Blood of the Wicked

by Leighton Gage

  But Vicenza was much more than a pretty face. Early on, she’d realized that the career of a model, no matter how successful, was short. She started bringing books to her photo shoots, reading them while they were setting up the lights or when the other models were being made up. They were the kind of books most photographers and art directors had never read, much less any of the other girls. Marx, Spengler, Engels, Sartre, Camus—she read them all, and kept going back to the bookshops to buy more. While the other girls’ closets were stuffed with shoes and dresses, Vicenza’s were stacked with paperbacks. While the other girls spent their evenings in nightclubs and trendy restaurants, Vicenza took to staying at home, reading, and going to bed alone, by preference.

  She couldn’t discuss her books with any of the people she worked with, so she started studying at night. By the time she was twenty-three she’d earned a degree in social sciences from the University of Rio de Janeiro. At twenty-six, she was doing local coverage for the Rede Mundo affiliate in São Paulo. At twenty-eight she went national. And now, at thirty-three, she had her own show, could choose what she wanted to report on, and was a major force in shaping Brazilian public opinion. Everybody in government, from the President of the Republic on down, was leery of getting on her bad side.

  “I think she spotted me,” Silva said.

  “I think she did too. You ever meet her? In person, I mean.”

  Silva nodded. “In another age, she would have been locked up for being a communist. She and Pillar must see eye to eye. He probably invited her.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “She is that. She’s also abrasive as hell.”

  “Introduce me.”

  Silva nodded. “Okay,” he said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Vicenza came walking toward them, trailing a cameraman and a guy with a microphone boom.

  “Ah, Chief Inspector Silva. I heard you were in Cascatas.”

  “Is the camera running, Vicenza?”

  She answered him with a smile and another question.

  “Are you here to help with the breakup of this encampment?”

  Silva just stood and smiled. She repeated the question with exactly the same result. Their activity attracted the attention of other journalists. Some of them started walking toward them like cautious wolves inspecting new prey. Silva didn’t recognize any of them but there was a good chance that some of them would recognize him. He turned his back.

  “Okay,” Vicenza said, walking around Silva so that she could face him. “Take a break, guys.” The cameraman took the camera from his shoulder and slipped on a lens cap. The soundman lowered his microphone boom. Then the two of them wandered off in the direction of a blue truck with the Rede Mundo logotype.

  The other journalists watched them for a moment, then gravitated back to Pillar.

  Vicenza fished a cigarette out of her shoulder bag and lit it. She didn’t seem miffed by Silva’s unwillingness to play.

  “Shall we try again?” she said. “Off the record?”

  Hector cleared his throat.

  “Who’s this?” She flashed her long eyelashes.

  “Hector Costa, a delegado from the São Paulo office.”

  Hector smiled and took a step forward.

  “Ah. And your nephew, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Hector winced.

  “Well informed,” Silva said, “as usual.”

  Vicenza redirected her attention to Silva.

  “What brought you to Cascatas in the first place, Chief Inspector? Dom Felipe? The Poli woman? Young Muniz’s kidnapping?”

  “All of the above. What can you tell me about Muniz?”

  “Who’s the reporter here?” She had a slightly crooked incisor. The small defect served to enhance her smile.

  “Help us out, Vicenza. I’ll reciprocate.”

  She cocked her head and thought about it. “Okay. Who do you want to know about? The father or the son?”

  “The son.”

  “Nasty bastard, just as mean and greedy as his father. Thought the league was out to get him, and with good reason. They say he murdered a man by the name of Aurelio—”

  “I know about that.”

  “So he was paranoid. Always locked himself in at night and had a half a dozen capangas guarding the house. He’s got a manager who lives here on the property, name of Santos. They were supposed to meet for a late breakfast.”

  “Where?”

  “At the casa grande, Muniz’s house. Santos showed up on time, but Muniz wasn’t there. Neither were any of his bodyguards. The cook and the maid were, but they don’t sleep in the house. They’ve got their own little cottage just on the other side of that hill. They arrived to find the front door and the door to his bedroom smashed and no sign of their boss.”

  “What time was that?”

  “A little after eight.”

  “Aside from the broken doors, and the fact that Muniz missed his appointment, was there anything else that induced them to suspect foul play?”

  Vicenza smiled. “Foul play? Foul play? Do cops really talk like that?”

  “I’m a cop and that’s the way I talk. Answer my question.” Vicenza’s smile vanished.

  “Please.”

  The smile came back.

  “That’s better, Chief Inspector. Be nice. Muniz’s car and van were still in the garage. Both are blindados, teflon in the doors, windows two centimeters thick and bulletproof. He never traveled in anything else.”

  “Was he married?”

  She immediately caught the past tense. “Why do you say ‘was’?”

  “I’ll tell you in a moment. Was he married?”

  She nodded. “And he’s got two kids. They spend most of their time in Rio. The wife is a socialite. A spoiled bitch, addicted to dinner parties laced with caviar, champagne, and foie gras. If she spends more than a week living on the fazen-da she gets claustrophobic.”

  “Claustrophobic? How big is this place?”

  “About half the size of Denmark.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “Jesus. How about their kids?”

  “She keeps them with her. Says they can’t get a decent education in Cascatas. She’s got them in the American School in Rio.”

  “Muniz’s paranoia—the fact that he surrounded himself with hired guns—was that because he feared reprisal for Azevedo?”

  “Not only that. He had another reason.”

  “Which was?”

  “This isn’t the first time the league has made a grab for some of his property. They tried it about fourteen months ago. Muniz got the State Police to help him evict them. A couple of people were killed, including a seven-year-old girl. The league blames him for that, too.”

  “I remember reading about the girl. She caught a stray bullet.”

  “That’s what Colonel Ferraz says. The league people tell a different story. They claim Muniz shot her on purpose, just to make a point.”

  “Why didn’t the league people bring charges?”

  “They tried, but the local judge is a friend of the Munizes,’ some crook by the name of Wilson Cunha. He threw them out of court.”

  “The Azevedo thing, was that before or after?”

  “Before and after. Azevedo was the guy who led the invasion of the property, and he was the guy who tried to press charges for the murder of the little girl. Junior started getting threats. That’s when he started locking his doors and, some say, laying plans to make an example of Azevedo.”

  “What’s your best guess about who’s responsible for Junior’s disappearance?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Chief Inspector. He disappears one night, and they invade his fazenda the next. What do you need? A road map? It had to be the league. Who else? Your turn now, and I hope it’s good.”

  “Oh, it is, Vicenza, it is.”

  Silva looked around and leaned closer. Her perfume had a faint lemony scent. “It’s not a kidnapping anymore. Muniz
is dead. They found his body, on a hill, about two kilometers down that road. His old man just arrived and he’s already up there.”

  She threw her cigarette to the ground and crushed it under one of her black pumps. She’d only taken one puff on it, the one to get it lit.

  “A pleasure doing business with you, Chief Inspector. We’ll catch up later.” Then, with a sideways glance at the competition, she started strolling toward the blue truck as if she was disengaging herself from a fruitless conversation.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ARNALDO DIDN’T THINK It would be a good idea to take a rental car into a favela, so he took it back to the hotel and left it in the garage under the building. Then he found a place under the shadow of a jacaranda tree and looked up and down the dusty, deserted street. There was no sign of a taxi. He was thinking about going back inside and asking them to call one when a white-haired lady, trailing a poodle of the same color, came out of a neighboring apartment building. While the dog sniffed at Arnaldo’s crotch, and they both tried to ignore it, the lady directed him to the nearest taxi stand.

  It turned out to be a three-minute walk away, on a parallel street called the Rua Tiradentes, and consisted of a telephone box bolted to a lamppost. A yellow Volkswagen Beetle with both doors open was parked along the curb. The passenger’s seat, the one next to the driver, had been removed to facilitate access.

  “We’re going to a favela called Consolação,” Arnaldo said, folding his considerable bulk into the back and slamming the door on the passenger’s side.

  The driver, who’d been fanning himself with a magazine while leafing through another, turned around and stared at him. He was a black man with a day’s growth of white beard and a bald head. “No, we’re not,” he said. “Not me. Those people will slit your throat for a few reais.”

  Arnaldo took out his badge and flashed it. “Consolação,” he said, “or the nearest police station.”

  “Merda,” the driver said, but he slammed his door, started the engine, and pushed down the flag.

  “Isn’t this thing air conditioned?” Arnaldo asked.

  “No,” the driver said. “Why don’t I bring you over to the cab stand near the bus station? You can get an especial with air conditioning and the whole bit. You’ll be a lot more comfortable.”

  “Forget it. Get moving.”

  “No charge. I’ll take you for free.”

  “Get moving, I said. Now, listen up. When we get there you’re going to help me find a woman—”

  “Look, senhor, if all you want is a whore I can—”

  “Shut up and drive. I was talking.”

  WHAT PASSED for the favela’s main street was an unpaved alleyway lined with shacks built of scrap lumber. Every now and then a narrower alleyway branched off to the left or to the right. There was no room for the driver to maneuver, no way for him to avoid the water-filled potholes, any one of which might have been deep enough to engulf one of his wheels. He bounced ahead slowly, cursing under his breath.

  “Stop next to that woman,” Arnaldo said. “We’ll try her first.”

  The woman in question was carrying a blue plastic washtub on her head and picking her way through the garbage that lined the street. The windows in the back of the cab didn’t open, so Arnaldo had to lean over the driver’s left shoulder to talk to her.

  “Senhora?”

  She stopped and gave him a wide, curious smile.

  “I’m looking for a woman who has a son named Edson Souza.”

  “Sorry,” she said, “I don’t know her.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Senhor?”

  Arnaldo leaned forward hopefully.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t go driving around this neighborhood.”

  “You see?” the taxi driver said as they pulled away. “Now you heard it from somebody else, and she lives here, for Christ’s sake. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Keep going.”

  They came next to a group of five youths standing in a circle.

  “Stop here.”

  “Senhor, for the love of—”

  “Stop, I said.”

  The driver stopped and looked down, writing something on a clipboard, avoiding the five pairs of eyes.

  The youngest kid was about thirteen, the oldest maybe seventeen. They were all dressed in clothes that looked several sizes too big for them, and they all had shaved heads. Arnaldo was reminded of the school of barracudas he’d once seen while scuba diving. He’d been about thirty meters down, on the wreck of the old Principe de Asturias, just off the north coast of Ilha Bela. The damned fish had looked at him then just like the kids were looking at him now, as if they were deciding whether it would be safe to flash in and take a bite.

  “What?” the oldest kid said.

  No greeting, no smile, just the single word. Arnaldo asked the same question he’d asked of the woman with the washtub.

  “What’s it worth to you?” the kid asked.

  “Five reais.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Ten.”

  “Let’s see the ten.”

  Arnaldo fished out his wallet. Probably a mistake, he thought. The wallet was fat with the money he’d taken from the ATM. He held it low, so that the kids couldn’t see into it, and took out a ten-real note.

  The kid stuck out his hand.

  “First the information,” Arnaldo said.

  The kid snarled, then pointed up the street. “You see the house with the blue plywood?”

  Arnaldo squinted through the windshield. “Yeah.”

  “That’s it. Give me the ten.”

  Arnaldo did, and the kid turned his back on him. It was a sign for the rest of the school. They all turned their backs on him, too.

  Without being told, the driver crept forward again, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror.

  “Meninos da rua,” he said. Street kids. He sounded frightened.

  He stopped at a shack that had a piece of blue plywood patching a hole to the right of the entrance. Entrance, not door. A piece of rotting canvas hung down to close the opening.

  “Keys,” Arnaldo said.

  “What?”

  “Shut off the engine and give me your keys.”

  “That’s not necessary, senhor. I’ll be right here, waiting for you when you come out.”

  “Sure you will. And the Tooth Fairy exists. Keys.”

  The driver sighed, turned off the engine, and handed them over.

  A little too easily, Arnaldo thought. “You have a set of spares?”

  “No, senhor, no spares.”

  “Okay, get out.”

  “Why, senhor?”

  “Don’t argue, just do it.”

  When he did, Arnaldo told him to go around to the back of the car, remove the distributor cap and take out the rotor.

  The driver’s eyes rounded in fear. He ran a hand over his bald pate.

  So he did have another set of keys. “I won’t be long,” Arnaldo said, pocketing the rotor. “Anybody gives you any trouble, just yell.”

  “There are five of them, senhor. Five.”

  “And I’m carrying a pistol with ten rounds in the magazine. Ten. If they come over here, tell them I’m a cop. It will save me the trouble, and I can start shooting right away.”

  “Please, senhor, I don’t want any trouble. I have a wife. Three children. You don’t know those kids, they—”

  “I know kids like them. And, yeah, I know that at least a couple of them are carrying.”

  “Carrying, senhor?”

  “Certainly knives. Maybe a gun or two.”

  “Senhor, for the love of God—”

  “Okay, okay, come with me. Stand in the doorway and keep an eye on your car. If they touch it, tell me.”

  With a furtive glance at the kids, the driver nodded, and followed.

  Arnaldo didn’t know what the protocol was when it came to canvas curtains instead of doors. He tried clapping his hands.

  It worked. A moment la
ter, the canvas was swept aside, and he was looking into the mistrusting eyes of an old mulatto woman. She had what might have been a piece of firewood in one hand. Or it might have been a club. She stared at him without speaking.

  “I’m looking for the mother of Edson Souza.”

  “Not here.”

  When she opened her mouth he could see she was toothless.

  “Souza’s mother doesn’t live here?”

  “Not here,” the woman repeated, smacking her gums. And then added, grudgingly, “She’s working.”

  He’d come to the right place. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” the woman said.

  He showed her his warrant card. She squinted at it.

  “Can you read?”

  “No,” she said.

  He showed her his badge. “Federal Police.”

  She drew back slightly and took in a breath. “Didn’t do anything,” she said.

  He was beginning to think she wasn’t quite right in the head. “I didn’t say you did. Can I come in?”

  She stepped out of the opening, pulling the canvas aside as she did so.

  Inside, the shack smelled of lamp oil, sweat, and human excrement. Arnaldo remembered that places like these didn’t have toilets. They dug holes in a corner and used that, covering the holes with boards, sometimes sprinkling lime if they could afford it. They’d fetch their water from a communal spigot. Electricity, if any, would come from an illegal tap.

  There were no windows. In the dim light, he could make out that the interior was nothing more than one small room. Three children, the oldest about six or seven, and the youngest no more than two, lay entangled on the bed like a litter of cats. The bed was made of jute coffee bags, sewn together and stuffed with something. There was a single three-legged stool, and there were three wooden crates, but no other furniture. One of the crates supported a small black-and-white television set with a rabbit-ear antenna.