Every Bitter Thing cims-4

by Leighton Gage

  “Like when?”

  “Like when I’m nervous, that’s when. What’s this all about? Why are the Federal Police interested in me?”

  “Come on, Sacca. You know the drill. You don’t ask the questions, we do.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay.”

  “I want to know if you were on TAB flight number 8101 from Miami to Sao Paulo, the one that arrived on the morning of the twenty-third of November.”

  Tic.

  “No.”

  “I think you were.”

  “You can think what you want. Go ahead. Check the passenger list. You’re not gonna find me.”

  “Not as Abilio Sacca, no.”

  Tic. Tic.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Ever hear of a guy called Darcy Motta?”

  “Never.”

  “Uh-huh. You should ask a doctor to check out that tic.”

  “I already did. He says it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You ever play poker, Sacca?”

  “No.”

  “Let me give you a word of advice: don’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Bluffing isn’t one of your strengths.”

  “I’m not bluffing. You got the wrong guy. Somebody makes a couple of mistakes in his life and you never let him forget it. You know what this is? This is police harassment, that’s what.”

  “We’ve got a DVD.”

  “You’ve got a what?”

  “We have a video recording of you boarding the flight in Miami.”

  Sacca put a hand over his right eye in an attempt to still the tic and stared balefully at Silva out of his left.

  “Not true,” he said.

  “The God’s honest truth,” Silva said.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  One of the most traumatic events in Haraldo Goncalves’s life took place in the living room of his parents’ home. Haraldo had been three weeks short of his eleventh birthday. It was the final game of the World Cup, the decisive game of the tournament.

  Twenty-three minutes into the first half, with the score at nil all, Argentina’s principal striker fired off a shot that narrowly cleared the top of the goal. Five centimeters lower, and Brazil’s hated rivals would have scored. Young Haraldo, in his excitement, wet himself.

  The last thing Haraldo wanted was to be saddled with a derisive nickname like Pisspants. Hurrying to his room, he slipped into clean underwear, changed his jeans, and, without giving it a second thought, grabbed a team shirt with the logo and colors of Corinthians. Then he raced back to the living room, clutching the fatal jersey in his hands.

  He’d no sooner slipped it over his head when an Argentinean shot struck home. It was the only goal of the game.

  There is an expression in Brazilian Portuguese, vestir a camisa, literally to wear the shirt, but also signifying support for any movement, group, company, or philosophy.

  Corinthians was having a spectacularly bad year. To wear their shirt signified supporting a loser. By the final whistle, Haraldo’s family, and their invited friends, had reached general agreement: young Haraldo had transferred Corinthians’ bad joss to the Brazilian National Team. He was a pe frio, a Jonah, a bringer of bad luck. He, personally, had brought on the disaster. That they believed this was bad enough. Worse was that Haraldo came to believe it himself. He took upon his young shoulders the heavy responsibility for Brazil’s defeat.

  Years later, Haraldo had tried to explain the sequence of events and consequences to a Chilean girlfriend. When he’d finished talking, she told him his family was crazy. And when he demurred, she told him he was crazy.

  None of them were, but all of them were Brazilian. And Brazilians are superstitious. On New Year’s Eve, they dress in white, light candles, and toss flowers, perfume, and even jewelry into the sea to propitiate Iemanja, the orixa of the waters. Any other comportment on that night is, according to common belief, sure to bring ill luck in the year to come.

  In Brazil, Maes-de-Santo read the future with cowries. Chickens are sacrificed on a regular basis. Offerings of cachaca and cigars can be found along rural roads and near waterfalls, mostly surrounded by the stubs of burned-out candles. There is no Brazilian who has not, at one time or another, wrapped a fita do Senhor do Bonfim around his wrist or ankle and tied three knots in it while making his three wishes.

  Haraldo’s family members were no more spiritually inclined than any of their neighbors, but certainly no less. By the time that year’s Cup had rolled around, their Candomble priests and priestesses had been busy for weeks. Blessings, hexes, sacrifices, prayers, all had been performed. And then Haraldo had undone the lot by slipping into that cursed jersey.

  His mother didn’t speak to him for two days, his father for a week, his sister for almost two months.

  Now, almost a quarter century on, the superstitious child had become a superstitious man, the most superstitious man any of his colleagues had ever met. Goncalves didn’t walk under ladders. He would go around the block to avoid crossing the path of a black cat. His heart skipped a beat at the spilling of salt. He avoided unlucky numbers like the plague. It was, therefore, with great trepidation, and a drawn Glock, that Haraldo Goncalves approached the door of room 666 in the Hotel Gloria. Something awful was behind that door, Goncalves knew it. He’d taken his gun out of its holster even before he’d left the elevator.

  “It’s that superstition crap all over again, isn’t it?” Arnaldo said. “You want to scare some innocent citizen half to death? Put that thing away.”

  “Innocent, hell. Clancy’s in there with a woman.”

  “So what? No law against that.”

  “He’s a priest, for God’s sake! He’s a priest and he’s in there with a woman.”

  “Maybe he’s just taking her confession.”

  “Oh, sure, right.”

  The elevator came to a stop, they got out, and the door closed behind them. There were signs on the wall. Room 666 was to the left. Arnaldo muttered something and started walking.

  “What?” Goncalves said, hurrying to catch up. “What did you say?”

  Arnaldo stopped in front of 666, put a finger to his lips and knocked.

  “Yes? Who’s there?”

  If Something Awful was behind the door, it had a sweet voice and an American accent.

  “Federal Police,” Arnaldo said.

  “What do you want?” The woman sounded confused, not frightened.

  “Open up,” Arnaldo said, “and we’ll tell you.”

  “Please show me some identification first,” she said. “Hold it up where I can see it.”

  Polite. But firm.

  Arnaldo fished for his wallet, held his ID in front of the tiny aperture in the door.

  There was a short pause, then the rattle of a chain. The door opened, first a crack, then wider. The woman who came into view flinched at the sight of Goncalves’s Glock.

  And what a woman she was. She had long blond hair, high cheekbones, and a perfect complexion. The areas around her blue eyes and full lips bore no makeup at all. She didn’t need it.

  “Senhora Clancy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your… husband. Dennis Clancy. Where is he?”

  A voice behind her said, in English, “Someone looking for Dennis Clancy?”

  “Yes, dear, they are,” the blond responded in the same language. “They say they’re federal policemen.”

  “I’m Dennis Clancy,” the man said, stepping into the doorway. “You speak English?”

  “Badly,” Arnaldo said. It wasn’t true. He spoke English quite well.

  “Splendid,” Clancy said, willing to accept badly as quite good enough. “So Petra won’t have to translate. Come in, won’t you?”

  The room was small, the wallpaper faded, the carpet thin and stained. Chipped Formica tables flanked the double bed. A coffee machine stood on the chest of drawers, a television hung from a rack bolted to the ceiling, an armchair graced a corner. The only o
ther piece of furniture, a writing desk, was butted up against a grimy window that overlooked an air shaft. Six sixty-six wasn’t one of the Gloria’s best rooms.

  Dennis Clancy closed the door and directed the federal cops to the chairs. Goncalves took the one at the writing desk. Clancy and the woman sat side by side on the bed. He took her hand in his.

  “The coffee is quite dreadful,” he said, “otherwise I’d offer you some. You already know our names. What are yours?”

  “I’m Agent Nunes. This is Agent Goncalves.”

  “Good. What can I do for you?”

  “You can answer some questions. Did you arrive in this country on the morning of the twenty-third of November?”

  “I did.”

  “On TAB 8101 from Miami?”

  “Yes. But my visa is perfectly in order, and I haven’t-”

  “Just answer the questions, please. Why did you come to Brazil, Father Clancy?”

  “Just Mister Clancy, or Dennis, if you prefer. We’ve elected to leave the church.”

  “ We? Wait a minute. Are you telling me she’s a nun?”

  “He’s telling you,” she said, “that I was a nun. Sister Clare. Before and after that, I was Petra Walder. Now I’m Petra Clancy.”

  “You’re married?”

  “We’re married,” she said.

  “M ERDA,” A BILIO Sacca said.

  “Indeed,” Silva said, “and you’re in it up to your neck. Come on. Start talking.”

  “I got nothing to say.”

  “Yes, you do. Want me to tell you why?”

  “Okay. I’ll play along. Why?”

  “Because we’re investigating multiple murders, all performed by the same person.”

  “Not me. I never killed anybody in my whole life.”

  “With only two exceptions, the people who were travelling with you in that business-class cabin are either dead or they’ve been cleared.”

  “And one of those two exceptions did the killing? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility.”

  “It was the other guy.”

  “With you people,” Hector said, “it’s always the other guy.”

  “And, in this case,” Silva said, “the other guy is a Catholic priest.”

  “So what? Priests can kill people.”

  “They can. And maybe he did. But if I can’t pin the murders on him, I’ll pin them on you.”

  Tic. Tic. Tic.

  “Wait. Wait. Wait. You’re saying you’re gonna pin ’em on me even if I didn’t do ’em?”

  “Correct.”

  The Brazilian civil police framed people like Sacca all the time. Sacca knew this, and Silva knew he knew it.

  “You got no call to do something like that,” Sacca said. “I never done nothing to you!”

  Silva shook his head, as if in regret.

  “Sorry, Sacca,” he said. “One of the murder victims was the son of the foreign minister of Venezuela. The president wants results. The minister of justice is on my boss’s back. You see the bind I’m in. I’ve got to deliver.”

  “And you deliver by framing me?”

  “Or the priest. Makes no difference to me, except I figure you’ll be easier.”

  Tic. Tic. Tic.

  Within Sacca’s world, what Silva was saying made perfect sense. The little burglar rubbed a hand over his face.

  “Maybe we can work something out,” he said. “What is it you wanna know?”

  “There was a boy in the compartment, traveling alone. Remember him?”

  “Yeah, I remember him. I remember everybody. I got a good memory for faces.”

  “You were searched when you were going through Customs, right?”

  “Right,” Sacca said, cautiously, a wary look in his eyes.

  “They didn’t find anything on you,” Silva said.

  “Right again. So, what are you-”

  “But they found something on the kid.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Ecstasy pills. Your Ecstasy pills. You were smuggling them in from the States.”

  “No, I-”

  “You got up in the middle of the night, took those pills out of your hand luggage, and slipped them into his. The kid was busted with your pills. They took him away and put him in a cell with hardened criminals. An hour or two later, he was sent to a communal shower.”

  “Why are you-”

  “Shut up and listen. Someone tried to rape him. He wouldn’t have it. They killed him and raped him anyway. He was fifteen years old.”

  Sacca shrugged. “You know what the kid should have done? He should have just let them do it. I mean, he’d be alive today if he had, right? Sometimes you just gotta-”

  “You framed him, didn’t you?”

  Abilio Sacca opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. At that moment, he reminded Silva of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  “I didn’t frame him,” he finally said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “No? How was it, then?”

  “I want to see a lawyer. I’m not saying another word until I see a lawyer.”

  “No deal,” Silva said.

  “What do you mean, no deal? I got a right to a lawyer. I don’t have to talk to you guys.”

  “Thing is,” Silva said, “I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

  “And what the fuck do you think you’re putting me under?”

  Silva couldn’t count the tics any more, they were coming that fast. “Ah. But that’s different,” he said. “You’re a convicted felon. I’m a cop.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Talk. I need answers now, right now. I can’t wait. And if you don’t give me those answers, I’m gonna pin those murders on you.”

  Beads of perspiration broke out on Sacca’s brow. “Look, how about we do this? How about you turn off that camera up there in the corner-”

  “It’s not on.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Do you have a choice?”

  “Give me your word.”

  “What?”

  “Your word. Give me your word it’s not on.”

  “You have my word. It’s not. But, if it would make you more comfortable, how about we have this conversation somewhere else: out in the yard, for example?”

  “Good idea. Now, I want your agreement on the rest.

  Then I talk.”

  “What rest?”

  “I don’t sign anything. I just tell you. You get me a lawyer, a good one, and you don’t tell him shit about the conversation we’re about to have. And you don’t testify about it either. Not you, not this guy here.” He pointed at Hector.

  “All right.”

  “All right? Just like that? All right?”

  “We’ve got bigger fish to fry, Sacca. You play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you.”

  “I’m still not sure I can trust you.”

  “You’re going to be happily surprised. Let’s go outside.”

  Clancy’s three brothers had opted for the secular life, but his parents, religious people to the core, had always dreamed of having a son who’d embrace the priesthood. They worked hard to steer him away from his sweetheart, Petra, and toward the Church.

  “I wanted to please them,” he said. “I managed to convince myself that there was something romantic about giving up the love of a woman to serve God. I began to see myself as a kind of hero, sacrificing his own happiness for a greater good.”

  Petra looked down at his hand and squeezed it. “When he first started talking about becoming a priest,” she said, “I thought he’d get over it.”

  “What she really did,” Clancy said, “was refuse to believe it.”

  She smiled at him and then at Arnaldo. “He’s right,” she said. “And I kept refusing until the day he entered the seminary. It wasn’t far from my home. I hid behind a telephone pole and watched when his parents brought him to the front door. Then I hugged the wood,
trying to make believe I was hugging him. I hugged it so hard that, when I got home, I found splinters in my cheek. I locked myself in my room, and I cried for hours and hours. I wasn’t interested in other men. The prospect of spending my life alone frightened me. I decided to join a religious order.”

  “A convent?” Goncalves asked.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Goodness, no,” she said. “That wouldn’t have suited me at all. I joined a small order. We help refugees in London, street kids in Nairobi, migrant workers in Florida. Here, in Brazil, I work-worked-with the rural poor.”

  “Meanwhile,” Clancy said, “I was ordained. I’m not cut out to run a parish. I was doing social work. One day, I ran into Petra’s sister, Heidi, on the street.”

  “She wrote me afterwards,” Petra said, “told me what he was doing, gave me his address. By then, I was in this little town up north, Sao Bento. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”

  Arnaldo shook his head.

  “No,” Goncalves said. “I never have.”

  “It’s in Tocantins, near Miracema. Dennis and I began a regular correspondence. His work. My work. Nothing that you might call really personal.”

  “Not in the beginning,” he said.

  “In one letter,” she said, “I referred to what we’d shared as ‘puppy love.’”

  “But I didn’t think so,” he said, “I thought it was much deeper, much more profound than that. And, in my next letter, I shared the thought with Petra. It was the hardest thing I ever wrote.”

  “And when I read it, I started crying again.”

  “The situation was driving me crazy,” he said. “Most people go to psychiatrists when that happens, but I was a priest. I went to another priest.”

  “Damon O’Reilly,” she said. “We’d known him all our lives.”

  “Damon died in Boston a month ago,” he said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t tell you this: there was a girl, in Ireland, when he was young. They exchanged a kiss. One kiss, and in more than sixty years, he told me, a month hadn’t gone by when he hadn’t thought of that girl at least once. He’d learned to live with it, he said, but if he had his life to live over again, he wasn’t sure he’d do the same. He told me to come down here and talk to Petra, get it out of my system one way or another. One way or another, he said, but I think he knew what was going to happen. I wrote her straightaway.”