Blood of the Wicked

by Leighton Gage

  “No, Father, I didn’t.”

  After a moment of silence, Father Angelo spoke. “Chief Inspector Silva is quite right, Anton. He didn’t say it. Perhaps someone at the encampment mentioned it to you, someone who was jumping to conclusions.”

  He turned to Silva. “The night before last the league—”

  “—invaded Muniz’s fazenda. Yes, I know.”

  Father Brower shook his head. “Don’t call it an invasion. It wasn’t. What the league did was to occupy uncultivated land within a fence put up by Orlando Muniz Junior. When the government—”

  Father Angelo put his hand on Father Brouwer’s knee. “I think that Inspector Silva’s concerns lie elsewhere, Anton. He’s only interested in things that are germane to the cases he’s investigating.” He turned to Silva. “Muniz’s foreman was heard to say that his employer had disappeared and that people were searching for him. Perhaps the rumor about him being dead is simply wishful thinking.”

  “That must be it,” Brouwer said. “A rumor.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  Then Silva said, “All right, let’s put Muniz on the back burner for a moment. What can you tell me about the bishop?”

  Father Brouwer leaned back in his chair. “I can’t help you very much,” Brouwer said. “I didn’t know him well.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “As I’ve just said, I hardly knew him.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill him?”

  “You heard about his sermon? Asking people to come forward if they knew anything about the murder of the Azevedo family?”

  “I heard about it, yes.”

  “Well, then, there you have it. My guess would be that he was killed by the same murdering parasites who killed Azevedo: Muniz, or one of his cronies.”

  “Landowners?”

  “Landowners. From all accounts, the bishop wasn’t a particularly likeable man, but I can’t think of anyone else who would have had a reason to kill him.”

  “Father Gaspar thinks otherwise. He thinks someone from the league might have done it.”

  “From the league?”

  Father Brouwer was genuinely surprised.

  So was Father Angelo. “What possible motive could anyone from the league have?” the old priest asked.

  “Perhaps because the bishop withdrew church support?”

  “Nonsense,” Father Brouwer said. “Everyone knew that was bound to happen when the old bishop died. Now, that man, the old bishop, he was a saint. He cared more about the poor than he did about the opinions of a few learned—and some believe misguided—old men in Rome. We won’t see his like again in our lifetimes. These days, Rome would never appoint a man like him. They’ll only appoint someone else who follows the party line. Dom Felipe did. That’s one of the reasons he got the job.”

  “Tell me about the league.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Help me to understand them. What kind of people are they?”

  Father Brouwer scratched his chin, and then said, “They’re the stubborn ones.”

  “Stubborn?”

  “Stubborn. The ones who haven’t given up, the ones who’ve rejected migration to the big cities, the ones who’ve elected to stay and fight.”

  “That’s well and good, Father, but they shouldn’t be doing it by occupying land to which they have no right—”

  “No right? No right?” Father Brouwer scowled. He took a deep breath then let it out, slowly, through his nose. “Tell me this, Chief Inspector: Who has a greater right to the land, someone who’s born on it, sweated on it, drawn his subsistence from it, or some capitalist who paid for it with money, or stole it by forging false documents?”

  “Capitalist?” Silva said, raising his eyebrows.

  Father Brouwer leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking Marxist, you’re thinking communist. But you’re wrong. I’m neither. I believe in God.”

  “How about liberation theology? Do you believe in that?”

  Brouwer exchanged a glance with Angelo. “How could I?” Brouwer said. “After all, my superiors in Rome have condemned it.”

  “It’s forbidden,” Angelo said. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

  “Condemned?” Silva said. “Forbidden? So no priest could ever publicly commit to it, right?”

  “Right. Not publicly,” Brouwer said.

  It didn’t escape Silva that neither one of the priests had actually denied being a liberation theologian. He looked from one to the other. The conversation was going nowhere. He rose to his feet. “I think I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’m at the Excelsior. You will call me, won’t you, if anything else occurs to you?”

  “Of course,” Father Angelo said.

  Father Brouwer didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t even nod.

  WHEN SILVA got back to the hotel he was surprised to find a note from Arnaldo:

  If you’re reading this, I’m in the coffee shop.

  It would have been impossible for Arnaldo to arrive in the few short hours since he’d authorized Hector to summon him. His nephew had clearly jumped the gun. Silva made a mental note to take him to task about it.

  Arnaldo was where he’d promised to be. It was still lunchtime, and the restaurant was crammed with people dressed in the fashion of the countryside. At that time of the year, with temperatures peaking around 40 degrees Celsius— 104 degrees Fahrenheit—the men were clothed almost exclusively in thin cotton shirts open at the neck. Arnaldo, in a beige suit, starched white shirt, and blue necktie, stuck out like a penguin in a chicken coop.

  He was frowning at a menu when Silva slipped into a seat in front of him.

  “A cheeseburger, medium,” Arnaldo said to the hovering waiter.

  “And to drink, senhor?”

  “Guaraná.”

  “What a surprise,” Silva said.

  In coffee shops, Agente Arnaldo Nunes always perused the menu from appetizers to desserts, and almost always ordered a cheeseburger and a guaraná.

  Arnaldo was an experienced man, considerably older than Hector, almost as old as Silva himself. He was a good cop, but his lack of formal education had blocked his advancement. The law required federal delegados to have a law degree from an accredited university and Arnaldo, having married young, could never find either the money or the time to get one. He was condemned to working out his time as a lowly agente. Silva had known him for over twenty years. They were comfortable with each other, despite the difference in rank.

  The waiter offered Silva a menu. Silva shook his head.

  “One cheeseburger, medium, and one guaraná. That’s it?” the waiter said, looking at each of them in turn.

  “That’s it,” Arnaldo said.

  “You got it.”

  The waiter turned on his heel, managed to look right past an aged couple trying to get his attention, and strolled off toward the kitchen.

  “The guy’s a real pro,” Arnaldo said, in mock admiration. “Those geezers coulda shot off rockets, and he wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.”

  He scanned the tables around them, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “We got a trace on the incoming phone call, the one from Edson Souza to the bishop. Turns out it originated right here in Cascatas, from the post office.”

  “Post office?”

  “It’s one of those places where you fill in a form and make a deposit. Then the operator sends you to a booth and places the call. After you finish, you go back and get your change.”

  “And nobody remembered the caller, I suppose?”

  “Nobody remembered. But I got these.”

  Arnaldo took a transparent envelope from his breast pocket.

  Silva examined the objects inside: Forms the post office used for requesting telephone calls.

  “Why didn’t you send them off to have them dusted for prints?”

  “I thought maybe you wanted to use that local guy. . . .”<
br />
  “Ferraz?”

  “Yeah, Ferraz.”

  “No. We’ll do it ourselves. Send them to São Paulo. It’ll be quicker than going through Brasilia.”

  “Okay. I took the prints of the clerk for comparison. Same guy was on duty both times.”

  Silva held the bag closer to his nose and studied one of the forms. The name of the caller and number he’d called were filled in with a blue pen. The amount of the deposit, the cost of the call, and the amount of the balance were written in another hand, in black ink.

  “Souza is lefthanded,” Silva said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “The heel of his hand brushed over the wet ink while he was writing. Look here. See?”

  Arnaldo took the envelope. He was still studying it when his guaraná arrived. He put the envelope back in his pocket, took a sip, and said, “What’s next?”

  “Ferraz’s men know the town,” Silva said. “We don’t. As much as I hate it, I’m going to ask him to help.” He glanced at his watch. “He’s probably back from lunch by now. I’ll go over and have a talk with him.”

  “Want me to do it?”

  “No. He gave Hector the brush-off. He’d do the same to you. Hector says he’s a son of a bitch.” He briefly summed up what his nephew had learned about Ferraz and added what Father Angelo had told him.

  “Sounds like a real sweetheart,” Arnaldo said. He would have embellished his remark, but the waiter arrived with his cheeseburger. Arnaldo moved his drink aside and sat back in his chair while he was served. When the waiter had gone he opened the bun and made a face.

  “Medium, my ass,” he said, and probed the overcooked meat with his fork. “You want company? With Ferraz, I mean.”

  Silva shook his head. “You start checking available sources to see if we can’t get some information on this Souza. Credit cards, bank statements, utility bills, all the stuff that’s easier for us to get than it is for Ferraz.”

  “You think somebody who uses a post office telephone has a credit card?”

  “No, but maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe he didn’t have to use it. Maybe he decided to use it. Anyway, we have to go through the motions. Check the phone book.”

  “I already did. It’s thinner than the director’s dick and there’s no Edson Souza.”

  “Do you talk about me like that? And how do you know about the director’s dick, anyway?”

  “Only behind your back, and because the director has been fucking me ever since he got his appointment.”

  Arnaldo was referring to the current freeze on salary increases. Silva definitely didn’t want to get him started on that subject.

  “Hector’s on his way back from Presidente Vargas,” he said. “After I see Ferraz, I’m going to make some telephone calls and turn in early. Let’s all meet for breakfast. Here, at nine. I’ll leave him a note.”

  “Okay. Sure you don’t want to check out the nightlife?”

  Silva shook his head. When the opportunity arose, Arnaldo always asked the same question and he always got the same answer. But asking was part of their ritual.

  Arnaldo took a cautious bite of his cheeseburger and grimaced in disappointment. “You really want to have breakfast here? I’ll bet the cook in this place can’t even boil a fucking egg.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  FERRAZ’S SECRETARY WAS A uniformed policewoman in her mid-forties with a no-nonsense hairdo and an abrasive manner.

  “I already told you on the telephone, Chief Inspector. He’s in a very important meeting. He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Just tell him I’m here,” Silva said.

  She gave him a scornful look, picked up her telephone, and stabbed a button set into the base.

  “Chief Inspector Silva is here,” she said and then, after a moment, “Yes, here. He asked me to tell you.”

  She hung up. “You can wait,” she said.

  A table against the wall bore a pile of magazines—a half dozen dog-eared and outdated copies of Veja, three of Agricultor Moderno, and two of Gente—as well as a tattered copy of Diana Poli’s newspaper, Cidade de Cascatas.

  The headline on the front page caught his eye: ANOTHER HAM: THE FIFTH.

  Silva checked the date: Two days before the bishop had been shot. He picked it up and took a chair.

  The photo spread across the bottom half of the page made it clear that the headline didn’t refer to smoked pork. In Brazil the word ham, presunto, has a secondary and more sinister meaning. It’s giria—slang—for a murder victim who has been bound in a special way, ankles tied to wrists, so that the body takes on a form roughly resembling a ham, and then shot, execution style, with a single bullet to the back of the head.

  Making presuntos is a signature of a death squad, rogue policemen who take it upon themselves to thin out the ranks of the criminal population. It was an aberration in law enforcement, and as such, should have been immediately reported to the Federal Police. But no one had. Diana’s article was news to Silva.

  All five of the victims had been street kids, and all five had been murdered in exactly the same way, at a frequency of about one a month for the last four months.

  Silva muttered an obscenity and reread the story from beginning to end, absorbing the salient details. He had plenty of time to do it.

  Ferraz kept him waiting for a total of sixty-three minutes. No federal employee could have gotten away with it, but Ferraz reported to the State Secretary for Security, and Silva’s department had no power over him. In the interim the colonel received three other visitors.

  Two of them were together, a married couple in their sixties who arrived shortly after Silva did. The woman was carrying a toy dachshund with a collar that matched the necklace she was wearing. The gems on both the necklace and the collar could have been green tourmalines, but the man was using a gold Rolex watch, which led Silva to believe that he was looking at a dog that was draped with emeralds. Both the man and the woman were wearing jeans, designer jeans but still jeans, wealthy landowners by the look of them. Ferraz received them after a short wait.

  They stayed about twenty minutes and came out with smiles on their faces. Their host didn’t accompany them to the door.

  Another ten minutes went by and another visitor arrived. His uniform and badges of rank identified him as a major in the State Police. There was a thin scar high on his left cheekbone. A scabbard in black leather that matched his holster hung from the opposite side of his gunbelt. The bone handle of a knife protruded from the scabbard. He ignored Silva, nodded at the secretary, and went into Ferraz’s office without knocking. Ten minutes later, on his way out, he gave Silva the look that policemen generally reserve for felons, not colleagues.

  More time went by. Finally, the secretary’s telephone buzzed. “He’ll see you now,” she said, replacing the receiver. “Go on in.” She made no effort to open the door for him as she’d done for the couple.

  Silva stepped into a haze of cigar smoke and would have left the door ajar, but she came out from behind her desk and slammed it shut.

  The colonel didn’t waste any time on pleasantries. He didn’t offer Silva a hand. He didn’t even offer him a seat. Silva took one anyway.

  “Okay, Mario, now that you’ve made yourself at home, what can I do for you?”

  Ferraz said it with an insolent smile. The use of Silva’s first name without having such usage offered to him was a breach of etiquette bordering on insult.

  “Thanks, Colonel, for coming right to the point. I’m sure you’re a busy man and wouldn’t appreciate me wasting your time any more than I appreciate you wasting mine.”

  The smile faded. “Crap. If I’d shown up to see you without an appointment, wouldn’t you have kept me waiting?”

  “Not if I could help it. And I would have taken your call. You know what brings me here. I can hardly imagine you have anything more important on your agenda.”

  “What the fuck do you know about my agenda?”

  Silva
ignored the question. “How come you haven’t informed us about those street kids?”

  “What?”

  Ferraz seemed genuinely surprised.

  “The serial murders, Colonel. My business, as much as yours.”

  “Oh. That.”

  Ferraz made a dismissive gesture. “Paperwork,” he said. “I didn’t get around to it.”

  “The first one was four months ago, Colonel. Four months.”

  “I thought you were here because of the bishop.”

  “I am, or rather I was. Now there appear to be other matters that require my attention, notably serial murders, and the disappearance of the fazendeiro, Orlando Muniz.”

  “Junior,” Ferraz corrected him. “Orlando Muniz Junior. How did you find out about the death squad?”

  “From the newspaper in your waiting room. So you confirm it’s a death squad?”

  “Pretty damned obvious, isn’t it? But they’re only killing street kids, so who cares? It’s not like they’re knocking off honest citizens.”

  “It’s still serial murder.”

  “Look, if you want to waste your time, I’ll send you the paperwork, okay? I’ll try to have it waiting for you when you get back to Brasilia, which I hope is going to be real soon. What else do you want? I’m a busy man.”

  “Have your men made any progress in investigating what happened to the bishop?”

  Ferraz took another pull on his cigar and launched a jet of smoke toward the ceiling. “Nope,” he said. “But we don’t have to worry, because now we’ve got the Federal Police in town and if they can’t catch the bad guy, who can?”

  “You asked me what I wanted. I’m going to tell you. I want you to help me locate someone called Edson Souza.”

  The colonel blinked, obviously mystified. “Who?”

  “Edson Souza.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he might have information about the bishop’s murder.”

  “You got a description? A profession? Age?”

  Silva shook his head. “Only a name.”

  Ferraz puffed on his cigar. “So what makes you think—”

  “We talked to the bishop’s secretary. This Souza called Dom Felipe a few days before he was shot. They spoke about something so confidential that even the secretary doesn’t know what it was. Maybe it’s related.”