ERNESTO WAS PROVING TO be of no help at all. In fact, he was proving to be a downright pain in the ass. To every-one’s relief, including Clarice’s, Silva suggested Babyface take him home.
“Why?” Ernesto asked suspiciously.
“We’re going to see that secondhand furniture dealer,” Silva said. “There are three of us and your wife makes four. It’s a small car.”
“I’m not a big guy. You can pack me in. I know my rights.
Rights? What rights?”
“My wife hasn’t done anything. Me neither. You got noth-ing to arrest us for.”
“We’re not arresting you.”
“No?”
“No.”
“So you need my wife to go with you voluntarily?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t need me?”
“No.”
“Clarice, you want to go with these cops? You want to go back to that shop? Again?”
“I want to see the end of this, Ernesto. I want to find out what happened to Augusta and her family. I’m going.”
“You see?” Silva said. “It’s voluntary. She’s simply agreeing to help us with our inquiries.”
“Aha,” Ernesto said, as if he’d caught Silva in an admis-sion of wrongdoing.
“What do you mean, aha?”
“It’s the duty of every citizen to help the cops with their inquiries, right?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s my duty to go along, too.”
“But we don’t need you,” Silva said.
“Let me get this straight. Are you suggesting I don’t do my duty as a citizen? What kind of cop are you, anyway?”
“You’d better let him come, too,” Clarice said, putting a hand on Silva’s arm. “Otherwise, I’ll never hear the end of it.
Gonna be a tight fit,” Babyface said.
WHEN THEY entered his secondhand furniture shop, Goldman was standing at a counter near the door, reviewing some paperwork. He looked up when he heard the bell, but the budding smile vanished from his lips when he saw the Portellas and their companions.
“What, again?” he said.
“It’s the federal police this time,” Clarice said apolo-getically.
“Federal, schmederal,” Goldman said, “the police are the police.”
“I’m Chief Inspector Silva. This is Delegado Costa and that’s Agente Gonçalves.”
They all shook hands.
“No offense,” Goldman said, “but I think your visit is a waste of time. I already told everything I know to that Japanese fellow.”
“Delegado Tanaka,” Silva said. “He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Somebody blew him up with a bomb. It happened before he filed his report of his conversation with you. We think it might have had something to do with what you told him.”
“
Caralho.
A bomb, huh? He have kids?”
“Two. Both daughters.”
Goldman shook his head.
“The violence in this town is beyond belief,” he said. “I should move to Israel.”
“Or maybe not,” Silva said. “They’ve got bombs there, too.
Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Okay, how can I help?”
“What can you tell us about this guy Roberto Ribeiro?”
“She was here,” Goldman said, pointing at Clarice. “She must have told you.”
“We want to hear it from you,” Hector said.
“Not much to tell. Ribeiro came in here with a load of fur-niture. I bought it off him, sold some of it. Then this lady and her husband—”
“Me,” Ernesto said.
“Yeah, you,” Goldman said, looking at Ernesto’s T-shirt and beret with distaste, “came in and started looking at the merchandise.”
“
Overpriced
merchandise,” Ernesto said.
“You told me that the first time you were in here,” Goldman said. “You don’t like my prices, go buy from some-body else.”
“I’ll buy from anyone I like,” Ernesto said. “Last I heard it’s still a free country, although God knows for how—”
“Shut up, Ernesto,” Clarice and Silva said in almost per-fect unison.
“Just get on with the story,” Silva said.
“Okay, so this lady here finds some furniture she thinks belongs to a friend of hers. I tell her I bought the stuff fair and square and that I’ve got a canceled check to prove it. She says her friend would never have sold it. I say she must have. She goes off and a couple of days later she comes back with the Jap . . . uh, I mean, Delegado Tanaka. He says he wants to see the canceled check. I give it to him. End of story.”
“So Tanaka held on to the check?”
“And the receipt.”
Silva had a sinking feeling in his chest, but he asked the question anyway: “And you didn’t make a copy?”
Goldman’s answer surprised him: “Of course I made a copy. You think I’m gonna send original checks and receipts to my accountant? What if he loses them? What then? How would I justify my expenses?”
“Senhor Goldman,” Silva said, “I would be most grateful if you would give me those copies.”
“No way,” Goldman said.
Silva frowned.
“I’ll make copies of the copies and give you those,” Goldman said.
THE MAN they were steered to at Ribeiro’s bank, the man who could have given them access to all his account infor-mation, was a vice president by the name of Bertoldo Perduzzi, and he was a stickler for details. Silva explained the situation with great patience. He wheedled. He cajoled. He came close to losing his temper. But Perduzzi wouldn’t budge. He just kept shaking his head.
“It’s not a question of not
wanting
to help you,” he said. “I understand this guy might be some kind of dangerous felon, but what if he isn’t?”
“He is,” Silva said. “I can assure you, he is.”
“Okay, he is. I’ll take your word for it. But accounts in this bank are inviolable and the law’s the law. You give me a war-rant, and I’ll be happy to give you whatever you need. But without a warrant, my hands are tied.”
“There’s a dead man, a delegado by the name of Tanaka, who managed to get whatever the hell he needed out of you people. And he did it without a warrant. How come he could and we can’t?”
“I have no knowledge of this man, Tanaka,” Perduzzi sniffed, “but if he’d come to me I would have told him the same thing.”
“I want to talk to your boss,” Silva said.
And he did. And Perduzzi’s boss backed him up.
The only recourse was the legal route, and Silva took it. There was a judge he knew who was friendly, accommodating, and willing to work from home. But by the time the paper-work was ready, all of the people who could have furnished him with the information he needed had left for the day.
Fuming, Silva was waiting on the doorstep when Perduzzi arrived for work on the following morning. The banker greeted the cop like a cherished customer, wished him a cheerful good morning, scrutinized the warrant, and turned to his computer.
Minutes later, Silva was out the door of the bank and into the waiting car.
“Where to?” Babyface said.
Silva looked at the printout in his hand and rattled off an address.
“Never heard of it,” Babyface said.
“It’s that street under the Minhocão,” Hector said from the backseat. “Crime doesn’t pay.”
“I guess not,” Babyface said, letting out the emergency brake. “Not in his case, anyway. Maybe he’s got a habit, or maybe he gambles.”
“Or maybe he just likes living like a pig,” Hector said.
THE MINHOCÃO had an official name, but no Paulista ever used it; they just called it the Minhocão, the big worm. It was a viaduct that curled between the city center and the
bairro
of Água Branca and had been designed to alleviate the traffic gridlock between the two. For a while, it had done just that, but then the growth of the city clogged that artery, just like it had already clogged most of the others. These days, both the viaduct and the street below were bumper to bumper from early morning to well past midnight seven days a week.
What had once been a middle-class bastion had become cheap and run-down. People chose the neighborhood only if they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
There was no telling what color Ribeiro’s building had originally been, or even if it had been built of blocks, stone, or concrete. Exhaust fumes, and time, had colored the facade a uniform, sooty black, just like the stanchions that supported the viaduct.
For want of a better option, Babyface pulled onto the side-walk, the tires of the car crunching over broken concrete until they came to a stop. There was just enough room between the car and the front of the building to get the door open. While Silva struggled to work his fuller frame through the narrow space, Hector went in for a cursory reconnais-sance of the target. He was back in less than thirty seconds.
“No rear entrance,” he said. “No other way in or out.”
Silva instructed Babyface to stay behind the wheel and to keep an eye on the door. Then he and Hector trudged up three flights of stairs and located Roberto Ribeiro’s apart-ment. The doorbell didn’t work, or perhaps it couldn’t be heard over the rumble of traffic, so after three unsuccessful attempts, Hector pounded on the door with his fist.
There was no response. He tried it again, knocking even harder. If Ribeiro was in there, there was no way he wouldn’t have heard it.
“Police,” Silva said. “Open up.”
Still no response. Both men took out their pistols. Silva tried the knob. It was locked. Hector examined the door and the frame.
“A cinch,” he said, “unless he’s in there and has it bolted from the inside.”
“Do it,” Silva said.
Hector was lifting his foot when a door across the hall opened.
“What’s all this fuss?” a woman with a carioca accent said. She looked to be in her late sixties, was wearing a housecoat, and carrying a cat. The cat didn’t take its eyes off Hector.
“Do you know the man who lives here?” Silva pointed at Ribeiro’s door.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Federal Police.” Silva produced his identification and held it up in front of her. She took a pair of reading glasses that were dangling from a chain around her neck, put them on the end of her nose, and leaned in for a closer look. Apparently satisfied, she stroked the cat and answered Silva’s question.
“I know him. He’s been here just about as long as I have. Three years. Seems like a nice boy. Polite.”
“Name of Roberto Ribeiro? Carioca? Mustache?”
“Yes, all of that. What do you want with him?”
“Police business. Do you know where he is?”
The woman shook her head and transferred the cat to her other arm. The cat blinked and then went back to looking at Hector as if he were a bowl of cream.
“Any idea where he works?” Silva said.
Again, she shook her head, this time stroking the cat with her other hand. The feline began to purr.
“I hardly know him,” she said. “Just, you know, to exchange a few words when we pass in the hall.”
“He live alone?”
“Alone. Yes.”
“Go inside, Senhora, and lock your door.” Silva said.
For a moment, she looked as if she were going to ask another question, but in the end she didn’t. She closed her door without another word. The cops heard her key turn in the lock.
“Remind me to call Dantas,” Silva said.
Now that Ribeiro’s neighbor had seen them, they could no longer claim they’d found the door already smashed. They were going to have to justify the break-in. That meant they’d have to get a predated search warrant, and
that
meant getting Dalton Dantas, that most accommodating of judges, to provide it.
RIBEIRO WASN’T there.
The place was surprisingly clean, even the curtains on the window that overlooked the Minhocão, even the win-dowsill. The curtains must have been washed, and the sill dusted, within the last few days. There was a vase of fresh flowers on the coffee table. The bed was made. There were no dishes in the sink. The place even smelled clean, with faint odors of furniture polish and pine-scented disinfectant.
Hector scratched his head. “Didn’t that woman say he lives alone?”
“She did.”
“Sure as hell doesn’t look like it.”
“No,” Silva said, “it doesn’t.”
“A namorada, you figure?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s gay, or maybe he’s got the world’s best faixineira, but this place doesn’t look like your run-of-the-mill bachelor pad, that’s for sure.”
“If it’s his faixineira,” Hector said, “I’m going to fire mine and hire his. She’ll be looking for a new employer when we put the bastard away.”
The apartment consisted of a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The interior of the kitchen cup-boards was orderly, the rug in the living room was vacuumed, the sheets on the bed had recently been washed and even ironed, and the towels in the bathroom were neatly arranged on a rack.
A thorough search of the apartment turned up nothing of interest. No photos, no letters, no record of Roberto’s work-place. The only papers they found were a stack of bills, some paid, some unpaid, and a checkbook from the Bradesco Bank.
After tossing the place, Silva and Hector canvassed the other apartments in the building. There were sixteen in all, four floors and four apartments on each. They’d already spoken to the woman with the cat. Seven of the other fourteen resi-dents didn’t answer their doors or weren’t at home. They made a note of the apartment numbers for subsequent follow-up.
No one they questioned seemed to know anything about Roberto Ribeiro. He had no social relationship, as far as they could determine, with anyone else in the building. Finally convinced they’d done as much as they could, Silva called in a two-man team.
When the men arrived, he told them to keep the building under surveillance in the hope that Ribeiro would come home sometime soon. He and his nephew went back to Hector’s office.
“Pictures,” he said to Babyface when they got there. “Get me pictures. Ribeiro must have a national identity card, maybe he’s got a record, maybe he’s got a driver’s license, maybe you can track down his family. Make up a circular and an e-mail. Get them to all the field offices, to local and state police, and to the border-crossing checkpoints, particularly the border-crossing checkpoints.”
“Gonna cost a bundle to do all of that,” Hector said. “Sampaio isn’t going to like it.”
“I don’t care. Just do it.”
Babyface nodded and left the office.