Blood of the Wicked

by Leighton Gage

  And once Lori read her work, then she’d understand, and all would be forgiven. Lori could be temperamental at times, but Diana had grown confident about the depth of their love. It was a far cry from their first few months together, when Diana was always asking herself how a blonde goddess with fashion sense could be interested in a square-shouldered woman with no waist.

  She glanced at her watch. The bank was open late. She could just make it.

  She transferred everything she was working on, transcripts and all, onto a CD, put the CD into a large envelope, added the memory sticks from the camera and the copies of the audiotapes. Then she typed out a short note, put it into a smaller envelope, and added stamps.

  She went to the door of their bedroom and tapped lightly. “Lori?”

  No response.

  “Lori, I’m going out. Just for a little while. I’ll be back for dinner.”

  Still no response.

  Diana gave it up, picked up her knapsack, and left the apartment, locking the door behind her. Down in the garage she fired up the Honda Valkyrie, her favorite bike. Her business at the bank took no more than ten minutes. She mailed the letter to Anton Brouwer on her way home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  SILVA AND HECTOR DEDICATED the day following their conversation with Luiz Pillar to the procedural ritual. They visited the murder site, spoke with the medical examiner, and interviewed the members of the bishop’s reception committee. Nothing brought them closer to a solution.

  They were back at the hotel, and Silva was nursing a cold beer, when his cell phone, the one for which only the director had the number, started to ring. He fished it out of his breast pocket.

  “Good evening, Director.”

  “Silva?”

  It wasn’t the director.

  “Who is this?”

  “Orlando Muniz. One of your superiors should have talked to you about me. Did he?”

  “Yes. How did you get this number, Senhor Muniz?”

  “Never mind that. I’ve arrived. I’m in suite nine hundred at the Excelsior. Where are you?”

  “In my room. The same hotel.”

  “Good. Come up.”

  “Right now?”

  “Something wrong with your ears?”

  “I assumed you’d be staying at your son’s place.”

  “It’s not his place. It’s my place, and it has two broken doors. I’ll move out there when they’re fixed. Suite nine hundred. Make it quick. I’m waiting.” Muniz hung up.

  “And good afternoon to you, too, Senhor Muniz,” Silva said. Then, to Hector, “How about another beer?”

  * * *

  THIRTY MINUTES later, a flinty-eyed man wearing an empty shoulder holster answered the door of Suite 900. A pistol, a Glock .40 just like the one Silva was wearing under his jacket, was in his right hand, pointing at the floor.

  “Senhor Muniz?” Silva said.

  “Who wants him?” the bodyguard said.

  “Costa and Silva, Federal Police.”

  “Took your own sweet time getting here,” a voice grumbled from inside the suite, and then, giving an order, “Let ’em in, Jair.”

  Jair stepped aside. After they walked past him he stuck his head into the corridor, looked left and right, and then locked the door behind them.

  Muniz’s suite was a good deal larger than Silva’s, but it was on the top floor of the hotel, just under the roof, so the air-conditioning wasn’t equal to the task of cooling the place. It was uncomfortably hot. If Muniz had shown him a bit more courtesy, Silva might have told him that the hotel had other, cooler, alternatives.

  But Muniz hadn’t and Silva didn’t.

  Muniz had another visitor and, by the look of things, he’d already been in the suite for some time. Both men were stripped down to their shirtsleeves, had opened their collars, and had circles of sweat under their arms. There was a full ashtray on the coffee table. The same table held a number of empty glasses, an ice bucket, and a bottle of Logan’s Twelve Year Old. The bucket was transparent. It only had a few slivers of ice in the bottom and about a centimeter of water. A strong smell of tobacco was in the air and enough haze to make Silva’s eyes burn.

  Muniz stood. He was a short, swarthy man, with a wart to the left of his nose. Earlier in the day, Silva had received photos of his son. There was no physical resemblance.

  The other man also stood. Muniz introduced him. “Judge Wilson Cunha.”

  The judge offered his hand, first to Silva and then to Hector. He was short and his erect posture and protruding chest reminded Silva of a pigeon. His hair, moist from perspiration and immaculately coifed, was somewhat long for a man of his age and station. It hung slightly over his ears.

  The other two men in the room, the fellow who’d opened the door, and another who could have been his younger brother, apparently didn’t rate introductions.

  Muniz wiped his forehead on his sleeve, snapped his fingers, and pointed to the chairs surrounding a dining table. “Put two of those”—he pointed to a spot on the opposite side of the coffee table—“right there.”

  The men with the flinty eyes did what he’d told them to do and then retreated to opposite corners of the room.

  “Sit down,” Muniz said, making it sound more like a command than a courtesy. He sank back into his seat on the couch.

  Cunha adjusted his armchair to form a united front. He was obviously going to be on Muniz’s side, whatever it was.

  Silva expected to be offered a drink. It didn’t happen.

  “You find my boy?” Muniz began without preamble. In Brazil, where manners dictate that virtually every conversation open with some kind of chitchat, it was a clear discourtesy.

  “Not yet, senhor,” Hector said.

  “I was talking to your boss, not you,” Muniz said, sharply. “What about the note?”

  “No prints,” Silva said. “Written with a ballpoint pen in block letters.”

  “Get it. I want to see it.”

  Silva shook his head. “I sent it to Brasilia for analysis. Maybe there are fingerprints. We may learn something of interest from the ink or the paper, but I doubt it. We may be able to confirm the identity of the writer if we catch him, but then again—”

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe. That’s all you’ve got? What’s the matter with you people? How many of those agitators have you questioned?”

  “League members, you mean?”

  “Who else would I mean? Do you know what happened last night?”

  “The occupation of your son’s, sorry, your fazenda? ”

  “So you’re not completely uninformed? Good for you. You think that threat was bullshit, or is my boy really dead?”

  “They made no demands. I’d expect the worst.”

  Judge Cunha nodded sagely, as if he’d already made the same point. Then he reached over, used his fingers to extract some of the remaining ice from the bucket, put it into his mouth, and cracked it with his teeth.

  “Why haven’t you arrested some of the bastards?” Muniz went on.

  “As Judge Cunha here will undoubtedly be able to tell you, there’s the issue of proof—”

  “Proof?” Muniz exploded. “Those maggots are crawling all over my fazenda. Do you think it’s a coincidence? Haul the bastards in on a trespassing charge. I’ll be happy to question them myself.”

  Silva’s jaw tightened, but he kept a close rein on his temper. “It’s possible we may be dealing with two unrelated issues,” he said.

  “It’s possible that the blessed Virgin Mary had two balls and a cock,” Muniz said, “but I doubt it.”

  The judge looked shocked. But then he reached out, tentatively touched Silva just above his kneecap and cleared his throat. “You have to understand, Chief Inspector, that my friend Senhor Muniz is justifiably upset. He’s worried about his son, as any father would be, and he’s outraged that those . . . people had the effrontery to invade his property.”

  He paused, and appeared to be waiting for Silva to respond. When Si
lva didn’t, the judge continued. “Before you arrived, we were discussing Senhor Muniz’s legal recourses with respect to the occupation. The situation seems very clear to me.”

  “Does it? I’m told that Senhor Muniz’s son wasn’t using that land.”

  “What the hell has that got to do with it?” Muniz snapped.

  “The law states,” Silva said, “that the government can appropriate uncultivated land by paying a fair price for it. The law further states that the government can grant land thus appropriated to landless farmers. If you, Judge, would entertain an act of appropriation, I’m sure the league people could be convinced to leave the property until the case is settled.”

  It was Muniz’s turn to look shocked. “Are you insane? Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  Before Silva could answer Judge Cunha intervened. “Do you own any land, Chief Inspector? I’m not talking about a piece of property with a house on it, or a little chacara. I’m talking about real land, a fazenda.”

  “No.”

  “No. I didn’t think so.” The judge looked at Muniz and gave a faint nod, as if he’d just scored a point. “Then we could hardly expect you to understand, could we?” he said to Silva.

  Muniz stood. The interview was over. “We’ll solve it our own way,” he said. “The way we always have. We don’t need your help anymore. Go home.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Silva said. “I wasn’t sent here because of your son, and I have my orders.”

  “We’ll see about your orders. Get out.”

  “MERDA,” THE director said twenty minutes later, and he said it loud enough to cause Silva to move the cell phone away from his ear. “I told you to treat him with kid gloves. What am I going to tell the minister? Get on a plane and get out of there. Muniz won’t stay for more than a day or two. You can go back just as soon as he’s gone.”

  “You’re the boss, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “It’s pretty obvious what Muniz is up to. He’s got a local judge in his pocket, and I have no doubt he’s got more than the two capangas I saw in his suite. He’ll have brought them in from one of his other fazendas, or from Paraguay. This town is already packed with people from the national press. If Muniz gets his way there’s going to be a slaughter, and when there is, the journalists are going to spread it all over the media.”

  The director reflected for a moment, considering the consequences.

  “I’ll have the minister talk to him,” he finally said.

  “As you wish. But if you do, and if Muniz ignores him and goes ahead with his plans, the minister won’t have any deniability. He might not thank you for that.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the telephone. Finally, the director said, “Well, then, get that State Police Colonel Whatshisname to stop it.”

  “With respect, Director, Colonel Ferraz will do what Judge Cunha tells him to do, and the judge will do what Muniz tells him to do. Ferraz, by the way, has a large landholding of his own.”

  “A cop with a fazenda?”

  “Yes, Director, a cop with a fazenda, and that should give all of us an idea about what kind of a cop he is, don’t you think? Anyway, he’s got no sympathy for the league. If they need his protection, the odds are that he’ll be somewhere else. He might even be the person they’ll be needing protection from.”

  “Can’t you get that judge to do something?”

  “No. But I’m sure Muniz can. I’m also sure that, if he does, we’re not going to like it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I’ll try to defuse the situation. Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying to find out what happened to the bishop and to Muniz’s son. It’s possible the two events are connected.”

  “Connected? How?”

  “I’m not sure, and I could be wrong. I just have a hunch.”

  “What’s your next step?”

  “I still want to go to Presidente Vargas and talk to the bishop’s secretary.”

  “That again? We’ve been through that already. You want to leave Cascatas? At a time like this? Not on your life.”

  The director seemed unaware that he’d just undergone a complete reversal of position.

  “Just for the day,” Silva said. “I—”

  “Out of the question,” the director said. “Not on your life. You stay right where you are. Send that nephew of yours.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  FATHER FRANCISCO CAPORETTO WAS in his mid-thirties and darkly handsome. When he met Hector in the reception area, he was wearing a tailored black suit that fit him like a glove. They shook hands, and he led his guest down a long corridor toward the back of the building.

  “This is—was—Dom Felipe’s room,” he said, opening a door. “Shall we sit over there?” He pointed at two chairs nestled into the alcove of a bay window.

  The late bishop’s office was a spacious chamber with white-painted walls, modern furniture, and an oil painting which Hector thought might be a Pignatari above the fireplace.

  The two men sat, and the bishop’s erstwhile secretary rang for coffee.

  The novice who brought it, a girl of seventeen or eighteen, couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Father Francisco. She used no makeup, was radiantly beautiful, and smelled of toilet soap. Hector suppressed a libidinous thought and waited until she left before he got down to business.

  “Have you been with Dom Felipe a long time?”

  “Since before he took up his most recent appointment. It would have been three years, this June,” Francisco said, without betraying whether he thought three years was a long time.

  “You were his friend?”

  “I was his secretary, Delegado. I don’t believe the bishop had any friends.”

  “De mortuis nil nisi bonum, eh?”

  Father Francisco smiled, but not, Hector thought, because he found it funny, only to show that he understood the Latin. The priest settled back in his chair and crossed his ankles.

  “Did you like him?” Hector persisted.

  “It wasn’t my place to like or dislike him.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Francisco looked through the bay window. Hector followed his gaze. Two boys were kneeling on the street, playing with a wooden top. Hector hadn’t seen a wooden top for at least twenty years.

  “Hardly any television here,” Francisco said, as if he could read the thought. “No antennas. No cable. Some of the wealthier people have satellite dishes, of course, but most of the children are still being raised without it. They play the same games their parents and grandparents used to play.”

  “Nice.”

  “A little dull, actually. But to get back to your question: No, to be frank, I didn’t really like him. He was severe with himself and severe with others. Mind you, I’m not saying he was unjust, just severe.”

  “Father Gaspar called him a friend.”

  “Did he?”

  Father Francisco lifted an eyebrow. Hector waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, Hector went off on a new tack. “How about enemies?”

  “No one who hated him enough to kill him.”

  “Pardon me for asking this, Padre, but I have to: A relationship?”

  The urbane priest seemed to take the question in stride. “A relationship of a sexual nature you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I think not. He never struck me as a man who had to struggle to maintain his vow of chastity. He really wasn’t interested in women. And he often expressed a distinct dislike of homosexuals and homosexuality. He found it an aberration.”

  “Money, then. Was he particularly fond of money?”

  “Some people might say so. He was always trying to raise money to build a new church, or a new school. He was good at it, too; some of the donors wouldn’t have been anywhere near as generous if Dom Felipe hadn’t been so persistent.”

  “What did he think of liberation theology?”

  The sudden change of theme caused Fran
cisco’s forehead to crease in puzzlement. “I thought you were exploring motives.”

  “I am. Please answer my question.”

  “Liberation theology? What did the bishop think of it?”

  Hector nodded.

  “He opposed it. He had to. It’s been condemned by Rome.”

  “So it’s likely his successor will condemn it as well.”

  “It’s not ‘likely,’ Delegado, it’s certain. Dom Felipe’s successor will certainly condemn it.”

  “What would you say to a suggestion that another priest, a liberation theologian, might have killed the bishop?”

  Francisco shook his head. “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? Why?”

  “First of all, because there are no longer any priests who are liberation theologians. All of them either renounced the doctrine or left the Church. Second, because any priest, no matter how radical, would know that killing the bishop wouldn’t change anything. Liberation theology is a discredited doctrine, and the death of a hundred bishops won’t alter that.”

  “I see.”

  Francisco leaned forward. The gold frame of his eyeglasses reflected a pinpoint of light from the window. “But there’s one possibility you might not have considered. Have you heard of a man called Aurelio Azevedo?”

  “The activist? The man they nailed to a tree?”

  “Yes, the man they nailed to a tree. Did you know that they killed his wife and his two children as well?”

  “Yes.”

  The priest paused for a moment, as if he expected Hector to comment on the barbarity of it all. When Hector didn’t, he went on. “All of us were outraged, the bishop in particular. Several weeks before he died he went to Cascatas and preached a sermon in the old church. He drew his inspiration from Psalm Fifty-eight, verse ten: The passage reads ‘The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.’ His thesis, in a nutshell, was that whoever spills innocent blood is evil and deserving of having their own blood spilled.”