Blood of the Wicked

by Leighton Gage

  “I don’t have to listen to any more of this.”

  “It’s a simple question, Padre. Answer it.”

  “Of course he didn’t. Why would he?”

  “Maybe to help you conceal the fact that you’re a pedophile?”

  “A pedophile? Me, a pedophile?”

  “Well? Aren’t you?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “No? He says you are.”

  “Him? That vagabond? You’d take the word of a whore and thief over that of a consecrated priest?” Gaspar’s chin went up, and his back straightened. A little smile creased the corner of his mouth. “You haven’t any proof, have you? Of course not! How could you? There isn’t any to get. Euclides, show these people out.”

  Silva made a final attempt. “Look, Padre, you know what you did. So do we. Why don’t you just make it easy on all of us and confess?”

  Father Gaspar picked up his pen, put the glasses back on his nose, and went back to his papers.

  Silva turned on his heel and walked out of the priest’s study, followed by Edson and Hector. When they passed through the front door, Euclides slammed it behind them.

  Silva took out his cell phone, searched his pockets for the number Father Angelo had given him, and made good on his promise to update the old priest on the results of his interview with Gaspar.

  Chapter Forty-four

  ARNALDO WAS NOT PLEASED when Silva told him why he’d wanted the rental car.

  “Why can’t we just send him by bus, like we did his mother?”

  “Too risky,” Silva said. “By now, Ferraz knows she’s gone. He’ll be checking the buses, looking for the kid. And we can’t use one of our own cars because the colonel already knows what they look like.”

  Silva’s cell phone chose that moment to ring.

  “Wipe that smile off your face, you little punk,” Arnaldo said to Edson. The kid had been looking back and forth between Silva and Arnaldo like he’d been watching a tennis match.

  “Fuck you,” the kid said.

  Silva pulled the phone out of his pocket, wishing the damned thing had a caller ID. He pushed the call button.

  “Mario?”

  It was the director. Again.

  “I’ve got to take this call,” he said, putting a hand over the mouthpiece.

  Arnaldo snorted, grasped Edson’s shoulder, and propelled him out of the room.

  “Hey,” the kid said, “keep your paws to yourself, you big gorilla.”

  “Cut the crap,” Silva called after them.

  “What the hell do you mean, ‘cut the crap’?”

  “Sorry, Director, that wasn’t meant for you.”

  “I should hope not. What’s this business about somebody offing a priest? What did this Brouwer guy have to do with what happened to the bishop?”

  “As far as I know, nothing at all. I don’t think the killings are connected. How, may I ask, did you find out about Brouwer?”

  “Not from you, that’s for damn sure. On the news. Ana heard it.”

  Ana. Silva liked the director’s secretary, but sometimes . . .

  “Has it occurred to you, Mario, that ever since you arrived things have been getting worse?”

  “I take exception to that remark, Director.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you take exception to. Are you one iota closer to solving the bishop’s murder?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. He’s a pedophile and—”

  “Whoa. Slow down. The bishop was a pedophile?”

  “No. The man who killed him is. Well, actually it wasn’t the man himself, but this manservant of his who—”

  The director, interrupting, cut right to the chase. He wasn’t a man who cared about details, no matter how juicy they might be.

  “Can you prove it?” he said.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “What do you mean by not yet?”

  “Well, we’ve got a witness—”

  “To the killing?”

  “Not to the killing, to the pedophilia. He’s a street kid—”

  “A street kid? And he’s going to testify against a pedophile?”

  “Yes, except that the pedophile is a priest and—”

  “A priest? Did he confess?”

  “No. He denies everything. But I’m sure he did it, as sure as I’ve ever been of anything in my life.”

  In a moment of silence, rare for him, the director reflected. Then he softened a bit. Not much, but a bit. “Well, I suppose we’re better off today than we were yesterday. Wrap it up, Mario, wrap it up.”

  And, although he didn’t wait for Silva’s reply, he actually went to the trouble of saying goodbye.

  Just before the handset hit the cradle, Silva heard him bellowing for the long-suffering Ana.

  Chapter Forty-five

  ORLANDO MUNIZ WAS POURING what he’d planned to be his last whiskey of the evening when the telephone rang. He kept on pouring and let one of his bodyguards pick it up.

  “It’s Colonel Ferraz, senhor.”

  Muniz picked up his glass with one hand and the wireless telephone with the other.

  “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

  “It’s about that priest, Brouwer.” Ferraz sounded worried. Strange. The colonel hadn’t struck him as someone who worried easily.

  “What about him, Colonel? You, yourself, said he was harmless.”

  “More than ever. Somebody killed him.”

  Muniz took a sip of his drink and swished the whiskey around in his mouth.

  “You hear what I just said?”

  Muniz swallowed. “Yes, Colonel, I heard what you said. Brouwer is dead. I’m delighted to hear it. Good riddance.” Muniz took another sip. The whiskey in his glass was almost gone. Maybe he’d have just one more before he went to bed.

  “Good riddance, yeah. But there’s a problem. Angelo thinks we had something to do with it.”

  “Angelo?”

  “Father Angelo. The old guy who lived with Brouwer.”

  “Thinks we had something to do with it? We? As in you and me?”

  “Yeah,” the colonel said again.

  “And you think we should be concerned about that? Really, Colonel, I’m surprised at you. That priest, if he’s the one I’m thinking of, is a weak old man. He must be pushing ninety.”

  “It doesn’t take any strength to pull a trigger. He’s got a gun.”

  “He said that? He said he had a gun?”

  “He did. And he said he was going to use it on both of us.”

  “I’d like to see him try. I really would. The old bastard is just blowing off steam, that’s all.”

  “You think so, huh? Well, I hope to hell you’re right.”

  There was a newfound insolence in the colonel’s voice. Muniz didn’t like it.

  He decided he’d definitely drink one more whiskey.

  Chapter Forty-six

  EMERSON FERRAZ TURNED A cold stare on his deputy.

  A sheepish expression came over Palmas’s face, and he looked down at the handcuffs shackling his wrists.

  The fact that he let the old bastard get the drop on me, Ferraz thought, is something I’m never going to let him forget. Never.

  The old bastard in question, Father Angelo Monteiro, had been standing out of sight, and just to the right of Colonel Ferraz’s front door, when Palmas rang the bell. So the only person Ferraz had seen through the peephole was Palmas, and Palmas was one of the few people, maybe the only person, for whom Emerson Ferraz would have opened his door without having been given a damned good reason first. So he had opened the door and now here he sat, in his own house, wearing a pair of his own handcuffs, with his ankles firmly bound to the chair he was sitting in.

  Palmas was in another chair, and he was even worse off. Father Angelo had forced Ferraz to run a long length of clothesline around and around Palmas’s chest and to fasten him firmly to the backrest. When he was finished, the old man made Ferraz stuff one of his own handkerchiefs into Palmas’s mout
h. Finally, he was instructed to tie a second handkerchief around Palmas’s head, and over his lips, to make sure the first one stayed in place.

  Ferraz, in his fury, had made the second handkerchief a good deal tighter than it had to be. He could see that Palmas was feeling the pinch. Well fuck him. He deserves it.

  The gun Father Angelo was holding looked like an antique. It was a military revolver of some kind. There was a ring on the butt that you could hook a lanyard to, and the thing had a huge bore. The old piece of hardware seemed to be well-oiled, but a lot of the bluing had worn off. If the priest really knew what he was doing, he would have exchanged it for one of the more modern weapons Ferraz had in the house but the old goat hadn’t thought of that. He obviously felt he was doing just fine with what he had.

  And the thing that really pissed Emerson Ferraz off was that the priest was right. He was doing just fine. There wasn’t a damn thing that Ferraz, or his deputy, could do to put him in his place which, as far as Ferraz was concerned, was two meters underground. The colonel was immobilized and angry but he wasn’t afraid. Not much, anyway. He didn’t think the old man would shoot him on purpose. The trouble was that the antique firearm was fully cocked. The damn thing could go off anytime, doing just as much damage as if the priest had meant to shoot him in the first place. With that in mind, the colonel had decided that his only recourse was to do the old bastard’s bidding and be patient until he went away. But once he does . . . once it’s all over, I’m going to find him, and I’m going to hurt him really, really bad before I kill him.

  “You did well, Colonel,” Father Angelo said.

  “I don’t get it. If you’re going after Muniz, why did you tell me to warn him?”

  “That needn’t concern you, Colonel. Now there’s just one more thing I want you to do for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to hold that telephone handset up to your ear again so that you can make another call. Just one, and then we’re done. A little more than half an hour after you’ve made that call, I’ll be gone.

  “Who is it this time?”

  “You’ll be talking to one of your men, and you’ll tell him exactly what I say. No tricks now, Colonel. Don’t even think of trying to summon assistance. If you say one wrong word, I assure you that I will shoot.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  SILVA KNOCKED OVER A glass of water when he reached out for the phone. Fortunately, most of the liquid wound up on the hotel’s carpet, not in his bed.

  “That Chief Inspector Silva?” someone lisped.

  Silva raised himself to a sitting position and glanced at the numbers on the face of the digital clock. It was 2:14 in the morning.

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Sergeant Menezes.”

  Silva turned on the bedside lamp. “Who?”

  “Sergeant Menezes. State Police. I took you up to the body of Muniz Junior, remember?”

  It was that fat sergeant with the gap between his teeth, the one who’d gone up the hill puffing like a steam engine.

  “I remember. What is it, Sergeant?”

  “You know that priest, Gaspar?”

  Some of the water was still dripping off the surface of the table. Silva looked around for something to mop it up and settled on the terrycloth bathrobe he’d draped over the back of a chair. The telephone cord was just long enough for him to reach it.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Silva sat down again, the robe still in his hand.

  “What?”

  “Dead. Shot his manservant and then killed himself. Colonel says you better get over here.”

  * * *

  “OKAY, YOU old bastard,” Colonel Ferraz said. “You talked about half an hour. Well, it’s been half an hour. What are you waiting for? When the hell are you going to let us loose and get out of here?”

  “I told you I’d leave, Colonel,” Father Angelo said. “I don’t recall having said anything about letting you loose.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Let’s return to that subject in a moment, shall we?” The priest lifted the sleeve of his cassock and consulted his cheap plastic watch. “Moreover, it’s only been twenty-seven minutes since you made the call.”

  He took another puff on the cigarette dangling from his lips, removed it from his mouth, and extinguished it in an overflowing ashtray.

  “But twenty-seven minutes might well be long enough. Let’s see.”

  He took out a pack of cigarettes, but instead of a smoke, he removed a small piece of paper he’d inserted between the pack and the outer wrapper. His reading glasses were inside some kind of a pocket accessible through the neck of his cassock. He fished them out, put them on his nose, and pulled the telephone toward him. Consulting the paper, he dialed a number. While it was ringing, he put a finger to his lips enjoining Ferraz to silence.

  The colonel heard a faint click as someone picked up the receiver.

  “I know it’s terribly late,” Father Angelo said, “but might I speak to Father Gaspar?” Then, after a short pause, “Father Angelo Monteiro. And you?” Another short pause. “Oh, hello, Sergeant. What in the world are you doing there?”

  Ferraz couldn’t hear a word of the other end of the conversation, but the man who Angelo had addressed as “Sergeant” went on talking for quite some time. When next the old priest spoke, his voice conveyed concern. “That’s terrible. Just terrible. But thank you, Sergeant, for telling me. I’ll pray for them both. Yes. And a good night to you, too.”

  He put the telephone back on the cradle, fished out another cigarette, and lit it.

  “Good work, Colonel. Your men are already there. I would imagine they’ve also called Silva by now.”

  “What the fuck have you done?”

  Father Angelo secured the cigarette with his lips, dangling it as he spoke. A fine rain of ash fell onto the lap of his black cassock.

  “Who killed Diana Poli and her roommate, Colonel? Was it you?”

  The question took Ferraz by surprise.

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” he said, sullenly.

  “No?”

  The priest picked up the revolver. It had been lying on the coffee table for the last twenty minutes and was still cocked.

  Ferraz watched him like a hawk.

  “So it was Palmas who killed both of them?” Father Angelo said, absently waving the muzzle of the antique weapon in the major’s direction.

  Palmas’s eyes bulged and he leaned aside.

  “Watch out for that thing,” Ferraz said. “Stop pointing it at people. It could go off.

  “Answer my question.”

  “Fuck you.”

  The explosion caught Ferraz by surprise. It was tremendously loud in the confined space of his dining room, seemed louder still because Ferraz hadn’t been expecting it. Major Palmas slumped in his chair. There was a spreading stain on the front of his uniform. The stain looked black in the dim light.

  “You see?” Angelo said, conversationally. “Just like me. Old, but it still works.” He didn’t seem to be in the least perturbed that he’d just shot a bullet into a man’s heart. He put the revolver down while he fished out, and lit, another cigarette. “Answer my question, Colonel. I really want to know. Was it him, or was it you? Who killed Diana Poli and her roommate?”

  For the first time since the priest invaded his home, Ferraz felt real fear. This was no longer the man he’d helped to string up all those years ago. This was a new Father Angelo Monteiro.

  “He did,” Ferraz said, inclining his head toward the body in the chair. “He killed Vicenza, too, and Pereira, and some of those people at the encampment. Not all. A couple of the other guys were shooting too. I wasn’t. I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Who were these ‘other guys’?”

  Ferraz gave him the names: Tenente Lacerda, Sargento Maya, Cabo Cajauba, and Soldado Prestes.

  Father Angelo took out a little notebook and
asked Ferraz to repeat the names. Then he said, “You, Palmas, and another four men. Is that it? Are those all of the men who compose your death squad?”

  Ferraz nodded.

  Father Angelo leaned forward and closed his hand around the grip of the revolver.

  “There are two more,” Ferraz said hastily. “Soldados Porto and Najas. They weren’t there that night. But they were there . . . other times.”

  Father Angelo made a note of those two names as well. Then he lit another cigarette with the still-burning butt of the one he’d been smoking. He crushed the butt into the ashtray.

  “And lastly, Colonel, we come to the subject of my friend, Anton Brouwer. Who killed him?”

  “Palmas.”

  “Come now, Colonel. There were cigar burns all over his body. Palmas didn’t smoke cigars, did he?”

  Ferraz didn’t answer. His eyes swiveled back and forth.

  “Did he?”

  Father Angelo lifted the revolver and aimed it at Ferraz’s heart.

  “No. Okay, I admit I burned him, but I didn’t kill him. Palmas did.”

  “Anton Brouwer was a good man, Colonel. You may find this hard to believe, but I think he would have forgiven you for what you did.”

  “Really?” There was a flicker of hope in Ferraz’s eyes.

  “Oh, yes—but unfortunately for you, I can’t.”

  He stood, walked to within a meter of Ferraz, and pointed the revolver at his face.

  “Wait,” the colonel said. “What are doing?”

  “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit—this.”

  And Father Angelo Monteiro put a bullet into Emerson Ferraz’s forehead.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  EVERY HOMICIDE IS DIFFERENT, but the circus surrounding every homicide is pretty much the same. The circus begins with the arrival of the first police car and ends with the removal of the corpse. It’s lit by flashing red and blue light, punctuated by the squawk of police radios, and isolated by yellow strips of crime-scene tape. The gatekeeper is almost always a grizzled veteran or an eager rookie.

  This time it was an eager rookie.