A Vine in the Blood (26 page)

“No sign of the pigeon,” she said, “just blood and feathers. The bag is here, and so is the device, both of them all chewed up. We figure the pigeon must have been attacked by a bird of prey.”

“Of all the goddamned pigeons in the State of São Paulo,” Silva said, “some goddamned hawk had to pick that one?”

“Of all the goddamned pigeons,” Gloria said, “some goddamned hawk did.”

“Okay, Gloria, thanks. Stay where you are. I’ll get back to you.” Silva hung up and turned to Lefkowitz. “Work out a compass course based on the pigeon’s line of flight. We’ll give it to Gloria’s pilots, tell them to fly further along the line, see if they can spot something.”

“Spot what?”

“Hell, I don’t know. There was a whole flock of those damned pigeons. Some may still be in the air.”

“Not unless they still had a long way to go.”

“We’ll also have them look for henhouses, for chicken coops, for dovecotes, for any other place they might have gone to roost.”

“I’ve got some topographical maps downstairs. I’ll go get them.”

Lefkowitz was back in three minutes. Within a few more, he was talking to one of the helicopter pilots.

“Get Silva on the radio,” the pilot said as Lefkowitz was wrapping up, “Gloria wants to talk to him.”

“How far do you want us to go?” Gloria said when she heard Silva’s voice.

“As far as you can before dark. Then we’ll talk.”

C
ORNELIO
B
RAGA
was, by no means, the only chicken farmer to run through a scale of emotions that day. But his reaction was typical.

First, surprise at having an extremely noisy Helibras AS 350 B2 land in his front yard. Then fear, when a black-clad team wearing balaclava helmets and carrying machine pistols leapt out under swirling blades. Finally anger, when the woman in charge of the operation offered him a token apology and was getting ready to depart.

“Sorry? Sorry doesn’t cut it, Senhora. Or is it Senhorita?”

“Senhorita,” Gloria Sarmento said, struggling to be polite, a quality that didn’t come easily to her.

“If figures,” Cornelio sputtered. “What kind of a guy would be interested in a woman who jumps out of helicopters and carries a machine gun?”

Raul Franco, her number two, and Gloria’s secret heartthrob, was standing next to her at the time. Gloria’s oblique overtures in Raul’s direction had yet to be reciprocated, so Braga’s remark struck closer to home than he could possibly have imagined. It caused her to lose her temper.

“My personal life is none of your goddamned business, Senhor Braga.”

“You have any idea how many hens I got in there,
Senhorita
?”

Cornelio managed to make Senhorita sound like an epithet.

“No,” Gloria Sarmento said, “and I don’t—”

“Five hundred, that’s how many.” Braga stabbed a finger in the direction of his hen house. “You know what makes a hen stop laying? Stress, that’s what. You know what stresses a hen?”

“I don’t give a—”

“Too goddamned much noise for one thing. You got any idea what you people just did to my egg production with that machine of yours? Any fucking idea?”

She was opening her mouth to tell him that she didn’t fucking know, and that she didn’t fucking care, when she glanced to her right. Raul, that bastard, was smiling. He was
enjoying
this.

She turned to him and tapped a forefinger on his finelysculpted chest.

“From here on in,” she said, sweetly, “
you
are the squad’s official liaison to chicken farmers.”

Raul stopped smiling.

“Hell, Gloria,” he said. “Give me a break. You got it wrong. I wasn’t …”

Gloria didn’t wait for the rest. She sneered at Cornelio, shouldered her MP-5 and strode back to her helicopter.

It was nice to be the boss.

A
S DARKNESS
fell, Lefkowitz pointed to the map and said, “The lead chopper is here, just short of Riberão Preto.”

“Tell them to pack it in for the night,” Silva said.

“They’ve got four hundred thousand candlepower searchlights on those things, you know.”

“Not good enough. Those lights only illuminate whatever you’ve got them pointed at. It’s too easy to miss something. And the rest of the gear, the heat detection stuff isn’t going to do us any good either. Those birds are already under cover, or they’re sitting in trees with a hundred million other birds. Tell them to start again at first light.”

“Which brings us back to Gloria’s question,” Lefkowitz said. “How far do you want them to go?”

“Take it out to five hundred kilometers beyond Riberão Preto.”

“As far as that?”

“For now. We might have to go even further.”

Lefkowitz turned to the radio, and Silva to Mara.

“Let’s try shaking something loose on the diamonds. How about we take another shot at jewelers, dealers in gemstones and receivers of stolen goods?”

“Receivers of stolen goods?” Mara said. “Good luck with that one.”

“Probably useless to ask, I agree, but maybe not. Even crooks hate the idea of us having our butts kicked by Argentina. They might feed us some anonymous tips.”

“You’ve got a point,” she said.

“I’m brimful of ideas,” Silva said. “That’s why I’m the boss.”

“And here I was,” Arnaldo said, “thinking you got the job just because you’re older than everyone else.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

T
HEY RIPPED OFF THE
duct tape that covered Jordan Talafero’s mouth, pulled out the handkerchief and stuck a hose down his throat.

Toninho Feioso, the author of the hose idea, had heard, somewhere, that such a procedure, followed by turning on the water full-blast, could be particularly painful to the victim. He, therefore, decided to give it a try, because, in his opinion, Jordan Talafero was a
canalha
who deserved the very worst that he and Gaspar could dish out.

The result of the hose operation was gratifying. So gratifying, in fact, that Toninho was loathe to give it up. It took quite some cajoling on Gaspar’s part before he finally agreed to turn off the water and replace the handkerchief and the duct tape.

Toninho meant “little Tony”, but this was a misnomer. Little Tony was neither little nor named Tony. Some of his colleagues, Gaspar for one, knew that much, but no one claimed to know what his true name actually was. No one ever had the guts to ask.

Feioso meant “ugly,” which was entirely appropriate. Toninho Feioso was the ugliest of men, and he appeared even uglier when he was attacking your kneecaps with a ball peen hammer, as Jordan Talafero, after they’d finished with the hose, had occasion to find out.

“And this, you bastard, is for the guy downstairs,” Toninho informed Talafero, the statement eloquently punctuated by the crack of breaking bone and a muffled scream from beyond the duct tape.

Toninho, who wasn’t very smart, couldn’t remember the name of Miranda’s downstairs neighbor, which was Atilio Nabuco, and he didn’t care much about Nabuco anyway, but he had previously dedicated bones on other parts of Talafero’s anatomy to Miranda, his wife, and each of his kids. He was grasping for names since it appeared he was going to run out of them before he ran out of bones.

Gaspar would have liked a turn with that ball peen hammer, but he knew better than to interrupt Tony when he was exercising his professional skills.

Gaspar, therefore, confined himself to questions of the kind Talafero could respond to with movements of his head.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” he said, “did you, or did you not, plant that fucking bomb that killed the Captain?”

For the first time, Talafero nodded.

Gaspar took a step backward, looked at Tony and smiled. Then he turned back to Talafero.

“You shoulda come clean in the first place, admitted it right away, saved us all this trouble. Then you coulda been dead by now.”

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been much of a reward for honesty. But Talafero, at that moment, wanted nothing more than a quick bullet to his head.

Gaspar, however, wasn’t quite ready to give it to him. Some questions remained.

“There was something about diamonds,” he said. “The boss was gonna talk to the federal cops. You know anything about that?”

Talafero shook his head.

“And the Artist’s mother? You have anything to do with grabbing her?”

Again, Talafero shook his head.

Gaspar turned back to his colleague.

“Well, I guess that’s that.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “that’s that.”

He took out his pistol.

“Hang on,” Gaspar said.

“What?”

“Lend me that hammer.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

T
ALAFERO’S BODY WAS FOUND
on the street in front of what remained of Captain Miranda’s building.

Silva was watching the TV coverage and sipping a coffee when Hector joined him in the conference room.

“I just got off the phone with São Paulo homicide,” he said.

“And?”

“They fingerprinted Talafero’s corpse. We got a match.”

“To the fingerprint on that fragment of electrical tape?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s it then. Talafero killed Miranda.”

Hector waved a sheet of paper.

“Additional confirmation,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“The contents of a note found pinned to Talafero’s body.” Silva patted the pockets of his jacket.

“I left my glasses in your office.”

“I’ll read it. ‘This canalha killed the Captain. He didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping of Juraci Santos.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Must have been meant for us.”

“Must have been. But why would they bother?”

“Miranda wanted to help. My guess is they either honored his wishes, or feel the same way he did. For us, it doesn’t matter. What matters is we’ve got another dead end.”

“Appropriate choice of words.”

“Quite intentional.”

“The kidnappers have their diamonds. If they intend to release her, or kill her, wouldn’t they have done it by now?”

“Not necessarily. They’ll want to be sure about the worth of the stones, evaluate them before they take further action.”

“So what now?”

“I’m going to have another talk with our consultant, Professor Rosa. Call Arnaldo and ask him to order up a car.”

R
OSA WAS
waiting in the interrogation room. No handcuffs this time. He greeted them with a smile and a deep intake of breath, as if he was capturing a scent. “You bring with you the air of freedom.”

“All I agreed to do, Professor,” Silva said, “is to testify on your behalf. I don’t make the final decision, so don’t blame me if they don’t let you out of here.”

“You were the last impediment, Chief Inspector.”

“You’ve bribed all the members of that parole board? Is that what you’re implying?”

“Tut, tut, tut, Chief Inspector! You shock me. I’m not implying any such thing. Even if those sterling citizens were to accept bribes, where would I get the money?”

“More than half of the money you took from your victims was never found. You must have squirreled away a bundle.”

“Alas, if it were only true. In those, my halcyon days, I lived high off the hog. The best wine, luxury hotels, fine restaurants. I owned a Ferrari, you know,
and
a Porsche.”