A Vine in the Blood (7 page)

Danilson “Dumbo” Hoffmann was the coach of the Brazilian national team. Nobody who saw his ears ever had to ask where the nickname came from.

Cintia refused to be sidetracked. “Jardin keeps everybody waiting, but
he
doesn’t like to wait for anyone. You know how much he charges for a cut? Six hundred Reais, that’s how much, and he’s booked back-to-back. Missing a session with Jardin is like missing a private audience with the Pope. Except the Pope probably doesn’t go ballistic and Jardin does. If you’re ten minutes late, it’s like you insulted him. I did it once and now the little bastard refuses to give me any more appointments.”

“Showing up late really gets his nose out of joint,” Tico said. “Even I know that.”

“And Juraci knew that,” Cintia said. “I started to worry right away. I told Jardin’s secretary I’d check around and call her back. I was still trying to locate her, when the bitch called for a second time.”

“How does this—” Silva started to say.

Cintia interrupted him. “You wanted to know why I think Jardin tipped off the radio people. I was telling you. Do you want to hear it, or not?”

“Please go on.”

“So I was talking to this bitch of a secretary, and before I could get in a word edgewise, she started telling me how pissed off Jardin was and how, if Juraci didn’t have a really, really good reason for not showing up, she couldn’t be a client anymore. Jardin was going to give Juraci another fifteen minutes grace, she said, but only in deference to the fact that she was such a good client, and because he liked her. Two minutes after she hung up, Tico called me with the news that she’d been kidnapped.”

“And how did you get that news?” Silva asked him.

“The kid who runs the website,” Tico said. “He read the email, looked at the photo the kidnappers sent, the one of my Mom holding up the newspaper, and panicked. The note said not to contact the police, said they’d hurt her if I did.”

“I remember.”

“And, to tell you the truth, maybe I
wouldn’t
have gone to you guys at all if the story hadn’t come out on the radio.”

“Understandable. Go on.”

“The kid knew I was in Curitiba because it’s been all over the sports news, so he decided to try calling the training facility. They wouldn’t let him talk to me, at first. But then he told them what it was about, and they called me in from the field. They still thought it was some kind of hoax, but they didn’t want to run the risk that it wasn’t. And it wasn’t.”

“Tico told me he was going to charter a plane and come to São Paulo,” Cintia said. “We agreed to meet here. Then, just after he hung up, the bitch called for a third time. And, to shut her up, I told her.”

“You told Jacques Jardin’s secretary about the ransom note?”

“What did I just say? I blurted it out. I was nervous. So what? It’s done. Jardin was probably talking to the media five minutes after his secretary hung up. He’s like that.”

“Probably all for the best,” Silva said. “The kidnappers must know we’re involved by now, and they seem to have accepted that fact. Who does the website? A kid, you said?”

“My agent’s kid,” Tico said.

“That’s his job? Websites?”

“Nah! He studies during the day, does the sites on the side, mostly at night. He does them for most of his old man’s clients. He does Cintia’s too.”

“These days,” she said, “everybody has to have a website.”

“
I
don’t have a website,” Arnaldo said.

“Let me amend that,” she said. “Anybody of any importance has to have a website.”

“Where did
you
spend last night?” Arnaldo said, his voice taking on an edge.

“Me? What’s that got to do with anything?”

Arnaldo gave Cintia his cop’s stare, perfected by almost three decades of facing down felons.

“At home,” she said, buckling under it. “So?”

“Alone?”

“Of course, alone. I’ve got a part in a
novela
. I was learning my lines. What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Arnaldo said.

But he was.

Arnaldo Nunes had taken a distinct dislike to Cintia Tadesco.

Chapter Eight

J
ACQUES
J
ARDIN HAD A
French accent as round and thick as a great wheel of Camembert. Haraldo Gonçalves would undoubtedly accepted it as genuine—had he not discovered, before leaving the office, that Jardin did, indeed, have a rap sheet.

Jardin, the records revealed, had acquired his current name at the age of twenty-seven. Until then, he’d been Giovanni Giordano, the youngest of nine children born to an Italian immigrant couple who’d settled in São Paulo’s middle-class
bairro
of Mooca.

Jardin had never spent any appreciable amount of time in France. He had, however, spent a good deal of time in public toilets. It was the time in those public toilets that had given rise to the aforementioned rap sheet. It registered half a dozen arrests, and two convictions, for indecent exposure.

When he’d first clapped eyes on the famous coiffeur, Gonçalves hadn’t been quite sure whether Jardin was using eyeliner, or whether he was permanently tattooed. Curiosity about what he was actually seeing had caused him to stare long and hard at Jardin’s eyes. Perhaps too long, and too hard. The stylist licked his thin lips, almost as if he could taste Gonçalves on his chops, and smoothed back his immaculately styled hair. The word
preening
came to mind.

In the initial stages of their conversation Gonçalves learned little that the Federal Police didn’t already know. Revelations, however, began to surface when he touched on the subject of the Artist’s girlfriend, Cintia Tadesco.

“I can well understand that you have an interest in
her
.” Jardin managed to insert another oval cigarette into his ivory holder without taking his eyes off Gonçalves. “The woman is a total bitch.”

“A total bitch, eh?”

Gonçalves had already learned that Jardin required only a minimum of prompting.

“I don’t mean she’s just a gold-digger,” Jardin said. “God knows, I’ve known my share of gold-diggers. I don’t dismiss them as a category. Some of them actually give quite good value for money.”

“Value for money?” Gonçalves echoed.

Jardin’s lighter was a Dupont, in black lacquer and gold. It made a musical
ding
when he lit up.

“Suppose,” he said, “that you’re old, and rich, and single. Divorced, maybe, or a widower. You’re lonely. You haven’t seen what a twenty- to thirty-year-old body looks like”—he took another puff, expelled the smoke and looked Haraldo up and down before going on—“for maybe the last quartercentury. Then along comes this nubile young thing who sells you on the idea that May-December relationships are all the rage. She tells you she loves you for yourself, not your money, or your status, or your fame. You believe it because you
want
to believe it. You say to yourself, hey, it’s not as impossible as I thought. It’s happened once or twice before. And now it’s happening to
me
.”

“Uh huh. And then?”

“And then you start bonking her, and she makes you feel like you’re the most virile man she’s ever met. You may have to swallow a handful of pills to get a hard-on, but when it’s up, it’s up, and it’s glorious. She admires it, kisses it, strokes it, runs her hand up and down the shaft, tells you you’re the first man who’s ever made her feel truly like a woman. So you start buying her expensive jewelry, and you set her up in a nice place of her own. Why not? You can afford it.” Jardin took another drag on his cigarette. Gonçalves made no attempt to interrupt. “Then, if you’re really besotted, you might even marry her, marry her no matter what your family might be saying about her. If a friend opens his mouth, you’d sooner lose the friend than lose the girl.”

“And you call that value for money? Estranging people from their friends and family?”

“Estrangement occurs only if the friends and family are stupid enough to question the lady’s motives and start telling you things you don’t want to hear. And yes, it
is
value for money if the woman has a sweet nature, is grateful for what she’s being given and is willing to keep up her side of the bargain by hanging in there until you’re so senile you don’t recognize her anymore or dead, whichever comes first.”

“You’re talking about an old man. That’s not the Artist’s case. He’s a young guy. It’s different.”

“Different, is it? Have you ever met the Artist?”

“No.”

“Seen a photo then?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“But nothing. He’s ugly as sin and, stating it kindly, intellectually challenged. What he’s got going for him is the same thing that lots of old millionaires have going for
them
: fame and money. The only difference between him and them is they need their pills to get an erection.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a bit cynical about this?”

“Cynical? My Young Innocent, you have no idea how society works, or what
real
money can buy, do you?”

“Let’s get back to Cintia, okay?”

“Of course, dear boy, of course.”

“Why do you think she’s a bitch?”

“Two reasons. First, because I have personal knowledge of the woman. She used to be one of my clients. People say I struck her from my roster because she was late for an appointment. Not true. Between you and me, dear boy, that’s one of the excuses I use when I tire of someone’s company. Would you like a glass of sherry?”

“Thank you, no.”

“But you won’t mind if I have one, will you?”

Without waiting for a reply, Jardin balanced his cigarette holder across a large, jade ashtray and stood up. He went to a cherry wood cabinet and took out a bottle. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Jardin selected a single glass, delicately cut and looking like it cost a bundle, and resumed his seat.

“Where were we?” he said, pouring the amber liquid.

“You tired of her company.”

“Ah yes.” He took a sip. “I did.”

“Why?”

Jardin thought for a moment. “Gossip is one thing,” he said. “I’m not averse to a little of it myself, but spewing venom is another. I never heard her say a good word about anyone. So I drew the obvious conclusion: she wasn’t saying good words about me either.”

“How about her future mother-in-law?”

“Juraci? I don’t recall Cintia saying anything at all about Juraci. It would have been naïve to do so, and naïve is one thing Cintia is not. Everyone is well aware that the relationship between the Artist and his mother is a close one. If Cintia had expressed a negative opinion about her, there are
scads
of people who would have rushed off to make sure the Artist heard about it.”

“How about the Artist’s father? I don’t recall hearing anything about him. Ever.”

“You never will. Although I’ve been told there’s a claimant every now and then.”

“A claimant?”

“Juraci was … how shall I put this? Let’s just say that, in her youth, she was quite profligate with her charms. She’s never been quite sure who the Artist’s father is. That’s not what she gives out, but I assure you it’s true. Now, however, now that her talented son has come to fame and fortune, many of the men who’ve passed through Juraci’s life earnestly desire to be admitted back into it.”

“How does she handle it?”

“Denies them, one and all; claims that the Artist’s real father was a stonemason killed in a construction accident when his son was very young.”

“And that’s what most people believe?”

“That’s what virtually everyone believes.
Fofocas
has investigated her story in some detail. They’ve been unable to disprove it.”

Gonçalves’s familiarity with
Fofocas
stemmed from the fact that it kept turning up in the bathrooms, or next to the beds, of many of the women he slept with. None of them ever admitted to purchasing it. One of their girlfriends, they’d say, must have left it behind, by mistake.

“How come you don’t buy into the stonemason story?”

Jardin smiled. “Unlike you,” he said, “Juraci Santos is fond of sherry. We’ve had a few tipples together and have, how shall I put this? Shared confidences.”

“Tell me more.”

“No, dear boy, I won’t, not without a good deal more sherry. Do you like erotic sketches?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Erotic sketches. Do you like them? I have a rather impressive collection.”

“No. I can’t say I’m much of a fan. You said you had two reasons for thinking Cintia a bitch. One of them was personal experience. And the other?”

“The opinion of the Artist’s mother.”

“Well,
that’s
certainly relevant. Why don’t you tell me about that?”

“Hmm,” Jardin said. “There are limits even to
my
indiscretion, but I see no harm in telling you this much: Juraci Santos employed a private detective to check up on Cintia Tadesco’s background. Unlike her son, Juraci is actually quite a perceptive woman, all too aware of the Artist’s shortcomings. She never accepted that a bombshell like La Tadesco could possibly be interested in anything other than her son’s money and fame. At the very least, she thought, Cintia must be cheating on him.
Mother’s instinct
, she’d tell me.”

“Who is this private detective she hired?”

“She told me, but I don’t recall his name.”

“Do you know if he discovered anything of note?”

“No.”

Jardin picked up the sherry bottle.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Correct. I don’t know. But, knowing Cintia, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he did.”

Jardin topped up his glass.

“Did Juraci tell her son she’d hired a private detective?”

Jardin took a sip of his sherry and breathed out a contented sigh.

“She didn’t,” he said. “She said the Artist would be furious if he found out.”

“Unless, of course, the detective came up with something.”

“True. And she was hopeful he would. At least, she was the last time I spoke to her.”

“How long ago was that?”

“In the course of her last visit. Three weeks ago today. Which brings me back to
Fofocas
. Do you ever read it, by the way?”