Favelas are shantytowns. There are no numbers on the shacks; there are no names given to the streets; they aren't to be found on municipal maps; there's no mail delivery. If Souza's mother lived in a favela, it might not be easy to find her. Arnaldo recognized that he was going to need help, local help. Not the kid. He'd scamper off at the first opportunity.
"Take my advice," he said. "Use the money to get out of town."
The kid swallowed. "And you won't tell? You won't tell anyone what I told you?"
"No. Put your clothes on and get the hell out of here."
He let Rambo leave first. After a minute or so, he followed him downstairs and walked up to the desk.
"You owe me twenty reais."
Fat Boy lowered the magazine and looked at his watch. "You figure?" he said, insolently.
"Yeah, I figure."
Fat Boy looked Arnaldo up and down. Arnaldo was a head taller and at least twenty kilos heavier. None of it was fat.
Fat Boy reached into his pocket.
Their parting was about as cordial as could be expected. Fat Boy didn't thank Arnaldo for his business, and Arnaldo didn't give in to the temptation to beat the crap out of Fat Boy.
Arnaldo walked around until he found an ATM that would accept his bankcard. The limit was R$500, so he withdrew that. And then he went looking for a taxi.
Chapter Twenty-four
"Roadblock," Hector said, taking his foot off the accelerator pedal.
He put the gearshift in neutral, lightly tapped the brake, and glided to a stop behind a blue truck piled high with bunches of green bananas. On the tailgate, the truck's owner had made his contribution to popular literature:
Kids are like farts. Most people can only tolerate their own.
The majority of Brazil's owner-operated commercial vehicles display something similar, pithy expressions of folk wisdom dreamed up by the drivers themselves. This one was surrounded by little painted roses, white and pink.
Silva got out and assessed the extent of the traffic jam. The space between their car and the roadblock, a distance about the length of a soccer pitch, was packed with all kinds of vehicles, mostly trucks.
He got back in. "Plenty of room on the right shoulder," he said.
Hector put the car in gear, spun the wheel, and drove the hundred meters or so to the roadblock.
A man with a paunch, and a gap where his two front teeth should have been, wearing a State Police uniform with sergeant's stripes, saw them coming. He walked toward them with a scowl on his face, flapping his hands at the wrist as if they were wet and he was trying to shake the water off.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he said as soon as he was close enough not to have to exert himself by raising his voice. He lisped. It would have been difficult not to with those missing teeth, but it was still funny, coming from such a big man.
Silva suppressed a smile and reached for his badge. "Federal Police."
"You Silva?" the cop said, not in the least impressed. It came out "Thilva."
Silva nodded.
"We weren't expecting you so soon. The colonel said to bring you up when you got here."
"What are you talking about?"
The sergeant scratched the bulge of flab that hung over his belt.
"You're here to see the body, right?"
"What body?"
"Muniz. They found him."
The entrance to the Fazenda Boa Vista was a stone's throw from where the cops had set up the roadblock. The sergeant got into their car and went with them to show the way.
"You go left at the fork," he said as they drove through the front gate.
A right turn at the same fork would have brought them to their original destination, a cluster of pavilions surrounding a red banner on a long pole. There must have been at least fifty of the structures, fluttering roofs of black plastic. Around and among them were gathered people of both sexes and all ages. There was a smell of cooking fires, and the distant sound of a baby's crying.
"League encampment," the sergeant said. "Smells real bad if you get too close. Stop over there next to the ambulance. We gotta climb the fucking hill."
The hillside was steep and strewn with gray rocks, some of them as big as a baby's head. The sergeant picked his way carefully over the ground, going slow and huffing like a steam engine. At the pace he set, Silva and Hector didn't even work up a sweat.
About halfway up, Silva's cell phone rang.
"Director?" he said.
"That Mario Silva?"
"It's Silva. Who's this?"
"Corporal Borges from the State Police. I've got a message for you from Colonel Ferraz."
"How did you get this number?"
"The colonel gave it to me."
Silva sighed. "What's the message?"
"Orlando Muniz Junior is dead. We found the body. The colonel said to meet him at the Muniz fazenda, the Boa Vista. You know where that is?"
"Yes."
"He says somebody will be waiting for you at the gate."
Silva thanked him and hung up without bothering to explain that he was already there.
The flat area on the crown of the hill had once been cleared, probably for grazing, but that must have been quite some time ago. A few stunted trees and some clumps of brush were sprinkled here and there. Silva stood still for a moment and let his eyes sweep around the horizon. Down below there were endless fields, most planted with sugarcane, some lying fallow. At the margin of one vast, empty area he could see the plastic shelters and flapping banner of the Landless Workers' League.
Close at hand, red earth was piled next to a rectangular hole cut into dried grass. Half a dozen cops in uniform, and some who weren't, were hanging around the site. Most were looking at the contents of an oblong wooden box about the size of a coffin.
The spectators didn't include Ferraz, who was standing to one side, engaged in conversation with the same officer Silva had seen entering and leaving his office, the one with the scar and the knife hanging from a scabbard on his belt. The colonel was dressed in a red polo shirt, jodhpurs, and boots, as if he'd been out riding when he got the news.
A man wearing latex gloves squatted over the box. There was a black medical bag standing open-mouthed on the ground near the man's right foot.
"Colonel."
Ferraz turned at the sound of Silva's voice. "How the fuck did you get here so fast?"
Silva ignored the question. "Why don't you introduce me?" he said, nodding at the officer.
Reflexively, the officer nodded back. Ferraz looked from one to the other and finally said, "Osmani Palmas, Mario Silva." He didn't elaborate, and he didn't include Hector in the introduction.
"How did you find him?" Silva asked, pointing at the makeshift coffin.
"His old man hired a helicopter, had it fly back and forth over the property. The pilot spotted what looked like a grave. Turned out, it was."
"Does Muniz know his son's dead?"
"He sure as hell does, and he's on his way. Those league guys screwed up big this time. He's going to fuck them up good." Ferraz seemed pleased, almost gleeful.
"There's no proof they did it.,,
"No proof?" Ferraz laughed out loud. A couple of the other cops turned toward him. "No proof?" he repeated. "What do you think that is?" He pointed toward the corpse. "How much more proof you think the old man needs?"
Silva brushed past the colonel and went to talk to the man wearing the latex gloves, a Nisei with rimless glasses and a purple birthmark on his forehead.
"Ishikawa," the man said, rising to his feet. "Medical examiner. You?"
"Costa," Silva pointed at Hector, "and Silva," he stuck a thumb into his own chest. "Federal Police. Any conclusions?"
"He was alive when they buried him," the doctor said. He stuck the thermometer he was holding into a breast pocket, pulled out a pencil, and made a note. "He tried to free his ankles and wrists. Cut himself up pretty badly. The marks on his forehead came from battering his head repeatedly against the lid. Maybe he was trying to knock himself out."