Graveyard Samba (Devil Barnett Detective Series Book 4) Read online

  “Help?”

  “Luis and Vinicius.”

  “Aw come on,” Vianna’s smooth clean shaven features visibly soured at the mention of the names.

  “And before you say it, I want you to know I agree with you. Neither of them are in your league, in fact neither of them are even qualified to carry your jockstrap when it comes to investigations. They know it, you know it and I know it. But the fact remains, if I don’t assign them to the case, then it looks like I’m not doing everything I can. So now you have it straight from the horses’ mouth.”

  Vianna was fighting not to lose control. It was no secret that he had a reputation for working alone and getting results. It was also no secret that he and Detective Vinicius Sangalo got along about as well as a nervous cat and a rabid dog locked in a small cage. He saw Sangalo’s partner, Luis Vargas as being bright enough, though not very aggressive. But at least he had a brain that could be instructed. Sangalo on the other hand was arrogant, stubborn, self-centered, and closed minded. The inside story on Vinicius Sangalo was when he had been a regular cop, he had caught the daughter of a politician in flagrante delito with a guy in the back seat of a car. Being a first class bastard Sangalo photographed the encounter and then used the photos to blackmail the politician.. The politician offered to pull strings to get Sangalo made detective if he would burn the negatives.. To Arlindo Vianna, Detective Vinicius Sangalo was a pure waste of space.

  “And oh,” continued Passador as he slid off the edge of the desk and fished a folded piece of paper from his shirt breast pocket and laid it in front of Vianna.

  “This is a little something that was sent over from IML. Make a few calls. It seems that our informed sources think that this guy was an American journalist who had been in search of our illusive and mysterious Robin Hood priest.”

  “Oh no, not again,” Vianna said.

  “Oh no is right, but follow it up anyway,” Passador said, as he started to walk away.

  “How many times have we heard rumours about this mystery Robin Hood priest, a priest nobody seems to has ever seen or talked to first hand? Now you ask me to spend valuable time looking for a ghost, huh?” Vianna quipped to his boss, who was already halfway across the room.

  Passador stopped and turned towards Vianna then raised his arm as if he were addressing an audience in a theatre. “Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance. Yonder palace was raised by single stone, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigor three hours a day will pass in seven years a space equal to the globe. Samuel Johnson,” Passador said and went back into his office and closed the door.

  Vianna looked at the paper. It was a report from IML, the place where the dead ended up if they died in either suspicious circumstances or without identification.

  The dead man in question: Duncan Lamont, killed by a bus in Madureia.

  It was almost 8:08 when Vianna arrived home. He had stayed at work for three hours overtime and was tired of thinking. He just wanted to relax now. He was forty-two years old, had been married once, and divorced three years ago, with no children. So now he was living the life of a bachelor. Vianna liked to think of himself as an uncomplicated man. Work was complicated enough, so in his private life he liked to make things as simple and efficient as possible. No frills. Work took up most of his energy and that’s the way he liked it, for now anyway.

  His one bedroom apartment was located in a simple five story building and his furnishings were simple and neat.

  Vianna popped a frozen dinner into the microwave and then went to take a shower. Tonight he planned to watch a DVD he’d bought the previous weekend. It was a classic, The Magnificent Seven with Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. He had always liked American movies, especially westerns, ever since he was a kid and his father used to take him to see John Wayne movies.

  As the tepid water from the shower passed over his body, Vianna hoped it would somehow clean away some of the dirtiness that had filled his mind about the missing children case during the day. Some nights he dreamt about his work. He was hoping this wouldn’t be one of those nights. He tried to turn his mind away from work, to something he could look forward to enjoying, like the skiing trip he had planned. It was still two months away but at least it was something to look forward to. The trip would take him to Europe. He had the extra money now, so he would treat himself. He had even thought of asking Julianna. She was a woman he had met about a month ago. They really liked each other and got on well together. She was beautiful, the right age, the right personality. Not too pushy. The only thing stopping him from asking her so far was the fear that after the trip she might want to become more serious. Then there could be complications. Keep it simple. No complications. Anyway, he still had time to decide.

  As he finished his shower something his boss Passador had said earlier in the day caused him to stop in the middle of drying his hair. It was about the American found dead in Madureia. Passador had used the term informed sources. What informed sources could he have been talking about? Vianna finished drying himself and then quickly put on his robe. He went to the desk he used when working from home and dialed the phone.

  The first number went to answer phone; he dialed another number.

  “IML, Creuza Santos,” a female voice answered.

  “Is Carlinhos there? This is detective Arlindo Vianna.”

  “Yes, hold on,” the voice answered. A few minutes later Carlinhos’s voice came on the line.

  “Listen, I need to know something about a guy that you have. A guy I D’d as Duncan Lamont. I need to know who brought him in and exactly who came there from our department to I D the body,” Vianna said.

  “OK, I’ll see what I can do,” Carlinhos said sleepily.

  “No, don’t see what you can do. Do it. I’ll make it worth your while,” Vianna said.

  “OK, call me back in about two hours,” Carlinhos said.

  Just as the buzzer on the microwave went off, the phone rang.

  Vianna had started in the direction of the kitchen but stopped. He answered on the third ring.

  “Detective Vianna,” an unfamiliar voice said.

  “Yes.”

  “You are looking for the missing children, are you not?”

  “Who is this?”

  “I am The Man of Heavenly Love. But there are many who call me by other names,” the voice said. Then the voice on the phone continued speaking in a calm and measured way as if it delivering mass. “And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven. And he cried mightily with a strong voice saying Babylon has fallen and is the habitation of Devils and every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of her fornication. And I heard another voice from heaven saying come out of her my people that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye not receive her plagues. For her sins have reached heaven and God hath remembered her iniquities.”

  “Who the hell is this?” Vianna said.

  Crack . . . The bullet entered the window and penetrated Vianna’s skull. His eyes froze and his body went limp. He was dead before he even hit the floor.

  ***

  The Man of Heavenly Love slowly unscrewed the sharpshooter’s rifle which broke down into three parts. There was no need for him to hurry because no one knew he was there and he had been extra careful by using a silencer on the rifle. He wrapped the pieces of the rifle in three separate strips of thick cloth and secured the cloth to his body with heavy gray gaffer’s tape.

  He then covered himself with the long traditional priest’s frock and walked down the back stairs of the building into the street. Something about the warm Brazilian night with its star-filled sky caressed his memory and made him think about his boyhood in the countryside among the sounds of Forro dances and the thick, rich, brown earth of his family’s small coffee farm in Matto Grosso. On nights like these he remembered playing football by moonlight with his cousins in the open fields. Running and playing and laughing until he grew so tired, he barely had the energy to walk into the house and pull himself into the bed. That seemed so long ago, long before he had become a Man of Heavenly Love.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “So brother, if you need me to stay another few days with you, I can,” Johnny Ray Slim said to me, as he looked at the cloudless blue sky above Rio’s International Airport.

  “No, changing your reservation would cost at least thirty percent more than the ticket cost in the first place,” I told him.

  “Yeah you’re right, besides I know people are wondering where I am. It’s been at least five years since I took a real vacation.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll check you as soon as I get back. I’m thinking a few more days. It’s just that I’ve got to do this thing for my friend and there’s no way I can move before it’s taken care of.”

  “Cool, we got to do this thing next year, too, man,” Johnny Ray grinned.

  “I’m down,” I grinned.

  Johnny Ray gave me a hug then headed towards the departure gate.

  I did a U-turn and went back to the parking lot where the car I had rented was waiting. It was still only 11:30. I figured it would take me about a half hour to get back to the hotel, which was only twelve miles from the airport. There I planned to chill-out until word from IML about the paperwork necessary to ship Jim’s brother’s body back to the States came through. The IML was the place in Brazil where murdered bodies or dead bodies without proper identification turned up. I didn’t know any details about Jim’s brother other than he had been a journalist and he had been hit by a bus. As I made my way back towards the hotel I was noticing the advertising billboards along the way and was surprised how much Portuguese I was able to read and understand. Being fluent in Span
ish made it pretty easy. Easy, plus the month’s course I had taken before the trip hadn’t hurt. I figured I was understanding about 85 percent and speaking about 75 percent.

  I arrived back at the hotel in plenty of time for lunch. I ate on the balcony and looked out over the half-empty beach towards Sugar Loaf. Two little girls who looked about seven or eight were selling plastic flowers attached to a piece of paper with the name of a saint printed on for a dollar each.

  They came over and I bought two flowers and told the young vendors to keep the flowers and sell them again. They both smiled appreciatively and moved on quickly. These poor kids made me think of my ex-girlfriend Sonia and her twin daughters back in Spanish Harlem, New York. They were about the same age. It reminded me of my last birthday when Sonia’s daughters had baked me a Devil’s food cake with little frosted flowers on top. The funniest part was they had never baked a cake before but insisted on doing it themselves without their mother’s help. To everyone’s surprise it was delicious. Later the girls admitted they’d thrown the first three attempts into the trash and the one we ate was the fourth incarnation. They had also given me a CD of The Modern Jazz Quartet because they knew I was a jazz collector. It was one of the happiest birthdays I can remember. Because of times like that, I tried to convince myself that putting the detective part of my life behind me was worth it , but in the end I just couldn’t bring myself to stop doing what I really needed to do, which was helping people out who found themselves in a jam. My friend Jim Frazier always said my being what he called a do-gooder detective was my way of seeking redemption for all the lives I helped to destroy during my fifteen years I worked as an assassin for the CIA. And though I truly believed then as I did now that most of the people deserved it, I still didn’t feel good about having done it. Maybe Jim was right.

  Since I had left the CIA I had been involved in more than a few episodes in Harlem which led to people getting justice I believe would have otherwise eluded them. I’ll be the first to admit that being involved with real people on that level made me feel good. Real good. When I was an agent, no assignment left me feeling anything, good or bad. It was just a job. Sometimes I felt as if I had lost my soul. But Sonia or no Sonia, deep within me, I knew I wasn’t ready to give up this part of my life. At least not yet.

  Still, a few minutes later I was at a pay phone in the street asking the operator to connect me with Sonia’s number in New York. I’m not sure why, other than the fact I needed to hear her voice. The phone rang twice and then Maria and Marissa’s voices came on the phone doing their very bad impression of a French accent. “Sorry my darlings but ze ladies of ze ‘owse Sonia, Maria and Marissa cannot talk weez you right now, but leeeve a mesaage at ze tone and we will get back weez you as soon as posseeeble darlings ”. Then the voices of the two girls exploded in laughter and the tone beeped. I smiled and hung up without leaving a message.

  I had lunch at a small Copacabana Italian restaurant across from the Excelsior Hotel on Avenue Atlantico and then crossed the street and began walking toward the beach. I stood looking out at the ocean and tried to remember all of the things I had seen and done the past twelve days I’d been here. I’d found Brazil a country of incredible contrasts. The Copacabana with its breathtaking scenery as well as the favellas (slums) and morros (hills) with their devastating poverty. In Brazil, September was late spring and people hadn’t started jamming the beaches like they would as summer approached at the end of the year. I lazily stopped along the beach to watch a guy making an elaborate beachscape scene from sand. Before this trip to Rio I had never seen such intricate sand sculpturing before. But there it was, as plain as day, and beautiful too. This artist had created a castle, a mermaid and Neptune rising out of the sea all in one sand sculpture. I paid homage to him by parting with more of my tourist money and kept walking.

  Moving from east to west along the ocean front, you can move from one beach to another. Copacabana Beach is connected to a lot of other beaches, beaches with names like Leme, Botafogo, Flamengo, Ipanema, (yeah the same one from the famous song,) Arporador and LeBlon. I was enjoying the sunshine, breathing in the warm salt air and trying not to think too much about why Jim wanted me to send his dead brother back to the States, when I’m sure there was another way to have it done. Jim was still CIA. There was no question he would have been able to arrange something through the American embassy. I told myself maybe Jim wanted me to do it, because he was feeling closer to his brother now that he was dead and one his best friends just happened to be on the scene.

  After walking to Flamingo beach I returned to my Copacabana Palace Hotel. The clerk at the desk told me no one had called or left any messages for me. I decided not to sweat it so I headed up to my room for a nap.

  **

  The blue haze entered the room and swirled over the man sleeping in the bed. He, the haze, was there but he wasn’t sure why. All he was sure of was that he had followed the dream path that had summoned him. He was also sure that he had changed. He was not the same as he had once been. His old self had faded away and now he had become something new, something else. Or more accurately, he was still becoming. Constantly becoming. In a constant state of metamorphosis. Plausible human understanding or explanation could not suffice. Even he didn’t fully understand it, he just knew it was. In the same way that he knew other things. Not as humans might know them—differently. He knew things as the wind might know it blew colder or harder one day than it had the day before, or as the sun might know it shone hotter on the equator than it did in other places.

  His was a knowledge based on infinite knowing. The limited superficial pseudo-logical perceptions of humans were all lost to him now. His memories had been replaced by a kind of sensory perception that revealed itself in colours. Colours through which he could read and understand the universe. This was his new language. Through his colour sensory perception he could read human thought and even understand all human emotions. Emotions often went deeper and darker than human thought could perceive. And sometimes if he concentrated, enough his energy would swell like a tidal wave and he could direct that colour energy. He sensed that he could even direct it to the extent that it affected humans. How or why he couldn’t understand or explain. He just knew he could. His movements were effortless now. Physical barriers no longer existed. When he wished to be physically in a place, he simply floated there like a sound upon the wind. He sensed a time when he could not move as easily as he could now, but that memory too had faded. The physical concept of time as humans perceived it no longer existed for him either. Now he floated among the world of humans unseen, unheard and undetected by all but the members of the ancient and secret societies that dated back to the beginnings of man on the African continent. He floated through the concrete and steel walls of the building towards the place his dream path had guided him to be. He sensed what he had come to do. He hovered in mid-air in the middle of the hotel room above the man who lay sleeping on the bed. This was the man whose spirit he sought. The man called Devil Barnett.

  He recognized him by the color of his many spirits that lived inside him. Some happily emanated translucent passive blues and bright yellows while others roamed restlessly, pulsating with angry reds and passionate deep purples ready to explode. The sleeping man’s spirits sensed him and acknowledged his presence. He acknowledged them in return as they were all a part of the same world.

  He emanated a deep green and purple greeting. Then the sleeping man’s host spirit spoke to him. It called him by his old name, a name which had faded from his memory until that very moment. It said, “Welcome Jesús, we have been expecting you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The phone rang and I jolted up in bed. My head was cloudy. I had been talking to someone. I had obviously dreamt it.

  “Mr. Barnett, this is the IML, returning your call,” the woman’s voice said.