CHAPTER 7

Captain José Da Silva hung up the telephone and swung his chair to stare from the window of his office on an upper floor of a building in the Rua Dom Manuel in Rio de Janeiro. Before him the beauty of Guanabara Bay spread itself, from the Santos Dumont airport to the rocky walls of Sugar Loaf; a small car crept bravely along the spiderlike cables toward the summit; an ocean liner, one of the last of the breed and proud of it, steamed majestically into the harbor. It was all quite picturesque, but the captain saw none of it. One more death in Paraíso—one more victim of the Death Squad up there. But was it one more link in a chain building toward eventual conviction of someone; or just one more hurtle in the path? It was one thing to chide Wilson for his faith in Judge Magalhães, but Da Silva knew Wilson and knew how rarely the American erred in his evaluation of people.

The captain sighed and returned to the telephone, dialing an internal number. The telephone was answered at once. The captain instructed his assistant, Lieutenant Perreira, to appear before him without stopping to read a book or have a cafezinho, and Perreira, knowing the captain well, was at the side of the desk almost before the captain had hung up.

“Sir?”

“There’s been another Death Squad killing at Paraíso,” Da Silva said quietly without looking up. He studied the notes he had taken. “Supposedly a talent agent. Lived at the Miracopa Palace, apartment 614. He also had an office in the Edifício Rio Branco, number 867.” He looked up at last. “You know the building?”

“Yes, sir. It’s that round-faced building on the corner of the Rio Branco and the Avenida Presidente Wilson.” Perreira was writing in his notebook, a bulky affair; Da Silva had always wondered how the lieutenant ever got it into his pocket. Perreira paused and looked up. “The building’s half-empty now, but some of the movie distribution companies still have offices there and some of the airlines have their offices on the street level in the building.”

Da Silva never questioned where Perreira got his facts; the lieutenant seemed to collect trivia with remarkable ease, and most of it came in handy more often than not. Which is what it took to be a good investigator, Da Silva thought—luck in the trivia you remembered.

“That’s the place. I want everything you can find out about the man. Why did he go to Paraíso in the first place? He was found this morning, but it seems he was killed last night. When did he leave Rio? Did he leave alone? What business did he have there? And—very important—I want to know if he really was a talent agent, whatever that’s supposed to be, or if he was in one of the rackets, which is what I suspect if he’s to follow the formula.” He stared at his assistant. “Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Perreira said, scribbling madly.

“And quickly.”

“Yes, sir.” Perreira finally got it all down. He looked up. “His name, sir?”

Da Silva referred to his notes again. “Valadares. Joaquim Saldanha Valadares. Age about forty—”

“Valadares? Joaquim Valadares?”

Da Silva looked up in surprise. “You know him?”

“If there aren’t two men named Joaquim Saldanha Valadares,” Perreira said with satisfaction—although whether the satisfaction was because he knew the name or because the man was dead was not certain—“then I sure do know that filho de mae! Or at least I know who he is. I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person.” Perreira rubbed one heavy fist against his tattered notebook, indicating how much he would have liked to have met the man, preferably in a dark alley.

“So who is he?”

“When I was in Vice,” Perreira said, “we had a dozen leads to that one, but we could never prove anything. As far as I know the filho was never even arrested, let alone convicted. So Valadares is dead!”

“Yes, he’s dead,” Da Silva said with a patience he was beginning to lose. “So who is he?”

“He is—or was—the biggest cafetão in Brazil,” Perreira said. “Houses in every major city in the country, all run out of Rio; girls from Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina—and not just from South America. And they were high-class places—none of this cheap ten-cruzeiro stuff. He was also cute. We’d close an apartment in the Rua Rainha Elizabeth in the morning, and he’d have the same girls working out of an apartment in the Barrata Ribeiro the same afternoon and manage to get word to the clientele, too. Organized! I have to give him credit for that.”

“He was organized,” Da Silva said dryly. “Somebody disorganized him last night.” He looked at Perreira with a touch of satisfaction. “So that makes four out of the five who were bad boys. Let Mr. Wilson argue against a death squad with those statistics!” He drummed his fingers on the desk while Perreira waited patiently; at last the captain looked up. “Perreira, can you think of any reason why Valadares would go up to Paraíso?” One reason came to him by himself. “Did he have a place up there?”

“You mean with girls, sir? I don’t know, but probably.”

“Well, I’ll get Wilson working on that angle the next time I speak to him. It’ll give him something to do with his time, rather than kicking dirt.” He grinned at the thought, and then straightened his face. “Well, forget about checking on Valadares; I’ll do whatever needs to be done now that we know who he was. How were you doing on Chaney when I called you in?”

Perreira went back to his notebook, flipping pages.

“Here it is, sir,” he said. “Well, he didn’t speak Portuguese, so it’s a good thing they speak English at the Beira Mar. Nobody at the hotel knows anything about his business; he was pretty much of a loner—”

“What about phone calls?”

“A few, but no toll calls, sir.” He shrugged. “And the Beira Mar isn’t a hotel where the operator listens in on calls, sir.”

“Visitors?”

“None that were remembered, sir. I asked.”

Da Silva looked up. “No girls?”

“Not that anyone at the hotel remembers, sir. I asked about that especially.” A sudden thought struck Perreira. “Say, that’s an idea, sir! Maybe this Chaney was in the habit of visiting some of the girls in some of Valadares’ places. Maybe that’s the connection between them.”

“That might be fine as far as Chaney is concerned,” Da Silva said a bit sarcastically, “but it would be a little far for Torres to come. All the way from Porto Alegre just for a girl? They must have houses there.”

“I’m sure,” Perreira said, “and Valadares probably owned all of them or at least some of them.” He swallowed and added, “sir,” as if to take some of the sting out of telling his superior something he should have thought of himself.

Da Silva smiled. “Don’t let a person off when he acts stupid or you’ll never make captain.” His smile faded to be replaced with a frown. “It’s a thought, but it doesn’t feel right. I keep coming back to that same question—why Paraíso? If the connection between these men were girls and houses, why were they all killed in Paraíso? Why were they all brought to Paraíso? Because they were, and I know it. No. There’s another connection.” He looked at Perreira. “What is it?”

Perreira racked his brain for something to say. He hated to be found wanting when the captain wanted answers, but this time he was truly blank. “I don’t know, sir,” he said at last, and then added for lack of anything better., “The only thing I can think of is they all went up there by plane.…”

Da Silva thought about it a moment. “I wonder.… Perreira, get your notebook.”

Perreira wondered what he had said to make the captain wonder. “Yes, sir.”

“I want you to find out if the four men—Torres, Chaney, you know—all flew up to Paraíso with the same airline. Or with the same pilot.”

“Look sir,” Perreira said, now sorry he had opened his big mouth in the first place, “it would be almost impossible. I’m not sure any one airline even services all those cities, and if they did, would different airlines transfer pilots that quickly? I mean, would Cruzeiro do Sul, for example, have a pilot on the Porto Alegre run one day, and then would that same pilot show up, say, on Vasp, flying from Rio to Paraíso a few days later? Or to the Recife-Paraíso run a week earlier? Pardon me, sir, but it seems a little farfetched.”

“It may be,” Da Silva admitted. “Still, suppose Cruzeiro do Sul, or any other line, had a flight that started in Porto Alegre, say. Suppose it stopped in Rio, then went on from Rio to Recife, and from Recife it stopped at Paraíso. Then the pilot would hit each town at a different hour, but that same pilot could hit each city on his run. And if he made the run regularly, he might well have picked up each of our victims and brought them to Paraíso.” He came to his feet. “Come on. I’ll walk you over to the Edifício Rio Branco. While I’m checking out Valadares’ office there, you can go around to the airlines around there and see if any of the personnel ever heard of Chaney, or of anything else helpful. Find out about their pilots. I’ll meet you downstairs later.”

Perreira looked puzzled. “Sir—why does a pilot for the connection between the victims seem better to you than a call girl?”

Da Silva smiled gently. “It doesn’t.”

“You mean, we’re reaching?”

“Exactly,” Da Silva said, “except in this business the secret of success isn’t to say you’re reaching—at least not to a superior. You merely say you’re being thorough.…”

There was a time when the Edifício Rio Branco was the most prestigious business address in Rio de Janeiro, avidly sought after by the major companies, mostly American, but that was a long time ago, before the new skyscrapers with their more modern conveniences began to rise farther along the Avenida Rio Branco in the direction of the Praça Mauá, before the narrow streets of Candalária were removed to permit the construction of the broad Getúlio Vargas with its twenty-story edifices marching side-by-side in almost military rank toward the Ministry of War and the railroad station; before, in fact, many businessmen tired of the problems of the city’s center entirely and began to move to Flamengo, or Botofogo, or even Copacabana itself.

In those distant days when the Edifício had been in its glory, sharing the area with the Senate across Rio Branco, Guanabara Bay had actually lapped the stone wall that formed the opposite side of the Avenida Beira Mar, just short yards away, with small yachts rising and falling lazily on the pulsing water almost beneath the eyes of the building’s occupants. Captain Da Silva, pausing on the top step to the entrance to the building’s lobby, looked at the beautifully landscaped landfill that had now moved the bay nearly half a mile away, and wondered if the many changes in the city really spelled progress. True, in the old days, before the new highways that nearly covered the new fill, it took forever to get from the center of the city to the southern suburbs, but it had been a relaxing ride by trolley—taxis being impossible to obtain—giving one time to properly savor the true flavor of the city. Now one traveled the landfill at ninety miles an hour, frightened every inch of the way, and the trolleys were a thing of the past, together with the stucco walls and the cobblestone streets and the sense of relaxed living. I must be getting old, Da Silva thought, with an inward smile that had more than a touch of nostalgia in it; I haven’t thought of those days since those days, and I was a university student at the time. He turned and walked into the building. Memories were fine, but crime was a now thing. Unfortunately.

The creaking lift, its operator reading O Dia without paying the slightest attention to their route, deposited him on the eighth floor and he walked along the wide terrazzo corridor searching for the proper office number. He almost passed it, for the frosted glass bore no descriptive legend, and the number had long since been almost chipped to oblivion, but it obviously had to be between 865 and 869. He twisted the knob and pushed his way into the office.

To one whose knowledge of theatrical agencies had been gleaned from old motion pictures like Tin Pan Alley, starring Betty Grable and John Payne, the office of Joaquim Saldanha Valadares would have proved a grave disappointment. Not only was there no efficient-and-tough-as-nails secretary to keep the hordes of stage-struck applicants from the aloof agent in the inner office, there was no hordes. Nor was there an inner office. In fact, Da Silva noted, there wasn’t even an old upright piano on which the non-existent stage-struck hordes could prove or disprove their talent. Instead the large barn-like room seemed to be used mainly for the storage of a large number of filing cabinets, and its only occupant was a tough-looking man in need of a shave, cigarette pasted to his lower lip, tilted back in a swivel chair behind a battered desk reading the Jornal de Esportes. He looked up at Da Silva, his face expressionless.

“Yeah?”

Da Silva looked around a moment and then brought his gaze back to the man in the chair. “Senhor Valadares?”

“He ain’t here.”

“Do you know when he’ll be here?”

“When he gets here,” the man said evenly. “He don’t report to me. And who wants to know?”

“Well,” Da Silva said easily, “after all, he’s supposed to be a theatrical agent, I’m told. I’m having this affair, you see, and I’ve been looking for entertainment—”

“You ain’t looking for entertainment,” the man said with a humorless smile. “You’re giving it.” He waved his hand. “Man, you smell cop from here to Nova Iguaçu.” He turned back to his paper. “Go away. You’re wasting my time.”

Da Silva’s jaw tightened. “That’s not polite,” he said quietly.

“It wasn’t meant to be.” The man took his attention from his paper long enough to lean forward and crush out his cigarette in an ashtray on the desk, although the floor bore evidence of having been used for that purpose more frequently. He looked up. “You still here? Look, copper, you want anything, you come back with a warrant and maybe you get it. Otherwise, it’s been nice seeing you, and good-bye.” He leaned back in his chair and raised the paper again.

He did not get to read very far in the article that had interested him, however, because before he could locate his place he felt himself being lifted from the chair by his collar, and then pulled close to the hardest and ugliest face he had seen in a long time. A large hand shifted from his collar to the front of his shirt, bunching it and twisting.

“Let’s start from where I walked in the door,” Da Silva said evenly. “Where’s Valadares?”

“Hey, you’re choking me!”

Da Silva tightened his grip. “Where’s Valadares?”

A hand came up to try and claw the shirt front free; it was slapped down hard. The man shook his hand to ease the pain and coughed. Da Silva twisted tighter.

“Well?”

“All right, all right!” The pressure eased a bit. The man swallowed. “Lousy cops!”

“This isn’t ‘cops’; this is me! Where’s Valadares?”

“I don’t know! Cops! Christ! He said he’d be here this morning but he ain’t shown so far. But he ought to be here soon.” He tried to wriggle his head to free his collar more, but without success. “Hey, did you hear? You’re choking me!”

“When did you see him last?”

“Damn it, ease up, will you?”

Da Silva’s almost Indian features hardened further. “I don’t have all day. When did you see him last?”

“Let go and I’ll talk!” Da Silva released the man and shoved him back into the chair. The man yanked his stained necktie free and rubbed his neck. He stared at Da Silva resentfully, but if he thought of saying anything about his treatment, he changed his mind. “Yesterday,” he said sullenly.

“What time yesterday?”

“Maybe ten-thirty; maybe eleven. Around there. Morning, I know that.”

“Did he say anything about leaving town?”

Despite his discomfort the man looked surprised. “No. You guys got nothing on him. Why should he leave town?”

“That’s what I want to know from you.” Da Silva leaned one haunch against the edge of the desk, relaxing a bit. He brought out a cigarette, lit it, and tossed the spent match on the floor to join the other debris. For a long time he studied the sullen man sitting massaging his neck. “What’s your name?”

There was a second’s hesitation and then, wearily, as if from long practice, answering the question to other police officers, the man said, “Pasmado. Pedro Lins Pasmado.”

“What’s your record?”

“I’m clean—” One look at the rocklike face looking down at him, and he cleared his throat a bit self-consciously. Besides, what difference did it make? He was clean at the moment. “Six years in São José dos Campos.”

“You mean, the last time.”

“That’s right, the last time.”

“What for?”

The man looked down at his hands in his lap and mumbled something.

“Speak up!”

“Rape.”

“Is that your connection with Valadares? A recruiter? What happened? Some girl object?”

Pasmado remained silent. Da Silva changed the direction of his questioning. “Where were you last night?”

Pasmado looked surprised. “Me? I’m clean with the cops. You think I’d be sitting here like a duck on a rock if I wasn’t?”

“That’s not what I asked you. I asked you where you were last night!”

“Last night? Nowhere. I mean,” he said hastily, seeing Da Silva’s eyes narrow, “I was with a gang. We ate at the Churrascaria Gaucho, the one in Laranjeiras. Then we went to one of them’s place and just sat around, you know, having a beer. You can ask them; you can even ask them at the restaurant. They know me.”

“I’ll believe you until I have reason not to,” Da Silva said, mainly because he couldn’t visualize the character before him having gone to Paraíso to kill anyone. Murder wasn’t his bit; that took more courage than rape. He paused, considering the man before him. Under that inscrutable and incomprehensible stare, Pasmado began to fidget. Then, when it was the last thing he had been expecting, he heard the ugly pock-marked detective leaning against the desk say slowly, quietly, “Valadares was killed last night.”

For a moment the information didn’t register; when it did Pasmado’s first reaction was resentment that the miserable cop had asked him where Valadares was when he knew all the time. This feeling was quickly replaced by anger.

“You cops couldn’t get anything on him legally, so you wiped him out! Nobody else would have any reason to!”

Da Silva disregarded the comment; it was too close to his own theory for comfort. “He was killed in a small town called Paraíso. In Piauí state. You know it?”

“What?” Pasmado shook his head; there was a touch of relief in his voice when he spoke, because, after all, Valadares owed him money, and when the cop had first spoken, he had thought the money gone forever. “You got the wrong man. Like I said, Joaquim was here, yesterday morning, right in this office.”

Da Silva continued to hold the man in his unwavering stare.

“Joaquim Saldanha Valadares. Age about forty. Neat dresser. Small mustache. Lived at the Miracopa Palace, apartment 614. Height, about five ten; weight about one-seventy.” Pasmado was staring at him, unbelieving. “Shot once in the chest and once in the head. Found near an old road by a lake in Paraíso, in the state of Piauí. This morning about eleven-thirty.” He thought a moment. “He also had a small mole back of one knee—I forget which one.”

Pasmado had gone pale. “But—it’s impossible! He was here yesterday, I tell you! Why would he have gone to Paraíso at a moment’s notice?”

Da Silva felt a touch of relief. After all, other than a description of the man that would also have fit thousands of others, all they really had to identify the man were some business and social cards, and as he himself had pointed out, anyone could have cards printed.

“It’s not impossible at all,” he said evenly. “It’s less than a three-hour flight. Did Valadares have a house up there?”

“I don’t know,” Pasmado said slowly. “But I’m sure he had no plans to go there. I would have known. And he was going to meet me here this morning.”

“Except he went to Paraíso.” Da Silva allowed his voice to show his doubt. “And you claim you don’t know why.”

Pasmado looked hurt. “I don’t claim; I don’t know! It just don’t make sense.”

Which is my line, Da Silva thought. “All right. Exactly what time did you see him yesterday?”

“I told you. Ten-thirty, or eleven. Closer to eleven, I think.” Pasmado screwed up his face in an effort to properly remember. “He said he was going to get himself a haircut—he had it trimmed every week. Me, I’m lucky I get to see a barber once every couple months. Then he said he was going to get some lunch. He didn’t say what he was going to be doing in the afternoon, but he definitely said he’d meet me here this morning. Here.” He pointed to the floor to eliminate any doubt.

“About what?”

“Business,” Pasmado said, and clamped his jaw shut.

Da Silva didn’t press it. “Where did he usually have lunch?”

Pasmado shrugged; this was safe ground. “Lots of places. If he wasn’t staying downtown for any reason, he usually ate at the Miracopa so he could go up to his apartment and grab a nap later. Or if he was with other people, he usually ate there. He liked it by the pool. Of course sometimes he ate other places, too, like Mario’s, or, if he wanted Italian, Sorrento’s in Leme—”

Da Silva didn’t feel like listening to a run-down of all the restaurants in Copacabana; he knew most of them, to his sorrow. “And where’s his barbershop?”

“Downstairs. In this building. Second floor.” Pasmado looked at him, curious. “Why?”

“I need a trim. Which one was his barber?”

“Armando, himself. He’s the owner.”

“Always the best for Valadares, eh?” Da Silva smiled a humorless smile and came to his feet. He brought out his wallet, extracted a card, and laid it on the desk before the seated man. Pasmado picked it up gingerly, as if it might have been dipped in curare. Da Silva gestured toward the small bit of cardboard. “That’s my card. If you hear anything, or remember anything useful, get in touch. We want to know why Valadares went to Paraíso, and if he didn’t go alone, we want to know with whom.”

Pasmado remained silent, looking at the card. Da Silva walked to the door.

“And don’t leave town without permission,” he said evenly. “I can arrange it so our delegacia here can make São José dos Campos look like a convent.”

He closed the door behind him. Pasmado stared at the closed door. That’s what you say, he thought sourly. You ain’t never been to Sao Jose dos Campos.…