Sampaio showed no sign of having heard him.
“Pluma is an ex-journalist for God’s sake. All those guys smoked marijuana or used cocaine at one time or another.”
“I hate to be insistent-”
“Which you’re being.”
“-but I feel that we have to go. How about if we leave tonight and we’re back in the office on Monday morning? Will that suit you?”
The director stared at Silva for a while.
Silva didn’t blink.
Finally, Sampaio said, “That’s two round-trip tickets plus hotels, plus per diem. It’s gonna cost at least three thousand Reais. Don’t you think we have better things to spend our money on?”
“We can economize on the hotels,” Silva said. “I’ll stay with my sister. Arnaldo has family in Sao Paulo. He can stay with them.”
“And you can take the midnight flight. It’s cheaper.”
“Alright. We’ll take the midnight flight.”
“Deal,” the director said, and reached for his pen.
Chapter Three
At eleven o’clock on the following morning the pre-vailing smells in the corridor of the Sao Paulo morgue were of formaldehyde, tobacco smoke, and putrefying flesh, mostly putrefying flesh.
“They’re in here,” Dr. Gilda Caropreso said, stopping at a heavy metal door, “and so is Yoshiro Tanaka. He’s been wait-ing for you gentlemen.”
“Who’s Tanaka?” Hector asked before Arnaldo or Silva could.
“The delegado titular of the precinct in which the bodies were found.”
“How come he showed up himself? How come he didn’t just send one of his homicide detectives?”
“I’m told that he takes a personal interest in the murders that occur in his district,” she said, assessing Hector out of a pair of gray-green eyes.
Considering the years she would have needed to get a medical degree, and the postgraduate work required to qualify as a pathologist, Dr. Caropreso had to be-Hector did the calculation in his head-almost as old as he was. But she sure as hell didn’t look it. If he’d passed her on the street, he might have taken her for a teenager, twenty or twenty-one at the most. He dropped his eyes to her left hand. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.