.”

  “You know I don’t like that nickname, Chief Inspector.”

  It was 4:30 P.M. in Brasília. Haraldo Gonçalves was calling in from Rio de Janeiro.

  “Sorry,” Silva said, smoothly. “It just slipped out. What have you got?”

  “Nada. Chantal Pires is a dead end. She’s no killer.”

  “Chantal Pires? That would be Jonas Palhares’s girlfriend.”

  “The very same.”

  “All right, let’s hear it.”

  “They met on the beach.”

  “So?”

  “The girls you meet on the beaches in Rio, they’re all dressed alike, which means in bathing suits about the size of postage stamps. And nobody is stupid enough to wear jewelry or a watch, so you don’t know whether you’re dealing with an heiress or a whore until she opens her mouth.”

  “And often not even then.”

  “And often not even then. You must be younger than you look, Chief Inspector.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, Senhor. It just slipped out. Chantal told me Palhares had her in bed two hours into their first date.”

  “How forthcoming. Go on.”

  “Palhares lived in a rental apartment, a duplex penthouse on Vieira Souto in Ipanema. The guy went through a divorce, for Christ’s sake! You gotta ask yourself how he could have afforded it.”

  “So you went there and had a look?”

  “I did. There’s a stain where he bled out on the rug. The air-conditioning had crapped out, and Palhares’s corpse was there for a while before they found him. The whole place still stinks. The owners have got some work ahead of them before they can rent it out to someone else.”

  “Find anything of interest?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The Rio cops have any other suspects?”

  “Not one. And they’re backing off on Chantal. As w
ell they should.”

  “What makes you so sure they can rule her out?”

  “The way she talked. When he brought her home the first time, she took one look at that apartment and thought she’d found the duck that lays golden eggs.”

  “In the fairy tale, it was a goose.”

  “Whatever. She told him she was a model.”

  “But she isn’t?”

  “No, Senhor. But she sure as hell looks like one.”

  “So he bought it.”

  “He bought it. She let him tell her long, boring stories about oil rigs, fed his ego, waited on him hand and foot, fucked him until he was cross-eyed. And, apparently, things were going just fine, and she was already thinking of herself as Senhora Palhares.”

  “And then someone came along and killed him.”

  “And then someone did. And if Chantal knew who it was, she’d kill him with her bare hands.”

  Chapter Nine

  HECTOR COSTA WAS BOTH the head of the federal police’s São Paulo field office and Mario Silva’s nephew. Late the following morning, he drove from São Paulo to Campinas. It was a pleasant drive through verdant hills studded with small farms, and he made good progress until he reached the outskirts of the city. But then things started to go wrong.

  Campinas, now numbering over three million inhabitants, had recently introduced a number of one-way streets. He was in town for more than an hour before he located the precinct housing the homicide squad.

  But he’d called ahead, and when he gave his name to the desk sergeant, he was immediately directed to the office of Delegado Artur Seixas.

  Seixas was a man pushing sixty. On the wall behind his desk was a small blackboard with a label. Days Until Retirement, it said. The number 27 was scrawled in white chalk.

  “From today?” Hector asked.

  “Including weekends,” Seixas said. “First thing I do every morning is pick up the chalk and change the number.” He stuck out a hand and Hector shook it. “It was my wife’s idea. She keeps telling me how great it’s going to be, and I go along with the game. But the truth is I hate the idea. You’d think thirty-five years would be enough, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it isn’t. Not for me. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I got no hobbies at all. I’m afraid I’m gonna go nuts. You want to go get some lunch?”

  THEY SAT at a counter and ate sandwiches.

  “I understand you have a suspect,” Hector said when the conversation turned to the Neves case.

  “You talking about Eduardo Coruja, his business partner?”

  “Him.”

  “Nah! That turned out to be a dead end.”

  “No other suspects?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any forensics that might help?”

  “We got the bullet and sent it to Brasília. My understanding is you’re going to compare it to the one you took out of that Venezuelan.”

  “We are. Anything else?”

  “Nothing else. And our forensics people are first-class.”

  “Unicamp, huh?”

  Seixas opened his hands, as if the answer was obvious. And indeed it was. Unicamp, the Campinas branch of the University of São Paulo, trained the best criminal forensics people in the country. The professors who worked there were often called upon, nationwide, to consult on difficult cases.

  “No offense,” Hector said, “but I’d still like to have a look at that apartment.”

  “None taken,” Seixas said. “We can go over there right now. I brought the key.”

  NEVES HAD lived in a high-rise bordering the university’s campus. The neighborhood was packed with bars, boutiques, and trendy restaurants. The building’s security guard recognized the grizzled cop from previous visits and buzzed them through at once.

  An elevator was waiting. The indicator panel skipped every other number. “Lofts,” Seixas said. “Every apartment takes up two floors.”

  Victor Neves’s place was on seventeen. His front door opened onto a living area backed by windows rising two stories to the ceiling. A counter divided the living/dining area from the kitchen. An open door led to a guest bathroom. A stairway curved upward.

  “Watch your feet,” Seixas said, indicating some dried bloodstains just inside the front door.

  “Must have shot him right here,” Hector said.

  “Uh-huh,” Seixas agreed. He pointed to a much larger bloodstain near the sofa. “And beat him to death over there.” One side of the blood pool had a straight edge. “There was a carpet,” Seixas said. “They took it for analysis.”

  “And?”

  “Lots of fibers and stuff. Some interesting blond hairs, so they tell me, but we’ve got nothing to compare them with, so they’re all pretty useless at this stage.”

  “I take it Neves’s girlfriend is not blond.”

  “You take it right. She’s a brunette.”

  The downstairs area was small, the furnishings sparse. The kitchen had all of the modern conveniences, including a dishwasher, but everything in miniature. The apartment was spacious enough for a couple, but not for a couple with kids. Telltale smudges of black fingerprint powder showed on many of the surfaces.

  “What’s upstairs?” Hector asked.

  “A bed and a bathroom. Go ahead. Have a look. I’ll stay here. I’ve seen it already, and I have bad knees.”

  Hector climbed the stairs, stood at a metal rail, and took in the view of the city. Beyond the urban sprawl, a mountain range showed bluish in the haze.

  Seixas looked up at him from below. “The shades were down when Neves was found,” he said. “He’d probably closed them for the night.”

  Closets with sliding doors lined the far side of the sleeping area. Next to the bed was a small table with a clock radio, a reading lamp, and a copy of a novel written by Paulo Coelho. Hector picked up the book and absently flipped through the pages. A bookmark slipped out and fell to the floor. He picked it up, looked at it, and went downstairs to show it to Seixas.

  “NEVES WAS reading Guerreiro da Luz. He left it on the nightstand next to his bed. Guess what he was using for a bookmark?”

  “Tell me,” Silva said.

  “A boarding pass for a flight from Miami International to São Paulo Guarulhos. Neves’s name was on it. He was in Miami last November.”

  “And so was Rivas. Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “A long shot, I know—”

  “A very long shot.” Silva grabbed a ballpoint from the porcelain mug on his desk. “Date?”

  “The twenty-second of November.”

  “Airline?”

  “TAB.”

  “Flight number?”

  “8101.”

  “Got it. Did you get a chance to speak to Janus?”

  “I did.”

  Janus Prado was the head of São Paulo’s homicide squad.

  “Did he have anything more on that thug João Girotti?”

  “He was busted on a burglary charge, but in the end they couldn’t hold him. The witness, the only witness, recanted.”

  “Bought off?”

  “Or scared off. Girotti was released on the afternoon of the day he was killed. If he’d stayed in jail, he might still be alive. The term ‘protective custody’ comes to mind.”

  “Don’t be a wiseass. You’re starting to sound like Arnaldo.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  “What else?”

  “Prado’s guys are doing no more than go through the motions. Their feeling is that whoever killed Girotti did the city a favor.”

  “Did they question the people in the bar?”

  “Only briefly. Girotti was there celebrating his release. He drank nonstop from about five in the afternoon until nine or nine thirty at night. Then he left. His body was discovered fifteen minutes later.”

  “He left alone?”

  “No. With a woman.”

  “That kind of a bar, eh?”

  “That kind of a bar.”

 
; “Maybe the killer got the woman to lure him outside.”

  “You don’t think Girotti is a dead end? Somebody else’s victim?”

  “You saw the photos?”

  “I saw the photos. Unlikely, huh?”

  “Very. But it won’t be long before we know for sure. I should have the ballistics results on those bullets by tomorrow at the latest. Is Babyface back from Rio?”

  “Should be by now.”

  “Send him over to that bar.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE BAR DO ELIAS was a shabby establishment with a sign in the front window offering beer for two reais.

  Haraldo Gonçalves wasn’t about to miss out on a deal like that. He bellied up to the bar and rapped his knuckles on the wood.

  “A Cerpa,” he said.

  “Beer’s only for folks old enough to drink.” The bartender grinned.

  His attempt at humor failed miserably. “Take a good fucking look,” Gonçalves said, flourishing his warrant card in the bartender’s face.

  “Brahma or Antarctica?” the bartender said.

  “I told you. Cerpa.”

  “No Cerpa. We only got Brahma and Antarctica.”

  “Antarctica, then.”

  The bartender reached into a cooler, pulled out a cold bottle, and poured half of the contents into a glass. He set the glass and the bottle on the bar between them.

  “You look too young to be a cop,” he said.

  “No shit. Elias around?”

  “Elias sold me this place back in 1997. I never got around to changing the name.”

  “And yours is?”

  “Renato Cymbalista, but nobody calls me that. They call me Gordo.” The word meant fatty, and it was appropriate.

  “Gordo, huh?” Gonçalves said, eying Cymbalista’s vast midriff. “I can’t imagine why.”

  He was still miffed about the fat man’s attempt at humor.

  “You in my place on business, or pleasure?” Gordo asked.

  Gonçalves looked around him with distaste and curled his lip. “What do you think?” he said. “Were you working the night João Girotti was murdered?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “I didn’t know him at all. Why he chose my place to drink in, and the alley out in back to get killed in, I couldn’t say.”

  “Did you talk with him?”