Father Castori advanced on Raoni. Which is when Maura, who’d been watching the exchange in stunned silence, ran out of patience. She whipped out an aerosol can and sprayed him in the face. Jade, grasping Raoni by the hand, took off at a run for the Grand.
Chapter Thirty
“Maced HIM?” ARNALDO SAID and burst into a hearty laugh. “Your buddy Maura used chemical mace on the priest?”
Jade nodded. She was still nervous and not seeing any humor in it.
“You should talk to Delegado Borges about this,” Silva said.
“Delegado Borges won’t do a damned thing, Chief Inspector.”
“How do you know? Did you ask him?”
“No, but I know him, and he prides himself on being a good Catholic. He’s more likely to arrest Maura for assault than he is to take action against Father Castori.”
“You’re the FUNAI agent. This child is your responsibility. The law is on your side.”
She started nodding before he’d finished speaking. “But I know Borges, and he’s going to come down on the priest’s side, not mine.”
“Would you like me to speak to him on your behalf?”
“No, Chief Inspector. What I want is for you to dispatch a man to cover my house and keep Raoni out of Castori’s clutches until I can send him to the orphanage in Belem.”
“So that’s your decision? You’re going to send the boy to Belem?”
“It’s the last thing I want to do, but allowing the priest to have him would be worse.”
“And you wouldn’t be willing to raise him yourself?”
“I would, you know. But if I tried, my own people at the FUNAI would take him away from me. It’s strictly against the rules.”
Silva studied the boy for another moment, rubbed his chin, and stood up. “Hector.”
“Senhor?”
“Where’s Gilda?”
Hector looked at the little boy, said, “Getting you-know-who nailed into a coffin. She wants to make damned sure it can’t be opened by little fingers.”
“Make sure it gets loaded as soon as she finishes. Babyface?”
For once, Gonçalves didn’t even flinch at his nickname. “Senhor?”
“Tell Osvaldo we’re about to leave. Then call Lefkowitz and inform him we’ll be out of range of our telephones until sometime in the afternoon. Tell him to contact us at the end of the day.”
The two men nodded and left.
“The rest of you wait here,” Silva said. He took out his cell phone and left the restaurant.
Arnaldo looked down at the boy, then up at Jade. “Does he understand anything we say?”
“Nothing. Where did the Chief Inspector go? What’s he up to?”
Arnaldo hesitated, scratched the back of his head, seemed to make up his mind. “Let me tell you something about Mario Silva,” he said. “He had a son, an only child. The kid died of leukemia when he was the same age as that young man you’re holding by the hand. It was a long time ago now, but it changed his life forever. He thinks kids are God’s most precious gift. Nothing bothers him more than the abuse of children, either physical or mental. If he’d been there with you, he would have maced that fucking priest himself—and probably beat the crap out of him, too.”
“So you’re saying …”
“I’m saying you don’t have to worry about Castori getting his hooks into this kid. I’m saying Mario is out there, right now, solving the problem.”
“How?”
“I wouldn’t like to say.”
“But you know.”
“I think I know. Let’s just wait and see, shall we? He won’t be long. Where’s your friend Senhorita Mandel?”
“I … I don’t know exactly.”
It was true. Fred Vaz had shown up just as they were leaving, and Maura had gone off with him. But, at the moment, she didn’t know her whereabouts exactly.
“I have two questions for the boy. Would you kindly put them to him?”
“I’m not sure I can, but I’ll try.”
Arnaldo’s questions were short ones, and Jade was able to ask them in her limited Awana, although she had to use a number of gestures to do it.
Had the boy’s father buried the meat? (He had.)
Had they seen, or heard, anything besides birds or insects in the sky at any time before discovering the bodies? (They hadn’t.)
By the time Arnaldo had gotten his answers, Silva was back.
“I’m going to open my home to him,” he said to Jade.
“You’re going to do what?” She glanced at Arnaldo. He gave her a little nod, as if to say, I told you so.
“I’ve just spoken to my housekeeper,” Silva went on. “I’m going to charter a plane to bring the two of you to Belem. From there, you’ll take a commercial flight to Brasilia. She’ll meet you there when you arrive.”
Jade shook her head. “Out of the question,” she said. “I can’t just pick up and leave.”
“Why not?”
“I should think that’s obvious. I have responsibilities here.”
“Do you? It seems to me, Senhorita Calmon, that your responsibility is the welfare of the Awana tribe. And the Awana tribe has been reduced to this one little boy.”
“I’m not sure my superiors would see it that way.”
“Don’t worry about your superiors.”
“Easy for you to say, Chief Inspector—”
“Actually, Senhorita Calmon, it is. There are some people in your organization who owe me favors. I’m one hundred percent sure I can secure approval for what I’m proposing.”
“But—”
“Think about it. If you send him off to an orphanage, there will be no one he can talk to, no one he can trust. Look at the way he clings to you. You’re the most important person in his life right now. The boy has suffered enough.”
Jade frowned.
“Plus,” Arnaldo cut in, “there’s the fact that the only thing his tribe’s killers have left undone is … him. I don’t like putting it that way, but—”
“My housekeeper is a good person,” Silva said. “And like me, she once lost a child. Take him to Brasilia. Please. Stay at my home. The two of you will be in excellent hands.”
Jade glanced at the wedding band on Silva’s finger. “How about your wife? We can’t just show up on her doorstep. What’s she going to think?”
“My wife has a drinking problem,” Silva admitted. “She sleeps late, so we haven’t yet spoken. But I assure you she’ll make Raoni welcome. We have an extra bedroom. She loves children. She volunteers at an orphanage five days a week, never starts with the alcohol until she gets home. And he’ll be in bed, sleeping, before she gets very far along.”
“Well—”
“And my housekeeper doesn’t drink at all. She’ll be there all the time. Believe me, it’s our best alternative. Tell me you’ll do it.”
Jade bit her lip, thought about it, and said, “All right, Chief Inspector. I’ll do it. When do you want me to leave?”
“As soon as we get back. We’ll go from the village to your home, where you can pack a bag. And then Arnaldo and I will take you to the airport. We won’t let you, or him, out of our sight until you leave. Arnaldo?”
“Mario?”
“Call the airport. Reserve a plane to take them to Belem at five o’clock this afternoon. I know the pilot won’t be able to get back before dark, but I don’t care. Tell them they can bill us for a hotel. Then call Sanches, give him an approximate arrival time, and tell him to meet them at the airport. As soon as he’s put them on a flight to Brasilia, he’s to call me with the arrival time, so I can get in touch with Irene and Maria Lourdes.”
“Consider it done.”
Arnaldo went out. Silva turned back to Jade. “Go talk to Osvaldo’s wife. Get her to take the boy’s measurements. Then, while we’re gone, she’s to buy him clothing. Shirts, pants, shoes, socks, underwear, anything he needs. Put it on my bill. I’ll have more money waiting for you when you get to Brasilia.�
��
“You’re going to pay for all of this yourself?”
“I am, and I don’t want to hear a word about it. I can’t think of anything better to spend my money on. Now, go. We have to bury this young man’s father and make sure we’re back here before we lose the light.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“DAMN,” MAURA SAID, WAVING a hand in front of her face.
Fred glanced over his shoulder. “That repellent I gave you not working?”
He seemed oblivious to the flies. Not once had he attempted to shoo them away.
“It’s their buzzing,” she said. “It’s driving me insane.”
“You get used to it.”
She followed him over the trunk of a fallen tree, extending her arms to balance herself. “You know what, Fred? I don’t want to get used to it. It’s even worse than the stench.” The rank odor of rotting fish was on the wind, getting stronger with each step they took.
“Not yet,” Fred said, “but wait until we get there.”
It took them another three or four minutes to reach the site. And, by the time they did, she had come to agree with him. The smell was worse than the flies.
“Jesus,” Maura said, holding her nose.
Wire mesh had been stretched across the river and anchored to posts on either bank. On the downstream side, there were no fish; on the upstream side, hundreds. Some were fighting for breath, their gills working to keep them alive; many were on their backs, their white bellies exposed. Most were covered with the omnipresent flies; others had birds standing on their stomachs, pecking at their insides with greedy beaks. Maura turned away in revulsion.
“You think this is bad?” Fred said. “Look over here.” He pushed aside a curtain of leaves. Behind it, was a huge pile of rotting fish. “They have to haul them out now and then,” he said. “If not, the water gets backed up and overflows.”
“Who’s they?”
“God knows.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Months.”
“You ever see anyone here? Hauling out dead fish?”
He shook his head. “So what do you think?” he said. “That what you came to see?” He sounded as proud as if he’d constructed the whole scene for her benefit.
“It’s exactly what I came to see,” Maura said. “What’s this river called?”
“The Sapoqui.”
“It flows into the Jagunami, right?”
“Right.”
“How much further downstream?”
“Just around the next bend, a couple of hundred meters.”
“Why didn’t we follow the big river to get here?”
“It curves a lot. I took a shortcut.” He pointed at the wire. “You got any idea why somebody would do that?”
“Pretty obvious, isn’t it? To prevent dead fish from floating into the Jagunami.”
“I still don’t get it. The water is going through the wire. Won’t it just kill more?”
“It will. But it will be diluted by the water of the larger river, so it will kill more slowly, and the fish won’t accumulate.”
Maura slid out of her knapsack, opened a flap and removed one of the bottles. “Take this and fill it with water from among those dead fish.” There was no way she was going to touch any of that rotting flesh. “I’ll take another sample from the other side of the wire.”
“And then?”
“And then we’re going to follow this river upstream.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
WHEN AMATI HAD BEEN laid to rest, the diggers, operating under Jade’s instructions, cut one of the sacred trees and erected a kuarup. Raoni decorated it, using paints and brushes Osvaldo had brought from Cunha’s store. Gilda guided his hand with the finer work.
When he had finished, the little boy lay down on his father’s grave, embraced the earth as if he was embracing the man himself, and cried. Jade asked the others to join their hands, and bow their heads. No white men’s words were used. Silva was surprised to see tears streaming down the cheeks of the digger with a wart next to his nostril.
No one spoke on the journey back to town.
THE VEGETATION was too thick for Maura and her guide to move upstream while keeping to the riverbank, but Fred Vaz had an unerring instinct for navigating the green wilderness, and he was often able to bring them close enough to take additional samples.
“You know what a GPS is?” she asked as she capped the fifth of her bottles.
“Yeah,” Fred said with a smile. “I know. But I don’t need one.”
“Never?”
“Never. I’ve been in and out of this rainforest all of my life. In here, every place looks pretty much the same to most people, but not to me. You drop me down just about anywhere in here, and I can find my way home.” And then, after a pause, “You hear that?”
She listened, shook her head.
“All I hear is flies.”
“One of those flies isn’t a fly.”
Now Maura could hear it too, a deeper note, different from that of the buzzing closer to her ears.
“I don’t like this,” Fred said. “We’re turning back.”
“No,” she said.
“The deal was to bring you to the place where there were dead fish. I did that. We’re turning back.” He passed her and continued walking in the direction from which they’d come.
“I’ll pay you another two hundred Reais,” she said.
He stopped short and turned to face her. “How much further do you want to go?”
“Until we get to the source of that sound.”
He pursed his lips, then shook his head. “No telling how far away it is. We could be walking for hours, and believe me, you don’t want to get stuck out here after dark.”
“What if it’s close?”
“That’s possible, too.”
“So let’s set a time limit. Two hours?”
“No way.”
“How about one?”
“Also too long. Thirty minutes.”
“Forty-five.”
“Okay. Forty-five minutes and then we turn back. But not for nine hundred Reais. You’re going to have to make it an even thousand.”
“Okay, a thousand.”
Fred nodded curtly, passed her again and resumed leading them forward.
WHEN THEY reached the main road, the truck that had carried Amati’s coffin turned left and vanished over a hill. Arnaldo, now at the wheel of the lead jeep, turned right. He went first to the Grand, where Amanda was waiting with two bags of clothing. The next stop was Jade’s home, where she packed bags for herself and the boy and sat down to write a note of farewell to her best friend.
Her first attempt was a failure. It wouldn’t make Maura feel any better about being abandoned. Angry at not being able to find the right words, Jade crumpled the paper, threw it into the wastebasket, and started anew.
And this time, she wrote the one thing that would soften the blow of her departure. She broke her promise to Silva and confided everything she’d learned.
“I DON’T like this,” Fred said. “You know what that sound is, don’t you?”
They were closer now, and it was obvious.
“A gasoline-powered motor,” Maura said.
“That’s right. A power saw—or maybe a generator.”
It was their first exchange in five minutes. Fred, talkative as hell up until he’d agreed to the time extension, had fallen into a worried silence.
“I don’t think it’s either one,” Maura said.
She was thinking gasoline-powered dredge, but she was reluctant to tell him that.
“Whatever it is, it’s in the Awana reservation, being run by white men and not supposed to be here. We’re going back.”
She glanced at her watch. “My forty-five minutes aren’t up.”
He turned to face her, came closer, and lowered his voice. “Senhorita Mandel, listen to me and listen good. The people who are making that racket are doing something illeg
al. I don’t know what it is, but I guarantee you it’s illegal, and they aren’t going to look kindly on your finding out about it. This isn’t São Paulo. You can’t just stick your nose into another man’s business and expect to get away with it, especially if it’s illegal and in the middle of the rainforest.”
“Our deal was forty-five minutes. You haven’t earned that additional three hundred Reais we were talking about.”
“Fuck the three hundred Reais. We’re going back.”
“Just a little bit further.”
“You’re not listening. It’s dangerous, and it’s Federal Police business, not ours.”
“We’re close now, Fred. Listen to how loud the motor is. Do you really want to turn back without a look? After coming all this way?”
“You bet I do.”
“We’ll be careful. We’ll creep up on them, have a look, and sneak away again.”
“No, we won’t. Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Like we’re being watched?”
Maura sensed the hairs rising on the back of her neck. Now that he’d mentioned it, she did feel like they were being watched. But there was no way she was about to admit it.
“That’s ridiculous. You’re just trying to scare me.”
“I’m not. I’m scared myself. And I want to get out of here. Now.”
“Just—”
“Now. If they’re watching, and we don’t go any further, they might just let us go. But if we see what they’re up to, and they catch us, they sure as hell won’t. Believe me. They could put a bullet into both of us, bury us out here, and no one would be the wiser. Ever.”
“I don’t think—”
He cut her off. “What was that?”
She listened, shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“But I did, and you’re not exactly Sheena, the Queen of the Jungle, are you? Let’s get the hell out of here!”
His fear was contagious. Or maybe Maura herself had sensed something on a subliminal level. She felt the onset of panic, and this time she was unable to contain it. Suddenly, there was nothing she wanted to do more than get out of this suffocating green hell.
The Ways of Evil Men Page 16