“I run a special for cases that require, uh. . a certain degree of discretion,” Blessa said. “Five hundred reais and no questions asked.”
“Five hundred?”
Five hundred was nothing. The deal Soares had negotiated with Claudia Andrade was for ten thousand, but it was against the lieutenant’s principles to accept the first price he was offered. He lifted an eyebrow and waited for Blessa to crumble.
And after a few seconds, Blessa did. He was, after all, only a sergeant. Soares was a lieutenant and the brother-in-law of the secretary of public safety, to boot.
“Normally, yeah,” Blessa said, “five hundred, but for you, being a special customer and all, four fifty. A twenty percent discount.”
“I’ll take it.”
Blessa opened a drawer in his desk, took out a brass ring holding a single key, and went over to pull down a shade over the service window.
“Fifteen minutes?” he said, offering Soares the ring.
“Twenty,” Soares said, taking it. “This is the master key?”
“Yeah,” Blessa said. “Fits all the padlocks.”
Blessa might have been a crook, but he was an efficient and extremely well-organized crook. Items in his cupboards were always in their proper place and meticulously listed in his database. The computer allowed searches by name (of both the victim and the accused), by case number, by date of entry into the locker, and by item. Soares started searching by item.
When he couldn’t find the listing he was looking for, he opened his briefcase and took out the notes he’d made dur-ing his search of the archives. The man who styled himself Abdul Al Shakiri was a terrorist, arrested fifteen months ear-lier while in transit through Guarulhos airport.
International pressure, mostly from the Americans, had resulted in a speedy trial. An appeal was under way, but it wasn’t likely that the exhibits used to convict Al Shakiri would be required any time soon, if at all. Soares typed in Al Shakiri’s name and hit ENTER.
Nothing.
He referred back to his notes and tried the man’s real name, Muhammad Wahabi.
And got a hit.
When he’d done the search by item, he’d tried “explo-sive,” “plastic,” “plastico,” and “plastique.” Now he could see why he’d been unsuccessful. The stuff Al Shakiri/Wahabi had been arrested with was listed under its brand name: Semtex. The detonators were in the same cupboard as the explosive. Both were securely stored away in his briefcase by the time Sergeant Blessa knocked on the door.
“Find everything you need?” Blessa asked.
“Four fifty, you said?”
Blessa nodded.
Soares fished out his wallet and counted out nine bank-notes of fifty reais each. Blessa put them into his hip pocket and smiled.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” he said, looking very much like he’d just snapped up a fat and extremely tasty dragonfly.
“Three full watts of power.”
The owner of the model-aircraft shop said it with a touch of pride, as if he’d designed and built the thing all by himself.
“And that’s the most powerful one you’ve got?” Claudia said.
The owner looked hurt.
“Well. . sure,” he said. “That’s the maximum permitted by law. You don’t need any more than that. By the time it gets out of range of this baby, you’re gonna need binoculars to see whatever you’re flying.”
“That should do it then.”
“Absolutely. Aileron control here, rudder control here, and elevator control here,” he said, stabbing at the front panel of the remote control designed for model aircraft.
“Receiver and motors?”
“In the box. Everything you need is in the box. Instructions, too. What’s the wingspan by the way?”
Claudia knew nothing of aircraft models. She gave him the first number that popped into her head.
“One meter sixty-two.”
It was her height.
The owner whistled. “That big, huh? Jesus, you don’t fool around, do you? I can see why you’d be afraid of losing it. You’re gonna need a set of batteries. They’re not included.”
“Okay.”
He selected some batteries from a shelf behind him, turned back to the register, and started hitting buttons.
“The whole business,” he said, “comes to eight fifty seven and sixty centavos. Let’s call it eight fifty seven even, okay?
“Fine.”
Claudia opened her purse and took out her wallet.
“Cash or credit?”
“Cash.”
“I don’t get many women in here,” the shop owner said, taking her money and giving her three reais in change.
“It was my uncle’s hobby,” Claudia lied. “He taught me.”
In fact, the things her uncle Ugo had taught her were more in the nature of what an erect penis looked like, and how she’d better keep her mouth shut about what he did to her with it.
The shop owner closed the drawer of the register, brought out a plastic bag from under the counter, and filled it with her purchases.
“You got any questions, just call,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.
The imperial family and the majority of the people were in favor of the act.
The great landowners were appalled. Who’d pick their cotton? Cut their sugarcane? Harvest their coffee?
In desperation, they turned from Africa to the Orient, solving their labor problem by importing tens of thousands of Japanese peasants to work as indentured servants. And work they did, for the five years it took them to fulfill their con-tractual obligations. Then they gravitated to the great cities, struck out on their own, and worked even harder. So hard, in fact, that many of the new immigrants made modest fortunes.
By the end of the twentieth century, Brazilians of Japanese descent were doctors, lawyers, politicians, and university professors. They were businessmen, firemen, and policemen like Yoshiro Tanaka. And they’d transformed Sao Paulo into a city that boasted more ethnic Japanese than any place out-side of the home islands.
Liberdade, the heart of the Oriental district, had become fully as large, and equally as colorful, as San Francisco’s Chinatown.
It was there, in Liberdade, under a red Shinto arch that marks the entrance to the neighborhood that Gilda and Hector agreed to meet. Hector arrived fifteen minutes early. Gilda was spot on time. He took her arm and led her to a little restaurant that was patronized almost exclusively by the locals. It was a narrow, but very deep establishment, wedged between a grocery smelling of dried seaweed and a shop displaying a suit of samurai armor. They were guided to the sole unoccu-pied table.
Two hours later, four customers remained: Gilda, Hector, a man in a blue suit, and a woman in a kimono. The woman was seated Japanese-fashion, perched high on her chair, calves doubled under thighs, her white-crowned head only a few centimeters from that of the man in the suit. He looked to be less than half her age, possibly her son, perhaps her grandson. They were murmuring softly in Japanese.
Gilda put down her chopsticks, picked up her rectangular box of cold sake, and managed to sip from it without drib-bling anything on her chin, a trick that Hector, for all the time he’d spent in establishments like this one, had yet to master.
The waiter came to take Gilda’s plate, noticed there were still two pieces of tuna on it, and asked if she was finished. Gilda shook her head.
“Not quite,” she said.
“I think he wants to close,” Hector said, when the waiter was gone.
“Close?” Gilda blinked and looked at her watch. “Nossa,” she said. “Five to three already? I have to get back.”
She popped another piece of sashimi into her mouth, put down her chopsticks, and reached for her purse.
Hector realized, with something of a shock, that they hadn’t gotten around to discussing the findings of the med-ical examiner’s office. And that, ostensibly, was the reason for the lunch.