The Ways of Evil Men (31 page)

“Will you give me time to pack a few things? There are some pills I take—”

“You have no need to pack anything, Senhora. You’re not going anywhere.”

She opened her mouth in surprise. “What?”

“Justice wouldn’t be served by taking you away from your daughters. You’re no danger to society. The man you married deserved everything he got. This conversation never took place. Do you understand? It never took place. And you mustn’t tell anyone what you’ve told us, ever. Goodbye, Senhora Frade, I wish you joy in your new life.”

“And I, also, Senhora,” Arnaldo said. “As far as I’m concerned, you did this world a service.”

It left her speechless. She recovered her voice when they were halfway down the steps. “Wait,” she said. “We’re not done.”

Both men turned around.

“Please, come back and sit down. There’s more to tell—and some papers you have to see.”

Silva preceded Arnaldo up the steps.

Sonia went into the house, then returned with an envelope.

“W
HAT
I’
M ABOUT TO
tell you now is in the strictest confidence,” Silva said.

They were, once again, crowded into his room at the Grand. Hector and Gilda were seated side by side on the bed. Arnaldo occupied the room’s only chair. Gonçalves sat in another, brought from his room down the hall. The Chief Inspector had elected to remain on his feet. He was addressing the entire crew, but when he said the words
strictest confidence
he locked eyes with Gonçalves.

“Which means you don’t shoot your mouth off to Maura,” Arnaldo said, driving the point home.

Gonçalves blushed. “Understood,” he said.

Silva waited a beat, as if to emphasize what his partner had said. Then he told them about Sonia’s confession—and what he intended to do about it.

“Nothing?” Gilda said when he was done. “You’re not going to do
anything at all
?”

“Correct.”

“So how can you ever prove to the people in this town that Amati was innocent?”

“We can’t. For them, he’s always going to be a murdering savage and lynching him was the right thing to do.”

“That’s
so
wrong,” Gilda said.

Silva nodded. “But it would be an even greater travesty of justice to deprive those little girls of their mother.”

The eyes of the others moved back and forth between Gilda and Silva, following the exchange like it was a tennis
match. And like a tennis match, the spectators had their favorite. Gilda was getting no support, not even from her fiancé, but she persisted:

“You talk about injustice, but what about Raoni? Don’t you think
he’s
entitled to justice? Do you intend to let him go through life believing his father was a murderer?”

“I’ll tell him I’m convinced his father was innocent.”

“But never tell him who was guilty?”

“Perhaps, someday. Look, Gilda, it’s not a perfect solution, far from it, but the alternative is worse.”

The others looked at her while she gave it some thought. Finally, she nodded.

“You agree?” Silva insisted.

“I don’t like it,” she said, “but I agree.”

“Good,” Silva said. “Now, let’s talk about this.” He showed them the envelope Sonia Frade had given him.

“What’s in it?” Hector said.

“Love letters. Omar Torres gave them to Sonia Frade, Sonia gave them to us, and I intend to use them to entrap the people who murdered the Awana.”

“You know?” Gilda said. “You know who did it?”

“We do,” Silva said.

“But we still have to prove it,” Arnaldo said. “How about you guys back up and tell us the story from the beginning?” Hector said.

Somewhere, just outside, two dogs started barking. The Chief Inspector walked to the window and shut it. The dogs kept on barking, but it was no longer so loud that he couldn’t be heard.

“It all begins with Omar Torres,” he said.

“So he really did do it,” Gilda said, “killed the entire tribe, just like everyone has been telling us?”

“No, Gilda, he did not.”

“Then?”

“Omar, as we’ve learned by now, was a philanderer. He had relationships with many of the women in this town. One of them was Patricia Toledo.”

“The mayor’s wife?” Gilda asked.

“The mayor’s wife,” Silva confirmed. “For him, Patricia was no more than a milepost on the road, but she saw their relationship as something far more serious. She was crazy about him.”

“Crazy enough to write him the letters in that envelope?” Hector asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I have a look?”

Silva handed them over. “Those are photocopies,” he said. “The originals are in the hotel’s safe. They haven’t, as yet, been fingerprinted—but we’re going to tell our subjects that they have been.”

Hector started shuffling through the papers and gave a whistle of surprise. “Hot stuff,” he said. Gilda leaned in to read over his shoulder.

Silva kept on talking: “When Torres turned his back on her, Patricia was furious, but she managed to convince herself he did it out of fear of her husband, and also because, as long as Hugo was around, there couldn’t be any future to their relationship.”

Gonçalves scratched his head. “So?”

“So she hatched a plot to get rid of him.”

“Get rid of her husband?”

Silva nodded. “Yes. Her husband.”

“Wait a minute,” Gilda said, looking up from her reading. “First you’re talking about the genocide of the Awana, and then you’re talking about some plan that Patricia Toledo had to get rid of her husband. What’s the connection?”

“They’re one in the same.”

“Whoa!” Gonçalves said.

“Juicy story, eh?” Arnaldo said. “But you …” He pointed at Gonçalves.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m to keep my mouth shut about it. Go on, Chief Inspector. Like Hector said, this is hot stuff.”

“Hugo Toledo,” Silva went on, “had long coveted the Indians’ land—and owned the only
fazenda
with easy access to it.”

“By way of the old Azevedo place,” Arnaldo clarified.

“Moreover,” Silva said, “he had the political power to get the reservation declassified—as long as he could get rid of the Indians. So, first, he tried getting the entire tribe transported to the big reservation in the Xingu.”

“But that didn’t work,” Arnaldo said. “He couldn’t drum up enough support in Brasilia.”

Gilda broke their back-and-forth rhythm with a question: “So the bastard made up his mind to kill them?” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that?”

“No,” Silva said, “not just like that. It hadn’t occurred to him to take such a drastic step. It had gotten to the point where he’d decided to accept the status quo and give up on the project.”

“What made him change his mind?” Hector asked.

“Not what,” Silva said. “Who.
Patricia
got him to change his mind. She fed him the idea of the genocide, overrode his objections, convinced him he should do it and even told him how to go about it. She was a close friend of Maria Bonetti, a biologist. One time, when they were having a chat, Maria mentioned a curious little creature, and showed her a picture of one in a biology book.”

“The
phyllobates terribilis
?” Gilda said.

“Exactly,” Silva said, “each one containing enough poison
to kill ten adults. Hugo’s motive for the murders was greed, pure and simple. Patricia’s was entirely different.”

“Wait,” Gilda said. “You’re telling me that she arranged to kill forty human beings just so she could get her hooks into a man?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Silva said. “Her scheme was to convince Hugo to kill the Indians, which he did, and then to turn on him, claim she had nothing to do with it, denounce him to the FUNAI and to Barbosa in Belem. He’d be arrested and taken out of the picture. Then, while he was sitting in prison for the next forty years or so, she’d have all the land and could go off into a golden future with Torres. Putting their holdings together would have created the biggest
fazenda
in the whole state. It would be a snap to get him elected as mayor. She could go on being the First Lady.”

“And she told Torres that?” Hector said.

“She did,” Arnaldo said, “but she didn’t consult him ahead of time. She just did it. And then, after the genocide had taken place, she called him up, ‘crowing’ was the way Torres described it.”

“Described it to Sonia, that is?” Hector asked.

“Uh-huh,” Arnaldo said. “To Sonia.”

“According to his account,” Silva said, “and there’s no reason to disbelieve it, he told Patricia he had enough land, told her he didn’t want to be mayor, told her that he had no intention of coming back to her.”

“Must have been a big disappointment to the dear lady,” Gilda said sarcastically.

“With an even bigger disappointment to follow,” Silva said.

“Which was?” Gonçalves asked.

“He told her he was sick of her.”

“Ouch!”

“Ouch is right,” Arnaldo said. “Patricia went ballistic. Her reaction was so strong it scared the hell out of him.”

“She threatened him?”

“She did. And Sonia too.”

“Sonia?” Hector wanted to know. “How did she know about Sonia?”

“She knew Torres’s habits. When he broke up with her, she expected that another woman was involved, and she wanted to know who it was. Her husband spent a lot of time drinking at the Grand, so she started accompanying him into town and keeping an eye on the alley in the back of the building. One night she saw Torres going upstairs with Sonia. Later, when she and her ex-boyfriend had their conversation, she told him she was willing to forgive him for what she called his
infidelity
, but only if he came back to her. Otherwise, she said, and this is a direct quote,
he and that bitch had better watch their asses
.”

“And what you’re telling us now,” Hector asked, “is all based on what Torres told Sonia and what she told you?”

Silva nodded. “All of it. The whole story. And I should add here that both Arnaldo and I have bought into it. If someone was lying, it wasn’t her. And I don’t think it was Torres either.”

“I think we all trust your judgment, Chief Inspector,” Gilda said. “Yours, too, Arnaldo. What happened next?”

“What happened next,” Silva said, “was Patricia’s big mistake. The one that’s going to help us to convict her. She was so hungry for vengeance that she went straight to Sonia’s husband and told him what his wife was up to.”

“In the hope that he’d revenge himself on both Torres and Sonia?”

“Just so. But what she hadn’t anticipated was that Torres
had already briefed Sonia—and suggested something they might do to defend themselves.”

“Which was?”

“Use Patricia’s letters to blackmail her into keeping her mouth shut,” Silva said.

“But,” Arnaldo said, “by the time they had their plan in place, it was too late. Frade acted first. He killed Torres, set Amati up for it, forced Patricia to have sex with him and went home and told Sonia all about it.”

“Run that by me one more time,” Hector said.

Silva did. Slowly, with all the details that Sonia had given them.

Hector ran a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t Sonia tell us any of this before? We could have solved her problem for her, arrested her husband for the murder, taken him out of her life.”

Silva shook his head. “She didn’t want us to take him out of her life. She wanted to do it herself. José Frade killed the only thing in life that mattered to her except her children. She decided to pay him back in kind. And she did. Anything else, she thought, would be too good for him.”

“Okay,” Hector said, “I’ve got it now. But, if we’re to use those letters to nail those people, there’s one crucial question you’ve left unanswered.”

Silva anticipated it. “You want to know if there’s an admission of the genocide in one or more of Patricia’s letters? Answer: no. There isn’t. Not a word. And no threats either.”

“Meaning that, as far as the genocide is concerned, all we’ve got, at the moment, is the testimony of a dead man, about a telephone conversation that Patricia will deny ever took place.”

Silva shook his head. “We’ve got more,” he said. “We’ve got the pride of a jealous husband, and a wife who knows what he’d be capable of if he were free to get at her.”

“Jealousy and fear. You think that’s going to be enough?”

“That,” Silva said, “and a little gentle massaging of the truth. Enough talk. Gilda, please go to the Grand and tell Osvaldo we’ll need a room on the second floor with a good, strong door. Hector, you and Babyface”—Gonçalves winced, but didn’t object when Silva used his hated nickname—“go to the Toledo’s home, arrest Patricia, bring her to the hotel and lock her in that room.”

“And meanwhile?” Hector said.

“Arnaldo and I will arrest Hugo at his office. We’ll be bringing him to the
delegacia
.”

“So we’re going to keep them apart?”

“Yes, and if either team happens to encounter them together, separate them immediately. I intend to begin with her husband before you get back, but don’t worry, you won’t be missing anything. He’s not going to crack, not right away.
She’s
the one who’s going to crack. We’ll meet you at the hotel just as soon as we’ve completed our first session with his honor, the mayor.”

H
UGO
T
OLEDO
’
S
initial reaction, when they told him about his wife’s affair with Torres, was disbelief. “Patricia? With Torres? Impossible! She couldn’t stand him.”

“She lied,” Silva said. “Have a look at these.”

He offered the stack of photocopies.

Toldedo snatched them out of his hand. “It looks like her handwriting,” he admitted, after reading the first three, “but I still don’t believe it. These are forgeries.”

“And if I were to tell you that her fingerprints are on the originals?”

“Is that true?”

“Yes, Senhor Toledo, it is.”

The mayor tossed the stack on the table. “That bitch!” he
said, his eyes narrowing. And then added, suspiciously, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m hoping you’ll get angry enough to tell us your side of the story.”