“A recent development?”
“We parted ways a month ago.”
“Amicably?”
“Not in the least.”
“Two of my colleagues met her yesterday. They found her… difficult. Would you concur with that assessment?”
Marques leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his grey waistcoat.
“In my line of work, Agent Goncalves, difficult goes with the territory. I often take on demure young beauties and mild-mannered young Adonises only to see them evolve into raging egomaniacs. It happens all the time and no longer surprises me.”
“But, with Cintia Tadesco, you got something that did surprise you?”
The agent stuck out his jaw, as if Goncalves had questioned his judgment.
“I’m good at reading character. Ask anyone. But for her, purely out of spite, to kill a goose that was laying golden eggs?
Well, that, I confess, I never expected.”
“The goose being?”
Marques’s belligerent attitude vanished in the wink of an eye. He broke into a sheepish grin.
“The goose being me, I suppose.”
His self-deprecation showed another facet of the man; Goncalves began to like him.
“It’s this way,” Marques said. “I don’t expect my clients to become intimate friends, but I do expect a modicum of loyalty.”
“And you didn’t get it from Cintia?”
“No, Agent Goncalves, I didn’t. Do you read Fofocas?”
“I’ve seen it around.”
“It’s trash, and it’s full of lies, but I find it a useful tool. I’m only asking because there was a recent article about Cintia’s new agent and his stable of clients. All of those clients, until last month, were clients of mine. Cintia was quoted as saying I’d been a good agent once, now become but an aged shadow of my former self. She went on to state that anyone truly concerned about their career shouldn’t consider employing me.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch, indeed.”
“Do you think she believed what she was saying?”
“I do not.”
“Why, then, would she do it?”
“I have a supposition.”
“Nothing concrete?”
“No. Simply a supposition.”
“Something to do with money?”
“Money?” Marques scoffed. “No, Agent Goncalves. Nothing at all to do with money. Cintia is greedy. She loves money. She can never get enough of it. But, as far as our relationship is concerned, it’s no longer a factor. She has achieved what physicists call critical mass. She’s hot and getting hotter. She no longer needs external impetus to fuel her growth. Despite her disagreeable personality, Cintia is getting more offers of work than she can possibly accept. Money she could make with me or with any other agent. Money wouldn’t be a motive for her to switch.”
“What then?”
“I could be wrong, but I suspect a romantic liaison with her new agent.”
“If that’s so,” Goncalves said, “she’s being discrete about it.”
Marques smiled. “You’ve been talking to Caio Prado.”
“How did you know?”
“After that damned article appeared in Fofocas, the Artist’s mother came to see me. By that time, it was apparent there was no love lost between me and her potential future daughter-in-law. Juraci wanted to know if I had any dirt to dish, told me she’d hired a detective, told me it was Prado. Not a bad choice, by the way.”
“He doesn’t make much of an impression.”
“That’s one of his strengths. People don’t notice him; he fits in anywhere; he’s never perceived as a threat. Prado is a sly old fox. Lots of people in the entertainment industry use him, and he knows a good deal about it. Juraci could afford the best. In Prado, she got it.”
“So you told Juraci your supposition about this new agent of Cintia’s?”
“Actually, I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“I was still in a state of shock, still trying to understand why Cintia did what she did. Since then, I’ve given it a great deal of thought. Frankly, I can’t come up with any other explanation.”
“Who is this guy?” Goncalves asked. “This new agent of hers?”
“A young man by the name of Tarso Mello. Actually, his name isn’t Mello, or even Tarso, but it’s the one he goes by, a stage name, one that was chosen for him.”
“What’s the name he was baptized under?”
Marques scratched his head. “I’m not sure he was baptized. I think he’s Jewish, but that’s beside the point. He never uses his original name. Tarso Mello is the only name you’ll need to locate him.”
Goncalves made a note of it and said, “Okay, go on.”
“He was an actor once, a bad one, but he was extraordinarily good-looking when he was younger, and he had a reasonably good run as a photo model. But then, when he started pushing thirty-five…” Marques held out two hands palms upward.
“His bookings started to dry up?”
“Indeed they did, and he was without a single prospect of a role in television or cinema, so he started casting about for another career.”
“And that’s when Cintia and Mello started a relationship?”
Marques nodded.
“That’s not a fact, mind you,” he said, “only an assumption. All I can tell you with certainty is that Cintia came to me and asked me to take him on as an assistant. I said I didn’t need an assistant. What I didn’t tell her was that, even if I had needed an assistant, I would never have considered Mello. To be a good agent you have to have a modicum of sensitivity, and you have to be intelligent. Mello has no sensitivity at all, and he’s astoundingly stupid.”
“Cintia took it badly? Your refusal to hire Mello?”
“She got nasty, as she always does whenever she doesn’t get her way. But I stood firm. I thought, and I continue to think, that Mello would do me more harm if I accepted him than if I rejected him, even if Cintia did get her nose out of joint.”
“Even if you lost her as a client?”
“That aspect of it didn’t enter into my deliberations. I thought the storm would blow over.”
“Had you known then what you know now, would you have acted differently?”
“I would have acted in exactly the same way. My days have been less lucrative since Cintia left, but they’ve been far more peaceful. At this stage in my life, peace is of more value than money.”
“From everything I’ve heard of the woman, I can understand why you’re happy to be rid of her. But I detect a certain inconsistency.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re telling me she switched her business for emotional reasons. That doesn’t sound like the Cintia Tadesco I’m learning about. From everything I’ve heard, she’s nothing if not calculating. She doesn’t let emotion get in the way of her goals.”
Marques leaned back in his chair. “We humans are complex creatures, Agent Goncalves. We’re hardly ever one hundred percent this or that. Cintia Tadesco may be largely a calculating bitch, but she’s still capable of an emotional act. In this case,” he said, “I think she’s committed two of them. I think she did what she did to favor Mello-but also to spite me.”
“To spite you? Simply because you wouldn’t give her what she wanted?”
Mello nodded, and a lock of mane tumbled in front his eye. He lifted a hand and brushed it aside. “When Cintia Tadesco doesn’t get what she wants, she reacts like the spoiled child she is. She’s extraordinarily impulsive. I’ve seen her turn on people in a heartbeat. One moment she loves you, and the next she’s ready to destroy you. It happened to me. In time, it will happen to Mello.”
“Convinced of that, are you?”
“I am. And for Mello it will be worse than it was for me. She brought him all of his clients. When she takes them away, it will destroy him.”
“Could she do that?”
“Of course she could.”
“Doesn’t he have them under contract?”
“Big clients, Agent Goncalves, the ones that really matter, resent signing contracts. It makes them feel constricted. They want to be free, at the drop of a hat, to distribute their largesse to whomever they wish.”
“Do you continue to manage Marco Franco, Cintia’s former boyfriend?”