“Remember that couple, the Portellas?” Hector asked.
The telephone connection was, for once, a good one. Silva could even hear the rumble of traffic on the street in front of Hector’s office.
“The ones who turned in that complaint about a missing family,” he said. “You bet I do.”
“We got a call from a lady by the name of Alcione Camargo. Clarice Portella cleans for her on Tuesdays.”
“And?”
“And Clarice is on her way back from Pernambuco.”
“Wasn’t she supposed to stay two weeks?”
“She was. But no more. According to what she told Dona Alcione by telephone, there’s a family feud going on up there. It seems that Ernesto, that’s Clarice’s husband, fancies himself a member of the oppressed masses. His brother-in-law, the guy they were staying with, owns a shop and has a couple of employees. The two of them, Ernesto and the brother-in-law, downed a bottle of cachaca the night before last. The brother-in-law was opening another one when Ernesto accused him of being one of the oppressors. The brother-in-law told Ernesto that if he felt that way he could buy his own damned cachaca. By that time it was well past midnight and all the shops and bars in town were closed, so Ernesto made a grab for the bottle. It isn’t clear who hit whom first, but Clarice and her sister had to break it up. And now the Portellas can’t stay there anymore, and none of their other relatives have any room for them, and they can’t afford a hotel, so they’re coming back.”
“And Dona Alcione told you all this?”
“No. She told Babyface.”
“Babyface, huh? And he managed to extract all this infor-mation in a simple telephone call?”
“He did. His charm continues to amaze.”
“Why would Clarice go into the ugly details with some-one she works for?”
“Babyface says Dona Alcione and Clarice have one of those relationships where they bitch to each other about their husbands.”
“Dona Alcione told him that, too?”
“Uh-huh. Babyface ought to be wearing a warning label. He’s a danger to women, that’s what he is. They pour their hearts out to him. If he wasn’t working for us, we’d have to consider arresting him.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I am.”
“When are the Portellas due back?”
“The day after tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon. Babyface will be waiting. He’ll bring them here.”
“Don’t start questioning them without me. I’ll be there by four.”
“Understood. Heard anything from Arnaldo?”
“Not a word.”
“Merda. Did he bring a gun?”
“No. Only a telephone. I had the service provider check. It’s switched off. I’m beginning to get a bad feeling. He’s been out of touch too long.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Check out that travel agency on the Rua Sete de Abril. See what other information you can dig up. Make sure they’re doing business as usual.”
“Will do. How are things in Brasilia? Have you dug up any dirt on that fellow Pluma?”
“Not a thing.”
“You’re not even trying, are you?”
“And thereby ignore a direct order from my superior? Perish the thought.”
“Isn’t that superior’s nose going to go out of joint if you get on an airplane and come here?”
“It most definitely is.”
“He won’t bankroll the trip. He won’t sign the forms.”
“That’s what credit cards are for. I’ll find some way to recover the money later.”
“And you can’t be here before four because you’ll be leav-ing at lunchtime when he’ll be ingratiating himself with some politician in an expensive restaurant.”
“Exactly right, my boy. Your powers of deduction are excellent. They must be genetic.”
Three hours later, Hector placed another call to his uncle.
“Turns out that travel agency was doing most of its book-ings with an airline called Mexicana.”
“So?”
“So we’re doing a computer run, crossing the names on Mexicana’s reservations database with recent missing per-sons’ reports from Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo. Guess what?”
“A correlation?”
“Five hits so far, all within the last six months. Seems a bit excessive, don’t you think? Especially when you consider that not one of those five people actually made the flight.”
“It sure as hell does. Pick up that Argentinian.”
“I’ll have to find him first. The place has a big sign on the door: closed for vacation. We have no name for the guy other than Juan, which at least one out of every five Argentinos calls himself.”
“I would have said one out of four.”
“The office space is rented in the name of Gabriel Larenas, but it turns out Larenas died in 2005. The owner of the building didn’t give a damn whose name was on the lease as long as he kept getting his check every month. The tele-phones and other utilities are in Larenas’s name as well. Babyface had a look through the glass and he says the place has an empty feel to it. His guess is that the bird has flown. We’re getting a search warrant. I’ll keep you posted.”