“What did you do?”
“Left the furniture. Put a sign in the window. It didn’t take long to find another tenant. These places are cheap, and they’re close to the center of town.”
“What about his personal effects?”
“I put them in boxes and stored them down in the basement. This Queiroz, he’s…”
“He’s what?”
“Well, for want of a better word, mean. Mean and a bully. I didn’t want him coming back here and getting mad because I threw his stuff away.”
“Can I have a look in those boxes?”
“Sure.”
The boxes were of no help. Clothes, some condoms, a few pornographic magazines, toiletries, two bottles of cachaca, one of them full. There was nothing that gave Hector an insight into Carlos Queiroz or suggested where he might have gone.
“What do you think?” the Indian asked, gesturing toward the little pile of boxes. “Do I have to keep holding on to this stuff?”
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” Hector said. “I can pretty much assure you Senhor Queiroz won’t be coming back.”
“Nestor Porto lived with his mother and grandparents,” Silva said.
“And wouldn’t hurt a fly, sang in the church choir, and helped little old ladies cross the street,” Arnaldo said.
The three federal cops were back at the Hotel Tropical, having a drink at the bar.
“Not quite,” Silva said. “The grandfather seems like a hard-working guy, an electrician. Nestor was born when his mother was fifteen. Nestor’s father took off when he found out she was pregnant. Nobody’s seen him since. The grandmother was supposed to be taking care of Nestor while his mother finished school, but the grandmother contracted lung cancer and died within a year. The kid got into a bad crowd, dropped out of school, started using drugs, built up a habit, got caught robbing a house.”
“Same old, same old,” Arnaldo said.
“They put him away for fourteen months. Third day he was back, he smashed all the dishes in the house and beat the shit out of his grandfather.”
“The grandfather file a complaint?”
“No. Nestor apologized, said he was on crack, swore he’d never do it again. After that, they pretty much left him alone, never knowing what might set him off. He started going out at night, coming back at all hours, sometimes not coming back for two or three days. Then he was arrested again. Armed robbery. He got five years, three of which he served with the big boys.”
“I remember reading that part on his rap sheet,” Arnaldo said. “The three years, I mean. They must have wiped the juvenile charges.”
“Now, here’s the thing,” Silva said. “Last November, about two months after he got sprung for the second time, he joined his mother and grandfather for breakfast. They were surprised to see him at that hour of the morning. Normally, he didn’t climb out of bed before noon. They asked him what he was doing at the breakfast table. He told them to mind their own business. When he left, he said he’d be home for dinner, but he never came back.”
“So he disappeared,” Hector said, “just like Carlos Queiroz.” “Indeed,” Silva said. “Just like Carlos Queiroz.”
Chapter Seventeen
Early on, before she started testing prospects, Claudia had a disagreeable experience. A guy by the name of Pedro Soares told her that if she paid him enough he’d let her photograph him fucking anything on two legs and several things on four. But when it came time for him to perform, he’d proven to be a disappointment. The female lead was deft with both her mouth and her fingers, but her ministrations hadn’t helped a bit. She couldn’t tease an erection out of him. By that time, though, Pedro already knew too much to be allowed to live. Claudia sent him out on the river with Hans and Otto and sent the still unsuspecting girl back to her room.
A second mishap had been worse. The sex part went off without a hitch, but when it came to the snuff the subject balked.
“I’m not gonna do it,” he said. “And I’m not gonna let you guys hurt her.”
He was a big man, bigger than Otto, and accustomed to getting his way. He was already out of the bed and halfway toward Otto when Hans shot him, pam, pam, pam, three times in the chest, then, when he was down, pam, once more in the head. By then, of course, the cat was out of the bag. The girl knew what was going to happen to her, and she was already screaming. Claudia had to tell Hans to put a bullet in her head.
The camera captured it all, but Arie Schubski refused to distribute it. He said his customers didn’t want quick kills with anonymous bullets coming in from out of frame. They wanted to savor the act. They wanted to see life slowly being forced out of a woman by a man who’d just had sex with her, not a quick execution carried out by an anonymous perpetrator.
So Claudia had been out the cost of the girl, a set of satin sheets and the time and effort that it took to clean things up. From then on, she preselected people who’d already proven their contempt for human life. That’s where Chief Pinto came in. For a price, he helped her with recruitment. Sometimes the people he proposed were freelance pistoleiros like Carlos Queiroz and Nestor Porto. Other times, the chief might suggest a full-time employee of one of the great landowners. Every large ranch had a few such men. Their job was to keep the other employees in line, making sure they didn’t start bitching about the pittance they earned, making sure they didn’t run off and, when they did, making sure they came back, alive if possible, dead when it became necessary to set an example.
The man Hans shot had been one of those, a fellow who’d probably killed a dozen people in his lifetime, but who’d inexplicably shied away from strangling a used-up whore. His action demonstrated to Claudia that she could never be absolutely certain how a man might comport himself at the critical moment, so she made every attempt to make the pre-selection as rigid as possible.
First, a candidate had to demonstrate that he was capable of getting an erection while in the presence of a bank of lights, a woman with a camera, and two other men. The way Claudia did it was to tell their prospective recruit that she had a paying customer, a European in Manaus on holiday, who liked to watch the recording of live sex, and who was willing to pay for the privilege.
If the recruit was interested, his next question was usually, “How much?”
Claudia made sure her answer always exceeded his expectations.
The deal struck, the prospect would soon find himself on a bed with one of The Goat’s girls, surrounded by Hans playing the European, Otto playing Claudia’s assistant, and Claudia herself operating the camera. The lights would be switched on and the couple would be told to begin.
Claudia hardly ever bothered to roll the camera during her so-called screen tests. She wasn’t in the business of making simple pornos. And she never did the test and the shoot on the same day because she could never be sure of the man’s ability to turn in a repeat performance.
Test or shoot, it didn’t matter, she always had the whore service Hans and Otto first, so they’d be sated and keep their minds on business. That, however, required a willing female. It wasn’t going to work with a fifteen-year-old recalcitrant virgin. And there was another good reason for not carrying out the screen test with Marta herself: when the protagonist discovered he was in for a fight he might refuse to get near her the second time around.
She resolved both problems by arranging to rent a whore from The Goat. The whore would service Hans and Otto, then apply herself to the “talent.” On the day of the shoot, she’d rent another whore, or maybe the same one all over again. She’d be for Hans’s and Otto’s use, to be returned prior to rolling the camera. Marta would be kept for the killer. The rentals would add to expenses, but not by much. The Goat’s girls were among the most expensive in the city, but Manaus was Manaus. She could get two of them for the price of a decent bottle of wine.
Chief Pinto came through, as he always did. Forty-eight hours later, Claudia was conducting the test.