Quests of Simon Ark (22 page)

“This hardly seems a crime of passion,” Simon pointed out.

“She bled him of every penny. In the end he was living with me, having only his interest in this shop to keep him going.”

“Could you tell us something of his disappearance?”

“He left the shop early on Christmas Eve. Generally only one of us worked here at a time, but during the Christmas season we had a part-time clerk as well. He had planned to do some last-minute shopping for his children. Naturally, I expected he would be home when I arrived there a bit past six o’clock. But his absence did not worry me at first. I assumed he had gone early to visit his children. In fact, it was not until Christmas morning when Rosetta telephoned me that I realized something was wrong.”

“He didn’t go there?”

“No, she never saw him—or so she claimed. I telephoned some of his friends but no one had seen him. When he did not return home that evening I reported him missing to the police.”

“And they found him two days ago?”

“Yes. On the twenty-eighth, early in the morning. The waves had rolled his wrapped body onto the beach.”

“The body is still at the morgue.”

Luiz nodded. “They are trying to determine the cause of death. It will be released later today, which is why I am closing early. The funeral must be tomorrow because of the New Year’s holiday.”

“Brighter said you thought he might have been off drinking because he was depressed at the breakup of his marriage.”

“The thought occurred to me. I despised that woman, but we are a Catholic country, after all, and divorce is a very serious matter. It was a terrible blow to my brother.”

“So he drank.”

“Yes.”

I paused at a counter to pick up a small stone carving of a llama. “This looks very old. Is it valuable?”

“Ones like it from pre-Columbian days are national treasures in Peru. But that is only a copy.”

I set it gently on the counter. Simon seemed to have finished with his questioning. He paused only to study a framed photograph of the two brothers that hung on the wall behind the shop’s cash register. Then he said goodbye and followed me outside.

“What do you think about him, Simon?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I was struck mainly by the resemblance between him and his dead brother. With the addition of a mustache he could be the twin of the man in the morgue.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Embalming a body removes one very specific means of identification—a person’s blood type. The blood is drained and replaced by embalming fluid.”

“So it could be Luiz in the morgue instead of Sergio?”

“We’ll see.”

Back at our hotel Simon telephoned the detective, Marcos Orleans, and asked him how the body was identified. He listened and finally hung up, somewhat disappointed. “Sergio’s ex-wife identified him. And his fingerprints checked out too. There’s no doubt about the identification.”

“It was a good idea, Simon.”

We spent the evening strolling the streets of Rio near our hotel. Once we came upon a newsstand where large prints of religious scenes were sold along with the magazines. There was an agonized Christ, and the Last Supper, and St. Stephen pierced by arrows, and in the midst of them a portrait of a beautiful lady in a blue gown rising from the flower-strewn ocean waves.

“That would be Yemanja,” Simon pointed out.

“They certainly mix their religious icons.”

“The pagan and the Christian have always been very close in Latin countries. In the morning we will visit Father Rudolph, and perhaps he can help us.”

I had been to Catholic Mass before with Simon, but nothing prepared me for the Mass we attended at the little Church of Santa Catarina. The entire front row of the church was filled with a row of native women, their heads shaved and their bodies and faces dabbed with spots of white paint. Colorful scarves were wound around their bodies and their necklaces and bracelets jingled when they moved. They seemed under the direction of a robed woman who wore a dozen or more crosses and strands of beads around her neck. As the Mass came to an end, she unbelievably lit a cigar and smoked it as she shepherded her charges out.

Father Rudolph, a tall smiling priest with a Midwestern accent, had been told to expect us. He shook hands and led us into the sacristy while he removed his vestments.

“Who were those people, Father?” I asked. “It seemed almost part of some initiation rite.”

“That’s exactly what it was. They are initiates into the Candomble spirit cult. The initiation ceremony lasts for several weeks and this is the final ritual. They are brought to attend Catholic Mass.”

“I can’t believe it!” I said. “That woman with the cigar—”

The priest merely shrugged. “The cigar is part of the ritual, and she is the Mother of Saint, the head priestess of their closed community. They are mediums, you see, or think they are.”

“But you allow them here?”

“Candomble is the oldest of the spirit cults, with roots in West Africa. Those white dots and lines painted on the initiates’ bodies are meant to represent the scars cut into the flesh by African tribes. Theirs is a mixture of Christian and pagan ceremony, and in many ways they are an approximation of the Church. Though we deplore spiritism, we will not drive them away from our churches.”

“Do these people worship Yemanja?” Simon asked.

Father Rudolph carefully folded his vestments. “No. She is a deity of the Umbanda cult, which is Rio’s largest. And its most dangerous, I might add, since it fosters a subsidiary cult that practices black magic.”

“The Devil.”

The priest studied Simon. “You say it like the name of an old friend.”

“Hardly a friend, but surely an acquaintance. He is never far away, is he?”

“Not here. Not where poverty drives the people down and superstition lifts them up. If the Church and the spirit cults cannot help them, they will turn to an older religion.”

“I am interested in the death of Sergio Costa.”

“Yes.” The priest nodded. “The one wrapped like a mummy.”

“A sacrifice to the sea goddess?”

“Perhaps. Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and sacrifices will be made on Rio’s beaches.”

“Who would I talk to about the sacrifices?” Simon asked.

“Bamba Yin, perhaps. She’s a fat ugly old woman who knows more about such matters than any human being should.”

“Where will I find her?”

“You won’t, today. She’ll be meditating for tonight’s celebration. Look for her before midnight on Copacabana Beach.”

“Will you be there, Father?” Simon asked.

“I do not worship Yemanja. They may bring their gods to me, but I do not take my God to them.”

When we left the little church, Simon suggested we call on the dead man’s former wife. “A wife, present or former, is always a suspect in a murder case,” he pointed out.

“We’re not even certain it is murder, Simon. Unless Orleans has been able to establish the cause of death was poison,”

“I think we can assume, my friend, that Sergio Costa had some unwanted help in departing this life. Let us visit the widow.”

We arrived at the Costa home just as the family was returning from the cemetery. I’d forgotten this was the morning of the funeral. The children were taken inside by an older woman dressed in black while Rosetta Costa, also in black, greeted us on an enclosed patio. She was a lovely woman with long black hair, not at all what I’d expected, and it took me a moment to realize why her face seemed so familiar. It was because she bore an uncanny resemblance to the painting of the goddess Yemanja that we’d seen for sale.

I glanced at Simon and saw that his eyes were on her face. “Who would want to murder your husband, Mrs. Costa?”

“He hadn’t been my husband for two years. I saw him only when he came to see the children. And this year he did not even send them his usual cards before Christmas. If he involved himself with the spirit cults he deserves what he got.”

“Do you know for a fact he was involved with them?”

“I told you his life no longer concerned me. But years ago he was involved with them. I do some modeling, and an artist used a photograph of me to paint a picture of one of their goddesses.”

“Yemanja,” Simon said.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“The resemblance is still quite striking.”

“They ask me to take part in their ceremony each year, on the beach. This year, because of the funeral, I should not go.” She considered a moment and added, “But perhaps I will. Sergio was dead for me two years ago.”

“It might be wiser to stay away,” Simon cautioned. “But what about your brother-in-law, Luiz? Are you on friendly terms with him?”

“Why do you ask?”

“He did not come back here after the funeral.”

“How observant you are. No, we’re not on particularly friendly terms. He took in Sergio after I’d thrown him out. He was on Sergio’s side through the entire divorce.”

“Isn’t that natural for a brother?”

“I suppose so,” she said with a sigh, “but that doesn’t mean I have to like him.”

“Did you ever stop into their shop?”

“Never, since the divorce.”

“One last question, Mrs. Costa—if I may still call you that. Was Sergio involved in any criminal activity?”

“Do you mean the cults? They are not criminal, except for the black magic perhaps.”

“Not the cults. Something else.”

“No, no—there was nothing else while we were married. Since then, who knows?”

We left her on the patio and walked back to my rented car. “Why did you ask that last question, Simon? Do you know something?”

“No more than you do, my friend.”

I thought about that as we drove back to our hotel.

There was a message for us to call Marcos Orleans. When I reached him he said, “You and Simon might want to come down here to police headquarters. We’ve solved the Costa murder.”

When we got there Orleans greeted us with a smile. “We have filed charges against a Peruvian citizen named Juan Mira.”

“Murder charges?” Simon asked.

“Yes, along with certain customs violations and other offenses.”

“I thought it odd that a member of the federal police would be investigating a local killing unless there were other crimes involved.”

I remembered Orleans’ introduction to us at the morgue. Simon had caught the fact I’d missed—that he was a federal investigator rather than a local one.

“Mira has confessed to everything except the actual killing,” Orleans said. “But we’re certain he’ll admit to that soon too.”

“What did the customs violations involve?” Simon asked.

“Traffic in pre-Columbian art treasures. But I’ll let you hear it directly from the man himself. He’s more than willing to talk. We’ve been on his trail for some time.”

He issued some rapid instructions in Portuguese over the intercom, and presently a slender man with sharp features was brought into the room. It was obvious at once why he’d been so willing to talk. There was a large purple bruise beneath one eye and he walked with a stiff painful gait that hinted at other unseen injuries.

“Ah!” Orleans greeted him, helping him to a chair. “These gentlemen would like to hear your story just as you told it to me.”

Juan Mira shifted in his chair as if seeking a less painful position. I was reminded of the news stories of the Brazilian brand of justice, with torture of prisoners and the infamous death squads of off-duty policemen who sought out and executed known criminals without the formality of a trial. For an instant I even wondered if Sergio Costa might have been the victim of a police death squad. But then Mira began to tell his story.

“The government of Peru has very strict laws against the exporting of pre-Columbian works of art, whether jewelry or sculpture. Sergio hit on a method of moving the art objects across the border by using tour boats that operate on the upper Amazon River. The source of the Amazon is in the Peruvian Andes, not far from some of the famed Inca ruins. Tourists often visit the ruins and then take a boat trip partway down the river to visit some native villages. It is not difficult for the boats to wander across the border at this point long enough for a skilled skin diver like myself to remove certain packages secured below the waterline. Once the art pieces are inside Brazil I transport them to Sergio’s shop here in Rio. They are sold as imitations for Customs purposes, with the buyer paying extra under the counter.”

“Tell them about last week,” Orleans urged.

“A few days before Christmas I met with Sergio to conclude our largest deal yet. We avoided seeing each other as much as possible, of course, only meeting two or three times a year when there was a shipment to be delivered. This time I phoned him as usual and he met me at the Rio Yacht Club near Sugar Loaf. I gave him the packages of smuggled art work—sixteen small pieces in all—but then he said he couldn’t pay me till the following day. I was upset because he’d never done that before, but he pleaded that his brother was getting suspicious and he hadn’t been able to take the money out of the store account. He promised to meet me at the Yacht Club the next day, but he never showed up. I went to the store but only Luiz was there.”

“Exactly when was this?”

“Two days before Christmas. I kept searching for him all day and night, and the next day I even confronted Luiz in the shop. He told me his brother was missing.”

Marcus Orleans nodded and turned to Simon. “It seems obvious now that Juan here tracked down Sergio and murdered him for welching on the deal. He hasn’t confessed that yet, but he will.”

Juan Mira lifted his head, and there was a fleeting look of fright in his eyes. “I did not find him. I did not kill him.”

Orleans signaled to a guard and the prisoner was led away. Simon leaned back in his chair and asked, “You’re convinced this man is the murderer?”

“It seems more than likely, doesn’t it?”

“Sergio had the smuggled artwork. Someone might have killed him for it.

“Or Juan Mira might be lying about not receiving the money,” the detective pointed out. “He might have received payment and then killed Sergio himself, to take back the art treasures.”

“But we come back to one unanswerable question,” Simon said. “Why was the body embalmed and wrapped as a mummy? If Mira killed him—or even if one of your infamous police death squads carried out his execution—the body would have been left in a ditch somewhere. A great deal of trouble and risk went into having it embalmed.”