“Damn. You put it in circulation?”
Goncalves nodded. “Every border control point, every field office, and every delegacia.”
“Good. Who’s next?”
“The kid.” He unfroze the image. They watched in silence for a while, then: “There. That’s him.”
“Doesn’t look nervous at all,” Silva said. “Why did they pick on him?”
“One of them took a dislike to him,” Goncalves said.
“Just that? No good reason at all?”
“No good reason at all.”
Silva ran a hand through his hair. “Canalhas,” he said. “Where’s the priest?”
“Coming up. I didn’t bother with the timecodes. All the business-class people boarded together. It’s just as fast to let it run.”
They went through an eerie parade of the dead: Juan Rivas, Professor Paulo Cruz, Victor Neves, Jonas Palhares, Luis Mansur, and then…
“Clancy,” Goncalves said.
The priest was a handsome man, young, with an open face, dressed entirely in black. A sweater was draped over his shoulders; a small valise was clutched in his right hand.
“You give him the same treatment?” Silva asked.
“Same treatment. The e-mails went out about two hours ago.”
“Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” Silva said.
They got lucky.
The first call came in at three minutes past nine and by then Hector was there to take it. The call was from a delegado in Santo Andre, a satellite town southeast of the capital.
“You one of the guys who’s looking for Abilio Sacca?”
“Who?” Hector said.
“You got him tagged as Darcy Motta, but that’s wrong. His name is Abilio Sacca. I got a rap sheet on him as long as my arm. Better yet, I got his ass in a cell. All you gotta do is come over here and pick him up.”
“Where are you?”
“Got something to write with?”
“Go ahead.”
“Avenida Duque de Caxias, 384, in Santo Andre. It’s a gray building. You’ll be able to park right in front. Ask for me. In case you didn’t get it the first time, the name’s Carillo, with two l’s. I’m the delegado titular.”
“With two l’s. Got it. I really appreciate the call, Delegado.”
“Don’t mention it. You have something on him you can make stick? I got enough problems in this district without Abilio Sacca running around loose.”
Fifteen minutes later another call came in. This one was routed to Goncalves.
“Agent Goncalves? Ricardo Vasco speaking. I’m the day manager at the Hotel Gloria. You dropped by a while back-”
“Yes, Senhor Vasco. I remember you.”
“The guest you asked about? Dennis Clancy?”
“Yes?”
“He’s back. He and his wife just checked in.”
“His wife? Clancy is a priest!”
“Yes, I know. Distressing, isn’t it? I regret to say it happens quite often.”
“Tell your people to stay away from the room. Where will I find you?”
“At the reception desk.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Goncalves hung up and dialed Hector’s extension. Silva answered.
“Don’t go alone,” Silva said when Goncalves finished talking.
“You don’t want to be in on the bust?”
“Hector and I have a line on Darcy Motta. We’re going to Santo Andre. Take Arnaldo and bring in the priest.”
In the days when the Avenida Ipiranga was the jewel of Sao Paulo’s thoroughfares, the Hotel Gloria was the jewel of the Avenida Ipiranga.
But those days were long gone.
The lobby still boasted silver-plated chandeliers and faux-Aubusson carpeting, but brass had begun to shine through the silver and the carpeting had worn thin.
The Gloria’s restaurant had never managed to find quite the right chef or maitre. It had closed for renovation in the late eighties. More than two decades later, it was still closed, and the renovation was no further along than the sign on the door. Management put up a new one every six months (sooner if someone swiped it), to sustain the illusion of a future reopening.
All the rooms in the Gloria were, with one exception, small. Smaller, certainly, than they should have been in a hotel that charged the prices the Gloria did. The exception was the private suite designed for the owner’s personal use. That particular accommodation occupied the entire top floor of the hotel and featured an open-air terrace as big as a parking lot. Their first look at that terrace never failed to engender squeals of delight from the impressionable young ladies the owner had been fond of entertaining there. And that, of course, had been the purpose behind its construction in the first place.
When the owner died in the early seventies, the suite had been taken over by a personality whose real name was Meyer Katz, but whom all of Brazil knew as Bobo.
The television program that made Bobo a household name billed itself as a talent hunt. But in reality, performers were chosen not because they had talent, but because they lacked it. Bobo, dressed in a clown suit and a stovepipe hat with a flower pinned to it, would receive them with great fanfare and give them a big buildup. Then they’d sing, or dance, or tell jokes, or do whatever they thought they could do well-and generally did very badly-until the studio audience would begin to groan and boo. At that point Bobo, feigning surprise and disappointment, would squeeze the rubber bulb on his horn. Honk. Honk. Honk. And the unfortunate performers would be forcibly removed from the stage with a long hook resembling a shepherd’s crook. The mere sight of that crook creeping in from offstage was enough to throw the five hundred people in the studio audience, and millions more watching throughout the country, into paroxysms of laughter.
Add to the formula the occasional performer who introduced an element of surprise by demonstrating true talent, add seven scantily clad women who danced to canned music, and you had a recipe that made Bobo a household name for a generation.
And things might have gone on for still another generation if fate hadn’t cancelled Bobo’s act. One night, returning from dinner with one of the more lissome of his dancers, Brazil’s most famous clown had had a fatal heart attack. He collapsed and expired right there in the Gloria’s lobby.
This lent cachet to the hotel where he’d lived and died. Many were the tourists who wanted to spend a night in the same place Bobo had spent his nights. And many were the tourists who wanted to see the spot where he’d breathed his last.
The widow of the Gloria’s original builder, the woman who’d become the hotel’s sole proprietress, recognized that Bobo’s fading fame wouldn’t sustain the place forever. But at the moment it still did.
And thus it was that the Hotel Gloria went on, providing small, relatively clean, overpriced rooms at an occupancy rate that sometimes exceeded eighty percent.
The two cops followed each other through the revolving doors, skirted the easel with the black-bordered photo of Bobo, and headed for the hotel’s reception desk.
Ricardo Vasco, as promised, was there to meet them. He was a white-haired gentleman in his mid-sixties, somber and thin. Goncalves introduced Arnaldo. Arnaldo took the lead.
“We appreciate your call, Senhor Vasco.”
“I’m pleased to be of service. You don’t intend to take Senhor Clancy and his wife out of here in handcuffs, do you?”
“Hopefully not.”
Vasco looked relieved. “I’m glad to hear it. It wouldn’t be a scene we’d relish. Such things have a way of upsetting the guests.”
“You sound like it’s happened before.”
Vasco smiled a sad smile. “The Gloria has been here a long time. For that matter, so have I.”
“Where’s our man?”
“Sixth floor. Room 666.”
“Six sixty-six,” Goncalves said. “But that-”
“Is the number of the beast,” Vasco said. “Yes, I’ve heard that one before. Silly, isn’t it?”
But Goncalves didn’t think it was silly at all. He was already turning pale.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Abilio Sacca’s criminal history was such that it would have caused even the most dedicated of social workers to throw up her hands in defeat.