Leighton Gage - Every Bitter Thing

“The coffee is quite dreadful,” he said, “otherwise I’d offer you some. You already know our names. What are yours?”

“I’m Agent Nunes. This is Agent Goncalves.”

“Good. What can I do for you?”

“You can answer some questions. Did you arrive in this country on the morning of the twenty-third of November?”

“I did.”

“On TAB 8101 from Miami?”

“Yes. But my visa is perfectly in order, and I haven’t-”

“Just answer the questions, please. Why did you come to Brazil, Father Clancy?”

“Just Mister Clancy, or Dennis, if you prefer. We’ve elected to leave the church.”

“ We? Wait a minute. Are you telling me she’s a nun?”

“He’s telling you,” she said, “that I was a nun. Sister Clare. Before and after that, I was Petra Walder. Now I’m Petra Clancy.”

“You’re married?”

“We’re married,” she said.

“M ERDA,” A BILIO Sacca said.

“Indeed,” Silva said, “and you’re in it up to your neck. Come on. Start talking.”

“I got nothing to say.”

“Yes, you do. Want me to tell you why?”

“Okay. I’ll play along. Why?”

“Because we’re investigating multiple murders, all performed by the same person.”

“Not me. I never killed anybody in my whole life.”

“With only two exceptions, the people who were travelling with you in that business-class cabin are either dead or they’ve been cleared.”

“And one of those two exceptions did the killing? Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

“It was the other guy.”

“With you people,” Hector said, “it’s always the other guy.”

“And, in this case,” Silva said, “the other guy is a Catholic priest.”

“So what? Priests can kill people.”

“They can. And maybe he did. But if I can’t pin the murders on him, I’ll pin them on you.”

Tic. Tic. Tic.

“Wait. Wait. Wait. You’re saying you’re gonna pin ’em on me even if I didn’t do ’em?”

“Correct.”

The Brazilian civil police framed people like Sacca all the time. Sacca knew this, and Silva knew he knew it.

“You got no call to do something like that,” Sacca said. “I never done nothing to you!”

Silva shook his head, as if in regret.

“Sorry, Sacca,” he said. “One of the murder victims was the son of the foreign minister of Venezuela. The president wants results. The minister of justice is on my boss’s back. You see the bind I’m in. I’ve got to deliver.”

“And you deliver by framing me?”

“Or the priest. Makes no difference to me, except I figure you’ll be easier.”

Tic. Tic. Tic.

Within Sacca’s world, what Silva was saying made perfect sense. The little burglar rubbed a hand over his face.

“Maybe we can work something out,” he said. “What is it you wanna know?”

“There was a boy in the compartment, traveling alone. Remember him?”

“Yeah, I remember him. I remember everybody. I got a good memory for faces.”

“You were searched when you were going through Customs, right?”

“Right,” Sacca said, cautiously, a wary look in his eyes.

“They didn’t find anything on you,” Silva said.

“Right again. So, what are you-”

“But they found something on the kid.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Ecstasy pills. Your Ecstasy pills. You were smuggling them in from the States.”

“No, I-”

“You got up in the middle of the night, took those pills out of your hand luggage, and slipped them into his. The kid was busted with your pills. They took him away and put him in a cell with hardened criminals. An hour or two later, he was sent to a communal shower.”

“Why are you-”

“Shut up and listen. Someone tried to rape him. He wouldn’t have it. They killed him and raped him anyway. He was fifteen years old.”

Sacca shrugged. “You know what the kid should have done? He should have just let them do it. I mean, he’d be alive today if he had, right? Sometimes you just gotta-”

“You framed him, didn’t you?”

Abilio Sacca opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. At that moment, he reminded Silva of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“I didn’t frame him,” he finally said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

“No? How was it, then?”

“I want to see a lawyer. I’m not saying another word until I see a lawyer.”

“No deal,” Silva said.

“What do you mean, no deal? I got a right to a lawyer. I don’t have to talk to you guys.”

“Thing is,” Silva said, “I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

“And what the fuck do you think you’re putting me under?”

Silva couldn’t count the tics any more, they were coming that fast. “Ah. But that’s different,” he said. “You’re a convicted felon. I’m a cop.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Talk. I need answers now, right now. I can’t wait. And if you don’t give me those answers, I’m gonna pin those murders on you.”

Beads of perspiration broke out on Sacca’s brow. “Look, how about we do this? How about you turn off that camera up there in the corner-”

“It’s not on.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Do you have a choice?”

“Give me your word.”

“What?”

“Your word. Give me your word it’s not on.”

“You have my word. It’s not. But, if it would make you more comfortable, how about we have this conversation somewhere else: out in the yard, for example?”

“Good idea. Now, I want your agreement on the rest.

Then I talk.”

“What rest?”

“I don’t sign anything. I just tell you. You get me a lawyer, a good one, and you don’t tell him shit about the conversation we’re about to have. And you don’t testify about it either. Not you, not this guy here.” He pointed at Hector.

“All right.”

“All right? Just like that? All right?”

“We’ve got bigger fish to fry, Sacca. You play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you.”

“I’m still not sure I can trust you.”

“You’re going to be happily surprised. Let’s go outside.”

Clancy’s three brothers had opted for the secular life, but his parents, religious people to the core, had always dreamed of having a son who’d embrace the priesthood. They worked hard to steer him away from his sweetheart, Petra, and toward the Church.

“I wanted to please them,” he said. “I managed to convince myself that there was something romantic about giving up the love of a woman to serve God. I began to see myself as a kind of hero, sacrificing his own happiness for a greater good.”

Petra looked down at his hand and squeezed it. “When he first started talking about becoming a priest,” she said, “I thought he’d get over it.”

“What she really did,” Clancy said, “was refuse to believe it.”

She smiled at him and then at Arnaldo. “He’s right,” she said. “And I kept refusing until the day he entered the seminary. It wasn’t far from my home. I hid behind a telephone pole and watched when his parents brought him to the front door. Then I hugged the wood, trying to make believe I was hugging him. I hugged it so hard that, when I got home, I found splinters in my cheek. I locked myself in my room, and I cried for hours and hours. I wasn’t interested in other men. The prospect of spending my life alone frightened me. I decided to join a religious order.”

“A convent?” Goncalves asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “Goodness, no,” she said. “That wouldn’t have suited me at all. I joined a small order. We help refugees in London, street kids in Nairobi, migrant workers in Florida. Here, in Brazil, I work-worked-with the rural poor.”