An elevator was waiting. The indicator panel skipped every other number. “Lofts,” Seixas said. “Every apartment takes up two floors.”
Victor Neves’s place was on seventeen. His front door opened onto a living area backed by windows rising two stories to the ceiling. A counter divided the living/dining area from the kitchen. An open door led to a guest bathroom. A stairway curved upward.
“Watch your feet,” Seixas said, indicating some dried bloodstains just inside the front door.
“Must have shot him right here,” Hector said.
“Uh-huh,” Seixas agreed. He pointed to a much larger bloodstain near the sofa. “And beat him to death over there.” One side of the blood pool had a straight edge. “There was a carpet,” Seixas said. “They took it for analysis.”
“And?”
“Lots of fibers and stuff. Some interesting blond hairs, so they tell me, but we’ve got nothing to compare them with, so they’re all pretty useless at this stage.”
“I take it Neves’s girlfriend is not blond.”
“You take it right. She’s a brunette.”
The downstairs area was small, the furnishings sparse. The kitchen had all of the modern conveniences, including a dishwasher, but everything in miniature. The apartment was spacious enough for a couple, but not for a couple with kids. Telltale smudges of black fingerprint powder showed on many of the surfaces.
“What’s upstairs?” Hector asked.
“A bed and a bathroom. Go ahead. Have a look. I’ll stay here. I’ve seen it already, and I have bad knees.”
Hector climbed the stairs, stood at a metal rail, and took in the view of the city. Beyond the urban sprawl, a mountain range showed bluish in the haze.
Seixas looked up at him from below. “The shades were down when Neves was found,” he said. “He’d probably closed them for the night.”
Closets with sliding doors lined the far side of the sleeping area. Next to the bed was a small table with a clock radio, a reading lamp, and a copy of a novel written by Paulo Coelho. Hector picked up the book and absently flipped through the pages. A bookmark slipped out and fell to the floor. He picked it up, looked at it, and went downstairs to show it to Seixas.
“Neves was reading Guerreiro da Luz. He left it on the nightstand next to his bed. Guess what he was using for a bookmark?”
“Tell me,” Silva said.
“A boarding pass for a flight from Miami International to Sao Paulo Guarulhos. Neves’s name was on it. He was in Miami last November.”
“And so was Rivas. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“A long shot, I know-”
“A very long shot.” Silva grabbed a ballpoint from the porcelain mug on his desk. “Date?”
“The twenty-second of November.”
“Airline?”
“TAB.”
“Flight number?”
“8101.”
“Got it. Did you get a chance to speak to Janus?”
“I did.”
Janus Prado was the head of Sao Paulo’s homicide squad.
“Did he have anything more on that thug Joao Girotti?”
“He was busted on a burglary charge, but in the end they couldn’t hold him. The witness, the only witness, recanted.”
“Bought off?”
“Or scared off. Girotti was released on the afternoon of the day he was killed. If he’d stayed in jail, he might still be alive. The term ‘protective custody’ comes to mind.”
“Don’t be a wiseass. You’re starting to sound like Arnaldo.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“What else?”
“Prado’s guys are doing no more than go through the motions. Their feeling is that whoever killed Girotti did the city a favor.”
“Did they question the people in the bar?”
“Only briefly. Girotti was there celebrating his release. He drank nonstop from about five in the afternoon until nine or nine thirty at night. Then he left. His body was discovered fifteen minutes later.”
“He left alone?”
“No. With a woman.”
“That kind of a bar, eh?”
“That kind of a bar.”
“Maybe the killer got the woman to lure him outside.”
“You don’t think Girotti is a dead end? Somebody else’s victim?”
“You saw the photos?”
“I saw the photos. Unlikely, huh?”
“Very. But it won’t be long before we know for sure. I should have the ballistics results on those bullets by tomorrow at the latest. Is Babyface back from Rio?”
“Should be by now.”
“Send him over to that bar.”
Chapter Ten
The Bardoelias was a shabby establishment with a sign in the front window offering beer for two reais.
Haraldo Goncalves wasn’t about to miss out on a deal like that. He bellied up to the bar and rapped his knuckles on the wood.
“A Cerpa,” he said.
“Beer’s only for folks old enough to drink.” The bartender grinned.
His attempt at humor failed miserably. “Take a good fucking look,” Goncalves said, flourishing his warrant card in the bartender’s face.
“Brahma or Antarctica?” the bartender said.
“I told you. Cerpa.”
“No Cerpa. We only got Brahma and Antarctica.”
“Antarctica, then.”
The bartender reached into a cooler, pulled out a cold bottle, and poured half of the contents into a glass. He set the glass and the bottle on the bar between them.
“You look too young to be a cop,” he said.
“No shit. Elias around?”
“Elias sold me this place back in 1997. I never got around to changing the name.”
“And yours is?”
“Renato Cymbalista, but nobody calls me that. They call me Gordo.” The word meant fatty, and it was appropriate.
“Gordo, huh?” Goncalves said, eying Cymbalista’s vast midriff. “I can’t imagine why.”
He was still miffed about the fat man’s attempt at humor.
“You in my place on business, or pleasure?” Gordo asked.
Goncalves looked around him with distaste and curled his lip. “What do you think?” he said. “Were you working the night Joao Girotti was murdered?”
“Yeah.”
“How well did you know him?”
“I didn’t know him at all. Why he chose my place to drink in, and the alley out in back to get killed in, I couldn’t say.”
“Did you talk with him?”
“Just to take his orders.”
“What was he drinking?”
“Beer with Dreher chasers.”
Goncalves wrinkled his nose. Conhaque Dreher, cachaca flavored with ginger, was just about the cheapest distilled spirit you could buy.
“Got pretty drunk, did he?”
“He got wasted.”
“Think back. Did he talk to anyone else?”
“I don’t have to think back, on account of I already told the story twice. By now, I got it memorized. First, I told it to the uniformed guys who showed up just after Graca found the body. Then I-”
“Who’s Graca?”
“One of the girls.”
“She works for you?”
“None of them work for me. We got an arrangement. They use the place to pick up customers, and the customers buy them drinks. Like that, see?”
“How did Graca find the body?”
“The women’s toilet is out there.” Gordo shot a thumb in the direction of the rear door. “She walked out to use it, and she stumbled over him.”
“This was how long after he left?”
“Ten minutes? Fifteen? Not long.”
“Back to my question: did he talk to anyone else?”
“Just the girl who was sitting at his table, the one he left with.”
“And that would be?”
Gordo shrugged. “Some blond,” he said. “I never saw her before. She shoulda come over and talked to me first, but she didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you talk to her?”
“The guy was buying anyway, and I was busy.”
“Seen her since?”
Gordo shook his head.
His eyes now accustomed to the dim light, Goncalves checked out his surroundings. Standing at the bar, just a few meters away, an old man with bleary eyes was staring straight ahead and nursing a drink.