“It is not likely we will see O Rei do Açúcar,” Maria says, one hand atop each revolver, “but if we do—remember that this man is serpente, and do not trust his lies.”
Off to the side, at one of the annexes to the main house, a Range Rover arrives. Not full of armed grileiros like the others, this one carries cane cutters—the plantation laborers. When the first man steps out, you see he’s clothed head to toe in gray cloth, like a padded ninja, a turtleneck pulled up over his face and a boonie hat pulled so low that only his eyes are visible.
The other cutters exit and their machetes glimmer in the moonlight.
• “We should infiltrate dressed as workers.”
• “Let’s go straight to the main house and get the jump on management!”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
The Morning After
“What’s the plan?” you ask, walking alongside Viktor as you leave the favela. “You said get the agents off our trail, but what do you propose we do?”
“I’ve been wondering that very same thing. But last night it finally dawned on me—if the Americans think I killed my Jane, then surely they’ll be looking for me. I assume you gave my description to a police sketch artist?”
You say that you did.
“So let me ask you this: if you’re looking for something, and you’re truly dedicated, when do you stop looking for it?”
He sits at a bus stop and you take a seat next to him, pausing to think. But there’s only one answer: “Once I’ve found it.”
“Exactly. Which, if you’ll follow the premise to its conclusion, means I have to give them…me.”
“You’re turning yourself in?”
“Of course not, no. Come, you’ll see.”
The red-line bus pulls up and Viktor tosses a few coins into the slot for both of you.
“Your English is excellent,” you say once you’re seated, making small talk.
“Thank you. I’ve spent so much of my life abroad, both in education and professionally, that often my instinct is to call myself ‘a Brazilian,’ as you say, rather than ‘Brasileiro,’ as we say here. It’s funny, really, but in spite of everything I still consider Rio my home.”
He looks out the window and you do the same. Eventually, your companion indicates it’s time to disembark. As soon as you get off the bus, you realize you’re in a much nicer district.
There aren’t any favelas near here—just skyrise apartment buildings. Viktor walks up to one skyrise and buzzes the intercom. “André! It’s your old roomie, let us up.”
After a moment, the door buzzes and you open it. The hall echoes as you step inside, announcing your arrival to the empty lobby. It’s much cooler here inside this marble cave, and you can feel the slight bite of the conditioned air against your spine. You find the elevator and punch the “up” button.
After a short ride, you’re on the sixth floor. A man whom you assume is André steps out into the hall to greet Viktor. Your assumption is confirmed when the two men embrace in a hug and slap each other on the back like long-lost brothers.
“Who’s this?” he asks, looking at you.
The man is a handsome Brazilian, rugged and masculine. He’s taller than Viktor by about two inches, his face is fuller, and his body is broader. He wears a ribbed sweater despite it being summer. Where Viktor is intelligent and agile, André is cock-sure, charismatic and powerful. His eyes are a creamy golden-brown, and he has a five o’clock shadow.
“De boa—it’s cool,” Viktor replies. “Can we go inside?”
André nods and waves you in. It’s a plush penthouse with all the trimmings. The latest in modern décor and minimalist style. You don’t have to be an ace detective to figure this one out: the man is wealthy. He goes straight for what looks to be an antique gun safe, and your first instinct is to bolt for the door, but when he opens the safe, you breathe a sigh of relief. The safe has been refurbished and now serves as his liquor cabinet.
“Can I offer you a drink?”
“You may want one yourself,” Viktor says. “I have quite a story to tell.”
“Lucky for you, I was already enjoying a Canario,” he says, claiming a cocktail from an end table. The table is an old wooden powder keg, emptied out and reclaimed. It still has the original label stenciled on the side. “Are you sure you won’t join me?”
“We have much work to do, my friend. Our day has just begun.”
“Of, course. Mine was just ending,” André says with a smile, toasting the air with his glass.
“We’re interrupting?” Viktor asks.
“No, no. Nothing of the sort. I only mean—my mind is prepared to receive your urgent news.”
Viktor looks around the penthouse apartment with deliberate caution. “May we talk on your balcony? You have the most brilliant views of the rising sun.”
Your host nods and leads the way outside. You’re greeted with a slight breeze; the air is cooler up here than it was on the red-line and holds a peerless view of the city. It’s stunning. Though you’re only six stories up, the building sits on a hilltop and offers a panoramic vista of the coast.
Once the glass door slides closed, Viktor says, “I can’t be too careful. I don’t believe your home is bugged, nor do I think they’ll link us together. I’m not sure the university keeps records of who shared a dorm room with whom, and you’ve got your stage name, in any case.”
You share the same puzzled look as the man before you, but he’s able to hide his grimace with a sip from the cocktail glass.
“Just—out with it already!” you blurt.
They both look to you and Viktor lets out a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry. I know each of you only know half the story. André here is one of the most talented actors in Brasil.”
The man gives a dramatic bow.
“And I’m now one of the most wanted,” Viktor continues. “So I need you, my friend, to perform the role of a lifetime. I need you to pretend to be me! To convince the American federal agents of my innocence and to throw them off my trail. I’d do this myself, but you can talk your way out of anything. I’ve seen that first-hand too many times to count. If they think you’re me, I can blend in and travel unencumbered on the rest of my journey.”
André taps his index finger on his lips, deep in thought. He sighs, then drains the rest of his cocktail, throws the glass over the balcony and firmly grips Viktor’s shoulders with both hands.
“What do you get the man who has everything?” André asks with a playboy’s grin. “Adventure! My friend, you’re just what I need. I’ve been driven mad with these television roles. This—this is real acting.”
“You’ll do it?” Viktor asks.
“With pleasure!”
Viktor turns to you with a grin. “I’ll fill André in. Time is precious, so I think we should split up for an hour or two. We need to leave a note on the agents’ car so they’ll meet André later today for his big show. I also need my laptop, and that’s back at my apartment. We’ll have to act with extreme care at either location: the former is the lion’s den and the latter is their hunting ground.”
• “I’ll leave the note; just tell me what to do.”
• “They’ll be looking for you at your apartment; I’d better go instead.”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Motorist
You walk along the edge of the road by the sugarcane, looking for headlights in the waning light. With your focus on the horizon, you accidentally kick something, but it’s soft and loose and you don’t tumble. Instead, it bounds away—croaking.
It’s a gigantic frog, six inches across, thick and covered in warty globules of skin. There are a dozen toads at least, most likely fleeing from the fires.
“Don’t touch,” Maria says. “The skin has venom.”
“Great,” you say, and rub your shoe against the dirt.
“Cane toads,” Bertram says. “That gives me an idea.”
He removes a pair of thin shooting gloves from his pants’ cargo pocke
ts and dons them just as the headlights of a vehicle start to shine through the sugarcane. Maria takes a step back into the crop and you follow suit.
Bertram lifts two toads, one in each hand, and readies himself. “If either of you are an animal-rights type, you may want to look away,” he says with a grin.
Just as a jeep rounds the corner, Agent Bertram hurls the toads at the vehicle’s windshield, spattering them across the glass like they were water balloons. The jeep swerves wildly and finally skids to a stop.
Bertram rushes around to the driver’s side and bashes the driver with the butt of his rifle, incapacitating him. Maria points a revolver at each of the passengers in the rear seat as you train your shotgun on the man up front.
“We’ve got another one!” you shout, spotting a second set of headlights.
Maria demands in Portuguese that the men exit the vehicle.
“Hop in back and fire a warning shot when they get too close!” Bertram commands, pulling the slumped body from behind the wheel.
As the rear passengers exit, you take a seat and ready the shotgun. Maria hops in front and Bertram peels out.
“Hotshot! We’re gonna flip around. I want you to blast their tires.”
Agent Bertram performs a flawless J-turn, flipping the jeep around 180 degrees just like he was taught in his DSS anti-terrorism driving course, and flies towards the oncoming pickup truck. You let out a shotgun blast from the rear of the jeep, easily turning the driver’s side tire into Swiss cheese.
The truck crashes into the sugarcane embankment, flattening more toads, and leaving the grileiros in the ditch.
• To the plantation!
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
The Mouth
The child gang leads you through the slums, out into a wide and open street, and finally just outside a hovel. It would appear the man you seek is inside. The leader of the gang steps in front of the curtained doorway and holds out his palm expectantly.
“He wants his payment for bringing us here.”
“But we don’t have any money….” you say.
Viktor says something in Portuguese, then brandishes his pistol. Adrenaline shoots through you and you go for your own weapon in preparation for a firefight. At the last moment you stop, realizing that the children remain as placid and unafraid of Viktor as if the man had just pulled out a lollipop. Indeed, he announced his intent so that the gang wouldn’t be frightened when he gave the teen leader his pistol as a gift, which he does now.
“What are you doing?” you ask.
“We can either give them something valuable or have them take our valuables from us.”
You look at the boys, each of them eying you hungrily. The leader takes Viktor’s weapon, passes it off to one of his lieutenants, then opens his palm to you.
“Go ahead, Tourist. This is our charge for transport and safe passage, and we each have to pay. Think of it as a ticket; time to pay the ferryman.”
Reluctantly, you hand off your pistol. The leader of the child gang smiles, gives a slight bow, and with that the group disappears down the street. After they leave, you turn back toward the hovel. Here you are—hopefully. It suddenly occurs to you that you could’ve been led anywhere. Who knows whose home this is!
Viktor calls out and the curtain opens. There to meet you stands the next tier of drug lord—a young man of high-school age. Thin, baggy-clothed, and wielding an AK-47, he greets you with a suspicious scowl. You’re not sure what Viktor says to him, but he opens the curtain and bids you enter.
The room is occupied by two other teens with AK-47s. The one who wears a tank top and looks about 17 introduces himself as Falador. He folds his spindly arms across his chest with an air of impatience.
“I’m going to try something,” Viktor says.
As he speaks to the teens in Portuguese, your anxiety runs high. You feel powerless in this room, impotent and unarmed against three killers with assault rifles. You hope his “something” pays off.
Viktor grins. “I told them we talked to the bleach-haired detective and that in exchange for information, they don’t have to pay him next month. I told them that the cop says if they refuse, they will pay double. Falador will gladly tell us what he knows.”
Well, that was easy, you think as Viktor converses with the gangsters. These young men will be in for a rude awakening next month when the cops expect their regular tribute, but you won’t lose any sleep over pitting crooked cops and drug traffickers against one another.
Viktor brightens. “He says he knows everything about the American girl! He says it was the Shadow Chiefs who killed her, and that the bounty for her life was paid for by the sugarcane mafia. It’s just as I figured; my new energy patents threatened the Sugar King’s empire and now Falador has confirmed that the order came from O Rei do Açúcar, himself!”
Then Viktor’s eyes darken and he adds, “I’m going to find the hitman who killed Jane, I will have justice against him, and then we will see Governor Mateo Ferro, the Sugar King.”
“But how?” you say. “How could you expect to take on an entire mafia with no money and only a single sub-machinegun?”
“You’re forgetting two things, Tourist: My determination and my ‘Manhattan Projects.’”
He speaks with the teen in Portuguese again, but soon becomes frustrated. “No, no, no,” he says, shaking his head.
“What is it?” you ask.
“He says they kidnapped her at sunset, near the consulate, when she was walking back from work….”
“So the scene at her house was a decoy? They didn’t get her from there?”
Viktor shakes his head. “He says he’s certain, but that’s impossible. I got a message from her just before…Here, I wrote down all my messages with timestamps before I ditched my mobile.”
He produces a sheet in his journal, then reads, “I have what we need, but I think they know. Date first. Sent Monday, 9:24 pm.”
Replacing the journal, he says, “See? Long after sunset. It doesn’t make any sense.”
That’s when it dawns on you: the timestamp! The very same thing that freed you from jail. You pull out your digital camera and flip through the pictures of the crime scene. The timestamp of your picture of the alley, the one with the glorious graffiti angel, reads, “8:57 pm.”
“Look!” you shout, showing him the camera. “She sent you that message nearly half an hour after I stumbled upon the body. You just didn’t check your phone until after you ran from me!”
Viktor’s eyes gleam, though he doesn’t share your full enthusiasm. “What does this really prove? That her phone was used later that night. Anyone can send a text message. Or maybe she was in an area without service when she wrote it and it didn’t send until later?”
“Listen to me! If this guy’s so certain they took her at sunset, then it’s possible they took a different girl. I know this sounds crazy, but what if Jane gave them the slip? What if she’s…still alive?!”
Viktor turns to Falador and asks him a new set of questions with fevered intensity. When the boy answers, Viktor shouts with joy.
“I asked him what the girl they took looked like. She was a young, pretty American and blonde like my Jane, but he said this girl had blue eyes—my Jane has green! He says she had a mole on her nose, and my Jane has no moles! What if you’re right, Tourist? What if she’s in hiding because she knows the only thing keeping her safe is the idea that they think she’s dead?”
“What if she claimed the evidence on her own and is leaving you clues so you’ll find her?”
His bright eyes glitter with inspired madness. “The message could have a double meaning…I thought ‘date first’ was just a way to verify her identity—it’s an inside joke of ours—but it could be telling me to check the date and time of the message! To see what happened first! And if she’s alive… that would mean it is Jane who is in ‘the place of hate.’”
“You know where it is?”
“Yes! If the men who tried to kill her were
the Sugar King’s men…”
He turns to leave, but Falador has blocked your exit to the door. The three young men all brandish their AK-47s. With a cruel smile, Falador shakes his head. You’re not going anywhere.
“He says he knows who we are; knows I’m the fiance and that there is a bounty on my head as well. They have orders to kill us. ‘No hard feelings,’ he says. I’m going to offer him a bribe—go for my backpack.”
Viktor talks to them in Portuguese while you:
• Offer them your passport. It’s the most valuable thing you own.
• Remove one of the “Manhattan Projects” and hand it to Viktor.
• Slide the safety off the sub-machinegun and go to town.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Nailed
The two of you chase Viktor through the crowded streets. A few times it seems like he might have lost you, but then his glasses glint under the street lights and the chase will be on once again. Just when you think you can’t run any further, Viktor makes a mistake.
He turns down the wrong alley and into a dead end. Seeing that he’s lost, he turns back and shoves a hand into his backpack.
“Drop that bag, now!” Irma shouts, her revolver leveled at his head.
Viktor does so, his hands raised in the air. In one hand, he holds a small metal sphere.
“Drop the bomb, you son-of-a-bitch! One sudden move and I will not hesitate to kill you.”
She pulls back the hammer on the revolver.
“Okay, okay!” the man says. “Listen to me, please. You don’t understand.”
“Shut up!” she cries.
He continues, “You have no idea what you’re dealing with. The men you think are your friends, your bosses, everyone—”
The chamber starts to rotate as she depresses the trigger.
• Watch as she shoots him.
MURDERED: Can YOU Solve the Mystery? (Click Your Poison Book 2) Page 23