“Sorry I missed you,” she said. She paused to let the significance of the remark sink in. Missed killing them, she meant. “It’s so difficult to hire decent help these days.”
Her smile faded and her eyes turned hard. “Your attentions are getting tiresome. You need something else to worry about, so I’ve arranged it. Deputado Roberto Malan is going to get a little package. After what I saw on Rede Mundo, I’d hazard a guess that he dislikes you almost as much as I do. What I’ve sent him is going to make him dislike you even more.”
The screen went black.
“Bitch scored another goal.” Arnaldo said, his face grim.
“Game’s not over,” Silva said, hitting the stop button.
Hector looked from one to the other. “What the hell was she talking about?”
“She killed Marta,” Silva said. “She killed her, made a video of it, and mailed the damned thing to Marta’s grandfather.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Bento Rosario screwed off the cap and took a tiny sip of water. It loosened his tongue from the roof of his mouth, but did nothing to assuage the dryness in his throat. Still, he had to conserve the little he had. There was less than a centimeter left in the bottle, barely enough for a healthy swallow.
If Silva doesn’t show up sometime soon, he thought, I’m gonna have to decide between thirst and a bullet.
Just then, a mosquito bit him behind the right ear. He reacted instinctively.
Slap.
A mistake. One of the taxi drivers heard the noise and looked toward the bushes where he was hiding. Bento forced himself to lie perfectly still. After a while, the taxi driver went back to his newspaper.
A tour group, headed by a woman with a name tag pinned to the lapel of her bush shirt, came out of the Hotel Tropical. She passed between two taxis and led her charges toward the pier, where the excursion boats were docked.
He wiped his forehead. Partly, it was because of the heat, but he would have been sweating even if the day had been cooler. Bento Rosario was scared to death.
The turnaround in Bento’s life had come with dizzying speed. It was his own fault. It would never have happened if he’d followed his uncle Tarcio’s advice.
“Working for the city is like being in the army,” Tarcio had said.
Bento had never been in the army. He’d escaped compulsory military service because of his flat feet. He had to ask Tarcio for clarification.
“You keep your head down,” Tarcio had explained, “do what you’re told to do, never take initiatives, and never, ever, volunteer for anything.”
Tarcio knew what he was talking about. In the army he’d risen to the rank of master sergeant, and now he’d been on the city payroll for almost three decades. Currently, he had a cushy sinecure in the sewer department, which gave him contacts throughout municipal government. But you needed more than contacts to get a job in Manaus. Contacts only put you in touch with the people who had jobs to give. You still had to bribe them to get one.
When Tarcio told him about the opening, Bento had been anything but enthusiastic.
“Clerk for the municipal police?” he’d said to his uncle. “Sounds boring.”
Tarcio hadn’t liked that. Hell, Bento knew for a fact that he didn’t even like him. He thought his nephew was a prissy little pain in the ass, had told him so more than once. He wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help if Bento’s mother, Tarcio’s kid sister, Arlette, hadn’t bullied him into it.
“It’s the only thing going,” Tarcio said, “and it’s a hell of a lot better than mucking around in other people’s shit, which is where I got my start. Take it or leave it.”
Bento knew what his mother would say if he didn’t take it. He didn’t want to put up with that.
So Tarcio had pulled the strings, and Arlette had paid the bribes, and the next thing Bento knew he had his very own seat behind one of three identical desks in the cellar of the delegacia central.
Alberto Coimbra, his new boss and the head clerk, was a benevolent despot who didn’t look too closely at the time Bento started in the morning and seldom complained if Bento came back half an hour late from lunch, both of which were big pluses. Bento had always found it difficult to wake up early, and he loved long lunches.
Another plus was that Coimbra generally left everybody to do their own thing. He didn’t go hanging over your shoulder, double-checking every damned piece of paper and file. The last thing Bento had expected was that he’d incur Coimbra’s wrath by taking a bit of initiative. Tarcio had clearly told him initiative was a no-no, but what did Tarcio know? There was a considerable difference between the sewer department and the municipal police, right?
Wrong. Coimbra had been furious.
“Why didn’t you talk to me first?” he’d said, his face so close to Bento’s that Bento could feel little drops of spittle while Coimbra was shouting at him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I just answered a query. I thought you’d be pleased. I thought-”
“You’re not paid to think. You’re paid to do. I’m paid to think.”
Bento didn’t get it at first. All he’d done was respond to an E-mail from the federal police in Brasilia. The E-mail had a photo attached. The federals wanted to know if they had a file on anyone who looked like the man in the photo.
Simple.
And easy for Bento, who had a good eye for faces.
He’d started with the “A’s” and, within minutes, he’d come up with a match. The guy’s name was Damiao Rodrigues, but somebody had misfiled his jacket under the A’s instead of under the R’s where it belonged.
By the time Coimbra got back from his afternoon coffee break, which usually involved cachaca instead of coffee and generally went on for an hour or more, Bento had already shot off a reply to the federal cops and put a copy of that reply onto Coimbra’s desk. Coimbra’s reaction had been swift and terrible.
First, he looked at the E-mail. Next, he unlocked a drawer of his desk, took out a piece of paper and ran his finger down the page. Then his face turned red.
He sprang to his feet and came storming over.
After Coimbra spat all over him, Bento took the wise course and apologized for thinking. But Coimbra wasn’t having it.
“Apologies don’t cut it,” he said. “This is more serious than you know. I have to see the chief. Don’t move until I get back.”
Bento hadn’t moved.
Five minutes later, Coimbra swept back into the room, took him by the arm and led him up to the chief’s office.
“We already got an answer to your fucking E-mail,” the chief said.
Those were the first words the chief had ever spoken to him. Bento had never even been introduced to Chief Pinto, much less seen the inside of his office. He didn’t get much of a chance to see it that day either. The chief didn’t tell him to sit down.
“You, Rosario, are a first-class fuckup. I should fire your ass right now.”
“But… why?”
The chief looked at Coimbra.
“He wants to know why,” he said. “Jesus.”
“Jesus,” Coimbra echoed.
The chief looked back at Bento.
“Because you fucking ignored your instructions, that’s why!”
“You’re supposed to come to me first,” Coimbra said. “You’re supposed to come to me whenever any outsider asks for information from our archives. You’ve been told that.”
Bento hadn’t been told any such thing. Coimbra was covering his ass. Bento opened his mouth to defend himself, but when he saw the way Coimbra was looking at him, he shut it again. If he lost his job, it was going to reflect on his uncle Tarcio, which meant his uncle Tarcio was going to be pissed. And not only that, his mother’s hard-earned money would be right down the drain. It was time to eat crow, and he did.