Leighton Gage: Buried Strangers

“And people build houses in the middle of that?”

“Hell, no. Not in the middle of that. The houses are in a closed condominium. And the condominium is surrounded by a wall three meters high. You get inside that wall and you could be anywhere. Big green lawns, landscaped gardens, swimming pools, it looks like Alphaville.”

Alphaville was a series of luxury condominiums, num-bered 1 through 14, stretching from the suburb of Barueri to the suburb of Santana do Parnaiba. The walls that surrounded each project, and the guards stationed at their gates, guaran-teed a degree of isolation from the otherwise harsh realities of the city.

Alphaville and the other closed condominiums were like small towns in the United States, an ersatz paradise only a few Paulistas could afford.

No crimes ever occurred in closed condominiums, at least no crimes that any of the home owners would be willing to talk about.

“And that’s where that caseiro lives, the guy who was searching for the dog? In a closed condominium?”

Tanaka bobbed his head.

“It’s called Granja das Acacias. There are thirteen houses. We talked to nine of the owners and at least one employee from every house. They’ve got drivers, gardeners, caseiros, maids, all of them live-in because there’s no city bus line that gets anywhere near the place. Nobody recalled any sus-picious activity. None of the owners would admit it if they did. Property values, you know. It gets around that there’s criminal activity in the neighborhood, the prices plummet. Those people are scared to death of that, almost more than they are of the crooks. And they’re so cut off from the world that they could as well be living on Mars. They only come out from behind their walls to work, or to shop, or to go to a restaurant or a show. Otherwise they sit around their pools and talk about their servants, or whatever else it is that rich folks talk about.”

“So no help there,” Arnaldo said. He sighed. “I guess we’re going to have to talk to the buceta. ”

Tanaka looked mystified at this use of the vulgar term for the female genitalia.

“Talk to the what? ”

“A nickname,” Silva said. “Godofredo Boceta is our pro-filer. He’s going to want photos of the corpses in situ and of the site overall.”

“Some nickname,” Tanaka said. “I’ll bet it pisses him off. Photos shouldn’t be a problem. Dr. Caropreso’s assistant must have taken a hundred of them. I’ll ask her to send you copies.”

“I could take care of that,” Hector said, “call her directly, save you the trouble.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Tanaka said. “I have quite a bit on my plate at the moment.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to get back to my del-egacia. I’ll keep in touch. You can count on it.” He shook hands with them, turned on his heel, and hurried away.

Silva watched his retreating back for a moment, then turned and looked at his nephew.

“Your professional zeal is praiseworthy,” he said.

“What?” Hector asked, innocently.

“Your generous offer to unburden Delegado Tanaka of the onerous task of calling Dr. Caropreso.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hector said.

But of course he did.

Tanaka lied to the federal cops. He had no intention of going back to his delegacia.

His staff was accustomed to see him disappear at lunchtime on Friday and resurface on Monday morning. So accustomed, in fact, that he no longer bothered to inform them of his impending absences. They not only took those absences for granted, they followed his example. Friday afternoons at Tanaka’s delegacia had taken on the aspect of Saturday morn-ings. There were empty desks throughout the building.

His plan on that particular Friday was to catch the three o’clock replay of the match between Sao Paulo’s Corinthians and their nemesis from Rio de Janeiro, Flamengo.

But it was not to be.

He drove directly to his apartment, parked under the building, pressed the button for the elevator, and waited. And waited. He pressed the button again, and put his ear to the door to see if the damned thing was moving.

It wasn’t.

“Piece of shit,” he mumbled to himself and made for the stairs.

Tanaka’s front door opened directly onto his living room. He turned on the television, went to the kitchen to get a beer, and found himself standing face-to-face with his own nemesis: his wife, Marcela.

Marcela was the daughter of Sicilian immigrants, one of those women who, when they stop getting taller start getting wider. For almost twenty years she’d outweighed Tanaka by a considerable margin, an attribute she used to good advantage when their spats turned physical. Her husband had learned to be wary of her fierce temper and took care not to provoke her. It was embarrassing to show up at the office with a split lip or a black eye, an occurrence so frequent that Tanaka had long ago run out of excuses to explain his injuries.

His hand had barely closed around one of the cold bottles in the refrigerator door, when he realized there was some-thing amiss. His wife was seated at the kitchen table, attack-ing a cauliflower, ripping off the outer leaves, tearing pieces off the core, occasionally looking up at him with angry eyes.

From long experience, Tanaka knew that if he didn’t con-front the situation right then and there, Marcela would fol-low him into the living room, turn off the TV, and start haranguing him. He decided to get it over with, harboring the hope that he could appease her before the game began.

“Bad day, querida? ” he said tentatively.

She narrowed her eyes in exasperation.

“Nilda Ferreira was here,” she said. “They have another new car.”

Nilda Ferreira, a svelte brunette some fifteen years younger and thirty kilograms lighter than Marcela, was the second wife of Inspector Adilson Ferreira. She and her husband lived in a spacious apartment in one of the tonier areas of the city, an apartment that was a far cry from the tiny two-bed-room affair that Tanaka shared with his spouse and two daughters. Nilda and Adilson were people who frequented all of Sao Paulo’s better restaurants. They often took shop-ping trips to Miami. Once, they’d even been to Europe.

Nilda’s passions were fine clothes and expensive jewelry, but to Tanaka it seemed as if the woman lived for the sole purpose of raising his wife to Olympian heights of jealousy. Marcela didn’t begrudge Nilda’s trim figure or high cheek-bones. But she deeply coveted Nilda’s income.

Neither Adilson nor his wife had been born to wealth. Nilda, like Marcela, didn’t work outside the home. Tanaka was a full-fledged delegado titular, while Adilson was only a section head. But Adilson was the section head of the unit charged with investigating white-collar crimes.

And that made all the difference. When it came to aug-menting a municipal cop’s meager salary, there was no better assignment than the white-collar unit.

The unit consisted of only seven men. And one woman.

The woman hardly counted. She’d been on the job for a little over four months and was expected to continue for another six, after which there’s be a new vacancy. Her name was Eleni Soares, and she was the daughter of Lieutenant Soares. Her father was the brother-in-law of the state secre-tary for public safety. Eleni’s position was a stopgap measure, an opportunity to save money for her upcoming marriage.

The men were in a different category altogether. On the rare occasions when one of them retired, or died (those being the only reasons a male ever left the white-collar unit), new appointments were hotly contested and candidates had to fulfill at least one of the two requirements, preferably both. Adilson had: he’d been able to scrape up the cash necessary to grease the requisite palms, and he had an uncle in the hierarchy, a man who had considerable influence when it came to making appointments.