“And then?”
“And then, Agente Goncalves, we’re going to have three kids.”
“Four,” Petra said. “And now, officers, you’ve heard our story. We’d like to hear yours. Why are you here?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
There was a wooden picnic table in the courtyard. Hector and Silva sat on one side, Sacca on the other. The federal cops asked to be left alone with the prisoner.
“It was like this,” Sacca said when the guard was gone. “I’m in a bar in Freguesia. You know Freguesia?”
Freguesia do O, once a hilltop village, had long since been absorbed by its expanding neighbor. These days, it was simply one of Sao Paulo’s many neighborhoods, with little to distinguish it except for the old central square with its church and cemetery.
“I know it,” Silva said.
“So I’m up there,” Sacca said, “in this bar, and a guy I know comes to me with a proposition.”
“What guy?” Silva said.
“You don’t have to know that, do you?”
“Maybe not. What was the proposition?”
“Carry a package to Miami.”
“What was in the package?” Silva said.
“I got no idea. It was none of my business.”
“None of your business?”
“Look, he doesn’t tell, and I don’t ask, okay? He’s like, you want to do this? And I’m like, how much? And he’s like, ten thousand dollars, American.”
“Guy wants to give you ten thousand dollars to take a package to Miami, and you think it’s on the up-and-up?”
“I never said that. I’m not stupid. I just said I didn’t know what was in there.”
“Uh-huh. So then?”
“So I tell him I’ve never been out of the country, and I don’t have a passport, and, with my record, there isn’t much chance of me getting one. And he says no problem. He’s gonna get me a passport, and he’s gonna furnish the ticket, and I’m even gonna travel business class. He’ll pay me half of the ten grand before I leave. The person I deliver it to in Miami will pay the other half.”
“All right. So you agreed, and…”
“And he tells me to be ready to leave on Friday, meet him in the same place at seven o’clock, and bring a suitcase with what I need for a couple of nights in Miami.”
“And you did.”
Sacca nodded. “And I did. And he gives me the package, and a ticket, and a reservation for a hotel, and a passport.”
“And the passport was in the name of Darcy Motta?”
“Yeah. And the photo in it was from one of my mug shots. But the background was different, and they took out the sign they make you hold on your chest.”
“You think this guy is a cop?”
Sacca shrugged. “How else would he get one of my mug shots?” he said.
“And the passport? It got you into the States with no trouble?”
“Uh-huh. There was a visa in it and all, good for five years with multiple entries, if you can believe that. Multiple entries means-”
“I know what it means. If you don’t overstay your welcome, you can keep going back and forth. Go on with the story.”
“Yeah, okay. Well, it must have been a real visa because it had one of those holo… holo…”
“Holograms?”
“Yeah, one of them on it.”
“Where did you deliver the package?”
“He gave me an address. It was typed out on a piece of paper, and he told me I’d better not lose either the address or the package, because if I did, he’d cut my balls off. ‘Just show it to a taxi driver,’ he says. ‘It’s a bar,’ he says. ‘Get there at ten the day after tomorrow. Take the package with you. Leave it out on the bar where people can see it, and have a drink. Somebody will contact you.’”
“And somebody did?”
“A woman. An ugly skank, name of Maria.”
“Maria what?”
“There you go again,” Sacca said, showing peevishness for the first time. “Don’t you get it? You do this kind of stuff, you don’t ask people to tell you things like that. And even if you did, they’d lie. Maria, just Maria, okay?”
“Okay. Blond? Brunette? Redhead?”
“Blond. But not really. Her eyebrows were dark.”
“What else can you remember about her?”
“She was old enough to be my mother. And she had rough hands, I mean really rough, with calluses and all, probably worked as a maid somewhere.”
“Hang on. You’re in a bar, right? It was ten at night. It was dark. And you notice her hands.”
“Hell, yes, I noticed her hands. I didn’t look at them; I felt them. She wanted to shake on the deal.”
“What deal?”
“I’m getting to that,” Sacca said.
Sacca asked for a cigarette and got one. Then he asked for a Guarana, and Hector went inside to get one from the guards’ canteen. By the time Sacca had finished drinking it, he was back into single tics.
“You’re gonna get me a lawyer, right?”
“I’m going to get you a lawyer,” Silva said. “I promised, didn’t I?”
“Cops don’t always keep their promises.”
“This cop does,” Silva said. “Keep talking.”
“All right, all right, keep your shirt on. So this Maria coughed up the money, the other five grand. Then she asks me if I want to earn more. Sure, I say. How? So she spells it out. It’s Ecstasy. You know Ecstasy? It’s that pill kids take when they go to-”
“I know what Ecstasy is,” Silva said. “Go on.”
“This Ecstasy stuff, she tells me, used to come from Holland, mostly. But now, with a lot of kids there in the States into it, she knows a Dutchman who makes it right there in Miami. And there’s another guy in Sao Paulo who will buy everything she can send him. That’s where I come in.”
“She wants you to carry Ecstasy from Miami to Sao Paulo?”
“Yeah. But there’s a catch. She’s not about to put the stuff in my hands and just let me walk away with it. What’s to prevent me from stealing it, right?”
“Right. So what did she suggest?”
“This: I buy the stuff from her. She can get it really cheap, and she’s already got the guy lined up to buy it. She marks it up fifty percent to me, I mark it up fifty percent to the guy in Sao Paulo, he marks it up a hundred percent to the kids who distribute it in the clubs, and they mark it up god knows how much. Everybody wins.”
“Except the kids who consume it,” Silva said.
“Hey, nobody’s standing with a gun to their heads. It’s a free country, right? They want to take the stuff, it’s their decision.”
“Finish the story.”
“I’m getting there. So she makes the proposition, and there are two problems with it.”
“She might be lying about the numbers, and she might give you sugar pills instead of the real stuff.”
Sacca looked at Silva with something approaching admiration.
“Right. Exactly right. Although, to tell you the truth, I didn’t come up with those problems on my own. While I’m sitting there, turning the deal over in my head, she does it herself. And then she gives me the solutions. She tells me to call somebody in Sao Paulo, anybody I want, and check on the street value of the stuff. That’ll prove she’s not lying about the numbers. She even offers to pay for the call.”
“And to make sure she was selling you the real stuff? How were you going to convince yourself of that?”
“By trying it. She says she’ll meet me at the airport, says I can put my hand in the cookie jar, pick out any pill I want, and pop it. If it works, odds are the other pills are gonna work too. And I don’t hand over the money until I taste the goods.”
“It didn’t worry you that you were only going to try one pill, that she might have mixed some duds along with the real article?”
“I thought about it. But then I thought why should she? That’s like killing the chicken with the gold eggs. She’s talking about a long-term relationship here and, by this time, she knows I’m fixed up with a phony passport that will take me through customs like shit through a snake.”
“And how does she know that?”
“Because I told her, okay? She’s selling the deal to me, and I’m selling me to her. I’m interested, see? If it all checks out, I can make easy money.”