“He was. What were you doing in Miami, Senhor Mansur?”
“Huh?”
“I asked you what you were doing in Miami.”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?”
“I deal in petroleum-based industrial lubricants. Let’s cut right to the chase. You’re telling me I could be a victim, but you’re thinking I could be a murderer, right?”
“You’re a perceptive man, Senhor Mansur.”
“You’re goddamned right I am. Well, Senhor Chief Inspector Silva, let me tell you this: I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Then you could be in danger yourself.”
“Who else was in that cabin? Remind me.”
“Would names have any significance for you?”
“Probably not.”
“Then it would suffice to say there was a fifteen-year-old boy, the son of an airline employee-”
“I remember him. I wondered why he was traveling alone in business class. They must have upgraded him because of his father. I guess we can rule him out. Who else?”
“An American.”
“Aha.”
“Aha?”
“You can’t trust Americans.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion, Senhor Mansur.”
“What does this American do for a living?”
“He appears to be a priest.”
“What do you mean, ‘appears to be’?”
“We’re awaiting confirmation on that.”
“Priests don’t murder people.”
“I have to differ with you. Occasionally they do. I’ve known one who did.”
“Who are the other-dare I say- survivors?”
“Three Brazilians. We haven’t located any of them either.”
“So let me add this up. You got the American priest, the woman, a teenager, four dead guys, a dead stewardess, three other people, and me. That’s twelve altogether.”
Whatever else Mansur might have been, he wasn’t stupid. And he had a good memory.
“Correct,” Silva said.
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t kill anybody. The old lady probably didn’t, and the teenager ditto. That brings you down to four suspects.”
“One of the four is a child.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember him too. Traveling with his father.
Waste of money, taking a kid into business class. His old man should have popped him back in coach and let the stewardesses take care of him.”
Silva was beginning to develop a healthy dislike for Luis Mansur.
“So, let’s see who we have left,” Mansur said. “There’s only the priest and those two other guys, right? Maybe you’d better give me their names after all.”
“The father of the boy is Marnix Kloppers.”
“What the fuck kind of a name is that?”
“It’s of Dutch origin, I believe.”
“And the priest?”
“Dennis Clancy.”
“And the last guy?”
“Darcy Motta.”
“Oh, yeah, Motta.” Luis Mansur chuckled.
Silva picked up on the reaction. “You know him?”
“Know him? Hell, no.”
“You didn’t sit down next to him?”
Mansur bristled. “He tell you that? Tell you I sat down next to him? If he did, he’s lying.”
“He hasn’t told us anything. We’re still looking for him.”
“You found me. How come you haven’t found him?”
“His ticket was purchased with cash. We’ve been unable to uncover any credit cards. He has no driver’s license, no telephone, no cell phone, no criminal record. It’s possible that Darcy Motta is an alias, that his real name is something else.”
“Hmmm,” Mansur said. He sounded pensive.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Silva asked.
“No.”
“Does the name Girotti mean anything to you? Joao Girotti?”
“Not a thing. Why?”
“He, too, was murdered. The method of killing, and the bullet used, matched the others.”
“But he wasn’t on the plane?”
“No, he wasn’t. Listen, Senhor Mansur, I’d like to speak to you personally. Could we meet on Tuesday morning? About ten?”
Mansur did a noisy flip through of his desk calendar.
“Make it nine,” he said. “I’ve got a busy day, but I’ll shuffle my schedule around.”
“Nine, then. In the meantime, be careful.”
“Let me tell you something, Senhor Chief Inspector Silva. I’ve got a Taurus. 38 and, before you ask, yes, I do have a permit to carry it. I was robbed one time on the street; a little punk threatened me with a knife. I gave him my wallet, and my watch, and the little fucker cut me anyway. It took six stitches to close the wound, and if I’d raised that arm up a fraction of a second later, I would have gotten it right in the face. I’m not about to let anything like that happen again. Anybody, man, woman, or child, who threatens me is gonna eat a bullet.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Customs agents who’d nabbed Junior Arriaga were Fausto Mainardi and Douglas Caetano. Mainardi, who seemed friendly enough, was a veteran in a baggy suit. Caetano, new to the service, was surlier but a better dresser. They brought Goncalves to the windowless room where they’d interrogated the teenager.
A television camera was mounted high in one corner, a monitor in another. A microphone protruded from the ceiling. The only source of illumination, a fluorescent tube, was protected by a metal grate.
Goncalves, preparing to take notes, tried to move his chair closer to the table. It wouldn’t budge. He looked down and saw it was bolted to the cement floor.
“Why are we interested in this kid?” Mainardi said.
The we was a reminder. The Customs Service was a division of the Federal Police. Mainardi and Caetano fell into the category of colleagues. They expected Goncalves to tell them the whole story.
Which he did, starting with the murder of Juan Rivas and emphasizing the director’s personal interest in the case.
When he told them about young Arriaga’s murder, neither man seemed shocked-or even interested.
“Sounds unrelated,” Mainardi said.
“Probably no connection at all,” Goncalves agreed, “but my orders are to follow up on it. Tell me what you remember.”
“Start with the old system,” Caetano said to his partner.
Mainardi nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Time was,” he said, “we asked people with taxable goods to fill in a form. Those that didn’t, they’d go straight to nothing-to-declare. There was this button they had to push, and a sign right next to it, all in lawyer’s language: By pushing this button I affirm yadda, yadda, yadda and so forth and so on. If an arrow in front of the pusher went green, it would be pointing left and they were home free. But if the arrow went red and pointed to the right, and a loud fucking buzzer went off, they’d have to go to the tables and start opening their bags. Way I heard it, some cousin of some higher-up sold us this system and cut a nice deal for doing it. Way I heard it, it was the most expensive buzzer-and-light system in the history of the world.”
“Not to be impolite,” Goncalves said, “but what’s this story got to do with-”
“Hold your horses. I’m getting there.”
“You gotta hear the whole thing,” Caetano said. “Otherwise you’re not gonna get it.”
Mainardi waited until Goncalves nodded. Then he continued. “A lot of us were pissed off about the changes. We figured we were better than any random system. We lobbied for an override, a little transmitter we could keep in our pockets and use to buzz anybody who looked suspicious. In the end, the higher-ups agreed.”
“Uh-huh,” Goncalves said. He started to drum his fingertips on the table.
“Almost there,” Mainardi said. “So we used the hybrid system, random and override, for a couple of years, until the guy who had it installed retired to his villa on the French Riviera, or some such place, and the new regime took over. That’s when we switched.”
“To what?”
“Now everybody has to fill in the form, whether you have goods to declare or not. We stand there and collect them. Anybody looks suspicious, we shake ’em down. Back to square one, you know what I mean? But it wasn’t square one, because working with the other system taught us something.”