Blood of the Wicked (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

When the taxi stopped, the four rent-a-cops in the guardhouse gave it a thorough once-over through the glass, and then three of them went back to watching a daytime soap opera on their little television set. The fourth, a husky fellow with a revolver on his hip, carrying a clipboard, came out of the door and approached the taxi. He ignored the driver and spoke directly to Arnaldo.

“Senhor
?”

The form of address was polite. The man’s tone of voice wasn’t. Arnaldo’s taxi was a Volkswagen Beetle, not even a
taxi especial.
A resident (or a friend of a resident) of Jardim Jericoara wouldn’t have been caught dead in one. The conclusion was obvious: Despite his suit and tie, Arnaldo had to be either a household servant or some other kind of service provider. In either case, he didn’t merit first-class treatment.

“I’m here to see . . .”—Arnaldo consulted the paper the old woman had given him—”Dona Marcia on the Rua das Bromelias.”

The guard narrowed his eyes at the soap wrapper and made an annotation on his clipboard. “About?”

Arnaldo flashed his badge. “Police business.”

The guard’s attitude changed completely. He stood up a little straighter, the sneer on his face vanished, and a tone of respect crept into his voice.

“You want me to call?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”

The guard nodded. “That’s the procedure,” he confirmed, “for any visitor.”

“Then you’d better do it.”

“Can I hold on to some ID? Sorry. But that’s the procedure, too.”

Arnaldo took out his national identity card and handed it over.

The guard walked into the shack, said a few words to his companions and picked up a telephone. Three pairs of eyes turned toward the taxi and stared at Arnaldo. Arnaldo stared back. They redirected their attention to the TV screen.

The guard returned in less than a minute. “Okay, she’s expecting you.” Then, for the first time, he addressed Arnaldo’s driver. “Bromelias is the first right off the second left.”

The driver nodded. Arnaldo sank back in his seat. The barrier lifted and the taxi started to roll.

The condominium was no housing project. Every house was unique, and every house was set well back on a tailored lawn. It was a little island of luxury in a sea of poverty. After the first turn, Arnaldo could no longer see the high walls that surrounded the place.

A group of teenagers was hanging around on one of the street corners. They were similar in age to the kids Arnaldo had seen in the favela of Consolação but there the similarity ended. These were wearing clean T-shirts with slogans in English and French. One of them, not older than twelve, was sitting on a motor-driven scooter, gunning the engine. There wasn’t a dark skin among them.

The driver had no problem finding Dona Marcia’s house. She was standing at the curb, and she started waving to them when they turned into her street. It wasn’t a friendly wave. She was only doing it to get their attention.

Dona Marcia was a slender woman, closer to forty than thirty. Above her designer jeans she, too, was wearing a T-shirt with something written on it in English. This one said: FIVE REASONS WHY A BANANA IS BETTER THAN A HUSBAND
,
and went on to enumerate them. None of the first four were complimentary to males. Arnaldo, whose English wasn’t that good anyway, couldn’t read the fifth. It was tucked in under her belt.

The taxi driver offered his keys when Arnaldo got out of the cab.

“Keep them,” Arnaldo said, and then to the woman, “Dona Marcia?”

“Sim.”

She didn’t ask him what he wanted, didn’t ask him anything at all, just stood there frowning at him.

“You have a woman working for you? A woman by the name of Souza?”

“What’s she done?”

“Nothing. She hasn’t done anything. I just want to ask her some questions. Is she here?”

“Could I see your badge, or something?”

Arnaldo had his police ID ready.

She took a moment to study it, compared the photo with his face. “You’re not from around here?”

“No, Senhora
,
Federal Police, based in the capital.”

By which they both understood him to mean São Paulo, the capital of the state, and not Brasilia, the nation’s capital, which everybody always refers to by name.

“Look, Agente
,
I’ve got a couple of young kids in this house, and my husband travels a lot. If Marly’s been involved in anything illegal, I’ll fire her so fast her head will spin. And I want you to tell me, right now, if she has.”

She was a woman used to getting her way and not in the least fazed by being in the presence of a cop. She knew what cops were for. Cops were to protect people like her.

“She hasn’t. I told you, I just have some questions to put to her.”

Dona Marcia hooked a thumb under her jaw and tapped perfectly manicured fingers on her cheek. It wasn’t a wholly unconscious gesture. She was wearing a gold ring with a large diamond—three carats, at least. After he’d had a good look at it she said, “I suppose you’d better come in.”

He followed her through the front door. She led him through a sunken living room with white leather furniture and onto a wooden deck overlooking a swimming pool.

“Sit there,” she said, indicating a plastic chair. “I’ll get Marly. I think she’s doing the bathrooms.”

The woman she brought back looked to be a good deal older than her employer but probably wasn’t. Marly Souza’s best feature were her eyes, which were large and brown, and at the moment, fearful. She’d done nothing to conceal the streaks of gray in her black, kinky hair. Her lips were generous and still showed the signs of some carmine lipstick. Arnaldo thought she might have been quite pretty, once.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Dona Marcia said, and went away without so much as offering Arnaldo a cup of coffee.

“Bitch,” he said softly to her retreating back.

One corner of Marly Souza’s mouth twitched. A smile or a nervous tic? He wasn’t sure. She brushed a strand of hair from her right eye with a hand that showed faint traces of crimson nail enamel.

“She’ll fire me for sure,” she said.

“Why? You haven’t done anything, have you?”

Marly looked down at her ragged sneakers, once white. She was wearing them without socks. Bits of the dark skin of her feet showed through the holes.

“Have you?” Arnaldo insisted.

She looked up. “You don’t get it, do you? I brought a cop to her home. That’ll be reason enough.” She sounded angry, and maybe she was, but the fear was still there. She still hadn’t asked Arnaldo what he wanted. And she didn’t. Instead, she looked around to make sure they were alone and said, “Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“I swear.”

Arnaldo caught on. “I don’t work with Colonel Ferraz,” he said.

Her mouth opened in surprise.

“I’m from the Federal Police. Help me. We’ll protect him.”

She started picking at one of her broken nails.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Yeah, you do. We’re talking about Edson. We’re talking about your son. If Ferraz gets to him first, he’ll kill him.”

With a brusque movement she ripped off part of the nail. Her finger started to bleed. She stared at it, as if she’d had no part in causing the injury. The expression on her face didn’t change.

“Help me,” Arnaldo said. “Help him.”

“I’ll do what I promised,” she said. “You go back and tell the colonel that. Tell him I’ll come and tell him where Edson is. I’ll tell him just as soon as I know.”

“I doubt it,” Arnaldo said. “I’ll bet you’re worried about all of your children, not just the little ones.”

He’d struck a nerve. Impulsively, she reached out a hand and clutched him by the wrist. “No,” she said. “A bargain’s a bargain. I’ll keep up my side. Please. Tell him that. Tell him to leave my babies alone.”

“Marly?”

It was Dona Marcia.

Both of them looked up. The woman came forward and held out some banknotes.

“For today,” she said, “and for last Friday. I won’t be needing you anymore.”

“Does this have anything to do with me?” Arnaldo said.

“No, Agente
,
it has to do with Marly, and frankly it’s none of your business. Now, if the two of you are quite finished. . . .”

“We’re not,” he said bluntly.

“Then you can continue your conversation elsewhere. I want you both out of my home.”

Arnaldo waited while Marly fetched her things, a purse and a shopping bag, and watched while Dona Marcia made a minute inspection of the contents of both to make sure that Marly hadn’t helped herself to any of the family silver.

The taxi driver was where Arnaldo had left him, listening to a cassette tape of
musica sertaneja
and tapping his fingers on the dashboard
.
He didn’t seem surprised to have acquired another passenger.

“Where to now?” he said cheerfully, shifting the meter from the waiting position to the basic rate for daytime travel.

His broad smile disappeared when Arnaldo told him to go back to the favela
.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Muniz led the way in his black Mercedes. His capangas were right behind it. Ferraz’s black-and-white police sedan brought up the rear.

Muniz leapt to the ground and advanced on Pillar even before his car had come to a complete stop. A long-barreled .44 magnum revolver dangled from a holster on his right hip. He was carrying a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun.

The men he had with him grabbed their weapons, piled out of both vans, and formed a semi-circle behind him.

Hector reached under his jacket and wrapped his fingers around the grip of his Glock.

Muniz was so furious, and so intent on getting to Pillar, that he didn’t even notice.

But one of his gunmen did, and tensed.

Silva addressed his nephew, speaking softly so that no one else could hear. “Don’t draw that pistol. We’re outgunned. Put your hands where that capanga can see them.”

“He wouldn’t dare—”

“He would. And then his friends will kill those reporters, Pillar, and me. Muniz will claim the league started it, and Ferraz will back him up. Do it.”

Hector took his hand out from under his coat, but the capanga didn’t take his eyes off him.

Muniz came to a stop, three meters from the group surrounding Pillar.

The journalists scurried back out of the way. A few of the league members did too, but only a few.

Pillar raised his hands to shoulder height.

Muniz pumped a round into the chamber of his shotgun.

“I’m sorry about your son,” Pillar said, his voice even. “It’s a heavy burden for any father.”

“Don’t give me that, you hypocritical, lying bastard. You made the biggest mistake of your life when you decided to tangle with me.”

There was a screech of brakes. Vicenza and her crew piled out of their van, leaving the doors open and the engine running. The red light on the front of the camera was already blinking.

“No pictures,” Ferraz said, extending his arms as if he was directing traffic.

Vicenza lifted her microphone, caught her breath and said, “You’re looking at Colonel Ferraz of the São Paulo State Police, a man who evidently thinks he’s still living in a dictatorship. Over his shoulder, and holding a shotgun, is Orlando Muniz
.
”

The cameraman pushed a button, and the barrel of the zoom lens started to rotate, tightening the angle on Muniz.

“A few moments ago,” Vicenza continued, “Senhor Muniz told us he’s convinced that the Landless Workers’ League is responsible for the death of his son. It appears he’s decided to take the law into his own hands.”

Pillar saw his chance. He raised his voice and started to talk, almost as if they’d rehearsed it. “The Landless Worker’s League categorically denies any complicity in the death of Orlando Muniz Junior. None of us are armed. None of us want trouble.”

“Well, you’ve got it anyway.” It was Ferraz, his face crimson. “You’re trespassing on private property. The owner of this fazenda, Senhor Muniz here, has the right to evict you. I authorize him to use force.”

“Sorry, Colonel, you can’t do that—”

“The hell I can’t.”

“—because we’ve got a restraining order,” Pillar finished calmly. “We’ve petitioned the court. They’ve agreed to consider our case.”

“Petitioned the—”

Muniz cut Ferraz off. “What court?” he said.

“A federal court and a federal judge,” Father Angelo Monteiro said, stepping out of the crowd around Pillar. He held a smoking cigarette in his right hand and a document in the left.

Muniz lowered the shotgun, snatched the paper from the old priest, and stared at it. “Son of a bitch,” he said, his eyes bulging as he absorbed the significance of what he was reading.

“No,” Father Angelo said, “he isn’t. That particular judge happens to be an honest man, unlike a certain local magistrate you have on your payroll.”

Muniz ignored the priest and turned to Ferraz. “Can they do this?”

Ferraz opened his mouth, thought better of whatever he had planned to say and shut it again.

“May I see that?” Vicenza Pelosi took the paper from Muniz’s unresisting hand and held it toward the camera. The cameraman adjusted his focus.

Muniz realized what was happening, snatched the paper back, and tore it to shreds.

“I got it,” the cameraman said to Vicenza. “Sharp, but short. We’ll have to freeze it.”

Muniz started advancing toward him.

The cameraman stepped backward, zoomed out, refocused.

“Keep rolling, Beto,” Vicenza said.

“Rolling,” the cameraman confirmed, stopping when Muniz did.

Muniz, trembling with rage, spun around. He raised his shotgun and aimed it at the ground in front of Pillar. He shouted an epithet, but no one heard it. The blast of the weapon overpowered his voice. The hail of buckshot threw up a cloud of dust. Before it had settled, and while the report was still ringing in everyone’s ears, he turned on his heel and walked back to his car.