“Yes, sir.” Ruy hesitated a moment. “There’s just one thing, Captain. I have a brother in construction work, and I know a little about it. These companies, even the big ones, usually don’t have a large permanent staff. They have their engineers and estimators and a few field superintendents, plus their office help, but the operários they generally pick up as they need them. Construction labor is mostly made up of floaters.”
“That’s true,” Da Silva admitted, and thought a moment more. “All right, then here’s what you do. Get a list of every job the company has worked on for the past year — no, make that the past two years — and a list of each man who worked on each job. When he started and when he left. And what he did. They’ve got to have those records someplace. And the regulars we talked about before, of course. All right?”
“Yes, sir. It’ll take time, though.”
“You have exactly two days,” Da Silva said evenly. “Somebody from the directoria ought to be available today, holiday or not. Find him, drag him out of bed if you have to, and get out to Duque de Caxias and start digging into those records. I want that information, and I want it fast. Hear?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Good. Get going.” Da Silva dropped the receiver on the hook and swung around. Wilson was watching him curiously.
“What’s up?”
Da Silva looked at him with a thoughtful frown. “Do you remember that day in the restaurant at Santos Dumont? The day we met Jill? You remember while we were waiting I told you about a bridge that had been blown up in the interior and a man killed in the process? Well, the man who was killed worked at one time or another for the Caxias Construction Company.”
Wilson stared at him and then jerked a thumb at the body of the thin man slumped at the foot of the chair.
“You mean the same company this one worked for?”
“That’s right.”
“And you don’t think it a coincidence.” It was a statement.
Da Silva shook his head. “I do not. It would be pretty miraculous, considering that the company is probably small, and probably doesn’t take on jobs more than forty or fifty kilometers from Caxias at the most. Besides, when you consider that Jill’s brother is a geologist missing somewhere in the interior and that the shoe of the man killed up there at the bridge was radioactive—”
“What? You never told me that.”
“I never told you lots of things. In fact, I’ve kept a lot of secrets from myself. Because I never saw any connection until tonight.” His voice was bitter; he got to his feet and began pacing the floor. The body of the fat man barred his passage; he glared down at it. “And where the devil is that wagon?”
As if in answer to his question, the doorbell rang stridently. Wilson walked over and opened the door; two men in white uniforms stood there, a stretcher between their hands. Da Silva nodded in satisfaction.
“Good. All right, men, these are your customers.” He turned to Wilson. “Let’s get the girl ready for travel. We’ll let the ambulance follow us. When we get to the Cantagalo, it can block off the road for a while while we go through the pass. That ought to prevent anyone from trailing us. Your car’s in the garage?”
The two attendants were rolling the body of the fat man onto the stretcher; they came to their feet, studying the situation, trying to determine whether the effort of carrying two bodies at one time was greater or lesser than the effort of making two trips. Wilson walked over to the bedroom door and stood there, barring entrance.
“I’ll get Jill ready alone,” he said with an almost proprietary air. He saw the faint smile on Da Silva’s lips and defended himself bravely. “If your brain is finally beginning to work on this affair, I wouldn’t want you distracted.”
11
Captain Da Silva, alone in the living room of Astrea’s apartment while the others ministered to the unconscious girl in the bedroom, paced the floor restlessly, trying to put his thoughts together. The extremely odd circumstances surrounding the completely dissimilar, but undoubtedly connected, crimes kept teasing him. A small voice in the back of his head kept telling him he had as much information as he required to solve the case, but unfortunately, the small voice sealed its lips stubbornly and merely gave an idiot shrug when he turned on it and demanded to know what that solution was or even what facts he had that might lead to it.
He paused at the wide windows, staring down at the deserted street below for a moment, and swung around, probing the contents of the room as if he might find the answer there. One trouble was that he didn’t know enough about minerals or radioactivity; in fact, didn’t know anything about them. A second was that he didn’t know enough about Jill Howard; even if she gave them a story when she finally regained consciousness, could the story be believed? And the greatest distraction of all, of course, was the femininity of the room in which he stood, and the realization that it was Astrea’s home, and that he felt her presence even when she was not there.
As if in answer to the thought, the door to the bedroom opened, and Astrea emerged silently, softly closing the door behind her. Da Silva suddenly realized it was the first time he had ever seen her without her uniform. She was wearing an evening gown, filmy, but clinging; her hair was up, making her dusky beauty even more striking. She walked to the coffee table and bent down, taking a cigarette and lighting it with the table lighter before Da Silva could fumble a match from his pocket and perform the duty. She straightened up and studied the tall man as if reassessing him.
“I suppose I owe you an apology.”
Da Silva tried to calm the sudden urge he felt to take her in his arms. When did all this happen? he thought. I’ve seen this woman only twice before, and both times she irritated me — once I wanted to break her neck. And such a lovely neck, and attached to such lovely shoulders, attached... He brought his mind back to business.
“How’s Jill? Has she regained consciousness?”
“No, João is examining her now.” She seated herself, tipped her shoes off under the cover of the long gown, and tucked her feet under her. Her large brown eyes studied the face of the man above her. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”
Da Silva looked at her steadily. “Wilson thinks so.” His voice came from a throat suddenly dry; it seemed to him that his next words were spoken by someone else. “I don’t think she can hold a candle to you. Not for beauty or anything else.”
She dimpled. “Thank you, Captain.” She looked down almost demurely. “She also has a beautiful body.” Her head came up, her eyes twinkling. “Of course, you have no basis for comparison there.”
“No,” Da Silva agreed. There was something rueful in his tone; suddenly the two were grinning at each other like small children. The large man dropped into a chair across from her, leaning forward, suddenly feeling relaxed. “Look, let’s be friends for a while, eh? At least until this thing is over? After all, you’ll be guarding the girl, and I may have to drop in from time to time, and frankly, fighting with you distracts my mind from my job. And also, of course, it has to be poor therapy for a convalescing patient to hear us constantly screaming at each other.”
Astrea laughed, a warm husky laugh, contented. She bent forward, putting her cigarette away, and then leaned back again, studying his face with evident pleasure.
“Good. We’ll declare a truce. But on one condition — that you do drop in from time to time. Otherwise I’ll probably sit here all alone and imagine you doing all sorts of things, and then I’ll probably get nasty again.”