Free The Ways of Evil Men by Leighton Gage Page A

stock in trade. I rent rooms to those people. They have a right to my discretion.”
    “This is a man’s life we’re talking about here.”
    “You got a point. And it’s a bum rap. It’s clear as cheap cachaça that Borges arrested the wrong man.”
    “So out with it. In a situation like this, you
can’t
keep quiet.”
    Osvaldo sighed, scratched the side of his nose, leaned forward again.
    “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you didn’t get it from me.”
    “Understood. I promise.”
    “The wives of three of those guys at the table.”
    “
Three
?”
    “Like I said, Omar was a real ladies’ man.”
    “Which three?”
    “The mayor, Bonetti, and Frade.”
    Again, Jade picked up her cup. It had cooled. She took a sip. “So, from what you’re telling me, the only man sitting at that table who didn’t have a reason to kill Omar Torres—”
    “Was the priest,” Osvaldo said.

Chapter Twelve
    O SVALDO SERVED HER A light lunch, and Jade tried to do justice to it, but wound up leaving most of it on her plate. Just before one, they left the Grand and walked around the corner to the
delegacia
. A crowd had gathered in front of the little brick building, many of them women.
    Someone spotted Jade and said, “It’s that FUNAI woman.”
    Someone else said, “She’s here to get that murderer out of there.”
    Norma Prado, a cashier from Paulo Cunha’s supermarket, ran up to Jade and spit in her face.
    “Indian lover!” she said.
    Another woman kicked Osvaldo in the shin. “Shame!” she said.
    “Ouch, Ofelia,” he said. “That hurt.”
    “It was supposed to. Shame on you, helping this, this … FUNAI woman”—she made FUNAI sound like an epithet—“to defend some dirty Indian. You make your living in this town. Don’t you think you should be on our side?”
    Jade recognized her. Ofelia Prado was a close friend of her housekeeper, Alexandra Santos.
    “Don’t you think the Indian has a right to be heard?” she asked.
    “He’s got a right to a noose,” someone in the crowd said.
    Jade thought the voice sounded like Alexandra’s. She looked around, but didn’t see her.
    “Why don’t you just go home to São Paulo, or wherever else you came from?” Norma the Spitter said.
    “Norma’s right,” another woman shouted, “the bitch is an Indian lover!”
    “Indian lover! Indian lover! Indian lover!” Soon the whole crowd was chanting it.
    Jade and Osvaldo, the voices ringing in their ears, jostled their way to the front door. They found it blocked by one of Borges’ men carrying a shotgun.
    “We’re expected,” Jade said.
    “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He didn’t sound any more welcoming than the people in the crowd, but he stepped aside.
    They found Borges and Father Castori drinking coffee in the delegado’s office. Jade found a paper handkerchief in her purse and, spotting a mirror on the wall, went to clean off the woman’s saliva.
    “What are
you
doing here?” the priest asked the hotelkeeper.
    “I brought him along to translate,” Jade said.
    The priest glared at her reflection in the mirror. “
I’m
here for that,” he snapped. And then, to Osvaldo, “I always suspected your sympathies were on the side of the Indians. Now, I’m sure of it. Leave. Your services won’t be required”
    “I want him here,” Jade said, “or I wouldn’t have brought him.
    Castori opened his mouth and turned to the delegado for support.
    But he didn’t get it. “She’s the FUNAI agent,” Borges said. “Sorry, Father, but it’s her call. This is a political hot potato, and I intend to play it by the book.”
    The delegado stood up, snagged a ring of keys from a hook on the wall, and led the way to a door in the far wall. Jade, Osvaldo and the priest trailed along behind them.
    “We tried to pump some coffee into him,” Borges said over his shoulder. “But he made a face and spit it out.”
    He opened the door and entered a corridor with two cellson either side.