Perfect Hatred Read Free Page A

crater?”
“I sure as hell did.”
“What?”
“Let me have a look at the recordings first. Then we’ll talk.”
“I’m about to call the boss. He’ll want to assemble a task force. And I guarantee you that you’ll be on it. Keep your cell phone on.”
“I never turn it off.”
Hector withdrew to the alcove where sergeant Correia had been standing at the time of the explosion. There, somewhat sheltered from the noise, he took out his cell phone and called Chief Inspector Mario Silva at his office in Brasilia.
Silva was the Federal Police’s Chief Investigator for Criminal Matters.
And Hector’s uncle.
“You heard?” he said when he had him on the line.
“On the radio,” Silva said. “On my way to work. Information is still sketchy. How many dead?”
“They’re still counting.”
“I’ve already reserved the jet. I’m leaving now. I’ll swing by the house, pack a bag and go straight to the airport. I’ll be in your office by noon at the latest.”
“Good. Who do you want on this?”
“You, of course. Also Danusa, Lefkowitz, Mara and Babyface. I’ll bring Arnaldo.”
Mara Carta was Hector’s Chief of Intelligence. Haraldo “Babyface” Gonçalves, so-called because he looked at least ten years younger than his chronological age, was one of the best investigators in the São Paulo field office. Arnaldo Nunes was Silva’s longtime sidekick. The Chief Inspector seldom went anywhere without him.
Chapter Three
    At five minutes to twelve, Nora heard sirens. Seconds later, a cheer erupted. She got to her feet and leaned over the security tape.
    About fifty meters away, Plínio Saldana, wind tousling his jet-black locks, was stepping out of a dark-blue SUV. Some claimed his hair was colored. Nora regarded such remarks as heresy.
    Plínio raised his hands over his head and clasped them together. The people close enough to see the gesture went wild.
Plínio! Plínio! Plínio!
Their cries set off the rest of the crowd. The sound was deafening. Nora’s heart swelled in her chest. To a rolling wave of cheers, the candidate began to move forward, approaching the podium on the far side of the walkway.
That would put him a good three meters from her when he passed by. And, what was worse, at least half his entourage would be walking between them.
Nora expressed her disappointment in an oath so coarse and in a voice so loud that several people across the corridor turned their heads to cast denigrating looks in her direction —and as swiftly looked away when Nora’s new friend joined in. The woman was almost as formidable as Nora herself, and the two together formed a front no one wanted to tangle with.
Plínio passed them and climbed the steps. The two women stopped cursing and looked at each other.
“He’ll walk on this side on the way back,” the woman said.
18 Leighton Gage
    “I just know he will.”
“From your mouth to God’s ear,” Nora said and resumed
her seat.
She remained there throughout the preliminaries, but was
on her feet again when Plínio stepped forward to speak. She’d heard it all before. So had her neighbor. So had
most of the crowd. And, since they all knew what was coming, they were able to lift their brooms and wave them at
just the right moments. Those moments, the high points of
any speech Saldana made, were always when he attacked
Governor Abbas, and when he talked about sweeping him,
and his whole corrupt crew, from the corridors of power. Nora was inspired. She felt herself at one with the multitude. Mostly.
Every now and then, however, some selfish filho da puta
tried to shove his way between her and the security tape. Woe befell those who did. Nora wasn’t a particularly tall
woman, but she was stout, and many years of carrying heavy
boxes of vegetables around Curitiba’s Municipal Market had
made her strong. No other woman in the crowd would have
been a match for her in a fight—and few men.
She set her feet, as if bracing herself against a wind—and
the wind would