“We got a break, ” Danusa Marcus said. “No line on anyone we can bust, not yet anyway, but there’s some indi-cation that your namorada’s hypothesis is correct.”
“I already told you,” Hector said. “She’s not my namor-
Whatever,” Rosa Amorim said. “Have you got a few minutes?”
Hector studied the two women who’d burst into his office without as much as a courteous rap on the door.
“For you two?” he said. “Always. Sit down.”
Rosa sank into a seat.
Danusa remained standing, leaned over, opened the Estado de Sao Paulo she was carrying, and spread the news-paper out on Hector’s desk. She tapped a manicured finger on the headline of an article: COUPLE FOUND DEAD IN APARTMENT.
“I saw this on the way to work this morning,” she said. “The murdered couple are the Oliveiras, Clovis and Ana Carmen. Their names rang a bell. They were on our list of people to interview, but we hadn’t gotten to them yet.”
Hector took a moment to scan the article.
“Suspicion of poison, huh?”
“What it doesn’t say,” Danusa continued, “is that they had a baby boy, and that the kid needed a heart transplant. I spoke to one of the homicide guys assigned to the case. He told me Senhora Oliveira’s mother had a key to their apart-ment. She was accustomed to talking to her daughter by tele-phone at least twice a day. Last night, after no contact since early morning, she went over there and let herself in. They were in the dining alcove, pitched over the table, dead. Her daughter was clutching her husband’s hand.”
“You go to see the mother?”
Danusa looked pained. “Had to, right? I didn’t enjoy it.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t.”
“She lost her only daughter, and her only grandchild, and she’s a widow to boot. Her husband died not six months ago, killed in a holdup for twenty reals in cash and a thirty-real watch. Sometimes, I hate this town.”
“Her grandchild is dead, as well?”
“I was getting to that. Raul, his name was, born at Albert Einstein, up in Morumbi. Kid was less than two hours old when he was diagnosed with something called dilated car-diomyopathy, whatever the hell that is.”
“Fatal?”
“Without a heart transplant, yes.”
“And?”
“And Ana Carmen, that’s the baby’s mother, told her mother that they’d arranged for one, and that it was supposed to take place the day before yesterday. She also said there was something irregular about it, which precluded her from giv-ing any more details. Irregular, that’s the word she used.”
“The plot thickens.”
“Goddamned right it does. Now, get this: we can’t be ab-solutely sure the kid’s dead, but it seems like a safe assumption. We can’t find any trace of him. We’ve called every single hospital and clinic known to be able to perform heart trans-plants. Nobody admitted to performing one on a kid called Raul Oliveira.”
“Merda. How about the people at Einstein? What did they have to say?”
This time it was Rosa who spoke up.
“I talked to the cardio who did the diagnosis, a guy by the name of Jacob Levy. He says he put the baby’s name on the list to receive a heart, but he has no idea where the case went from there. I think he’s lying.”
“Why?”
“Nothing I can put my finger on. Just a feeling. Call it a mother’s intuition. My sons try it on all the time.”
“I’ve learned to trust your intuition. You think this Levy is involved in the murder of the parents or the disappearance of the kid?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I talked to a number of other peo-ple at the hospital, did a little background check. Levy is competent and well liked. Compassionate is a word that came up often. I think he might have suggested a way for the Oliveiras to work around the waiting list and get a heart for their son. But there’s no way he’s going to admit that. If he did, he’d lose his license in a flash.”
“Yeah, he would. Sweat him anyway. In the meantime, keep digging.”
“We intend to,” Danusa said. “So, like I said in the begin-ning, it looks like your namorada was right. Oh, sorry, she’s not your namorada, is she?”
“No, she sure as hell isn’t. We’re friends, that’s all. Who the hell is this Sylvie woman?”
“Told you. She’s a friend of Gilda Caropreso’s. . and something a little more than that when it comes to Babyface Goncalves.”
“Well, she’s misinformed.”
“If you say so,” Danusa said.
Rosa didn’t say anything at all, but she looked at Hector as if he were one of her teenage sons, and she could see right through him.