“Except,” Da Silva pointed out, “how many people know it’s an apartment rented by the Correio de Manha, and not by José Maria Carvalho?”
“Damn few,” Rangel said flatly. “We’ve hidden a lot more disrespectable people there than J. M. Carvalho. Just don’t tell the cops.” He went back to his pad. “What else?”
“That should do it,” Da Silva said. “Somebody is bound to try and worm the address from your paper — I hope — and we might have a very important lead.” He frowned at Rangel. “How soon can you get this rolling?”
The little newspaperman methodically noted the intended use of the apartment, tucked the notebook away, and then carefully turned the pencil to retract the lead; he made the operation seem both intricate and a little intimate. Only when the pencil had been neatly clipped into his inside jacket pocket did he look up, and then only to shrug.
“How soon? A week; two weeks...”
“A week? I thought you were a daily!” Da Silva shook his head decisively. “No, senhor! If I wanted to serialize this thing I would have asked my friends at Manchete, or Cruzeiro, or had Victor Civita put it in a picture book for children. I want this in the Correio de Manha the day after tomorrow, on the front page, under a banner headline that says something like ‘Dock Racket Exposed!’ or ‘Scandal on Santos Pier!’ or something like that. And I want it to be a long article, detailed, and startling; the stuff people normally read O Globo to get. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if this even built up your circulation.” He thought a moment and came up with an addition. “And I want the headline to be in the size type you use when nations go to war. Is that clear?”
Rangel sighed hopelessly. “Day after tomorrow?” Even for an editor accustomed to unreasonable demands from stockholders, this was patently unfair. “It’s impossible.”
“What do you mean, impossible?” Da Silva demanded. “It isn’t even improbable! The day after tomorrow.” His voice was unrelenting. “Pretend we’re a national bank crisis. Or a fire in an orphanage.”
Rangel was staring at him stubbornly. “We want to do this right, don’t we? It has to be a good article, well-written, and that takes time. And then there’s the matter of the pictures; they have to be taken in Santos if they’re to have any degree of authenticity at all, and we go to press at eleven at night.” Rangel glanced at his wrist watch. “Tomorrow’s edition is just starting to roll now.”
“So you have a full twenty-four hours,” Da Silva said calmly. “What more do you want?” He looked over at his desk with the covered typewriter on it. “You can write it here. Now. You used to be a newspaperman before they kicked you upstairs, weren’t you?”
“We’ll even help you with it,” Wilson said generously. “We can probably come up with some additional details we’ve forgotten to brief you on.”
“No thanks!” That was all he needed, Rangel thought, to get additional details from this pair. They’d probably add a Chinese spy, a ravishing Indonesian slave girl, not to mention a car chase and a prison escape. “I’ll write it at the office.” He saw the look in Da Silva’s eye and added with a sigh, “All right. Tonight.”
“Good!” Da Silva said, his smile forgiving all past hesitation. “Then the first thing tomorrow we can catch a plane — your paper has a plane, I know — and go down to Santos with a photographer and get those pictures. How long does it take to snap a few pictures, fly them back to Rio, develop them and print them? The day after tomorrow is liberal,” Da Silva said, his tone of voice chiding Rangel for his pessimism. “It’s a pity you’re not an afternoon paper; we could get it out tomorrow.”
Rangel came to his feet. “We’ll try.” He straightened the creases in his trousers, staring down at them sadly, although it was hard to tell if his lugubrious expression was due to the wrinkling of his suit or to the exigent deadline. Suddenly he looked up. A rather disturbing thought had just come to him, and he wondered how he had ever come to overlook it before. That Da Silva and his golden tongue!
“One thing I forgot,” he said. “What about the authorities in Santos? What reaction will our paper get from, say, the prefeito, or the chief of police, if we print a story that someone is stealing the Santos docks blind?”
“What can he say?” Da Silva asked, as if amazed by the question.
“What do you mean, what can he say? He can come to our board and raise so much general hell that—”
“Look! If the policing down there is so bad that a man like this José Maria Carvalho is able to walk away with half the docks, what can a chief of police say? He ought to get down on his knees and thank the Correio de Manha for bringing it to his attention.”
“Damn it, Zé! I’m serious! We could get into a lot of trouble if—”
Da Silva saw the stricken look on Rangel’s face and laughed.
“I’m only joking. Don’t worry. The chief there is Paulo Bombeba, and he’s an old and good friend of mine. I’m sure that after I explain what we’re trying to do, he’ll be only too happy to co-operate.”
Rangel didn’t seem overly convinced. “I hope so...”
“Believe me. Don’t worry,” Da Silva said reassuringly. He came to his feet and walked Rangel to the door, his arm around the small newspaperman’s shoulders. “I’ll get hold of Bombeba right away if I have to wake him at home — or I’ll get him at his girlfriend’s apartment, which is more likely. But I’ll get hold of him tonight and straighten everything out. You can be assured.”
“Okay,” Rangel said, feeling better.
“You just go down to the office and write that story. And make it strong meat. We want this José Maria Carvalho to draw fire, so we want to leave a strong scent.”
The newspaperman in Rangel took over. Even though it was all imaginary, he determined to make the exposure of Carvalho a major story. With Da Silva squaring the authorities in Santos, he would be in the clear. He smiled at his old friend.
“We’ll make it strong. I just hope it works.”
“As do we all,” Da Silva said. “We’ll see you at the Santos Dumont airport at eight in the morning. You can show us your story while we’re flying down.”
“Right,” Rangel said, and strode away on his uplift heels.
Da Silva closed the door softly behind the small man and walked to the bar, stifling a yawn. “One last drink and then to sleep. You can go home anytime,” he said. “It’s been a long day and we have an even longer one ahead of us tomorrow. I just hope their company plane isn’t a Piper cub.”
Wilson frowned. “But what about your call to Santos? To this Bombeba?”
Da Silva paused in the act of pouring his nightcap and turned to consider Wilson over his shoulder. This time the expression of amazement on his pock-marked face was genuine.
“Did you take me seriously when I said I was going to call Bombeba? Did you really think I was about to warn the Santos police department that this José Maria Carvalho story is a hoax, when we may well have a member of a national death squad in the Santos department? We’re trying to scare them out with this story, not scare them off.” He shook his head in disbelief. “How naïve can you get?”
Wilson stared at him. “But what about your friend Rangel and the Correio de Manha? They could get into a lot of trouble printing charges that aren’t true!”
Da Silva shrugged. “One of the culinary tragedies of life is that you can’t generate omelets without breaking eggs.”