The Ways of Evil Men

by Leighton Gage

Toledo’s face turned red with pure rage. “Punish me for … That’s absolute crap! I didn’t kill Omar Torres.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No, damn it, I didn’t. I might have done, if I’d known he was fucking my wife. But I didn’t know, so I had no reason to do him in.”

  “And we’re supposed to accept that?” Silva had a vague hope that he might be able to drive him over the edge, but he didn’t really expect it—and it didn’t happen.

  Toledo took a deep breath, then another. And then he said, “My lawyer’s Renato Kassab. I’m not going to say another word until he gets here.”

  “As you wish. Arnaldo?”

  “Mario?”

  “Call Borges’s deputy in here. Senhor Toledo is to be allowed one telephone call. Then he’s to be shown to a cell.”

  TWO HOURS later, in a room at the Grand, Patricia Toledo was staring at the photocopies in disbelief. “He told me he’d destroyed them,” she said.

  “So you don’t deny you wrote them?” Silva said.

  She put the letters down on the table in front of her. “Would you believe me if I did? My fingerprints must be all over them.”

  “Quite,” Silva said.

  “So what? So what if I did write them? Since when is it against the law to be in love with someone?”

  “We’re not here to talk about love, Senhora Toledo. We’re here to talk about murder.”

  “You think Hugo killed Omar?”

  “Do you?”

  “He would have—if he’d known, but he didn’t.”

  “Correct,” Silva said. “He didn’t know. Not until we told him—and showed him your letters.”

  She put her hand on the stack. “You showed him these?”

  Silva nodded. “That’s what I just told you.”

  “How … how did he react?”

  “He was very angry—and anxious to talk to you.”

  She sat up straight in her chair and stared him down. “Your indiscretion is despicable. You had no reason to destroy my relationship with my husband. And for what? You’ve already admitted he knew nothing about the affair, so there would be no reason for him to have killed Omar Torres. He’s innocent, and so am I.”

  “No, Senhora, you’re not innocent. Neither is your husband. And it’s not what happened to Omar Torres that concerns us at the moment. It’s other murders.”

  “What other murders?”

  “The genocide of the Awana tribe.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s all you have to say? Oh?”

  “What else do you expect me to say? I know nothing about it.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “What if I were to tell you, Senhora, that Omar Torres made a recording of your conversation?”

  “What conversation?”

  “The one in which you proposed denouncing your husband.”

  The color drained from her face.

  “And in which he told you he wouldn’t come back, even if you got rid of Hugo.”

  “He didn’t record that conversation. He wouldn’t!”

  “He was a cautious man. He kept your letters. Why should you think he wouldn’t record your voice?”

  “That bastard! I’m not going to say another word! I want my lawyer.”

  Hector looked at Silva. This seemed to be ending the same way that the interview with her husband had ended.

  But Silva was prepared for it—and had other ideas.

  “You’d be better advised,” he said, “to stick to your original plan.”

  “What original plan?”

  “The plan you had to denounce your husband.”

  “Why should I? What would be the point?”

  “The point, Senhora Toledo, would be to obtain a lighter sentence. If you don’t take advantage of this opportunity, and start talking to us right now, you and your husband will go down together. And, if you do, I estimate you’ll both get between thirty-five and forty years.” Silva fell silent, let her mull it over. She was quiet for some time. And then she started to talk.

  “It was Hugo’s idea,” she said. “All of it. I had no inkling of this until he’d gone and done it. And once those poor Indians were dead, the reason I didn’t tell anyone is because he threatened me.”

  “Your husband threatened you?”

  “Yes. He swore he’d kill me. I feared for my life.”

  It was like Maria Bonetti all over again: the same shifting of blame, the same defense, exactly the reaction Silva had been hoping for. If she’d been able to monitor his heart, she would have heard it kick up a few beats, but not a muscle on his face moved.

  “Do you have anything to back up your allegation?” he said. “Anything in the way of evidence?”

  “There’s a trader he bought the frogs from. Across the border in Peru. They’re more common there. The Indians trap them. I can give you his name, tell you where to find him.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “I know where Hugo put the syringe. It will contain residue from the poison, have his fingerprints are all over it. And I’ll tell you where he got the parachute. You think that’s enough?”

  “Yes, Senhora, I think that’s enough.”

  BY NINE that evening, the cops had everything wrapped up.

  WHILE THE rest of their party celebrated in the bar of the Grand, Maura and Gonçalves seized an opportunity to spend a final evening together. They commandeered Jade’s jeep, drove to the old Azevedo place, and began a companionable stroll toward the river.

  “So then,” Gonçalves was saying, “we went back to Hugo and confronted him with everything.”

  “And you taped that, too?” Maura said.

  “We did.”

  “Can I get a peek?”

  “You can. The Chief Inspector authorized it.”

  “How come he’s my new best friend?”

  “He feels bad about not having been able to protect you better.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It wasn’t his fault.”

  “Maybe not. But that’s the way he is.”

  “So what’s going to happen to the land? Who’s going to get their hooks into it?”

  “Hopefully no one. The Chief Inspector says it’s Raoni’s birthright. He’s going to do everything he can to convince the powers-that-be, in Brasilia, to keep it on the list of reservations.”

  “All those thousands of hectares held in keeping for a single child? You think they’ll buy that?”

  “This is a huge country. There’s a lot of land. The Chief Inspector is owed a lot of favors by a lot of people.”

  “And the boy? You think he’ll ever want to live there again?”

  “After a few years in Brasilia? Probably not. But it’s where his people are buried. Gravesites are sacred to the Awana. And the alternative to maintaining the reservation is to see those gravesites plowed under. The Chief Inspector doesn’t think that would be right.”

  “I agree with him. I hope he can pull it off. And dropping the meat by parachute? Whose idea was that?”

  “Patricia’s. They went up together, but she was the one who actually tossed the parachute out of the plane.”

  “What a bitch that woman is!”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “It’s probably … no, it’s definitely the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard of, causing the death of all of those people just to get your hooks into a man.”

  They kept strolling, quiet for a while, then she said, “So nobody else had anything to do with the genocide? For a while, it was beginning to look like half the town was in on it, but in the end, it was just those two?”

  “Just those two. Lisboa and that pistoleiro of his are completely in the clear. Cunha is into wood, and that’s all he cares about. He was getting some of that wood out of the reservation, taking it through Toledo’s land, and Toledo knew it, but he was willing to keep his mouth shut for a cut of the action. Cunha and that IBAMA guy are sure to go down for illegal logging.�
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  “And this whole story of Torres threatening to root out the Indians?”

  “All lies. All made up.”

  “By the Toledos?”

  “By Patricia. She was the brains of the operation, but it was Hugo who called a meeting of the Big Five, invited the doctor and the priest, and got all of them to spread the story around. For the general good, he said.”

  “General good,” Maura snorted. “Forty Awana dead and the last survivor of the tribe an orphan. And that story about Amati threatening to kill Torres? That was fabrication as well?”

  “Mm-hm. Suggested by Hugo, who got the padre to lie about it.”

  “Can I print that?”

  “The Chief Inspector wishes you would. He’s hoping the Church hierarchy will take action against Castori.”

  “So it was José Frade who killed Torres?”

  “Uh-huh. And, if he hadn’t, I don’t know if we’d ever have gotten to the bottom of this. It was that murder, in a way, that was crucial to helping us to solve the case.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Who killed Frade?”

  “I can’t tell you that either.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “Here we go. It’s the Chief Inspector all over again, isn’t it? Forcing you to keep secrets?”

  He took her arm, brought her to a stop and faced her. “It is and it isn’t. But, in this case, I agree with him one hundred percent.” She brushed his hand away, but gently, as if reluctant to do it. “Not ninety-nine, Maura. One hundred. There’s a damned good reason for me not telling you. You have to believe that.”

  “Oh, I do, and it makes me all the more curious. But you know what, Haraldo, I’m going to get it out of you eventually.”

  “Never!”

  “Never? Not even if we were to get married?”

  He gaped. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  She smiled. “I can’t either.”

  He extended his hand, she took it, and they crossed the bridge together.

  Author’s Notes

  BRAZIL’S INDIGENOUS TRIBES HAVE been victims of genocide for over five hundred years.

  These days, the federal government is attempting to put a stop to it, but it isn’t easy. Success is hampered by deep jungle, vast distances, the attitudes of the people who prey on the tribes—settlers, illegal loggers and gold miners—and even the difficulty of identifying which of the many accounts of abuse are true and therefore require an investment of the very limited resources available to investigate them.

  It is believed, for example, that an eight-year-old Awá girl was tied to a tree and burned alive in January of 2012 in a remote area of Maranhão State. The perpetrators were said to be illegal loggers, trying to frighten the tribe off land where they intended to cut timber.

  The Indigenous Missionary Council, a Catholic group, believes the death occurred. They claim the loggers laughed while they did it and that a video of the child’s charred remains exists.

  The Brazilian government, however, will neither confirm nor deny the report—but they concede that illegal loggers are, indeed, active in the area.

  A better-documented case is the genocide of the Akuntsu, in Rondônia, reduced at this writing to a total of just five individuals, the last known survivors of their people.

  For more information on threats to indigenous peoples throughout the world—and what you might be able to do to help them—please visit this web site: survivalinternational.org/tribes

  In addition to the clearing of land for agriculture and cattle ranching, major threats to the Indians include mineral extraction and illegal logging.

  Here’s an example of what can happen: as recounted in this book, a six gram nugget found at Serra Pelada, in the State of Pará, kicked off the last great gold rush in history. In a few short years, between 1980 and 1986, an estimated 360 tons of gold were wrested from the ground, but the cost in human lives, and to the environment, was immense.

  A number of Sebastião Salgado’s brilliant black and white photographs of the great open pit during its heyday are to be found on the Internet. If you’ve never seen one, I suggest you do a search. I think you’ll be amazed. It’s like looking into Hell.

  Small scale gold-mining in Brazil is often carried out with the use of mercury. Part of the process involves reducing it to a gas that can travel thousands of miles in the atmosphere. It often settles in river beds in North America and Europe, and, from there, moves up the food chain to fish—and thence to humans.

  Illegal logging, too, can have a direct and deleterious effect on North Americans and Europeans.

  The trees in that rainforest produce more than twenty percent of the world’s oxygen.

  And the world can’t afford to lose it.

  Santana do Parnaiba, SP

  Brazil

  February, 2013