Every Bitter Thing cims-4 Read online

  The old man with the bleary eyes didn’t react, even though he was close enough to hear every word.

  “But I wouldn’t waste your time with him if I was you,” Gordo said, not lowering his voice, speaking as if Leonardo wasn’t there. “He doesn’t recognize his own wife half the time.”

  “You’re exaggerating, right?”

  “I’m not. She comes in three or four times a week to drag him home, and he honest-to-God doesn’t recognize her. I don’t think it’s just the booze. Something is screwed up in his head.” He pointed at his temple and made a circular motion. Maybe it’s that… that…”

  Goncalves helped him out. “Alzheimer’s?”

  “Yeah, that. I figure there’s a bright side, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Think about it. Every time he takes her to bed, it’s like he’s fucking a different woman. You married?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  “I think I do. There are happy marriages, you know.”

  “So I hear. Never seen one myself. Want another beer?”

  “Not yet. So Leonardo was here, but he really wasn’t. Who else?”

  “None of the guys over there, maybe one of the girls. They’re coming and going all the time. It’s tough to keep track.”

  “All right. One more question. After this guy Girotti went outside, did you hear a shot?”

  Gordo shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “And, before you ask, the answer is yes.”

  “Yes to what?”

  “Yes, I know what a shot sounds like. We hear them all the time around here.”

  Goncalves picked up his glass and went over to where the women were clustered around a table. Gordo had called them girls, but they were hardly that. They hadn’t been girls for a long, long time.

  They made for a colorful group: one was a mulata, one was black, and one was white.

  “Mind if I sit down?” Goncalves said.

  “Your mother let you play with big girls?” the mulata said, sizing him up.

  “She lets.”

  “Then sit,” the black woman said. “I’m Dorothy. This is Amalia”-she indicated the youngest-“and this is Ruby.”

  “Haraldo,” Goncalves said.

  Amalia was the one who’d winked at him. She reached out and fingered his necktie.

  “Nice,” she said. “You a cop?”

  “Yeah, I’m a cop.”

  “I like cops,” she said. “Want to go somewhere and show me your gun?”

  “Not today, thanks. I’m working.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

  She took a cigarette from the pack on the table and held it to her mouth, waiting for him to light it.

  “Sorry,” Goncalves said. “I don’t smoke.”

  Amalia reached into her purse, produced a cheap plastic lighter, and handed it to him. He held the flame to the tip of her cigarette. She put a hand around his, as if she needed to steady it, which she didn’t. When he doused the flame, she released him and took a long drag.

  “I hate to break up this little scene,” the black woman said, “but you can do me with handcuffs if you want.”

  Goncalves shook his head. “I just want some information,” he said.

  “ Caralho, you’re no fun at all,” Amalia said, tipping off some ash.

  The white one didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at him. It occurred to Goncalves that she might have been pretty once.

  “The least you could do is to buy us some drinks,” Amalia said.

  “What are you having?”

  She inclined her head in the direction of the bar. “He knows,” she said.

  “But I don’t,” Goncalves said.

  “Champagne,” she admitted: part of her deal with the bar’s owner, no doubt.

  “How much?”

  “Has to be a bottle. It goes flat, so Gordo doesn’t sell it by the glass.”

  “How much?”

  “Sixty reais.”

  She blew a smoke ring in his face. The ring was damn near perfect. She must have spent a lot of time perfecting the technique.

  “Sixty reais, huh?” Goncalves said.

  The champagne couldn’t have been imported, not in a bar like this, not for a price like that. And if it wasn’t imported, it was a ripoff. But Goncalves figured it was worth it to get the girls talking. When he turned in his expenses, he hoped Silva would think so too.

  “All right,” he said.

  The white woman emerged from her stupor to flash him a smile. It was a surprisingly sweet smile, but it didn’t last.

  The black woman lifted a hand and made a gesture to Gordo.

  A minute or so later, he bustled over and made much of opening a bottle of Peterlongo, cheap sparkling wine from Rio Grande do Sul. Goncalves could have bought it for less than ten reais in any second-class supermarket. The better stores didn’t stock it.

  He waved off the glass that Gordo offered him and pointed at his own. “Give me another one of those,” he said.

  “One Antarctica, coming right up.”

  Gordo hustled off, smiling for the first time since Goncalves had waved his credentials in his face.

  “Wise choice,” Amalia said, grinding her cigarette into the ashtray and taking only the tiniest sip of her wine. The butt continued to smolder. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “You remember that murder a while back? Body found out back?”

  “Sure, I remember. Thing like that doesn’t happen every day, not even around here. Besides, a friend of mine stumbled over him when she went out to do xixi. It scared her half to death. She came back screaming.”

  “You remember the woman he was with?”

  “Sure.” Amalia tipped wine onto the butt. It sizzled and went out.

  “Do you know her name?”

  “I’ve been working this joint for three years. I thought I knew all the girls, but that one…” She shook her head.

  “She been back since?”

  “No. You think she had something to do with it?”

  “Maybe. Maybe she lured him outside so the killer could get at him.”

  “Or maybe she was just trying to turn an honest trick, and when the killer showed up she made herself scarce.”

  “That’s possible too. What do you remember about her?”

  “She was goddamned fast, for one thing.”

  “What do you mean, fast?”

  “That Joao, the murdered guy, he wasn’t here two minutes. We’re all still looking at him, waiting for him to make a move. Then she sashays in like she owns the place. She didn’t look around, didn’t smile at anybody; she just made straight for his table and took a seat.”

  “You think he knew her?”

  “Hell, no. He looked surprised. I thought he was going to tell her to fuck off. But he didn’t.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They talked. He drank. The drunker he got, the louder he got.”

  “What did you hear him say?”

  “Nothing. Just the same crap, over and over. He was shitfaced.”

  “Could you hear anything the woman said?”

  “Not a word. But she was trying to calm him down. She put a hand on him right here.”

  Amalia laid a hand on Goncalves’s thigh.

  “After a while,” she said, “she moved it up to-”

  Goncalves crossed his legs.

  “Hey,” she said, “you don’t have to get all fidgety on me. I was just explaining.”

  She took another cigarette out of the pack and put it between her lips. Goncalves picked up the lighter and lit it.

  “So she’s got her hand between his legs,” he prompted.

  “She’s grabbing his cock, that’s what she’s doing. But does he move? No, he orders another round. And then another one. He was here for hours. Guy like that, guy who just gets out of jail, you’d think he’d be crazy for a woman, right? But no
, he just keeps drinking. Around about the time I’m thinking he’s gay, he finally pays the bill. When he stands up, his legs are all wobbly, but I can see he isn’t gay at all.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then they left. They went out that way.”

  Amalia pointed toward the back of the bar. Goncalves followed the line of her finger and saw a single door. On the wall next to it was a crudely painted sign. The sign said SENHORAS.

  “Why didn’t Girotti wait here until she got back from the toilet?”

  “Are you kidding? There was no way she was going to let him do that, no way she was going to give anybody else a chance to get their hooks into him. She took him by the hand and led him outside. The lady’s toilet opens onto the alley. So does that door. And the alley itself runs between two streets. She never came back.”

  “What did she look like? Describe her.”

  Amalia took another puff on her cigarette. Some of the smoke rose past her eyes and caused her to squint. Or maybe she was just remembering.

  “She was white, and she was blond. Maybe that’s why he let her stay. Guy like him doesn’t get many chances with a white woman. And I’ll bet he never had a blond in his whole life, probably wanted to know what she looked like down there.”

  “Tall? Short?”

  “Neither. Medium, I’d say.”

  “How about her eyes?”

  “She was wearing sunglasses, big and really dark. She must have had a hard time seeing anything.”

  “Suppose you saw her in a lineup. Would you recognize her?”

  “Not in a million years,” Amalia said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Via E-mail

  To: Mario Silva, Headquarters, Brasilia

  From: Mara Carta, Field Office, Sao Paulo Further to your request, please find attached the passenger list for Transportes Aereos Brasileiros flight 8101 on the 22nd of November last year.

  Cordially,

  Mara

  Mara Carta was Hector’s intelligence officer. The attachment consisted of six pages. The first was dedicated exclusively to first-class passengers. It added nothing to Silva’s knowledge. The last four listed the people in economy class. There, too, he found nothing of interest.

  But the second page was a revelation. The third name Silva read caused him to blink; the last three brought him bolt upright in his chair.

  TAB Flight 8101 22 Nov. Passenger List (cont.) Business Class Cabin

  Passenger Name

  Nationality

  1

  Arriaga*, Julio

  BR

  2

  Clancy, Dennis, Fr.

  US

  3 Cruz, Paulo, Dr.

  BR

  4

  Porto, Lidia

  BR

  5

  Kloppers**, Jan

  BR

  6

  Kloppers, Marnix

  BR

  7

  Mansur, Luis

  BR

  8

  Motta, Darcy

  BR

  9

  Neves, Victor

  BR

  10

  Palhares, Jonas

  BR

  11

  Rivas, Juan

  VE

  Silva consulted Joao Girotti’s rap sheet and then placed a call to his nephew.

  “Have you seen that passenger list for TAB 8101?”

  “Not yet,” Hector said. “Why?”

  “Cruz, Rivas, Neves, and Palhares are on it.”

  “ All four? ”

  “All four.”

  “That’s it, then? That’s the connection we’ve been looking for?”

  “Looks that way. On the night of the twenty-second to the twenty-third of November, they were all traveling in the business-class cabin of Flight 8101, TAB.”

  “Where was Girotti?”

  “He was in jail. He’d been there for a week.”

  “How did he get out?”

  “The witness, the only witness, recanted.”

  “Recanted? Just like that?”

  “Just like that. His lawyer was Dudu Fonseca.”

  “Fonseca? Where did a punk like Girotti get the money to hire Fonseca?”

  “Good question. And here’s another we should be asking ourselves: if Girotti had the money, why did he elect to sit around cooling his heels in jail? Fonseca could have had him out in a day.”

  “Maybe Girotti didn’t have the money when he went in. Maybe he came into it after he got pinched.”

  “That’s the most logical explanation, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. Fonseca doesn’t lift a finger unless he gets a retainer in advance.”

  “True. He generally needs to bribe some witness or another.”

  “Or to hire someone to scare the witness off.”

  “Also true.”

  “What’s our next step?”

  “Warn the surviving passengers.”

  “I suppose it didn’t escape you that one of them might be the killer?”

  “It certainly did not.”

  “Who are they?”

  “There are seven of them, one female. They’re all Brazilians, except for one of the males.”

  “And he is…”

  “An American, Dennis Clancy. There’s an ‘FR’ in front of his name.”

  “A priest?”

  “Either that or a misspelling. There’s a ‘DR’ in front of Cruz’s. Maybe they typed an F instead of a D.”

  “And the others?”

  “The woman was Lidia Porto. The men were Julio Arriaga, dependent of an airline employee, probably a kid.”

  “Airline employee? TAB headquarters is here in Sao Paulo. Want me to handle that?”

  “Would you? His mother’s name is Aline Arriaga. She’s the employee.”

  “Got it.”

  “Next, Kloppers, Marnix and Jan, father and son. Jan is the son, described here as a minor.”

  “Kloppers? What kind of name is that?”

  “No idea. The last two are Luis Mansur and Darcy Motta.”

  “Names and nationalities, that’s all we’ve got to work with?”

  “At the moment, yes.”

  “There are going to be Mansurs, Portos, and Mottas galore.”

  “Put Mara on it. Tell her to get into the national identity card database and start sifting. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can find out about the American.”

  Silva’s next call was to the immigration section. He spoke to a clerk who said his name was Cizik.

  “Cizik?”

  “My old man was a Czech, Chief Inspector. How can I be of assistance?”

  Silva explained what he wanted. Cizik told him everything was computerized. It would only take a moment.

  A couple of minutes later, he was back on the line. “I’ve got copies of Clancy’s visa application and entry card. First name, Dennis? Occupation, priest?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm, what?”

  “Unusual case. It appears Father Clancy is still in Brazil.”

  “And that’s unusual?”

  “He’s been here for almost three months. Most gringos stay for three weeks or less. The few who stick around generally come in on another kind of visa.”

  “Such as?”

  “Study or work.”

  “Could he have left? Could it be a computer glitch?”

  “It’s possible, wouldn’t be the first time. But frankly…”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s not likely. He listed a hotel in Sao Paulo. Want me to call them?”

  “I do.”

  “Give me twenty minutes.”

  Cizik was better than his word. Silva’s phone rang in less than ten.

  “It checked out. He stayed at the Hotel Gloria on Avenida Ipiranga, in Sao Paulo. But it was only for one night.”

  “The Hotel Gloria? Why do I-”

  “Bobo, Chief Inspector. He used to live there.”

>   “Bobo, the TV star. Of course. I’ll get a man over there. Who did you talk to?”

  “The manager, a fellow by the name of Vasco.”

  “I appreciate your assistance, Cizik. Now listen. It’s very important we find this man Clancy.”

  “Because?”

  “Because if we don’t, and soon, he’s liable to kill someone, or someone’s liable to kill him. How about you check the passenger lists for domestic airlines?”

  “Sure. Glad to help.”

  “Did Clancy pay the hotel with a credit card?”

  “He did, and we have the number. But it’s an American card. I’ve had dealings with those people, Chief Inspector, and they’re a pain in the ass. The Americans are too damned afraid they’re gonna get sued. They don’t cough up anything without legal paper.”

  “I have a friend who’s a cop in Miami Beach. You think he can help?”

  “Don’t waste his time. They won’t give it to him either. We’ll get you the information eventually, but we’re gonna have to go through channels.”

  “And how long is that likely to take?”

  “At least a week, probably more. It’s not like we’re at the top of any of their priority lists.”

  Silva told Cizik to do it anyway, thanked him, and placed another call to his nephew.

  “The Gloria?” Hector said. “Isn’t that the place where Bobo-”

  “It is. Listen, I’ve been thinking about that flight. Something else occurred to me.”

  “What?”

  “We should consider the flight crew as well. Find out who worked the business-class cabin.” * Dependent of Aline Arriaga, TAB employee #13679, traveling on standby. ** Minor child accompanied by parent.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bruna Nascimento and Lina Godoy breezed through immigration and followed the rest of the crew to the waiting van. A ten-minute drive brought them to the Caesar Park Hotel. The rising sun was painting the building with gold as they maneuvered their small suitcases through the revolving door and into the marble-floored lobby.

  They checked in, sent their luggage upstairs, and then, as they often did after a long flight, the two young flight attendants went to the coffee shop.

  Forty-five minutes later, they were on their second pot of hot chocolate and trying to get rid of Horacio Leao. Leao, their copilot, was handsome, single, and on a fast track to captain. He was also vain, shallow, and a crushing bore. His interests, as far as Bruna could determine, were limited to airplanes and sex. Horacio had been trying to get Bruna or Lina into bed for some time, and he’d made it abundantly clear that he’d be equally happy to score with either one.