The following morning, Arnaldo got to the breakfast table first. He was already poking at a cheese omelet when Silva arrived.
"Look at this thing," he said. "I told you they couldn't even boil an egg."
"That's not boiled."
"The hell it's not. It's boiled in warm oil."
Hector joined them five minutes later, his eyes still puffy from sleep. His uncle made a show of looking at his watch.
"Yeah, sorry," Hector said, and then to the waiter: "Coffee, black. I'll have the breakfast buffet."
"Good choice," Arnaldo said, and put down his fork.
"So, how did it go with Brouwer?" Hector asked. "What did you think of him?"
As if on cue, the buzz of conversation in the restaurant came to a sudden stop. Heads turned toward the door.
A tall man in blue jeans and a Landless Workers' League T-shirt was standing there, scanning the room.
"Speak of the devil-" Silva said.
"That's him?"
"That's him."
The conversation around them resumed, but something about it had changed. There was tension in the air. Eyes followed Brouwer as he walked toward them and stopped at their table.
"May l?"
"Sure. Have a seat," Silva said, indicating the empty chair. "Padre Anton Brouwer, meet Delegado Hector Costa and Agente Arnaldo Nunes. Coffee?"
"Please."
Hector raised a hand to summon the waiter, who seemed to be the only person in the room who wasn't looking their way.
"I'll go get him," Arnaldo said, and stood. As he lifted his bulk out of the chair, he did a visual sweep of the room. People started taking a sudden interest in their food.
Silva raised his eyebrows. "We seem to be attracting quite a bit of attention. Is it you, Father, or the T-shirt?" He pointed to the league logotype emblazoned on the priest's chest.
"Both," Brouwer said. "This isn't a place for the have- nots. I don't belong here."
Arnaldo came back and caught the priest's last words. "The waiter thinks so, too," he said. "Says the other customers aren't going to like it if you get served. I had to flash a badge at him."
"I don't want to be here any more than they want me to be here," he said. "But I had to come. Because of this." He pulled a piece of paper from one of his pockets.
"What's that?" Silva said.
"A letter from Diana Poli to me. Read it."
Silva did.
Anton,
You were right. It's one hell of a story, but now that I know what he's capable of I'm scared to death.
If anything happens to me, tell the Federal Police to look in my safe-deposit box. It's at the Itau Bank, the one on Avenida Neves. And if you call, for God's sake don't mention this note. He may have tapped my phone.
Love, D.
Silva handed the note to Hector. Hector read it and passed it to Arnaldo.
"Who's `he'?" Silva asked.
"I'm not sure she'd want me to tell you that."
Silva let that one go for the moment. He took the note back from Arnaldo and rustled it. "When did you get this?"
The waiter arrived with a pot of fresh coffee, put a cup in front of the priest and went away without looking at any of them.
"It came in this morning's mail," Brouwer said. "I called her right away. She didn't answer the phone at her apartment, so I tried her at the office. She had a meeting set for eight o'clock, but she never arrived."
Hector wrapped his napkin around the metal handle of the pot and filled Brouwer's cup. The priest nodded his thanks and reached for the sugar.
"She's punctual? Reliable?" Silva asked.
"Very. And she has a pager and a cell phone. She's not responding to either."
"You know where she lives?"
"Yes."
Silva pursed his lips. He was getting a bad feeling about this.
"Finish your coffee, Father. I want you to take us there."
They tried buzzing Diana from the lobby. There was no answer.
"There's probably a zelador," Arnaldo said-a live-in janitor, responsible for keeping the public areas of apartment buildings clean and neat.
"Go see," Silva said.
Arnaldo took the stairs that led down to the garage. A few minutes later they heard two pairs of footsteps coming back up.
The zelador was a little brown man with a singsong Bahian accent. No, he hadn't seen Senhorita Diana, not last night, not this morning. No, he didn't have a key to her apartment, but Cecilia did.
"Cecilia?"
"Sim, senhor. Cecilia. Senhorita Diana's faxineira. She comes to clean. She'll be here tomorrow morning."
"We can't wait. Come with us. We're going up."
Upstairs, they pounded on the door of the apartment.
There was no answer.
Silva put his ear to the door. He heard a faint buzzing, constantly changing in pitch, and recognized it immediately for what it was.
"Ah, Jesus," he said to no one in particular. And then, to Arnaldo, "Open it."
Arnaldo stepped up to the door and examined it.
"Steel, in a steel frame," he said, "it's gonna be a bitch to break. You want me to call a locksmith?"
"Wait," Hector said. First he looked under the welcome mat. Nothing. Then he ran his hand over the top of the doorjamb. A key came tumbling down, tinkled once against the door and wound up on the corridor's rug.
"Voila," he said, and picked it up.
The steel door had done a good job of isolating the hallway from what was happening inside. The minute Hector cracked it open all of them could smell the stench.
Arnaldo and Hector exchanged a knowing look. Father Brouwer put his hand to his mouth. Silva turned to the zelador.
"There's a dead body in there," he said.
"Stinks, doesn't it?" the zelador asked. He was enjoying it.
"I want you to go downstairs and call the State Police. Wait for them out in front and bring them here when they arrive. Understand?"
"Sure. But-"
"But nothing. Get moving."
The zelador looked at the door to Diana's apartment, back at Hector, back at the door again, and shrugged. Then he turned and walked reluctantly to the elevator, taking his time about it.
Silva walked inside, followed by Hector.
"Let's go, Padre," Arnaldo said. "Follow me, hold your nose, and watch where you step."
They found the bodies in the office. Someone had switched off the air-conditioning and left the door to the terrace ajar. Diana's apartment wasn't just hot, it was stifling. The smell was bad, but the flies were worse. They were everywhere: in the air, on the furniture, the curtains, the walls, the ceilings, the pools of blood on the floor, but mostly on the corpses of the two women.
Diana was lying on her back with her throat cut. Nearby, a woman with blonde hair was bound upright in a chair. She was naked from the waist down. Her head was tilted forward, and they couldn't see her wound, but judging by the blood that covered her blouse it was likely she'd been dispatched in the same way.
"You know her?" Silva asked Brouwer, pointing at the blonde.
He nodded. "Diana's friend, Dolores. Diana called her Lori. They lived together."
"Look at her hand," Arnaldo said.
The other three did.
Brouwer was the first to speak.
"There was something they wanted to know," he said. "They chopped Lori's fingers off, one by one, until Diana told them. Then they killed them both."
Silva remembered the priest's experience of torture.
Arnaldo looked at him with admiration. "You could've been a cop," he said.
"Let's get out of here," Silva said.
"You don't want to wait for the locals?" Hector asked.
His uncle shook his head. "I want to see what's in that safe-deposit box," he said.