The news anchor, an attractive brunette with an overbite, dished up the details with a shiver of delight. And she didn’t know the half of it. If the brunette had been aware that both a deputado’s granddaughter and Claudia Andrade were involved, she would have had, as Arnaldo put it, a triple orgasm right there on camera.
But she wasn’t aware, and Silva had no intention of enlightening her.
Chief Pinto, on the other hand, made a show of being totally forthcoming. He might not have known the whole story, but he knew how to make the best of what he had. His well-rehearsed sound bite went on for almost fifty seconds.
The chief described the priest’s grisly demise in graphic detail, told how one of the murderers had been shot dead by the cops and informed viewers the other had been captured. But he didn’t say which cops had done the shooting and the capturing.
When asked why the priest was at the Mainardi home in the first place, Pinto frankly admitted that he didn’t know. And as to Lauro Tadesco’s role in the affair, that was still under investigation.
The chief’s performance was followed by a series of reactions to the murder.
A spokesman for the National Association of Bishops said Father Vitorio’s death was a tragic loss and so forth and so on, the usual nil nisi bonum.
This was followed by a montage of comments from some of Father Vitorio’s former students, none of whom seemed to have acquired a turn-the-other-cheek attitude from associating with their former mentor, and all of whom expressed satisfaction that at least one of the killers had paid with his life.
The next face to appear on the television screen caused Arnaldo to choke on his breakfast coffee.
Roberto Malan wasn’t a Catholic, didn’t represent the State of Amazonas in the chamber of deputies, and had nothing to do with the death of a priest in Manaus. But there he was, in a tight close-up, speaking from his office in Brasilia.
“ Rede Mundo wouldn’t have gone to him,” Hector said. “He must have-”
He stopped short when Silva held up a hand.
“… not of my faith,” Malan was saying, “but Father Vitorio was a man whose service to the poor demanded respect. Certainly, he had mine.”
“Five will get you ten Malan never heard of him before he got knifed,” Arnaldo put in.
“No bet,” Silva said. “Now will the two of you kindly shut up?”
Malan paused and continued. “Brazil has, this day, lost a good shepherd. It’s not only a loss to his flock, it’s a loss to our country as a whole.”
“Does he talk like that in person?” Arnaldo asked.
“No,” Silva said.
The deputado leaned forward. He looked straight into the lens. His skin began to redden in anger. His voice took on a tone of righteous indignation.
“His death,” he said, “is an outrage, made all the more outrageous because it was entirely avoidable. Yes, avoidable! So who, in the end, are we to blame for Father Vitorio’s demise?”
Malan left viewers in no doubt he had the answer to that, but he took another pause, building up the expectation.
“The Almeida brothers, certainly,” he said, “and the nefarious-”
“Nefarious? Oh, please,” Hector said sotto voce, and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“-person or persons who employed them. But they’re not the only ones. Others contributed to Father Vitorio’s death. They didn’t contribute by shooting him, or ordering him to be shot, but they’re guilty just the same. They’re guilty of gross negligence.”
“Here it comes,” Arnaldo said.
“And who are these negligent incompetents? My fellow Brazilians, they are the federal police! Yes, the federal police! Those same federal police who let the mass murderer, Claudia Andrade, slip through their fingers not twenty months ago. If the federal police had been truly zealous in their efforts, dedicated in their comportment, efficient in their methods, they would have apprehended Claudia Andrade long ago. And if they had taken the initiative to suppress the dastardly exploitation of minors, with which the death of Father Vitorio Barone is undoubtedly linked, he would be alive today instead of-”
Click.
Silva put down the remote control. “I give him fifteen minutes,” he said.
Hector scratched his head. “Who?” he said. “Who do you give fifteen minutes?”
Nelson Sampaio was on the line in less than ten.
“Did you see Roberto Malan’s interview on Rede Mundo?” His voice was higher-pitched than usual. He sounded, Silva thought, like someone was squeezing his scrotum.
“Yes, Director, I did. Grandstanding, I think they call it.” Sampaio, who was prone to doing quite a bit of grandstanding himself, glossed over Silva’s critique.
“Why, Mario? Why would he go and do a thing like that?”
“I assume,” Silva said, “the deputado has become impatient with us in general and with me in particular. I’ve kept him waiting for news about his granddaughter. He can’t go public with that, so he chose another opportunity to make us the whipping boy. He knows the escape of the Andrade woman still galls us. He knows it would be painful to reopen the wound. What he doesn’t know is it’s all connected: the death of Father Vitorio, the disappearance of his granddaughter, Claudia Andrade, they’re all tied together.”
“Claudia Andrade? She’s involved?”
Sampaio was silent for a moment. Silva thought the director was going to insist on more details.
But he didn’t.
“Shouldn’t we tell Malan what we already know?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“The only way to appease him is to tell him something concrete about the whereabouts of his granddaughter. I’m not yet in a position to do that.”
Just before lunchtime, Lefkowitz came to call. He settled into a chair in Silva’s suite, and while he mopped his brow Hector went to fetch him a guarana from the little refrigerator.
“I didn’t want to use the telephone,” Lefkowitz said, removing his glasses and wiping off sweat with his handkerchief. “The chief has a tap on it. I know that for a fact, because I’m the one who put it there. He’s also instructed that all contact with you guys is to go through him. He’s going to be pissed if he finds out I was here.”
“If he does, it won’t be from us,” Arnaldo said. “We’re giving the chief the mushroom treatment.”
“Keeping him in the dark and feeding him a lot of shit, huh?”
“You know them all, don’t you, Lefkowitz?”
“Just the really old ones. Has he told you about the prints?” “Not a word,” Silva said.
“I figured as much.”
“Was I right?”
“Yes, Chief Inspector, you were. That Andrade woman left her prints all over the house.”
He took a long draught of his guarana.
“Anything else?”
Lefkowitz smacked his lips and nodded.
“There were three cars on the street near Carla’s, sorry, Claudia’s place. One was registered to a lowlife by the name of Delfin Figueiredo. Soon as you left, the chief and his buddies were all over it.”
“You and your people weren’t invited to participate?”
“Nope. The story’s going around there was money found. They split it among themselves. Lion’s share for the chief, of course.”
“Of course,” Silva said. “You see him do it?”
Lefkowitz shook his head.
“And nobody else would be willing to testify they did. The chief scares people. Now as to the blood, it’s gonna take a while to get the DNA results.”
“So you can’t tell us how many victims there were?”
“Not yet, but I can make an educated guess.”
“So, guess.”
“At least a dozen.”
The package arrived about an hour after Lefkowitz left. It was wrapped in brown paper, bore no stamps, no return address. Silva’s name was on the front, neatly written with a felt-tipped marker.
“Dropped off at reception by some kid,” Arnaldo said. “Desk clerk never saw him before.”
The package contained a single VHS tape, no note, no label.
The hotel’s convention center had a VCR, but it was broken. In the end, Arnaldo had to go out and buy one. It was almost six in the evening before they had it hooked up. The tape opened with a close-up of Claudia Andrade and maintained that visual all the way to the end. The composition was so tight that her pores were prominent, so tight that no clue to her surroundings was visible. The recording could have been made anywhere. The camera captured her head-on, foreshortening her prominent nose. There was a smile on her face. She looked quite attractive.