“Yes,” Clarice said brightly. “That’s the man. Roberto Ribeiro.”
Chapter Forty-one
Ernesto was proving to be of no help at all. In fact, he was proving to be a downright pain in the ass. To every-one’s relief, including Clarice’s, Silva suggested Babyface take him home.
“Why?” Ernesto asked suspiciously.
“We’re going to see that secondhand furniture dealer,” Silva said. “There are three of us and your wife makes four. It’s a small car.”
“I’m not a big guy. You can pack me in. I know my rights.
Rights? What rights?”
“My wife hasn’t done anything. Me neither. You got noth-ing to arrest us for.”
“We’re not arresting you.”
“No?”
“No.”
“So you need my wife to go with you voluntarily?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t need me?”
“No.”
“Clarice, you want to go with these cops? You want to go back to that shop? Again?”
“I want to see the end of this, Ernesto. I want to find out what happened to Augusta and her family. I’m going.”
“You see?” Silva said. “It’s voluntary. She’s simply agreeing to help us with our inquiries.”
“Aha,” Ernesto said, as if he’d caught Silva in an admis-sion of wrongdoing.
“What do you mean, aha?”
“It’s the duty of every citizen to help the cops with their inquiries, right?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s my duty to go along, too.”
“But we don’t need you,” Silva said.
“Let me get this straight. Are you suggesting I don’t do my duty as a citizen? What kind of cop are you, anyway?”
“You’d better let him come, too,” Clarice said, putting a hand on Silva’s arm. “Otherwise, I’ll never hear the end of it.
Gonna be a tight fit,” Babyface said.
When they entered his secondhand furniture shop, Goldman was standing at a counter near the door, reviewing some paperwork. He looked up when he heard the bell, but the budding smile vanished from his lips when he saw the Portellas and their companions.
“What, again?” he said.
“It’s the federal police this time,” Clarice said apolo-getically.
“Federal, schmederal,” Goldman said, “the police are the police.”
“I’m Chief Inspector Silva. This is Delegado Costa and that’s Agente Goncalves.”
They all shook hands.
“No offense,” Goldman said, “but I think your visit is a waste of time. I already told everything I know to that Japanese fellow.”
“Delegado Tanaka,” Silva said. “He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Somebody blew him up with a bomb. It happened before he filed his report of his conversation with you. We think it might have had something to do with what you told him.”
“Caralho. A bomb, huh? He have kids?”
“Two. Both daughters.”
Goldman shook his head.
“The violence in this town is beyond belief,” he said. “I should move to Israel.”
“Or maybe not,” Silva said. “They’ve got bombs there, too.
Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Okay, how can I help?”
“What can you tell us about this guy Roberto Ribeiro?”
“She was here,” Goldman said, pointing at Clarice. “She must have told you.”
“We want to hear it from you,” Hector said.
“Not much to tell. Ribeiro came in here with a load of fur-niture. I bought it off him, sold some of it. Then this lady and her husband-”
“Me,” Ernesto said.
“Yeah, you,” Goldman said, looking at Ernesto’s T-shirt and beret with distaste, “came in and started looking at the merchandise.”
“Overpriced merchandise,” Ernesto said.
“You told me that the first time you were in here,” Goldman said. “You don’t like my prices, go buy from some-body else.”
“I’ll buy from anyone I like,” Ernesto said. “Last I heard it’s still a free country, although God knows for how-”
“Shut up, Ernesto,” Clarice and Silva said in almost per-fect unison.
“Just get on with the story,” Silva said.
“Okay, so this lady here finds some furniture she thinks belongs to a friend of hers. I tell her I bought the stuff fair and square and that I’ve got a canceled check to prove it. She says her friend would never have sold it. I say she must have. She goes off and a couple of days later she comes back with the Jap. . uh, I mean, Delegado Tanaka. He says he wants to see the canceled check. I give it to him. End of story.”
“So Tanaka held on to the check?”
“And the receipt.”
Silva had a sinking feeling in his chest, but he asked the question anyway: “And you didn’t make a copy?”
Goldman’s answer surprised him: “Of course I made a copy. You think I’m gonna send original checks and receipts to my accountant? What if he loses them? What then? How would I justify my expenses?”
“Senhor Goldman,” Silva said, “I would be most grateful if you would give me those copies.”
“No way,” Goldman said.
Silva frowned.
“I’ll make copies of the copies and give you those,” Goldman said.
The man they were steered to at Ribeiro’s bank, the man who could have given them access to all his account infor-mation, was a vice president by the name of Bertoldo Perduzzi, and he was a stickler for details. Silva explained the situation with great patience. He wheedled. He cajoled. He came close to losing his temper. But Perduzzi wouldn’t budge. He just kept shaking his head.
“It’s not a question of not wanting to help you,” he said. “I understand this guy might be some kind of dangerous felon, but what if he isn’t?”
“He is,” Silva said. “I can assure you, he is.”
“Okay, he is. I’ll take your word for it. But accounts in this bank are inviolable and the law’s the law. You give me a war-rant, and I’ll be happy to give you whatever you need. But without a warrant, my hands are tied.”
“There’s a dead man, a delegado by the name of Tanaka, who managed to get whatever the hell he needed out of you people. And he did it without a warrant. How come he could and we can’t?”
“I have no knowledge of this man, Tanaka,” Perduzzi sniffed, “but if he’d come to me I would have told him the same thing.”
“I want to talk to your boss,” Silva said.
And he did. And Perduzzi’s boss backed him up.
The only recourse was the legal route, and Silva took it. There was a judge he knew who was friendly, accommodating, and willing to work from home. But by the time the paper-work was ready, all of the people who could have furnished him with the information he needed had left for the day.
Fuming, Silva was waiting on the doorstep when Perduzzi arrived for work on the following morning. The banker greeted the cop like a cherished customer, wished him a cheerful good morning, scrutinized the warrant, and turned to his computer.
Minutes later, Silva was out the door of the bank and into the waiting car.
“Where to?” Babyface said.
Silva looked at the printout in his hand and rattled off an address.
“Never heard of it,” Babyface said.
“It’s that street under the Minhocao,” Hector said from the backseat. “Crime doesn’t pay.”
“I guess not,” Babyface said, letting out the emergency brake. “Not in his case, anyway. Maybe he’s got a habit, or maybe he gambles.”
“Or maybe he just likes living like a pig,” Hector said.
The Minhocao had an official name, but no Paulista ever used it; they just called it the Minhocao, the big worm. It was a viaduct that curled between the city center and the bairro of Agua Branca and had been designed to alleviate the traffic gridlock between the two. For a while, it had done just that, but then the growth of the city clogged that artery, just like it had already clogged most of the others. These days, both the viaduct and the street below were bumper to bumper from early morning to well past midnight seven days a week.