“I’ve heard they’re easy to get,” Silva said.
“You heard right.”
Unger put his pen away, folded the fingerprint over the photo, slipped both into another pocket of his jacket, and picked up his fork.
“I gotta admit,” he said, “that our relationship up to now, yours and mine, I mean, has been pretty much a one-way street. This is the first time you ever asked me for anything, and I figure I owe you. So I’m going to get on to this right away, even if it is for a fucking cleaning woman.” He looked at his watch. “It’s three hours earlier in Washington. I should have an answer for you by tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” Silva said.
“Thanks, nothing,” Unger said, grinning, “just take off your panties.”
Silva vaguely remembered the joke, something about an elephant doing a favor for a mouse and wanting sex in return. It seemed appropriate. America, the elephant, Brazil, the mouse. He forced a smile.
Unger shoveled up the last bit of fish and put it into his mouth. “How are the desserts in this place?” he asked, still chewing.
Chapter Twenty-six
“I’ve got some foreigner on the line,” Camila said. “I think he wants to talk to you.”
“You think?” Silva said.
She shrugged. “He doesn’t speak Portuguese.”
Camila apparently found it unnecessary to add that she didn’t speak anything else.
Silva’s new secretary was surly and inefficient, but firing her was out of the question. She’d been appointed by Sampaio as a favor to her father, a highly ranked bureaucrat in the federal accounting office.
“I’ll take it,” Silva said.
“Line two.”
The foreigner turned out to be Grant Unger.
“We’ve got nothing on this guy Norberto,” he began with-out preamble. “There’s a Krupps with two p’s, but his first name is Adolph. How’s that for a Brazilian name, huh? Adolph Krupps. Sounds like some fucking Nazi. Border Patrol picked him up last March. I had them e-mail me his mug shot. He doesn’t look anything like your guy.”
“And he’s the only one with a similar name?”
“The only one. I put the print through AFIS, our com-puterized system. No match. Son of a bitch could be working some unregistered shit job or using somebody else’s social security number. We got a law that punishes people who em-ploy illegals, but you know how it goes. Lots of cheaters slip through the cracks. I arranged to have his picture posted and I got his name and print into the computers. If they pick him up, I’ll hear.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
“Okay, but don’t hold your breath.”
When Silva hung up, he unlocked the top drawer of his desk, took out a large, manila envelope, and went down the hall to Arnaldo’s office. Arnaldo was still working the phones, calling the cops in city after city, trying to get a lead on cults that might be involved in ritual murder.
“Any luck?” Silva asked.
Arnaldo hung up and made a checkmark on his list to remind him where he’d left off. “Nothing that rings a bell.”
“How would you like to get back to Sao Paulo for a while?”
“Who do I have to kill?”
Arnaldo, a Paulista, born and bred, hated his temporary assignment to the federal capital. He gave all sorts of reasons for his displeasure, everything from the quality of Brasilia’s restaurants to daily exposure to the director, but Silva sus-pected that Arnaldo’s major problem was that he missed his family. He’d never admit it, of course. Arnaldo enjoyed bitching about his wife and two teenage sons, and he down-right gloried in excoriating his mother-in-law.
“You don’t have to kill anybody,” Silva said, “but the job may involve some travel.”
“I knew there had to be a catch. Same case?”
“Something different. A nineteen-year-old carpenter was trying to get into the States. He disappeared.”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
“Officially? Nothing. He’s my faixineira’s son. I want to help her.”
“What good is power if you can’t abuse it, right?”
“My sentiments exactly. Do you want the job or not?”
“Yes, I want the job. What’s the timing?”
“Immediate.
“Good. You know how much time I spent sleeping at home in the last thirty days? Two nights, that’s how much, two lousy nights. My wife is starting to think I’ve got a mistress.”
“Do you?”
“On my salary? Kindly outline what I have to do to escape from durance vile.”
“Durance vile?”
“You think you’re the only guy who reads books? Brief me.”
Silva detailed his conversation with Maria de Lourdes and showed Arnaldo copies of the postcard and the photo.
“You try the Americans?” Arnaldo said when he’d finished.
“I cashed in a favor with Grant Unger.”
Arnaldo did a mock shiver. “I can see you’re willing to carry this to great lengths.”
“I am. Unger already called me back. They have no record of the kid.”
Arnaldo pointed at the list on his desk. “How about all these calls I haven’t made?”
“I’ll put Camila on it, move her in here. It’ll make her feel important.”
“And keep her out of your hair.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Like hell you didn’t. You’ll have to answer your own phone, you know.”
“I do now.”
“This Norberto kid was going to the States of his own volition. What’s our mandate here?”
“None.”
“So how are you going to account for my time? Sampaio goes over the time sheets like a fucking miser counting his money. He’ll be onto us within two weeks.”
“I’ll sign off on the sheets. Besides, I don’t think it’s going to take two weeks. And, by that time, he’ll be grateful. It’ll be another solution he can take the credit for.”
“And if we don’t have a solution?”
“We’ll have a solution. My faith in you is boundless.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls. Where do you want me to start?”
“Go to the travel agency he used. Act like you’re desper-ate to get into the States.”
“And then?”
“Take a cell phone, conceal it on your person, do what they tell you to do, follow the trail to where it leads.”
“Including creeping through the desert in Arizona, or Texas, or wherever?”
“If it comes to that, yes.”
“And Sampaio, when he notices I’m not coming into the office? How are you going to handle him?”
“I’m going to tell him you’re following up a rumor about Romeu Pluma.”
“What rumor?”
“The one about Pluma molesting teenage boys.”
“Such a rumor exists?”
“It does now. It will turn out to be unsubstantiated.”
“How much longer do you think you can keep using Pluma to get away with stuff?”
“He shows no sign of backing off, so Sampaio won’t either. It could go on forever.”
“We should give Pluma a citation for meritorious service. Alright, getting back to the Americans, if I wind up crossing their border, they’re not going to like it.”
“The Americans aren’t going to know about it. Not if you don’t get caught.”
“They’ve got cameras. They’ve got helicopters. They’ve got vigilantes. They catch a lot of people.”
“So they catch you. No big deal.
They’ll send you back.” “They’ll print me first, and they won’t let me back in if I ask for a visa. What if I want to take my kids to Orlando to see Disney World? What do I do then?”
“You can’t afford to take your kids to Orlando.”
“You’re right. I can’t. But what if my rich uncle Uriel dies?”
“You haven’t got a rich uncle Uriel. Do you want to get back to Sao Paulo or not?”
“I want.”
“I can’t ask Ana to do the paperwork. Sampaio would never sign it. I’m gonna have to advance the money myself. Here.”
He held out the envelope he’d been carrying.