Blood of the Wicked

by Leighton Gage

  “I gather he didn’t believe in turning the other cheek?”

  “No, Delegado, he most certainly did not. The bishop leaned toward Old Testament solutions, an eye for an eye. He enjoined anyone with information about the death of Azevedo to come forward, told them their souls would be in peril if they didn’t.”

  “Did he specifically accuse any individual or any group?”

  “No. He stopped short of that, but people got the message.”

  “And those people included the big landowners, I suppose.”

  “Most certainly. Several of them stood up and walked out while he was still speaking. I was there. I saw it.”

  “Did it work? Did anyone come forward?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly?”

  Francisco looked out the window, gathering his thoughts. Hector followed his gaze. The children who’d been playing with the top were gone.

  “About a week after the sermon,” the priest resumed, “Dom Felipe received a letter, postmarked Cascatas, and signed by someone named Edson Souza.”

  Hector made a note of the name. “Go on,” he said.

  “Souza claimed to have knowledge of a crime and wanted to speak to the bishop personally. He gave a date and a time when he was going to call.”

  “May I see the letter?”

  “It’s gone. Missing. After the bishop’s death I searched for it, but I haven’t been able to find it. I don’t think anyone took it, though. Perhaps the bishop discarded it.”

  “And did this Souza actually call?”

  “He did, but the bishop was unable to speak to him. At the date and time specified he had a longstanding engagement elsewhere. He instructed me to give Souza an alternate date and time to call him back.”

  “Which you did?”

  “Which I did.”

  “What did Souza sound like? Can you describe his voice?”

  “Young. Poorly educated. Local accent. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific than that.”

  “What do you mean by a local accent?”

  “He’s from around here somewhere. São Paulo State for sure.”

  “Any speech defects? A lisp, perhaps?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “When did this conversation take place?”

  The priest stood up, walked to the glass-topped desk and consulted a calendar. “The . . . eighth of last month.”

  “At what time?”

  “Eleven o’clock in the morning.”

  “What number did he call?”

  “Number?”

  “The telephone number that Souza used to contact you.”

  The priest rattled off some numbers, and Hector made a note of them. “Then what happened?”

  “Souza agreed to call back.”

  “And did he?”

  “He did. He called the next day at the same time. The bishop spoke to him. I was curious, so I went into his office just after he’d hung up. Dom Felipe was staring down at the surface of his desk. When he heard me come in, he looked up. He was as angry as I’ve ever seen him. At first, I thought it was because of my interruption. But no. He told me to place a call to Father Gaspar Farias in Cascatas.”

  “And did you?”

  “I did.”

  “What did they discuss?”

  “I have no idea. He offered me no information about either call. Not the one from Souza, not the one to Father Gaspar. Not then. Not later.”

  “And you never asked him?”

  The priest shook his head and smiled, as if the question struck him as naïve. “Oh, my goodness, no. I’d never take that kind of liberty with the bishop.”

  “Do you think the two calls were related?”

  Father Francisco toyed with his empty cup and thought about the question. Then he pushed cup and saucer aside and leaned back in his chair. “They might well have been.”

  “Might they both have had something to do with Azevedo’s murder?”

  “I’d be speculating, but . . . yes, I think so.”

  “Why would he talk to Gaspar about it and not to you?”

  “I’m here. Father Gaspar is in Cascatas. The bishop preached his sermon in Gaspar’s old church, and he was going to Cascatas to consecrate the new one. Perhaps he wanted some information about a parishioner, or wanted Gaspar to take some kind of action prior to his arrival. That’s my best guess, but I really don’t know.”

  “Did you speak to Dom Felipe on the morning of his death?”

  “No. As you now know, having made it yourself, it’s a long drive to Cascatas. I wanted to be there when he arrived. I left very early in the morning, long before he came down to breakfast.”

  “Why didn’t you accompany him in the helicopter?”

  Father Francisco shook his head. “He wouldn’t have welcomed it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . .” For the first time during the interview Father Francisco seemed to be at a loss for words. “ . . . the bishop was—how shall I put this?—publicity conscious.” He seemed pleased with his phrasing and repeated it. “Yes, publicity conscious. He was making a grand entrance into Cascatas. My presence on the helicopter would have been . . . a distraction.”

  “A prima donna was he? A publicity hound?”

  “I didn’t say that, Delegado.”

  “No, Padre, of course you didn’t. Let me ask you this: Did his arrival achieve the intended effect?”

  “Oh my, yes. It was a great success. He must have been very pleased.”

  “His idea? The helicopter?”

  “Mine. More coffee?”

  Hector accepted the coffee. His interview with Father Francisco went on for almost another hour, but nothing of any further significance came to light.

  SILVA WAS in a taxi when his nephew’s call came through. “Where are you?” Hector asked.

  “On my way to see Anton Brouwer, that priest Diana Poli mentioned. You?”

  “Just leaving Presidente Vargas.”

  Hector gave his uncle a quick summary of his conversation with the bishop’s secretary. Toward the end of his account, the signal started breaking up. “ . . . bring . . . São . . . leg . . .”

  “What?”

  “I said . . . bring Arnaldo . . . São Paulo . . . legwork.”

  “You want to bring Arnaldo from São Paulo to do some legwork?”

  “Yes. I . . . you fine.”

  “Well, I can’t hear you. Okay, call Arnaldo. Tell him to drive. We could use another car.”

  Silva could see the cabdriver’s face in the rearview mirror. The man’s mouth tightened when he heard the part about another car. More cars meant fewer customers for taxis.

  “Did you start a trace on the bishop’s incoming calls?” Silva said.

  “ . . . already underway. If . . . home phone, we’ll get him.”

  “Don’t count on it. Anything else?”

  But Hector was gone.

  The cabdriver pulled onto the unpaved shoulder of the road, put one arm over the back of the seat, and pointed with the other.

  “Father Brouwer’s place is over there. You go down that alley between the banana trees,” he said. “You want me to wait?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  A FRIENDLY MONGREL WITH a gray muzzle came padding up to Silva as he started down the path. He paused to scratch the dog behind the ear. When he resumed walking the animal, panting in the heat, fell into step behind him. The path ended at a little house with a tile roof and stucco walls badly in need of paint. Wooden steps led up to a small porch. The dog brushed by, sought a place in the shade, and lay down with its head between its paws.

  As Silva mounted the last step the front door opened and a priest in a black cassock appeared. He smiled at his visitor and then bent his head to light the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.

  The priest was frail and very old. Silva had expected a younger man. “Father Brouwer?”

  “Oh, my goodness, no. You flatter me. I have thirty-seven years
on Anton,” he said. “I’m Father Angelo.” The priest stuck out a hand. There were amber tobacco stains on his index and middle fingers.

  Silva shook hands and introduced himself. If the priest was impressed to be speaking to a chief inspector of the Federal Police, he didn’t show it.

  “What can I do for you, my son?” Father Angelo was a small man. The top of his head didn’t quite reach Silva’s chin, and he had a sparse rim of hair that encircled it like a white laurel wreath.

  “Actually, Father, I’m here to talk to Father Brouwer.”

  “Nothing I can help you with? You sure?”

  “I wanted to talk to him about liberation theology.”

  “You’ve come to the right place. Have a seat.”

  He pointed to one of four chairs that surrounded a wicker table. Silva sank into it, and Father Angelo sat down in another. “He doesn’t like me to smoke inside the house,” he said.

  “He?”

  The priest ground out his cigarette in the ashtray, fished a half-empty pack of unfiltered Caballeros from somewhere within his cassock, and immediately lit another one. “Anton. Father Brouwer.”

  The old man coughed, took out a handkerchief, put it over his mouth, and coughed again. Before he put it away he studied the surface of the cloth and nodded to himself, as if pleased. “I’d offer you coffee,” he said, his voice like a rasp on hardwood, “but he doesn’t like me mucking about in his kitchen.”

  “I’m fine, Father. Thanks.”

  “Smoke?”

  Silva shook his head. “I gave it up.”

  “Very wise of you. Sorry about the ashtray. Anton doesn’t smoke either. This is his week to do the household chores, but he refuses to clean it. And if I leave my cigarettes lying around, they have a mysterious way of disappearing. It’s a little game we play. Now, tell me, what sparks your interest in liberation theology?”

  “I’m investigating two crimes: the shooting of Bishop Antunes and the abduction, perhaps murder, of a landowner by the name of Orlando Muniz Junior.”

  “Ah, yes. Muniz.”

  “You know him?”

  The priest took his time in answering, first studying the ash on his cigarette, then tapping some of it off into an overflowing ashtray. Most of the ash fell onto the surface of the table. He didn’t attempt to clean it up.

  “Oh, yes,” he said at last. “Everyone around here is familiar with young Muniz. Slavery was abolished in this country in 1889, but that fact seems lost on people like him.”

  Silva said nothing, suspecting that Father Angelo would have more to say, which he soon did.

  “Muniz is a bloodsucker, a modern day slaveholder. You must know how it works.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “It’s the old story: His agents recruit people, promising to pay them a fair wage. When they arrive they find they’re in debt for the cost of their transport and the food they ate along the way. Then he forces them to buy everything they need from his own store.”

  “So they never get out of debt?”

  “Never.”

  Silva was all-too-familiar with the practice. The Brazilian government had been trying to stamp it out for more than a century, but it persisted.

  “And if they run,” the priest went on, “Muniz’s capangas go after them, beat them into submission, and bring them back. In your work you must have met others like him.”

  “Never in the state of São Paulo. The practice is more prevalent up north, in places like Acre.”

  “It happens here, too. And it’s not just Muniz.”

  “We can stop him, you know. All we need are—”

  “Witnesses brave enough to come forward?”

  “Yes.”

  The priest shook his head sadly. He lit another cigarette with the glowing butt of the one he’d been smoking and then stubbed out the butt, causing more detritus from the ashtray to fall onto the table.

  “You won’t find them. Not after what happened to a man named Aurelio Azevedo.”

  Silva nodded. “I’ve heard about him.”

  “God forgive me. I try to love my fellow man, but I can’t help myself from despising some of them. Cascatas is going to be a better place without Orlando Muniz Junior.” The priest seemed to realize what he’d just said and added hastily, “If he’s really dead, that is.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Then Silva said, “It’s been suggested to me that he might have been kidnapped and murdered by people from the league.”

  A wary expression came into Father Angelo’s eyes, but the only thing he said was, “Really? The league, eh?”

  After a moment of silence, Silva went on, “I’m told that your colleague, Father Brouwer, actively supports the league.”

  “Told by whom?”

  “Sorry. That’s confidential.”

  “Hmm. Well, as to the league, it’s probably best if you put that question to Anton himself, but if you think he might have had anything to do with Muniz’s death you’d be wrong. He didn’t.”

  “You think so?”

  “I don’t think. I know. We go back a long way, Father Brouwer and I.”

  Father Angelo settled back in his chair, rested his elbows on the arms and took another puff.

  “Where were you on the thirteenth of May, 1976?” he asked.

  It seemed like an abrupt departure from the subject, but Silva played along. “I have no idea. Should I have reason to remember?”

  “Probably not. But I do. I can remember exactly where I was on the thirteenth of May, 1976. I was with Anton Brouwer. He would have been . . .”—he took another puff and made the calculation in his head—“twenty-four at the time. The two of us were suspended by our wrists, facing each other, in the cellar of the State Police headquarters in Cascatas. They hung us up on the evening of the twelfth. They took us down on the morning of the fourteenth. They had us hanging there for thirty-four hours.”

  “Why?”

  The priest went on as if he hadn’t heard the question. “I’ve always kept a diary. My memoirs. I hope to have them published someday. But I never wrote about that. The whole period of our most recent military dictatorship isn’t covered in any degree of detail anywhere in my writings. It was too dangerous to write about then, and I can’t bring myself to write about it now. But I talk about it, every now and then. I talk about it to someone like you, someone I don’t know too well, or to someone I think should hear the story, and remember. Am I boring you?”

  “Not at all.”

  Father Angelo lit another cigarette from the glowing stub of his last and extinguished the stub in the overflowing ashtray. He dangled the cigarette in his mouth while he rubbed the ash off his fingers. Then he took another puff and went on.

  “When the military took power in 1964, they told us they were doing it to reestablish law and order. We soon discovered that law was for the few and order only an excuse for oppression. In reality fear, not law, was the source of their power. Torture was one of their instruments for instilling that fear.”

  “Why did they pick on you and Father Brouwer?”

  “We’d set up a producer’s and consumer’s cooperative for the small farmers. They said it smacked of communism.”

  “And they tortured you just for that?”

  “Oh, no. In those days, even people who practiced mild socialism got in trouble with the government, but we did much more. We organized adult literacy groups. That interfered with their concept of education. They didn’t want the underprivileged to be educated. Education could have led to resistance. That’s what they said, anyway. We also established a small newspaper and made the mistake of calling it The Liberator. All the major newspapers were censored then. The smaller ones . . . well . . . they just raided the offices, beat the people, and destroyed the facilities. Three days after they’d done that to The Liberator they came for us.”

  He took another puff. There was no breeze. The cloud of smoke hung about him, dispersing slowly in the air. The old d
og lying near his feet whined in its sleep. He glanced at the animal, smiled, and continued.

  “There was a police captain named Soares. I haven’t seen him since the fourteenth of May, 1976, but when I close my eyes I can see his face as clearly as I can see yours now. At about nine-thirty on the evening of the twelfth they brought us into a room in the cellar of the police station. There were no windows. The walls were painted green. There was a drain in the floor, and there were hooks hanging from the ceiling. Captain Soares had several assistants in the room and while they hung us up from the hooks, he told us that there’d been assaults throughout the state. Money had been stolen from banks and some weapons had been stolen from one of the military installations. He said he was sure we could provide information about the people involved. When we told him we knew nothing, he ordered his assistants to strip us. One of those assistants, the only one I ever saw thereafter, is now a colonel in the State Police.”

  “Ferraz?”

  “Ferraz. You know him?”

  “Not personally. Not yet,” Silva said and then, before the priest could break the thread of his story, “What happened next?”

  Father Angelo stubbed out another cigarette and took the pack from his cassock. This time he didn’t light another one right away. He held the orange-colored pack in his hands, turning it around from one side to the other, looking at it as if he’d never seen it before. His eyes were far away.

  “I told you, didn’t I, that they hung us facing each other? They worked on us, one at a time. It was ingenious in its perverted, disgusting way. I could see everything that was happening to Anton, and he could see everything that was happening to me. That made it worse: You not only saw a close friend being injured and broken, you could also anticipate that they’d soon be back to you, doing the same thing.”

  The priest dug a disposable plastic lighter out of his cassock. It was pink. The color didn’t suit him at all. Silva wondered if a woman had given it to him.

  Somewhere in the near distance there was the sound of children’s voices: “Give it to me,” one of them said. “Get your own,” another one said. Then there was a slap and a squeal. Father Angelo didn’t react to any of it. He went on with his story.