Perfect Hatred

by Leighton Gage

  “I can’t believe it,” he concluded. “I thought God was supposed to hate adulterers.”

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Janus intoned.

  Hector recognized the remark as sarcasm, but the sergeant took it at face value.

  “He sure as hell does,” he said. “Here I am alive, and that poor baby—”

  “Baby?” Hector said.

  Correia looked at Janus. “You didn’t tell him about the baby either?”

  “No,” Janus said. “Tell him.”

  “It didn’t fit,” the sergeant said.

  “What didn’t fit?” Hector said.

  “There was this woman, and she was pushing a carriage with a baby inside.”

  “Uh-huh. And?”

  “And the mother, she was dark. Almost like a mulata. But the kid wasn’t. The kid had really pale skin. Thinking back, I shoulda noticed there was something strange about it. But I didn’t. It only hit me afterwards.”

  A baby carriage made sense. A bomb large enough to do the damage this one had done might have been too big to conceal on a person. Putting it within a carriage could have been the bomber’s solution. And, if she was heartless enough, she might have used a child to complete her deception.

  Hector was revolted by the thought, but he had to ask. “A doll, maybe,” he said.

  “No. I’m telling you, it was a baby.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The sergeant threw up his arms in exasperation. “Of course, I’m sure. I leaned over and had a good look. My kids are in Rio, and I miss them. And I like kids anyway. This particular kid not only looked like a baby, it smelled like a baby. It was sound asleep, but it was no doll.”

  Hector ran a hand through his hair. “So what did you do?” he said.

  Correia frowned and blinked, as if he hadn’t understood the question. “Do?”

  “Yes. What did you do next?”

  The sergeant scratched his head, vigorously, as if he was trying to kick-start his memory. “I looked at the baby, and I smiled at the mother. I tried to start a conversation, but she wasn’t having it, so I walked away. That was all.”

  “Tell me more about her.”

  “What?” Correia pointed at one of his ears. “You gotta speak up. I can’t—”

  Hector raised his voice. “I said, tell me more about her.”

  “She was a Muslim.”

  “What made you think so?”

  “She was dressed like one, that’s what.”

  “Describe her. What did she have on?”

  “One of those headscarf things. And a … dress, I guess you’d call it. It went all the way down to the ground. There was no shape to it at all.”

  “What do you mean by ‘no shape’?”

  “It was loose. You couldn’t see what kind of a body she had. Why would a woman choose a dress like that? I mean, they usually want to show what they’ve got, right? Especially the young ones.”

  “And this was a young one?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Where was she standing?”

  “Behind the carriage.”

  “And where was the carriage?”

  Correia pointed at the crater.

  “Right there,” he said, “where that big hole is.”

  AFTER SPEAKING with the sergeant, Hector went in search of Danusa and found her talking to Lefkowitz, the Federal Police’s chief crime scene technician.

  “Listen to this,” she said and hooked a thumb toward her companion.

  Lefkowitz turned to Hector. “I talked to one of the consulate’s security guys,” he said. “There were two video cameras on top of the building.”

  Hector looked up at the façade. “Well, they’re not there now.”

  “Blown off,” the diminutive crime scene tech said, “but it didn’t affect the recordings.”

  His horn-rimmed glasses were slipping down his nose. He put a finger on the bridge and pushed them back into place.

  “Two of them, huh?” Hector said. “Both pointed this way?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Thank you, God, for small favors. Have you asked for copies of the tapes?”

  “They’re not tapes, they’re video disks. And copies are being made as we speak.”

  “You find anything down in that crater?”

  “I sure as hell did.”

  “What?”

  “Let me have a look at the recordings first. Then we’ll talk.”

  “I’m about to call the boss. He’ll want to assemble a task force. And I guarantee you that you’ll be on it. Keep your cell phone on.”

  “I never turn it off.”

  Hector withdrew to the alcove where sergeant Correia had been standing at the time of the explosion. There, somewhat sheltered from the noise, he took out his cell phone and called Chief Inspector Mario Silva at his office in Brasilia.

  Silva was the Federal Police’s Chief Investigator for Criminal Matters.

  And Hector’s uncle.

  “You heard?” he said when he had him on the line.

  “On the radio,” Silva said. “On my way to work. Information is still sketchy. How many dead?”

  “They’re still counting.”

  “I’ve already reserved the jet. I’m leaving now. I’ll swing by the house, pack a bag and go straight to the airport. I’ll be in your office by noon at the latest.”

  “Good. Who do you want on this?”

  “You, of course. Also Danusa, Lefkowitz, Mara and Babyface. I’ll bring Arnaldo.”

  Mara Carta was Hector’s Chief of Intelligence. Haraldo “Babyface” Gonçalves, so-called because he looked at least ten years younger than his chronological age, was one of the best investigators in the São Paulo field office. Arnaldo Nunes was Silva’s longtime sidekick. The Chief Inspector seldom went anywhere without him.

  Chapter Three

  AT FIVE MINUTES TO twelve, Nora heard sirens. Seconds later, a cheer erupted. She got to her feet and leaned over the security tape.

  About fifty meters away, Plínio Saldana, wind tousling his jet-black locks, was stepping out of a dark-blue SUV. Some claimed his hair was colored. Nora regarded such remarks as heresy.

  Plínio raised his hands over his head and clasped them together. The people close enough to see the gesture went wild.

  Plínio! Plínio! Plínio!

  Their cries set off the rest of the crowd. The sound was deafening. Nora’s heart swelled in her chest. To a rolling wave of cheers, the candidate began to move forward, approaching the podium on the far side of the walkway.

  That would put him a good three meters from her when he passed by. And, what was worse, at least half his entourage would be walking between them.

  Nora expressed her disappointment in an oath so coarse and in a voice so loud that several people across the corridor turned their heads to cast denigrating looks in her direction —and as swiftly looked away when Nora’s new friend joined in. The woman was almost as formidable as Nora herself, and the two together formed a front no one wanted to tangle with.

  Plínio passed them and climbed the steps. The two women stopped cursing and looked at each other.

  “He’ll walk on this side on the way back,” the woman said. “I just know he will.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Nora said and resumed her seat.

  She remained there throughout the preliminaries, but was on her feet again when Plínio stepped forward to speak.

  She’d heard it all before. So had her neighbor. So had most of the crowd. And, since they all knew what was coming, they were able to lift their brooms and wave them at just the right moments. Those moments, the high points of any speech Saldana made, were always when he attacked Governor Abbas, and when he talked about sweeping him, and his whole corrupt crew, from the corridors of power.

  Nora was inspired. She felt herself at one with the multitude.

  Mostly.

  Every now and then, however, some selfish filho da puta tried to shove his w
ay between her and the security tape.

  Woe befell those who did. Nora wasn’t a particularly tall woman, but she was stout, and many years of carrying heavy boxes of vegetables around Curitiba’s Municipal Market had made her strong. No other woman in the crowd would have been a match for her in a fight—and few men.

  She set her feet, as if bracing herself against a wind—and the wind would have to be a hurricane to dislodge her.

  But it wasn’t her physical strength alone that made her well-nigh invincible. She also had her broom. The handle was of peroba, and peroba, one of the hardest of all Brazilian woods, was so heavy it sank in water. Once, just as Plínio was launching into his peroration, she’d slammed it down on an interloper’s instep—and had the satisfaction of hearing him yelp.

  Too soon, the speech was over. The loudspeakers on the platform erupted into a recorded chorus of two hundred voices singing Entre os astros do Cruzeiro, accompanied by drum ruffles and trumpet flourishes. And to that, the music of his state’s anthem, a smiling, waving Plínio Saldana started for the stairs.

  As he descended the platform, Nora’s excitement climbed to fever pitch. She almost forgot she had to pee.

  And, yes, he chose her side of the walkway!

  Nora turned to tell her companion she’d been right, but the woman was gone, her position usurped by an apelike man, with hairy arms and a low forehead, holding an infant he was offering for a kiss. The infant, obviously his son or daughter, looked not unlike a small chimpanzee.

  Over the sound of the music, and from somewhere behind her, Nora could hear her ex-neighbor cursing a blue streak at having been forced out of her place. But it was every woman for herself now. There was nothing she could do to help her erstwhile friend.

  Plínio moved closer, shaking hands, smiling, accepting congratulations. An athletic brunette with a bouquet of flowers tried to invade from the left. Nora broomsticked her. The woman staggered back, dropping the flowers. Before she could recover, they were trampled underfoot.

  Nora was reaching out to Plínio when she felt, rather than saw, someone trying to displace her on the right.

  She butted with her shoulder, dug her elbow into the interloper’s ribs—and was nearly deafened by an explosion.

  He’d fired a gun centimeters from her right ear. She knew it was a gun because the bullet punched a round hole in Plínio’s forehead. His mouth opened in an “O” of surprise. A pistol appeared in the hand of one of his bodyguards.

  The people around her started to scream.

  Chapter Four

  THE TASK FORCE MET in the second floor conference room of the Federal Police building on the Rua Hugo D’Antola.

  Promptly at noon, Silva took a seat at the head of the long table, called them to order, and pointed at Lefkowitz. “Hector tells me you’ve got a video.”

  Lefkowitz nodded. “From the security cameras on the roof of the building.”

  He opened his notebook computer, waited until his colleagues had positioned themselves for a good view of the screen and clicked a button.

  The image was time-coded. He let it run for four or five seconds and froze it.

  “Right here,” he said, “we’re at two minutes prior to the detonation.” He tapped the screen. “I draw your special attention to the individual behind the baby carriage.”

  He let it run until the explosion took place and the image dissolved.

  “Too fast,” Mara said.

  “I’ve got another recording where I’ve doctored the image to slow it down,” Lefkowitz said. “We’ll look at that in a minute. But, right now, concentrate on what’s going on. A woman comes over and looks into the carriage. Then she looks up at the person behind it. Then she turns around, spots a cop, and goes over and talks to him. He’s walking toward the carriage when the explosion occurs. Here. Let’s look again.”

  He replayed the scene.

  “You’re tying yourself into knots,” Silva said, “not to refer to the individual behind the carriage as a woman. Would I be correct in assuming it was a man?”

  “Hell, Chief Inspector, you’re raining on my parade. That was going to be my big surprise.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because, down in the bomb crater, I found some of his body parts still wrapped in pieces of that outfit he was wearing.”

  “A hijab and abaya,” Danusa put in.

  “If that means a penis and a scrotum,” Lefkowitz said, “you’re right.”

  “I was referring to the outfit,” she said. “A hijab covers the head and neck. An abaya covers the rest of the body.”

  “Thanks for the lesson,” Lefkowitz said. “Hijab and abaya. Right. I’ll remember that. Anyway, a fragment of this particular abaya had part of his trunk, including his sexual organs, wrapped in it. The bomber was a male. No question.”

  “How about a hand?” Arnaldo asked. “Did you find one?”

  “You’re thinking fingerprints, right?”

  Arnaldo nodded.

  “In fact,” Lefkowitz went on, “we found two, one completely charred, but Gilda was able to get three partials off the other one.”

  Gilda, a pathologist and Hector’s fiancé, was São Paulo’s Deputy Chief Medical Examiner.

  “Put a priority on running them through the database and get copies to the neighbors and the Americans,” Silva said.

  “Will do,” Mara said.

  That sort of thing fell into her realm of responsibility.

  “How come you’re so sure the bomb was in the carriage?”

  “I’ll show you,” Lefkowitz said.

  He changed the disk and played the last two seconds of the previous scene in extreme slow motion. The quality of the image was poor, but it was clear the carriage had been at the epicenter of the blast.

  “Why did he put the bomb in the carriage?” Gonçalves asked. “Why not simply strap it on? Isn’t that what they normally do?”

  “I don’t know about normally,” Lefkowitz said. “This is a first for me, but this was a bulky and heavy piece of ordinance. The explosive was seeded with stuff from a hardware store, bolts, nuts and washers, all of it designed to act as shrapnel. That, and the sheer amount of explosive, plus the battery, and the detonators, would have made it a heavy proposition to carry.”

  “And yet,” Silva said, “using a carriage without a baby would have been risky. What did he use instead? A doll?”

  “Not a doll,” Hector said.

  Silva narrowed his eyes. “What?” he said.

  Hector related what the sergeant had told him and added, “The cop we saw approaching the carriage at the time of the explosion, and the woman who appeared to have tipped him off, were both killed, so we’ll never really know. But our assumption is that the difference in skin coloration between the bomber and the child aroused her suspicion.”

  “I cannot imagine,” Silva said, with steel in his voice, “that any mother would willingly sacrifice her own baby for something like this.”

  “No,” Danusa said. “We don’t either. We’re operating under the assumption the child was kidnapped.”

  “Any reports of missing babies filed with the Civil Police?”

  Mara shook her head.

  “Not yet,” she said, “but we have a flag on it.”

  “Do we have a freeze frame of the bomber’s face?”

  “We do,” Lefkowitz said.

  He opened an envelope and distributed prints.

  “Get a half-dozen of these over to Janus Prado,” Silva said. “If someone reports a missing baby, they’ll need them to show.”

  “He has them already,” Hector said.

  “This kid,” Arnaldo said, studying the face of the bomber, “looks even younger than a certain colleague of ours.”

  “Don’t think for a moment,” Gonçalves said, “that I didn’t recognize that as a veiled reference to my appearance.”

  “No way,” Arnaldo said.

  “Way,” Gonçalves said, “and I gotta say the constant
humor at my expense is getting rather thin.”

  “On the contrary,” Arnaldo said. “I continue to regard it as a thick vein with a great deal more to be mined.”

  “Don’t encourage him, Haraldo,” Mara said to Gonçalves. “You know how he is.”

  Banter about Gonçalves’s youthful appearance was a constant in the São Paulo field office, and Arnaldo, on his frequent visits, always contributed to it. There were even those, Gonçalves himself being one, who believed that Arnaldo had started it all in the first place.

  Silva, however, seldom joined-in. He turned to Danusa. “You’re the one who knows the most about this stuff. The bomber, would you typify him as unusually young?”

  “Maybe a little,” she said, “but, statistically, more than eighty percent of suicide bombers are under twenty-four.”

  “How do they do it?” Mara asked. “How do they convince a young man, with his whole life before him, to sacrifice himself?”

  “Like the Nazis did,” Danusa said, “enlist them when they’re young and brainwash them. For all the praise they heap upon them, they really regard the kids as fodder, no more than dupes to the leadership and the cause. The real criminals are the ones who twist their minds.”

  “How about the explosive?” Silva asked. “Any taggants?”

  “Yes,” Lefkowitz said. “And we’ll know more within a few hours.”

  “Anyone take credit?”

  Mara shook her head. “Not yet,” she said.

  Silva looked at Danusa. “Your Arabic? Is it still fluent?”

  “It is,” she said. “I keep it up.”

  “Then I want you to take that photo and go around to the mosques and madrasas here in São Paulo. See if anyone recognizes him. Mara?”

  “Chief Inspector?”