Dying Gasp (17 page)

“God sent you here,” Lauro said, speaking slowly, as if he was addressing someone of limited intelligence, “because He wants Father Vitorio to take advantage of the opportunity you present.”

Silva couldn’t help himself. He swung around again. “Opportunity? What opportunity?”

“The rescue of the deputado’s granddaughter is going to be a big story, right? If Father Vitorio is present, the national press will want to interview him. That will give him a pulpit from which he can denounce what’s happening to girls who are of equal worth in the sight of God, but don’t have a depu-tado federal for a grandfather.”

A headache had begun to form behind Silva’s right eye. He lifted a hand and started massaging his temple. “So he’s already tipped the press?”

“Not yet. He wants to make sure you get the girl. Otherwise, there’s no story, right?”

“What’s the number of his cell phone?”

Lauro gave it to him, and Silva dialed it.

No one answered.

Arnaldo slowed to a crawl. Off to their left, they caught an occasional glimpse of the river through the foliage. On the right, the rainforest was a wall of green. The road was wide enough for two cars, but just barely.

“There,” Lauro said, and pointed.

Arnaldo pulled over.

“You want to take the car in there?” he asked.

“Hell, no,” Silva said. Then, to the kid, “You stay here.”

“I think I have a right—”

“You don’t,” Silva said shortly. “Let’s go.”

The three federal cops got out and entered the access road on foot. The previous night, as on almost every night in the Amazon, there’d been rain. The surface under their feet was unpaved. Silva stayed in the middle, following the impression of tire tracks in the mud. Two sets of them appeared to be quite recent. One diverged toward the right margin and disappeared into heavy brush. While the others waited, Hector followed that one. Wordlessly, he picked up a
samambaia
leaf and showed them the stem. The leaf, almost as tall as a man, had been cut at the base. Hector gingerly removed another leaf, thereby exposing the front grille of a Fiat Palio.

The car had been artfully camouflaged and was positioned for a quick escape.

“
Y
OU HEAR THAT? ”

Luis’s voice was little more than a whisper. Joaquim cocked his head to listen. He heard birds, insects, the
thump-thump
of a diesel motor out on the river; nothing else.

“What,” he said.

“I coulda swore . . . there it is again.”

This time, Joaquim heard it too: rustling leaves. He disengaged the safety on his AK-47.

From their hiding place they had a clear view of both the front of the house and the last twenty meters of the approach road.

“They’re not on the road,” Luis whispered. “They’re coming through the woods.”

“Still gonna get a big fucking surprise,” Joaquim said.

He checked the fire control on his assault rifle, making sure it was switched to full automatic. Luis worked the slide on his Glock, chambering a round, making what sounded to Joaquim like a hell of a racket. He shot his brother a look.

But, no, they were okay. The rustling hadn’t stopped. It was just getting louder.

“Coming right at us,” Luis said.

“Shut up, you moron
,
” Joaquim hissed.

“Moron? Me, a moron? Watch your fucking mouth, Joaquim.”

“Watch yours, asshole.”

“Who you calling an asshole?”

T
HE COPS weren’t far away. Lauro couldn’t see them yet, but he could hear them, first doing something with one of their guns then arguing. One called another one a moron. Normally, Lauro didn’t like arguments. In fact, he didn’t like contention in any form. But he was pleased that the federal policemen were out of sorts with each other, because he was equally out of sorts with them.

Stay here
, Silva had told him.

Stay and miss the climax of the operation that he, Lauro Tadesco, had brought about? Miss the liberation of the depu-tado’s granddaughter? Miss the apprehension of the people who’d abducted her?”

Stay here, indeed!

He could see them now, just ahead.

But they weren’t the federal agents. There were only two of them, not three, and one of them was pointing a—
Oh, God!

J
OAQUIM, STARING over the sights of his AK-47, saw a flash of color moving among the leaves. He squeezed the trigger, felt the rifle kick into his shoulder and saw a red mist appear where his target’s head used to be. The body below it slumped out of sight.

Gotcha, you fucker
, Joaquim thought.

But he didn’t release the trigger. He went on to blow through the whole magazine, hosing everything to the right and left of the man he’d just shot. Then he released the catch, changed clips, and was ready for another go.

S
ILVA THREW himself on the ground at the sound of the first shot. When the echo of the last round died he raised his head and looked at his comrades. Both were prone, both unhurt. He signaled them to stay where they were and to keep their heads down. The shooter had a weapon capable of full automatic fire. They had handguns. Their only option was to remain quiet and hope for an opportunity.

It wasn’t long in coming. He could hear men crashing around in the brush, getting closer. A voice said, “Luis?”

“Yeah,” a second voice replied.

“He’s over here. He don’t look like no cop,” the first one said.

More crashing around in the brush.

“Lemme see here,” the first voice said again. “Might be that kid.”

“What kid?”

“The priest’s little friend. Tadesco.”

“Yeah?”

“Give me a minute. Yeah. It’s him.”

“Good. So that’s one down, four to go.”

Silva was sure now there were only two of them, still hidden by the leaves and only meters away. He rose to his feet, trusting that they were still distracted by the body of their victim. Silently, cautiously, Silva’s companions followed his example.

“Merda,” the man called Luis said. “His head’s all fucked up. How can you be sure it’s him?”

“I rolled him over. The other side of his face isn’t blown out.” “Well, this side sure as hell is.”

Silva could see them, now, standing with their backs toward him, looking down at Lauro’s mangled body. Silently, he cursed himself. He should have handcuffed the boy to the steering wheel to keep him out of harm’s way.

Hector stepped on a twig. It broke with a sharp
crack
.

The killers spun around. The taller one, a guy with a growth of beard and a face like a jackfruit, had a pistol in his hand and he raised it. Hector pumped three quick rounds into his chest. The man dropped like a stone.

The other guy, clean-shaven and round-faced, had an AK-47. Silva’s single shot, aimed at his upper body, struck the breech of the assault rifle and slammed the stock into his ribs. Roundface squealed with pain, dropped the weapon and the game was over: cops two, killers zero.

Chapter Twenty-three

“
F
OR
C
HRIST’S SAKE,” THE guy with the round face said, not for the first time, “get me to a hospital! My ribs are killing me!”

Arnaldo ignored the killer’s complaint and continued going through his pockets. The rib thing was no revelation. In fact, he’d be surprised if the thug
wasn’t
in pain. He’d given him a capoeira kick in the chest to bring him down, flipped him over, pressed a knee into his back, and leaned his full weight upon it while he was cuffing him.

The pockets contained a set of keys, some small change, a cell phone and a wallet. In the wallet were several hundred Reais in cash, a condom, a national identity card, credit cards in three different names, driver’s licenses in two, and a dog-eared photo of a woman. The woman was smiling at the camera and wearing makeup that looked like it had been laid on with a trowel. She bore a strong resemblance to the guy who owned the wallet. Even punks like Joaquim had mothers.

The national identity card matched one of the credit cards and one of the driver’s licenses.

“That your name?” Arnaldo said. “Joaquim Almeida?”

The punk stopped his litany long enough to tell Arnaldo to go fuck himself.

Arnaldo’s response involved his right foot and elicited a howl of pain from the punk.

“This one was Luis Almeida,” Hector said, reading from the sole identity card he’d found in the wallet of the guy who had a face like a jackfruit. “Brothers maybe.”

Joaquim craned his neck and tried to look up.

“Was?” he said. “You mean he’s dead?”

“Killed while resisting arrest,” Silva said, “just like you.”

“I ain’t killed,” Joaquim said.

Silva didn’t respond to that, just looked at him.

For a few seconds, Joaquim didn’t get it. And then he did. “Merda,” he said. “Okay, okay, what do you want to know?” “Who else is in the house?”

“Nobody.”

Silva twirled a finger at Arnaldo. Arnaldo used a foot to roll Joaquim onto his back. Silva bent over him.

“Look me in the eyes, Joaquim.”

“I’m looking.”

“Who else is in the house?”

“I already told you. Nobody.”

Arnaldo kicked him in the ribs.

Joaquim made a sound between a groan and a whimper. “There was just the two of us. I swear.”

“And you were waiting for us? Us, specifically?”

“Yeah. She had a picture.”

“Who had a picture?”

“The woman who hired us. She had a picture of you, that guy over there, and this gorilla here, all of you together.”

“Watch your mouth,” the gorilla said. “Otherwise I’ll put a foot in it.”

“She wanted you dead,” Joaquim said, sounding like he thought having them dead was a good idea.

“How about the priest,” Silva said. “Where’s he?”

“Luis did him,” Joaquim said.

F
ATHER
V
ITORIO’S ancient yellow truck was parked near the front door. The priest was inside the house, lying on a carpet in the living room, his throat slit from ear to ear.

Arnaldo braced Joaquim against the wall.

“Luis, huh? Not you?”

“Luis. I swear.”

“You’d swear to anything, you little prick.”

“Go look at his shirt. Luis washed the blood off his hands, but he couldn’t get it off his shirt.”

“His shirt isn’t going to tell us anything,” Arnaldo said. “Luis managed to get his own blood all over it.”

“Talk about killing the priest,” Silva said, “How did it go down?”

“He pounded on the door like he was the fucking chief of police. Soon as we let him in, he started shooting his mouth off. Kept going on and on about exportation of little girls.”

“Exportation? You mean exploitation?”

“Exploitation, exportation, whatever. He screamed until Luis took out his knife. Then he kept on screaming, only different.”

“This woman who hired you, where is she?”

“I think that gorilla broke some of my ribs.”

“Then you sure as hell don’t want me to break any more, do you?” Arnaldo said.

Joaquim’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “She’s got a house on the river.”

“She live alone?” Silva asked.

Joaquim shook his head.

“With two capangas. Big guys. Not from here. They talk funny. Must be from down south somewhere.”

Silva looked at Arnaldo.

“Three of them,” he said. “Looks like we’re going need help from Pinto.”

Joaquim’s eyes went wide. “Chief Pinto?”

“And your point is . . .” Silva said.

“Keep him away from me,” Joaquim said.

“Why?”

Joaquim spit it all out. He told the federal cops about the Mainardis, about the chief letting them out, about the deal with the woman.

“Pinto will kill me if he gets a chance,” he said. “You take care of me, lock me up safe somewhere, and I’ll sign anything you want.”

“It won’t be worth much,” Silva said. “You’re not exactly a pillar of the community.”

“A what?”

“This woman? What’s her name?”

“Carla.”

“Carla what?”

“Merda, I don’t know. Just Carla.”

“Describe her.”

“Classy. No dummy. Nice tits and ass. Black hair. Good-looking, except for a big nose.”

The nose part brought Silva up short. He fished out his wallet, rifled through it, took out the photo he carried of Claudia Andrade, held it under Joaquim’s nose.

“Is this her?” he asked. “Is this Carla?”

Joaquim squinted as if he needed glasses. Then he looked up at Silva.

“Yeah,” he said.

D
ELFIN
F
IGUEIREDO didn’t trust boats. One little hole, that’s all it took. One little hole, and the damned thing would fill up with water and sink. Then where’d he be? At the bottom of the Rio Negro, that’s where.

Somebody had once told him that this part of the river was a hundred meters deep. He didn’t know if it was true, but he knew it didn’t have to be more than two meters deep to drown him. Delfin wasn’t a little guy, far from it. He stood exactly one meter ninety in his bare feet and weighed almost ninety-five kilograms, only a little of it fat. But the one meter ninety wouldn’t do him a damned bit of good in a hundred meters of water, and the absence of fat would only make him sink faster.

Problem was, Delfin didn’t know how to swim. He’d been raised on the river, but it had been farther downstream, below where the Rio Solimões flowed in, and where the water was as dark as chocolate. He’d seen the things with teeth that fisherman pulled out of that water, things longer than he was tall and with mouths that could engulf his head.

Just the thought of one of those creatures lying under the surface, waiting there in the dark, had always petrified him. Neither his family nor the kids he’d grown up with had ever been able to lure him, or to taunt him, into immersing himself in that water.

So, when the woman told him the video was going to be shot on a boat, he’d balked.

“Fuck her, okay,” he’d said. “Kill her, okay. But no boat. There’s no way I’m gonna do it on a boat.”

“Why not?” the woman said. “What difference does it make?”

“It just does.”

“Big guy like you, afraid of boats?”

“Afraid? Me, afraid? Hell, no. I just don’t like them, that’s all.”

But then she’d offered him more money, and more money, and finally they were up to double the price he’d agreed upon in the first place. It was more than he’d ask if somebody wanted him to kill the mayor, or a senator. And how often did he get asked to kill the mayor or a senator? Never, that’s how often. The truth was, Delfin Figueiredo had never been paid more than three thousand Reais to kill anyone in his entire life.

Delfin was a man of modest tastes. With what she was offering he could live for a year, screwing all the whores he wanted, drinking all the cachaça he wanted, only climbing out of a hammock to get another smoke, or another drink, or something to eat.

It was just too tempting.

It wasn’t like she wanted him to get
into
the water. He didn’t have to get his feet wet at all. All he had to do was get into a fucking boat. And the boat looked pretty solid, and there was another little boat she was going to tow behind, meaning they’d all have someplace to go if the big one sank, and the day, like most days in the dry season, was all sunshine and just a few fleecy clouds. There weren’t going to be waves. There wasn’t going to be wind. So Delfin had agreed, and he told her he wanted half the money in advance, and she’d said no problem, and he’d stuffed it into the trunk of his car near the spare tire, and here he was, out on the river in the cabin of a fucking boat.

Delfin looked across at the girl he was expected to kill. She had one ankle fastened to a brass ring. They were using a pair of handcuffs for that. The rest of her was trussed up like a tapir ready for roasting. She was gagged, too, which was a good thing, because she had a mouth on her like a sewer. Delfin had heard her spouting off before they left the house, before the guy with the bags under his eyes stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth and secured it in place with another one. Delfin wondered where a girl with a classy accent learned language like that. Maybe in one of those fancy schools, maybe all the girls talked like that when they were in the bathroom. Now
that
would be the beginning of a good porno movie, girls in a bathroom talking dirty. Not this, not being out on a fucking boat.

The girl didn’t know about the killing, of course, but she must have figured out the rest. Funny thing was, she didn’t look scared. She looked angry. They’d warned him she was going to fight him. Well, as far he was concerned, that was fine. Delfin liked the rough stuff, but they wouldn’t let him get away with it in the boates, so it’d been a while since he’d had a chance to beat a woman into submission. Not that this was a woman. She didn’t look to be more than sixteen. She was a virgin, too, or so they said. Delfin found it hard to believe. Most of the girls he knew didn’t carry their virginity beyond the age of eleven, twelve at the most.

He tried to concentrate on what was coming, not on the sloshing of the water outside.

And found himself getting hard.

W
HILE SHE was setting up the lights, Claudia kept one eye on Delfin, studying him, as he studied Marta. He’d started out the trip nervous as a scalded cat, and she’d been worried about his ability to perform, but now he seemed to have adjusted to the situation. Claudia gave a little smile of satisfaction when she saw him open his legs and rub his crotch, displaying for the girl like the animal he was.

Marta turned her head aside in disgust.

“Getting close,” Otto said, his voice coming through the companionway.

Claudia clambered on deck and looked over the bow. Hans was already up there, seated on the cabin roof, one hand on the anchor. The shoreline was about a hundred meters away. She relieved Otto at the wheel, took a ninety-degree turn and steered parallel to the bank. Over here on this side of the river there wasn’t much to see, just the occasional fisherman’s shack, surrounded by dense vegetation. Now and then, they heard the screech and saw the flash of a passing macaw. Occasionally they caught sight of a monkey leaping from branch to branch.

Claudia couldn’t anchor in midriver. It was too deep, the current too swift. But she didn’t need the middle of the river. Here, in the shallower water near the shore, they were thoroughly isolated and unlikely to be disturbed. It would have been a different matter if there’d been a bridge. Then the city would have spilled over to this side. But there was no bridge, not here, not for eight hundred kilometers upstream, not for more than sixteen hundred kilometers downstream all the way to the sea.

She motored along until she came to a little cove. The cove had a high bank shielding it on three sides and thick vegetation growing right down to the water. Above the scrub, above the high-water line of the rainy season, trees, some with trunks as high as thirty meters, towered upward and spread their branches to form a canopy. The land rose beyond that and the canopy seemed to go on forever.

Claudia threw the twin throttles into neutral, waited until the forward motion had stopped and told Hans to heave the anchor overboard. She put the boat into reverse, and he paid out line. Thirty meters from shore, she cut the engine and told him to snub the line on the cleat. The boat stopped with a gentle jerk, the nylon cord rising from the water like a long white snake as the hull adjusted to the wind and current. When she thought the process was complete, Claudia took a step forward, lined up a stanchion with a tree on shore, and verified that the anchor was holding. Then she went below and started to unpack her camera from its padded case.