Chapter Six
“I want to discuss this,” Silva said.
“What’s to discuss?” Pereira said. “Who cares about some broken lock? I sure as hell don’t. Garcia might have done that himself.” He started to turn back toward the living room. “I’m going to bust him.”
Silva gripped him by the arm. “Wait,” he said.
“Why?”
“What if you’re wrong? What if he doesn’t confess?”
“He’ll confess. I’m gonna lean on him. When I’m done, he’ll own up to it even if he didn’t do it.”
“Walter, listen to me. As soon as you finger Garcia Sampaio will steal the ball and run with it. He’ll take credit for solving the case.”
“Surprise, surprise. What else is new?”
“If Garcia is innocent, Sampaio will have to eat his words. It’ll make him look like an idiot.”
“Garcia isn’t innocent. And Sampaio is an idiot.”
“Yes, he is. But you don’t want to give him cause to take offense.”
“I might give a shit if I reported to him. But I don’t. Let go of my arm.”
Silva did, but he kept talking. “Sampaio has this thing he calls a favor bank. He does something for somebody, and they wind up owing him one. He can call in chips anytime he wants to and, believe me, Walter, if you incur his enmity, he’ll find a way to call in the chips on you .”
“Filho da puta!” Pereira said, but now he was paying close attention.
“And how about your own boss, Meireles?” Silva said. “I hear he’s angling to become secretary of public safety.”
“True. But Meireles is different.”
“Is he?”
“He’s a real cop, for one thing.”
“Tolerant of honest mistakes, is he?” Silva said.
“I’m not making a mistake!” Pereira said.
“Keep your voice down, Walter. Let me give you an alternative scenario: What if this guy Gustavo and his friend Juan had a falling-out? What if Gustavo doesn’t have an alibi? What if someone saw him and the victim together a short time before the murder?”
“That’s all circumstantial bullshit.”
“And what do you have?”
“I got-”
“You’ve got letters and an established association. What you haven’t got are the murder weapons. Rivas and Garcia were lovers. Latent prints and hair samples are going to be all over that apartment. They’ll be useless as proof. And, anyway, Garcia has already told us he was there last night. Without solid forensic evidence, or an admission of guilt, your case won’t hold water.”
“I’m gonna get an admission of guilt. I’m gonna get a full confession.”
“Garcia isn’t some punk you can sweat until he says what you want him to say. He’s connected.”
Pereira bit his lip. “You think he’s got diplomatic immunity?”
“I don’t know. But I do know he’s a friend of the foreign minister of Venezuela. An intimate friend, as you just heard.”
“How long do you think that’s going to last? When Juan’s old man hears about Garcia’s little game of hide-the-banana with his son, he’ll-”
“You heard what Garcia said. No gays in The Clown’s government. It’s not much of a stretch from there to no fathers of gays in The Clown’s government. You think Jorge Rivas is going to thank you for making his son’s affair public?”
Pereira rubbed the stubble on his chin. “What’s my alternative?” he said.
“Give me time,” Silva said, “to check our database.”
“What database?”
“The one we’ve got on violent crimes countrywide, the one your people are supposed to be contributing to.”
“Oh, that one. Right. We do contribute to it.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Not everybody does. Think about it, Walter. This murder is unusual in three ways: one, the bullet to the abdomen prior to the beating; two, the extreme violence of the beating; three, the absence of the murder weapons. Suppose we don’t find the weapons, or suppose we find them and can’t link them to Garcia. If there’s one more murder, just one, that fulfils the other two conditions, and if Garcia can prove he was elsewhere when it happened, a case against him won’t hold water. How many victims are gutshot and then beaten? How many corpses have you seen that suffered as much physical abuse as Juan’s did?”
There was a soft knock on the door. Silva opened it.
“What is it, Safira?”
“Excuse me,” she said. “Senhor Jorge Rivas is here.”
Silva grimaced. “Already?”
“Sim, Senhor.”
“Let’s go, Walter,” Silva said. “Think about what I said.”
“I’m thinking,” Pereira said. “Goddamn it, I’m thinking.”
In the living room, Rivas had his hand on the shoulder of a weeping Tomas Garcia and was studiously ignoring Detective Vargas. The young cop’s cheap suit had classified him as a man of no importance. No importance, at least, to the Foreign Minister of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
The minister was a diminutive man, a fact about which he must have been sensitive, because he was wearing shoes that added about four centimeters to his height. His eyes were dry and clear, those of a man who’d learned to sleep comfortably on a first-class airline recliner, those of a man who’d done just that.
His striped dress shirt was starched and unwrinkled, certainly changed since his arrival. An Hermes tie, firmly knotted, was pulled up to the limits of his collar and held in place by a gold pin. Otherwise clad in a splendid example of the Italian suitmaker’s art, he exuded an air that reminded Silva of someone else he knew: Nelson Sampaio. Rivas’s first words added weight to that impression.
“Who’s in charge here?”
“This is Delegado Walter Pereira,” Silva said, “head of Homicide here in Brasilia.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters, Federal Police.”
“Your boss went to the airport to meet my flight.”
“Did he, Senhor?”
“If he’s an ass-licking shit called Sampaio, he did.”
“That’s him,” Arnaldo said.
“I’ll be sure to tell him you said that. Who the fuck are you?”
“Agent Haraldo Goncalves, Senhor,” Arnaldo Nunes said without missing a beat. “Federal Police.”
“Two of you, huh? Two federals and”-he glanced back and forth between Vargas and Pereira-“two civils. Well, you’re not stinting on the manpower, at least. What do the Federal Police have to do with this?”
Silva formulated his answer with care: “Consideration for your position, Senhor.”
“You know what it looks like to me? It looks to me like your ass-licking boss stuck his nose into my son’s case so people would pay attention to him. He may have thought I didn’t notice him at the arrival gate, but I did. When he wasn’t fawning on one of his betters, he kept trying to stick his head into the shots so he could get on camera. When we got to the VIP lounge, away from the reporters, he button-holed me. Told me you people were going to crack this case in short order. Have you? Have you cracked the case?”
Silva looked at Pereira.
“What?” the Venezuelan said, shifting suspicious eyes from one to the other.
“No, Senhor,” Pereira said at last. “We haven’t yet cracked the case.”
“Well, what are you doing hanging around here? Get out and solve it. Leave me and my friend alone. We have grieving to do. Christ, I wish I was in Caracas where the cops know their jobs.”
Pereira flushed and opened his mouth for a sharp retort, but Silva surreptitiously stepped on his foot. “We’re finished here, Senhor,” he said. “But before we move along…” Tomas Garcia, with the mien of a dog fearing a blow, took a step away from Rivas and lowered his head between his shoulders. “… I’d like to offer you my heartfelt sympathy on the death of your son.”
“Thank you,” Rivas said stiffly, then turned his back on the four cops and led Garcia off toward the bedrooms.
“How the fuck do you do it?” Pereira whispered, when the door closed behind them.
“Do what?” Silva asked.
“Keep your patience with a blowhard like that.”
“We get a lot of practice,” Arnaldo said.
“Reminds me of that filho da puta, your boss.”
“Like I said. Practice.”
“All right, Mario,” Pereira said, “I still think you’re wrong, but I’m gonna go along for the ride. What do you expect me to do while you’re checking that database of yours?”
“Talk to the other doormen. Find out when Rivas came home for the last time. Find out if he was alone. Find out if he had any visitors. Continue looking for the murder weapon. Believe me, Walter, you have nothing to lose by playing it this way. You might even uncover something that will strengthen your case against Garcia.”
“Or absolve him completely,” Arnaldo said.
Pereira stuck out his jaw. “Somebody teach a course in ballbusting at that federal police academy of yours, Nunes?”
“You’re looking at him,” Arnaldo said, exuding false modesty.
“Gustavo Fernandez,” Silva said, thinking aloud, “is a Cuban exile, probably an American citizen now. Either way, he would have needed a visa, which means we’ll have a record of his address in Miami. I can get a friend, an American cop, to do a background check.”
“For all the good that’s going to do,” Pereira said.
“Stop being so damned negative, Walter. We may just come up with something.”
“When pigs fly,” Pereira said.