Mello’s eyes got big. Outrage, maybe. Or fear?
“Edson Campos. Leave him out of it.”
“Why should I?”
“He has nothing to do with my work or my clients. He doesn’t know Cintia. He isn’t even involved in the entertainment industry.”
Mello’s voice had turned shrill. Goncalves decided it was outrage.
“No?”
“No. He’s a veterinary technician.”
“Tell me more about Senhorita Tadesco.”
Taking the spotlight off his partner had an immediate calming effect. Mello seemed to relax.
“What do you want to know?”
“Do you like her?”
“Do I what?”
“Like her. Not as a client. As a person.”
“What’s that got to do with-”
“Just answer the question, Senhor Mello.”
“Like her? Actually, I do.”
“The way I hear it, most people hate her.”
“I’m not most people. I find her candor and singlemindedness refreshing. I don’t hate her a bit, and she knows I don’t. She wouldn’t continue to retain me if I did.”
“How’s her relationship with her prospective mother-in-law?”
“Cintia doesn’t discuss her personal life with me.”
“Never?”
“Never!”
“You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you, Senhor Mello? I don’t like lies.”
“I’m not lying, and I resent the implication that I am.”
“You don’t recall Cintia saying anything to you about Juraci Santos?”
“No.”
“How important to Cintia is her relationship with Tico Santos?”
“Very important. She loves him.”
“How can you possibly be sure?”
“What?”
“If, as you’ve just alleged, Cintia doesn’t discuss her personal life with you, how can you be sure she loves Tico?”
“It’s… it’s been in the newspapers, in the magazines.”
“And you believe everything you read in the magazines?”
“I… I…”
Mello’s gape reminded Goncalves of a fish. Goncalves disliked fish.
“He was nervous as hell.” Goncalves was on the street again, calling Silva to report. “I think he’s hiding something, and the dumb bastard isn’t good at it.”
“So you don’t think Mello is particularly intelligent?”
“Hell, no. He’s a dumb fuck. You think it’s true? That part about his being gay?”
“I think it must be. He’d know how easy it would be to check. He even encouraged you to do so.”
“Yeah, that’s true I guess.”
“And if he’s nervous, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s hiding something. Let’s put Mello on the back burner for a minute. Remember that postman?”
“The one Juraci’s neighbors saw her talking to?”
“Correct. The Sa woman has identified him from a photo. Come back to the office. You and Hector are going to pay a visit to the gentleman.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The postman’s name was Jose Afonso Lyra. He lived in Penha, a lower-middle class neighborhood in the northern suburbs. The narrow, one-way streets were unpaved, the signposts few, and Hector and Goncalves had to stop several times for directions. The sun had set by the time they arrived.
The Lyra manse turned out to be a tiny, free-standing house, located on an equally tiny lot and constructed of unpainted concrete blocks. A dim glow shone through the shutters. The front door was ajar. From within, they could hear the audio of Radio Mundo’s third soap opera of the night.
Hector took a picture out of his pocket, a copy lifted from Lyra’s personnel records.
“This is him.”
Goncalves brought the photo close to his face and studied it in the light of a street lamp. “Scrawny little runt like that isn’t going to give us any trouble.”
“No? I ran into a fellow once who was even smaller and scrawnier. He had a shotgun. He killed three cops before they brought him down.”
Goncalves handed the photo back and loosened the Glock in his holster. He kept one hand on the grip, as he followed Hector up the concrete path.
There was no doorbell. Hector balled a fist and rapped on the wood.
“Senhor Lyra?”
There was a rustling from inside, and a skinny scarecrow of a man holding a drinking glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other appeared in the opening. His personnel records from the post office had given his age as forty-two, but he looked older. His only garment was a ragged pair of shorts. Goncalves took his hand off the butt of his gun.
“Who are you guys?” the scarecrow said.
“Federal cops,” Hector said. “Are you Jose Lyra?”
“Yeah, I’m him.” Lyra frowned. “What do you want with me?”
“We want to talk to you about the argument you had with Juraci Santos,” Hector said.
“Ah, crap. What did she tell you? That I was blackmailing her, or some such shit?”
“She didn’t tell us anything,” Hector said. “She’s been kidnapped.”
“Really?” Lyra said raising his eyebrows.
He was either the last person in Brazil who didn’t know what had happened to the Artist’s mother, or he was lying.
“You don’t watch the news?” Goncalves said. “Read the papers?”
“I get home too late for the news, and I get all the reading I want from addresses on envelopes. So she got her ass kidnapped, did she? Hell, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, not even that selfish bitch.”
“Why do you call her that?”
“Because she is. Come on in. Have a drink. I’ll tell you all about it.”
All Lyra had to offer was cachaca, but the cachaca was out of a jug, and it was amber-colored. A jug meant domestically produced; amber that it was aged. Both cops accepted a glass, sipped, made appreciative noises.
“Yeah,” Lyra said, “smooth, isn’t it? Made on a fazenda near Riberao Preto. A friend of mine brings it to me whenever he’s in town. Okay, you asked about Juraci? Well, here it is: she was my sister-in-law.”
“Wait a minute,” Hector said. “Did I hear you right? Did you say sister-in-law?”
Lyra settled back in his chair, as if the story was going to be a long one.
“My first wife’s name was Graca,” he said, “and she was Juraci’s sister. She’d just turned fifteen when she got pregnant. I was six months older. Our parents said we had to get married. We were just kids, used to doing what we were told, so we did. We moved in with my parents. I left school and got a job.”
“And Juraci?”
“Juraci was a year younger than Graca, only fourteen, but she was a woman already, if you know what I mean.”
“Uh huh.”
“She had this long brown hair that hung all the way down to the crack in her ass. I was in love with that hair. Hell, I was in love with her.”
“How about your wife?”
“I was in love with her, too. For a while. But then we lost the kid, and it hurt her, and she didn’t want to screw anymore. Meanwhile, here’s Juraci, giving me the eye every time we go around to her parents’ place for Sunday dinner. I could see she was keen. I heard she’d had a couple of boyfriends, wasn’t a virgin or anything like that, so I went around one day and tried my luck. Her mother and father both worked, but she was still going to school. I knew she got home around three. I told my boss I was sick and went over there.”
Lyra took a final drag on his cigarette, extinguished it, and took a sip of his cachaca.
“And then?” Goncalves prompted.
“It was like she was expecting me. We fucked right there in the front room, her bending over one end of the couch, me standing behind her, looking through a crack in the curtain to make sure nobody walked in on us.”
“So you became your sister-in-law’s lover?”
“Best piece of ass I ever had. The best ever. She’d do everything, let me stick it anywhere. And she loved it! If I forget everything, I won’t forget that. As far as I was concerned, it could have gone on forever.”
“What happened? Did you get caught?”
“No. We never did. But one day, out of a clear blue sky, she told me not to come around anymore. She was tired of me, she said. Later, I found out she had this thing going with some kid at school.”