When Silva’s grandfather was a lad and football was a game played almost exclusively by the English, the Tiete River was a pellucid stream on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. As a child, Silva had heard stories from the old man about transparent waters where people went to fish and boat and bathe.
On one stretch, so straight it appeared to be a canal dug by the hand of man, a rowing club had sprung up. At the time, no man could consider himself educated unless he was steeped in Greek and Roman lore, and the founders of the club were all so steeped.
They’d chosen to call their organization the Spartan Rowing Club. In those days, to be a Spartan meant simply to be a great warrior. The word hadn’t yet taken on the more recent connotations of frugality and austerity.
The battles those warriors fought were on the lazy current of the river, and they consisted of racing each other in sculls of one, two, or four men.
Time brought radical change. By the last years of the twentieth century, and on into today, no one would think of entering the water, boat or no boat. The Tiete had become little more than an open sewer, devoid of fish and poisonous to man.
As the quality of the water degenerated, the rowing club evolved. Females were admitted, and the members began to take up other sports. The boats disappeared, replaced by tennis courts, swimming pools, athletic fields and a clubhouse, in which there was a ballroom and a restaurant.
Most important of all, in the northernmost corner of the complex was the football stadium, capable of seating 78,420 people and home to the CFS, the Clube de Futebol Espartense, the Spartan Football Club, nine times national champions.
Twenty-five city blocks had been demolished to construct the building and the parking lot that surrounded it. Packed to capacity on game days, the lot was largely empty when Silva and Arnaldo drove in. The two federal cops were able to find a spot not fifty meters from the main entrance.
They passed through portals hung with the club’s flags (red Grecian helmets on a white field) and approached a security checkpoint. Seated there, in a uniform as grey as his hair, an old man was reading a newspaper. He looked up when Arnaldo leaned on the counter.
“Senhores?” he said.
“Jordan Talafero,” Silva said. “We want to see him.”
Despite their surprise visit, Talafero didn’t keep them waiting. Within five minutes of their arrival, the two cops were in comfortable chairs, sipping coffee.
Talafero sat with his elbows propped-up on a desk that appeared to have been made out of a solid plank of jacaranda. A picture window in the wall behind him overlooked the playing field. The other salient feature of Talafero’s office was his clocks.
They were of all sizes and types. There were clocks sheathed in plastic, in wood, in different kinds of metal, in domes of glass. There were clocks on the walls, clocks on the desk, clocks on the side tables, clocks on the bookcase.
“Little hobby of mine,” Talafero said in a high, squeaky voice ill-suited to a man of his considerable height and bulk.
“Good thing you guys arrived just before the hour.”
“How so?” Silva asked.
Talafero held up a hand. “Wait for it,” he said.
Just then, one of the clocks started to chime. It was still chiming when another clock kicked in. In seconds, the office was filled with the sound of clocks tolling the hour. Talafero sat listening with a smile on his face.
“That first one was a little bit off,” he said when the ring of the last chime had died away. “I gotta adjust it.”
“Quite a show,” Silva said.
“That was nothing,” Talafero said. “You want to hear them pull out all the stops, stick around until noon.”
Silva studied a model standing on his side of the desk. Inside a crystal case, three spheres, supported by a central axis, rocked back and forth. They were fashioned of the same gilded metal used for the hands.
“How many have you got?” he said.
“Seventy-four. When I got my sixtieth, my wife made me bring them into the office, said they were driving her nuts.”
“Some look quite old.”
“Some are. See that one over there? That’s from 1873. The date of manufacture is inside, etched into the frame.”
“I’m impressed.”
“I don’t just collect them, I repair them. I even build them, make ’em for Christmas presents. See this one? It’s one of mine.”
Talafero was in his mid-forties and running to fat. A Spartan T-shirt was tightly stretched over his bulging belly. It wasn’t particularly warm in the room, but his underarms were soaked with sweat. So was his forehead. He seemed to be agitated about something.
“Enough about clocks,” he said. “We got more important things to talk about. You’re here about the Artist’s mother, right?”
Silva raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think so?”
“Stands to reason. Who else would you talk to first? Who’s closer to the Artist? Answer me that.”
“Frankly, Senhor Talafero-”
“Nobody. Nobody’s closer. I’ve known him since he was twelve. I know his mother. Hell, I even know that girlfriend of his, although sometimes I wish I didn’t. You guys are federal, right?”
“Right.”
“Good. Because, if you were from the Civil Police, I wouldn’t talk to you. He’s got all of those guys on his payroll.”
“Who?”
“The man who did it. Captain Miranda.”
“Miranda, the bicheiro?”
By bicheiro, Silva meant a mobster, a banker for the jogo do bicho — the animal game. Brazil’s illegal lottery was an import, with minor variations, of a similar form of illicit gambling run by organized crime interests in the United States. There, it was referred to as the “numbers racket.”
“Him,” Talafero said. “He’s the one. He snatched Tico’s mother. I’m sure of it.”
“You may be sure of it, Senhor Talafero, but can you prove it?”
“No, I can’t.”
“So why do you think he did?”
“I don’t think he did, Chief Inspector, I know he did. He takes the whole carnival thing very seriously. He-”
“Wait,” Silva said. “Back up. What’s carnival got to do with it?”
“It’s got everything to do with it. He’s not just a bicheiro, he’s the patron of Green Mangos.”
“The samba school?”
“Of course, the samba school. You know anything else called Green Mangos? We’ve beaten the bastards three years running. Miranda doesn’t want it to happen again.”
Silva scratched his head. “Miranda wants his school to win the competition, so he decides to kidnap the Artist’s mother? I don’t get the connection.”
“Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself,” Talafero said, mopping his brow. “Let me lay it out in terms that even your muscle man here will understand.”
“Hey,” Arnaldo said.
Talafero ignored him-as he’d been doing since the beginning of the conversation. “You heard about my deal with Real Madrid?”
“I heard about it,” Silva said with distaste.
“You got no call to be looking at me like that,” Talafero said. “It’s just business.”
Business that had become front-page news, business that had caused a great deal of discontent among Brazilian sports fans. The Artist’s pending transfer to the Spanish club, Real Madrid, was immensely unpopular.
“People got no right to be so pissed off,” Talafero said defensively. “It’s not like it’s going to fuck up our chances of winning the Cup.”
It didn’t. In the World Cup, players always represented their home countries. The Artist would play for Brazil no matter who owned his contract.
“Yeah,” Arnaldo said, “but from here on in we only get to watch him on television.”
“Most people watch him on television now.”
“That’s because he’s playing here, for the Spartans. How many people really care what he does in Spain?”
“How many? Forty million Spaniards, that’s how many. Listen, you guys aren’t here to question my business decisions. You’re here because it’s your job to get the Artist’s mother back.”
“Thanks for reminding us,” Arnaldo said. “We almost forgot.”
Talafero ignored the sarcasm. “Let’s not get off on a tangent.”
“You were talking about-”
“I know what I was talking about. Here’s the thing: I haven’t got Real Madrid’s signature on the dotted line. They can still back out.”
“Why should they?” Silva said.
Talafero threw up his arms, revealing sweat-stained armpits. “Give me a break! Isn’t it obvious? When the Artist finds out his mother is dead-”
“What makes you think she’s dead?”
“That’s the way Miranda works. That bastard kills people, and when the Artist finds out he’s done it to his mother, he’ll go all to pieces. Believe me, I know. I know how Tico is, and I know how he thinks about her. There’s no way he’s going to get over it in time.”
“ If she’s dead,” Silva said, “I’d have to agree with you. We have less than two weeks before-”
Talafero, impatient, cut him off in mid-sentence.
“You think I’m talking about the Cup?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Hell, no. I’m talking about the option with Real Madrid. It’s only got twenty-seven days to run. If they don’t sign before then, the deal is off.”
“But not for long,” Silva said. “There’s only one Artist. He may be distraught right now, but sooner or later, whatever the outcome, he’ll get over it. Then the scramble will start all over again. Now that the other European teams know you’re willing to sell, you might even get a bidding war going.”
“You don’t have to tell me my business. I know all that. Thing is, I don’t need the money in three or four months. I need it now. I need it for Carnival.”
“Carnival? Carnival is eight months away.”
“You got any idea how long it takes to put together a first class desfile? Eight months is cutting it short.”
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You think Miranda snatched the Artist’s mother so he can ransom her for five million dollars, so he can invest it in his samba school, so he can win next year’s competition? With all due respect, Senhor Talafero, nobody takes Carnival that seriously.”
“Miranda does. He hates Silver Carnations, and he hates me. And he’s not doing it for the five million. By snatching the Artist’s mother, he queers the deal with Real Madrid and makes sure I don’t have the money to invest in costumes, or floats, or dress rehearsals. Meanwhile, the prick already has a business that nets him hundreds of thousands every month. He doesn’t need the ransom money. That’s just gilt on his fucking lily.”
“So, according to you, the kidnapping of the Artist’s mother is an ego thing? It’s all about who can put on the best show?”
“What the fuck is wrong with that? The public wins, right? You think they go to the Sambadrome to see poverty? You know who likes poverty? The fucking intellectuals and bleeding-heart liberals, that’s who! Them with all their bullshit about the integrity of the common man, the noble worker, all that crap. If that’s what you think, Chief Inspector, I got news for you. What the common man wants is luxury. That’s what they go to the Sambadrome to see, the kilometers of skirts wrapped around the Bahianas, the sequins on the bikinis of the destaques, the floats as big as a ten-story building. They want to see luxury. And luxury costs money.”
“So by snatching the Artist’s mother-”
“Miranda fucks up my deal, prevents me from getting my hands on the money we need, and Green Mangos wins. To top it all off, he pockets five million dollars. It’s that simple.”