“Over here,” Bernardo said, and waved the gun slightly, directing Da Silva into the headlights.
Why not? Da Silva thought, and walked over, half-stumbling, to stand in the blinding brilliance, blinking. His hands were held together as if handcuffed. Bernardo shot his sleeve, exposing his watch.
“You have one minute to say your prayers.”
Ritual followed. And what shall I use this last precious minute to conjure on? Da Silva thought, and then heard the gunfire. A variety of jumbled thoughts swirled through his consciousness, intermingling, as he stumbled to the ground: that they had cheated him of his last minute or that the minute has passed too quickly to be remembered; that they had both fired which was unfair; and that death, surprisingly, was not as painful as he had always imagined. There was something a bit disappointing in the knowledge. And then he felt a strong arm under him and he opened his eyes.
Wilson’s face was smiling at him. Above, a tall thin man stood, his face invisible under the broad brim of his leather hat. A rifle was angled in his arms, frontier style.
“So you didn’t want an American confederate, eh?” Wilson said, and tucked his revolver away.
Chapter 15
The old judge straightened up from laying another log on the fire in the large stone fireplace and stood contemplating the flames a moment. “In the old days,” he said reminiscently, almost as if speaking to some inner self, “out in the sertão, we’d keep a campfire going long after we were through cooking supper, whether it was hot or cold that night. It wasn’t to keep off animals; it was for companionship. Something alive; something moving. A sort of security, I suppose. Hard to break the habit.” He turned his back to the fire, his hands spread to capture a warmth unnecessary in the room, and looked at Da Silva. “Are you feeling better, Captain?” He gestured toward the sideboard. “Would you like another brandy?”
In the sprawling living room, paneled with local woods and beamed with jacarandá, the climbing flames overcame the weak efforts of the several lamps, throwing highlights over the faces staring into the fire, bringing out Da Silva’s hawklike and Indian-type cheekbones, Isabela’s cameo profile, Wilson’s plain, unemotional features. Da Silva was sitting beside Isabela on a wide couch while Wilson was slumped in a deep chair to one side, watching the flickering of the flames through half-closed eyes. Da Silva looked up at the judge and shook his head.
“Thank you, no. I’m feeling much better.” He smiled and took a deep breath. “I guess I’m getting used to being alive again. It’s quite a sensation, coming back from the dead.”
Isabela looked at him and then faced the others. She seemed to be making a pronouncement. “I’m getting used to Zé being alive again, too,” she said simply, and gripped his arm more tightly, letting the others understand that she intended to continue being used to it for a long time.
Wilson smiled lazily in the girl’s direction.
“I hope it doesn’t bother you to discover that Zé is only a cop and not the romantic, dashing thief he pretended to be. He always pulls something like that, just to impress the girls. You’ll have to keep an eye on him.” The statement brought a thought in its wake. He looked at Da Silva. “And speaking of keeping an eye on people,” he added, “how about handing me back my bleeper?”
Da Silva frowned. “Your what?”
“My bleeper. You’ll find it attached to the back of your jacket lapel, right side. It looks like plain repair tape, but it’s got the power to be picked up half a mile away. And it’s charged to my personal account at the Embassy, so hand it over.” He saw the look on Da Silva’s face and smiled. “You didn’t honestly think I found you through clairvoyance, or second sight, did you? I know I’m a genius, but even us geniuses — or genii, take your pick — have our limits.”
Da Silva nodded, smiling. “So that’s what you were doing in that closet last night!”
“And you thought I was just a Peeping Tom! Ah, well, that’s just one more hypothesis you’ll have to abandon.”
“One more?”
“Right. Together with your offside death squad theory.”
Da Silva shook his head. “Abandoning that theory doesn’t bother me, although I wish you had left at least one of those two alive for questioning. But I grant those two weren’t police. I know that Emil Floriano certainly wasn’t.” He shuddered involuntarily, thinking of the situation not long before, and frowned at Wilson. “What made you disregard my instructions to check out Isabela?” There was a small intake of breath from the girl; Da Silva smiled at her momentarily and then brought his attention back to Wilson. “What made you come to Paraíso, instead?”
Wilson smiled faintly and waggled an index finger from side to side in the Brazilian gesture of negation.
“You keep thinking that just because this is your country, everyone in it has to follow your orders. Four things to remember, friend. One, slavery is a thing of the past. Two, Uncle Sam pays me my pittance and he’s the only one I take instruction from, if that. Or is it, if him? Actually, it’s really not anybody; I’m a free soul. Three, checking up on young ladies isn’t chivalrous, which you’d know if you paid more attention to your Boy Scout manual as a child. And four, of course, is that once I get the idea of being an American confederate in my head, it’s hard to get it out. Incidentally,” he added, “you haven’t thanked me yet for coming to your rescue; nor congratulated me on my foresight in bringing Judge Magalhães along. He is some pumpkins on a rifle, as we used to say back in my home state of Isabela.”
Da Silva smiled. “I thank you.”
“You’re welcome. What else bothers you?”
Da Silva frowned, taking the question seriously. “The whole case bothers me. Among other things, the motive behind the killings bothers me. Who stands to gain? We’ve ruled out individual members of the victims’ organizations trying to take-over; we’ve ruled out any Mafia-type gang trying to organize on a country-wide scale; and now we’ve ruled out a death squad. What are we left with?”
“A homicidal maniac?” Wilson offered, but his heart wasn’t in the suggestion.
Da Silva shook his head. “Neither one of us believes that, not with the planning that went on — sometimes seemingly unnecessarily complicated planning — to get the victims to come to Paraíso to be killed. A homicidal maniac would take his victims where he found them. And homicidal maniacs don’t work with confederates, and whoever is behind these killings had an organization that included Emil Floriano, for one, and that Bernardo we still have to give a last name to.”
“And speaking of that,” Wilson said, looking up at the judge, “what’s being done about it?”
“The two men are in the morgue and we’re sending the description and fingerprints of this Bernardo out, but you know what our fingerprint identification system is, here in Brazil.” The judge shrugged a bit helplessly. “It leaves a lot to be desired. If we only knew where he came from...”
“Wait a minute.” Da Silva frowned in recollection. “He said something. He said — no, it was Emil who said something about that. I remember, now. It sounded familiar when he said it, but I didn’t know why. Or particularly care, in the circumstances. I had other things on my mind; the filho had just recognized me. Anyway, he said—”
He suddenly stopped speaking and stared into the fire, his eyes wide. He looked as if he had suddenly become mesmerized. Then he slowly disengaged his arm from that of Isabela and bent his head, putting his face into his hands. Isabela stared at him, worried.