"What kind of a cop are you, anyway?"
"Federal," Silva answered shortly.
"Your colega said you were taking me to Brasilia? Why Brasilia? I didn't do anything in Brasilia."
"Meaning that you only did stuff in other places?"
"Meaning nothing. What's this all about?"
"It's about a rape and a murder."
"I don't know nothing about no rape and no murder."
"It was a long time ago. Seven years."
"Seven years! Shit, I can't remember back seven months. Except I never raped nobody. Never had to pay for it neither. I got women lining up to fuck me, I do."
Silva drove on in silence, giving no sign that he'd heard what Miranda had said. The car began to jolt when he hit the unpaved road. A light rain had been coming down when they left the delegacia, but had tapered off before they entered the forest. The air was heavy and tinged with the smell of rotting vegetation. When Silva braked to a stop, it was gray dawn over the road, still dark under the shade of the trees. The place hadn't changed since his last visit. The little depression in the ground, the surrounding vegetation, the large rock with the flat face, all were just as he remembered them. Silva had been back to this place many times over the course of the last seven years, at first to walk the ground and investigate, later to meditate about what he might do here, and to pray for his father's soul.
He opened the back door, pulled Joao Miranda out by his heels, and started dragging him across the ground.
"Hey," the thug said when his head hit a rock. "Hey, no need to get rough. Let me up. Let me walk."
Silva didn't respond. He kept dragging Miranda until they reached the place his mother had pointed out to him, the place where his father had been shot.
"You know where you are?" he asked. "You know why you're here?"
The punk shook his head. Silva gave him a kick in the ribs. "Answer me," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about you and a friend of yours. I'm talking about a man you shot to death, here on this spot."
"I didn't shoot nobody."
Silva kicked him again. The punk assumed the fetal position, protecting his soft parts, his genitals and his abdomen.
"Talk, you filho da puta."
"I told you, I didn't shoot nobody."
"The next kick is going to be in the balls."
That was the only threat Silva had to make. Despite his facade, the punk was a coward at heart. "It wasn't me," Miranda said. "It was Escorpiao. Escorpiao did it."
The name meant scorpion.
"Who?"
"Dante Correia. Escorpiao. It was an old guy, right? We were gonna do his wife and he came on strong, and he took a swing at Escorpiao and Escorpiao shot him in the head."
"How many times?"
"Twice. He shot him twice."
"Where's this Escorpiao now?"
"Dead."
Silva kicked him again. "Don't lie to me."
"No. I swear. You know the Commando Vermelho?"
The Commando Vermelho was a drug gang, one of the largest. They were in constant warfare for control of the trade. The battles were fought out in the favelas, the shantytowns.
"Yeah, I know the Commando Vermelho," Silva said. "What about it?"
"He was one of their soldiers. Got himself shot dead, maybe five years ago. I swear. You're a cop. You can look it up. Dante Correia. Escorpiao. It was in all the papers."
"And he pulled the trigger on the old man who was shot here? Is that what you're telling me?"
"That's what I'm telling you. Why are you making such a big thing out of this? It was years ago, for Christ's sake. What's it to you?"
"The man was my father. The woman you raped was my mother."
Joao Miranda's eyes got so big that Silva could see white encircling both pupils.
"Jesus," he said.
"Yeah," Silva said, and pulled out his revolver.
He had a shovel in the trunk of his rental car, a new one he'd bought just for the purpose. He dug a hole, stripped the handcuffs from Miranda's wrists and ankles, and buried him just below the place where his father had died.
He'd been looking forward to doing that for seven years, but in the end, it didn't bring him the satisfaction he thought it would.
When he'd been at Quantico, he'd heard a lecture from some psychiatrist. The man talked about "closure." Closure, like you could just walk away and close a door behind you and that would be it. Could it be that there really were people who could do that?
The next day, he looked up the records on Dante Correira, the man Miranda had called Escorpiao. Miranda had been telling the truth. Correia had been dead for almost five years.
Silva felt a little surge of relief. He'd never before killed a man in cold blood. He didn't want to do it ever again.
But two years later, he did.
Chapter Ten
Carla, Mario Silva's only sibling, shared her mother's name and her father's features. She had the same jetblack hair, the same black eyes, and the same determined set to her jaw.
In character, she resembled her brother. Once she'd made up her mind that something, or someone, was worth pursuing, she did it with singleminded determination.
In September of 1974, she made up her mind about a fledgling electrical engineer named Claudio Costa. In August of 1975, they were married.
At first, her parents greeted the news of her engagement with protest. Not that they didn't like Claudio. They just thought the match was premature. The young people had, after all, known each other for such a short time. Then there was the matter of Carla completing her education at the University of Sao Paulo.
Carla admitted, and promptly brushed aside, the matter of the relationship's short duration. As to the degree, she said, one thing didn't preclude the other. She'd keep on studying.
Dr. Silva and his wife had to admit that they'd never known Carla to promise anything she couldn't deliver. Backed into a corner, they reluctantly gave their consent. A very pregnant Carla Costa was awarded her diploma in June of 1976. Her son, Hector, was born a week later. He was two years old on the night his grandfather died, eleven when he witnessed the murder of his father.
IT WAS a Saturday, a week before Christmas. The Costas lived in Granja Viana in those days, a residential suburb about twenty kilometers from the city center. On the morning of the murder they were stuck in a traffic jam, mostly composed of people who, like themselves, were on their way into town to do some shopping.
Claudio was behind the wheel. Carla was seated next to him, her attention absorbed by a notepad into which she was jotting names and gift ideas. Hector was in the back seat, manipulating a little plastic puzzle.
They heard the man before they saw him.
"Your watch," he said. "Hand it over."
Carla looked up to see a man with a day's growth of beard pointing a revolver at her husband's head. The man was standing just outside the car, on the driver's side. The muzzle of the gun protruded through the open window.
Carla looked around for help. People in the neighboring cars were staring straight ahead or in other directions. They'd seen the gun. Nobody wanted to get involved. Carla looked back at the gunman. The muzzle of the revolver was trembling, the man's brown eyes glazed and distant.
Drugs, she thought.
"Do it," the man said to Claudio. "Do it, now. Take off the goddamned watch." As if to emphasize what he said, he cocked the revolver.
Carla watched the cylinder spin, heard the click, saw Claudio's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. Both of her husband's hands were frozen on the wheel. She knew the watch had been his father's, knew he didn't want to give it up.