Leighton Gage - Dying Gasp

The story was all over the media by now. She’d heard it on the boat’s radio. The Goat must have seen it on television. She wasn’t Carla Antunes any more, she was Claudia Andrade, accused of mass murder and organ theft. There was no use denying it.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “What I was doing in Sao Paulo was-”

He didn’t let her finish. “What you did to the girls I sold you, that was sick too. Silva was right to go after you. You deserve everything you’re gonna get, you crazy-”

Hans cleared his throat.

The Goat turned to face him.

“What?” he said.

“The rest is between you and her, right? You got the money you promised me? The ten thousand? Me and Otto, we got to be going.”

“Oh, yeah,” The Goat said, “what I owe you. I got it right here.”

He reached under his shirt. But when his hand came out again it was holding a pistol. In one flowing movement he raised it and shot Hans through the heart. Otto was still standing there with his mouth open when The Goat put a bullet into his forehead just left of center.

Claudia’s ears were ringing from the reports. Her nose filled with the acrid stench of gunpowder. The Goat turned on her, still holding the pistol.

“No,” she said. “Don’t. You don’t want to shoot me. I’ve got money. We can make a deal.”

The Goat shook his head.

“Fuck your money,” he said. “And shooting is too good for you. I got something else in mind.”

He put the pistol down and peeled off his shirt.

Next to the empty holster on his belt dangled a silk cord.

The following morning, a little after seven, the telephone rang in Silva’s suite. It was Lefkowitz. He told Silva that Claudia Andrade was on a slab down at the morgue. Silva called Hector first, then Arnaldo.

“It couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl,” Arnaldo said.

The morgue turned out to be a single-story concrete building, appropriately located on a dead-end street. There was one of those electronic keypads on the front door. Lefkowitz was standing next to it.

“Body was wrapped up in plastic sheeting tied with clothesline,” he said, punching numbers on the pad.

The lock clicked. He pulled on the door and ushered them inside. They started walking along a dim corridor, lit at intervals by round globes. The place smelled like morgues everywhere-and of something else too. Silva thought it might be mold.

“You guys know Yamaguchi?” Lefkowitz asked.

“No,” Arnaldo said, “but hum a few bars, and I’ll try to fake it.”

“That joke,” Lefkowitz said, “was old when my grandfather was a boy. Yamaguchi is the medical examiner, and I gotta warn you: the woman has no sense of humor.”

“Perhaps not with your tired routines, Lefkowitz, but with outstanding wit like my own-”

“Where did they find Claudia?” Silva cut in.

“Somebody dumped her at your hotel,” Lefkowitz said. “The night clerk saw it happen, right through the glass of the front door. He was behind the reception desk when this white Volkswagen van pulls up. The side door opens. Bang, she’s on the sidewalk. Slam, they close the door. Vroom, the van takes off. It’s gone by the time he gets outside.”

“What time was that?” Silva said.

“A little after four this morning.”

“Present for me?”

“Could be. Somebody kills somebody around here, they usually drop them in the river. According to my wife, who knows about such things, there are more than six hundred species of fish out there. That’s more than they’ve got in the whole Atlantic Ocean. They make short work of any kind of meat.” “And the people in this town eat those fish?” Arnaldo said. “It’s enough to make a man sick.”

“You can say that again,” Lefkowitz said. “You try the Recanto Gaucho, that joint I told you about?”

“Yes, we did. That Gaucho saved my life. I’m gonna remember him in my will.”

“Tell me more about the body drop,” Silva said.

“I took a couple of photos in sitio, then I had her brought back here. I unwrapped her right on Yamaguchi’s table. She was nude.”

Inside, doctor Yamaguchi and her diener-the morgue assistant-were bent over Claudia’s corpse. The diener was a woman, raven-haired, attractive, and pregnant. She looked to be at least eight months along. Her appearance clashed with the surroundings.

The medical examiner, on the other hand, blended in perfectly. She was a short Asian woman in her midforties with a studious expression. Under a disposable paper cap, her hair was pulled back in a severe bun. When she heard the door, she looked up, and light reflected off the thick lenses of her eyeglasses.

“You’re the federals, right?”

She had no trace of a Japanese accent.

“We’re the federals,” Silva agreed.

“Stand over there,” she said, gesturing with a scalpel, “and stay out of my way.”

Hector, Arnaldo, and Silva went to stand in the place she’d indicated. It brought them within three feet of the table. Yamaguchi’s surgical gloves were smeared with blood. She’d already made the Y-incision and was palpating the liver prior to cutting it out for weighing. Claudia’s lids were open, the whites of her eyes shot with so many petechiae that they appeared to be red.

“The ligature marks around her neck are consistent with death by strangulation,” Yamaguchi said. “She was also stabbed, once, through the heart. She’s been dead about twelve hours. The stab wound was probably post-mortem, the killer making sure his victim was dead. There was considerable bruising around the genitals and anus. She was penetrated in both places by something at least eighteen inches long and at least three thick.”

“Sounds like me,” Arnaldo said. “But I didn’t do it.”

Yamaguchi straightened up and looked at him through her thick lenses. Then she looked back and forth between Hector and Silva.

“Who let the comedian into my autopsy suite?” she said.

“Thank you, thank you,” Arnaldo said. “This is my last show in Manaus. Don’t miss me in Brasilia and as soon as possible I’ll appear in Sao Paulo. I hope to be there for the rest of my life.”

“Semen?” Silva asked.

Yamaguchi nodded. “That also. But the bruising was caused by something else.”

“I’ll need a DNA analysis of the swabs.”

“Who pays?” she asked.

“Send them to Brasilia. We’ll do it there.”

“Five will get you ten,” Arnaldo said, “The Goat did it.”

“No bet,” Silva said.

“Who’s he?” Yamaguchi asked. She must have been one of the few people in Manaus who’d never heard of The Goat.

“A boate owner with a score to settle,” Silva said. “We had a score too. I expect he thought he was doing us a favor.”

“And he was,” Arnaldo said. “Let’s hear it for The Goat.” “What kind of a cop are you?” Yamaguchi said. “This is a murdered woman we’ve got here.”

“She was a tough person to love,” Silva said.

“But somebody did, in a matter of speaking,” Arnaldo said. Yamaguchi speared him with her eyes. “You are a disgusting man,” she said.

When the three federal cops left the autopsy suite, Lefkowitz was gone. Side by side, they walked down the dim hallway toward the front door.

“Normally,” Arnaldo said, breaking the companionable silence, “I hate these places.”

“So do I,” Silva said. “Normally.”

He paused next to an overflowing barrel of trash, took out his photo of Claudia Andrade, and tossed it on top.

Then he led the way out of the gloom and into the sunlight.