“Where are the monitors?”
“Come around to this side.”
Silva stepped behind the desk. Below the level of the surface, out of the sight of visitors, was a bank of small computer screens. Sharply-defined peaks were springing into existence on one side of each and trailing-off to disappear on the other. Above the pulsing green tracings, and in the same color, there were numbers. Some changed as he watched.
“Vital signs,” she said, and then pointed them out, “heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure.”
“Was Senhor Cambria hooked up to one of these?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“We don’t have enough units for everyone. His wound wasn’t serious. We had other priorities for the equipment.”
“What kind of priorities?”
“Patients over sixty, or those with special problems. Senhor Cambria didn’t fall into either category.”
“You keep a list of visitors?” Arnaldo asked.
“No,” she said.
“Why not?”
“We do that in intensive care, and in maternity, where it’s necessary.”
“Meaning that here it isn’t?”
“Meaning exactly that.”
Her tone was getting sharper with each successive reply.
Once again, Silva stepped in, “How many patients on this floor?”
“Forty-two. Every room is occupied.”
“Forty-two,” Silva repeated. “That must generate a great deal of coming and going.”
“It does.”
“So you’d have a hard time remembering all the visitors.”
“It’s not my job to remember visitors.”
Silva betrayed no irritation, although he certainly felt it, and persisted: “But Nestor would have been different, right? He was a special patient. Somewhat of a celebrity. Someone whose visitors you’d be more likely to remember.”
“Yes,” she conceded, “he was. Senhor Cambria was a hero. Everyone saw him on television. Everyone. They kept playing the scenes over and over.”
“So who were they? Who came to visit him?”
She reflected for a moment, then said, “Well, his wife, of course. She was here this morning just after they brought him in. She said she’d be back after dinner.”
“Who else?”
“A gang of reporters.”
“Who else?”
“Stella Saldana, Plínio’s wife. She arrived with a whole entourage. They all trooped down to Senhor Cambria’s room. After a while, the others all came back and hung around here, waiting for her.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re saying Senhora Saldana remained alone in the room with Senhor Cambria?”
“That’s correct, but surely you’re not suggesting that she had anything to do with—”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Senhora. I’m just trying to get a feel for the timeline. How long did Senhora Saldana stay with Senhor Cambria?”
“Ten minutes? Fifteen? I really can’t be sure. I didn’t keep an eye on the clock.”
“But you don’t think it was more than fifteen minutes?”
“Probably less.”
“At about what time did she leave?”
“Shortly before you arrived. When the visiting hours ended.”
The elevator door opened, and a man in a uniform stepped out.
“Just one more question, Senhora,” Silva said. “How many of those reporters were there?”
“Seventeen,” the newcomer said, injecting himself into the conversation, “most of them idiots.”
He was a slim young man, about a hand’s breadth shorter than Arnaldo, with a mole on his left cheek and intelligent gray eyes.
Silva turned to face him. “What makes you say that?”
“They kept asking him how it felt. How it felt to be shot. How it felt to lose a friend. How it felt to kill a man. They weren’t really after answers, just sound bites and visuals. The newspaper people were the only ones who asked intelligent questions. And there were damned few.”
“Newspaper people or intelligent questions?”
“Both.”
“Sounds like you were there,” Arnaldo said.
“I was. Bunch of ghouls. Hell, how did they expect him to feel when a friend was murdered? A friend he was supposed to be protecting? And right in front of him too. I’m Raul Sintra, by the way, Head of Security here at Santa Cruz. Who are you?”
Silva showed his gold Chief Inspector’s badge. Sintra looked suitably impressed.
“And this is?”
“Agent Nunes,” Arnaldo answered for himself.
“Did I understand you to say Saldana and Nestor were friends?” Silva said.
“Close friends, ever since they were in law school. Didn’t you know?”
Silva shook his head.
“Tell me this, Senhor Sintra, did you ask for credentials from all those reporters?”
“No. I didn’t deem it necessary.”
“Fair enough. Did you take their names?”
“Nope. I didn’t think that was necessary either. I just told them to assemble in the lobby, and we’d take the whole gang upstairs at once, which we did. My turn. What’s going on?”
Silva told him.
Sintra reddened with anger. “Murdered him?” he said. “Someone murdered him? On my watch?”
“I see you’re taking it personally.”
“Goddamned right I’m taking it personally. Nobody warned me his life was in danger. Nobody said so much as a goddamned word. If they had, I would have had people inside and outside his room. I would have had a camera installed in there.”
“You sound like you might have been a law-enforcement officer.”
“I was. I was a delegado with the Civil Police here in Curitiba.”
“And?”
Sintra’s jaw tightened. “I resigned.”
“Because?”
“Because I had a boss I couldn’t stomach.”
“Braulio Serpa?”
“Bingo.”
“Good. We can’t stomach him either.”
Sintra smiled. “You sound like my kind of people. What can I do to help?”
Silva pointed toward the elevator bank. “I spotted a security camera when we were coming up. How many have you got and how many actually work?”
“There are security cameras in every elevator in the building. They all work. And we record all the images and keep them for seventy-two hours.”
“Excellent. And the stairwells? Also covered?”
“Both stairwells. Ground floor only. And, before you ask, all the exits and entrances to the building.”
“And, if you’re on this floor, there’s no other way to leave other than via those elevators”—Silva pointed—“or the two stairwells?”
“Correct.”
“And the video recordings are date and time-stamped?”
“They are.”
“Excellent. I’d like you to go through the videos and make a photo of every person who used an elevator, or one of those stairwells, in the past hour. Will you do that for me?”
Sintra nodded. “Sure. No problem. Why only the past hour?”
“Senhor Cambria’s body is still warm. He hasn’t been dead for more than a few minutes. So, in the interest of speed, let’s start with that. We can always expand the envelope if we don’t come up with anything. Are your men trained to use firearms?”
“They’re all ex-cops, except for one who’s an ex-army NCO.”
“Do they carry?”
Sintra shook his head. “Not normally, but there’s a locker downstairs where I keep some weapons for emergencies.” He fished a notebook and a ballpoint pen out of his hip pocket. “You want me to cover the exits, right? Just in case he’s still in the building?”
“Exactly,” Silva said. “Two armed men on each of the exits, make a record of everyone who leaves, detain anyone who’s suspicious and carry out a complete search of the building
. Have you got enough staff to do all that?”
Sintra nodded.
“Enough on duty,” he said, “to cover the doors with two in reserve. I’ll call in people from home to do the search. What else?”
“You want me to call Serpa and get backup?”
“If that bastard’s in,” Sintra said, “I’m out.”
“Then he’s not in,” Silva said.
“Good,” Sintra said. “What else?”
Show the photos to the staff and the patients. See if there’s someone none of them recognizes.”
“Okay. Who do I call if I get a hit?”
“Me. Take this.”
Silva offered his card.
“The number for the phone I carry is on the back,” he said. “If Serpa shows up, don’t give it to him.”
Sintra flipped the card over to check the number.
“I can already see it’s going to be a pleasure to work with you, Chief Inspector,” he said.
Chapter Seven
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, JUST before ten, Hector got a call from São Paulo’s Head of Homicide.
“Late last night,” Janus began without preamble, “this salesman for a media company got back from a trip to Rio and found his wife dead in their apartment.”
“And this is significant because?” Hector asked.
“Because they had a baby, a son about four months old—and he’s missing.”
Hector grabbed his pen. “Name?” he said.
“Adnan Chehab.” Janus spelled it. “His wife was Carlotta with two Ts.”
“Chehab? What kind of a name is that?”
“Lebanese, I think. Anyway, the guy sells space in magazines, has a number of clients in Rio and goes there once a week. Yesterday morning, at around quarter past seven, he kissed his wife goodbye and left. When he got home, at ten that night, he found a bloodbath, and she was in the middle of it. Somebody cut her throat and left her body on the living room floor.”
“The father’s story check out?”
“He had ticket stubs for the shuttle. He met a colleague at Congonhas. They flew together. We called his business contacts, had a look at the passenger lists. He was in Rio all right.”
“Could he have killed her before he left?”
“The M.E. says he could have, but the first responders found him sitting on the floor, with her head in his lap, babbling like an idiot. If he was putting on a performance, they said, he deserves an Academy Award. So I don’t think it’s likely.”
“Yesterday, Lefkowitz told me he might be able to recover DNA from the baby. We’ll need a sample of the woman’s blood.”
“I’ll get one for you. But I’m not finished.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Chehab kept getting more and more hysterical, and the paramedics finally had to shoot him full of sedatives. But, before they did, my guys got him to take them around his apartment.”
“And?”
“And it wasn’t a robbery. Other than the kid, nothing was missing.”
“Nothing?”
“You’re about to ask me about a baby carriage, right?”
“I was, yes.”
“Like I said, nothing. The Chehabs’ carriage was still there, and they only had the one.”
“Where is Chehab now?”
“At the Sírio-Libanês Hospital. We won’t get any more access to him until sometime this afternoon, if that.”
“You have people there?”
“Two. Sitting just outside his room.”
“How about the Chehabs’ neighbors?”
“My guys held off until this morning before they did the canvassing. They wanted to do it at the same time of day the wife had her throat cut.”
“And?”
“They struck pay dirt. It’s a small building, only twenty-two apartments. A lady who lives on the floor above goes out every morning to buy fresh bread. Yesterday, Adnan joined her when she was going down in the elevator. He was off to Rio, he said. She wished him a pleasant trip and went to the padaria on the corner. It isn’t fifty meters from the front door of her building. When she got back a young guy, pushing a baby carriage, was talking to Chehab’s wife on the intercom.”
“Description?”
“Dark-skinned, she said. A middle-eastern type.”
“Your man show her a photograph of the bomber?”
“The damned fool wasn’t expecting to get lucky, so he didn’t have one with him. I chewed up one side of his ass and down the other. He’s on his way back as we speak, but I haven’t got much doubt about what she’s going to tell him. You?”
“No. Did she hear their exchange? Over the intercom?”
“Carlotta seemed to know him and had no qualms about buzzing him in, only that.”
“Did she introduce herself to him? Get a name?”
“They rode up together in the elevator, and she tried to initiate some friendly chit-chat, but he wouldn’t have it. His attitude put her nose out of joint. She thought he was rude.”
“Baby in the carriage?”
“No baby. The carriage was new. She thought the guy was delivering it.”
THE Centro Islamico, on the Avenida do Estado, was São Paulo’s oldest mosque and the one with the largest congregation. It was, therefore, the logical place for Danusa to initiate her inquires.
She was just arriving for her appointment with Sheikh Ahmad, the worship leader, when Hector called her cell phone and filled her in on the conversation with Janus Prado.
“With a name like that,” she said, “I think Janus is right about him being Lebanese. What’s the wife’s first name?”
“Carlotta.”
“Carlotta? That doesn’t fit.”
“I didn’t think so either.”
“Is the husband a practicing Muslim?”
“No idea.”
“I’ll ask the Sheikh about him. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
THE AGED cleric, a hunger-thin man with a kindly face and sad eyes, received her in his office.
“I must admit to a certain degree of curiosity about all this urgency,” he said. “I was to have spoken, this morning, at a school, and I hate to disappoint children.”
He’d used the word curiosity. What he really meant was irritation, but he was too polite to say it.
“I’m sorry,” Danusa said, “but when you know the facts, I think you’ll agree that there was no time to lose. Tell me, what percentage of the city’s Muslims worship here at the Centro Islamico?”
“Fifty percent … or thereabouts.”
“So it follows that you probably know half the Muslims in São Paulo?”
“Probably. We’re not a very large community.”
“Are you, by any chance, acquainted with a couple by the name of Chehab?”
“I know two couples named Chehab. Why all these questions?”
“The people I’m referring to are Adnan and Carlotta.”
“Adnan and Carlotta? Yes, I know them.”
“Are you aware that Carlotta recently gave birth?”
“Yes. God blessed them with a little boy. They named him Fadi. Again, why all these questions?”
The murder of Carlotta would be in the morning papers. There was no need for secrecy. Danusa told him.
The Sheikh’s mouth opened in surprise, and his eyes became even sadder. “What kind of a monster would do something like that?”
“That’s a question for psychiatrists,” Danusa said. “Our job is to identify the monster. You’ve heard about the bombing in front of the American Consulate?”
“Yes. A terrible thing.”
“More terrible, even, than the newspapers are letting on.”
She told him about the baby.
“And that baby … was Fadi?”
“We don’t know that for certain, but it’s a distinct possibility.”
The Sheikh looked at his hands. He was quiet for a long moment.
“And Adnan?” he said, looking up again. “What of him?”
<
br /> “He’s overwrought. He’s being treated at the Sírio-Libanês Hospital.”
The Sheikh began straightening the things on his desk. “I must go to him.”
Danusa shook her head. “He’s under heavy sedation, and he’s not being allowed any visits, even from the police.”
“Oh,” he said, becoming still. “Until when?”
“Sorry, I don’t know.”
“I shall call the hospital to check. And I shall pray for him. He’s a good man, who loved his wife and child very deeply. He will be heartbroken.”
“So you can’t see him using his baby for something like this?”
“Adnan Chehab? Never!” He accompanied his words with an emphatic shake of his head.
“No chance he could be involved with an extremist group?”
“Adnan’s positions against radicalism and violence are well-known. He is moderate in all things, extreme in none.”
“You’re sure?”
The Sheikh’s nod was equally emphatic.
“Ask anyone in the congregation. If Adnan hates anyone, it’s the people who bring our religion into disrepute by misinterpreting the word of God. Further proof of his tolerance, if any is required, is that he married a Christian.”
“Carlotta is a Christian?”
The Sheikh waved a finger in denial. “Carlotta was a Christian. She converted to Islam.”
“At his behest?”
“Certainly not. Of her own free will. Because she wanted to.”
Danusa showed him one of the photos. “Do you recognize this man?” she said.
He gave it only a cursory glance. “That’s a woman,” he said.
She shook her head. “Please look more closely.”
“Why? What—”
“Please. Just look. It’s a picture of the bomber, taken seconds before the explosion.”
The Sheikh pushed his spectacles above his hairline, accepted the photograph and brought it close to his nose. “Oh, God,” he said.
His eyes had become huge. Danusa felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck.
“You know him then?”
The Sheikh nodded. “I know him.”
“Who was he? What was his name?”
“Salem Nabulsi,” the Sheikh said, shaking his head as if to negate the thought.
“Salem?” Danusa said. “Salem?” She repeated it with more emphasis.
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