Dying Gasp (15 page)

“Do you really want to know?”

The chief didn’t reply to that. He took another sip and looked at the ceiling, debating the wisdom of getting involved.

“Cost you,” he said at last. “Cost you a bundle.”

“How much?”

“Fifty.”

He was just trying it on and Claudia knew it. Fifty thousand Reais was outrageous.

“Twenty-five,” she said. “Reais, not dollars.”

“You’re busting my balls, Carla,” he said and raised the glass to his lips. This time he swished the whiskey around in his mouth before swallowing it.

She didn’t say anything, simply waited him out.

“It just so happens,” he said, “that I got just the people: real nice guys, Joaquim and Luis Almeida. And when I say got, I mean it literally. They’re in a cell down at the delegacia
.
”

“What are they in for?”

“Killing an old couple by the name of Mainardi. The wife was eighty-four, the husband was eighty-six. There was a rumor the Mainardis were keeping their savings under a mattress. I don’t know how that kind of shit gets started. You got to be an asshole to believe it. Anyway, the old guy told them it wasn’t true, but the Almeida boys didn’t believe him. Not at first, anyway. Not until they’d killed the old lady in front of him.
Then
they believed him, but by then it was too late. They figured they had to kill him too. And they might have gotten away with it, if they hadn’t been drinkers. Joaquim shot his mouth off to someone in a bar.”

“You think they could stay sober long enough to do this job?”

The chief nodded. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “You give me the twenty-five. I have a little talk with them. I tell them I’m gonna let them loose, but on one condition: they have to do a job for you.”

“And they’ll buy that?”

“In a heartbeat. I’ll tell them I get a cut. Being greedy bastards, they’ll relate to that.”

“How much do I offer?”

“Not too much.”

“How much?” she insisted.

The chief shrugged. “Best way to work it is this: You explain the situation and ask them to set a price. Don’t agree right away. You’re not going to pay them anyway.”

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re not. But you don’t want them getting suspicious. Keep it simple. Plan it for them, otherwise they’ll probably fuck it up.”

“And afterward?”

“Afterward, you kill them. The Almeidas are scum. They’re also broke, so there’s no other way I’m gonna earn money off them. And there’s no sense in letting them shoot their mouths off about this, or go back to being dangers to the good citizens of Manaus.”

“What good citizens?” Claudia said.

W
HEN THE chief left, he was carrying a substantial part of her ready cash, twenty-five thousand Reais for the Almeida brothers and an additional five thousand for returning Marta Malan.

Two hours later, he dropped the two felons off at Claudia’s door. Joaquim was the elder of the two and the one who did all the talking. Luis sat and stared at Claudia out of a pair of thoroughly emotionless brown eyes. The eye color was about the only characteristic the two brothers shared, that and their willingness to kill people for money.

Joaquim was short, so short that he didn’t quite come up to Claudia’s chin. Luis, taller by a head, and with much broader shoulders, still had all his front teeth. Luis’s face was elongated and shriveled by some kind of a disease. He obviously hadn’t shaved in several days. The overall effect reminded Claudia of a jackfruit with hair.

Joaquim, in contrast, was clean-shaven and round-faced. The few front teeth he had left were stained with tobacco. He only showed them when he smiled, which wasn’t often, but he was smiling now, even after hearing that three of the people they were being asked to kill were federal cops.

Or maybe because of it. It wasn’t every day that somebody asked you to kill a federal cop. A “service” like that was worth a bundle.

“I’ll give you a group rate,” he said, “twelve thousand for all three of them.”

“Four thousand each,” Claudia said. “The cops might be worth that but a priest and a kid aren’t.”

“Wait a minute,” Joaquim said. “The chief didn’t say anything about a priest and a kid.”

“I’m saying it now,” she said. It had always been her intention to kill Father Vitorio and Lauro Tadesco as well, but Chief Pinto didn’t have to know that. If he did, he’d ask for more money. “A priest and a kid. How much?”

Joaquim ran a hand over his chin. “Three thousand sounds about right for a priest,” Joaquim said. “How old is the kid?”

“I don’t know. Eighteen? Nineteen, maybe. But he isn’t going to give you any trouble. I have the impression he’s rather naïve.”

“Okay. A thousand for him. How much is that altogether?” “Sixteen thousand,” Claudia said. “I’ll give you thirteen.” “Make it fifteen and you got a deal,” Joaquim said.

“Fourteen, or you can go back to jail.”

Joaquim’s eyes hardened.

“Chief Pinto wants half,” he said. “So how much does that leave for us?”

“Seven,” Claudia said, “but since he doesn’t know about the priest and the kid, you can tell him I’m only paying you twelve. You give the chief six. That way you’ll walk away with eight.”

Joaquim might have been lousy at math, but the idea of screwing Chief Pinto obviously appealed to him.

“Done,” he said. “How do you want to do it?”

“We have to get them away somewhere. Not too far from town, but isolated enough not to attract any attention while you’re busy.”

Joaquim smiled. “I got just the place,” he said. “Little house off the main road. Dirt road to get to it. Brush and banana trees all around. Deserted.”

“Deserted?”

“Used to be owned by a couple of old farts named Mainardi, but they’re dead now.”

“All right. Now, do you know the
favela
of São Lazaro?”

“Yeah. That slum? What’s that got to do with the federals?”

“If you shut up and listen, I might tell you.” She waited for him to look suitably chastened, but it didn’t happen. He just kept staring at her out of those emotionless eyes of his.

“You go there,” she said. “You ask around until you find a school run by a priest by the name of Vitorio Barone.”

“Barone. That’s the priest you want dead?”

“That’s him. You want to write it down?”

“Uh . . . yeah. Maybe I’d better.”

She pushed a pad and a pencil across the table. He licked the point of the pencil and made a careful note.

“Okay,” he said. “Then what?”

“As soon as you find out where the school is, knock on some of the neighbors’ doors. Tell people you’re looking for a kid named Lauro Tadesco. And, before you ask, yeah, that’s the kid I want dead.”

“Wait.”

He wrote that name down too, pursing his lips as he spelled it out. “Okay. So, we find this Tadesco guy. How do we get him, and the priest, and the federals out to the Mainardi’s place?”

“You find a girl who works the streets, somebody who can tell a good story.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult,” he said. “Most whores are pretty good liars. What story?”

“Pay attention,” Claudia said.

Chapter Twenty-one

A
RNALDO’S CELL PHONE RANG while they were picking at their dinner, a fish stew larded with coconut milk and
dende
oil. Arnaldo put down his spoon to take the call, but he didn’t pick it up again after he hung up. He shoved the half-empty plate aside, put the phone back into his pocket, and braced his elbows on the table.

“The Goat’s back,” he said.

Silva stopped chewing. “Who says so?”

“Father Vitorio.”

“And how does he know?”

Arnaldo shrugged.

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

“Cheeky bastard,” Hector said, then added, “The Goat, I mean, not Father Vitorio. You want to go over there now?”

“Unless you gentlemen want to finish this first,” Silva said, pointing to the bowl in the middle of the table.

The three of them stood up.

T
HE MUSIC in The Goat’s boate was loud, too loud: a Daniela Mercury
axé
tune, distorted by high volume and cheap speakers. The light was dim, the smell of perfume stronger than on Silva’s last visit. A tired-looking whore was shuffling around the dance floor with a customer. Three men were grouped together at a table. They were drinking beer and leering at the remaining merchandise, consisting of five brunettes, who’d probably been born that way, and one blonde, who definitely hadn’t. The Goat had them displayed with their backs to the wall, one girl to a table. The whores recognized the federal cops, and each of them found somewhere else to look.

The Goat might have noticed if he hadn’t been beaming at Silva and his companions, whom he took to be new customers. He continued beaming as they approached the bar. Silva took a seat in front of him.

“
Bem vindo
,” The Goat said, raising his voice so Silva could hear him over the music.

“You the guy they call The Goat?” Silva asked.

“That’s me,” The Goat said, a gold incisor catching a pinpoint of light from the candle that stood between them.

Before Silva could produce his badge, something over his shoulder caught The Goat’s attention. Silva turned around to see what it was.

Rosélia was standing in the doorway that led to the bedrooms making frantic signs to The Goat. She stopped when Silva caught sight of her, took a step backward and closed the door.

The Goat wasn’t smiling anymore. “You’re cops,” he said accusingly, as if they’d intentionally deceived him.

“Yeah,” Silva said, “cops. I’m Chief Inspector Silva, federal police. This is Agente Nunes, and this is Delegado Costa. You want to talk here, or you want to go someplace quiet?”

“Here,” The Goat said. “I gotta take care of my customers.” “So turn down the music.”

The Goat complied.

“Hey,” one of the guys sitting at the table said. “Turn the fucking music back up.”

Silva swiveled his barstool, leaned his elbows on the counter behind him, and fixed the man with a look.

“Shut up,” he said.

The man narrowed his eyes and looked to his friends for support. Both of them suddenly discovered something interesting in their beers. After a second or two, the music lover decided there might be something interesting in his beer too.

Silva turned back to The Goat.

“Your boat around back?” he asked, remembering his last visit.

The Goat shook his head sadly.

“Sunk.”

“Sunk, huh?”

“I was going upriver,” The Goat said, “running flat out, when I got hit by a tree trunk coming the other way. Big bastard, maybe twenty meters long, with the branches pointing the other way. Musta been almost as heavy as the water, because it was hardly floating at all. Went right through my hull. My boat went down in minutes. I was lucky to get to shore alive.”

“Right,” Silva said. “Lucky. And where did this unfortunate accident happen?”

The Goat pointed in the general direction of the river. “Upstream,” he said, “maybe three or four kilometers that way, right in the middle. It’s a damned good thing I was towing my dinghy, because the water there is eighty meters deep, maybe more, and the current is so fast it drags things along the bottom. The hulk could be anywhere by now. Not a chance of salvage. It’s a bitch. I wasn’t insured.”

“Uh-huh. And you reported this disaster to the naval authorities, right?”

“Not yet. It only happened yesterday. I was pretty shook up. I’m gonna go down there tomorrow.”

The guy who’d been dancing leaned across the bar, brushing shoulders with Silva and Arnaldo and enveloping them in a cloud of cachaça fumes. “Give me a ficha,” he said, throwing a handful of notes on the bar.

The Goat counted the banknotes, nodded to himself, and put them in his pocket. Then he produced an old cigar box. He put the box on the bar. The contents rattled like coins.

“Just one?” The Goat asked. “For two fichas you get a whole hour.”

“What do I need an hour for?” the man said. “Fifteen minutes is plenty. She’s been rubbing my cock right out there on the dance floor.”

The Goat shrugged and handed over a brass disk with a number on it.

“Give it to the girl when you’re done,” he said.

“I know how it works,” the man said.

He took the girl by her arm and led her toward the bedrooms. She shuffled along next to him as if she were half asleep.

“What happened to the girls?” Silva said.

“What girls?”

“Your underage girls, the ones you had on the boat. What happened to them?”

“Nothing happened to them because there weren’t any. I was alone.”

“Alone, huh?”

“Yeah, all alone.”

“Where’s Marta Malan?”

“Marta who?”

“Malan.”

The Goat shook his head.

“Never heard of her.”

“Or her friend Andrea either, I suppose.”

“You suppose right.”

Silva leaned over the bar, getting into The Goat’s face.

“You had a girl working here,” he said, “who called herself Topaz.”

The Goat recoiled slightly. “No,” he said.

“Where is she?”

“I run a legitimate business here. I don’t employ minors—” “Who said Topaz was a minor?”

The Goat swallowed.

“You did,” he said.

“No, I didn’t,” Silva said. “Listen to me, you piece of garbage. I know you’re running a house with underage girls. I know you kidnap them and make them prostitute themselves, and I think that’s disgusting, but I’m after an even bigger fish. You help me, and I might be inclined to overlook a few things.”

“What do you mean by an even bigger fish?”

“I mean a psychopath. I mean somebody who makes videos of people being murdered.”

“Yeah, Rosélia said you guys were looking for somebody like that. But I’m not him.”

“I didn’t say you were. Matter of fact, I just said you weren’t. How about it? Are you going to help me or not?”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about,” The Goat said. “Yes, you do,” Silva said.

He took a card out of his pocket and put it on the bar. “I’m at the Hotel Tropical,” he said. “If I get some cooperation, I’ll see what I can do for you. If not, I’m going to make sure they throw the book at you. Think about it.”

The Goat wet his lips. For a moment, Silva thought he was going to say something, but then he shook his head.

Silva gave it up for the moment.

The door to the boate had barely closed behind them when the music reverted to its original volume.

“
P
SYCHOPATH?”
C
LAUDIA SAID.

The Goat nodded. Once again, they were in her kitchen. It was two o’clock in the morning. She’d been sleeping soundly when he’d pounded on the door, but now she was wide awake. The Goat took another belt of Claudia’s cachaça.

“Or maybe it was sociopath. I don’t remember. One or the other. Anyway, he said that anybody who makes videos like that has to be crazy. And you know what? I agree with him.” Claudia thought The Goat was sounding more and more like someone who was about to spill his guts to the federals. The temptation to call Hans and have him put a bullet in The Goat’s head right then and there was strong. They could weight him down and throw him in the river, just as they’d done with Andrea, just as they’d done with so many others. Out near the end of the dock, the bottom was twenty meters down. They’d been feeding the fish there for more than a year. Dorsal fins converged on the spot whenever there was a splash.

But, no.

Rosélia knew as much as The Goat did, and if anything happened to him she’d be pissed. To keep her quiet, they’d have to kill her as well. And if she disappeared, there’d be no one to make sure the girls kept their mouths shut. There was no telling what they knew, so, to be safe, they’d all have to be killed as well. And there was no way she could get away with a massacre like that. It would attract far too much attention.

Claudia bit her lip. “So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to make myself scarce for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

“You don’t have to know that. But Rosélia will. If you need to get in touch with me, send a message through her. My suggestion is that you get out too, keep your head down until all this blows over.”

“Maybe I will,” she said.

“The Malan girl. You still got her?”

“Only for another day or two,” Claudia said.