And, if God couldn’t help, you had only to climb a flight of stairs where you could visit a fortune teller, a homeopathic physician, or a lawyer. The remaining floors in the building were given over to apartments, four opening off each landing. Queiroz’s place was listed as 3C, but the name next to the bell said Cintra. The girl who answered the door wore a red dress with a neckline that plunged to her navel and a hem that ended just below her crotch. She didn’t look to be more than twenty, but it was a hard-lived twenty. The smile on her face faded when Hector asked about Carlos Queiroz and disappeared completely when he made it clear he had no interest in her services.
“Abilio,” she said, raising her voice just a little.
A door opened somewhere behind her. Seconds later a mean-looking guy with a single earring pushed her aside and intruded himself into the doorway.
“What do you want?”
“I just told your girlfriend. I’m looking for Carlos Queiroz.” “Never heard of him,” the guy with the earring said. He started to close the door, but Hector inserted his foot.
“What the hell…?” the guy said, blustering.
Hector waved his credentials in the guy’s face. “Let’s start all over again,” he said. “This is who I am. Who are you?”
“I don’t want any trouble,” the guy said, backing down.
“Me neither. Answer the question.”
“Abilio.”
“Abilio who?”
The guy paused for a moment then said, “Sarmento.”
Hector figured it was probably true. He also figured it wasn’t a name that Abilio normally answered to. Most people in Abilio’s business didn’t use their real names, hence the “Cintra” on the mailbox.
“Prove it,” Hector said.
Abilio nodded as if he’d expected that and stepped back from the door. “You can come in,” he said, as if he had a choice.
Like most places in Manaus, the place stank of fish. And it was hot, hotter even than down on the street. A sweat-stained couch, a folding aluminum table, and a TV set were the only furniture in the living room.
Abilio was wearing a pair of faded bathing trunks, plastic sandals, and nothing else. The sandals made little flopping sounds as Hector followed him down the hallway into the kitchen. The girl, barefoot, sloped along behind them. A pair of men’s trousers had been tossed in a heap in the corner. Abilio bent over to retrieve them. As he rose a wallet fell out of one of the pockets.
The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, the stove with unwashed pots. Another girl, who could have been a younger sister of the first, was squatting on the floor, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. She looked at Hector, then down at her bare toes, her brow furrowing as she tapped ash on the floor.
She’s not just using marijuana, Hector thought. She’s on something stronger. Crack, or maybe heroin.
Abilio rifled the contents of the wallet and came up with a dog-eared identity card. He handed it to Hector.
Abilio Sarmento, aged twenty-four, looked ten years older.
“Who else lives here?” Hector said.
Abilio said nobody did, said they’d been renting the apartment for the last three months, and that hell, yes, the girls were over eighteen.
Again, Hector told him to prove it.
Abilio left the kitchen and returned with both girls’ identity cards. Like him, they were named Sarmento: Aparecida Maria and Maria Aparecida, nineteen and eighteen years old respectively.
“My sisters,” Abilio said, before Hector could ask.
“Your parents didn’t have much imagination, did they?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Anyone got a record?”
All three of them did: the young women for lewd conduct, Abilio for stealing a car and possession of cocaine. He’d pleaded guilty, done thirteen months, and claimed he’d been clean ever since.
None of them knew Carlos Queiroz. Aparecida Maria, the sister who wasn’t stoned, said the building superintendent probably did. He lived down in 2D.
Hector told Abilio to show him around the apartment.
There were two bedrooms and three mattresses, two in one bedroom, one in the other. Clothes and personal effects overflowed cardboard boxes being used in lieu of furniture.
In the bathroom, shampoos, conditioners, and lotions surrounded the bathtub. Creams and cheap perfumes crowded the glass shelf above the sink. There was no shower curtain. The floor was wet from someone’s recent bath. Nothing suggested that anyone else lived in the apartment.
Hector said he was going down to talk to the building superintendent, but he might be back.
Abilio didn’t seem overjoyed by the prospect.
The Superintendent was a full-blooded Indian, not an unusual situation in a city where there were more natives than on any single reservation. From the way he spoke Portuguese, Hector figured he’d been educated by missionaries in his youth. That youth was gone, but he didn’t have a single gray hair. He could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, and was dressed in a clean blue shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. His living room was well furnished and a good deal cleaner than the one occupied by the Sarmentos.
“Carlos Queiroz?” he said. “Yes, I remember him. Good riddance.”
“How long ago did he move out?” Hector asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Hector frowned.
The Indian shook his head.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said.
“What am I thinking?”
“That I don’t want to help. You’re wrong. I’m happy to help, but we have a high turnover. It’s easy to lose track.”
“I don’t need a specific date, just an approximation.”
The Indian pulled his lower lip. “Look,” he said, “it’s this way: I collect the rent. It’s due on Mondays. I go from door to door, pick up the cash, and take it down to the bank, where I deposit it in Senhor Aquino’s account. Senhor Aquino owns the building, but he only drops by about once a year.”
“So?”
“So on a Monday, about nine weeks ago-or it could have been eight or ten-I knocked on Queiroz’s door, expecting to collect, as usual. He didn’t answer, which I thought was funny, because it was about eleven A.M., which is the time he usually got up. I went back the next day and the next. I tried him in the early morning. I tried him late at night. It was always the same. For the whole two weeks he never answered, and I never saw him again.”
“Two weeks? Why two weeks?”
“When they move in, everyone pays three weeks in advance. Two of those weeks are the security deposit. Tenants are supposed to pay every Monday after that.”
“For an additional week, in advance?”
“Exactly.”
“So, when he missed his payment, Queiroz had a right to stay for an additional two weeks?”
“Either that, or give us notice, tell us he’s moving out. Somebody does that, we return what’s left of their deposit.” “But Queiroz never did?”
“Give us notice? Never.”
“Okay. And when the two weeks were up?”
“I did what I always do. Used my passkey. He’d left dishes in the sink. There were cockroaches all over the place. Big as that, ” he said, showing how big that was by distancing the tips of his thumb and forefinger.
“Queiroz left a light on,” the superintendant continued, “as if he’d gone out at night and never come back. Very inconsiderate of him. Electricity is included in the rent, but Senhor Aquino doesn’t count on people leaving lights on twenty-four hours a day. Queiroz’s sweaty and dirty sheets were still on the bed. I didn’t even want to touch them. The man lived like a pig.”
“What else did you find in there?”
“His clothes. Everything I ever saw him wear. Some furniture, not much. Just a mattress, a kitchen table, a couple of chairs, and an old sofa.”