Leighton Gage - Dying Gasp

“You’re Silva, aren’t you?” he said. Then, without waiting for an answer, “You people have gotta help me.”

Bento Rosario started talking right there on the street. He was still talking when they were shown to a table in the Recanto Gaucho, the restaurant suggested by Lefkowitz. He paused long enough to drink an entire bottle of mineral water, asked for another, and continued his story.

The three federal cops nursed glasses of beer. Silva and Hector sat where they could keep on eye on the entrance. Arnaldo chose the other side of the table, next to Bento, and covered the door leading to the kitchen.

Bento finally took a break to scan the menu. He ran his finger down the offerings and frowned.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s the matter with this place? They don’t serve fish.”

From the restaurant, they went directly to Manaus’s sole federal magistrate, a man by the name of Rosenblatt. After being sworn to secrecy, and listening to Bento Rosario’s story, Judge Rosenblatt issued a fistful of warrants and wished them good luck. He too was no fan of the chief’s.

Silva told Arnaldo to call Brasilia from the judge’s chambers.

“Get Gloria up here,” he said. “We can’t do this alone. We’re going to need her.”

Gloria Sarmento, a woman who, according to Arnaldo, had “more balls than a pool table,” headed ERR1, one of the federal police’s elite hostage rescue teams.

“Gloria isn’t going to like it,” Arnaldo said. “She hates Manaus.”

“Tell her to bring six of her people,” Silva said. “We shouldn’t need any more than that.”

“Which six?” Arnaldo said.

“Let her choose.”

“No, no, no,” Arnaldo said. “What if she brings Diogo Carmo?”

Diogo Carmo was one of those people who couldn’t finish a story. You’d meet Diogo in the hallway and he’d say something like, “On the way into the office this morning I stopped off for coffee, and speaking of coffee, have you ever bought coffee at that little shop down among the warehouses in Santos? Oh, yeah, Santos, that reminds me, how about that game between Santos and Sao Paulo last Thursday? You know, Thursday, the same day…”

And so on and so forth. He drove his colleagues nuts.

Silva considered for a moment, then shook his head.

“Gloria won’t bring him,” he said. “Diogo has the same effect on Gloria as he does on everybody else.”

“Gloria,” Arnaldo said, “might get so pissed off about coming to Manaus that she’d pick Diogo just to-”

“I get the point,” Silva said. “Tell her not to include Diogo.”

From Judge Rosenblatt’s chambers, they went directly to the municipal dock, where they rented a boat. They told the owner/captain to moor the vessel in the mouth of an out-ofthe-way tributary, turn on the air-conditioning, and leave them alone in the cabin.

While Hector took a handwritten statement from Bento, Silva made calls from his cell phone. One of them was to the reception desk at the Hotel Tropical. There’d been two calls from Chief Pinto and one from Silva’s wife, Irene. He ignored the messages from the chief and was lucky to catch Irene still relatively sober. He told her to expect him the following evening in Brasilia.

“I’ll pick you up at the airport,” she said. “We’ll share a cocktail when you’re safely home.”

“Don’t start without me,” he said.

At eleven o’clock that night, the three federal cops took the boat back to the municipal dock. They left Bento aboard and packed themselves into a cab for a quick trip to the airport. Gloria and her people arrived on time, aboard the 11:30 P.M. flight from Brasilia. It took three more cabs to carry the personnel and equipment. Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the headquarters building of Manaus’s Municipal Police.

Silva assigned men to oversee the operations of the switchboard operator and the radio dispatcher, then assembled the rest of the small nighttime staff. He identified himself, showed his credentials, and waved a paper.

“This,” he said, “is a search warrant for this building and these”-he waved two other papers-“are arrest warrants for Chief Pinto and Coimbra, the guy who runs the archives. Under no circumstances are you to attempt to contact them. Nobody leaves the building. All calls, incoming and outgoing, are going to be monitored. Turn in your cell phones to the little lady with the big gun and line up to submit yourselves to a body search, men on this side, women over there.”

His listeners were more accustomed to pushing people around than being pushed, but they did it. An examination of Alberto Coimbra’s desk revealed no list of what might have been protected felons. They moved on to Pinto’s office, where the search for any kind of incriminating evidence proved equally disappointing.

“Only one more chance,” Silva said. “Where the hell is Lefkowitz?”

“Here, Chief Inspector,” Lefkowitz said, coming in through the doorway, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. One of Gloria’s men had commandeered a police car and picked him up at home. They’d made record time in getting there.

“I seem to recall you tap telephones,” Silva said. “Are you any good at it?”

“I’m a virtuoso.”

“Good. I want you to tap the chief’s.”

“His home?”

“His home.”

“Got a warrant?”

“I do.” Silva showed it to him.

Lefkowitz grinned. “It’ll be a pleasure,” he said.

“When you’re finished there,” Silva said, “go to Coimbra’s place and do the same thing. Here’s his address. Arnaldo will meet you there. Hector, take Enrique and follow Lefkowitz to the chief’s home. Keep an ear glued to his calls. If he gives you probable cause, break in and slap the cuffs on him. If he sticks his nose out the door, and you think he’s going to make a break, do the same.”

Coimbra, a bachelor who lived alone, was awakened from a sound sleep by the pounding on his door. He grabbed the phone next to his bed and made a desperate call to the chief.

The chief’s wife and two kids were in Rio, visiting his mother-in-law. The woman next to him in the king-sized bed was the maid. She picked up the telephone and handed it to him.

“Chief?”

“Coimbra? It’s three-ten in the fucking morning. What’s so import-”

“The federals are pounding my door.”

The maid slipped her hand down from Pinto’s stomach to his groin. Angrily, he brushed it away.

“Merda! Where’s your copy of the list?”

“Under my mattress. I brought it home after Carvalho missed his shot at Rosario.”

“Destroy it. Now!”

And Coimbra would have, if Arnaldo hadn’t put the earphone aside and broken down his door.

The chief’s first outgoing call was to a Sargento Carvalho, but all he did was to ask him for a telephone number, which he promptly called. It turned out to be the cell phone of Carvalho’s boss, Tenente Jordao. “What the hell’s going on?” The chief was getting angrier by the minute. “Did I give you an order to kill those goddamned federals, or didn’t I?”

“Sorry, Chief, but we can’t kill them if we can’t find them. They left their hotel at lunchtime and never came back.”

“Go to Coimbra’s place. He says they’re there, pounding on his door.”

“Merda. They must be tooled up for an assault. I’ve only got two men with me.”

“So get some more,” the chief said and slammed down the phone.

The tap bore additional fruit. Calls provided links to two more of the chief’s accomplices. He berated the first one for having allowed Bento Rosario to fall into the hands of the federal cops.

“You saw him, for Christ’s sake. You saw what he was doing. All you had to do was to shoot the bastard.”