Silva tried the doorbell.
It didn't work.
He knocked.
There was no answer, but he could hear a baby squalling from somewhere inside.
He knocked again, louder.
The woman who finally opened the door had prematurely graying hair and a crying, red-faced baby in her arms.
"Boa tarde, senhora," he greeted her. "Does Jose de Alencar live here?"
To his surprise, she nodded. An appetizing smell of garlic sauteing in olive oil was coming from the kitchen. It reminded Silva that he hadn't had lunch.
"Is he home?"
"Who wants to know?" she said, suspiciously.
Silva flashed his warrant card.
"Federal Police. I want to talk to him about a case."
"Let me have a closer look at that," she said.
He reopened his wallet. She scrutinized his credentials.
"Yeah, okay," she said. "He's here. Come in."
As he stepped through the front door, she put the baby over her shoulder and started patting it on the back, but the squalling continued.
"You're lucky," she said. "He just switched over to the eight PM to four AM shift. If you'd come last week, you wouldn't have caught him." She'd raised her voice to make herself understood over the baby's crying. Now, she raised it still further. "Jose, you got company."
She showed a distinct lack of concern about an unexpected visit from the police. The reason became clear when her husband walked in, buttoning his shirt. There were stripes on the sleeve and insignia on the lapels.
Jose de Alencar was a sergeant in the Sao Paulo Police Department.
That explained the reticence of the pawnshop owner. Nobody wanted any trouble with the SPPD.
"I've got lunch on the stove," the woman said.
"You want me to take him?" the sergeant asked, pointing at his son.
De Alencar was in his mid-thirties, pale skinned, with a cruel mouth and gray eyes that turned soft when he looked at his offspring. He had a thin but well-tended mustache on his upper lip.
The woman smiled at him. "No," she said, "He's okay. Just a little bit of colic, I think. Come soon. I don't want you bolting down your lunch." A moment later, she and the squalling baby were gone, leaving the two cops alone.
Silva glanced around the room. An expensive stereo system, a brand-new television set, a leather sofa and two leather armchairs, a table that looked to be made out of jacaranda wood. None of it fit. Not with the house's external appearance, and certainly not with a guy who was supposedly surviving on the salary of a municipal cop.
"So you're Jose de Alencar?"
The sergeant picked up on Silva's tone of voice. His gray eyes went from soft to hard, seemed almost to change their color, becoming a shade darker. "Yeah. Who are you?"
Silva's credentials were still in his hand. He held them out.
De Alencar took a step closer and read them. "A federal, huh?" he said curiosity turning to hostility. "What do you want?"
Silva's mother had described her assailants as in their early twenties and mulattos. This guy was in his thirties and white. His teeth were good. He had no tattoo. There was no way he could be one of them.
"It's about a watch you pawned," Silva said. "A gold one with an inscription on the back."
"When was this?"
"October of last year. You left it with Gilson Alveres, who owns a pawnshop on Rua Rio Branco. Your signature's on the ticket."
"So what?"
"I want to know where you got it."
"What's it to you?"
"It belonged to my mother. Someone stole it."
The sergeant's face reddened, but whether in embarrassment or irritation, Silva couldn't tell.
"Well, I sure as hell didn't," he said. "I found it,"
"Found it? Where?"
"On the street."
"Where on the street?"
"I don't remember?"
"Try."
"I told you, I don't remember."
"And you expect me to believe that?"
"I don't give a shit what you believe. Fuck you."
Silva saw red. He reached out his left hand and grabbed the sergeant by the front of his shirt. "Where did you really get that watch?"
The sergeant was at least twenty kilograms lighter than Silva, and maybe ten centimeters shorter, but he didn't back down.
"You got any idea who you're dealing with? You take me on and you're going to have the whole damned force on your back. Let go of my shirt."
The sergeant was right. The municipal cops stuck together. It was the only way for them to keep on doing what they did.
Silva released the sergeant, took a deep breath and a step backward. "The way I figure it is you lifted my mother's watch off of some lowlife punk. And you know what? I really don't care. All I care about is his name and where to find him."
"Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here and making accusations like that? Get the fuck out of my house."
"I need to know, Sergeant. Those filhos da puta killed my father and raped my mother."
The sergeant's red face turned even redder. "Tough. My heart bleeds. But I had nothing to do with it. Now, get out of here before I call some friends."
AT 4:3 0 the following morning, Sergeant de Alencar, sleepy from a long night at work, was walking along the deserted street, and less than five meters from his house, when he felt cold steel on the back of his neck.
"It's a revolver, and it's cocked," a voice said. "Keep your hand away from your holster. Pass your front door and keep walking."
"I don't know who you are, senhor, but you're making a big mistake."
"Shut up. Now, cross the street, stop next to the green car, and put your hands on the roof."
The sergeant did as he was told. The man behind him relieved him of his revolver, patted him down, and pocketed a small Beretta 7.65 semi-automatic that de Alencar was carrying in an ankle holster. Then he used the cop's own cuffs to shackle his hands behind his back and opened the rear door of the car.
"Get in."
"What is this?"
"Just do it."
The sergeant felt the revolver again, pressing into the back of his neck. He did as he was told. When the man slipped in beside him, de Alencar glanced at his face.
"You!" he said.
"Me. Tell me about the punk you got the watch from."
"There wasn't any punk. I already told you-"
Silva cut him short by smashing him in the face with the butt of his. 38 Taurus. The sergeant began to bleed profusely from his nose and lip. Silva reached behind him and threw him a towel. He'd come prepared.
"I know what you told me. Now listen to me very carefully. If you tell me what I want to know, and then keep your mouth shut about it, it stops here. If you don't, I'm going to kill you, and then I'm going to go into your house and kill your wife, that baby of yours, and anybody else who's in there. Your choice."
It was a bluff. He would never have done it, but the sergeant looked into Silva's eyes, black as death, and believed him.
They were just a couple of punks, the sergeant said, just like the hundreds of others he'd shaken down in his lifetime. He'd been on patrol with two rookies, teaching them the ropes, teaching them how to get along on the sallrio de merda that was supposed to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and didn't.
It had been broad daylight, maybe 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. They were cruising along Avenida Faria Lima, not far from that big shopping center, Iguatemi, when Flores, one of the rookies, spotted a Rolex. Everybody, even a green kid like Flores, knew what a Rolex was, right?
Silva nodded. There were gangs in Sao Paulo that specialized in lifting that one brand alone and sending the watches off to Paraguay for resale. But he wasn't there to talk about Rolexes.