Perfect Hatred (14 page)

Muniz was ecstatic, but cautious. The prosecutor was a much bigger man—and, no doubt, desperate. “Is he cuffed?” he asked Careca.
“He is, Senhor.”
“Make him kneel.”
Careca pressed a heavy hand on Zanon’s shoulder. The

“
Boa noite
, Senhor Public Prosecutor,” Muniz said gleefully. “How does it feel, eh? How does it feel now the roles are reversed?”

“What do you want, Muniz?” Zanon’s voice was dull. Muniz was sure he already knew exactly what he wanted, but he told him anyway.

Parma nodded, as if he’d known the answer before he’d asked the question.
“And you want me to beg for it? So you can refuse? Forget it! I know what kind of a man you are, Muniz. You’re going to kill me whatever I say. So fuck you.”
Muniz frowned in disappointment. This was wrong, not at all as he’d imagined it. Whenever he’d played out this scene in his head, Parma had been begging for his life, not treating him as if he was something the prosecutor had picked up on the sole of his shoe. Where was his two-hundred thousand dollars worth of satisfaction?
But then he had a thought.
“Call Reiner on the radio,” he ordered. “Tell him to bring the bastard’s wife and children.”
And that did the trick.
“Leave my wife and children out of this,” Parma said. “You want me to beg? I’ll beg. I’ll do any goddamned thing you want, as long as you leave them alone.”
Muniz leaned in close, studied Parma’s eyes in the dim light.
Yes! The man was starting to cry. This, now, was more like it!

“Your wife is going to get bullets in both of her kneecaps,” he said, slowly and distinctly, relishing every word for the exquisite pain he knew he was causing, “and I’m going to bring your daughters up close so they can see it happen. They’ll get the same treatment before I kill them. Then, and only then, it’s going to be your turn.”

Parma pitched forward on the sand, laying his head at Muniz’s feet. If the prosecutor hadn’t been cuffed, he would have been gripping his tormenter by the ankles.

“For God’s sake, Muniz, they’re innocent! They never did anything to you.”
Muniz’s smile became an outright laugh.
“Innocent?” he said. “I don’t give a damn about innocent. All I care about is making you suffer.” He turned to Careca. “Call Reiner.”
“No,” Careca said.
Muniz’s good humor vanished. He turned on the bigger man.
“What? What did you say?”
“We had this conversation once before, Senhor. My position is still the same.”
“Three-hundred thousand,” Muniz said. “Three-hundred thousand United States dollars.”
Three-hundred thousand dollars was a trifle, a bagatelle, a miniscule part of his vast fortune. But it was a considerable sum for a man like Careca, and Muniz, accustomed to buying men the way he bought objects, was certain the killer would be unable to resist.
But he was wrong.
“Not for four,” Careca said, “not for six, not for any amount. I’m not negotiating with you. I’m telling you no.”
Muniz was more than humiliated, he was flabbergasted. Everyone had their price. Everyone. But he was in a hurry, and he didn’t want to argue with the idiot, so he appealed to Aldo.
“How about you, eh? Three-hundred thousand American dollars?”
“No,” Aldo said.
Parma, with an effort, raised his head and looked first at Aldo, then at Careca.
“Thank you,” he said, with relief. “Thank you both.”
Muniz kicked sand at him.
“You keep the fuck out of it! Don’t you get it, you stupid bastard? They’re helping me
kill
you.”
Parma blinked the sand away and met Muniz’s eyes. “But they’re
not
helping you kill my wife and daughters. And that, you degenerate, sadistic bastard, merits my thanks.”
Muniz saw red. Frustration overpowered reason. He struck the prosecutor in the face with the barrel of his pistol, then reversed it, and using the grip like the head of a club, hit him again and again, taking out his anger not just with Parma, but with the whole damned lot of them.
He might well have finished the job right there, by beating Parma’s head to a bloody pulp, if Careca hadn’t reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“What the hell are you doing?” Muniz said. “Take your hands off me.”
“We didn’t sign on, Senhor, to watch you beat him, or to harm his wife, or his children. We signed on to help you kill him. And that’s all. Shoot him now and end it.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Careca said. “Do it now. Or I will.”
“The hell you will,” Muniz said. “I paid for him. He’s mine, and I’m going to get my money’s worth. He worked the slide on his pistol and chambered a round. “Every last centavo’s worth.”
He brought the muzzle of his silencer within a few centimeters of Parma’s knee and fired, then destroyed the other kneecap in the same fashion, then shot him in the genitals. He was smiling while he did it, but when there was no reaction from his victim, the smile faded.
“He didn’t feel a thing, Senhor,” Careca said. “You knocked him unconscious before you shot him.”
Muniz stared at the pistol in his hand, as if he was surprised to find it there. He looked down at Parma. It was true. The prosecutor had suffered no pain.
“We’ll wait,” he said. “We’ll wait until he wakes up.”
“No, Senhor, we will not,” Careca said. “We’ll leave now. It’s finished.”
“It’s not. He’s not dead.”
Careca pointed his pistol at Parma’s forehead and fired a single shot.
“He is now,” he said.
Careca’s weapon had no noise suppressor. Up at the house, Reiner must have heard the report. The radio on Careca’s belt burst into life.
“That’s it?” came Reiner’s voice.
Careca pushed the talk button. “That’s it,” he said.
“I’m on my way,” Reiner said.
Careca turned to Muniz. “We’re leaving now, Senhor Muniz,” he said, “so take your disgusting psychotic ass over to the goddamned boat and get on board.”

“That waitress,” Arnaldo said, as she sashayed away from their table to fill their order for a third round of afterdinner drinks, “has the soul of a china cabinet.”

After his second post-prandial whiskey Arnaldo was apt to turn philosophical. But this time, although he’d obviously designed the remark to be intriguingly enigmatic, it didn’t engender the desired response.

Silva’s mind was occupied with their next move, so instead of asking his sidekick why he thought the waitress had the soul of a china cabinet, he said, “I think we should question Jamil Al-Fulan.”

“Jamil Al-Fulan? That guy Jaco called a hatemonger? The one Bruna was afraid of?”
“Him.”
“We know, for sure, that he threatened to kill Nestor. You think he might also be connected to the bombing case?”
“Maybe.”
Arnaldo stirred the ice in his glass with a forefinger. “So you want to go to Ciudad del Este?”
Silva nodded. “We’ve pretty much run out of people to question here in Curitiba.”
“Plus the fact,” Arnaldo said, “that Hector told you he’s going there, and you want to get back into that bombing case.”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Team up, so we can cover more ground.”
“You’re the boss. You want me to get the concierge to book us a flight?”
Silva nodded. “For tomorrow morning. They’ll be staying on the Brazilian side of the river, at the Hotel das Cataratas. Book us into the same place.”
“For how long?”
“Three nights. We’ll extend it if we have to. Meanwhile, I’ll call Jaco and get him to set up a meeting with that friend of his, Ismail Khouri.”
“You gonna tell Serpa we’re leaving town?”
“I’d better.”
“Are you going to tell him why?”
“No. Just that we’re going south on a lead—and we’ll contact him when we return.”

It was almost three in the morning when Orlando Muniz got back to São Paulo, but he was still furious. He tossed his keys on the coffee table, picked up the telephone and called the Colonel to complain.

To his surprise, the Colonel answered immediately. What was more, he sounded alert.
“I don’t discuss business by telephone,” he said. “Meet me in the same place as last time.”
“When?”
“Noon.”
“I’ll be there,” Muniz said.

Once again, the Colonel was sipping beer. He was at the same table, and wearing the same black leather jacket. This time, though, there was but one glass.

Muniz took a seat and opened his mouth to speak, but the Colonel spoke first.
“I’m cancelling our arrangement,” he said.
Muniz was taken aback. “You’re
what
?”
“You heard me, Senhor Muniz. I won’t repeat myself. You got half of what you wanted. You’ll have to be content with that.”
Muniz leaned across the table. “I didn’t get half of what I wanted. I got nowhere near half. I wanted the
filho da puta
to beg for his life—and he didn’t. I stipulated I wanted to kill him myself—and I didn’t get the chance. Careca fired the kill shot. Did he tell you that?”
The Colonel nodded. “He did.”
“Did he also tell you that Parma wouldn’t crawl, wouldn’t grovel? That it was only when I told your guys to bring his wife and kids down to the beach that I got any reaction out of him at all? And then fucking Careca ruined it by saying he wouldn’t do it. Did he tell you that?”
“He did.”
“And did he also tell you that Parma thanked him? Actually
thanked him
for leaving his wife and daughters out of it?”
“He told me the whole story. He even told me that Parma told you to
go fuck yourself
. And you know what? I sympathize with that sentiment. You, Senhor Muniz, go too far.”
“What the hell do you mean, I go too far?”
“Don’t raise your voice to me, Senhor Muniz. I’m not one of your employees, and I don’t like it.”
Muniz repeated the question, but in a softer voice and without the epithet.
“You don’t think trying to bribe my men so you can torture and kill a perfectly innocent woman and her children is going too far?”
“What is it with you? You and your men are all professional killers. Why should you care?”
“I care, Senhor Muniz, because I have principles, which you clearly do not.”
The Colonel picked up his glass and took a sip of beer.
Muniz extended a forefinger, would have pointed it at the Colonel’s face, then realized whom he was talking to and stabbed it onto the table instead. “You accepted a deal whereby I was supposed to fire the kill shot. Then one of your men did it. And you defend him? Where’s the principle in that?”
“Careca was the tactical commander. As such, he had responsibility for the safety of his men. In his judgment, staying on that beach any longer could have led to discovery, which, in turn, could have put those men into jeopardy. He didn’t knock Parma unconscious. You did. And to wait for him to recover consciousness would have been foolhardy. He instructed you to fire the kill shot. He even insisted. Isn’t that true?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“But nothing. You, Senhor Muniz, are a psychopath with the morals of a feral cat. I want nothing more to do with you. The price we agreed upon was four hundred thousand dollars for both men. You paid half in advance. That will cover my fee for Parma. In addition, we incurred expenses of about five thousand Reais, but that amount of money is trivial, and in the interest of severing our relationship as quickly as possible, I’m going to forget about it.”
“Not so fast. I—”
“Senhor Muniz, do you have any idea, any idea at all, who you’re dealing with? We do not like you. So stop pushing your luck. Get up from that chair, right now, and get out of my sight.”

Muniz, fuming, stormed out of Leo’s Bar and returned to his flat. He was in the hallway, fishing for his keys, when he heard the telephone ring. He managed to unlock the door, and pick up the handset before the caller hung up.

“Muniz,” he said, treating it like a business call. The vast majority of all his calls could be so classified. Muniz had few friends, but as it turned out, this was one of them.

“Congratulations,” Orestes Saldana said.
“You heard?”
“I did. It was on the radio. I look forward to hearing the

details sometime.”
“It was nowhere as good as I thought it was going to be.
Did you call me just for that? To congratulate me?” “No. I called about the other one. You asked me to keep
tabs on him, remember?”
“Of course, I remember.”
“He left town this morning.”
“Damn!”
“But not for Brasilia.”
“Where then?”
“Foz do Iguaçu.”
“Foz do Iguaçu? Why that’s—”
“Perfect. I know. I thought you’d be pleased.”
“How long is he staying?”
“Three days.”
“Do you know where?”
“The Hotel das Cataratas.”
“Good. Good. You’re a real friend. Listen, I’m going to
need some . . . people. I’ve had a . . . misunderstanding with
my former associates.”
After a short pause, Saldana said, “You’ll be flying to your
place in Argentina?”
“Tomorrow.”
“How many do you need?”
“Three should do it.”
“You’ll have room on your aircraft?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop off in Medianeira. I’ll have them waiting for you.”

There is a place, on the border between Brazil and Argentina, where the Iguaçu River plunges over a highland plateau.

On the Brazilian side, within a huge national park, stands the Hotel das Cataratas.
Pink with white trim, and built in the Portuguese colonial style, the building is a fifteen-minute stroll from the mightiest of Iguaçu’s 275 waterfalls, a U-shaped, 82-meterhigh, 700-meter-long chasm called
A Garganta do Diabo
, the Devil’s Throat.
Almost half of the river’s water tumbles over it; a cloud of mist sometimes rises above it, and the roar that emanates from it can often be heard within the rooms of the hotel.
That day, the river was high from the rains, and the wind was blowing toward them, carrying with it a thunder so constant, and so loud, that Hector’s voice was proving difficult to hear.
Arnaldo got up from his seat on the couch to close the window; Danusa gave him a thankful nod, but Silva, sitting closer, and hanging on his nephew’s every word, seemed oblivious to the reduction in noise.
“. . . what the news reader said was sketchy,” Hector was saying, “so I called Mara and asked her to contact the cops on Ilhabela for more details. She wasn’t able to get back to me before we took off.”
“So you only got the full story when you landed?”
“Correct.”
“Who found him?”
“Some kids,” Danusa said, “on their way to have an earlymorning swim.”
“They don’t get many murders on the island,” Hector continued. “The police chief himself turned out for it. He knew Zanon by sight, saw how it went down, realized he was out of his depth, and called in reinforcements.”
“From where?”
“São Paulo. And when Janus Prado heard who the victim was, he assigned himself as lead investigator.”
“Good,” Silva said. “Nobody better.”
“He took a full forensics team. Mara’s liaising with him and will call whenever there’s anything new to report.”
“So what do we know up to now?”
“They shot Zanon four times, once in each knee, once in the groin, once in the head. The wounds to his knees and groin looked to be from one weapon, the wound to his head from another.”
“What about Iara? Was she in the house when they took him?”
“Yes.”
Silva grimaced. “The children?”
“Also.”
“Are they all okay?”
“Physically, yes.”
“Thank God. Do they know?”
“There was no keeping it from Iara. She heard the shot.”
“Didn’t you just say there’d been four shots?”
“Yes, but she only heard one. Another reason why Janus suspects two weapons were used. He figures one had a silencer.”
Silva’s compassion for Zanon’s wife and children was layered with a cold anger. He gave in to the anger. It was more productive.

“Two men woke them from a sound sleep. Then a third man brought in their two kids. All three wore hoods.”
“So there’s no chance she can identify any of them?”
Hector shook his head. “But we’re not entirely clueless. Iara’s observant. One had some pretty unique tattoos, and she can describe them. He also had a high, squeaky voice that sounded, she said, very strange coming from a guy as big as he was. Another one had blond hair on the back of his hands, so probably ditto on his head.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“They handcuffed Zanon and led him out. The blond guy stayed with her and the kids. A while later she heard the shot. The man talked to someone on a radio, warned her not to leave the house unless she wanted her children to wind up dead. So, of course, she didn’t. She was still there when the cops came knocking.”
“And that’s all she knows?”
“In essence, yes.”
Arnaldo muttered an unintelligible word, just one and delivered just above a whisper. The times when Arnaldo was most subdued were the times when he was most angry.
For a moment, all of them were silent. Then, Silva said: “The scene?”
“On the beach, just a short walk from the house. The killers arrived and escaped by boat. It left an impression on the sand. An inflatable, apparently.”
“Can they identify the size and type?”
“They’re working on it. Also, there was an additional set of footprints, a man wearing sandals. He stayed near the waterline, pacing back and forth, until they brought him Zanon. Zanon was made to kneel. At a given point, the guy also knelt, probably to get a better look at his handiwork.” “Handiwork?”
“Zanon’s head was beaten to a pulp.”
“Pistol whipped?”
“Probably.”
“Did they take anything from the house?”
“No.”
“Was Zanon wearing his watch when they found him?” “Yes.”
“So that rules out robbery.”
“It was revenge,” Arnaldo said. “The beating and the shots to the knees and groin speak to that. The person behind it not only wanted Zanon dead, he also wanted to see him suffer. He was the guy on the beach.”
“I agree,” Hector said. “And I’ll take it a step further: He was waiting there, because he didn’t cover his face. He wanted Zanon to know who was torturing him, who was killing him.
“So who do we know,” Silva said, “who not only hated Zanon enough to want to torture and kill him, but also had the means to hire people, professional people, to help him do it?”
“That
filho da puta
, Orlando Muniz,” Arnaldo said, slapping the coffee table hard enough to rattle the cups in their saucers.
Silva nodded and turned to Hector. “Tell Mara to call Janus, let him know he should interrogate Muniz.”
“Not that it’s going to do any good,” Arnaldo said, “Muniz is an
escroto
, but he’s not stupid. He’ll have an ironclad alibi, we can be damned sure of that.”
“And damned sure of something else,” Hector said.
“Which is?” Silva said.
“If it was him, he’s going to go after you next.”

Most Brazilians, back then, visited the city to enjoy the wine, the food and the nightlife for which the Argentinean capital was justly famous.

Not Muniz. He was there for one reason alone: to make money.
The country was going through another of its periodic crises. Cash was tight. Houses and apartments, estates and businesses, could be had for a song.
In five years, or ten, Orlando figured, they’d be worth three, four, five times more than they were then. And it was highly unlikely they’d ever be worth less.
He was sitting in a restaurant on the Costanera Norte, his knife sliding through an extremely rare
bistec de lomo
, when his real-estate agent, a woman who was helping him to gobble up one property after another, posed a question.
“Did you notice the wall?”
“Wall? What wall?”
“There,” she said and hooked a thumb.
He glanced over her shoulder—and froze.
“Are those real?”
She nodded. “Yes, Señor Muniz, all real, every last one of them.”
He put down his knife and fork, got up from his chair, and went for a closer look. The wall was papered entirely with banknotes, most of them of one peso, but there were fives and tens as well.
She rose and stood beside him.
“The old currency,” she said. “So worthless, now, that it’s cheaper per square meter than paint, cheaper, than wallpaper. When we switched from the old to the new, these
pesos antiguos
”—she tapped the wall with a lacquered forefinger— “were exchanged at a rate of ten-thousand to one, ten thousand
antiguos
for a single
Peso Argentino
. And you know what the
Peso Argentino
has come to be worth. Almost nothing! That’s hyperinflation for you. You won’t see
that
in many places in the world.”
Compared to us,
she seemed to be saying,
you Brazilians are amateurs. We Argentineans are the real experts at destroying a nation’s economy.
Back then, before they’d been humbled by subsequent events, arrogance had been an Argentinean national characteristic. Muniz had been exposed to a great deal of it in recent days.
“But the owner of this restaurant,” the woman went on, as they returned to their table, “didn’t put those banknotes there just because they were cheap.”
“No?” Muniz picked up his fork, speared a piece of meat and popped it into his mouth.
“No,” she said. “He was making a political statement. He is a great landholder in Corrientes Province. He raises the beef you’re eating.”
Muniz didn’t care a damn about the great landholder of Corrientes Province, but he appreciated the quality of the man’s beef—and he said so.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s good, isn’t it? That’s one of the reasons I brought you here.”
“
One
of the reasons?” he said, a trickle of blood escaping from one corner of his mouth.
She waited for him to blot it away with his napkin, and then got down to it: “He has always been rich, and he isn’t poor now, but by buying this restaurant, and renovating it, he has overextended himself.”
“You mean he needs an influx of cash?”
“Precisely, Señor.”
She put down her knife and fork, leaned back in her chair and looked at him expectantly.
Muniz cut another piece of meat and thought while he chewed. Then he swallowed and shook his head.
“I’m not interested,” he said. “I don’t know anything about the restaurant business, and I wouldn’t trust any Argentinean to run one for me.”
To her credit, the real estate agent, a nationalist to her fingertips, didn’t even raise a plucked eyebrow at the slur. “I’m not talking about this restaurant, Señor Muniz.”
“No? What
are
you talking about?”
“In addition to his estates on the pampas, and this restaurant, Señor Nogales—that’s his name, Señor Nogales—also owns a
hacienda
in Misiones Province.”
“Misiones Province. Where the hell is that?”
“It borders on your country. Also on Paraguay.”
“He wants to sell it?”
“He does Señor, and he’s been trying to sell it for the last several months. He’s had no takers.”
“What’s the land good for?”
“Agriculture.”
“What does he grow?”
“Yerba mate.”
“That stuff
gauchos
drink out of gourds?”
“That’s right, Señor. A great deal of it is consumed here in Argentina.”
“In the south of my country as well. So there’s a good market for that stuff, is there?”
“An excellent market, Señor. I even drink it myself.”
“I think it tastes like shit.”
Her smile didn’t falter. “But many, many people do not. And you, Señor, are an agriculturist yourself, are you not? You grow sugar cane? Coffee?”
“What if I do?”
“I’m told the land in Misiones Province is also suitable for the cultivation of other crops.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know them all, Señor. Sugar cane is one.”
“Now you’re talking. How big is the property?”
“Big, Señor. Twelve hundred hectares.”
“Big? That’s not big.”
“For Argentina, Señor, it’s quite big.”
“And, for us, it’s nothing, but that’s not to say I’m not interested. Any houses? Outbuildings?”
“A large house, Señor. Various barns. Servants’ quarters. Modern agricultural machines of various types. Hookup to the electric and telephone networks and located just off a paved road. There’s even an airstrip.”
“An airstrip, eh? So I could install a reliable Brazilian manager in the house and fly in and out to check on the staff growing my sugar, or whatever the hell else I choose to grow?”
“There is already a manager, a man who has lived there with his family for many years. I am told he’s honest, reliable and—”
“And, if I buy the place, he’s out of a job. I’m not about to entrust a property of mine to some Argentinean. If we go any further with this, I’ll bring a man down from Brazil.”
Her smile was getting brittle, but it was still there. “You’re interested, Señor?”
“I might be. Let’s try offering half of whatever he’s asking.” Muniz picked up his empty bottle of Quilmes and waved it under her nose. “Order me another beer.”
Thus it was that Orlando Muniz came to own a property separated by little more than a river from the Hotel das Cataratas—which made it an ideal staging point from which to launch an attempt on the life of Mario Silva.

“When I think of suicide bombers,” Luis Chagas said, studying Salem Nabulsi’s photograph, “I think of guys with beards, not some kid with pimples.”

Chagas headed the Federal Police’s Foz do Iguaçu field office. He’d replaced Nestor Cambria when Cambria resigned to work with Plínio Saldana.

The photo had been provided by the Paraguayan authorities. It showed Nabulsi as he’d been at fifteen, when he’d applied for his national identity card.

Many of them aren’t much older than he was back then.” “Really?”
Chagas was in his mid-thirties, but already balding. He

scratched the crown of his head where hair had once been. “Teenagers are just about the most selfish creatures on the
face of the earth,” he said. “I know. I’ve got one. How do you
go about convincing a teenager to blow himself up?” The three of them, Danusa, Chagas and Hector were
in a high-rise in downtown Foz do Iguaçu. The window of
Chagas’s office afforded a splendid prospect of the minarets
and dome of the Omar Ibn Al-Khattab mosque, the largest
in Brazil and the pride of the city’s Muslim community. But
none of them were in a mood to appreciate the view. “By convincing him,” Danusa said, “that the rewards of
Paradise are greater than anything he can expect from this
world, and that killing infidels is a quick and easy way to get
there.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Not at all,” she said. “Overcoming self-preservation,
which is what it takes, can’t be done overnight. It’s a question of years. And it can’t be done at all if the person being
brainwashed is already locked into an adult mindset. That’s
why the mullahs like to get them young.”
“Mullahs? So it’s done by clerics?”
“Mullahs aren’t always clerics. They’re Islamic scholars,
respected for their knowledge of the Qur’an, but there are
those among them who bend and twist that knowledge. They
sell their students on martyrdom, and paradise, and the
houris
waiting for them there, and send them out into the world to
maim and kill.”
“And they do all that in those madrasas I keep hearing
about, right?”
“Generally, yes.”
So why don’t we just crack down and close them all?” “Because most are perfectly innocent places run by wellintentioned people.”
“So there are good madrasas and bad madrasas?” “There are. But the only way to find out which is which
is by making inquiries in the Islamic community. And many
of the people you talk to will tell you good madrasas are bad
madrasas, and vice-versa.”
This time, instead of scratching his bald spot, Chagas
rubbed it. “Depending on their personal convictions?” “Exactly.”
“Which is why,” Hector said, finally joining in, “we’d like
to know more about the Muslim community around here in
general—and about the madrasas in particular.”
Chagas kept rubbing, but he moved his hand from his
head to his chin.
“I’ve got just the guy to help you with that. One of my best men. Raised locally. Egyptian parents. Speaks Arabic. His
name’s Abasi Ragab.”
“Sounds perfect,” Hector said. “Why don’t we get him in
here?”
“He’s off today. Where are you staying?”
“The Cataratas.”
“Nice. Lovely place. I’ll arrange for a meet. What else can
I help you with?”
“The explosives.”
Hector filled him in on what Lefkowitz had learned by
tracing the taggants and said, “So we’ve got to talk to someone within the Paraguayan military.”
Chagas shook his head. “The man you want to talk to,” he
said, “is Matias Chaparro.”
“We’ve already scheduled an appointment with him. But
he’s police, not military.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s still the guy to talk to. Matias has his
finger on the pulse of everything that happens around here.
Everything dishonest, that is.”
“If he’s dishonest, what makes you think he’d be willing
to talk to us?”
“Because I doubt Matias would approve of the stuff having been used in a terrorist attack. If he was involved in
the deal, and the odds are he was, it’s my guess they told
him it was going to a drug gang. He would have found that
acceptable.”
“But not that the stuff would be used by terrorists?” “No.”
“A moral objection?”
Chagas shook his head. “Matias isn’t moral. He’s purely
practical. Terrorist attacks call down too much heat. They’re
not good for business. That’s what he’d object to.” “I don’t think he and my uncle are likely to get along.” Chagas didn’t ask who Hector’s uncle was, a sure sign he
knew it already.
“You might be surprised,” he said. “Matias can be quite
charming. Comes from a good family, has a university education, is well-read and all that.”
“But he’s crooked.”
“He wouldn’t have been appointed if he wasn’t.” “Then I guarantee you, my uncle won’t like him. Have you
heard of a guy named Ismail Khouri?”
Chagas shook his head. “The name doesn’t ring any bells.
Who’s he?”
“A Lebanese Muslim, lives here in Foz, has a business in
Ciudad del Este.”
“So he’s a crook?”
“In his case, we have no reason to think so.”
“No?” Chagas looked dubious. “Let’s see.”
He picked up his phone, gave Khouri’s name, and asked
to check the files. When he hung up, he said, “Why are you
interested in him?”
“He’s a possible source of information, a friend of a friend.” “Friend or not, it doesn’t mean he’ll talk to you,” Chagas
said. “If he knows anything, and he passes it along, it could
get him and his whole family killed. He’ll know that. They
all know that. It’s the reason that getting reliable information
out of anybody in this town is like pulling teeth.”
The door opened and his secretary came in. She was
Chinese, slim and elegant.
“Thanks, Mei,” he said.
“
Não há de que
,” she said in accent-free Portuguese.
“Anything else?”
“Not at the moment,” Chagas said.
She nodded to him, smiled at the visitors, and went out.
Chagas opened the file, a thin one, and flipped through it. “Surprise, surprise,” he said. “It looks like your man Khouri
is honest after all. Or, at least, what passes for honest in this
part of the world.” He looked up. “But that’s not to say he
doesn’t make payoffs to the Paraguayan authorities. You can’t
run a business around here if you don’t.”
“So I’ve heard. Let’s talk a bit about Jamil Al-Fulan.” Chagas’s eyes narrowed, and his nose wrinkled. “That
bastard?” he said. “We’ve got a file on him thirty centimeters
thick. Want to see it?”
Hector shook his head. “We requested a copy as soon as
his name came up. We’ve already been through it.” “So why are you asking?”
“We want you to speculate.”
“About what?”
Hector told Chagas about the conversation with Nestor’s
wife, and also about the rumor they’d picked up from Jaco
Nassib concerning Plínio Saldana.
“I was aware,” Chagas said, “that Al-Fulan was behind the
threats to Nestor. We couldn’t prove it, of course, much less
do anything about it. But that one about Saldana being a
crook? That’s new for me. First time I’ve heard it.” “And yet you don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m not. You work here for a while, and you wind up with
a low opinion of most politicians. Matter of fact, you wind up
with a low opinion of most cops.”
“I don’t like to say this, but it has to be asked: Nestor
worked here, and he left to work for Saldana. You think he
might have been crooked too?”
“Nestor? No way! Nestor was as honest as the day is long.
If he had an inkling Saldana was involved in anything dishonest, he wouldn’t have taken the job.”
“I’m glad to hear you say it,” Hector said. “I liked Nestor.” “I more than liked him,” Chagas said. “He was a close friend.” “So you weren’t happy to see him leave? Even though it
meant a promotion for you?”
“On the contrary. I was happy to see him go. As long as
he remained here his life was in danger. No doubt about it.
I went out to the airport to see him and Bruna off—and I
breathed a sigh of relief when I saw them going up the stairs
onto the plane.”
“How about you?” Danusa said.
“What about me?”
“If Nestor was in danger, you must be as well.” She pointed
at his wedding ring. “How’s your wife dealing with it?” “She dealt with it,” Chagas said, “by taking our son and
moving back to Porto Alegre. She said she had no intention
of hanging around here and seeing me murdered.” “Your wife left, yet you stayed. Does the job mean that
much?”
“I asked for a transfer. He wouldn’t give me one.” “Who’s
he
?”
“Our revered leader.”
“Sampaio?”
“Who else? And since he wouldn’t, I’ve decided to give it
all up. I’m looking for a job in the private sector, and as soon
as I nail down a halfway decent one, I’m out of here.” “Sorry to hear it. You’re going to be a difficult man to replace.” “Sorry is a sentiment you can best save for the poor bastard who takes over this job. As long as Al-Fulan is alive,
any honest guy who sits in this chair is going to be a target.
Sometimes I think I’m crazy. I could be earning a lot of
money. I could have my wife and kid living with me. I could
stop worrying about having somebody put a bullet in my
back. And all I’d have to do is to turn a blind eye to what
that man is doing, but. . .”
“You can’t.”
“No. I can’t.” Chagas waved a dismissive hand. “But you
didn’t come to hear me bitch and moan. Let’s get back to
Al-Fulan.”
“Have you got enough on him to arrest him?”
“I do. I have a warrant, and I have a constant watch on the
bridge, but the bastard never crosses it.”
“And you can’t get him extradited?”
“Al-Fulan? Never! Every damned judge and cop in Ciudad
del Este is on his payroll.”
“Including Matias Chaparro?”
Chagas twisted impatiently in his chair. “
Especially
Matias
Chaparro. And Matias doesn’t make any bones about it
either. I complain, and he just shakes his head and laughs.” “How about Al-Fulan’s links to the Muslim community?
Does he have any?”
“Big time. He’s making a bid to become the sixth pillar of
Islam. He supports mosques on both sides of the border, contributes to charities all over the Muslim world and goes on
and on about nonviolent support for the Palestinian cause.” “Nonviolent? You buy that?”
Chagas shook his head. “Not for a minute. If the guy has
no compunction about having people killed for business reasons, and he doesn’t, why wouldn’t he have them killed for
Allah as well?”
“What turns a crook into a militant religionist?” Danusa
said. “Did he undergo some kind of epiphany?”
“Hell, no,” Chagas said. “It’s not about God, it’s about the
greater glory of Jamil Al-Fulan. He’s richer than Croesus. And,
since his ego is bigger than the Sugar Loaf, he’s perfectly willing to part with some of that wealth to play the big man.” “Could playing the big man include blowing up innocent
people?” Hector said.
“I wouldn’t, for a moment, put it past him,” Chagas said.