The Customs agents who’d nabbed Junior Arriaga were Fausto Mainardi and Douglas Caetano. Mainardi, who seemed friendly enough, was a veteran in a baggy suit. Caetano, new to the service, was surlier but a better dresser. They brought Goncalves to the windowless room where they’d interrogated the teenager.
A television camera was mounted high in one corner, a monitor in another. A microphone protruded from the ceiling. The only source of illumination, a fluorescent tube, was protected by a metal grate.
Goncalves, preparing to take notes, tried to move his chair closer to the table. It wouldn’t budge. He looked down and saw it was bolted to the cement floor.
“Why are we interested in this kid?” Mainardi said.
The we was a reminder. The Customs Service was a division of the Federal Police. Mainardi and Caetano fell into the category of colleagues. They expected Goncalves to tell them the whole story.
Which he did, starting with the murder of Juan Rivas and emphasizing the director’s personal interest in the case.
When he told them about young Arriaga’s murder, neither man seemed shocked-or even interested.
“Sounds unrelated,” Mainardi said.
“Probably no connection at all,” Goncalves agreed, “but my orders are to follow up on it. Tell me what you remember.”
“Start with the old system,” Caetano said to his partner.
Mainardi nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Time was,” he said, “we asked people with taxable goods to fill in a form. Those that didn’t, they’d go straight to nothing-to-declare. There was this button they had to push, and a sign right next to it, all in lawyer’s language: By pushing this button I affirm yadda, yadda, yadda and so forth and so on. If an arrow in front of the pusher went green, it would be pointing left and they were home free. But if the arrow went red and pointed to the right, and a loud fucking buzzer went off, they’d have to go to the tables and start opening their bags. Way I heard it, some cousin of some higher-up sold us this system and cut a nice deal for doing it. Way I heard it, it was the most expensive buzzer-and-light system in the history of the world.”
“Not to be impolite,” Goncalves said, “but what’s this story got to do with-”
“Hold your horses. I’m getting there.”
“You gotta hear the whole thing,” Caetano said. “Otherwise you’re not gonna get it.”
Mainardi waited until Goncalves nodded. Then he continued. “A lot of us were pissed off about the changes. We figured we were better than any random system. We lobbied for an override, a little transmitter we could keep in our pockets and use to buzz anybody who looked suspicious. In the end, the higher-ups agreed.”
“Uh-huh,” Goncalves said. He started to drum his fingertips on the table.
“Almost there,” Mainardi said. “So we used the hybrid system, random and override, for a couple of years, until the guy who had it installed retired to his villa on the French Riviera, or some such place, and the new regime took over. That’s when we switched.”
“To what?”
“Now everybody has to fill in the form, whether you have goods to declare or not. We stand there and collect them. Anybody looks suspicious, we shake ’em down. Back to square one, you know what I mean? But it wasn’t square one, because working with the other system taught us something.”
“Which was?” Goncalves said, still drumming.
“Which was that no matter how good we think we are, we’re still gonna make mistakes. The random system picked up people we would never have expected. And we chose to stop people who, no matter how shifty they looked, weren’t trying to get away with a thing.”
“And that’s what happened on this flight, the one the kid was traveling on?”
Mainardi pointed a finger at Goncalves as if it was a gun. “You got it,” he said. “There we were, young Douglas and me, working the flight in question and collecting the forms. First thing that happens is, I pull a guy name of…”-he consulted the file he’d brought with him-“Darcy Motta.”
“Why did you pick on him?” Goncalves asked, his interest quickening.
“Same reason I pick on anybody. He looked shifty. But no, I’m wrong. The guy’s carrying hand luggage and a small suitcase, that’s it. Inside the suitcase there’s a pair of pants, a couple of dirty shirts, ditto underwear. In the hand luggage, there’s a carton of cigarettes, a pack of chewing gum, some condoms, and a couple of girlie magazines. Meanwhile, young Douglas here decides to shake down Arriaga, an innocent-looking fresh-faced kid, somebody you wouldn’t suspect in a million years.”
“But if you wouldn’t suspect him, why-”
“Let me finish. Turns out the kid is carrying three plastic containers. They’re pretty big, about the size of a jar of mayonnaise. On the outside, it says they’re multiple vitamins.
Under the caps are foil seals. At least there are on two of them. The seal on the third one is broken. And what’s inside that one really are vitamin pills.”
“Kid’s eyes got real big,” Caetano said, “and he started to stammer. Claimed he’d never seen those containers before in his life. I picked up one of the sealed ones and rattled it. It sounded like it was full of pills, just like it’s supposed to be. But then I ask myself what kind of pills. I break the seal, and guess what?”
“Not vitamins.”
“Ecstasy. Branded, no less. Little dollar signs on every pill.”
“Again, why did you pick on the kid?”
“You’re gonna laugh.”
“I doubt it.”
“No, really, you’re gonna laugh. It wasn’t because I suspected him at all. I just wanted to bust his chops.”
“Why did you want to bust his chops?”
“Because he was an arrogant little punk who pissed me off, that’s why,” Caetano said.
“Let me get this straight. You chose to make trouble for him because he rubbed you the wrong way?”
“What good is power if you don’t abuse it, right?”
“What did he do to annoy you?”
“It was the way the little bastard looked at me, like I was beneath him.”
Julio Arriaga, a fifteen-year-old kid, was dead because of a few Ecstasy pills and because this prick hadn’t liked the way he’d looked at him.
Goncalves tightened his jaw, but Caetano didn’t seem to notice and went blithely on. “‘What’s this?’ I said, when I pulled the first container out of the kid’s bag. ‘I got no idea,’ the kid says. ‘It’s not mine.’”
“Not mine,” Mainardi said, joining in. “You have any idea how often we hear that?”
“A lot, I suppose,” Goncalves said.
“You bet your ass,” Mainardi continued, “a whole lot. We took him here, cuffed him to the table, let him stew while we ran the tests. We needed the results to make the case.”
“We came back here,” Caetano chimed in, “told him he was good and busted, and guess what? He’s not so arrogant any more. You want to see the tape?”
“In a minute. What did you do next?”
“Did what we’re supposed to do.” It was Mainardi again. “We called the civil police. They took him away.”
“To the nearest delegacia? The one where Bittencourt is in charge?”
“The nearest. The Fifteenth. I don’t know what the chief honcho’s name is.”
“Tell me more about this Darcy Motta.”
“What’s to tell?”
“Physical description?”
“Forty, maybe forty-five,” Caetano said after a moment’s thought. “Maybe a meter ninety, maybe ninety kilos. Got a brown spot right here.” He touched his right cheek. “Like one of those things old people get.” His eyes shifted to his partner’s hands. There were liver spots on the backs of both.
Mainardi took them off of the table and folded them in his lap.
“Anything else you remember?”
Mainardi shook his head.
Goncalves turned back to Caetano. “And you?”
“No,” Caetano said. “That’s it. The little fucker practically pissed himself. The tape’s a gas.” He pointed at the television monitor. “Want to see it now?”