Dying Gasp (14 page)

“Feed the girl. Feed the girl. Caralho, Carla, how many times you got to say it? You think I’m stupid or something?”
That was the one with the bags under his eyes.
He sounded sleepy, maybe a little drunk.

“Don’t be impudent with me, you imbecile.”

Still sniping at each other, they moved off in the direction of the kitchen.

What they were saying became indistinct, but she could hear the rattle of cutlery. A little while later she smelled coffee. When the back door slammed, she returned to the window. Carla and the big man were walking toward the boat. Just before they vanished from her line of sight, she heard Carla say something about picking up The Goat at his dock. A minute or so later, the boat’s engines came to life, loud at first, then fading, fading until they were gone. The house was silent again, the only sound the nightly chorus of insects in the nearby jungle.

It was the chance she’d been hoping for. She didn’t think she’d get a better one. For a while, she sat on the edge of the bed, getting up her courage. All that time she could feel her heart pounding, feel the sweat on her palms. She tried controlled breathing, taking the air in through her nose, four seconds for every breath.

Finally, when the moon was down, and the darkness as deep as it was going to get, she stood up, put on her clothes and attacked the door. She left the middle pin for last, broke a nail getting it out. There was a squeak, then a
thump
when the door disengaged from the frame. She caught it on her shoulder, got a hand on either side, and lowered it gently to the floor. Once it was down, she paused to listen. The thug was still snoring.

Her instinct was to run, but she suppressed it. She stood there, breathing heavily, looking at the gaping black hole that led to the corridor and freedom. The snoring seemed much louder now, and it was coming from the left, the direction she’d have to go to get to the front door.

She crept down the corridor, wincing with each creak of floorboard. The snoring persisted, deep, steady, and getting louder. She eased her head around the corner and looked into the room it was coming from.

There were three windows along one wall, all hung with heavy curtains, but the curtains were pulled back. In the glow of dim starlight, she could see equipment strewn around the floor, the kind of stuff she’d once seen in a photographer’s studio: tripods, small lights with little flaps mounted on the front, big lights that looked like scoops. In the center of the clutter was a single piece of furniture: a king-sized bed. The snoring man was stretched out on top of it, fully clothed, lying on his back with one arm across his eyes. His mouth was open.

Marta continued creeping toward the front door. She took a cautious step and listened, another cautious step and listened, forcing herself not to hurry.

The key was dangling from the lock. She turned it, stepped out into the night, and gently closed the door behind her.

Only then did she break into a run.

Chapter Twenty

T
HE WORLD’S LARGEST FRESHWATER archipelago, the Anavilhanas, begins some seventy kilometers upstream from Manaus. At that point, the Rio Negro is almost twenty kilometers wide.

During the rainy season, about two hundred of the islands lie submerged, but the vegetation covering them continues to protrude above the surface of the water. Clinging to the tops of the trees, seeking refuge from the flood, are monkeys half the size of a man and snakes as thick as telephone poles.

But it wasn’t the rainy season. Beaches had appeared. Channels had opened between the islands. The snakes and monkeys were crawling around at ground level.

The low water demanded careful navigation and made the search for The Goat’s boat all the more difficult. It took Claudia and her companions all morning and the better part of the afternoon to locate Osvaldo and his cargo.

Osvaldo had chosen his hiding place well, anchoring in a little cove, largely concealed behind a neighboring island. The boat was surrounded on three sides by dense rain forest.

Osvaldo wasn’t pleased to see them arrive, but he was downright delighted when The Goat told him they weren’t going to stay.

The Goat had him row the girls ashore and line them up on the beach. He addressed them as a group, holding a piece of rubber hose, slapping it against his thigh for emphasis.

“I know for a fact,” he said, “that somebody was in the house asking about Marta.”
Slap
. “I also know, for a fact, that someone shot off her mouth and said we were keeping her.”
Slap.

Silence.

“I want to know who it was.”
Slap.

The girls started looking at each other.

“If whoever it was tells me all about it,”
Slap
“nobody’s gonna get hurt. But if she doesn’t step forward right now,”
Slap
“and I mean right now,”
Slap Slap
“all of you are in for the beating of your lives.”

Now they were looking at one girl in particular, Vileini Rabelo, the girl who called herself Topaz.

Vileini put her hands over her face and started to cry.

“
I
T’S THAT priest,” The Goat said when they were on their way back to Manaus. “He’s behind all this. Got to be him.”

“What priest?” Claudia said.

“Vitorio Barone. He runs a school for slum kids in São Lazaro. When he’s not in the school, or sleeping, Barone is shooting his mouth off. He’s got a thing about young girls.”

“He likes to fuck young girls?” Hans asked.

“Hell, no,” The Goat said. “Just the opposite. Barone doesn’t want
anybody
to fuck them.”

“Fucking Nazi. What’s it to him?”

“He’s tried bitching to Chief Pinto, the mayor, and the governor. They all blew him off. Now, he musta gotten into bed with the federals.”

“How do you figure?” Claudia said.

“This Lauro kid, what did Topaz say his last name was?”

“Tadesco.”

“Tadesco. Yeah, that’s it. Lauro Tadesco. He’s too young to be a cop himself, right?”

“Right.”

“And he’s a local. He has the accent, knows the town. Topaz said so. How could they recruit him? Tell me that. They couldn’t start asking around for someone to take a risk like that without Chief Pinto hearing all about it. But Barone, the priest, he’d know a kid like that.”

“Hmmm,” Claudia said.

“Something else too,” The Goat said. “Lauro didn’t want to fuck, he only wanted to talk. He coulda done both, fucked and talked, but he only talked. And he let Topaz wrap him around her little finger. If that doesn’t smell like priest, I don’t know what does.”

Claudia recalled Topaz’s tearful confession.

The kid had asked Topaz if that was her real name. She’d told him it was. Then she’d asked him for his.

“Lauro,” he’d said.

He wasn’t bad-looking, she’d said, so she played the coquette, fished for a return visit, said she didn’t believe his name was really Lauro, said that a lot of guys lied to the girls they met in boates
.

And just like that, the kid pulled out his identity card.

Lauro Tadesco.

Topaz even remembered his last name, probably due to some kind of fantasy on her part, a fantasy of getting out of the life, seeing herself as Senhora Tadesco, set up in a house of her own with a couple of kids. Well, that was behind her now. She wouldn’t be talking to Lauro Tadesco anymore.

The Goat shook his head at the gullibility of both of them; Lauro’s even more than Topaz’s.

“Who the hell needs to impress a whore? Who even cares what a whore thinks? This Lauro, he must be some kind of religious freak.”

Claudia mulled it over. If Lauro was feeding information to Silva, there might be a way to use him to bait a trap. She thought about discussing her emerging plan with The Goat, then rejected the idea. He wasn’t as threatened as she was, and he wouldn’t be as likely to consider extreme measures.

M
ARTA
M
ALAN had been talking for almost an hour, first to the couple who’d picked her up, now to the fat guy who wanted her to tell the whole story all over again. Everything she’d said was true, but she’d left a few things out. For one thing, she didn’t feel obligated to explain the true nature of her relationship with Andrea. That was nobody’s business but their own. She said that Andrea had been sold off because she was too old, but didn’t mention that it was also because she was no longer a virgin. She
did
mention her grandfather. That had impressed the first two, and it seemed to impress the man who was interrogating her now. His eyebrows had gone up when she said it.

She took another sip of her third café com leite
.
He didn’t press her, just sat there, silently, waiting for her to go on.

“I turned left on the main road,” she said. “There wasn’t much traffic at that time of the morning. The first set of headlights I saw, I panicked. They were coming from behind me, and I thought it might be that brute I’d left back at the house. I crawled into the brush to hide.”

She looked down at the old-fashioned cassette recorder he was using to take her statement, felt her eyelids drooping. Now that the danger was over, adrenaline was no longer keeping her awake. Any moment now, she was liable to fall asleep right there at the table. Her throat was dry from talking. She took another sip of coffee and continued. “When daylight came, I went to look for a stretch of road where I could see the cars coming from a long way off. As soon as I was sure it wasn’t that woman, or her capangas, or The Goat, or his girlfriend, I’d step out and try to flag them down. Nobody stopped. They must have thought I was a thief, or a prostitute, or something. I got so sick of it that when I saw that couple coming, I went out and stood in the center of the road. They had to either stop or drive over me. They stopped. And they brought me here.”

The fat man pushed the button to stop the tape.

“They did the right thing,” he said, “and so did you. Now, why don’t you lie down in my office and get some rest while I get busy and do my job?”

Marta felt a glow of satisfaction. They were in trouble, all of them, and they were going to pay for what they did to her and to Andrea. She thought about asking the fat man if she could use his telephone.

But she was tired, so very tired, after her long ordeal. She’d have a short nap first. Then she’d call her mother.

O
TTO WAS on the dock, waiting for them. While Hans was still tying off the mooring lines, he climbed on board and rushed up to Claudia.

“It’s the little bitch,” he said. “She’s gone. Escaped. Took the fucking door right off the hinges.”

“And where were you?!”’

“Sleeping.”

“Sleeping it off is more like it! How long has she been gone?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I told you, I was—”

She wanted to scratch his eyes out, tell him what a stupid, incompetent bastard he was, but there was no time to lose. She swallowed her anger and said, “Come along, both of you.” She jumped onto the dock and started hurrying toward the house. They followed a few paces behind. “We’ll take the boat,” she said, without looking back. “You, Hans, take some plastic garbage bags and fill them with food from the kitchen. You, Otto, get the camera, lights, recording tape, anything else that looks incriminating. I’ll get my papers and the cash I’ve got on hand. Hurry, both of you.”

The telephone was ringing when they opened the back door. Hans stopped to pick it up. Claudia rushed toward Marta’s room to see things for herself. She was standing there, cursing, when Hans handed her the wireless phone.

“Chief Pinto,” he said. “Says it’s urgent.”

Claudia took the phone and put it to her ear.

The chief was in the best of moods. “Hello, Carla,” he said, “I hear you lost something.”

“You heard what?”

“Yeah,” the chief said. “Listen to this.”

She heard a
click
then Marta’s voice:
“As soon as I was sure
that it wasn’t that woman, or her capangas, or The Goat, or his
girlfriend, I’d step out and try to flag them down. Nobody
stopped. They must have thought I was a thief, or a prostitute, or
something. I got so sick of it that when I saw that couple coming,
I went out and stood in the center of the road.”

There was another
click
.

“Where is she?” Claudia said.

“Sleeping in my office. She’s gonna have, as they say, a rude awakening.”

“
T
HAT’S REALLY funny,” Hans said.

He pushed aside the bag he’d half-filled with canned goods and reached for the bottle of cachaça. Otto shoved his glass forward for a refill.

“It’s not funny at all,” Claudia said. “It’s sheer luck. What if the little bitch had run into the federals first? What if she’d made a telephone call before they dropped her off at the delegacia? Where would we all be then? Tell me that!”

“We’d be in deep shit,” Hans said. “But she didn’t, so we’re all right.”

“We’re not all right. We’ll only be all right when those federal cops are no longer a threat. I want them dead.”

“If we kill them, the feds are gonna go ballistic. They’ll send ten more.”

“But it won’t be Silva or Costa, because they’ll be dead, and that’s the way I want it.”

Lines creased Hans’s forehead. He rubbed his chin.

“It’s something personal between you and them, isn’t it?” “That’s none of your damned business.”

“Killing a few whores is one thing,” Hans said. “Killing a federal cop is heavy, really heavy. Why don’t we just clear out and go somewhere else?”

“And have them on our trail forever? No, we’re going to kill them.
Then
we’ll clear out and go somewhere else.”

Hans polished off his drink and cast a glance at Otto. Otto didn’t open his mouth, didn’t even move his eyes, but Hans nodded as if he’d voiced an opinion. He turned back to Claudia.

“We’re not gonna do it,” he said. “You can’t kill three federal cops and get away with it. Those fuckers are re . . . rel . . .” He furrowed his brow. He couldn’t think of the word, so he said it another way. “They don’t give up. And when they catch up with you, they don’t just slap the cuffs on you. They get payback. And then they kill you. Get somebody else to kill the federals. Then Otto and me will kill
them
. Make the trail a dead end.”

Claudia taunted him. “Scare you, do they? The federals?” Hans didn’t bite. “You’re goddamned right they do.”

He would have said something else, but just then the doorbell rang.

“There they are,” Claudia said.

T
HE CHIEF looked rumpled, as if he’d been awakened far too early, but there was a broad grin on his face.

Not so Marta. She was in handcuffs, her face pinched and pale, her eyes bloodshot.

“Welcome home,” Claudia said.

“
Vai tomar no cú,
” Marta snapped. Go fuck yourself.

Claudia would have slapped her for her insolence, but she didn’t want to give the chief the satisfaction of seeing her lose her temper. Pinto rubbed a thumb against his forefinger, making the sign for money.

“I think you have something of mine,” he said.

“I do,” she said. She turned to Hans. “Take her back to her room. Cuff her to something. And fix the goddamned door.”

Hans stood up and held out his hand. The chief dropped the key to the handcuffs into the center of his palm.

“Otto,” she said, “fetch that twelve-year-old whiskey the chief likes, then go out and buy hasps and padlocks.”

When she and the chief were alone, she said, “I need some people to do a job.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Hell, Carla. I’m already taking a big risk here, what with those federals being in town and all. Tell you the truth, the only reason I brought the girl back is because I know I can trust you to take care of her.”

“You can. And to make sure there’s even less risk for the two of us, I need some people.”

“How many?”

“Two should be enough.”

The chief picked up his glass of whiskey, put it under his nose and sniffed at it before taking a sip.

“You’re going after those federals, aren’t you?”