“Okay, okay: at one time. But no more. That’s history.”
“So the two of you haven’t spoken for a while?”
“What did I just say? History.”
“What happened?”
Fernandez shrugged.
“I moved on,” he said.
“You broke up?”
“There was nothing to break. Casual sex, that’s all it was. What have you guys got to do with any of this? Juan was murdered down in Brazil, right?”
“What makes you think that?”
“You mean he was here?”
“No. It happened in Brazil, all right.” Again, Willis consulted his notebook. “There were three occasions when you didn’t exchange telephone calls for over a week. The first was from the tenth to the eighteenth of August.”
“I was in Brazil.”
“And from the third to the thirteenth of October?”
“Again, Brazil.”
“That the last time you were there?”
“Yeah. Last time.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Hell, yes, I can prove it. I’ve got the stamps in my passport.”
Willis turned the page. “The third time period in which the two of you weren’t calling each other,” he said, “was from the fourteenth to the twenty-second of November.”
In the bathroom, the sound of the shower stopped. Fernandez lowered his voice. “He was here.”
“He stayed with you?”
“No, I mean here in Miami. He took a hotel suite. He was after a good time. I showed him around.”
“Did you stay with him? There in the suite?”
“What if I did?”
“When did you first meet him?”
Fernandez thought for a moment. “July. It musta been the first or the second. I remember taking him to the fireworks on the Fourth. You done?”
“Just a few more questions. What did he tell you about his relationship with Garcia?”
“That the old fart wouldn’t let go, couldn’t get it through his head that Juan was finished with him. He kept slipping letters under Juan’s door.”
“Did Juan show any of those letters to you?”
“He read a few when we talked by phone. We laughed about them. Hey, you think the old fart killed him?”
“Do you?”
Fernandez shrugged. “How would I know?”
“Did Juan talk to you about any of his other relationships?”
“No.”
“Did Juan ever tell you about anyone he was afraid of?”
“No.”
“Anything you can think of that might lead to finding his killer?”
“No,” Fernandez glanced at the bathroom door. “How much longer is this gonna take?”
Willis stood up and Andre followed suit.
“We’ll be out of here,” Willis said, “just as soon as you show us those stamps in your passport.”
“Hello, Babyface.”
“You know I don’t like that nickname, Chief Inspector.”
It was 4:30 P.M. in Brasilia. Haraldo Goncalves was calling in from Rio de Janeiro.
“Sorry,” Silva said, smoothly. “It just slipped out. What have you got?”
“ Nada. Chantal Pires is a dead end. She’s no killer.”
“Chantal Pires? That would be Jonas Palhares’s girlfriend.”
“The very same.”
“All right, let’s hear it.”
“They met on the beach.”
“So?”
“The girls you meet on the beaches in Rio, they’re all dressed alike, which means in bathing suits about the size of postage stamps. And nobody is stupid enough to wear jewelry or a watch, so you don’t know whether you’re dealing with an heiress or a whore until she opens her mouth.”
“And often not even then.”
“And often not even then. You must be younger than you look, Chief Inspector.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Senhor. It just slipped out. Chantal told me Palhares had her in bed two hours into their first date.”
“How forthcoming. Go on.”
“Palhares lived in a rental apartment, a duplex penthouse on Vieira Souto in Ipanema. The guy went through a divorce, for Christ’s sake! You gotta ask yourself how he could have afforded it.”
“So you went there and had a look?”
“I did. There’s a stain where he bled out on the rug. The air-conditioning had crapped out, and Palhares’s corpse was there for a while before they found him. The whole place still stinks. The owners have got some work ahead of them before they can rent it out to someone else.”
“Find anything of interest?”
“Nothing.”
“The Rio cops have any other suspects?”
“Not one. And they’re backing off on Chantal. As well they should.”
“What makes you so sure they can rule her out?”
“The way she talked. When he brought her home the first time, she took one look at that apartment and thought she’d found the duck that lays golden eggs.”
“In the fairy tale, it was a goose.”
“Whatever. She told him she was a model.”
“But she isn’t?”
“No, Senhor. But she sure as hell looks like one.”
“So he bought it.”
“He bought it. She let him tell her long, boring stories about oil rigs, fed his ego, waited on him hand and foot, fucked him until he was cross-eyed. And, apparently, things were going just fine, and she was already thinking of herself as Senhora Palhares.”
“And then someone came along and killed him.”
“And then someone did. And if Chantal knew who it was, she’d kill him with her bare hands.”
Chapter Nine
Hector Costa was both the head of the federal police’s Sao Paulo field office and Mario Silva’s nephew. Late the following morning, he drove from Sao Paulo to Campinas. It was a pleasant drive through verdant hills studded with small farms, and he made good progress until he reached the outskirts of the city. But then things started to go wrong.
Campinas, now numbering over three million inhabitants, had recently introduced a number of one-way streets. He was in town for more than an hour before he located the precinct housing the homicide squad.
But he’d called ahead, and when he gave his name to the desk sergeant, he was immediately directed to the office of Delegado Artur Seixas.
Seixas was a man pushing sixty. On the wall behind his desk was a small blackboard with a label. Days Until Retirement, it said. The number 27 was scrawled in white chalk.
“From today?” Hector asked.
“Including weekends,” Seixas said. “First thing I do every morning is pick up the chalk and change the number.” He stuck out a hand and Hector shook it. “It was my wife’s idea. She keeps telling me how great it’s going to be, and I go along with the game. But the truth is I hate the idea. You’d think thirty-five years would be enough, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it isn’t. Not for me. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I got no hobbies at all. I’m afraid I’m gonna go nuts. You want to go get some lunch?”
They sat at a counter and ate sandwiches.
“I understand you have a suspect,” Hector said when the conversation turned to the Neves case.
“You talking about Eduardo Coruja, his business partner?”
“Him.”
“Nah! That turned out to be a dead end.”
“No other suspects?”
“Nope.”
“Any forensics that might help?”
“We got the bullet and sent it to Brasilia. My understanding is you’re going to compare it to the one you took out of that Venezuelan.”
“We are. Anything else?”
“Nothing else. And our forensics people are first-class.”
“Unicamp, huh?”
Seixas opened his hands, as if the answer was obvious. And indeed it was. Unicamp, the Campinas branch of the University of Sao Paulo, trained the best criminal forensics people in the country. The professors who worked there were often called upon, nationwide, to consult on difficult cases.
“No offense,” Hector said, “but I’d still like to have a look at that apartment.”
“None taken,” Seixas said. “We can go over there right now. I brought the key.”
Neves had lived in a high-rise bordering the university’s campus. The neighborhood was packed with bars, boutiques, and trendy restaurants. The building’s security guard recognized the grizzled cop from previous visits and buzzed them through at once.