Mario Silva's training at the Federal Police Academy took seven months. He graduated first in his class and was assigned to the field office in Rio de Janeiro, working drug control.
That kept him busy for five days out of every week. The other two he spent in Sao Paulo, a 45-minute flight away. Partly, it was to pursue his courtship of Irene, but mostly it was to follow up on what he then considered to be his best lead. His mother's wristwatch had vanished along with the rest of her jewelry. It was a Patek Phillippe in yellow gold, unusual anywhere, unique because of the inscription on the back of the case:
To Carla, Who enriches my autumn As she enriched my springtime. Mario
Mario had also been his father's name.
Canvassing all of the jewelry stores in Sao Paulo was a big job. There were thousands of them and some, no doubt, specialized in stolen goods. He thought it best to represent himself as a potential buyer, not a cop. After months of disappointment, Silva no longer felt a surge of adrenaline when he saw a watch that resembled his mother's until the day he turned one over and found his father's words staring up at him.
It was the end of November, 1979. His mother had been dead for ten months.
"If she's Clara, and you're Mario, this is definitely the watch for you," the man behind the counter said, pushing the sale, trying to make a joke of the inscription.
He had buck teeth and was young, too young to own the place. He wore an expensive black suit and a silk tie covered with little butterflies. Silva, who'd pegged him as the business's heir apparent, didn't reply, didn't even smile. He just kept staring at the watch, running his thumb over the words on the back of the case.
The clerk continued his pitch. "I've got to be honest with you. We considered polishing it off, but the engraving is too deep. That's why it's such a good deal. Do you have any idea what one of these things costs when it's new?"
He was distinctly displeased when Silva produced his warrant card and demanded to know how the watch had wound up in the shop.
THE YOUNG man's father, as Silva had suspected, owned the place. He wasn't particularly surprised to be told that the watch was stolen, and his previous experience with such things had taught him to keep meticulous records of his sources.
The trail led to a pawnshop near the center of town. It was a place with a frontage no more than four meters wide, but it was at least twenty deep, and stuffed with everything from musical instruments to household appliances.
"Sure, I remember it," the pawnbroker told Silva. He was a little man with a bald pate, a shock of surrounding white hair, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a denim vest. "One of the best deals I ever made. The guy had no idea what it was worth. I didn't figure he was coming back, and he didn't, but I kept it for the full ninety days anyway."
"Why did you think he wasn't going to come back?"
The owner hesitated. "I just didn't," he said, avoiding Silva's eyes.
The man in the vest knew more than he was telling.
"You got a name? An address?"
"Sure. It's the law, right?"
According to the man's records, the watch had come into his possession five days after the murder. Still, Silva didn't get his hopes up. The address was probably false.
First, he thought, he'd go check it out. Then he'd come back and squeeze the pawnbroker for whatever else he knew.
An outdated map of the city, and two stops to ask for directions, brought Silva to a little street in the workingclass suburb of Sao Caetano.
The house was identical to the buildings on either side, hastily constructed out of white stucco, showing fissures in the mortar. In contrast to the green and flowery gardens of the neighbors, the short path leading to the front door was hemmed by dusty red earth. The door was blue, but its paint was peeling, showing the cheap pine beneath. The tiles on the front steps were cracked, and one was missing altogether, the impression of its ribbed underside still visible in the gray cement.
Silva tried the doorbell.
It didn't work.
He knocked.
There was no answer, but he could hear a baby squalling from somewhere inside.
He knocked again, louder.
The woman who finally opened the door had prematurely graying hair and a crying, red-faced baby in her arms.
"Boa tarde, senhora," he greeted her. "Does Jose de Alencar live here?"
To his surprise, she nodded. An appetizing smell of garlic sauteing in olive oil was coming from the kitchen. It reminded Silva that he hadn't had lunch.
"Is he home?"
"Who wants to know?" she said, suspiciously.
Silva flashed his warrant card.
"Federal Police. I want to talk to him about a case."
"Let me have a closer look at that," she said.
He reopened his wallet. She scrutinized his credentials.
"Yeah, okay," she said. "He's here. Come in."
As he stepped through the front door, she put the baby over her shoulder and started patting it on the back, but the squalling continued.
"You're lucky," she said. "He just switched over to the eight PM to four AM shift. If you'd come last week, you wouldn't have caught him." She'd raised her voice to make herself understood over the baby's crying. Now, she raised it still further. "Jose, you got company."
She showed a distinct lack of concern about an unexpected visit from the police. The reason became clear when her husband walked in, buttoning his shirt. There were stripes on the sleeve and insignia on the lapels.
Jose de Alencar was a sergeant in the Sao Paulo Police Department.
That explained the reticence of the pawnshop owner. Nobody wanted any trouble with the SPPD.
"I've got lunch on the stove," the woman said.
"You want me to take him?" the sergeant asked, pointing at his son.
De Alencar was in his mid-thirties, pale skinned, with a cruel mouth and gray eyes that turned soft when he looked at his offspring. He had a thin but well-tended mustache on his upper lip.
The woman smiled at him. "No," she said, "He's okay. Just a little bit of colic, I think. Come soon. I don't want you bolting down your lunch." A moment later, she and the squalling baby were gone, leaving the two cops alone.
Silva glanced around the room. An expensive stereo system, a brand-new television set, a leather sofa and two leather armchairs, a table that looked to be made out of jacaranda wood. None of it fit. Not with the house's external appearance, and certainly not with a guy who was supposedly surviving on the salary of a municipal cop.
"So you're Jose de Alencar?"
The sergeant picked up on Silva's tone of voice. His gray eyes went from soft to hard, seemed almost to change their color, becoming a shade darker. "Yeah. Who are you?"
Silva's credentials were still in his hand. He held them out.
De Alencar took a step closer and read them. "A federal, huh?" he said curiosity turning to hostility. "What do you want?"
Silva's mother had described her assailants as in their early twenties and mulattos. This guy was in his thirties and white. His teeth were good. He had no tattoo. There was no way he could be one of them.
"It's about a watch you pawned," Silva said. "A gold one with an inscription on the back."
"When was this?"
"October of last year. You left it with Gilson Alveres, who owns a pawnshop on Rua Rio Branco. Your signature's on the ticket."
"So what?"
"I want to know where you got it."
"What's it to you?"
"It belonged to my mother. Someone stole it."
The sergeant's face reddened, but whether in embarrassment or irritation, Silva couldn't tell.
"Well, I sure as hell didn't," he said. "I found it,"
"Found it? Where?"
"On the street."
"Where on the street?"
"I don't remember?"
"Try."
"I told you, I don't remember."
"And you expect me to believe that?"
"I don't give a shit what you believe. Fuck you."
Silva saw red. He reached out his left hand and grabbed the sergeant by the front of his shirt. "Where did you really get that watch?"
The sergeant was at least twenty kilograms lighter than Silva, and maybe ten centimeters shorter, but he didn't back down.
"You got any idea who you're dealing with? You take me on and you're going to have the whole damned force on your back. Let go of my shirt."
The sergeant was right. The municipal cops stuck together. It was the only way for them to keep on doing what they did.
Silva released the sergeant, took a deep breath and a step backward. "The way I figure it is you lifted my mother's watch off of some lowlife punk. And you know what? I really don't care. All I care about is his name and where to find him."
"Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here and making accusations like that? Get the fuck out of my house."
"I need to know, Sergeant. Those filhos da puta killed my father and raped my mother."
The sergeant's red face turned even redder. "Tough. My heart bleeds. But I had nothing to do with it. Now, get out of here before I call some friends."
AT 4:3 0 the following morning, Sergeant de Alencar, sleepy from a long night at work, was walking along the deserted street, and less than five meters from his house, when he felt cold steel on the back of his neck.
"It's a revolver, and it's cocked," a voice said. "Keep your hand away from your holster. Pass your front door and keep walking."
"I don't know who you are, senhor, but you're making a big mistake."
"Shut up. Now, cross the street, stop next to the green car, and put your hands on the roof."
The sergeant did as he was told. The man behind him relieved him of his revolver, patted him down, and pocketed a small Beretta 7.65 semi-automatic that de Alencar was carrying in an ankle holster. Then he used the cop's own cuffs to shackle his hands behind his back and opened the rear door of the car.
"Get in."
"What is this?"
"Just do it."
The sergeant felt the revolver again, pressing into the back of his neck. He did as he was told. When the man slipped in beside him, de Alencar glanced at his face.
"You!" he said.
"Me. Tell me about the punk you got the watch from."
"There wasn't any punk. I already told you-"
Silva cut him short by smashing him in the face with the butt of his. 38 Taurus. The sergeant began to bleed profusely from his nose and lip. Silva reached behind him and threw him a towel. He'd come prepared.
"I know what you told me. Now listen to me very carefully. If you tell me what I want to know, and then keep your mouth shut about it, it stops here. If you don't, I'm going to kill you, and then I'm going to go into your house and kill your wife, that baby of yours, and anybody else who's in there. Your choice."
It was a bluff. He would never have done it, but the sergeant looked into Silva's eyes, black as death, and believed him.
They were just a couple of punks, the sergeant said, just like the hundreds of others he'd shaken down in his lifetime. He'd been on patrol with two rookies, teaching them the ropes, teaching them how to get along on the sallrio de merda that was supposed to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and didn't.
It had been broad daylight, maybe 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. They were cruising along Avenida Faria Lima, not far from that big shopping center, Iguatemi, when Flores, one of the rookies, spotted a Rolex. Everybody, even a green kid like Flores, knew what a Rolex was, right?
Silva nodded. There were gangs in Sao Paulo that specialized in lifting that one brand alone and sending the watches off to Paraguay for resale. But he wasn't there to talk about Rolexes.
"Get on with it," he snapped.
"I am getting on with it. See, the thing about this particular Rolex was that the guy who was wearing it was a lowlife punk with dirty sneakers and a fucking Palmeiras shirt."
He remembered the shirt, the sergeant told Silva, because, just the previous night, Palmeiras had stolen a game from Corinthians, four goals to three, because of a blind referee who, in de Alencar's opinion, had no place on a soccer pitch and should never have been given a whistle.
Silva told him to shut up about soccer teams and finish the story.
De Alencar swallowed, and continued. "The punk with the shirt… no, that was wrong, it wasn't a shirt. It was more like a jersey-"
Silva waved the pistol.
"-well, he wasn't alone. There were two of them. And both of them were punks. The other guy was dressed in one of those fucking, stupid-"
Silva narrowed his eyes and took in an audible breath.
De Alencar cut short his sartorial criticism and hastened to tell how he and the two rookies had taken both punks into a convenient alley for a quick search. The watch was a Rolex all right, stainless steel with a black face. They'd gotten six hundred cruzeiros for that one. The other watch, the one Silva was talking about, was in the pocket of the other punk. Because it was gold, it brought three times that. They'd split the money, half going to him, half going to the two rookies. He was a sergeant, after all, and that's the way it worked. The senior guy always got half the take.
All the while they were being shaken down, the punks didn't say a word. What could they say? That the watches were family heirlooms? Yeah, right! So they just emptied their pockets and asked de Alencar and the two rookies to leave them enough change for the bus. No hard feelings on either side. That was just the way it worked.
Names? No. It had been over a year ago. How could Silva expect him to remember names? He hadn't seen them before, he hadn't seen them since, and after all this time, he sure as hell wouldn't recognize them from a mug shot.
They were Bahianos, he remembered that much. Well, maybe not from Bahia, maybe from Pernambuco, or Alagoas. It could be anywhere up that way, because all of those fucking northeastern accents sounded the same to him, and in the sergeant's opinion, all of those lazy bastards should be crammed into a fleet of buses and shipped right back to where they belonged because, more than anybody else, it was them that were fucking up the city.
"And that's it? That's all you can remember?" Silva said, cutting the social commentary short.
"Yeah. That's it."
Before he'd smashed de Alencar in the face, Silva had lowered the hammer of his Taurus. Now, he cocked it again.
"What are you doing?" the sergeant said, nervously. "Watch out for that thing."
"Think hard. Give me something else."
The sergeant swallowed, crimped his eyes shut, opened them again. "There was one more thing," he said.
"What?"
"One of them had this tattoo. It was a snake that started under that fucking jersey, maybe down on his chest. Then it curved all the way around his neck and the head and tongue were just under his ear."
The tattoo clinched it for Silva.
The man in front of him had been face-to-face with the men who'd killed his father and raped his mother. De Alencar had been close enough to smell them, close enough to reach out and touch them. But now they'd vanished again, and Silva's lead had run out, all because of the venality of three municipal cops.
Only the thought of the woman and baby sleeping across the street caused him to stay his hand. The sergeant never realized how close his wife had been to becoming a widow.