“Romario de Barros,” Silva said, “is a distinct possibility. We’ll look into it.”
“I think you’re gonna be wasting your time,” Tico said.
“Who cares about their time if it pisses Romario off?” Cintia said. “He’s caused you plenty of aggravation. It’s time you caused him some.” She yawned and looked at her gold Rolex. “How about you guys speed it up? It’s getting late.”
Not very concerned about our future mother-in-law, are we? Silva thought.
“And then,” he said, “we also have to consider the possibility that Senhora Santos’s abduction might have been an act of revenge.”
“Revenge?” Tico said.
“Revenge,” Silva said. “Do you know someone, anyone, who might want to punish you by kidnapping your mother?”
Tico rubbed his chin. Then he shook his head. “I can’t think of anybody.”
“How about Joaozinho Preto?” Arnaldo said.
“Never,” Tico said. “He’d never-”
“Who’s Joaozinho Preto?” Cintia said.
All the men looked at her.
“He was a striker for Palmeiras,” Silva said. “Tico broke his leg just before the national playoffs.”
“I still feel bad about that, but it was an accident. Ask anybody. I never even got a yellow card.”
“I don’t debate it. But the accident ruined Joaozinho’s career. He hasn’t played a day since.”
“He never said a word against me,” Tico said, “not then, not since. It was the fans that made a big issue of it, not him. And that photo they took at the time shocked a lot of people. Hell, it even shocked me. But we all take our chances. Joaozinho understood that.”
“So we can probably discount him. Nobody else you can think of?”
“No.”
“But they’re out there,” Cintia said. “You can count on that, querido, they’re out there. Lots of envious bastards who earn their pissy little hundred thousand Reais a year and are jealous of people like you and me.”
She gave his hand a supporting squeeze. He shot her a grateful look.
Arnaldo, whose annual salary, after almost thirty years as a federal cop, was considerably less than one hundred thousand Reais, started to cough.
“Sorry,” he said. “Getting a cold.”
“Maybe,” Cintia said, “you should go and get it somewhere else.”
“Could it have been an act directed against the lady herself?” Silva asked. “Someone intent on hurting her?”
“Impossible,” Cintia said. “There’s no one easier to get on with than my future mother-in-law. Everybody loves her, and she loves them right back.”
Not everybody, Silva thought. Not her neighbors, not that postman she was seen talking to. And, if the lady was fond of you, it’s unlikely she’d have had a detective following you around.
“Let’s talk about Senhora Santos’s house keys,” he said. “Did she give keys to people who worked in her home?”
“Sure,” Tico said, “but she was always careful, always changed locks when she changed servants.”
“How often was that?”
Tico shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe three or four times a year?”
“So she had a problem holding on to servants?”
“She had a problem finding good ones,” Cintia said. “Everybody does. Why do you care about her keys?”
“Just reviewing the possibilities.”
“Wasting our time is the way I see it. They told us the kidnappers smashed her kitchen door. So where do keys come into it?”
Silva was running out of patience with the woman.
“I’m not wasting your time, Senhorita Tadesco. I have good reasons for my questions. Now, Tico, do you have any idea how many sets of keys your mother had?”
“Four. She always got four.”
“Four.”
“Uh huh. One for herself, one for the servants, one for us, and an extra one to keep in the house in case someone lost one of the others.”
“You have yours?”
“Why?” Cintia said.
“Senhorita Tadesco, please. Tico, may I see them?”
“I gave them to you,” Tico said to Cintia.
“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”
“No? I coulda sworn-”
“You didn’t.”
“Then I got no idea where they are,” he said. “We never used the keys she gave us. We never had to. We only went out there when we knew she’d be home, and we always called before we went.”
Silva took a card out of his wallet, jotted the number of his cell phone on the back and handed the card to Tico. “If you find those keys,” he said, “give me a call.”
Tico took the card, looked at one side of it, then the other.
“You think it’s important?” he asked.
“It might be.”
“Okay, then.”
“The radio people, the ones at Radio Mundo,” Silva said, “knew about your mother’s kidnapping before we did. Any idea how that happened?”
Cintia didn’t give Tico time to answer.
“Her Royal Highness,” she said, “Princess Jacques Jardin.”
“The hairdresser?”
“Stylist, the little bicha calls himself. Stylist or coiffeur. He hates to be called a hairdresser. Juraci was late for an appointment. They couldn’t get her at home, so they tried here.”
“And you were here to take the call?”
“We forwarded calls to my cell phone.”
“Dumbo won’t let me have one during training,” Tico said. “He thinks cell phones are a distraction.”
Danilson “Dumbo” Hoffmann was the coach of the Brazilian national team. Nobody who saw his ears ever had to ask where the nickname came from.
Cintia refused to be sidetracked. “Jardin keeps everybody waiting, but he doesn’t like to wait for anyone. You know how much he charges for a cut? Six hundred Reais, that’s how much, and he’s booked back-to-back. Missing a session with Jardin is like missing a private audience with the Pope. Except the Pope probably doesn’t go ballistic and Jardin does. If you’re ten minutes late, it’s like you insulted him. I did it once and now the little bastard refuses to give me any more appointments.”
“Showing up late really gets his nose out of joint,” Tico said. “Even I know that.”
“And Juraci knew that,” Cintia said. “I started to worry right away. I told Jardin’s secretary I’d check around and call her back. I was still trying to locate her, when the bitch called for a second time.”
“How does this-” Silva started to say.
Cintia interrupted him. “You wanted to know why I think Jardin tipped off the radio people. I was telling you. Do you want to hear it, or not?”
“Please go on.”
“So I was talking to this bitch of a secretary, and before I could get in a word edgewise, she started telling me how pissed off Jardin was and how, if Juraci didn’t have a really, really good reason for not showing up, she couldn’t be a client anymore. Jardin was going to give Juraci another fifteen minutes grace, she said, but only in deference to the fact that she was such a good client, and because he liked her. Two minutes after she hung up, Tico called me with the news that she’d been kidnapped.”
“And how did you get that news?” Silva asked him.
“The kid who runs the website,” Tico said. “He read the email, looked at the photo the kidnappers sent, the one of my Mom holding up the newspaper, and panicked. The note said not to contact the police, said they’d hurt her if I did.”
“I remember.”
“And, to tell you the truth, maybe I wouldn’t have gone to you guys at all if the story hadn’t come out on the radio.”
“Understandable. Go on.”
“The kid knew I was in Curitiba because it’s been all over the sports news, so he decided to try calling the training facility. They wouldn’t let him talk to me, at first. But then he told them what it was about, and they called m
e in from the field. They still thought it was some kind of hoax, but they didn’t want to run the risk that it wasn’t. And it wasn’t.”
“Tico told me he was going to charter a plane and come to Sao Paulo,” Cintia said. “We agreed to meet here. Then, just after he hung up, the bitch called for a third time. And, to shut her up, I told her.”
“You told Jacques Jardin’s secretary about the ransom note?”
“What did I just say? I blurted it out. I was nervous. So what? It’s done. Jardin was probably talking to the media five minutes after his secretary hung up. He’s like that.”
“Probably all for the best,” Silva said. “The kidnappers must know we’re involved by now, and they seem to have accepted that fact. Who does the website? A kid, you said?”
“My agent’s kid,” Tico said.
“That’s his job? Websites?”
“Nah! He studies during the day, does the sites on the side, mostly at night. He does them for most of his old man’s clients. He does Cintia’s too.”
“These days,” she said, “everybody has to have a website.”
“ I don’t have a website,” Arnaldo said.
“Let me amend that,” she said. “Anybody of any importance has to have a website.”
“Where did you spend last night?” Arnaldo said, his voice taking on an edge.
“Me? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Arnaldo gave Cintia his cop’s stare, perfected by almost three decades of facing down felons.
“At home,” she said, buckling under it. “So?”
“Alone?”
“Of course, alone. I’ve got a part in a novela. I was learning my lines. What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything,” Arnaldo said.
But he was.
Arnaldo Nunes had taken a distinct dislike to Cintia Tadesco.
Chapter Eight
Jacques Jardin had a French accent as round and thick as a great wheel of Camembert. Haraldo Goncalves would undoubtedly accepted it as genuine-had he not discovered, before leaving the office, that Jardin did, indeed, have a rap sheet.
Jardin, the records revealed, had acquired his current name at the age of twenty-seven. Until then, he’d been Giovanni Giordano, the youngest of nine children born to an Italian immigrant couple who’d settled in Sao Paulo’s middle-class bairro of Mooca.
Jardin had never spent any appreciable amount of time in France. He had, however, spent a good deal of time in public toilets. It was the time in those public toilets that had given rise to the aforementioned rap sheet. It registered half a dozen arrests, and two convictions, for indecent exposure.
When he’d first clapped eyes on the famous coiffeur, Goncalves hadn’t been quite sure whether Jardin was using eyeliner, or whether he was permanently tattooed. Curiosity about what he was actually seeing had caused him to stare long and hard at Jardin’s eyes. Perhaps too long, and too hard. The stylist licked his thin lips, almost as if he could taste Goncalves on his chops, and smoothed back his immaculately styled hair. The word preening came to mind.
In the initial stages of their conversation Goncalves learned little that the Federal Police didn’t already know. Revelations, however, began to surface when he touched on the subject of the Artist’s girlfriend, Cintia Tadesco.
“I can well understand that you have an interest in her.” Jardin managed to insert another oval cigarette into his ivory holder without taking his eyes off Goncalves. “The woman is a total bitch.”
“A total bitch, eh?”
Goncalves had already learned that Jardin required only a minimum of prompting.
“I don’t mean she’s just a gold-digger,” Jardin said. “God knows, I’ve known my share of gold-diggers. I don’t dismiss them as a category. Some of them actually give quite good value for money.”
“Value for money?” Goncalves echoed.
Jardin’s lighter was a Dupont, in black lacquer and gold. It made a musical ding when he lit up.
“Suppose,” he said, “that you’re old, and rich, and single. Divorced, maybe, or a widower. You’re lonely. You haven’t seen what a twenty- to thirty-year-old body looks like”-he took another puff, expelled the smoke and looked Haraldo up and down before going on-“for maybe the last quartercentury. Then along comes this nubile young thing who sells you on the idea that May-December relationships are all the rage. She tells you she loves you for yourself, not your money, or your status, or your fame. You believe it because you want to believe it. You say to yourself, hey, it’s not as impossible as I thought. It’s happened once or twice before. And now it’s happening to me.”
“Uh huh. And then?”
“And then you start bonking her, and she makes you feel like you’re the most virile man she’s ever met. You may have to swallow a handful of pills to get a hard-on, but when it’s up, it’s up, and it’s glorious. She admires it, kisses it, strokes it, runs her hand up and down the shaft, tells you you’re the first man who’s ever made her feel truly like a woman. So you start buying her expensive jewelry, and you set her up in a nice place of her own. Why not? You can afford it.” Jardin took another drag on his cigarette. Goncalves made no attempt to interrupt. “Then, if you’re really besotted, you might even marry her, marry her no matter what your family might be saying about her. If a friend opens his mouth, you’d sooner lose the friend than lose the girl.”
“And you call that value for money? Estranging people from their friends and family?”
“Estrangement occurs only if the friends and family are stupid enough to question the lady’s motives and start telling you things you don’t want to hear. And yes, it is value for money if the woman has a sweet nature, is grateful for what she’s being given and is willing to keep up her side of the bargain by hanging in there until you’re so senile you don’t recognize her anymore or dead, whichever comes first.”
“You’re talking about an old man. That’s not the Artist’s case. He’s a young guy. It’s different.”
“Different, is it? Have you ever met the Artist?”
“No.”
“Seen a photo then?”
“Well, yes, but-”
“But nothing. He’s ugly as sin and, stating it kindly, intellectually challenged. What he’s got going for him is the same thing that lots of old millionaires have going for them: fame and money. The only difference between him and them is they need their pills to get an erection.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit cynical about this?”
“Cynical? My Young Innocent, you have no idea how society works, or what real money can buy, do you?”
“Let’s get back to Cintia, okay?”
“Of course, dear boy, of course.”
“Why do you think she’s a bitch?”
“Two reasons. First, because I have personal knowledge of the woman. She used to be one of my clients. People say I struck her from my roster because she was late for an appointment. Not true. Between you and me, dear boy, that’s one of the excuses I use when I tire of someone’s company. Would you like a glass of sherry?”
“Thank you, no.”
“But you won’t mind if I have one, will you?”
Without waiting for a reply, Jardin balanced his cigarette holder across a large, jade ashtray and stood up. He went to a cherry wood cabinet and took out a bottle. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Jardin selected a single glass, delicately cut and looking like it cost a bundle, and resumed his seat.
“Where were we?” he said, pouring the amber liquid.
“You tired of her company.”
“Ah yes.” He took a sip. “I did.”
“Why?”
Jardin thought for a moment. “Gossip is one thing,” he said. “I’m not averse to a little of it myself, but spewing venom is another. I never heard her say a good word about anyone. So I drew the obvious conclusion: she wasn’t saying good words about me either.”
“How about her future mother-in-law?”
“Juraci? I don’t recall Cintia saying anything at all about Juraci. It would have been naive to do so, and naive is one thing Cintia is not. Everyone is well aware that the relationship between the Artist and his mother is a close one. If Cintia had expressed a negative opinion about her, there are scads of people who would have rushed off to make sure the Artist heard about it.”
“How about the Artist’s father? I don’t recall hearing anything about him. Ever.”
“You never will. Although I’ve been told there’s a claimant every now and then.”
“A claimant?”
“Juraci was… how shall I put this? Let’s just say that, in her youth, she was quite profligate with her charms. She’s never been quite sure who the Artist’s father is. That’s not what she gives out, but I assure you it’s true. Now, however, now that her talented son has come to fame and fortune, many of the men who’ve passed through Juraci’s life earnestly desire to be admitted back into it.”
“How does she handle it?”
“Denies them, one and all; claims that the Artist’s real father was a stonemason killed in a construction accident when his son was very young.”
“And that’s what most people believe?”
“That’s what virtually everyone believes. Fofocas has investigated her story in some detail. They’ve been unable to disprove it.”
Goncalves’s familiarity with Fofocas stemmed from the fact that it kept turning up in the bathrooms, or next to the beds, of many of the women he slept with. None of them ever admitted to purchasing it. One of their girlfriends, they’d say, must have left it behind, by mistake.
“How come you don’t buy into the stonemason story?”
Jardin smiled. “Unlike you,” he said, “Juraci Santos is fond of sherry. We’ve had a few tipples together and have, how shall I put this? Shared confidences.”
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