“You were searched when you were going through Customs, right?”
“Right,” Sacca said, cautiously, a wary look in his eyes.
“They didn’t find anything on you,” Silva said.
“Right again. So, what are you-”
“But they found something on the kid.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Ecstasy pills. Your Ecstasy pills. You were smuggling them in from the States.”
“No, I-”
“You got up in the middle of the night, took those pills out of your hand luggage, and slipped them into his. The kid was busted with your pills. They took him away and put him in a cell with hardened criminals. An hour or two later, he was sent to a communal shower.”
“Why are you-”
“Shut up and listen. Someone tried to rape him. He wouldn’t have it. They killed him and raped him anyway. He was fifteen years old.”
Sacca shrugged. “You know what the kid should have done? He should have just let them do it. I mean, he’d be alive today if he had, right? Sometimes you just gotta-”
“You framed him, didn’t you?”
Abilio Sacca opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. At that moment, he reminded Silva of a ventriloquist’s dummy.
“I didn’t frame him,” he finally said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“No? How was it, then?”
“I want to see a lawyer. I’m not saying another word until I see a lawyer.”
“No deal,” Silva said.
“What do you mean, no deal? I got a right to a lawyer. I don’t have to talk to you guys.”
“Thing is,” Silva said, “I’m under a lot of pressure here.”
“And what the fuck do you think you’re putting me under?”
Silva couldn’t count the tics any more, they were coming that fast. “Ah. But that’s different,” he said. “You’re a convicted felon. I’m a cop.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Talk. I need answers now, right now. I can’t wait. And if you don’t give me those answers, I’m gonna pin those murders on you.”
Beads of perspiration broke out on Sacca’s brow. “Look, how about we do this? How about you turn off that camera up there in the corner-”
“It’s not on.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Do you have a choice?”
“Give me your word.”
“What?”
“Your word. Give me your word it’s not on.”
“You have my word. It’s not. But, if it would make you more comfortable, how about we have this conversation somewhere else: out in the yard, for example?”
“Good idea. Now, I want your agreement on the rest.
Then I talk.”
“What rest?”
“I don’t sign anything. I just tell you. You get me a lawyer, a good one, and you don’t tell him shit about the conversation we’re about to have. And you don’t testify about it either. Not you, not this guy here.” He pointed at Hector.
“All right.”
“All right? Just like that? All right?”
“We’ve got bigger fish to fry, Sacca. You play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you.”
“I’m still not sure I can trust you.”
“You’re going to be happily surprised. Let’s go outside.”
Clancy’s three brothers had opted for the secular life, but his parents, religious people to the core, had always dreamed of having a son who’d embrace the priesthood. They worked hard to steer him away from his sweetheart, Petra, and toward the Church.
“I wanted to please them,” he said. “I managed to convince myself that there was something romantic about giving up the love of a woman to serve God. I began to see myself as a kind of hero, sacrificing his own happiness for a greater good.”
Petra looked down at his hand and squeezed it. “When he first started talking about becoming a priest,” she said, “I thought he’d get over it.”
“What she really did,” Clancy said, “was refuse to believe it.”
She smiled at him and then at Arnaldo. “He’s right,” she said. “And I kept refusing until the day he entered the seminary. It wasn’t far from my home. I hid behind a telephone pole and watched when his parents brought him to the front door. Then I hugged the wood, trying to make believe I was hugging him. I hugged it so hard that, when I got home, I found splinters in my cheek. I locked myself in my room, and I cried for hours and hours. I wasn’t interested in other men. The prospect of spending my life alone frightened me. I decided to join a religious order.”
“A convent?” Goncalves asked.
She raised her eyebrows. “Goodness, no,” she said. “That wouldn’t have suited me at all. I joined a small order. We help refugees in London, street kids in Nairobi, migrant workers in Florida. Here, in Brazil, I work-worked-with the rural poor.”
“Meanwhile,” Clancy said, “I was ordained. I’m not cut out to run a parish. I was doing social work. One day, I ran into Petra’s sister, Heidi, on the street.”
“She wrote me afterwards,” Petra said, “told me what he was doing, gave me his address. By then, I was in this little town up north, Sao Bento. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
Arnaldo shook his head.
“No,” Goncalves said. “I never have.”
“It’s in Tocantins, near Miracema. Dennis and I began a regular correspondence. His work. My work. Nothing that you might call really personal.”
“Not in the beginning,” he said.
“In one letter,” she said, “I referred to what we’d shared as ‘puppy love.’”
“But I didn’t think so,” he said, “I thought it was much deeper, much more profound than that. And, in my next letter, I shared the thought with Petra. It was the hardest thing I ever wrote.”
“And when I read it, I started crying again.”
“The situation was driving me crazy,” he said. “Most people go to psychiatrists when that happens, but I was a priest. I went to another priest.”
“Damon O’Reilly,” she said. “We’d known him all our lives.”
“Damon died in Boston a month ago,” he said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t tell you this: there was a girl, in Ireland, when he was young. They exchanged a kiss. One kiss, and in more than sixty years, he told me, a month hadn’t gone by when he hadn’t thought of that girl at least once. He’d learned to live with it, he said, but if he had his life to live over again, he wasn’t sure he’d do the same. He told me to come down here and talk to Petra, get it out of my system one way or another. One way or another, he said, but I think he knew what was going to happen. I wrote her straightaway.”
“And I,” she said, “told him not to come. I didn’t think I could stand losing him twice.”
“Damon,” Clancy said, “was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He spent his last days in a hospital. I went to visit him, morning and night. Toward the end, he pushed himself up on his elbows and asked me what the hell I was doing there. He wanted to know why I wasn’t in Brazil.”
“Delirious?”
“Not at all. Sharp as a tack. Right up to the very end. I told him she wouldn’t have me. He said he’d only kissed a girl once in his life, but he knew more about women than I did. He told me to go catch a plane.”
“And you did?” Arnaldo said.
“Not until he died. He was the kindest man I ever knew. I wanted to be there for him at the end. I performed his last rites, and left for Brazil on the evening of his funeral.”
“We traced you,” Arnaldo said, “as far as Miracema. Then you dropped off the map.”
“There are no hotels in Sao Bento,” Clancy said. “It’s a tiny place, a church, a few shops, no hotel. No airport, either, and no train, but there’s a bus from Miracema. Petra fixed it so I could stay with a family.”
“He showed up on my doorstep,” Petra said.
They smiled at each other.
“There were classes to teach,” she said, “and they had to find someone to replace me. I didn’t want to scandalize my Sisters any more than I already had. We took care not to be alone together, not until we left.”
“We got married in Palmas,” Clancy said. “I called my mother to tell her. She hung up on me. Petra’s family has been more understanding. They’re supporting what we’ve done. Tomorrow we’re going to leave for Boston and try to put things right with my folks.”