Buried Strangers (12 page)
“I’VE GOT SOME FOREIGNER ON the line,” Camila said. “I think he wants to talk to you.”
“You
think?
” Silva said.
She shrugged. “He doesn’t speak Portuguese.”
Camila apparently found it unnecessary to add that she didn’t speak anything else.
Silva’s new secretary was surly and inefficient, but firing her was out of the question. She’d been appointed by Sampaio as a favor to her father, a highly ranked bureaucrat in the federal accounting office.
“I’ll take it,” Silva said.
“Line two.”
The foreigner turned out to be Grant Unger.
“We’ve got nothing on this guy Norberto,” he began with-out preamble. “There’s a Krupps with two p’s, but his first name is Adolph. How’s that for a Brazilian name, huh? Adolph Krupps. Sounds like some fucking Nazi. Border Patrol picked him up last March. I had them e-mail me his mug shot. He doesn’t look anything like your guy.”
“And he’s the only one with a similar name?”
“The only one. I put the print through AFIS, our com-puterized system. No match. Son of a bitch could be working some unregistered shit job or using somebody else’s social security number. We got a law that punishes people who em-ploy illegals, but you know how it goes. Lots of cheaters slip through the cracks. I arranged to have his picture posted and I got his name and print into the computers. If they pick him up, I’ll hear.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
“Okay, but don’t hold your breath.”
When Silva hung up, he unlocked the top drawer of his desk, took out a large, manila envelope, and went down the hall to Arnaldo’s office. Arnaldo was still working the phones, calling the cops in city after city, trying to get a lead on cults that might be involved in ritual murder.
“Any luck?” Silva asked.
Arnaldo hung up and made a checkmark on his list to remind him where he’d left off. “Nothing that rings a bell.”
“How would you like to get back to São Paulo for a while?”
“Who do I have to kill?”
Arnaldo, a Paulista, born and bred, hated his temporary assignment to the federal capital. He gave all sorts of reasons for his displeasure, everything from the quality of Brasilia’s restaurants to daily exposure to the director, but Silva sus-pected that Arnaldo’s major problem was that he missed his family. He’d never admit it, of course. Arnaldo enjoyed bitching about his wife and two teenage sons, and he down-right gloried in excoriating his mother-in-law.
“You don’t have to kill anybody,” Silva said, “but the job may involve some travel.”
“I knew there had to be a catch. Same case?”
“Something different. A nineteen-year-old carpenter was trying to get into the States. He disappeared.”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
“Officially? Nothing. He’s my faixineira’s son. I want to help her.”
“What good is power if you can’t abuse it, right?”
“My sentiments exactly. Do you want the job or not?”
“Yes, I want the job. What’s the timing?”
“Immediate.
“Good. You know how much time I spent sleeping at home in the last thirty days? Two nights, that’s how much, two lousy nights. My wife is starting to think I’ve got a mistress.”
“Do you?”
“On my salary? Kindly outline what I have to do to escape from durance vile.”
“Durance vile?”
“You think you’re the only guy who reads books? Brief me.”
Silva detailed his conversation with Maria de Lourdes and showed Arnaldo copies of the postcard and the photo.
“You try the Americans?” Arnaldo said when he’d finished.
“I cashed in a favor with Grant Unger.”
Arnaldo did a mock shiver. “I can see you’re willing to carry this to great lengths.”
“I am. Unger already called me back. They have no record of the kid.”
Arnaldo pointed at the list on his desk. “How about all these calls I haven’t made?”
“I’ll put Camila on it, move her in here. It’ll make her feel important.”
“And keep her out of your hair.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Like hell you didn’t. You’ll have to answer your own phone, you know.”
“I do now.”
“This Norberto kid was going to the States of his own volition. What’s our mandate here?”
“None.”
“So how are you going to account for my time? Sampaio goes over the time sheets like a fucking miser counting his money. He’ll be onto us within two weeks.”
“I’ll sign off on the sheets. Besides, I don’t think it’s going to take two weeks. And, by that time, he’ll be grateful. It’ll be another solution he can take the credit for.”
“And if we don’t have a solution?”
“We’ll have a solution. My faith in you is boundless.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls. Where do you want me to start?”
“Go to the travel agency he used. Act like you’re desper-ate to get into the States.”
“And then?”
“Take a cell phone, conceal it on your person, do what they tell you to do, follow the trail to where it leads.”
“Including creeping through the desert in Arizona, or Texas, or wherever?”
“If it comes to that, yes.”
“And Sampaio, when he notices I’m not coming into the office? How are you going to handle him?”
“I’m going to tell him you’re following up a rumor about Romeu Pluma.”
“What rumor?”
“The one about Pluma molesting teenage boys.”
“Such a rumor exists?”
“It does now. It will turn out to be unsubstantiated.”
“How much longer do you think you can keep using Pluma to get away with stuff?”
“He shows no sign of backing off, so Sampaio won’t either. It could go on forever.”
“We should give Pluma a citation for meritorious service. Alright, getting back to the Americans, if I wind up crossing their border, they’re not going to like it.”
“The Americans aren’t going to know about it. Not if you don’t get caught.”
“They’ve got cameras. They’ve got helicopters. They’ve got vigilantes. They catch a lot of people.”
“So they catch you. No big deal.
They’ll send you back.” “They’ll print me first, and they won’t let me back in if I ask for a visa. What if I want to take my kids to Orlando to see Disney World? What do I do then?”
“You can’t afford to take your kids to Orlando.”
“You’re right. I can’t. But what if my rich uncle Uriel dies?”
“You haven’t got a rich uncle Uriel. Do you want to get back to São Paulo or not?”
“I want.”
“I can’t ask Ana to do the paperwork. Sampaio would never sign it. I’m gonna have to advance the money myself. Here.”
He held out the envelope he’d been carrying.
“What’s this?” Arnaldo said, taking it.
“Seven thousand American dollars, a ticket to São Paulo, and a thousand reais. The so-called travel agent in São Paulo is probably going to ask you for five of the seven. The rest is for expenses if you get into the States. Don’t forget to bring sunscreen. The thousand Reais is for expenses here.”
Arnaldo drew the flap and looked inside the envelope. He let out a low whistle. “You’re really taking this seriously, aren’t you? Want me to count it?”
“No need. I already did. Twice. I don’t have money com-ing out of my ears.”
“Your own damned fault. You’re too fucking honest. This travel agency, you got an address?”
“Also in the envelope. It’s called Estrela Viagens and it’s on that street they reserve for pedestrians, the one near the Praça da Republica.”
“The Sete de Abril?”
“That’s the one.”
Arnaldo glanced at his watch. “There’s a flight in about an hour. If I hurry, I can make it.”
“So, hurry,” Silva said.
ALONG THE BACK WALL, a glass-fronted case contained petit fours, biscuits,
rosquinhas,
cookies, Lebanese
esfihas,
German pretzels, and a variety of cakes. Two attendants, dressed identically in paper hats and starched, white blouses, were behind the counter. They had no more than a half dozen customers and were having an easy time of it.
Not so the six attendants to Arnaldo’s right. Charged with dispensing the bread, they were beleaguered by a crowd that was elbow to elbow and three rows deep. Service seemed to be on the basis of push and shove. Every now and then an altercation would break out. But since most of the buyers were females, fights never seemed to escalate beyond an exchange of insults.
The loaves in contention were marvels of the baker’s art. There were narrow loaves, thick loaves, short loaves, long loaves, loaves made out of barley, manioc, rye, and wheat. There were loaves with sausage, cheese, and onion baked into the dough. There were French baguettes, loaves of Jewish rye, Syrian pitas, and German black breads, all reflec-tive of the multicultural nature of the neighborhood.
Arnaldo could have done without the noise, but he adored the mouth-watering smells and the jostling, rollick-ing atmosphere that was unique to a São Paulo
padaria.
Brasilia, too, had padarias, but they were nothing like this.
Every few minutes a guy in a white apron, rivulets of sweat running through a dusting of flour on his forehead, would come out of the back where the ovens were. He’d be carry-ing a wicker basket filled with something freshly baked, and he’d dump the contents into one of the unpainted wooden boxes reserved for that kind of bread. The effect on the women was immediate. They couldn’t wait to get at it. It reminded Arnaldo of the time he’d been in the Mato Grosso and had tossed the remainder of a ham sandwich into a pool of piranhas.
Most of the men, Arnaldo included, were gathered around the bar on the other side of the shop. São Paulo bakers sold sandwiches, fresh coffee, and alcoholic beverages, too. This particular baker seemed to be conveniently situated on the way home from work of many of his clients, and those clients appeared to be the kind of people who needed a drink to get their evenings under way.
The bar formed a perfect square. Arnaldo, with no little difficulty, had been able to belly up to a spot on the far side that had a view of the street.
He took another bite of his
Americano,
a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich with a fried egg on a crusty French roll, and masticated slowly. The men around him were a diverse group that seemed to share only one characteristic: a taste for their cachaça straight up.
There were laborers and office workers; there were men in T-shirts and men in ties; there were kids barely out of their teens; and there was one gaffer who’d never see the shy side of eighty again. They were all making so much noise, and having such a good time, and demanding so much attention from the two men and a woman who were serving them, that no one bothered to ask Arnaldo if he wanted another beer, which was fine with him, because he wasn’t there for the drink or the food. He was there to check out the travel agency directly across the street.
Estrela Viagens, Star Travel, the place was called, but if the proprietors were trying to suggest that their clients included the noteworthy of Brazilian media or sports, they were liars. Arnaldo had been in place for almost two hours, and the only people he’d seen go through the glass door and climb the stairs had been simple working men. The agency had a discreet sign at street level and a bigger sign in the window one floor up, directly above a shop that sold all sorts of imported junk from cheap perfumes to radios the size of a box of matches.
Arnaldo glanced at his watch. It was eight minutes to six.
According to the information stenciled on the door, busi-ness hours at the agency were almost at an end. Things were likely to go more smoothly if the people waiting on him had their minds on closing the shop. That way there’d be less time for chit chat, less conversation that could lead to a mistake. Arnaldo had never thought of emigrating, never would, and he wasn’t sure he could sustain the role of an emigrant for an extended period of time. He had an idea of what he was going to say, and how he was going to say it, but he wasn’t sure he had it right. How did emigrants talk about the place they were leaving behind? And how did they talk about the country they were going to? And how did they come to make the decision to sneak into a place that didn’t want them? It was all a mystery to him. And it was one of the things wrong with Brazil that more than a few of its citizens were so exasperated by the high crime rate and the lack of opportunity that they were willing to pay dearly to get out of their country.
Time to go. Arnaldo stood up. He’d left his gun at home and traded his jacket and tie for a faded, blue shirt. He put enough money to cover the bill under his beer glass, and moved toward the door. The space he’d occupied was imme-diately filled by patrons to his left and right.
He crossed the narrow street (closed to vehicular traffic during business hours), pushed through the glass door, and climbed stairs that ended in a little alcove. The alcove termi-nated in a counter strewn with airline brochures. Beyond the counter, a girl was perched on a high stool reading a
fotonovela.
She looked up, moved her chewing gum to one side of her mouth, and said, “Help you?”
“Yeah,” Arnaldo said. “I’m interested in a trip to the United States.”
“Sure,” she said. “Where to? New York? Miami?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” he said.
“Oh.” She winked. “You better talk to Juan. Hey, Juan.”
The only other person in the office, a man in his midthir-ties with his hair parted in the middle, looked up from a desk by the window.
“Somebody for you,” the girl said, and glanced at her watch. “Hey. Quitting time. See you tomorrow.”
She retrieved a cheap, plastic purse, ducked under the counter, and clattered off down the stairwell. The guy with his hair parted in the middle strolled over, an insincere smile plastered below his sparse mustache. He extended a hand. Arnaldo took it.
“Name’s Juan,” he said in a singsong accent that couldn’t be anything else but Argentinian.
“Arnaldo,” Arnaldo said, trying not to screw up his nose at the guy’s choice of cologne.
“What’s your pleasure?”
“I want to go to the States,” Arnaldo said.
“And?” Juan raised an eyebrow.
“And I can’t get a visa. Got turned down.”
“Why?”
“I worked there for years, overstayed my welcome, came home for my mother’s funeral. They stamped my passport on the way out, and now they won’t let me back in.”
“Sad,” the Argentinian said, but he didn’t sound as if he meant it. “So what makes you think we can help you?”
“I heard you guys organize trips. Through Mexico.”
“And where did you hear a thing like that?”
“Some guy I met.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember his name. Just some guy.”
“Where?”
“In Pompano.”
Illegal Brazilian immigrants live all over the United States, but there are particularly large communities in Astoria, New York, near Boston, Massachusetts, and Pompano Beach, Florida. The locals drop Beach. They call it Pompano.
“Pompano, huh?”
The Argentinian looked Arnaldo up and down. Arnaldo did his best to look guileless.
“You’re a pretty old guy for that sort of thing, aren’t you? Sneaking across borders, I mean.”
Arnaldo hated references to his age. It took a conscious effort for him not to tell the
Porteño
to go fuck himself.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but I got fam-ily there. A wife and two kids.”
“Guy’s got a family, he should be more careful. Maybe you shoulda stayed where you were.”
This time, Arnaldo almost lost it.
“I didn’t ask for your fucking opinion, I just want to know if you can help.”
“Hey, no need to get touchy. Travel is our business. We just got to be careful, you understand. You aren’t breaking any Brazilian laws by trying to get into the States, but if we help you, we are.”
“You want my business or not?”
The Argentinian seemed to come to a sudden decision.
“Cost you five thousand dollars American,” he said.
“And what do I get for my five?”
“Here’s how it works: you give me the five in cash, dollars, not reais. We put you up for a couple of days, room and board included, until we get a group of ten.”
“Put me up where?”
“A place we got. We don’t tell anyone where it is, and you don’t contact anyone while you’re there. No telephone, no letters, no nothing. Once we get a group together, we send everybody to Mexico. These days, the Mexicans are asking for visas from Brazilians. The Americans pressured them into that, but we have contacts. A little money changes hands and the visas get issued like that.” The Argentinian snapped his fingers.
“The visa’s extra?”
The Argentinian shook his head. “Included. Everything’s included. When you get to Mexico City, our group leader puts you in touch with one of our associates. The associate brings you and the others across the border. Once he does, you’re on your own. No guarantees.”
“What do you mean, no guarantees?”
“We provide board and lodging along the way, the ticket to Mexico, the visa, and the services of reliable guides, peo-ple who’ve done this kind of thing hundreds of times. Every now and then, one of them gets caught, which could mean
you
get caught. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens. The Yankees deport you, you come back here, and you try again. No discounts. If you want to try again, we charge you another five thousand dollars.”
“What kind of a deal is that?”
“It’s the deal we offer. It’s the deal everybody offers. You can try it on your own, of course. Some people do. Most of them don’t get very far. Aside from the fact that you probably haven’t got contacts at the Mexican consulate, your chances of getting across the border without help are pretty low. That’s what we charge for. Not the plane fare. Take it or leave it.”
Arnaldo nodded. “I’ll take it.”
“Good. When do you want to leave?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Then say your good-byes tonight. Come here tomorrow morning at eleven. Bring your luggage, one carry-on only, and my five thousand in cash. We’ll have you on your way to the land of margaritas and mariachis in a few days. You’ll be in the States within a week. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s closing time.”
Less than a minute later, Arnaldo was back on the street.
