A Vine in the Blood (6 page)

“And he has
five
bedrooms. I read the same article.”

“What’s an unmarried guy do with five bedrooms?”

“One to sleep in and four to keep his money. When he moves to Madrid, four won’t be enough.”

“Don’t remind me about Madrid,” Arnaldo said.

Wooden barriers had been put up to hold back the crowd. When Arnaldo made a move to shove one aside, a uniformed cop blew a blast on his whistle and ran over to stop him.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” he said.

Silva flashed his badge. “We’ve got an appointment with the Artist.”

Silva’s badge was gold trimmed with blue enamel, a sign of high rank. In a flash, the cop’s expression went from indignation to respect.

“Let me help,
Senhor
.”

He completed the shoving, stepped aside—and saluted.

The salute was a tip-off to the reporters. Strobe lights flashed, only a few at first, then by the score. The people not operating cameras started shouting questions.

Silva detested attention from the media. He forced himself not to break into a run.

“I’ve got a new one for you,” Arnaldo said, taking the reporters in stride, as he did most things.

“Later.”

“You might want to reconsider that. It’s about football.”

“About football? Okay, tell me.”

Arnaldo waited until they’d gained sanctuary in the lobby, then:

“This guy is sitting in the second row, center field, during the final game of the World Cup. Just below him, there’s an empty seat.”

Silva hit the button on the elevator.

“An empty seat? At the World Cup Final? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Of course I am. It’s a joke. Next to the empty seat is an old geezer who’s got his stuff all over it, program, beer, spare pair of eyeglasses, binoculars. A guy just above him, in the third row, figures he’s holding it for somebody. Halftime comes. Nobody shows up. By this time, everybody is looking at that empty seat and thinking how nice it would be if their girlfriends, sisters, parents, or whatever, could be there, sitting in it. Finally, the guy in the third row taps the geezer on the shoulder.

“‘Mind if I ask you a question?’

“The geezer turns around. ‘What?’

“‘Did you pay for that seat?’

“‘I did,’ the geezer says, ‘I bought it for my beloved wife of fifty-eight years.’

“‘And?’

“‘She died.’

“‘Gee, I’m sorry to hear that, but, um … this
is
the World Cup, after all. Surely, you’ve got some relative, or maybe a friend, you could have offered it to?’

“‘I do,’ the geezer says. ‘I’ve got a lot of relatives, and I’ve got a lot of friends, and one after the other, I offered it to every last one of them.’

“‘And no takers?’

“‘Nope.’

“‘That’s amazing.’

“‘I thought so too,’ the geezer says. ‘As a matter of fact, I thought it was downright crazy. Can you imagine? They all decided to go to her funeral instead.’”

S
ILVA WAS
till chuckling when they reached Tico Santos’s front door. Somewhat to his surprise, the Artist answered the door himself.

“Which one of you is Chief Inspector Silva?” he said.

“I’m Silva. This is Agent Nunes.”

“Thanks for coming,” Tico said, as if he’d issued an invitation. “The living room’s this way.” He pointed with his chin. “Follow me.”

When Tico turned his back, Arnaldo whispered into Silva’s ear, “
Football giant
, my ass.”

Tico was a head shorter than Arnaldo and probably fifty kilograms lighter.

“They mean it figuratively,” Silva said.

Tico heard him say something, but it was clear he hadn’t understood what it was. Without stopping, he spoke over his shoulder, answering a question Silva hadn’t asked.

“Maybe an hour ago,” he said. “I hired a private plane to get here.”

He didn’t bother to explain where he’d come from; he assumed Silva would know. And Silva did. Tico had been in Curitiba, in training, with the rest of the Brazilian team.

They entered a space about the size of a small ballroom. The far wall was windows, nothing but windows, floor to ceiling. Beyond them, a thousand lights sparkled in the mansions sprinkled over the hills of Morumbi.

The view was nothing less than spectacular.

So was the woman who was sitting on one of the white leather couches. She didn’t bother to get up.

“Cintia Tadesco,” the Artist said, “my fiancée. Cintia, this is Chief Inspector Silva and … sorry, I forgot your name.”

“Agent Nunes.”

Side by side, Tico and his girlfriend were a study in contrasts. Both were in their mid-twenties, but it was there that any similarity stopped. One of Tico’s brown eyes was noticeably darker than the other. His irregularly-spaced teeth were crooked; his forehead was a little too short; his chin a little too long; his nose a little too wide.

Cintia, on the other hand, was stunningly beautiful, taller than her boyfriend, taller than most men, with a figure that would stop traffic on Avenida Paulista at rush hour. The word
statuesque
popped into Silva’s mind. He recalled some things his wife, Irene, an inveterate consumer of gossip magazines, had told him about Cintia.

Cintia was not just a beautiful face; she was a prima donna, generally disliked by the photographers and art directors with whom she spent her days. Tico followed her around like a lapdog. They were due to marry in the spring. A few of Tico’s friends suggested she might be a gold-digger. Those that did were no longer Tico’s friends.

She gave the cops an appraising look. “I hope,” she said, “you’ve got some good news.”

“I wish we did,” Silva said. “At the moment, all we’ve got is questions.”

“In that case,” she said, taking charge, “Let me say this: Tico has had a long day. There’s nothing more he can tell you. He’s tired. He’s stressed. He needs sleep. How about you come back tomorrow morning?”

“The first few hours are always crucial. We’ll try to take up as little of his time as possible. Yours, too,
Senhorita
Tadesco.”

“I’m not too tired,” the Artist said. “This is my mother we’re talking about. I want to do everything I can to help. Make yourselves comfortable.”

Cops one, Tadesco zero
, Silva thought as he took a seat.

“Discounting the ransom,” he said. “Can you think of any reason why someone might have kidnapped your mother?”

“You don’t think five million dollars is reason enough?” Cintia said.

If she couldn’t get rid of them, she apparently intended to make her presence felt.

“It’s a good one,
Senhorita
Tadesco, and it may be the only one, but we shouldn’t fail to consider other possibilities.”

“Like what?”

“A group of Argentineans so focused on winning the Cup they kidnapped Senhora Santos to put Tico off his game.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“It probably is. How about this: someone thinks he has star quality, but Tico outshines him. He kidnaps Tico’s mother. Tico doesn’t play, and the kidnapper has a chance to be the big star of the Cup.”

Silva put as little faith in that possibility as he had in the first. He expected Cintia to reject it out of hand.

But she didn’t.

“Romário de Barros!” she said.

“Aw, come on, Cintia,” Tico said, “it’s not fair to accuse a guy just because—”

“Fair?” she said. “
Querido
, this is Romário de Barros we’re talking about.”

Romário de Barros was the Corinthians’ principal striker, a brilliant player, just not as brilliant as Tico. The fans knew that, the other players knew that, everyone in Brazil knew that. Everyone except Romário de Barros. Truth be told, he probably knew it as well, he just didn’t want to admit it. Had it not been for the Artist, Romário would have been Brazil’s greatest star. As it was, he ran a distant second. For most people, what Romário insisted on calling the “rivalry” between himself and Tico was no more than a joke.

“Romário de Barros,” Silva said, “is a distinct possibility. We’ll look into it.”

“I think you’re gonna be wasting your time,” Tico said.

“Who cares about
their
time if it pisses Romário off?” Cintia said. “He’s caused you plenty of aggravation. It’s time you caused him some.” She yawned and looked at her gold Rolex. “How about you guys speed it up? It’s getting late.”

Not very concerned about our future mother-in-law, are we?
Silva thought.

“And then,” he said, “we also have to consider the possibility that Senhora Santos’s abduction might have been an act of revenge.”

“Revenge?” Tico said.

“Revenge,” Silva said. “Do you know someone, anyone, who might want to punish you by kidnapping your mother?”

Tico rubbed his chin. Then he shook his head. “I can’t think of anybody.”

“How about Joãozinho Preto?” Arnaldo said.

“Never,” Tico said. “He’d never—”

“Who’s Joãozinho Preto?” Cintia said.

All the men looked at her.

“He was a striker for Palmeiras,” Silva said. “Tico broke his leg just before the national playoffs.”

“I still feel bad about that, but it was an accident. Ask anybody. I never even got a yellow card.”

“I don’t debate it. But the accident ruined Joãozinho’s career. He hasn’t played a day since.”

“He never said a word against me,” Tico said, “not then, not since. It was the fans that made a big issue of it, not him. And that photo they took at the time shocked a lot of people. Hell, it even shocked me. But we all take our chances. Joãozinho understood that.”

“So we can probably discount him. Nobody else you can think of?”

“No.”

“But they’re out there,” Cintia said. “You can count on that,
querido
, they’re out there. Lots of envious bastards who earn their pissy little hundred thousand Reais a year and are jealous of people like you and me.”

She gave his hand a supporting squeeze. He shot her a grateful look.

Arnaldo, whose annual salary, after almost thirty years as a federal cop, was considerably less than one hundred thousand Reais, started to cough.

“Sorry,” he said. “Getting a cold.”

“Maybe,” Cintia said, “you should go and get it somewhere else.”

“Could it have been an act directed against the lady herself?” Silva asked. “Someone intent on hurting her?”

“Impossible,” Cintia said. “There’s no one easier to get on with than my future mother-in-law. Everybody loves her, and she loves them right back.”

Not everybody,
Silva thought.
Not her neighbors, not that
postman she was seen talking to. And, if the lady was fond of
you, it’s unlikely she’d have had a detective following you around.

“Let’s talk about Senhora Santos’s house keys,” he said. “Did she give keys to people who worked in her home?”

“Sure,” Tico said, “but she was always careful, always changed locks when she changed servants.”

“How often was that?”

Tico shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe three or four times a year?”

“So she had a problem holding on to servants?”

“She had a problem finding good ones,” Cintia said. “Everybody does. Why do you care about her keys?”

“Just reviewing the possibilities.”

“Wasting our time is the way I see it. They told us the kidnappers smashed her kitchen door. So where do keys come into it?”

Silva was running out of patience with the woman.

“I’m not wasting your time, Senhorita Tadesco. I have good reasons for my questions. Now, Tico, do you have any idea how many sets of keys your mother had?”

“Four. She always got four.”

“Four.”

“Uh huh. One for herself, one for the servants, one for us, and an extra one to keep in the house in case someone lost one of the others.”

“You have yours?”

“Why?” Cintia said.

“Senhorita Tadesco, please. Tico, may I see them?”

“I gave them to you,” Tico said to Cintia.

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

“No? I coulda sworn—”

“You
didn’t
.”

“Then I got no idea where they are,” he said. “We never used the keys she gave us. We never had to. We only went out there when we knew she’d be home, and we always called before we went.”

Silva took a card out of his wallet, jotted the number of his cell phone on the back and handed the card to Tico. “If you find those keys,” he said, “give me a call.”

Tico took the card, looked at one side of it, then the other.

“You think it’s important?” he asked.

“It might be.”

“Okay, then.”

“The radio people, the ones at Radio Mundo,” Silva said, “knew about your mother’s kidnapping before we did. Any idea how that happened?”

Cintia didn’t give Tico time to answer.

“Her Royal Highness,” she said, “Princess Jacques Jardin.”

“The hairdresser?”

“Stylist, the little
bicha
calls himself. Stylist or
coiffeur
. He
hates
to be called a hairdresser. Juraci was late for an appointment. They couldn’t get her at home, so they tried here.”

“And you were here to take the call?”

“We forwarded calls to my cell phone.”

“Dumbo won’t let me have one during training,” Tico said. “He thinks cell phones are a distraction.”