“I’m going to be straight with you,” Carla said. “I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m a businesswoman. I send girls to Europe.”
“Prostitutes?”
“I prefer to call them escorts. They’re working girls, yes, but they don’t have to work anywhere near as hard as the girls work at The Goat’s place. They wear beautiful clothes and go to good restaurants. Sometimes they stay with a man for as much as a week, sometimes only for a night, but they never have to make love to more than one man a day.”
“You call that making love? It’s not making love, it’s fucking for money. I won’t do it.”
Carla smiled. “We’re going to have to let those bruises heal,” she said. “There’s a bathroom through that door. Soap, towels, shampoo, conditioner, everything you need.”
“I told you I’m not going to do it. Do you have any idea who I am? Do you have any idea what kind of risk you’re running here?”
“Risk? No, frankly I don’t. Enlighten me.”
“I’m the granddaughter of Deputado Malan.”
“Really?” She could see the woman didn’t believe her. “Let’s talk more about it when you’re rested, shall we? Are you still hungry?”
Marta nodded.
“There’s bottled water in the cupboard. Hans will bring you some food.”
Carla turned to leave.
“I have a friend,” Marta blurted out.
Carla had almost reached the door. She turned around.
“I know,” she said. “Andrea.”
Marta’s mouth opened in surprise.
“You know Andrea?”
Carla nodded.
Marta took a deep breath.
“You know where she is?”
Another nod.
“Would you like to join her?” Carla inquired.
“Oh, yes! Yes!” Marta said.
“I think that could be arranged.”
Hans was waiting in the corridor. Claudia led him down the hall, out of earshot.
“Get her some food,” she said. “What have we got?”
“Pacu.”
Claudia made a face. Pacu was one of the most common fish in the river, no less prized by Amazonenses for all of that.
“It’s all we got,” Hans said, “that, and rice, and beans, and corn meal.”
“Okay,” Claudia said, “Give it to her. She’s probably hungry enough to eat anything.”
“How about the shoot?” Hans said.
The shoot. Talking like he belonged to a film crew.
“Soon,” she said. “Now that we’ve recruited the talent, there’s no sense putting it off.”
“Right,” Hans said; then, as she turned away, “Where are you off to?”
“Out to find something better to eat than pacu.”
Inside her room, Marta was exploring. She slid up the window sash-it moved easily in its tracks-and wrapped her fingers around one of the white-painted bars. It was warm to the touch, probably steel. She shook it, but it didn’t budge. She tried all of the bars, one by one. None of them budged. When she drew her hand back, some flecks of paint came along with it. Her efforts had done no more than expose bare metal. The space between the bars was narrow, so narrow she couldn’t get her head between them, much less her shoulders. Above and below, the bars were solidly set into the thick concrete wall. Without tools, there wasn’t a chance she’d be able to get out through the window. And even with tools, removing them would make far too much noise.
She checked the closet and the bathroom, the walls and the ceiling. No vents, not a single one. She managed to get the front cover off the air-conditioner and examined the mounting screws. That, too, was a dead end. The screws were deeply embedded in the masonry. She left the door of the room for last. The one at The Goat’s had been sheathed with metal. This was solid wood, hung to open inward. The hinges drew her particular attention. She leaned forward for a closer look.
Like the hinges in her room at home these were made out of brass with little decorative spheres drilled and threaded to hold the hinge pins in place. The night she’d escaped and fled to Andrea’s, she’d had to take a pair of pliers to the spheres because they’d been frozen in place by a coat of paint. But these were different. They were larger, fluted on the outside, and had never been painted. Gingerly, she reached out a hand, grasped the topmost sphere as tightly as she could and tried to turn it.
It didn’t budge. She tried the one at the bottom of the same hinge, felt it give, then give some more and finally begin to turn. If she could remove just one sphere on each of the three hinges, she could pull out all of the pins. And once the pins were out, she’d be able to remove the door. She screwed the sphere she’d been working on back into place and attacked another one.
When Claudia got back from lunch, Otto was waiting.
“I got the photos,” he said.
“Finally. What took you so damned long?”
“The guy at the photo shop said they were going to be ready by nine this morning. They weren’t.”
“You ever hear of a digital camera?”
“I don’t understand those things. They got too many buttons.”
“Give me those,” she said, and snatched the envelope.
The first photo was of an athletic-looking man crossing a parking lot. Arnaldo Nunes. She recognized him immediately. The second shot showed him entering the main entrance to the airport. Both shots were in profile, the background out of focus, obviously shot with a long lens.
She shuffled to the third photo in the stack and froze.
Otto came around to look over her shoulder.
“Those are the two guys he met at the airport,” he said.
When she didn’t say anything, he prompted her. “You recognize them?”
“That one,” she said, “is Mario Silva.”
Otto leaned forward for a better look. “No shit?” he said. “That’s Silva, huh? You sure? He looks different from when you see him on the news and stuff.”
“It’s the outfit,” she said. “The bush shirt. Every damned photo you ever see of the man, every time he’s on television, he’s wearing a gray suit.”
“He’d have to be crazy to wear a suit in Manaus. A suit would kill him in this climate.”
“Then I wish he’d wear one and save us the trouble,” she said.
Otto looked at her nervously.
“Hey, Carla,” he said, “you’re not thinking of offing a federal cop, are you?”
“Why not?”
“Uh… well, if you are, we gotta talk about it.”
“What’s to talk about?”
“That’s heavy stuff, killing a federal. What are you worried about? What makes you think he’s after us?”
“He’s after me,” Claudia said.
Otto looked at her, waited for her to tell him more. When she didn’t, he said, “What makes you so sure?”
She didn’t reply.
“What?” he insisted.
Again, no reply.
“You’re sure it’s him? Really sure?”
She stabbed the photo with her forefinger.
“ That’s Silva, and that’s his fucking nephew, Hector Costa. And the guy who met them, the guy who was already here in Manaus, is an old-time sidekick of both, an agente named Arnaldo Nunes.”
“But how can you-”
“Shut up, Otto. I know what I’m talking about.”
She wasn’t about to tell him why she was so sure, or why she knew he was after her. That, and her real name, were none of his damned business.
Chapter Eighteen
Irene was sitting under a beach umbrella, reading a book, just the trace of a smile on her face. Silva was stretched out on blinding white sand, soaking up the sun, his head on his arms. He had one eye open and was studying her.
He heard his son call him.
“Look, Papa, look!”
He turned his head toward the voice, toward the clear, green sea. Little Mario, his ankles bathed in receding foam, was pointing at three dolphins swimming in the shallows, their dorsal fins skimming along the surface like the sails of tiny boats.
And little Mario wasn’t so little anymore. He looked to be about twelve. His olive skin had been darkened by the summer sun, and his smile showed teeth like pearls.