Free Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage Page B

being able to put on pressure locally, we have to do it by telephone and letter. Third reason: We—and by that I mean the federal police—are a force in this town. Here in Brasilia it’s relatively easy to get the data we need to input. It’s much harder in São Paulo. We’re not much of a player in that shit-hole. Oops! You’re from there, aren’t you? Sorry about that.”
    “No, Cicero. You’re not sorry, and you know damned well I think it’s a shithole too.”
    “Maybe I do, but getting back to the subject: Being from there doesn’t have anything to do with choosing São Paulo for our pilot project, right?”
    “No. Not a damn thing. And will you please back off?”
    “Temper, temper, Mario. No need to get huffy about it. No need to deal in falsehoods, either. Your secret is safe with me.”
    “Secret? What secret?”
    “That you’re more concerned about tattoos and a lack of front teeth than you are about scars, or moles, or birthmarks. Have I got that right?”
    “No, you don’t.”
    “Well, I hope not, because what we’re supposed to be doing is to set up a database that’ll make it possible to zoom in on a felon based on any identifying characteristic. That’s the brief, isn’t it? Collect any and all identifying characteristics and get them into the computer so they can be sorted and cross-referenced? Any and all , not just tattoos? Not just teeth?”
    “Right.”
    “And there’s nothing personal about anything we’re doing?”
    “How many times do I have to tell you, Cicero. There’s nothing personal about this. Not a damned thing.”
    SILVA KNEW, all too well, that he was working against the clock. The director hadn’t specifically said it, but unless his new system for identifying repeat offenders proved its worth within the first six months, it was likely to be written off as a failure.
    Department heads were constantly filing into the Director’s office with their hands out. The budget of the Federal Police was never sufficient to do everything that everyone wanted to do, and the fact that Silva had gotten any financing at all was proof positive that Fagundes considered him to be on a fast track.
    Every day Silva prayed for results. Four months into the experiment, and long before their database was anywhere near complete, his prayers were answered.
    Estrella Alba was a white woman in her mid-thirties with a red birthmark, about the size of a strawberry, on her left cheek. Her previous arrests, two for shoplifting, one for assault, and one for prostitution, coupled with her prominent facial feature, had brought her into Silva’s database.
    Digital photography was still some years in the future. All of the references were verbal. In Estrella Alba’s case, the keywords were, in order of importance, BIRTHMARK, CHEEK, LEFT, and RED.
    At ten o’clock one morning, and only a few days after Cicero had made the entry, an inquiry came in: A woman with a red birthmark on her left cheek was being sought for the holdup of a bank on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista. Could they help with an identification? By noon, Estrella’s name had been telexed to the inquiring officers in São Paulo. They located her a little before 3:00 in the afternoon. And, by 6:00, after a little coercion, she confessed.
    The news spread quickly throughout the law enforcement community. From that time on, Cicero and Silva no longer had to beg people to make the necessary contributions to their database. Other successes followed, first only a few, then many more as the database grew. They bought another computer, then another.
    Silva got a promotion. He was no longer entrusted with the day-to-day operation of the database, but he still made it a part of his daily ritual to check the computer for the references he’d been seeking all along: TATTOO, NECK, SNAKE, all of them together in one file. In October of 1985, almost seven years to the day after his father’s murder, he found them.

Chapter Nine
    HIS NAME WAS