by Blake Banner
I said, “Do you know Sylvie Martin?”
He shrugged and spread his hands. “No…”
“You ever been involved with the St. George’s Methodist Church on Fowler Avenue?”
He stared at me. “Oh, now wait a minute. Bogart Avenue? That the one that’s parallel to Fowler?”
I frowned, nodded.
He sighed and spread his arms wide, like he was a victim on the cross. “C’mon man!” He kind of staggered away, then came back, looking at us like we were being unreasonable. “You gotta be kidding me. The house that backs on to the church? The cute blonde?”
We didn’t say anything. We just watched him and waited for it. He shook his finger in the negative. “You ain’t gonna pin nothing on me there. I never broke into that house. I was gonna. It was on my list. Okay? I am coming clean with you. I was gonna break in. But man, she was always in the goddamn house! An’ if she wasn’t there, that fockin’ kid, the gardener was there. An’ the one time I got into the back garden, that fockin’ freak from the church was hiding in the bushes, sees me, an’ starts screaming and hitting me! Like the fockin’ hunchback of Notre-fockin-Dame!” He surprised me and burst out laughing. “El Diavolo! El Diavolo!”
I held up a hand. “Let me get this straight, Julio. You staked out the house…”
He nodded. “Yeah. It was one of the houses I had on my list. I was an apprentice locksmith. We did some work at the house. Upgraded the locks or something, I don’t recall. Anyways, it was on my list. I staked it out a couple of nights. But it wasn’t worth the fockin’ risk, man. She was always either at home or in the church. The Arab kid was always in the garden. Then that weird fockin’ freak scared the shit out of me and I moved on. I guess God was givin’ me a warning. I should’a paid heed, huh?”
Dehan and I stared at each other for a moment. Then I looked at El Chato. “Who was your boss?”
He grabbed one of his business cards and scribbled on the back. “Klive’s Keys. He won’t give me a good reference, you know what I mean? But he’ll confirm I was working for him.”
“Okay.” I took the card. “Where were you two years ago?”
He shrugged. “Here. Where else?”
I nodded and we turned to go. At the door, he called me back. “Hey, Detective. What was it, a homicide?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
He kind of winced. “Was it her? She had a baby girl…”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Oh, okay.”
We left.
TWELVE
I leaned my head on the car and she stood staring down the long, ugly road in the late afternoon sun, like she was looking at the view. After a bit, she said, “Okay, I am willing to bet that there is a fifty-fifty chance that if we search El Chato’s house, we will find a bowie knife, or something similar. But what we are not going to find is any Oscars, or even any awards for junior drama. I grew up with these guys, Stone, and he is exactly what he seems to be. He has an IQ between ninety-eight and one hundred and two. He is bog standard average. There is no way this guy is going to make up that story, thinking on his feet.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe.”
“Let me tell you the problem I’m having. I can think of one person, and only one person, who fits the bill. He’s big enough to knock Simon down, strong enough to stab him through the sternum, close enough to Sylvie to be in her house, obsessed enough with her to go violently to her aid if he thought she needed protecting, and simple enough not to realize that stabbing her husband in the heart was way out of proportion to the telling off he was giving his wife.”
“I know.”
“And, maybe most important of all, it might explain why she is concealing his identity.”
I looked down at my shoes. “We agree that Humberto is possibly Paul’s son.”
“I would lay money on it.”
“We need to confirm it.”
“I am thinking Humberto makes a habit of slinking around hiding in the bushes and peering through Sylvie’s window. He has got a childish crush on her, which to him it is like she is the center of the universe. And we know that there is easy access from the church to the house via the back gardens.
“I am thinking, on that Sunday, Ahmed finishes his work and Humberto sees him leave. He sneaks into the garden and finds the back door open. He goes in. Just then, Simon arrives.”
She paused, thinking.
I said, “We know that she hadn’t put the lights on and she wasn’t at the door to greet him.”
Dehan nodded. “Maybe that made Simon the Patriarch mad. Maybe he was having a go at her, threatening fire and brimstone for being a Jezebel, or whatever. Who knows? Thing is, Humberto comes to her aid.”
“Meanwhile, Paul is making hay with Elizabeth. But after the cops have gone, he phones and they talk for almost an hour. She is shaken, but not totally unhappy with the result. She is now financially secure, and free of her husband. They agree to keep Humberto’s name out of it.” I chewed my lip for a bit. “But where the hell did Humberto get a bowie knife?”
Dehan stared at me a moment. “Wasn’t Daddy an intrepid explorer on the Amazon?”
I stood and opened the car. “We need to confirm that. We need to know what their relationship is.” I hesitated and looked at my watch. “You need to be somewhere…”
She looked uncomfortable, stood on her toes, and shook her head. “Yeah…no, I can get a cab. Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go and scare the bejaysus out of Elizabeth.”
She nodded. “That makes sense. Find out what really happened in Brazil.”
“I can drop you somewhere.”
“Nah, it’s not on your way.”
“Where is he picking you up, at the precinct?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Come on, I will drop you there.”
She sighed and climbed in. As she slammed the door, she said, “I really should bring my own car.”
I fired up the engine. “For tomorrow, you can bring your own car. Today I can give you a lift.”
“…I didn’t mean that.”
We didn’t talk again till we got to the 43rd. I pulled up at the corner and looked through the window. Outside, the afternoon was turning to dusk. There was a convertible Mercedes sports car parked in the lot. A good-looking guy in his early thirties was sitting against the trunk. Dehan sat staring at the dash.
“We are here.”
“I know. Will you pick me up tomorrow?”
“Sure, if you want me to.”
She looked at me with intense, black eyes. “Yes, please.”
She got out and I watched her walk toward the guy with the sick car. He smiled at her and stood, bent to kiss her. She gave him her cheek and they climbed in the car. I pulled away and headed for Eastchester Bay.
By the time I got to Elizabeth Cavendish’s, house it was getting dark. The street lamps were glowing amber and the cars were made invisible by the glare of their dull headlamps. I pulled into her drive and rang the bell. After a moment, she opened the door and stood looking at me. I could smell the gin on her breath and she was a little unsteady on her feet. I could hear the music and sporadic chatter of a movie coming from her living room.
“This I didn’t expect. Where is your cute partner? Is this a social call?”
“No, Mrs. Cavendish. I have some questions for you. I would really appreciate five minutes of your time.”
She gave a nicotine-stained grunt. “How disappointing.” Then, she turned and walked away. I took that as an invitation and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.
In the living room, she picked up the remote and turned off the TV.
“Will you have a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“Less and less fun.”
She dropped onto her sofa and pointed to a chair. I sat.
“Mrs. Cavendish, do you understand that if you cover for somebody who is guilty of murder, you are committing a very
serious crime?”
She went very serious but did not answer.
I pressed on. “More to the point, if you enabled that person to commit the crime, whether you knew there would be a murder or not, you would be equally as guilty as they are. Do you fully appreciate what is involved in helping somebody to commit, or cover up, a homicide?”
“I think I want you to leave now.”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t. Because if I leave now, you leave with me, in cuffs.”
She went pale. “What is this, some sick, sexual game? Is this how you get your kicks?”
I watched her a moment. “I want you to be fully aware of the risks you are taking on Paul’s behalf. I know he wasn’t here on the night of Simon’s death. I know you were there. I know he phoned Sylvie from the rectory and I know they talked for almost an hour. And I know that you know a damn sight more than you are telling me.” I pointed at her. “But you need to understand that you could wind up doing serious time. And believe me, for a woman like you, a state pen is not a good place to be.”
She was rigid and her hand had started trembling. “You’re threatening me.”
“Threatening? No, warning.” I shrugged. “Semantics. You need to think long and hard about how you answer my next questions. Think,” I said, “about who is going to look after Reggie while you are on the inside for trying to protect Paul.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who is Humberto?”
She seemed to sag and covered her face with her left hand. “No…”
“I’m serious, Elizabeth. Is he Paul’s son?”
She nodded into her hand. “Of course he is.”
“Why all the cloak and dagger? Why all the secrecy? Paul is an American citizen. Why didn’t he just register him as his son?”
She heaved a sigh and dropped her hand. “Because, in the first place, he was conceived out of wedlock. In the second place, the girl who conceived him was, putting it bluntly, of mixed race and she was a whore. To enlightened people like you and me, that may mean nothing, but to the people who make up Revered Paul Truelove’s congregation, both of those facts carry a lot of weight. If they had found out that he’d been making the beast with two backs with a blackberry tart, they would have dumped him before he could bellow, ‘I’m coming!’”
She reached for a packet of cigarettes and lit one with shaking hands. She inhaled deeply, stood and carried her drink out to the patio, where she stood leaning against the wall, staring at her pool. I followed and stood in the doorway behind her. The turquoise water looked luminous and translucent. The croaking of the frogs was loud.
“Okay, I understand his decision to keep his paternity a secret from his congregation. But, if he went to the trouble of bringing him into the country, why didn’t he register his birth, or adopt him? The kid is a ghost. He has no social security number, no birth certificate…”
She interrupted me, half shouting, “Because he’s wanted for murder in Brazil!”
“What? He hasn’t the mental capacity for murder…”
She turned to glare at me. “Do you think they give a damn about that? He killed the son of the local cacique. It was an accident, but that makes fuck all difference to them! They mean to get hold of him, by fair means or foul, and Paul, for once in his miserable life, is doing the right thing.” She moved to the table and sat. A spasm of irritation contracted her face. “Oh, for God’s sake, get yourself a drink and stop being so damned upright!”
I went to the trolley and poured myself a couple of inches of Irish. She waited for me to sit before she started talking again. Then, to the lapping of the pool and the sawing of the frogs, she told me the story of Humberto and Paul.
THIRTEEN
“Paul was supposed to be doing missionary work for the church. Of course, he saw that as an opportunity to make large sums of money under the table, by cultivating influential friends and getting involved in various forms of contraband and smuggling. Only God knows what he got up to. Or perhaps He doesn’t. Knowing Him, He is probably turning a blind eye.” She stared a moment at the light, warping liquid silver on the surface of the pool, under a black sky. There was something tragic in her once beautiful face. “That man had truly no conscience and no inhibitions. We were in the Indira Marau region, in Itaituba, on the river Tapajós. It is a tributary of the Amazon, a hell hole miles from anywhere. It was remote. And I do mean, remote.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Reggie worked for a pharmaceutical company. He was engaged in research of the rainforest. We met Paul at a dinner party. He and Reggie hit it off, and I confess I found him fascinating. You would not think so to meet him now, but when he’s not putting on his pompous Man-of-God act, he is a very exciting, totally immoral bastard. Sorry.”
“So what happened?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. She sucked on her cigarette like she was hungry for the smoke. The only sound was the slap of the water and the sawing of the frogs down by the river.
“He had befriended one of the local land barons, Gabriel da Silva. They were involved in some shady deals together, something to do with logging.” She held a hand up to me. “Don’t ask me. I stayed out of that kind of thing. I was not and am not interested. The point is, Paul had rented this big, colonial villa on the lake just outside town. He had invited da Silva, his wife, and son to dinner. The boy was about thirteen—a little streak of piss of a kid. They all had a pretty unenlightened attitude towards the staff, as you can imagine. Human life hasn’t much value in those parts of the world.”
She stopped talking. I sipped my whiskey and reached for her cigarettes. She watched me light up and smiled a triumphant smile.
“Careful, big boy. Don’t lose control completely. You never know where you’ll end up sleeping tonight.”
I raised an eyebrow at her and allowed myself a smile. “Don’t stop, keep going.”
She sighed. “Reggie and I were invited. And of course Luz, his whore, and their son, Humberto. You know? I really believe Luz was the only woman he ever truly loved.” She shrugged. “She was bad and cheap and fake… like him, I guess. She meant something to him. Humberto was about twelve, I suppose. But even then he was a damned freak, almost six feet and terrifyingly strong.”
She paused, picking a piece of tobacco from her lip with her index finger. She examined it a moment and carried on talking.
“Humberto has this thing, where he becomes obsessively attached to women. Probably because his mother was an ice queen who was always fobbing him off onto their black nanny, Carmela. He adored Carmela. Anyway, I don’t know exactly what happened, but on this particular night, before dinner, Humberto and this boy, Gonzalo, were in the pool. Gonzalo was tormenting Humberto mercilessly, as he always did. He enjoyed it because Humberto was so much bigger and stronger, but with the mind of a child, it was so easy to terrorize him.”
She sighed, stubbed out her cigarette and reached for another. I lit it for her. She drew in the smoke and let it out in puffs as she spoke.
“Naturally, Paul and Luz were not going to intervene, and Gabriel and his wife, whatever her name was, thought it was all terribly amusing. Reggie only cared about his cut of whatever deal was going down and I, well, I’m sorry, but however distasteful I may have found it, I wasn’t going to get involved. So that just left Carmela, the black nanny. Frankly, she handled it very well. She came out with a towel and told Humberto it was time to get out of the pool and come in for his supper. I think Paul was relieved. I know I was, and I am damned certain Humberto was. He clung to her like she was his guardian angel. Poor freak was sobbing his eyes out.”
“So what happened?”
“What happened was that little Gonzalo got mad at having his fun spoiled. He got out of the pool, on his skinny little legs, and started screaming at Carmela that she was a ‘puta negra’, a black whore, and how dare she break up their fun. I remember it so clearly…”
She turned to look at me. The am
ber light from the spots lay across the drawn planes of her face, casting her eyes into shadow.
“Humberto protected her?”
“It was worse than that. I can see him now, the nasty little runt, his skin all wet and glistening in the lights from the house, and the spotlights from the pool. He was like a dancing, wriggling worm, stamping his feet and shouting. It should have been comical, but he started slapping Carmela, screaming at her. It happened in a matter of seconds. I can see it so vividly: Gabriel and his wife half standing, laughing, calling to Gonzalo to stop, Paul getting to his feet, looking embarrassed, poor Carmela cowering away…”
I felt the heat from the cigarette on my fingers and stubbed it out. Her gaze was lost in her glass. The drink was gone and the ice had melted. I said, “And Humberto?”
She gave a little shake of her head, like she was taken aback about what she was about to say.
“He punched him, like a boxer. Two great thumps with his right fist. Gonzalo fell and Humberto sat on him and started pounding him again and again. Everybody ran, screaming. Carmela was trying to drag him off, so was Paul. Gabriel and his wife were trying to drag Gonzalo from under him. It seemed to go on for an eternity. I saw his huge, balled fist hit Gonzalo’s head three or four times, maybe more. He was bleeding badly. His eyes were kind of goggling and out of focus. He wasn’t even trying to defend himself. It was horrible.”
“He was dead?”
She handed me her glass. “Get me another drink, would you?”
I stood and moved to the trolley. I started putting together a gin and tonic. Her voice followed me.
“You know? I have never talked about this. It’s kind of therapeutic. I suppose if I had been sensible, I would have gotten myself a therapist. But I don’t go in for that kind of stuff. Stiff upper lip, and a stiff drink to go with it.” I heard the smile in her voice. “I’m watching you. Don’t drown the gin.”