Perfect Hatred

by Leighton Gage

  “Braulio Serpa is a mendacious, despicable human being. He hasn’t got an honest bone in his body, and he’s Governor Abbas’s man to his fingertips. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t give credence to anything he said.”

  “But?”

  “He’s probably right. Anyone with half a brain would have been able to predict Stella would step in if anything happened to her husband. And also predict that, if she did, she’d win by a landslide. I can’t believe this, Mario. Ten days ago, Plínio, Stella, Nestor and I were all on top of the world, having the time of our lives. Now Plínio and Nestor are dead, and Stella and I are widows. I just can’t get my head around it. It’s a nightmare.”

  “I can’t imagine how painful it must be.”

  “Keep talking, Mario. It helps.”

  “Did Nestor tell you about our previous visit? The last time Arnaldo and I were here in Curitiba?”

  “Last summer? When you came to investigate those bank robberies?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded.

  “And did he tell you we had suspicions about Serpa being involved in the crimes?”

  She nodded again. “That too.”

  “Serpa obstructed our investigation at every turn. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to see us gone. And, when we finally caught up with the bank robbers, his men killed them. Resisting arrest, they said.”

  “Nestor told me. He also said Serpa couldn’t get you and Arnaldo out of Paraná fast enough.”

  “True. But this time, he claims, it’s different. This time, he’s offering complete cooperation.”

  “All he’s doing is taking care of number one. He knows he’ll be out on his ear as soon as Stella takes office, and that there won’t be a decent job for him in this country if he’s fired with Plínio’s unsolved murder still hanging over his head.”

  “He admitted as much.”

  “Not that he has to worry about getting another job anytime soon. He’s probably taken enough in bribes to set him up for the next twenty years. Still, if he’s willing to help.…”

  “I don’t want his help, Bruna.”

  “Why not? Why not accept any help you can get—no matter who it comes from?”

  “We have differing agendas, he and I. My concern is to find out who’s behind the murders.”

  “And his isn’t?”

  “Not if Governor Abbas had anything to do with it.”

  “And you think he did?”

  “I’m not excluding anyone at the moment.”

  “So you’re going to keep Braulio out of the loop?”

  “I am.”

  “He won’t like it.”

  “I don’t care whether he likes it or not.”

  Bruna smiled. It was a wan smile, but it was a smile nonetheless, the first since he’d arrived. “You never change, do you?” she said. “Have you formed any impressions up to now?”

  “It’s pretty obvious that Plínio’s was a contract killing. From what I’ve seen, it appears as if Nestor’s being wounded was … collateral damage, the killer trying to protect himself.”

  “That’s what the people who’ve seen the videos tell me: a contract killing and Cataldo shooting Nestor because Nestor shot him first.”

  “You didn’t watch any of the recordings?”

  “No. I couldn’t bear to. How about … what happened to Nestor in the hospital. Who could have done that? And why?”

  “I’m still clueless, I’m afraid.”

  “Any idea, as yet, about who might have given Cataldo the contract?”

  “No. But Serpa suggested someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Lúcio Saldana.”

  “Lúcio?” She looked surprised. “Plínio’s brother? Serpa can’t be serious.”

  “You don’t buy it?”

  “Lúcio is a nasty piece of work, just like his father, but he’s no killer. Forget Lúcio.”

  “All right. Let’s say we forget Lúcio and we forget Abbas—”

  She held up a hand. “Unless.…”

  “Unless what?”

  “How about if Plínio had the goods on Abbas? How about if he’d discovered something so bad it would destroy Abbas’s political career forever, not just set it back four or eight years? How about if it would send him to prison? Now, that would have been a reason for Abbas to kill him, no matter what the backlash might have been.”

  “A possibility. Here’s another one: a motive rooted in the past, maybe even in the distant past.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. An old grudge maybe?”

  Bruna thought for a moment and said, “There’s a man you could talk to, a man who knew them all back then.”

  “Before you did?”

  “Before. And, down through the years, he’s stayed in close touch with all of them.”

  “Who?”

  “Diogo Mariano. A professor they had in law school. Wait.”

  She stood up and left the room. While she was gone, her mother stuck her head in the door and repeated her offer of coffee. Again, Silva refused. She smiled and disappeared. A moment later, Bruna came back, carrying a piece of paper.

  “Diogo’s contact numbers,” she said. “He still works at the law school.”

  Silva put the paper in his pocket. “Thanks. Anything else that occurs to you?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure it’s relevant.”

  “Nevertheless, I’d like to hear it.”

  “Something was worrying him.”

  “Nestor? He never struck me as a worrier.”

  “That’s just the point. He wasn’t. He was, if anything, a fatalist. If something was going to happen, he’d say, it’s going to happen, and it doesn’t make sense to worry about it.”

  Silva nodded. “I can hear him saying it.”

  “Add to that the fact that Nestor never kept secrets. Not from me.”

  “Never?”

  “I take that back. There was one other time. But I wheedled the truth out of him. I would have done the same this time, if they hadn’t killed him.”

  “What was it the last time?”

  “You remember when we were living in Foz do Iguaçu, just before he resigned from the Federal Police?”

  “I do.”

  “He was threatened by a man in Paraguay, a smuggler who told him he was going to kill him if he didn’t play ball and take a bribe.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “It scared the hell out of me.”

  “I’m sure it did.”

  “I can’t tell you how relieved I was when Plínio offered him the job, and we packed up and moved out of there.”

  “Who was the fellow in Paraguay? Do you remember his name?”

  “Remember it? I’ll never forget it.”

  Silva took out his notebook and a pen. “Give it to me,” he said.

  “Al-Fulan. His name was Jamil Al-Fulan.”

  Chapter Eleven

  CURITIBA’S MUNICIPAL MARKET WAS a noisy place, so noisy that Arnaldo would surely have missed Silva’s call if his phone hadn’t been set to vibrate.

  “You talk to the Tasca woman?” the Chief Inspector wanted to know.

  “Not yet. This place is a madhouse. I’m still trying to find her. What’s up?”

  Silva told him about Diogo Mariano, the law school professor, and assigned him the interview.

  Arnaldo found what passed for a quiet corner, called Mariano and made an appointment. Then he resumed his search for the woman whose face he remembered from the videos.

  He found her unloading boxes of broccoli from a truck.

  “It’s gonna cost you,” she said when Arnaldo explained who he was and what he wanted.

  “Wait a minute,” Arnaldo said. “Are you suggesting I pay you?”

  Nora’s biceps rippled as she shifted another box. The boxes were made of wood, and they were heavy, but she was moving them from truck bed to hand trolley as if they were feather pillows.

  “I’m
not suggesting anything,” she said. “I’m telling it like it is. I get paid by the box, not by the hour. If I take time off to talk to you, it costs me money.”

  “How about you do what you’re doing right now? Talk while you work?”

  She topped off the stack with a final box. “How about you go question somebody who hasn’t got a living to earn?”

  She tilted her trolley and hurried off.

  “Hang on a minute, Senhora Tasca—”

  “Senhorita,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Senhorita,” he echoed, taking off after her. “After Plínio was shot you gave interviews to every TV station in Curitiba. How come you had time to talk to them, but you haven’t got time to talk to me?”

  “I didn’t have time, I made time. And I made it because they paid me. Same thing applies to you.”

  Three meters away by now, she was approaching shouting distance. Arnaldo was forced to raise his voice. “They were journalists, for Christ’s sake. I’m a cop.”

  “I don’t care if you’re the President of the Republic.”

  He was moving fast, but so was she. The distance wasn’t closing. “You supported Plínio. You wanted to see him elected. Don’t you want to see justice done?”

  Above the din, he heard her contemptuous snort. “Justice has been done. The guy who killed Plínio is dead. You want to waste your time on conspiracy theories, you go right ahead, but there’s no way you’re going to waste mine. You want it; you pay for it, just like everybody else.”

  “I could arrest you for this.”

  He delivered the line at a volume that caused a couple of people to turn and look at him, but the threat didn’t faze her in the slightest.

  “Try it, and see how much information you get.”

  At a near run by now, he tried to come up beside her, but she frustrated his attempt by deftly maneuvering her trolley through a gap between two crates of cauliflowers. He was forced to drop back.

  “How much?” he called out as the distance between them began to widen again.

  “Twenty Reais for twenty minutes.”

  That, too, was delivered over her shoulder.

  “That’s robbery. You don’t earn a Real a minute.”

  She sensed surrender, stopped and turned to face him. “And I don’t witness an assassination every day either,” she said. “That’s the price. Take it or leave it.”

  He took it.

  She unloaded the broccoli, received a chit, and they adjourned to a café up in the eaves overlooking the stalls.

  Below, throngs of purposeful housewives were elbowing their way through tightly-packed corridors. Many were trailed by kids from the local favelas, there to earn a few coins by carrying their shopping bags, and all were being beset by merchants competing for their attention.

  Over here, Senhora, over here! Mangos. Ripe, juicy mangoes, three for two Reais!

  Look Dona! Sirloin, just seven a kilo! Seven a kilo!

  Sardines! Sardines! Get your fresh sardines! Fresh from the sea!

  The place she’d chosen was almost as noisy as the floor below, but Nora Tasca’s booming voice cut right through the racket.

  “Coffee first,” she said, enthroning herself at the head of a long table. “Milk with three sugars.”

  When Arnaldo got back with their coffee, she rubbed her thumb against her index and middle fingers. “And now,” she said, “the money.”

  He put down his plastic cup, opened his wallet and fished out two ten-Real notes. She put them into a leather pouch suspended from her waist and pointed at a four-sided clock atop a tall column.

  “At eight minutes after the hour,” she said, “your time is up. It was like this: Plínio had just climbed down from the stage, and—”

  “I saw the whole thing on video,” Arnaldo said. “And since I’ve only got twenty minutes—”

  She glanced at the clock. “Right now,” she said, “you’ve got about nineteen, but if you want to pay for another twenty, I’ll give you a discount. Fifteen Reais.”

  “Maybe, if we need it, but for now, just let me ask some questions, okay?”

  “Okay. But, if you don’t want me to tell you what I saw, what do you—”

  “What I want you to do,” Arnaldo said, “is to shut up and listen.”

  “Be careful about how you talk to me, Senhor Cop. You don’t want to get me mad.”

  “Look, Senhora Tasca—”

  “Senhorita.”

  “Senhorita Tasca, all I want you to do is to answer my questions. Don’t offer anything unless I ask you about it. Can we agree on that?”

  She took a slug of her coffee. “Sure. It’s your money.”

  “Thank you. Now, was there anything you saw, or heard, that wasn’t in the television coverage?”

  “How about smelled?” she said.

  “Smelled?”

  “That killer, Cataldo? He was sweating like a pig, stunk to high heaven, must have been nervous as hell. He came barging in, all elbows, hit me right here.” She put a hand on her ribs. “But the little prick had no idea who he was dealing with. I gave him as good as I got and then some. Too bad I didn’t look his way just a little bit earlier. If I had, I woulda seen him pointing that gun. And I would have broken his arm, and shoved the gun up his ass. Fucking traitor!”

  “Traitor?”

  She drank more coffee and nodded.

  “You heard me. Didn’t you read what they said about him in the newspapers? They said he made a big deal out of supporting Plínio, said he even went out and campaigned for him. And then he turned around and killed him. So was he a traitor, or wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Arnaldo said. “I suppose he was. Why do you think he did it?”

  She shook her head and cast her eyes skyward, as if asking God for patience. “Duh! What kind of a cop are you?”

  “A federal cop. And I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your mouth. Just answer the question.”

  A sigh. “Money, of course. He did it for money.”

  “And who do you think paid him?”

  “You’re really dense, aren’t you?”

  “Senhora Tasca—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s Senhorita Tasca. Talk about dumb cops.”

  “Senhorita Tasca, then. And I already told you to keep a civil—”

  “Come on. Was that a stupid question, or wasn’t it? Who paid him? Abbas, of course. Who else?”

  “Abbas says no, says he didn’t do it.”

  “Of course he does! Would you expect him to? But he was behind it all right. You can be sure of that.”

  “Let’s assume, for a moment, he was.”

  “No assume about it. He was. Full stop.”

  She rapped her knuckles on the wooden table. They came down within a few centimeters of Arnaldo’s as-yet-untouched cup, causing some of the contents to spill over the rim. She didn’t apologize, and he chose to ignore it.

  “My question remains,” he said. “Was there anything you saw, or heard, that wasn’t in the television coverage?”

  “Are you kidding? Do you know how many cameras there were? They covered it from every angle. What you saw is what I saw. Cataldo put a bullet into Plínio right here”—she put a forefinger on her forehead—“and it blew out the back of his head. Plínio hadn’t hit the ground before his bodyguard had his gun out. I was scared to death. I thought he was pointing it at me. Bang, he fired a shot. I heard Cataldo grunt. And then Cataldo shot a second time and blood spurted out of the bodyguard. And the bodyguard fired again, and Cataldo’s blood spurted all over me. That was it. End of story.”

  “How about the others? Did anyone say anything? How about Plínio?”

  “With a bullet right through the middle of his forehead? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nestor?”

  “The bodyguard? He cursed. At least, I think it was a curse. People were screaming. There was a lot of noise.”

  “And Cataldo? Did you hear him say anythin
g?”

  She thought about it. “Well,” she said, “there was one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Just after he shot Plínio, he said, ‘Noooooo!’ ”

  “He said no?”

  She shook her head. “Not like that. It was more like a moan, more drawn out. ‘Nooooo!’ Like that.”

  “What do you suppose that was about?”

  She shrugged. “How should I know? You’re the cop. You figure it out.”

  Chapter Twelve

  JESSICA CATALDO’S KITCHEN WAS a homey space, filled with the comforting smells of spices and coffee, bathed in bright sunlight shining through chintz curtains—and furnished with a table she could use to distance herself from unwelcome visitors. She sat on one side and motioned Silva to a seat on the other. A coffee service, already in place, served as an additional barrier between them.

  “Sugar?” she said. “Sweetener?”

  “Just black, thanks,” he said.

  Her hand trembled when she poured. The cup rattled in the saucer.

  “I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time by coming here,” she said. “I’ve already told your colleagues everything I know.”

  Her reproachful look put him in mind of a puppy someone had kicked.

  “They’re not my colleagues, Senhora Cataldo. They work for the State of Paraná. I work for the federal government.”

  She shrugged, as if to say she made no distinction.

  After a moment of silence, he went on. “Where did your husband get the pistol? There’s no record of him owning a firearm.”

  “He never did, and he never would. Julio hated guns. He supported the legislation to ban them. Where he got that one from is a mystery to me.”

  “Where were you when you heard the news?”

  Without taking her eyes off him, she gestured toward the counter in front of the window. “There, at the sink, washing dishes. The children were in the living room, watching cartoons. They interrupted the program to show Julio being shot. The children saw it and began to scream.”

  “My God!” Silva said. “That’s horrible.”

  “I ran into the living room,” she said. “I don’t know how many times the children saw his neck gushing blood before I got there. They were playing the scene over and over in rapid succession. They said, later, that some of the material was too violent to show on television. But that, apparently, just applied to Plínio. They didn’t seem to have any compunction at all about showing what happened to my husband.”