The Ways of Evil Men (8 page)

“So we fly?”

“That would be my advice. But there are no scheduled flights. You’ll have to charter a plane. You figure Sampaio
is going to pop for that? He’s not exactly famous for sharing the wealth.”

“If he refuses,” Arnaldo said, “we’ll squeal to his sister.”

“His sister?”

“Never mind,” Silva said. “Just Arnaldo’s little joke.”

Barbosa looked at his watch. “As much as I’m enjoying this visit,” he said, “you’d better leave right now if you want to have any hope of getting there today. The runway doesn’t have lights. You can’t land after dark.”

“This is getting better and better,” Arnaldo said.

“You think
getting
there is bad?” Barbosa said. “Believe me, what’s waiting for you is worse.”

“T
HIRTEEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED
Reais,” the woman at the air charter company said.

“
Thirteen thousand four hundred?
” Silva echoed, incensed. “That’s crazy.”

“Out and back, fuel and tax, thirteen four,” she rattled off, stone-faced. “That’s the price.”

“That aircraft shouldn’t cost more than fifteen hundred an hour.”

“It never did until the other charter company went bust, and we became the sole option. That’s when my boss raised his prices.”

“Your boss is a thief.”

“I hear that a lot.”

“We can’t afford thirteen four. No way.”

“I hear that a lot, too.”

“And yet it’s a matter of life and death. We have to get there before dark.”

“Is that a fact?” She looked like she’d heard that one a lot as well.

“It is. Look.” He showed her his warrant card.

“Oh,” she said. “Cops.”

“That’s right.
Federal
cops.”

She lowered her voice, looked around to make sure no one was listening. “It’s just the two of you, right?”

Silva nodded.

“Well, I didn’t tell you this, but our other three-forty is fueling for a flight to the same place and with only one other
passenger. The three-forties accommodate five. Maybe you could team up and split the cost.”

“Bless you,” Silva said. “Where is he?”

T
HE OTHER
passenger wasn’t a he, it was a she.

“You dropped from heaven,” the young woman said. “I was just sitting here trying to figure out how I was going to explain to my editor how I managed to spend thirteen thousand four hundred Reais to charter a plane that should have cost half that.”

“So you’re a journalist?”

She nodded. “
Folha de Manha
, São Paulo. And you’re Mario Silva, right?”

“How did you know?”

“I read my own newspaper. Your picture is in it all the time. Your boss’s, too. Now there’s a publicity whore if ever there was one. He can’t get enough of the limelight, that guy.”

“No comment,” Arnaldo said.

She turned to him. “And you’re Arnaldo Nunes.”

“And you’re well-informed.”

“Actually,” she said, extending a hand, “I’m Maura Mandel.” She shook hands with Silva as well. “Don’t you just love Belem? If I’d known what these people were going to charge, I would have hired a plane in some big town further south, skipped this hellhole entirely, and had them fly me directly to Azevedo.”

“We’ve got three more people coming up tomorrow from São Paulo,” Silva said, “and that’s what I’m going to tell them to do.”

“Maybe,” she said, “we can do the same deal on the flight back. Hire a flight down there, and have them come to pick us up. I could drop you off in Brasilia on the way. It’s not much of a detour.”

“No,” Silva said, “it’s not. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“It’s got to be more than a coincidence that a journalist from one of the country’s major newspapers just happens to be going to a little town in Pará on the same day we do. Do you, by any chance, know a young lady by the name of Lana Nogueira?”

“I do.”

“And you’re aware that she’s the niece of my boss, with whom you also seem to have a certain degree of familiarity.”

“Yes.”

“May I therefore assume that you not only know why Arnaldo and I are on our way to Azevedo, but that you’re going there to report on it?”

“People have told me that you’re good at what you do, Chief Inspector. I’m beginning to see why they say that.”

“Don’t try flattering me, Senhorita Mandel. It doesn’t work.”

“I’m sorry you thought it was flattery. It wasn’t.”

“Then I apologize. Do you also know Jade Calmon?”

“She’s my best friend. She and I and Lana all went to school together. Sacred Heart, in São Paulo.”

“What inspired Jade to call you?”

Maura told him.

“I regret,” he said when she was done, “that the three of you had to go to such lengths to get the justice system working on this. As an officer of the law, it embarrasses me.”

“I don’t regret it at all. If we hadn’t done what we did, and I mean this most sincerely, we wouldn’t have had you working on the case. We would have been stuck with the fellow who runs your field office here in Belem, and he wouldn’t have done shit.”

“Very eloquently put,” Arnaldo said.

“It comes from hanging around in newsrooms. We all talk like that.”

“Delegado Barbosa’s reputation precedes him, I see,” Silva said, “even among the ladies and gentlemen of the press.”

“There are no ladies and gentlemen of the press. We’re all vulgarians. But yes, his reputation precedes him. Follows him, too, and hangs over his head. I checked up on him after he gave Jade the runaround. If it wasn’t for his political connections, I’m told, he would have been out on his ass a long time ago.”

“No comment,” Silva said.

“But there are those,” Arnaldo said, “who might say you’ve been told correctly.”

She grinned. “I see you have some experience of journalists.”

D
ESPITE HER SPIRITED DEFENSE
of Amati to Borges, Jade harbored doubts. The Indian was capable of violence. She’d witnessed that the previous day, had almost been a victim of it herself. But if he was guilty, what spark could have set him off? And why would he have chosen Torres as a victim? And how likely was it that he’d consumed alcohol?

Osvaldo might be able to help her answer those questions. She grabbed her purse and made for his hotel, where she found him seated in the bar, almost as if he’d been waiting for her to arrive.

“You heard?” she said.

He nodded. “I think maybe you could use some coffee.”

“I could.”

The bar was otherwise empty. Amanda was nowhere in sight. He got up from the table and returned with two cups.

“He didn’t do it,” he said, resuming his seat.

“What makes you so sure?”

“I slung a hammock for him not fifteen minutes after you left. He fell into it like a dead man, was asleep before I left the room.”

“So how likely is it that he would have crawled out of it in the middle of the night, gotten drunk, found a machete, and killed Omar Torres?”

“As unlikely as anything could be.”

“So someone rendered him unconscious and carried him?”

“That would be my guess.”

“How could they have done that without being seen?”

“The back stairway, the one we used when we brought him in.”

He took a hearty swig from his cup. Jade picked up her own. It was too hot, and she set it down again.

“What time did Omar leave?” she asked.

“Around midnight.”

“Drunk?”

“Any drunker and he would have fallen flat on his face. I remember thinking, some day he’s going to kill somebody with that jeep of his.”

“Who was with him before he left?”

Osvaldo closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if he was trying to see the scene in his mind. After a moment, he said, “Five, no, make that six guys. They were all sitting around a table playing poker.”

“Who were they?”

He started counting them off on his fingers. The mayor, the priest, three
fazendeiros—
”

He’d extended three fingers at once. She put her hand on his. “Which three?”

“Bonetti, Frade, and Lisboa.”

“And the sixth man? Who was he?”

“That foreman of Lisboa’s, Pandolfo.”

“I don’t think I know him,” she said.

“You don’t want to. He’s an animal, a
pistoleiro
. Lisboa uses him to keep his laborers in line. He carries a gun, but mostly he uses his fists and his boots.”

“Did Torres fight with anybody about anything?”

“No more than usual. Lisboa can’t play cards for shit, but he keeps doing it. Torres had a gift. He could play well even when he was drunk. He’s taken a lot of money off of Lisboa down through the years, and he can’t help crowing about it.”

Jade picked up her coffee again. Still too hot. “And that would have made Lisboa angry, right?”

“Not just Lisboa, but that bulldog of his as well. And there’s something else that would have pissed them off about Torres, if they knew about it. But I’m not sure they did.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t like to gossip.”

She set down the cup, still untasted. “That’s crap, Osvaldo. You
love
to gossip. And you wouldn’t have started unless you intended to finish. So let’s hear it.”

“You know that waterfall on the Jagunami?”

“The one with the pool? The one where people go to swim?”

“Yeah, but mostly on the weekends. During the week, the place is almost always deserted.”

“And?”

“And a couple of months ago, on a weekday morning, Torres came into town to buy something or other. His way home goes right by that waterfall. He decided to stop by for a swim. So he parked his jeep, walked through the brush to the falls, and what did he see?”

“What?”

“Pandolfo buggering his boss, right there on the rocks.”

“So the two of them are homosexuals?”

“Or bisexuals, or maybe Lisboa just pays Pandolfo to do it. God knows, but I do know one thing.”

“Which is?”

“That Torres told the story to everyone who was willing to listen. And those he told must have told others.”

“So the whole town would have had a good laugh about it.”

“Especially about Pandolfo, him always playing the
cabra macho
and all.”

“You think that if they’d found out—”

“They might have killed Torres? Maybe. But there were other people in this town that might have had it out for him.”

“Like whom?”

“Torres was a real ladies’ man. And most of those ladies are married.”

“In a town like this, that’s probably dangerous.”

“It is.”

“You know any names? Of some of the women, I mean.”

Osvaldo didn’t like the question, she could see that. He pursed his lips, put both palms on the table and pushed back his chair to increase the distance between them. “Jade, I … Look, I’d like to help, I would, but this is my stock in trade. I rent rooms to those people. They have a right to my discretion.”

“This is a man’s life we’re talking about here.”

“You got a point. And it’s a bum rap. It’s clear as cheap cachaça that Borges arrested the wrong man.”

“So out with it. In a situation like this, you
can’t
keep quiet.”

Osvaldo sighed, scratched the side of his nose, leaned forward again.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you didn’t get it from me.”

“Understood. I promise.”

“The wives of three of those guys at the table.”

“
Three
?”

“Like I said, Omar was a real ladies’ man.”

“Which three?”

“The mayor, Bonetti, and Frade.”

Again, Jade picked up her cup. It had cooled. She took a sip. “So, from what you’re telling me, the only man sitting at that table who didn’t have a reason to kill Omar Torres—”

“Was the priest,” Osvaldo said.

O
SVALDO SERVED HER A
light lunch, and Jade tried to do justice to it, but wound up leaving most of it on her plate. Just before one, they left the Grand and walked around the corner to the
delegacia
. A crowd had gathered in front of the little brick building, many of them women.

Someone spotted Jade and said, “It’s that FUNAI woman.”

Someone else said, “She’s here to get that murderer out of there.”

Norma Prado, a cashier from Paulo Cunha’s supermarket, ran up to Jade and spit in her face.

“Indian lover!” she said.

Another woman kicked Osvaldo in the shin. “Shame!” she said.

“Ouch, Ofelia,” he said. “That hurt.”

“It was supposed to. Shame on you, helping this, this … FUNAI woman”—she made FUNAI sound like an epithet—“to defend some dirty Indian. You make your living in this town. Don’t you think you should be on our side?”

Jade recognized her. Ofelia Prado was a close friend of her housekeeper, Alexandra Santos.

“Don’t you think the Indian has a right to be heard?” she asked.

“He’s got a right to a noose,” someone in the crowd said.

Jade thought the voice sounded like Alexandra’s. She looked around, but didn’t see her.

“Why don’t you just go home to São Paulo, or wherever else you came from?” Norma the Spitter said.

“Norma’s right,” another woman shouted, “the bitch is an Indian lover!”

“Indian lover! Indian lover! Indian lover!” Soon the whole crowd was chanting it.

Jade and Osvaldo, the voices ringing in their ears, jostled their way to the front door. They found it blocked by one of Borges’ men carrying a shotgun.

“We’re expected,” Jade said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He didn’t sound any more welcoming than the people in the crowd, but he stepped aside.

They found Borges and Father Castori drinking coffee in the delegado’s office. Jade found a paper handkerchief in her purse and, spotting a mirror on the wall, went to clean off the woman’s saliva.

“What are
you
doing here?” the priest asked the hotelkeeper.

“I brought him along to translate,” Jade said.

The priest glared at her reflection in the mirror. “
I’m
here for that,” he snapped. And then, to Osvaldo, “I always suspected your sympathies were on the side of the Indians. Now, I’m sure of it. Leave. Your services won’t be required”