Every Bitter Thing (20 page)

“I bent over and looked through the keyhole.”

“What did you see?”

“Nothing. I couldn't see Mansur, and I couldn't see the person who'd come in. But by that time, I was convinced that someone was beating him.”

“Why? Why were you convinced?”

“The sounds. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Like that. They went on and on.”

“No voices?”

“The john screamed a couple of times, begged whoever was doing it to stop.”

“And before that?”

“He said something when he first opened the door, and the person outside said something back, but I couldn't hear what it was.”

“Can you remember Mansur's words?”

“He said, ‘What the fuck is it?' or something like that. He wasn't at all polite.”

“How about the voice of the person who knocked on the door. Any accent? Any speech defect?”

“I told you. I couldn't hear him.”

“What did you do then?”

“I got the hell out of there, that's what! I grabbed my shoes and purse, climbed through the bathroom window, jumped the wall in back, ran down to the road, and hightailed it back to town.”

“How? How did you get back to town?”

“Stuck my leg out and my thumb in the air and hitchhiked. The guy who picked me up was interested in a program, but my head was all fucked up by what had happened. I gave him a quick blow job, and he dropped me where I could get a taxi.”

“Why didn't you call the police?”

“Me? Call the police? Just because somebody got beat up? Get real.”

“When did you find out Mansur was dead?”

“When I got up this afternoon. I saw it on the news.”

“And you still elected not to come forward?”

Moura squirmed in his chair.

“No,” he said. “You got it all wrong.”

“How so?”

“A beating is one thing. Murder? That's like, like
really
serious. I was going to do it. I was going to talk to the cops first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Sure you were,” Silva said.

“You don't have to take that tone with me, Chief Inspector. I'm not a criminal. You may disapprove of my lifestyle, but what I do isn't illegal, and I'd never, ever hurt anyone.”

Moura was indignant, and if he wasn't sincere, he was a damned good actor.

Chapter Thirty-Two

W
HEN THE VIDEO DISC
arrived from Miami, Gonçalves was at Guarulhos airport waiting for it. It was almost two in the morning by then, but Mainardi and Caetano were there, too, working the midnight to eight shift. By two thirty, they were all huddled in front of a television screen.

“Nope,” Mainardi said, after the first group of passengers filed by the camera.

“I backed it up to the previous flight,” Gonçalves said. A new group of travelers started passing in review. “This is it. Pay attention.”

Half a minute later, Mainardi sat bolt upright in his chair.

Gonçalves reacted by freezing the image.

Caetano put his finger on the screen, pointing out a man with a brown birthmark on his cheek. “Motta,” he said.

The image was sharp and clear, ideal for lifting a photo. Gonçalves made a note of the timecode so he could locate it again with ease. “All right,” he said, “now let's find the priest.”

S
ILVA, ANXIOUS
to see the video, got up at six in the morning. By seven, he was at the São Paulo field office, where a yawning Gonçalves was waiting for him.

“You look like you could use some sleep.”

“I'll get my second wind any time now,” Gonçalves said.

Silva believed it. Gonçalves, he knew, could spend an entire night clubbing and put in a full day thereafter.

“Ah, youth,” he said.

“Practice too,” Gonçalves said.

Silva rubbed his hands in anticipation. “All right,” he said, “let's get to it. Who's first?”

“Motta.”

“Play it.”

Gonçalves did, freezing the image as he'd done with the Customs agents.

“I had time before you got in,” he said, “so I lifted the best frame. No hits on the database.”

“Damn. You put it in circulation?”

Gonçalves nodded. “Every border control point, every field office, and every delegacia.”

“Good. Who's next?”

“The kid.” He unfroze the image. They watched in silence for a while, then: “There. That's him.”

“Doesn't look nervous at all,” Silva said. “Why did they pick on him?”

“One of them took a dislike to him,” Gonçalves said.

“Just that? No good reason at all?”

“No good reason at all.”

Silva ran a hand through his hair.
“Canalhas,”
he said. “Where's the priest?”

“Coming up. I didn't bother with the timecodes. All the business-class people boarded together. It's just as fast to let it run.”

They went through an eerie parade of the dead: Juan Rivas, Professor Paulo Cruz, Victor Neves, Jonas Palhares, Luis Mansur, and then….

“Clancy,” Gonçalves said.

The priest was a handsome man, young, with an open face, dressed entirely in black. A sweater was draped over his shoulders; a small valise was clutched in his right hand.

“You give him the same treatment?” Silva asked.

“Same treatment. The e-mails went out about two hours ago.”

“Let's keep our fingers crossed,” Silva said.

T
HEY GOT
lucky.

The first call came in at three minutes past nine and by then Hector was there to take it. The call was from a delegado in Santo André, a satellite town southeast of the capital.

“You one of the guys who's looking for Abilio Sacca?”

“Who?” Hector said.

“You got him tagged as Darcy Motta, but that's wrong. His name is Abilio Sacca. I got a rap sheet on him as long as my arm. Better yet, I got his ass in a cell. All you gotta do is come over here and pick him up.”

“Where are you?”

“Got something to write with?”

“Go ahead.”

“Avenida Duque de Caxias, 384, in Santo André. It's a gray building. You'll be able to park right in front. Ask for me. In case you didn't get it the first time, the name's Carillo, with two l's. I'm the delegado
titular
.”

“With two l's. Got it. I really appreciate the call, Delegado.”

“Don't mention it. You have something on him you can make stick? I got enough problems in this district without Abilio Sacca running around loose.”

F
IFTEEN MINUTES
later another call came in. This one was routed to Gonçalves.

“Agent Gonçalves? Ricardo Vasco speaking. I'm the day manager at the Hotel Gloria. You dropped by a while back—”

“Yes, Senhor Vasco. I remember you.”

“The guest you asked about? Dennis Clancy?”

“Yes?”

“He's back. He and his wife just checked in.”

“His
wife
? Clancy is a priest!”

“Yes, I know. Distressing, isn't it? I regret to say it happens quite often.”

“Tell your people to stay away from the room. Where will I find you?”

“At the reception desk.”

“I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Gonçalves hung up and dialed Hector's extension. Silva answered.

“Don't go alone,” Silva said when Gonçalves finished talking.

“You don't want to be in on the bust?”

“Hector and I have a line on Darcy Motta. We're going to Santo André. Take Arnaldo and bring in the priest.”

I
N THE
days when the Avenida Ipiranga was the jewel of São Paulo's thoroughfares, the Hotel Gloria was the jewel of the Avenida Ipiranga.

But those days were long gone.

The lobby still boasted silver-plated chandeliers and faux-Aubusson carpeting, but brass had begun to shine through the silver and the carpeting had worn thin.

The Gloria's restaurant had never managed to find quite the right chef or maitre. It had closed for renovation in the late eighties. More than two decades later, it was still closed, and the renovation was no further along than the sign on the door. Management put up a new one every six months (sooner if someone swiped it), to sustain the illusion of a future reopening.

All the rooms in the Gloria were, with one exception, small. Smaller, certainly, than they should have been in a hotel that charged the prices the Gloria did. The exception was the private suite designed for the owner's personal use. That particular accommodation occupied the entire top floor of the hotel and featured an open-air terrace as big as a parking lot. Their first look at that terrace never failed to engender squeals of delight from the impressionable young ladies the owner had been fond of entertaining there. And that, of course, had been the purpose behind its construction in the first place.

When the owner died in the early seventies, the suite had been taken over by a personality whose real name was Meyer Katz, but whom all of Brazil knew as Bobo.

The television program that made Bobo a household name billed itself as a talent hunt. But in reality, performers were chosen not because they
had
talent, but because they
lacked
it. Bobo, dressed in a clown suit and a stovepipe hat with a flower pinned to it, would receive them with great fanfare and give them a big buildup. Then they'd sing, or dance, or tell jokes, or do whatever they thought they could do well—and generally did very badly—until the studio audience would begin to groan and boo. At that point Bobo, feigning surprise and disappointment, would squeeze the rubber bulb on his horn. Honk. Honk. Honk. And the unfortunate performers would be forcibly removed from the stage with a long hook resembling a shepherd's crook. The mere sight of that crook creeping in from offstage was enough to throw the five hundred people in the studio audience, and millions more watching throughout the country, into paroxysms of laughter.

Add to the formula the occasional performer who introduced an element of surprise by demonstrating true talent, add seven scantily clad women who danced to canned music, and you had a recipe that made Bobo a household name for a generation.

And things might have gone on for still another generation if fate hadn't cancelled Bobo's act. One night, returning from dinner with one of the more lissome of his dancers, Brazil's most famous clown had had a fatal heart attack. He collapsed and expired right there in the Gloria's lobby.

This lent cachet to the hotel where he'd lived and died. Many were the tourists who wanted to spend a night in the same place Bobo had spent
his
nights. And many were the tourists who wanted to see the spot where he'd breathed his last.

The widow of the Gloria's original builder, the woman who'd become the hotel's sole proprietress, recognized that Bobo's fading fame wouldn't sustain the place forever. But at the moment it still did.

And thus it was that the Hotel Gloria went on, providing small, relatively clean, overpriced rooms at an occupancy rate that sometimes exceeded eighty percent.

T
HE TWO
cops followed each other through the revolving doors, skirted the easel with the black-bordered photo of Bobo, and headed for the hotel's reception desk.

Ricardo Vasco, as promised, was there to meet them. He was a white-haired gentleman in his mid-sixties, somber and thin. Gonçalves introduced Arnaldo. Arnaldo took the lead.