“Then perhaps you read about that clandestine cemetery in the Serra da Cantareira?” Silva said, making the state-ment a question.

“What about it?” the director said, neither confirming nor denying his awareness of the article in question.

“There were children in some of those graves,” Silva said, plunging on in the face of his boss’s apparent lack of interest. Silva, childless after the death of his son from leukemia at the age of eight, could get particularly passionate about the murder of children.

“Kids, adults, what’s the difference?” Sampaio said. “I asked you a simple question: What’s so important? Don’t you think you have enough on your plate right here in Brasilia?”

“I wasn’t aware that I had-”

“Not aware? Not aware? Mario, for God’s sake, what about Romeu Pluma?”

Romeu Pluma was a former journalist and the current press secretary for the minister of justice, Sampaio’s immedi-ate superior. Pluma and Sampaio loathed each other.

“I told you, Director, we haven’t been able to find any-thing in Pluma’s background to suggest-”

“And I told you to keep digging. Everybody has something to hide. You, him, even me. I want to know what Pluma’s hiding. Is that so much to ask?”

Sampaio was a believer in using the powers of his office to forward what he considered to be good causes, and foremost among all good causes was the continued advancement of Nelson Sampaio.

Romeu Pluma had the ear of the minister. He’d been whispering into it, questioning Sampaio’s competence and criticizing his effectiveness. And, even worse, he’d been ex-pressing those same opinions to the press. Pluma was quoted as being an “unnamed government source,” but that didn’t fool Sampaio. He always knew who was out to get him. He desperately wanted something to hold over the press secre-tary’s head, and he expected Silva to get it for him.