The Rua Augusta was once a fashionable place to shop. But that was once. In recent years, it had become a strip of potholed asphalt and broken sidewalks lined with down-market snack bars, second-class boutiques, and third-run cinemas.
Caio Prado’s office was two flights up, above a store that sold cheap Chinese knickknacks. The hand-painted sign in the flyblown display window read, Sale! Everything less than two Reais.
The sale must have been going on for a long time, because the letters were faded, and the paper was curling at the edges.
Prado’s receptionist looked to be in her late teens and, like most females of any age, seemed happy to find Goncalves standing in front of her. Her smile revealed braces.
“Help you?”
“Here to see the boss.” Goncalves flashed his badge.
“Agent Goncalves.”
She fluttered eyelashes heavy with mascara. “You have a first name?”
“Haraldo.”
The smile got wider. “I’m Ana.”
“ Prazer, Ana. As much as I’m enjoying our little tete-atete, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Okay,” she said, reaching for her telephone, “keep your shirt on. Or maybe not.”
Less than a minute later, Goncalves found himself being led into the presence of an elderly gentleman in a faded blue suit. Prado was thin, almost frail, had an ingratiating smile and looked rather like everyone’s favorite uncle. He offered coffee. Goncalves accepted, and kept his eyes on Ana’s undulating derriere as she left to fetch it.
“How old is she?” he asked when she was gone.
“Eighteen, going on thirty-five,” Prado said, “and before you get any ideas, she’s my niece.”
“Ah,” Goncalves said. “Seems like a sweet girl.”
“Seems that way to a lot of people,” Prado said. “It’s an illusion. But mostly those people are a lot younger than you are, which is the way my sister and brother-in-law prefer it.”
“How old do you think I am?”
Prado looked at him speculatively. “Twenty-two?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Really? You don’t look it.”
Goncalves sighed. “I know,” he said.
Ana returned with two cups on a tray and stood there, fluttering her eyelashes until Prado told her to leave.
At which point Goncalves got down to business: “It’s my understanding you undertook some inquiries on behalf of Juraci Santos.”
Prado stroked his chin. Goncalves was beginning to think he didn’t intend to answer at all. But then he said, “Did you read the brass plaque next to the front door?”
“ Caio Prado. Confidential Inquiries. That one?”
“That one. Confidential, Agent Goncalves, is the operative word. My clients prize discretion.”
“In this case, Senhor Prado, I think your client would value release from captivity over discretion.”
“There’s nothing I could tell you that would lead to her release.”
“We already know you were investigating Cintia Tadesco, and we know you were doing it on behalf of Juraci Santos. What else is there to know?”
“Very little. Senhora Santos largely wasted her money. And you, Agent Goncalves, are wasting your time.”
“I’d like to be the judge of that.”
“I’m sure you would. But no one wants a private investigator who spreads their business all over town. It’s not your welfare I’m considering, it’s mine.”
“Talking to the Federal Police can hardly be characterized as spreading it all over town. Look, Senhor Prado, your client is in trouble. Do we agree on that?”
Prado nodded. “Of course.”
“Then it should be clear you can best serve her interest by telling me what you know.”
“Her interest, perhaps, but not mine. If it got out that I-”
“It’s not going to get out,” Goncalves said.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. We’re quite accustomed to dealing with confidential sources. You can count on me not to go bruiting your name about.”
“Can I?”
Goncalves’s patience was wearing thin. He threw aside the carrot and picked up the stick.
“Listen to me, Senhor Prado. Let me make something clear. We, and by we I mean the Federal Police, have got everybody in the goddamned hierarchy right up to the President of the Republic on our backs. I’m not asking you anymore, I’m telling you: you’re going to brief me on everything you know, and you’re going to do it right now.”
Prado shook his head. “What I know is of no relevance, no relevance whatsoever, to your case.”
“You’re not listening. Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. You decide.”
Prado was probably an ex cop, certainly knew how the system worked. He was going to have to give Goncalves something, but he made a last attempt to give him as little as possible.
“Here it is in a nutshell: Juraci Santos neither liked nor trusted her prospective daughter-in-law. She asked me to investigate her background. I found nothing incriminating. That’s it.”
“That’s nowhere near enough. I want more than the nutshell, I want the nut. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you acquire Juraci as a client?”
Prado gave a deep sigh-and crumbled.
“The Artist’s mother was recommended to me by one of her friends, a lady who’d employed me in a divorce action. Juraci called me and asked me to drop by her home to discuss a matter she described as being highly confidential. I told her I’d consult in my office for free, but a house call was something I’d have to charge for. She told me money was of no import. It was a statement, I confess, that aroused my immediate interest. Clients like that don’t come along often.”
“What was her brief? Exactly.”
“To discover whether the Tadesco woman was doing, or had done, something that might damage the Artist in any way. A romantic liaison with someone other than Tico, for example, or if there was something in Cintia’s past that might engender a scandal.”
“Do you think Juraci was simply being cautious, or did she give you the impression she’d be pleased if you could come up with something negative?”
“The latter. It was evident from the way she spoke about Senhorita Tadesco that she’d taken a dislike to her.”
“So her true objective was to find some way to encourage the Artist to break off his engagement?”
“I believe that to be the case, yes.”
“And your investigations revealed… what?”
“I told you. Nothing. Nothing she could use.”
Goncalves took note of the qualification and pounced.
“But there was something.”
Prado paused to consider his words.
“I’ll say this much, Agent Goncalves: I wouldn’t want my son to contemplate a marriage with the likes of Cintia Tadesco.”
“Explain.”
“I’m about to. I do a good deal of my work with people in show business. In the course of time, I’ve learned a lot about it.”
“So?”
“Do you remember Marco Franco?”
“Franco, the actor?”
“Him.”
“He was pretty big once. Whatever happened to him?”
“Cintia Tadesco happened to him. Marco had an agent by the name of Leo Marques. Marques is every performer’s dream. He’s not only a shark when it comes to negotiations; he’s also adept at making stars.”
“The public does that.”
“I disagree.” Prado had turned a corner from laconic into loquacious. “The public most definitely does not do that. Manipulators like Marques do that. There’s no truth to the expression a star is born. Stars are made, not born. Stars are constructed article by article, sound bite by sound bite. The more an actor is exposed to the public, the more famous he or she becomes, the more press coverage they get. It’s a snowball effect, but somebody has to get the snowball rolling. That’s what people like Marques do, they get the snowball rolling. Am I boring you?”
“Not in the least. Keep talking.”
“Essentially, actors and sports stars are little more than entertainers, but many of them, deluded by the adulation of the masses, become convinced they’re much more. They begin to believe their opinions have validity in realms that go beyond their area of expertise, that they’re authorities on government, culture and art, and that they’re qualified to give advice on everything from child-rearing to where you spend your vacation. The public, by and large stupid, and the press, who earn their daily bread by pandering to the public, lap up their advice like dogs lap up vomit.”
“That’s pretty distasteful, Senhor Prado.”
“Divulging asinine pronouncements as if they’re gospel truth is even more distasteful, Agent Goncalves.”
“What’s all this got to do with Cintia Tadesco?”
“I’ll get back to Cintia in a minute. At the moment, I’m still talking about Marco Franco. Franco, then, largely due to Marques’s efforts, achieved star status. People admired him, people took his advice. He did testimonials for everything from toothpaste to cars, and the masses went out and bought whatever he recommended. For Leo Marques, who got ten percent of every centavo he earned, Marco Franco was a gold mine.”
“I still don’t-”
“Bear with me. I’m almost there. Now, actors come and go. They age; they lose their charms; they fall out of fashion.
Marques is an old fox. He’s been around a long time. He knows his continuing success depends upon constantly developing new people, getting new snowballs rolling. He spotted Cintia Tadesco at some party or other and told her to drop around and see him.”
“Sexual interest?”
“Not at all. Leo Marques is of an age where the only thing that gives him a hard-on is money. So Cintia shows up with her book… you’re familiar with the term book?”
“Portfolio?”
“Right. She shows up with a book which has only a few photos in it, and second-class photos at that. He leafs through it. They have a little conversation. He tells her she’s got the basics, and if she does exactly what he tells her, they’ll make a lot of money together.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“I’m making a few assumptions, but I’m not far off the mark.”
“Okay. So Cintia agrees.”
“Cintia agrees. Marques orchestrates a campaign to get her picture into Fofocas and all the other magazines and tabloids. He gets her into gossip shows on television. He gets her invited to parties where she’s photographed next to the rich and famous.”
“But you can’t just mandate that kind of stuff,” Goncalves said. “Why should the magazines and television shows go along? Why should they give her free publicity? I mean, there must be hundreds, maybe thousands of people who are clamoring for it. There are probably tens of thousands of beautiful women in this country. The competition is fierce.”
“It is. But that’s where Marco Franco came in. In him, Leo Marques was representing a well-established personality. The readers of Fofocas like to read about who’s courting who, who’s divorcing whom, who’s running around with someone else behind whose back. But all those whos have to be people the readership already knows. They only begin to care about nobodies when they become somebodies. So one of the ways to get a new snowball rolling is to link the person you’re trying to promote with someone who’s already famous. A man with a man, a woman with a woman, a man with a woman, it doesn’t matter. Before long, the unknown person becomes known. Got it?”
“Got it. And in Cintia Tadesco’s case-”
“Leo Marques linked her to Marco Franco.”
Goncalves scratched his head. “But Marco was already famous. Why did he go along? What was in it for him?”
“Two things: first of all, no matter how famous you are it never hurts to have a photogenic female on your arm. It generates more pictures.”
“And the second thing?”
“Timing. Marco Franco’s public was overwhelmingly female. There was a rumor going around he was gay. It could have killed him. He needed somebody like Cintia Tadesco.”
“And is he? Gay, I mean?”
“Let’s say he’s sexually confused.”
“Which means?”
“It’s never been clear, even to him, if he’s bisexual, or homosexual. But one thing’s for sure: there was truth to the rumor.
At the time, Marco was having an affair with a male tennis pro and the news was getting out and it was bad news for him because most of that huge female audience of his had fantasies about being in bed with him. There was no way they’d take kindly to a gay tennis pro being in there with them.”
“Understandable. So, as far as the press is concerned, Marco and Cintia became an item?”
“It started out that way, but before long, so the story goes, Marco is boffing Cintia and loving it. He buys her a BMW. He gives her a weekend place out in Granja Viana. He takes her on a tour of Europe. He rejects his old ways and becomes a raging tower of testosterone.”
“But?”
“But Cintia has no sense of gratitude. She’s hard as a diamond, and she’s always looking for ways to better herself. She’s introduced to the Artist. She doesn’t hesitate. She makes a play for him, and she snags him. He’s not only a step up; he’s a whole flight up. He’s famous all over the world. He can buy and sell Marco Franco twenty times over.”
“And he’s ugly as sin and dumb as a post.”
“That’s why I said I wouldn’t want my son to get involved with her. It’s obvious to everybody, as it was obvious to Juraci, that what her son has going for him has nothing to do with physical beauty or intelligence, both of which Cintia has in abundance. Of course, she might love the Artist for the kind and gentle soul he is. But how likely is that? Juraci didn’t buy it. She’d already pegged Cintia as a social-climbing, mercenary harpy. As far as I was able to learn, so has everyone else who’s ever had contact with her. Everyone except the Artist, that is.”
“And Franco? What happened to him?”
“She returned his letters, wouldn’t take his phone calls, told him to get lost. She humiliated him in public and in private, leaked to the press that the rumors about his being gay were all true. Then, when the reporters came to talk to her about it, she did this teary-eyed television interview saying that she really loved him until she found out he was cheating on her with the aforementioned tennis pro.”
“Which he wasn’t.”
“Which he wasn’t. That was all before Cintia came along. The tennis pro, though, felt jilted and wanted to get back at Marco.”
“So he said it was true.”
“He did, and the gossip press had a field day. They went on about it for weeks, every sordid exchange, every scandalous revelation. Well, the rest of the story is quickly told. Marco couldn’t get any more work. He’s still got money, but fame is an addictive thing. He misses it, and he’s drinking heavily. People in the know tell me he’s drinking himself to death and won’t last out the year. Cintia, sweet thing that she is, has allegedly said she doesn’t give a shit.”
“Did you report all of this to Juraci Santos?”
“I did. But think about it for a minute. What did I really get? Nothing, Agent Goncalves, nothing that Cintia couldn’t easily refute. If she sticks to her side of the story, and if the Artist believes her, Juraci really has very little that she can condemn her for, nothing she can go to her son with.”
“When did you make your report to Juraci?”
“I called her the day before she was abducted.”
“No written report?”
“I prepared one. I was going to mail it this morning. But then there didn’t seem to be much point.”
“Will you make me a copy?”
“If I must.”
“You must. Were you able to find out anything else about Cintia? Does she have other boyfriends?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you wouldn’t rule it out?”
“My recommendation to Juraci was to put Cintia under around-the-clock surveillance.”
“Around the clock, eh? It wouldn’t have been cheap.”
“It certainly would not have been. But I think she was going to agree to it.”
“You could have earned a bundle.”
“I most certainly could have. If you catch those people, and it is my earnest hope that you do, would you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Give each and every one of them a kick in the balls from me.”