“I wondered what took you so long.” Da Silva thought a moment and then reached into his pocket, bringing out his card. “She was a manicurist working at that barbershop. She was temporary, sent by this employment agency. Her first name is Bettina, but that’s all we have. The barbershop is Armando’s in the Edifício Rio Branco, and she was sent over there about a week ago. We want her full name, address, and anything else they have on her.”
“Yes, sir,” Perreira said. “But, why?”
Da Silva looked at his assistant in surprise. Usually Perreira was sharper than that. “What do you mean, why?”
“Well, sir — do you have any reason to suspect her of anything?”
“We’re not trying to arrest her,” Da Silva said impatiently. “We’re trying to follow the man’s movements from yesterday in Rio de Janeiro — where nobody had any idea he was planing to leave town, and where in fact he had plans to attend a reception in the evening — to Paraíso, a thousand miles away, where he was shot and killed some time last night. We’ve traced him as far as the girl. From what we can learn from her, I hope we can go forward, closing some of the gaps.”
“Except that the people on the plane he took, or people at the airport in Paraíso when he arrived, had to see him later than the girl,” Perreira said stubbornly. Whenever Perreira got his back up he dropped the “sir.” “After all, according to the waiter he left the Miracopa about two-thirty, and that left him only one flight he could have caught — Vasp flight 872, non-stop to Paraíso. Why waste time on the girl? Let me check directly with the airline. It’s a shuttle flight, so there’s no reservations and the tickets are like bus tickets, without names or anything, but the stewardess may remember him. I doubt they have that many passengers, and it was only yesterday. If that doesn’t work, I can go up to Paraíso and check the airport personnel there. Somebody should remember him, and if they do, maybe they can also remember who met him there.”
Da Silva sighed and rubbed his face. It was getting late and Perreira was probably right. Following the girl would probably be one more trail into the weeds, like checking the other manicurists and their families.
“All right,” he said wearily. “Forget the girl for the time being. See if the stewardess or any other of the crew remembers him, or remembers seeing someone meet him.”
“Right, sir,” Perreira said, willing to restore the title now he was satisfied he had saved himself a lot of unnecessary legwork. “I’ll get right to it.”
“And get in touch with me if you find anything at the airport here,” Da Silva said, and came to his feet. He stretched mightily, trying to loosen his chair-bound muscles, and came out of it with a little shudder. Age, he thought, and put the unpleasant thought away. “I’m going home—”
The ringing of the telephone interrupted him. Home, is it? he thought unhappily, and sat down in his chair again, reaching for the instrument. Perreira waited respectfully. Da Silva raised the receiver. “Yes?”
It was the switchboard. “Captain Da Silva? Ruy calling from Porto Alegre...”
“Put him on.” Da Silva tipped his head toward the door, dismissing Perreira. He watched the lieutenant leave, closing the door silently behind himself, and then brought his attention back to the telephone. They may not be getting anywhere, he thought wearily, but in not getting anywhere they were certainly covering a lot of ground. The line remained silent. “Damn it? Is there anyone on this line? Hello?”
Ruy came on. “Hello? Captain?”
Da Silva relaxed. “Speaking.”
“Good. About that Torres, sir—”
“Wait a second.” Da Silva propped the receiver between his shoulder and his ear and dug into a drawer, bringing out of a series of folders; they were the result of the separation of the data furnished by the Minister in Brasilia, plus very little new. Da Silva pulled one folder from the rest and shoved the balance to one side, opening the one he had selected. “Torres. Professional photographer. All right, what about him?”
There was deep satisfaction in Ruy’s voice. “Just that whoever shot him rates a medal in my book!”
“Why?” Da Silva asked without excessive interest. The fact that Torres was no loss to society had already been so firmly established in his mind that learning any collaborating details was slightly anticlimactic. “Was he that bad a photographer?”
“Not that bad — that good,” Ruy said, pleased with his ready turn of phrase. “The only thing is, it seems he took pictures of people who didn’t know they were being photographed.”
Da Silva nodded. “Blackmail, eh?”
“That’s right, sir. The police say they suspected him for a long time — there were rumors, talk, but no real proof, and none of his victims would charge him, you know. But when he got himself killed, the police here got a court order at once to open his safety-deposit box. And they found all the proof they needed.”
“So all they have to do now is dig him up and convict him.” Da Silva frowned at the telephone, thinking. Blackmail was, indeed, as good a reason to kill a man as any that existed; but to kill Torres without getting your hands on the incriminating evidence was usually considered poor planning on the part of the blackmailee. Still, the police were probably the best custodians of the damaging material — unless, of course, the material in the safety-deposit box was something implicating the police themselves. That was an idea — was it possible that Torres might have been blackmailing someone on the Paraíso police force? Or Judge Magalhães himself? Hold it, he warned himself sternly, you’re beginning to reach. He went back to Ruy.
“Ruy — have you been able to find out what made Torres decide to go to Paraíso in the first place? Was he from there, originally? Did he know anyone up there?”
“I talked with his secretary — ex-secretary now, I guess you’d have to call her,” Ruy said, “—and incidentally a beautiful dish, if you ever saw one. Lovely, lovely—!”
“Wait a second.” Da Silva frowned. An idea had suddenly come. “She wouldn’t be about five feet three, would she, with black hair, black eyes, dimples—?”
“Down in this part of the country? She’s blonde, closer to six feet tall, and she looks like those posters outside of the Municipal when they’re running one of those German operas — only what this babe’s got aren’t breastplates; they’re the real thing. Why?”
“Forget it,” Da Silva said. Anyway, Bettina would have to have her own private plane to get around the way he was scheduling her. “Go on with what you were saying.”
“Sure. Well, I was talking to his ex-secretary,” Ruy said, “and it seems this Torres had a legitimate front, a regular photography business — portraits, industrial photography, even an occasional assignment from a small newspaper down here, a weekly, that doesn’t have its own staff. He was a busy guy, anyway enough to warrant a couple to help — the secretary, who handled the front desk and the books, in addition to other chores, and a man in the lab. The man in the lab swore to the police he didn’t know what was going on, but I have a feeling a few years in the jug down here may make him remember a few things. The girl — well, like I said, I had a chance to talk to her in jail—”
“In jail?”
“Yes, sir. It seems she was in quite a few of those pictures the police found in the safety-deposit box. She’d lie like a politician to save herself, but I think she was telling me the truth about Torres.”
“What did she say?”
“She said he came in that morning looking like a tico-tico na fubá; all that grain just for a little bird like him, and the farmer off someplace else. He told her he had to go up to Paraíso right away; there was a good prospect there he’d heard about, and the deal wouldn’t wait. She said she was sure he’d never heard of Paraíso before — he was born in Santa Catarina and grew up between there and Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre, in fact. Anyway, he took his best camera, film, filters, light meter, and took off. And the next day the police came around to the shop and told her he’d been shot up there. She really wasn’t too surprised, she said,” Ruy went on. “She said she always knew one day he’d try some tricks with someone who wouldn’t stand still.”