The fat man pushed the button to stop the tape.
“They did the right thing,” he said, “and so did you. Now, why don’t you lie down in my office and get some rest while I get busy and do my job?”
Marta felt a glow of satisfaction. They were in trouble, all of them, and they were going to pay for what they did to her and to Andrea. She thought about asking the fat man if she could use his telephone.
But she was tired, so very tired, after her long ordeal. She’d have a short nap first. Then she’d call her mother.
Otto was on the dock, waiting for them. While Hans was still tying off the mooring lines, he climbed on board and rushed up to Claudia.
“It’s the little bitch,” he said. “She’s gone. Escaped. Took the fucking door right off the hinges.”
“And where were you?!”’
“Sleeping.”
“Sleeping it off is more like it! How long has she been gone?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I told you, I was-”
She wanted to scratch his eyes out, tell him what a stupid, incompetent bastard he was, but there was no time to lose. She swallowed her anger and said, “Come along, both of you.” She jumped onto the dock and started hurrying toward the house. They followed a few paces behind. “We’ll take the boat,” she said, without looking back. “You, Hans, take some plastic garbage bags and fill them with food from the kitchen. You, Otto, get the camera, lights, recording tape, anything else that looks incriminating. I’ll get my papers and the cash I’ve got on hand. Hurry, both of you.”
The telephone was ringing when they opened the back door. Hans stopped to pick it up. Claudia rushed toward Marta’s room to see things for herself. She was standing there, cursing, when Hans handed her the wireless phone.
“Chief Pinto,” he said. “Says it’s urgent.”
Claudia took the phone and put it to her ear.
The chief was in the best of moods. “Hello, Carla,” he said, “I hear you lost something.”
“You heard what?”
“Yeah,” the chief said. “Listen to this.”
She heard a click then Marta’s voice: “As soon as I was sure that it wasn’t that woman, or her capangas, or The Goat, or his girlfriend, I’d step out and try to flag them down. Nobody stopped. They must have thought I was a thief, or a prostitute, or something. I got so sick of it that when I saw that couple coming, I went out and stood in the center of the road.”
There was another click.
“Where is she?” Claudia said.
“Sleeping in my office. She’s gonna have, as they say, a rude awakening.”
“ That’s really funny,” Hans said.
He pushed aside the bag he’d half-filled with canned goods and reached for the bottle of cachaca. Otto shoved his glass forward for a refill.
“It’s not funny at all,” Claudia said. “It’s sheer luck. What if the little bitch had run into the federals first? What if she’d made a telephone call before they dropped her off at the delegacia? Where would we all be then? Tell me that!”
“We’d be in deep shit,” Hans said. “But she didn’t, so we’re all right.”
“We’re not all right. We’ll only be all right when those federal cops are no longer a threat. I want them dead.”
“If we kill them, the feds are gonna go ballistic. They’ll send ten more.”
“But it won’t be Silva or Costa, because they’ll be dead, and that’s the way I want it.”
Lines creased Hans’s forehead. He rubbed his chin.
“It’s something personal between you and them, isn’t it?” “That’s none of your damned business.”
“Killing a few whores is one thing,” Hans said. “Killing a federal cop is heavy, really heavy. Why don’t we just clear out and go somewhere else?”
“And have them on our trail forever? No, we’re going to kill them. Then we’ll clear out and go somewhere else.”
Hans polished off his drink and cast a glance at Otto. Otto didn’t open his mouth, didn’t even move his eyes, but Hans nodded as if he’d voiced an opinion. He turned back to Claudia.
“We’re not gonna do it,” he said. “You can’t kill three federal cops and get away with it. Those fuckers are re… rel…” He furrowed his brow. He couldn’t think of the word, so he said it another way. “They don’t give up. And when they catch up with you, they don’t just slap the cuffs on you. They get payback. And then they kill you. Get somebody else to kill the federals. Then Otto and me will kill them. Make the trail a dead end.”
Claudia taunted him. “Scare you, do they? The federals?” Hans didn’t bite. “You’re goddamned right they do.”
He would have said something else, but just then the doorbell rang.
“There they are,” Claudia said.
The chief looked rumpled, as if he’d been awakened far too early, but there was a broad grin on his face.
Not so Marta. She was in handcuffs, her face pinched and pale, her eyes bloodshot.
“Welcome home,” Claudia said.
“ Vai tomar no cu, ” Marta snapped. Go fuck yourself.
Claudia would have slapped her for her insolence, but she didn’t want to give the chief the satisfaction of seeing her lose her temper. Pinto rubbed a thumb against his forefinger, making the sign for money.
“I think you have something of mine,” he said.
“I do,” she said. She turned to Hans. “Take her back to her room. Cuff her to something. And fix the goddamned door.”
Hans stood up and held out his hand. The chief dropped the key to the handcuffs into the center of his palm.
“Otto,” she said, “fetch that twelve-year-old whiskey the chief likes, then go out and buy hasps and padlocks.”
When she and the chief were alone, she said, “I need some people to do a job.”
He thought about it for a moment. “Hell, Carla. I’m already taking a big risk here, what with those federals being in town and all. Tell you the truth, the only reason I brought the girl back is because I know I can trust you to take care of her.”
“You can. And to make sure there’s even less risk for the two of us, I need some people.”
“How many?”
“Two should be enough.”
The chief picked up his glass of whiskey, put it under his nose and sniffed at it before taking a sip.
“You’re going after those federals, aren’t you?”
“Do you really want to know?”
The chief didn’t reply to that. He took another sip and looked at the ceiling, debating the wisdom of getting involved.
“Cost you,” he said at last. “Cost you a bundle.”
“How much?”
“Fifty.”
He was just trying it on and Claudia knew it. Fifty thousand Reais was outrageous.
“Twenty-five,” she said. “Reais, not dollars.”
“You’re busting my balls, Carla,” he said and raised the glass to his lips. This time he swished the whiskey around in his mouth before swallowing it.
She didn’t say anything, simply waited him out.
“It just so happens,” he said, “that I got just the people: real nice guys, Joaquim and Luis Almeida. And when I say got, I mean it literally. They’re in a cell down at the delegacia. ”
“What are they in for?”
“Killing an old couple by the name of Mainardi. The wife was eighty-four, the husband was eighty-six. There was a rumor the Mainardis were keeping their savings under a mattress. I don’t know how that kind of shit gets started. You got to be an asshole to believe it. Anyway, the old guy told them it wasn’t true, but the Almeida boys didn’t believe him. Not at first, anyway. Not until they’d killed the old lady in front of him. Then they believed him, but by then it was too late. They figured they had to kill him too. And they might have gotten away with it, if they hadn’t been drinkers. Joaquim shot his mouth off to someone in a bar.”