The Ways of Evil Men

by Leighton Gage

  “Okay, so it was a lot. And before you ask, yes, it’s convenient for me that he’s dead, but I wasn’t anywhere near that alley on the night he was murdered.”

  “No? Where were you?”

  “On my way back here. We’d all been playing cards. I got up about five minutes after he did. One of my vaqueiros is getting married the day after tomorrow. We had the party to organize.”

  “So you’re Pandolfo’s alibi, and he’s yours?”

  “That’s correct. We were together all the time, all night at the card table, all the way back home.”

  And maybe even all night in bed, Hector thought.

  “Any questions, Haraldo?” he asked.

  Gonçalves was still impressed by the quantity of gold Lisboa was wearing. He would have liked to ask him if he knew the prospector, Welinton Mendes. But he couldn’t think of how to broach the subject without breaking his agreement with Maura.

  He shook his head.

  “In that case, I think we’re done,” Hector said. “I just want to have a glance at that logbook before we go.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  SILVA WAS A GREAT believer in dropping in on potential suspects unannounced. Cesar Bonetti lived within an hour’s drive of the town, so he decided to chance a visit in the hope of finding him at home. He wasn’t.

  “Cesar usually keeps track of our cattle with the airplane,” his wife said. “But it’s got some kind of mechanical problem, so he’s doing it the old-fashioned way—on horseback.”

  “How long has your aircraft been out of service?”

  “Almost three weeks. The idiots sent us the wrong part twice. I can’t tell you how annoyed Cesar is. He hates sleeping rough.”

  “So he’s likely to be away overnight?”

  “Hard to tell. It depends on how long it takes him to find the herd he’s looking for. It’s a big property.”

  “Is he carrying a phone? Can you call him?”

  Maria shook her head. “He’ll be too far from the tower. But why don’t you come in? We’ll have coffee. Maybe I can help.”

  She led them into a study lined with bookshelves. While she was fetching the coffee, Silva studied the spines of the books in her library.

  “I see you have an interest in biology,” he said when she returned with a tray.

  “More than an interest, Chief Inspector. I studied it at university, worked at it, too, before Cesar and I were married. Sugar?”

  “Black, thank you. Ever heard of a creature called a poison dart frog?”

  “The phyllobates terribilis? Cute little thing. Deadly though. Why do you ask?”

  “Its venom was used to poison the Awana.”

  “You don’t say.” She handed Arnaldo a cup. “Sugar?”

  “Please.” He took two heaping spoonfuls from the bowl.

  “So are you telling me it wasn’t Torres after all?” she said. “That it was other Indians?”

  “Oh, no, Senhora Bonetti. A white man did it all right. We’re sure of that.”

  “Are you? Mind if I ask how you discovered that?”

  Silva made a snap decision. He decided to tell her so he could judge her reaction. “The poison was injected into a piece of pork. Indians don’t keep pigs, and there are no wild ones in the forest. It’s white men’s meat—exclusively.”

  She frowned. “Sounds pretty conclusive.”

  “There’s more. It had been attached to a parachute and dropped from an airplane.”

  She pondered what he told her and nodded. “Well, that seems to prove it, doesn’t it. It was Torres after all.”

  “Did you hear him threaten to kill those people?”

  “Not personally, no. He wasn’t the kind of person I’d choose to spend time with. He was vulgar. Stupid. Some women might have found him an attractive animal, but he was an animal all the same.”

  “Other than the Indian, can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to kill him?”

  “Surely, you don’t think the Indian was innocent?”

  “Suppose he was. What then?”

  “Some jealous husband, perhaps, or one of the wives Torres seduced and abandoned.”

  “Yes, we’ve been told he was a womanizer. Can you share the names of some of the ladies with whom …”

  Silva’s voice trailed off. She had begun shaking her head before he was halfway through the question. “I’m sorry, Chief Inspector,” she said. “It’s all gossip. It wouldn’t be right to spread it.”

  “You wouldn’t be spreading it. We’d keep the names confidential.”

  Again, she shook her head. “I really wouldn’t feel right about it. I hope you understand.”

  “Something else then. You’ll pardon me for asking, but …”

  “Where was I on the night he was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right here. With two friends. Do you want their names?”

  “I don’t believe that will be necessary. And your husband? Where was he?”

  “Playing cards at the Grand.”

  “With Torres?”

  “And some others. Torres left first. My husband was still at the table when his body was discovered.”

  “Were you present at the lynching?”

  “No.”

  “Was your husband?”

  “No.”

  “Would you be kind enough to ask your husband to call us when he gets home?”

  “Of course.”

  Silva stood up. “Thank you, Senhora Bonetti. We won’t take up any more of your time.”

  She remained seated. “They’re all doomed, you know,” she said.

  The non sequitur took Silva by surprise. He sat down again. “I beg your pardon?”

  She took in a deep breath and let out a long sigh, as if the subject saddened her. “The Indians. Doomed. The lot of them, not just the Awana. Oh, we still have our uncontacted tribes—more than sixty, according to the most recent estimates, and more here, in Brazil, than anywhere else on earth. But their numbers are shrinking from year to year, and their demise is inevitable. The people who try to stop it are swimming against the tide. They’re wasting their time and our money. And they’re not helping the Indians. Instead of trying to preserve their culture, they should be putting their energies into helping them adapt to ours.”

  “So you don’t agree they have a right to live as they’ve always lived? That they have as much right to the land as we do?”

  “Simply because they were here first? Of course not. Think about it. Who was first in the United States? And how many are left? And what kind of a country would it be if they ruled it now? And look at Britain at the height of its empire. Could those little islands have ruled the world if they’d continued to have been populated by a bunch of people who painted themselves blue and worshipped rocks? No, they became the most powerful nation of their time because they’d been invaded successively by Vikings, Romans, and Normans, all of whom took the land from their predecessors. We, the Brazilians of European extraction, are the ones who’ve raised this country to the sixth economy of the twenty-first century. The Indians haven’t made any contribution to what we’ve become. In fact, it’s the other way around. They drain our resources.”

  Her little speech surprised him. Silva wasn’t expecting that degree of erudition, not from a rancher’s wife in a backwater in Pará.

  “I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying, Senhora Bonetti,” he said. “Surely you don’t agree—”

  “With genocide? Of course not! I’m no Nazi. No, Chief Inspector, assimilation is the solution to our Indian problem, not genocide. May I offer you another cup of coffee before you go?”

  “SMART,” ARNALDO said when they were getting into their jeep.

  “Yes,” Silva said.

  “Want me to look into that spare part?”

  Silva shook his head. “As you said, she’s smart, too smart to lie about anything that easy to check. They ordered one all right. But who’s to say their aircraft really
was out of service? We only have her word for that.”

  “True.”

  “And yet …”

  “What?”

  “She was too glib, too sure of herself. There was something about the way she was looking at me. I think the woman is an accomplished liar. And she’s used to getting away with it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Do?” Silva smiled. “For now, my friend, we let her think she’s done just that—gotten away with it.”

  “SENHOR FRADE? José Frade?”

  “That’s me.”

  Frade was a big man, running to fat, prematurely bald. His frame filled the entrance to his home like another door.

  “I’m Delegado Costa,” Hector said. “Federal Police. This is Agent Gonçalves. We have a few questions we’d like to ask. Can we come in?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Frade stepped aside. “Drink?”

  “A beer would be nice.”

  When they were seated and drinking, Hector said, “How about we invite your wife to join us?”

  Frade swigged some of his beer before he shook his head. “Waste of time. She doesn’t know shit. Hardly ever goes out, hardly ever talks to anybody.”

  “We’re going to have to touch base with her sooner or later. It will save us time if we do it now.”

  Frade made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snort, got up from the couch and left the room. Two minutes later he came back, trailed at a distance of three paces by a woman in a shapeless housedress. The first thing Hector noticed about her was a black eye. The second was her nervousness. She couldn’t seem to stop wringing her hands.

  Frade saw Hector staring at the eye. “Walked into a door,” he said. “She’s clumsy as hell. Aren’t you, Sonia?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Say it!”

  “I’m clumsy.”

  “This is Delegado Costa, and this is Agent Gonçalves. This is my wife, Sonia. Say hello, Sonia.”

  “Hello.”

  “I already told them,” Frade said, “that you don’t have shit to say. That’s right, isn’t it? You don’t have shit to say?”

  “No, José.”

  “But they wanted to talk to you anyway. So sit down and answer their questions.”

  “Yes, José.”

  The two cops asked their questions. Sonia didn’t offer a single reply. It was her husband who gave all the answers.

  Poison dart frogs? He’d never heard of poison dart frogs. Log book for his airplane? He didn’t keep one. Not necessary. There was a clock that kept a running total of engine hours. He’d memorized the requirements for maintenance. That was all he needed. The genocide? Torres, of course. Torres’s character? He was a lying, arrogant, two-faced filho da puta nobody liked.

  At that point, Sonia shot him a look, half-fear, half-disagreement. Hector saw it and pounced.

  “And you, Senhora, do you agree?”

  Frade glanced at her. The look was gone, her features composed. She nodded, first with just a small inclination of her head, then more emphatically.

  “But how well did you know him?” Hector said.

  Her hands writhed in her lap. “Not well,” she said. “But … people said he wasn’t a nice man.” It was her longest speech.

  “Not nice?” Frade said. “Well there’s a stupid, half-assed remark if ever I heard one.” He glared at Sonia. “The fucker wasn’t nice at all.”

  “No, José. I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Right? Of course, I’m right.” He looked back at Hector. “But not being nice wasn’t a reason to kill him. Only the Indian had a reason for that.”

  “So there’s no one else you can think of? No white man who might have had it in for him?”

  “Enough to want to kill him? Nobody.”

  “It’s our understanding there were some husbands whose wives were—”

  “Nobody.”

  “How about you, Senhora? Were you aware that Torres was reputed to be somewhat of a ladies’ man?”

  “Reputed?” Frade exploded in laughter. “Somewhat? That’s rich. Talk about understatement! The truth of the matter, Delegado, is that Torres didn’t give a shit who he fucked. He woulda stuck his dick in a sheep if it stood still long enough. Isn’t that right, Sonia?”

  She bit her lip.

  “I asked you a question, Sonia. Would Torres have stuck his dick in a sheep if it stood still long enough?”

  “Yes, José,” she said.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  CESAR BONETTI SPENT THE night in the little shack he’d constructed at the dig. He didn’t get home until nine the following morning.

  Their bedroom was the one place in the house where Maria was sure they wouldn’t be overheard by their servants. He hadn’t been in the house for more than thirty seconds before she hustled him there and told him about her lunch with Maura.

  He ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ. So she knows.”

  Maria shook her head. “She suspects. She doesn’t know. She won’t know until she gets the test results.”

  “You think she told the cops?”

  Maria shook her head. “If they’d known, they would have let something slip. That was the other thing I had to tell you. They were here looking for you.”

  He repeated the gesture with his hair. “Looking for me? Why?”

  “A routine visit. They’re asking the same questions of everyone. Don’t worry. I took care of it. They don’t have a clue about what we’re up to.”

  “Why would she keep it to herself? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Maria shook her head. “It makes total sense. She’s a journalist. She wants a scoop.”

  “So why did she tell you?”

  “She was digging for more information. We’ve got to stop her before she gets it. Clean up the dig, kill her, and we’ll be home free.”

  “Cleaning up the dig is easy. I can do it in an hour. Killing her is something else. Old Welinton was easy. Nobody misses him. Hell, there are even people who think he’s still out there, prospecting away like he always did. But if a reporter from a big-time São Paulo newspaper disappears—”

  He stopped talking when she put a hand on his arm. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about this,” she said, “and I’ve got it all figured out. She’s going to have an accident.”

  “What kind of an accident?”

  “A fatal snakebite.”

  “You think people will believe that?”

  “Why not? She’s a city girl. What does she know about snakes? She wouldn’t be careful about where she steps like we are. Who’s to say she didn’t put her foot on one?”

  He smiled. “Clever girl.”

  “We just have to make sure she doesn’t show any other wounds.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “I’ve got her phone number. I’m going to call and tell her I’ve learned something about a gold mine from one of our vaqueiros. I’ll invite her to tea.”

  “And then?”

  “Lock her in that empty storeroom—the one with the steel door—until you get back with the snake. Then we throw it in there so they can get acquainted.”

  “IT’S THIS way,” Raul Nonato said, taking Maura’s arm and guiding her down the hall. “There,” he said proudly, stopping at the door of his living room. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  “Nice,” Maura said.

  “Nice?” He was crestfallen. “Is that all you’ve got to say? Nice?”

  “I’ve seen televisions that size before, Senhor Nonato.”

  “You have? In someone’s home? Someone who actually owned one?”

  “They’re pretty common, these days.”

  “Common?”

  “In São Paulo. That’s where I come from, São Paulo.”

  “So it’s not what you came to see? When you said you were a friend of Jade’s I thought—”

  “I’m a journalist,” she said. “I’m here about something more serious.”

  �
�More serious?” He pointed. “What’s more serious than that? That’s a seriously big television set!”

  “Have you ever heard of a prospector by the name of Welinton Mendes?”

  “What about him?”

  “He claimed to have struck gold. And then he disappeared.”

  His enthusiasm gone, Nonato flopped down into one of his comfortable armchairs and waved her to another one. “I remember. So what?”

  Gingerly, Maura sank into the soft leather. “I did a story a while back on Serra Pelada, how mercury used to extract gold poisoned the soil and water around the site of the old mine. I figured that if someone killed old Welinton for what he knew, the same thing might be happening around here. I contacted a fishing guide and asked him if he knew a river where fish were dying. He did, and he took me there. I found thousands.”

  “Thousands of dead fish?”

  She nodded.

  “Lots of things kill fish.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Oh. Okay. Finish.”

  “I sampled the water and sent it to Belem for analysis. I just got the results: high concentrations of mercury.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Yeah. Jesus Christ.”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “My bureau chief in Belem, the guy who did the analysis, me—and now you.”

  “How about the guide? Who’s he?”

  “Fred Vaz. He knows something’s killing the fish, but he doesn’t know what it is.”

  “How about those federal cops? Did you tell them?”

  “No. And I’m not going to. Not until we get more proof. If we do this on our own, I get a scoop, and you get a pat on the back from your superiors. But if we hand it to those federal cops, they get all the credit. And you, Senhor Nonato, are going to look like an idiot for not having discovered it before they did.”

  He nodded vigorously. “You’re absolutely right. And I gotta thank you, Senhorita Mandel, for coming to me first. So what do you suggest we do? How are we going to tackle it?”

  “I suggest we go there and take photos of the operation.”

  He sat back in his chair, suddenly cautious. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

  “Not if we’re careful. I’ve got a camera with a telephoto lens. We don’t have to get too close.”