But he didn’t know, so he did.
Three days had passed since the disappearance of the birds, and in all that time there hadn’t been a single break in the case. True, Juraci Santos still hadn’t turned up dead, but that was little solace for Silva. He didn’t feel they were any closer to finding her, and he feared she might already have been murdered.
The call, therefore, came like a ray of hope breaking through dark clouds of despair. He and Arnaldo set out immediately for Riberao Preto.
Helio Fortunato, the delegado who’d called, was waiting to receive them.
“Where’s our perp?” Arnaldo said when introductions were complete.
“It’s not him,” Fortunato said. “He’s not part of it. But he can give you a description of the woman you’re looking for.”
“ Woman? ” Silva said. “We’re looking for a woman?”
“It seems you are.”
“That bitch,” Arnaldo said.
“What bitch?” Fortunato said.
“Cintia Tadesco,” Arnaldo said, “Tico’s girlfriend. It’s gotta be her.”
“That bombshell?” Fortunato said. “You figure?”
“More like wishful thinking,” Silva said. “My colleague here isn’t too fond of the lady. How about filling us in?”
“I think it would be better if you heard it from the man himself. Come on. It’s this way.”
Fortunato took them down a green-painted corridor to a windowless interview room, blue with cigarette smoke. There was a ring welded to the steel table, one to which a prisoner could be shackled, but the man seated there wasn’t handcuffed. He was smoking a cigarette, one of many by the looks of the overflowing ashtray. He looked nervous.
“I’m out of smokes,” he said to Fortunato. “Be a pal, Delegado, and see if you can’t get me a few more.”
Fortunato took a pack out of his pocket, removed four cigarettes and lined them up on the table. Then he made the introductions.
“Senhores, meet Tancredo Candido. Tancredo, this is Chief Inspector Silva, and this is Agent Nunes. They’re from the Federal Police. They want to know how the stone came into your possession.”
“Right. Right,” Candido said. He used his glowing butt to light one of Fortunato’s cigarettes, and took a deep drag. Then he launched into his story. “The woman who rented the place,” he said, “she was-”
“Wait. Stop,” Fortunato said. “Start by telling the officers about what you do for a living and where you do it.”
“Oh. Right. Right,” Candido had just taken another puff. He held it in while he said, “Well, it’s like this: I’m a caseiro. I take care of a sitio owned by Senhor Yakamura.” Then he exhaled the smoke.
“Who’s Yakamura?” Arnaldo asked.
“A rich Paulista.”
“Not Japanese?”
“That too.” Candido waved his cigarette, the ember a glowing jewel in the dimly-lit room. “I mean, that’s what he looks like, but when he talks, he sounds like he comes from Sao Paulo.”
“Go on.”
“Right. Right. Where was I?”
“Sitio.”
“Right. Right. There’s the main house, a swimming pool, a little house for me and about two hectares of land. That’s it. Yakamura doesn’t live there, hardly ever visits, rents it to people who get it into their heads it’d be nice to have a little place in the country.” He took another drag. “City folks, always city folks. First couple of weekends they generally show up with just the family. Then they start inviting friends. They do barbecues. They get drunk. Sometimes they screw each other’s wives. I remember one time-”
“What we’re really interested in,” Silva said, “are the circumstances pertaining to the diamond you tried to sell.”
Candido finished the cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray. This time, he didn’t light another from the stub.
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Right. So these people who rent the place?”
“Yes?”
“They mostly get tired of it pretty quick. I mean, unless you’re eating, or getting drunk, or screwing somebody’s wife it’s pretty boring, right?”
“The diamond, Tancredo.”
“I’m getting there. So one family after another moves along, and Senhor Yakamura rents it to another one. Now, me, I stay on, because I take care of the place. I cut the grass, and clean the pool and fix the little things that go wrong. The water’s from a well, for example, and the damned pump-”
“We don’t care about the pump,” Arnaldo said. “We care about the diamond. Where did you get it?”
“Anybody got a light?”
Fortunato tossed him a pack of wooden matches. He took one out of the box and struck it. Candido used the flame to light his cigarette, shook out the match, exhaled more smoke. “One of the birds brought it.”
“Birds?”
“See? You don’t know about the birds. And now you’re gonna want me to tell you about the birds, which I already would have if you’d let me tell it my way in the first place.”
“Then tell it your way,” Silva said.
Tancredo tossed the match in the ashtray, picked up the box.
“Can I keep these?”
“Sure,” Fortunato said. “Keep talking.”
“Right, right. Well, it was like this: about four months ago Senhor Yakamura rented the place to this woman. She shows up with five crates of birds and a couple of sacks of the shit they eat.”
“These birds,” Silva said. “Were they carrier pigeons?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that until later.”
“This woman. Describe her.”
“A lot younger than you guys.”
“How much younger?”
“I dunno.”
Silva closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Getting information out of this guy was like pulling teeth. “Thirty-five?” he said. “Forty?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Like what?”
“Thirty-five.”
“What else?”
Tancredo took another puff. “What else do you want to know?”
“Hair? Was she pretty?”
“Brown hair. Kinda curly. Not bad looking.”
“How tall?”
Candido held up a hand, palm down, to indicate her height.
“Average,” Silva said. “Her eyes? What color?”
“Brown… I think.”
“How was she dressed?”
“Tight pants. Nice ass.”
“What else do you remember?”
“About how she looked?”
“Yes.”
“What’s to remember? She was normal. She had a nice ass, that’s all. And, oh yeah, she smelled good.”
“What do you mean she smelled good?”
“What I said. She smelled good.”
“Her soap? Her deodorant?”
“Yeah, her soap maybe. What’s deodorant?”
“Never mind. What happened next?”
“She tells me it’s a hobby of hers, raising these birds. She says she’s busy in town all week, and she’ll only visit on the weekends, and maybe not every weekend, so she wants my help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Feeding them, cleaning the cages, that kind of stuff. I tell her okay, I’ll do it. She asks me how much I want to earn. I tell her four hundred a month. She says she’ll pay two.”
“But you accepted?”
“Yeah. I never figured she’d pay four. I was just trying it on. A week later, she’s back with a van-”
“What kind of a van?”
Tancredo ground out his butt, getting ash on his fingers in the process. He wiped it off on his pants.
“One of those Volkswagen things,” he said. “White, like most of them are. In the van, she’s got all the stuff to hammer together a house for the birds. She stands around being bossy while I do it, and then she has me move the pigeons from the cages into their new house, which isn’t very difficult because they’re little, and they’re not flying yet.”
“And then?”
“And then she tells me to keep feeding them and to let them out when it looks like they’re about ready to fly. I ask her if she isn’t worried about losing them, and that’s when she tells me they’re homing pigeons, which means they’ll always come back as long as I keep feeding them. So I keep feeding them. Pretty soon they’re taking off, and flying around and coming back to their house to sleep.”
“And the woman?”