“You will be contacted tomorrow regarding payment, Senhor Wise,” she said. “No cops. No Private. The money for your daughters, a quick exchange. Unless you try to fuck with us. In that case, all you’ll get back is their worthless bodies.”
Tavia bagged the tablet, Natalie’s scarf, and Alicia’s bracelet and went back for the samba mask. I checked the other door, the one that had been ajar and moving slightly in a breeze. The hallway continued on. At the far end it met another staircase that went up to another door.
I opened it. The pit bulls came at me like blitzing linebackers.
I yanked the door shut just in time, heard them thud, howl, and scratch violently against it. I knew now: the kidnappers had taken the girls out through the lumberyard.
It was almost daybreak when we slipped back out the window.
Urso eased out of the shadows. “They in there?”
“They were until they spotted you,” I said.
“That’s bullshit,” Urso said. “No one sees the Bear unless he wants to be seen.”
“Then they saw one of your friends,” I said. “They escaped through an underground passage to a shed in that lumberyard. You see anybody coming out of it? A gray van?”
The Bear looked uncertain, said, “I dunno. We were watching this place.”
“Did you go in there before us?” Tavia asked. “Look around?”
“No way, Reynaldo,” Urso said hotly. “I heard the chimes, figured the train distance, left to call my boys into position. End of story until you showed up.”
“How long were you gone when you went to get your friends?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Ten minutes? I walked around the corner to make the call where I wouldn’t be heard.”
“Whatever it was, something spooked them,” Tavia said.
Urso said, “I still get paid, though. I found them.”
Tavia hesitated, but I said, “He did his job. Pay him.”
I’d no sooner said that when my cell phone rang. It was General da Silva.
“General?” I said, stifling a yawn. “You’re up early.”
“I’m always up early,” the Olympic security chief said.
“That’s why you’ve always got things so well in hand.”
“Not this morning,” he said. “We’ve had a murder in the ranks, Jack. I want you and Octavia at the crime scene as soon as possible.”
Chapter 34
TRAFFIC WAS BUILDING. It took us almost an hour to drive from the cigar factory to Barra da Tijuca, a newer district of Rio south of Leblon. Shopping malls. Strip malls. Tract houses with red-tile roofs. It looked like large swaths of Orange County, California, had been slapped down in coastal Brazil.
We followed General da Silva’s directions to a residential street on a hillside that had a view of the beach and the ocean. Da Silva was waiting for us by a police barrier along with Lieutenant Bruno Acosta. There was a fire truck up the street, and firemen reeling in hoses. The air was tainted with a sickly smoke.
“Media hasn’t gotten word of it,” Tavia said.
“Yet,” da Silva said, not happy.
“We meet again,” Lieutenant Acosta said to me. “You find those missing girls?”
“No.”
“Ransom note?”
“Not yet,” Tavia said a little too quickly. “At least, we haven’t heard about one.”
“Let’s focus on what’s going on right here, okay?” the general said.
Acosta studied Tavia and me a beat and then motioned us through the barrier and down the road. The smell became more ungodly the closer we got to the driveway of a single-family home set behind lush hedges.
We came around the corner of the hedge and saw a tropical garden in front of a beautiful Mediterranean-style two-story home. The only thing that marred the idyllic setting was an incinerated car with the silhouette of a charred corpse in the driver’s seat; puddles of water surrounded the vehicle.
“The water’s unfortunate,” Tavia said. “Probably compromised evidence of whoever—”
“Get out of my way!” someone yelled behind us. I looked over my shoulder, saw a fit man in his late thirties wearing a business suit and no tie running up the street toward us. “What the hell is going on?”
“Senhor Santos. Antonio,” da Silva said, trying to stop him. “You don’t want to see this.”
“See what?” Antonio Santos cried, and he dodged around him, went to the end of the driveway, and halted.
His jaw sagged open and his eyes got hazy with disbelief. Then the corner of his lower lip began to quiver, and he sank slowly to his knees.
“Luna!” he howled. “Oh God. Oh…”
He retched and then fell over and curled up into a fetal position. We waited until the spasms that racked his body eased and then helped him to his feet.
“Can we talk to you inside?” da Silva asked.
Antonio Santos nodded numbly. Then he stole another glance at the horror, said, “Did they…was she…burned alive?”