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before taking out his cell phone and calling Ricardo Fortunato.
    “What can I do for you today, Yoshiro?”
    Tanaka and his bank manager were on first-name terms. A few years earlier, when inflation had been running at upwards of 30 percent a month, Tanaka had spent more time on the telephone with Ricardo Fortunato than he had with his current mistress. In those days, you had to invest your money in the overnight market or you might wind up scratching for food at the end of the month. The people who manipulated the investments were the bank managers, peo-ple like Ricardo Fortunato. It was all done on the basis of verbal commitments; paperwork following after the transac-tions had been made. Relationships of trust were created, relationships that persisted long after hyperinflation had become history.
    “I need some information, Ricardo.”
    “Not about your own account, I take it?”
    “No. And you know how it is when I have to go through channels. Takes too goddamned long.”
    “I understand,” Ricardo said, his voice softer than before.
    Ricardo didn’t have an enclosed office. His desk was right in front of the long counter where the tellers worked. Tanaka imagined him looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening.
    “I’m holding a canceled check,” Tanaka said, “paid out of one Bradesco account into another. The recipient’s name is Roberto Ribeiro. Got that?”
    “Got it. What do you want to know?”
    “I want Ribeiro’s address.”
    “Easy.”
    “The check was issued by—”
    “Don’t need it. Just give me the numbers: the payee’s account at the lower left and whatever’s written on the back.”
    Tanaka did.
    He heard Ricardo clicking away at his keyboard.
    “Here it is,” the bank manager said. “Got a pen?”
    Tanaka couldn’t believe it was going to be that easy.

Chapter Ten
    BOCETA HAD MORE TO offer, but as usual, he was going to make them work for it. If people didn’t listen to him around the watercooler, they sure as hell had to sit still when they asked him for an opinion—no matter how long it took. He settled back in his chair.
    “Remember Villasboas?” he said.
    “Oh, Jesus Christ, here we go again,” Arnaldo said.
    Boceta took off his glasses. “You are becoming tiresome, Agente.”
    “Me? Tiresome? You should have to listen—”
    Silva put a hand on Arnaldo’s arm and squeezed. “Villasboas,” he said. “I was working in São Paulo then. I remember, but I’m a little foggy on the details.”
    “Who the hell is Villasboas?” Arnaldo said.
    “Not who,” Boceta said, taking his usual satisfaction at the opportunity to correct someone. “Your question should have been what. Villasboas is a what. More specifically, it’s a town in Pará.”
    Pará was the state that embraced the mouth of the Amazon River, a huge area, much of it remote jungle.
    “Alright,” Arnaldo said, letting out a long sigh of defeat. “You got me. I’ll bite. What happened in Villasboas?”
    Boceta’s smile was more like a smirk. He took his time about answering. “Some bodies were found,” he finally said, “probably only a small percentage of the victims, but enough to excite interest. They were all young, all male, and all of them had their genitals removed. One of the perpetrators confessed. He was a medical doctor. The other people he implicated, another doctor, a few lawyers, some prominent local businessmen, denied involvement. It appears that he and his coreligionists all signed an oath in their own blood: lifelong obedience, secrecy about the rituals—”
    Arnaldo tried to hurry things along. “Coreligionists? So they were members of some kind of cult?”
    Boceta, running true to form, refused to be hurried. “Can you imagine any other reason why I might call them coreli-gionists?”
    Arnaldo sighed. “No,” he said.
    “Of course you can’t,” Boceta said. “Yes, it was a cult, a satanic cult. They believed that the devil wanted anyone with certain