Leighton Gage - Buried Strangers

“I already told you,” Hector said. “She’s not my namor-

Whatever,” Rosa Amorim said. “Have you got a few minutes?”

Hector studied the two women who’d burst into his office without as much as a courteous rap on the door.

“For you two?” he said. “Always. Sit down.”

Rosa sank into a seat.

Danusa remained standing, leaned over, opened the Estado de Sao Paulo she was carrying, and spread the news-paper out on Hector’s desk. She tapped a manicured finger on the headline of an article: COUPLE FOUND DEAD IN APARTMENT.

“I saw this on the way to work this morning,” she said. “The murdered couple are the Oliveiras, Clovis and Ana Carmen. Their names rang a bell. They were on our list of people to interview, but we hadn’t gotten to them yet.”

Hector took a moment to scan the article.

“Suspicion of poison, huh?”

“What it doesn’t say,” Danusa continued, “is that they had a baby boy, and that the kid needed a heart transplant. I spoke to one of the homicide guys assigned to the case. He told me Senhora Oliveira’s mother had a key to their apart-ment. She was accustomed to talking to her daughter by tele-phone at least twice a day. Last night, after no contact since early morning, she went over there and let herself in. They were in the dining alcove, pitched over the table, dead. Her daughter was clutching her husband’s hand.”

“You go to see the mother?”

Danusa looked pained. “Had to, right? I didn’t enjoy it.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t.”

“She lost her only daughter, and her only grandchild, and she’s a widow to boot. Her husband died not six months ago, killed in a holdup for twenty reals in cash and a thirty-real watch. Sometimes, I hate this town.”

“Her grandchild is dead, as well?”

“I was getting to that. Raul, his name was, born at Albert Einstein, up in Morumbi. Kid was less than two hours old when he was diagnosed with something called dilated car-diomyopathy, whatever the hell that is.”

“Fatal?”

“Without a heart transplant, yes.”

“And?”

“And Ana Carmen, that’s the baby’s mother, told her mother that they’d arranged for one, and that it was supposed to take place the day before yesterday. She also said there was something irregular about it, which precluded her from giv-ing any more details. Irregular, that’s the word she used.”

“The plot thickens.”

“Goddamned right it does. Now, get this: we can’t be ab-solutely sure the kid’s dead, but it seems like a safe assumption. We can’t find any trace of him. We’ve called every single hospital and clinic known to be able to perform heart trans-plants. Nobody admitted to performing one on a kid called Raul Oliveira.”

“Merda. How about the people at Einstein? What did they have to say?”

This time it was Rosa who spoke up.

“I talked to the cardio who did the diagnosis, a guy by the name of Jacob Levy. He says he put the baby’s name on the list to receive a heart, but he has no idea where the case went from there. I think he’s lying.”

“Why?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on. Just a feeling. Call it a mother’s intuition. My sons try it on all the time.”

“I’ve learned to trust your intuition. You think this Levy is involved in the murder of the parents or the disappearance of the kid?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I talked to a number of other peo-ple at the hospital, did a little background check. Levy is competent and well liked. Compassionate is a word that came up often. I think he might have suggested a way for the Oliveiras to work around the waiting list and get a heart for their son. But there’s no way he’s going to admit that. If he did, he’d lose his license in a flash.”

“Yeah, he would. Sweat him anyway. In the meantime, keep digging.”

“We intend to,” Danusa said. “So, like I said in the begin-ning, it looks like your namorada was right. Oh, sorry, she’s not your namorada, is she?”

“No, she sure as hell isn’t. We’re friends, that’s all. Who the hell is this Sylvie woman?”

“Told you. She’s a friend of Gilda Caropreso’s. . and something a little more than that when it comes to Babyface Goncalves.”

“Well, she’s misinformed.”

“If you say so,” Danusa said.

Rosa didn’t say anything at all, but she looked at Hector as if he were one of her teenage sons, and she could see right through him.

Paraguay is a country about the size of California, ruled by dictators during most of its existence. Officially, the economy depends on agriculture and the exportation of iron ore and manganese. Unofficially, it depends on money laun-dering, smuggling, drug trafficking, and providing a safe haven for tax dodgers, criminals, and Islamic militants.

It was, therefore, an ideal choice of destination for Roberto Ribeiro.

His flight to Asuncion, the TAM 8033, was scheduled to depart from Guarulhos at 10:30 AM. They arrived at the air-port at 8:30 and Roberto checked in.

“I’ll wait here until I see you pass the checkpoint,” his mother said.

“It’s only gonna make me nervous. Go home. I’ll call you when I get settled.”

“Don’t be stupid. When they find out who I am, they’ll tap my phone. Call your aunt Dolores. Here, I’ve made a note of her number.”

She passed him a piece of paper. Dolores, not truly his aunt, was a close friend of his mother’s. They’d turned tricks together all through their teenage years and right up until Dolores’s marriage to a naive accountant she’d met at a Sunday-morning mass.

“What do I tell her?”

“Just give her a number and a time to call. I’ll get in touch.” Roberto pocketed the paper without looking at it. “Okay,” he said. “Go.”

She kissed him, held on for a while, and finally walked off, turning to wave several times before going out the door. He glanced at his watch. There was still time for a quick tele-phone call.

“Where the hell are you?” Bittler asked.

He was angry. Had to be. It was the first time Roberto had ever heard him use profanity. “None of your goddamned business,” he said.

It felt good to talk to the old bastard like that. He’d been eating shit for far too long.

There was a shocked silence at the other end of the line. Then, “What’s happened?”

“The federal cops are what happened. They’re onto me.

How?”

“I got no idea. But you better get your place cleaned up before they show up on your doorstep.”

“What did you tell them, you fool?”

“Fool, my ass, you sack of shit! I didn’t tell ’em a thing. But that’s only because they didn’t catch me. If they do, I’ll sing like a canary.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I wanted to hear you squirm. You been treating me like a lowlife for years. Now the shoe’s on the other foot.”

Bittler started cursing. Roberto hung up on him. He hadn’t been totally frank with the old bastard. He’d had another rea-son for calling. If Bittler got a chance to do some housecleaning before the federal cops showed up, the less evidence there’d be.

And less evidence would be a good thing for Roberto Ribeiro.

The passport Ribeiro was using was, as his mother had remarked, a fine piece of work. The gold lettering on the green, cloth cover was faded and, in part, worn away. It bore visas from the United States and France as well as stamps for multiple entries and departures, all of which were genuine. In fact, the whole passport was genuine, except for the altered photograph and the pages with the holder’s vital sta-tistics. The document had been stolen at that very airport two weeks earlier and was the former property of a salesman dealing in agricultural products.