When Hector was ushered in, the window behind Sergio Bittencourt’s desk was framing an Airbus 320. As it sank out of sight behind some shrubbery, the office was suddenly filled with the roar of reverse thrusters being engaged. The racket precluded conversation.
Junior Arriaga’s mother had been right when she called the delegado little. He didn’t quite come up to Hector’s chin. She’d also called him a bastard. Bittencourt went on to prove it.
“I hope this isn’t gonna take long,” he said. “I got better things to do than waste my time on a little punk of a dope smuggler, much less a dead one.”
“A dope smuggler, is it?” Hector said. “Guilty, was he?”
Bittencourt shrugged. “Caught with the goods, wasn’t he?”
“Arriaga was fifteen. You should have taken one look at him and transferred him.”
“It happened early in the morning, before I got in,” Bittencourt said. “I never even saw him, not until he was dead. And what makes you think you got the right to barge in here and tell me how to run my delegacia?”
Before Hector could reply, an oncoming roar built to a crescendo. Another aircraft sailed into view, the heat from its turbines distorting the air behind it. He watched it disappear, waited until he was sure the delegado could hear him, and said, “I’m here because the minister of justice wants a full investigation. Take it up with him if you’ve got a beef. I’ll even wait until you have him on the line.”
Bittencourt’s mouth tightened. Then he seemed to realize Hector might be perfectly serious, and he forced a smile.
“Sergeant Rocas gave me your name,” he said. “I forgot it.”
“It’s Costa. Hector Costa.”
“Okay, Hector, let’s start this conversation all over again. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot. You call me Sergio, okay?”
“Sure, Sergio. Now, about the kid?”
“First time I saw him, he was on the shower-room floor.”
“You told his mother you were going to investigate. Did you?”
Bittencourt squirmed. “You know how many prisoners this place was built to hold? Fifty! You know how many I got back there right now? Hell, I don’t know how many I got, but it’s more than two hundred. You got no idea of what I have to put up with.”
“No, I don’t. And you know what, Sergio? I don’t care. I’m here to talk about the kid.”
“I am talking about the kid. He wasn’t the first person to die in here, and he wasn’t the youngest either, and he sure as hell won’t be the last. Only difference is, most of them get stabbed.”
“Stabbed, huh? Where do they get the weapons?”
“The walls in this place are concrete, like sandpaper. These guys got nothing to do all day, so they sit around and scrape away on spoons, and bedsprings, and anything else they get their hands on. They keep scraping, and sharpening, until they have a weapon. Once a week, we do a search, but you can’t imagine the places they think of to hide things in. We got cases in here that’re always on the lookout for tender young ass, but they steer clear of kids raised in the shantytowns. First thing that kind of kid does is arm himself. The perverts don’t want to get stuck, so they wait for the ones like Arriaga. And when one comes along, they settle on him like flies on honey. We don’t get many of them, so the competition is fierce when we do.”
“You’re telling me your people knew Arriaga would be attacked?”
“Hey, it’s easy for you to take the high moral ground. You don’t have to deal with it. First thing people learn when they come to work here is that, if they get between the flies and the honey, they’re the ones who get stuck. You think I can find guards who’re willing to lay their lives on the line for eight hundred reais a month? Give me a break!”
“So these guards of yours, they just let it happen?”
“It’s like this: a lot of prisoners really look forward to their showers. Washing, fighting, fucking. It’s recreation for them. Hell, I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath explaining this. I really don’t expect you to understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
“As far as that kid is concerned, if I’d known he had somebody’s juice up his ass, I woulda been on it in a flash. I don’t want any more trouble than the next man. Last thing I want to see on my record is a reprimand. And juice up his ass, coupled with the time that’s gone by without me doing anything about it, is sure as hell gonna get me a reprimand. But those pricks at the medical examiner’s office never told me a goddamned thing. They kept me in the dark. First thing I heard about it was when those two guys from homicide showed up to take samples.”
“Which was when?”
“Yesterday. Up to then, we had it down as an accident. We thought the kid fell.”
“Sure you did. So between the time the kid was killed and yesterday, you did absolutely nothing?”
“Look, even if I’d suspected something, which I’m not, for one minute, about to admit I did, there wouldn’t have been any point. You know how felons think. Nobody sees anything. Nobody knows anything. Why bother to ask? But now it’s different. Now we’ve got DNA and we’ll be able to nab the son of a bitch. I got no problem with that. It’s what he deserves. No, my problem is different. My problem is I shoulda been kept in the loop. Then I could have filed as murder, instead of accidental death.”
“The DNA samples, did they get one from everybody?”
“Everybody who was still here. Some had moved on.”
“Some? How many?”
“Two, I think. Yeah, two.”
“Was one of them a punk by the name of Joao Girotti?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Just answer the question, Sergio.”
“I don’t remember. I got people going in and out all the time.”
“And the name doesn’t ring a bell?”
Bittencourt shook his head.
“Do me a favor, Sergio. Get me those two names. And while you’re at it, get me their jackets.”
Bittencourt grunted and picked up his phone. Five minutes later, two folders were on the desk. One was Joao Girotti’s. The other belonged to a man named Ubaldo Spadafora.
Spadafora’s mug shot showed a mild-looking man with mousy brown hair and moustache. He looked like anything but a hardened criminal. The written material confirmed the visual impression. Spadafora was a bookkeeper, arrested for embezzlement and larceny. It was a first offense. He wouldn’t have spent a single night in jail if his employer hadn’t caught him leaving the office with a briefcase full of cash.
“This address,” Hector asked, “is it current?”
Bittencourt shrugged. “It’s the only one I got.”
“The homicide guys get a copy of this?”
“They got a copy. But they’re gonna be wasting their time. The guy’s a wimp.”
“And only real machos rape fifteen-year-old kids, right? I want a copy of this.”
“Copier’s broken.”
“Then I’ll borrow it and return it.”
“You want the other one too?”
“No. I already have everything I need on Girotti.” Hector stood up. “I might be back,” he said.
Bittencourt didn’t seem pleased at the prospect.
Ubaldo Spadafora lived in a small house with a vase of dead flowers on the porch. The bookkeeper opened his front door to find Hector looking down at the dried leaves and stalks. If he was surprised to see someone he didn’t know standing on his doorstep at six o’clock in the evening, he didn’t show it.
“My wife left when I got home from jail,” he said. “I kept forgetting to water them.”
Hector looked up. “You normally start a conversation by admitting you’ve been in jail?”
“I do if the conversation is with a cop. You’re a cop, aren’t you? You look like one.”
Hector held up his badge.
“Okay,” Spadafora said with a sigh. “Come on in. You want coffee?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“All I have is instant. It’s not bad if you make it with milk.”
“Good enough.”
Spadafora led the way to a small kitchen, where he popped two cups of milk into the microwave. Next, he opened a tin of cookies and began to arrange them in a circular pattern on a plate.
“They’re not homemade,” he said. “I don’t cook any more. There doesn’t seem much point to it, cooking for one person.”
“You cooked before?”
“Serena said she had a full-time job taking care of her garden. She used to grow flowers: no fruits, no vegetables, just flowers. She’d have a fit if she saw it now. Most everything is dead.”
The microwave beeped. Spadafora removed the two cups, spooned in instant coffee, and began to stir.
“I’d do the shopping on my way home and then cook dinner. I’d call her away from the TV so she could join us for the meal. Afterwards, she’d go back to her novelas, leave me to do the cleaning up and the rest of the housework.”
“You had your hands full.”
“I did. I took care of the kids, too, when she was glued to the TV. But none of it was enough. Serena had her heart set on buying a weekend place at the beach, somewhere near Ubatuba. She loves Ubatuba. Take your cup and come along.”
“Is that why you stole the money?” Hector asked.
“I stole it,” Spadafora said, “because she wanted that house, and I wanted to get it for her. Then, when it all went wrong, she left and took the kids. She’s taking this place too. Got a good lawyer, Serena did; cleaned out our bank account to hire him.”
“No chance that she’ll forgive you, that you can make a fresh start?”
“You wouldn’t ask that if you knew Serena. Enough about me. Why are you here?”
“The Arriaga boy. Remember him? The one who died in the shower?”
“How could I forget? Most brutal thing I ever saw.”
“You saw it?”
“Only the aftermath. I was at the other end of the shower room, and I had soap in my eyes. I heard a commotion, washed out the soap, saw him lying on the floor, bleeding from the head.”
“So you didn’t see him being struck?”
“No, but I saw the rape. They propped him up on all fours. Two men held his thighs so they wouldn’t collapse. Another pushed the nape of his neck so his head went down to the concrete floor. Then he buggered him.”
“ Who buggered him? Joao Girotti?”
Spadafora shook his head.
“Girotti was in line. He would have been third. Except…”
“Except what?”
Spadafora winced, the memory painful. “He never got a chance. Somebody said the guards were coming. Girotti gave it up. He turned around, went under one of the showers, turned on the cold water to get rid of his erection.”
“So who was it raped the kid?”
“Castor Salles; Big Castor, they call him. And it’s an apt description. When he saw Arriaga, the first thing he said was, He’s mine. I heard him say it. The boy did too. He backed up against the wall. I went to the other end of the cell and turned my face away. Five minutes later, they were herding us into the shower. Less than five minutes after that, the boy was dead.”
“You think Delegado Bittencourt is aware of what he’s got in Castor Salles?”
“How could he not be? You know, before I went to prison, I was against the death penalty. I used to look down my nose at primitive societies that execute people.”
“Primitive societies, huh? Like the Americans?”
Spadafora smiled a thin smile before he went on. “But now I think differently. People like Castor Salles, they’re… purely evil.”
The bookkeeper shivered, as if he could see Big Castor Salles right there in the room with him. Then he looked Hector full in the face. “You’re a cop. You must see people like Salles all the time, primitives with no regard for other people and no respect for human life. What do you think should be done with them?”
Hector didn’t answer, not because he didn’t have an answer. He did. He had very firm convictions about what, in a land with no death penalty, should be done with animals like Big Castor Salles.
But he’d never share those convictions with a man like Ubaldo Spadafora.