A Vine in the Blood (2 page)

“Let me have a closer look at that,” Nelson Sampaio said.

He leaned over his desk to snatch the photo from his Chief Inspector’s hand. Then he put on his gold-rimmed reading glasses and squinted at the headline.

Artist’s Mother Abducted.

He could have read it without the glasses. The typeface was that big.

In the photograph, Juraci Santos looked terrified. Her face was dirty, her hair unkempt; her upper body, as much of it as could be seen in the shot, was clad in a dark green sweatshirt several sizes too small. She had been photographed holding up a late edition of that morning’s
Cidado
de São Paulo
.

Sampaio tossed the photo onto a pile of newspapers, all with headlines echoing the one he’d been squinting at.

“Proof of life, my ass,” he said. “These days they can fake anything. Why diamonds?”

“Cash is too bulky,” Silva said. “A bank transfer could be traced. Diamonds have universal value. It’s a good choice.”

Sampaio took off his glasses and rubbed the indentations on the bridge of his nose. “How did those damned radio people get the news before we did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s Arnaldo Nunes?”

“In São Paulo, visiting family.”

“Good! Saves us a plane ticket.” Sampaio, when he wasn’t flattering a superior, or planning the overthrow of an enemy, kept a sharp eye on expenses. “Pry him loose from his bloody family. I need every available man. I need results fast. Timing is critical.”

For once, Sampaio was right. Timing
was
critical.

The felons who’d snatched the Artist’s mother could hardly have picked a worse time to do it.

The beginning of the FIFA World Cup was thirteen days away. The nation, as it did every four years, had gone football crazy. And, in the upcoming conflict, no player was more crucial to Brazil’s success than the Artist.

What Beethoven was to music, Rembrandt to painting, Tico “The Artist” Santos was to the art of
futebol
. He was the new Pelé. Some alleged he was
better
than Pelé. With Tico in form, his team was expected to go on to glory. With Tico depressed and worried about the fate of his mother, Brazil ran a grave risk of suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the country’s most bitter rival—Argentina.

Even that wasn’t the worst of it. Brazil, the only country to have won the Cup five times, was hosting the series for the first time in more than sixty years.

Every important government official, from the President of the Republic on down, had acquired tickets to the games. And every one of them had been looking forward to the grand finale, where they’d rub elbows, mid-field, in the great stadium of Maracanã, and watch Brazil crush the opposition.

Opposition that would, according to the bookmakers in London, most likely be wearing the blue and white of the Argentinean national team.

But now, the great elbow-rubbing fest had been thrown into jeopardy. A serious risk had arisen that Argentina might rub dirt into Brazilian faces. And, indignity of indignities, that dirt might be
Brazilian
dirt.

The task of finding the Artist’s mother had fallen to the Brazilian Federal Police. If Juraci Santos wasn’t quickly—and safely—returned, there was no one more likely to be targeted by the witch hunt that would surely follow than the Director in charge of that organization.

Nelson Sampaio.

“The Argentineans have a club in São Paulo,” he said, biting one of his nails. “That’s as good a place as any to start.”

Silva eyed him warily. “Start what?”

“Interviewing Argentineans, of course. It’s a question of
cui bono
. If Tico can’t do his stuff, who benefits? The Argentineans! That could be it right there! That could be the motive.”

Wariness crystallized into disbelief, but Silva was careful to keep his voice neutral.

“You think a cabal of Argentineans snatched the Artist’s mother?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Honestly, Director, I don’t think—”

“Call Nunes. I don’t want him sitting around on his ass waiting for you to get there. I want him over at that Argentinean club questioning suspects. Tell him that.”

Silva suppressed a sigh. “I’ll tell him, Director.”

Sampaio stabbed the photo with a forefinger. “Did this come by email?”

Silva nodded.

“We can trace emails, can’t we?”

“Not in this case.”

“Why the hell not?”

“They used a free, Web-based account and logged in through an unsecured wireless link.”

“Whatever the fuck that means.” Sampaio’s language tended to get saltier when he was under pressure. “Have you booked your flight?”

Silva nodded and looked at his watch. “It leaves in fiftyfive minutes.”

“Get a move on then.” Sampaio took another bite of nail.

“We’ll continue this conversation when I get there.”

Silva raised an eyebrow. “You’re coming to São Paulo?” “Are you hard of hearing, Chief Inspector?”

The Director loved to throw his weight around. Unfortunately for his subordinates, he generally threw it in the wrong direction. Allowing him to go to São Paulo would hinder, not help, the investigation. Silva acted immediately to defuse the threat.

“I’m sure Minister Pontes will be pleased with your personal involvement,” he said.

Antonio Pontes, the Minister of Justice, was the government’s Witch Hunter-in-Chief.

For a while, Sampaio didn’t reply.

Silva knew what he was up to. He was turning it over in his head:
Go to São Paulo and assume all responsibility, or
stay in Brasilia and blame Mario Silva and his team in case of
failure?

For Sampaio, a political appointee and a political animal, it really wasn’t much of a choice. He did exactly what Silva expected him to do.

“Damn,” he said, “I forgot about the corruption hearings. I’ll have to stay here. I could be called upon to testify.”

There was not the least chance of Sampaio being called upon to testify. The congressional corruption hearings were dead in the water. The politicians charged with conducting them were stonewalling, some to protect their buddies, some to protect themselves.

But Silva nodded, as if what the Director said made perfect sense.

“Mind you,” Sampaio added, “You’ll be calling me with updates at least twice a day.”

“Of course,” Silva said.

He had no intention of doing any such thing.

Chapter Three

T
HE
F
EDERAL
P
OLICE’S
S
ÃO
P
AULO
field office operated under the direction of
Delegado
Hector Costa.

Some people said he owed his position to his uncle’s influence.

They were wrong.

Silva had done everything he could to convince his nephew to embrace a less dangerous profession—and failed. When Hector had been accepted to the Federal Police, Silva had steadfastly refused to promote his advancement in the hope he’d quit. The result was to make Hector more stubborn, more determined to succeed. He’d worked hard, and in the end, it had made him an even better cop.

While the Director and the Chief Inspector were having their conversation in Brasilia, the Delegado was already on his way to the crime scene. São Paulo’s morning rush hour was still in progress, but traffic was flowing toward the city’s center while Hector was moving away from it. Less than forty minutes after leaving his office, he’d already entered Juraci Santos’s closed condominium in the suburb of Granja Viana.

He parked next to an ambulance, complimented the agent minding the crime-scene tape and entered Juraci Santos’s home through the front door. Someone had propped it open with a block of wood.

There were nearly as many crime scene technicians inside the house as there’d been reporters outside. Some were taking photographs, some mixing luminol, some dusting for prints. And, in charge of it all, was Lefkowitz, the chief crime scene technichian.

“Brought a few friends, I see,” Hector said, looking around him.

“I brought everybody I’ve got,” Lefkowitz said. “Nobody wants to nail those bastards more than me. I’ve got a bet with a cousin of mine in the States. He actually thinks the Americans are going to get into the quarter-finals.”

“They just might. They almost did last time.”

“The Americans? In the quarter-finals? You’ve got to be kidding. They don’t care about football. Not our kind, anyway.”

Hector wasn’t there to talk about football. He got down to business.

“They took down my car’s number plate when I came through the gate. You’ve probably already thought of this, but….”

“Did we get a copy of the gate records? Yes, we did. And there’s one car we’ve yet to identify. It arrived at 2:00
AM
, left at 5:00.”

Hector rubbed his hands. “A lead,” he said. “Thank you, Lefkowitz.”

“The Lefkowitz giveth, and the Lefkowitz taketh away,” Lefkowitz said. “We ran the plate through DETRAN. It doesn’t exist.”

DETRAN was the regulatory body that controlled car registrations in the State of São Paulo.

Hector chose to be optimistic.

“It might be from out of state,” he said.

“The other states are being checked as we speak. Another possibility is that the guard got the number wrong, so we’re also trying partials.”

“Other than the gate I came through—”

“Additional gates? None.”

“Damn! Somebody talk to the neighbors?”

“Franco did.” Letitia Franco, Lettie to her family, was Lefkowitz’s assistant. The crime scene techs in São Paulo seemed to have a thing about calling each other by their last names. “The neighbor over there”—Lefkowitz hooked a thumb over his shoulder—“and the one across the street, didn’t hear, or see, a thing. That one”—he pointed in the direction of the nearest house—“heard some commotion. You’d best have a chat with him.”

“Name?”

“Sá. Rodolfo Sá.”

“What kind of commotion? Screams? Shouts?”

“No screams. No shouts. Just a loud noise. Something else: I think they sedated the victim. We found an empty syringe in her bedroom.”

“Containing?”

“A few drops of a pale yellow fluid. We’re analyzing it.”

“How big is this condominium?”

“You’re thinking house-to-house search?”

“Uh huh.”

“Forget it. It’s huge. It stretches over two municipalities. You’d need a hundred men, and it would take a month.”

“Have you gone through her papers?”

“We have.”

“And?”

“Juraci had a private investigator following the Artist’s girlfriend around.”

“Interesting. Got a name?”

“Prado. Caio Prado. I got an address, too. Rua Augusta, 296, second floor.”

“You find any of his reports?”

“Receipts, mostly. Only one report.”

“Interesting?”

“Boring. But the investigation was ongoing.”

“Who’s the girlfriend?”

“Cintia Tadesco.”

“The model?”

“Actress, she calls herself these days.”

“I saw her in one of the nighttime soaps. She can’t act worth a damn.”

“Who cares? Watch her with the sound off. That’s what I do.”

“She is, I agree, a knockout. A splendid example of womanhood. Drawn to the Artist, no doubt, by his great physical beauty and awesome intellectual capacity.”

“Sarcasm, Hector, does not become you.”

“So I’ve been told. Any indication as to what prompted Juraci to hire Prado?”

“No.”

“Anything else of interest in her papers?”

“A receipt for house keys. Four sets. Made last week by a locksmith named Samuel Arns. He’s got a shop in the strip mall you had to pass in order to get here. We went through this house with a fine-tooth comb and found only three sets. One set was in a drawer in her office. One was in her purse, which the kidnappers left behind. And one was in the purse of one of the maids.”

“And that’s significant because?”

“A theory I have, which I’ll get to in a minute. Let me see. What else did we find? Oh, yeah, the footprint.”

“Footprint?”

“Juraci must have heard them coming. She locked herself in her bedroom. But the door was flimsy. He smashed it with his foot. In doing so, he was kind enough to leave us an impression of his sole and heel.”

“He?”

“No woman has feet that big, not even my wife. Once he was inside, Juraci panicked and lost control of her bladder. We found urine on the rug and on the sheets. We figure he tossed her onto the bed, threw himself on top of her to hold her down, and injected her with whatever was in the syringe.”

“
Tossed
her? Is the victim a lightweight?”

“Juraci? Hardly. There are pictures of her all over the house. She weighs ninety kilos if she weighs a gram.”

“Big guy, then.”

“Big feet at least. And strong. We recovered a few fibers from the sheets. Looks like he was wearing a wool sweater.”

“Any sign of blood?”

“Not in the bedroom. The kitchen is full of it. That’s where they killed the maids.”

“The bodies are still here?”

“Still here. I’ve got an ambulance on call to bring them to the IML, but I figured you’d want to see them first.”

“You figured right.”

The IML,
Instituto Médico Legal
, was where São Paulo’s criminal autopsies took place.

“Who will be doing them when they get there?” Hector asked.

“Gilda.”

Gilda Caropreso was an assistant medical examiner—and Hector’s fiancée.

“Did she do the
in situ
as well?”

“No.”

“Who then?”

“That new guy, Whatshisname.”

“Plinio Setubal. Did he estimate time of death?”

“He did. The same for both. Between four and five this morning.”

“Both. So there are two of them?”

“Brilliant deduction. You a detective?”

Hector ignored the sarcasm. “Shot?”

“Shot. Small bore pistol. A .22 would be my guess. No exit wounds. Come on, I’ll show you.”