The Ways of Evil Men (16 page)

“That sounds like it.”

“So he found the gold in a river?”

“I told you, he didn’t say. And I don’t understand that kind of stuff. What I do remember is that he said he needed a partner, somebody with money to invest. But he said it was a guaranteed return, and he could prove it was, and there was so damned much gold that he could afford to give away a fifty percent interest and still have enough left over to make him a millionaire a couple of times over.”

“So he intended to approach someone.”

“Without a doubt.”

The two women looked at each other, thinking the same thing, but Maura said it first: “And the person he talked to,” she said, “was the person who killed him.”

T
HE SIX
laborers, under Gilda’s supervision, began to excavate the bodies. Meanwhile, Silva, Jade, and Hector made a cursory examination of the village, steering clear of only one hut. After that one cry, Raoni had made no further sounds, but they avoided intruding on his grief.

Reinforcing Gilda’s suspicion that a nerve agent wasn’t involved, they found no sign that any of the villagers had either vomited or lost control of their bowels, but they did find one anomaly: up against a wall of green formed by the encircling forest and on the opposite side of the village from the graves, there was still another mound of freshly dug earth.

Hector called over two men from Gilda’s crew and set them to digging.

Fifty centimeters down, their shovels struck something soft. They cleared away the remaining dirt to expose silk-like material attached to evenly spaced nylon cords.

“Get it up here,” Silva said to one of the diggers.

The man jumped into the hole. “Some kind of a bundle,” he said.

“A dead child?” Jade asked.

“No. Feels like something else.”

The object hadn’t been buried deep. The digger was able to extract whatever it was without help from his colleague. He manhandled it to ground level and set it next to the hole.

Jade hung back, but Silva and Hector moved in for a closer look. The cords had been wrapped around and around the silk.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Silva said, when it registered what he was looking at. “Unroll it. Let’s see what’s inside.”

T
HE DAY
was almost done, the sun setting into a bank of ominous gray clouds, when a Scania R144, with massive logs piled to a height well above that of the cab, rounded a curve and lumbered toward them.

Arnaldo screwed the cap onto what remained of the bottle of mineral water he’d been drinking, tossed it into the back of the jeep and grunted in satisfaction. It was the first truckload of wood they’d spotted in an entire day of waiting. He took out his pistol, walked into the road and held up a peremptory hand.

Instead of slowing down, the driver floored the accelerator.

Arnaldo barely missed being hit. In leaping aside, he stumbled and fell headlong into a pool of mud. Cursing, he got to his feet just in time to see the Scania disappearing around the next bend. By then, it was doing better than fifty kilometers an hour.

Gonçalves started the engine. Arnaldo flopped into his seat with a
squish
, splashing mud onto his companion’s pants.

“Ewww,” Gonçalves said, “that’s more than just dirt. It smells like something died in it.”

“Shut up and drive.”

“Keep your shirt on. He’s got nowhere to go. And besides, we’re faster than he is.”

The unpaved road had enough potholes and ruts to shake out the fillings in their teeth. At a bone-jarring eighty kilometers an hour, they soon came close enough to read the pithy phrases painted on the truck’s rear bumper.

IF SIZE WAS EVERYTHING
,
ELEPHANTS WOULD OWN THE CIRCUS
was in pink.
ADAM WAS LUCKY
;
HE DIDN
’
T HAVE A MOTHER
-
IN
-
LAW OR A TRUCK
was in blue (complete with semicolon).

“The guy’s a philosopher,” Gonçalves said.

“He’ll need to be when I catch up with him.”

The thoroughfare was narrow, lined on both sides with thick jungle. Every time they tried to pass, the driver swerved to prevent it.

“Watch it,” Arnaldo said. “If you come up alongside him, and the bastard cuts his wheel, he could bury us under tons of wood.”

“Rather than stating the obvious,” Gonçalves said, “a suggestion about what to do would be nice.”

“Maybe there’s a lay-by somewhere ahead. If you spot one, you could detour into it and get in front of him.”

“Oh sure. A lay-by. On a back road in a jungle in Pará. Fat chance.”

Arnaldo was gathering sarcasm for a reply when the truck came to a sudden stop. “Thank you, Jesus,” he said and leapt out of the jeep.

A pickup truck piled high with sacks of
castanhas de Pará
was stuck in mud and blocking the road. The driver they’d been pursuing, already out of his vehicle, was off and running for the safety of the rainforest. And he might have made it, too, had he not tripped over a root.

“You, my friend,” Arnaldo said, putting one foot on the writhing man’s back, holstering his pistol, and pulling out his handcuffs, “are under arrest.”

“Arrest? You guys are cops?”

“Damned right.”

“Well, thank God for that,” the driver said.

* * *

T
HE WRAPPING
was a parachute. The silk-like cloth was its canopy, and the ropes were its cords. Enveloped within the folds was a rotting piece of meat.

“Roasted, by the look of it,” Silva said. And then, to one of the men: “Wrap it up again and go get a body bag.”

“You’re bringing it with us?” Jade asked, pinching her nose against the smell.

The flies attracted by the rotting meat, now denied access to it, began to settle on the bystanders. Silva waved a hand to shoo them away and nodded. “Gilda can examine it back in Azevedo.”

Jade pointed to the meat. “The only forest animal anywhere near that size is a tapir, and that’s no tapir.”

“No,” Silva said. “Unless I miss my guess, it’s a side of pork.”

“White man’s meat. I doubt the Indians would even have known what it was they were eating.”

“And yet they would have eaten it?

“They’re always on the lookout for protein. They even eat termites. When that … thing … came floating down they would have welcomed it as a gift from the gods. They would have made a ritual of sharing it.”

“All at the same time?”

“According to Father Castori, yes, and I have no reason to doubt him. Not on that score, anyway.”

“That explains a lot,” Hector said. He probed at the parachute with his foot. “Which one of those
fazendeiros
owns an airplane?”

“Every damned one of them,” Jade said bitterly.

T
HE PHOTO ON THE
truck driver’s identity card showed him at the age of fourteen, or maybe fifteen. Arnaldo compared it to the face of the grizzled veteran Gonçalves was securing by an arm. One bore little resemblance to the other.

“See?” the driver said, oblivious to the contrast. “It’s me. I wasn’t lying.”

“Otto Cosmos?” Arnaldo said. “What kind of a name is that?”

The driver bristled. “What do you mean
what kind of name is that
? It’s my name, that’s all. Don’t folks have the right to name their kids any way they want?”

Arnaldo ignored the outburst and continued inspecting the documents he’d found in the driver’s wallet. The license had expired the previous February, but the photo on it was more recent. It confirmed that he was, indeed, in the presence of one Otto Cosmos, native and resident of Belem.

“I got nothing to hide,” Otto said.

“So why did you run?” Gonçalves said.

“What would you have done?” The driver pointed a belligerent chin at Arnaldo. “I come around a curve in the middle of the fucking rainforest. This gorilla is standing in the middle of the road with a gun in his hand and signaling for me to stop—”

“Who the hell are you calling a gorilla?” Arnaldo said with a growl, but the driver went on, undaunted.

“He’s got no uniform. He’s not showing a badge. You”—he shot an accusing glance at Gonçalves—“are sitting on your
ass in a jeep. The jeep isn’t marked. You’re not wearing a uniform either. What the fuck did you expect me to do?”

“You thought we were trying to hijack you?”

“Fuck, yes, I thought you were trying to hijack me. You got any idea what that load of green gold over there is worth? Not to mention my truck?”

“Your truck,” Arnaldo said, “looks like a worthless piece of crap.”

“Which only goes to show,” Otto said indignantly, “that you know fuck-all about trucks. My truck is one of the most—”

“Many hijackings around here?” Gonçalves asked, cutting off the flow.

“Well …”

“Well what?”

“Maybe not around here, but on the Dutra it happens all the time.”

The Via Dutra was the main road connecting Brazil’s two largest cities: Rio and São Paulo. Despite its being the most heavily traveled interstate road in the country, truck hijackings were common, sometimes exceeding ten a day, often with fatal consequences for the drivers.

“We’re a long way from the Via Dutra,” Gonçalves said. “So why would hijacking be on your mind?”

“I got a copy of
O Caminhoneiro
up there in the cab,” Otto said. “It’s this month’s main story.”

O Caminhoneiro
, the truckers’ magazine, was devoured by drivers who could read. By law, that should have been all of them, but Brazil’s departments of motor vehicles were notoriously corrupt and tens of thousands had obtained their licenses by bribing the inspectors.

Gonçalves delivered Otto’s arm into the custody of Arnaldo and climbed up into the cab to retrieve the
publication. The cover showed a photo, obviously staged, of two men emptying their pistols into a third. A title, emblazoned across the top, read
THIS COULD BE YOU
and below that in smaller letters,
PAGE
37.

“See?” Otto said. “It’s all about how bad it’s getting, and it gives advice about what to do if it ever happens to you.”

“Which is?” Arnaldo said.

“Which is, among other things, never stop when some asshole stands in the middle of the road and waves a gun at you.”

“
Asshole?
Listen, you—”

Gonçalves interrupted before the dispute could escalate. “Are you in possession of documentation that permits you to transport that load of wood?”

“Of course. I’m an honest businessman, I am.”

“An honest businessman with an expired license,” Arnaldo said.

“Oho, so now you’re going to bust my balls about that? Why am I not surprised? Okay, how much?”

“You offer me one
centavo
, you little bastard, and you’re going to be in bigger trouble than you are already.”

Otto blinked. “So that’s not what this is all about?”

“No.”

“Not a shakedown?”

Arnaldo shook his head. “Let’s see that documentation.”

“Take off these handcuffs, and I’ll get it.”

“Tell me where it is, and
he’ll
get it.”

“In the glove compartment.”

Gonçalves fetched the papers and set about examining them.

“See?” Otto said.

“You know this guy Raul Nonato?” Gonçalves asked, his forefinger tapping one of the pages.

“No. Who’s he?”

“The IBAMA guy who signed this permit.”

“Why the fuck should I? I don’t do the logging. I don’t do the fucking paperwork. I just transport the wood.”

“How about this guy Cunha, the guy the permit was issued to?”

“Him, I know.”

“How?”

“He’s my fucking client, that’s how. I bring him stuff from Belem for his supermarket. I take his wood back.”

“How long have you been doing it?”

Otto thought about it. “Four months. More or less.”

“Anybody else transport his wood?”

“Lots of guys. We got an organization. We got a website. We got rules about prices and how to spread the work. Anybody with cargo to ship in this state goes in there, says how much of it there is, and where it’s going to, and we work it out.”

“So you’re an independent contractor?”

“Well, duh! How about you take off these fucking handcuffs?”

“Not yet. First, we’re going to search your truck.”

“And when you don’t find fuck-all?”

“Then we’ll think about letting you go.”

B
ACK AT
J
ADE
’
S PLACE
, Maura sat on the back porch, watching the light fade from the sky and reflecting about what she’d learned.

Gold. The old prospector had found it. The odds were that someone had killed him for it. And the strike he’d made was located within the reservation. Why the reservation? Because, if it were anywhere else, it would belong to whoever held title to the land. Maybe the man whose gold it was might have given him a finder’s fee, but no more than that. And if that gold was, indeed, somewhere on the reservation, there was another aspect to the business as well, something more disturbing: Welinton’s discovery might well have been the motive for rooting out the entire tribe.

So what now? Tell Silva? No. He’d tell her to stay out of it. File a story? Not yet, not without digging deeper. Without more facts, more proof, it was page two stuff, maybe even page three. But beating the federal cops to the truth would transform it into a front-page scoop.

So that’s the course she had to follow. She had to keep her investigation confidential until she had all the facts. That would not only please Mauricio, her editor, it would show Silva he’d made a mistake not to trust her in the first place. In some ways, he reminded her of her father, and as was generally the case with her father, she had an avid desire to prove him wrong.

Welinton had talked about a partner, someone with money. Was he likely to know anyone with money who didn’t live in
the town? No. So how many people had to be considered? The Big Five, surely. How many others? The doctor? The lawyer, Kassab? A group? No, probably not a group. They could, all of them, be considered among Brazil’s wealthy—and only a few of Brazil’s wealthy understood the concept of sharing. Whoever old Welinton had first taken into his confidence would likely have wanted all the gold for himself.