Father Angelo's eyes flashed in anger. "It's easy enough for you to say that, Chief Inspect-"
"No, it's not, Father. It's damned hard to say, but it's the truth."
"Will you let me finish?"
"Make it quick. We have to get out of here."
"I understand that, but this will only take a minute, and it's important that you understand. Our concern, Anton's and mine, was for the life of the boy. We didn't know to what degree we could trust you, but there was one thing we knew for sure: As long as Ferraz was on the loose, Edson's life would be in danger. It still is."
"But-"
Father Angelo ignored Silva's interruption.
"Try to follow my reasoning. In order to put Ferraz and his colleagues away, you're going to need proof, isn't that true?"
"Of course it-"
"But you don't have any do you? Not even now."
"That's not true. Now it's different. Now we have a witness."
"I'm not a fool, Chief Inspector. I'll tell you what you have, and it's the only thing you have: The word of a street kid, nothing more."
"All right. I admit it's not much-"
"It's nothing at all. Edson's word against the word of a colonel in the State Police is nothing at all, and you know it."
In the silence that followed, there was the sound of a distant siren.
"State Police are coming," Hector said.
"Put that trapdoor back in place and cover it with the carpet," his uncle told him.
Hector had barely finished when a vehicle pulled up outside. The siren slid down the musical scale and died out. Car doors slammed. They heard Arnaldo's voice, and then heavy footsteps on the porch followed by the squeak of the screen door. Two state policemen entered the room.
"Father," one of the cops said, acknowledging Angelo's presence. Both of them seemed to know him. He nodded a greeting.
"Guy outside told us what happened," the other cop said, addressing Silva. "We saw his ID. How about showing us yours?"
Silva and Hector produced their wallets. The eyebrows of the cop who checked their warrant cards went up when he saw that he was in the presence of the Federal Police's Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters. Apparently, Arnaldo hadn't mentioned it.
"Father Angelo came in after we did," Silva said. "We found Father Brouwer's body just as it is. Nothing has been touched. There's no reason for us to stay here. If you want a statement, send an escrivante to my hotel and I'll give him one.
"Sim, senhor," one of the cops said with a sideways glance at Anton Brouwer's mutilated corpse. "You're at the Excelsior?"
"Yes, the Excelsior. Let's go, Padre."
The trip to the hotel took them about fifteen minutes. Father Angelo kept one window open and smoked all the way.
They drove into the subterranean parking garage and succeeded in getting Edson up to Silva's suite without encountering anyone.
The kid tried not to show it, but he was impressed. A rather normal hotel suite was high luxury for him. He ran his hand over the fabric covering the couch and asked if he could use the bathroom. Hector showed him where it was. On his way back, Edson spotted the bottles behind the bar. "How about a whiskey?"
Silva poured him one. The kid had probably put much worse things in his body, and it might help him to relax. While he was drinking it, Silva nodded to Arnaldo, who took out his cell phone.
The agente dialed Riberao, got his sister on the line, and asked to speak to Marly Souza. The boy froze when he heard his mother's name.
When Arnaldo extended the telephone, Edson tossed off the rest of his whiskey and grabbed the instrument like he was afraid the agente was going to snatch it away again. The tough little street kid got a catch in his throat when he started to talk to his mother. He cleared it, then turned his back on them and talked for some time in a low voice. They didn't hurry him. When he finally hung up the telephone almost twenty minutes later he asked for another whiskey, and got it.
"Now talk to us," Silva said.
There'd been a rumor on the street, Edson said, that Ferraz's men were looking for him. He couldn't think of another place to turn, so he'd sought refuge with the priests. He'd started out by sleeping on their couch, only bolting down into the hole if he heard a car stop or someone coming up the walk that led through the banana trees.
Then, after a couple of days, the bad dreams started. He found himself waking up several times a night, always in a cold sweat. The priests wouldn't give him anything stronger than chamomile tea, so he'd tried spending a night in the security of the hole. He slept so much better down there that he'd taken to doing it all the time.
He didn't exactly know when he'd become aware of the footsteps overhead, but it had been sometime in the middle of the night. It was dark in the hole, pitch dark, and he didn't have a watch. After the footsteps there was the sound of a struggle, then the voice of Ferraz asking questions, and then the screams.
"That filho da puta Palmas was there too," Edson said. "I heard him. They hurt Father Brouwer bad, but he wouldn't tell them a fucking thing. Sorry about the language, Father, but it's the God's honest truth. Not a fucking thing. You would have been proud of him. I sure as hell was."
Father Angelo didn't comment. His hands were clenched in his lap. He was biting his lower lip.
Now that he was talking, Edson required little prompting. Ferraz, he said, supplied drugs to the street kids of Cascatas. To pay for them, the kids had to get money from somewhere. The ensuing crime wave caused a public revolt. Many townsfolk gave tacit support to what they thought was a death squad. In reality, it was Ferraz's gang of enforcers, killing the kids who didn't pay their drug debts.
No matter what anybody might have told them, Edson said, he didn't have a crack habit. And he'd never had a crack habit. He'd seen what the drug could do and it frightened him. But he was even more frightened of Ferraz, who demanded a regular purchase from every kid on the street. So he bought the stuff and pretended to use it. He didn't sell it to anyone. He just threw it away.
Then he lost one of his friends to an overdose and another to Ferraz's gang of killers. He wanted to do something, but he didn't know what. Finally he went to Father Brouwer and talked to him about it.
While Edson talked and talked, Father Angelo smoked and smoked, adding butt after butt to an already overflowing ashtray and filling the air with a thin haze. When Silva asked Edson why he'd called the bishop, the old priest raised his head and looked directly at the kid. This, it seemed, was something new.
Edson swallowed and looked down at the table. If his dark skin had been lighter they might have seen a blush.
"You called Dom Felipe?" Father Angelo said. "You never told me that."
"No, Father."
The kid squirmed in his chair.
"Was it something else about Ferraz?"
"No, Father."
"What then?"
Edson didn't answer.
"Immediately afterward," Silva said, "the bishop called Gaspar Farias. Gaspar says he can't remember what the bishop wanted to talk about.
"The fuck, he can't," Edson exploded. "He knows all right, the filho da puta."
Father Angelo leaned back and opened his mouth in surprise. Edson didn't notice. He was still looking down at the surface of the table.
"So you know why the bishop called Gaspar," Silva said.
"I don't want to talk about it."
Father Angelo put a hand on the boy's shoulder.
Edson swallowed. "Please," he said, and looked at the priest. "I don't want to talk about it. Not to you. Not to him."
Silva leaned back and locked eyes with the old man. Father Angelo blinked, gave the slightest of nods, and took over the interrogation.
"But you spoke to Dom Felipe, didn't you?"
"That was different. I didn't know him. And, besides, it was by telephone."