Verwandte Artikel zu Blood of the Wicked

9781569474709: Blood of the Wicked
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1569474702 ISBN 13: 9781569474709
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

In the remote Brazilian town of Cascatas do Pontal, where landless peasants are confronting the owners of vast estates, the bishop arrives by helicopter to consecrate a new church and is assassinated. Mario Silva, chief inspector for criminal matters of the federal police of Brazil, is dispatched to the interior to find the killer. The pope himself has called Brazil's president: the pressure is on Silva to perform. Silva must battle the state police and a corrupt judiciary as well as criminals who prey on street kids, the warring factions of the Landless League, the big landowners, and the church itself, in order to solve the initial murder and several brutal killings that follow. Here is a Brazil that tourists never encounter.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Leighton Gage is married to a Brazilian woman and spends part of each year in Santana do Parnaiba, Brazil, and the rest of the year in Florida and Belgium. This is his first novel.

Leighton Gage is married to a Brazilian woman and spends part of each year in Santana do Parnaiba, Brazil, and the rest of the year in Florida and The Netherlands. He is the author of two novels in the Chief Inspector Mario Silva series.


Leighton Gage is the author of five novels in the Mario Silva series: Blood of the Wicked, Buried Strangers, Dying Gasp, Every Bitter Thing, and A Vine in the Blood. He spends part of each year in Santana do Parnaiba, Brazil, and divides the rest of the year between Florida and the Netherlands. He is married with four daughters.

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Chapter One
 
SOMETHING TOOK THE HELICOPTER and shook it like
a jackal worrying a carcass. The bishop gripped the aluminum
supports on either side of his seat and hung on for dear life.
   “Clear air turbulence,” the pilot observed laconically, and
resumed chewing his gum.
   “Merda!” the bishop muttered. He regretted the vulgarity
as soon as he’d said it.
   “What’s that, Your Excellency?”
   The bishop’s eyes darted to his right. In his fear and discomfort,
he’d forgotten the microphones, forgotten the
headphones, forgotten that the man could hear every word
he said.
   And what if he had? Was it not true? Was the helicopter not a
merda, a great stinking, steaming merda? And who was the pilot,
anyway? What had he ever done in his blessed life other than to
learn how to fly the merda? How dare he criticize a man who might,
God willing, be a future prince of the Church?
   The pilot, whose name was Julio, and who wasn’t criticizing
anyone, had been distracted by a flock of vultures wheeling
in graceful curves over the approaching river. He honestly
hadn’t heard what the bishop had said. He opened his mouth
to repeat the question, then shut it again when he saw the
cleric’s mouth set into a thin line.
   Julio had a paunch, sweat stains under the arms of his
khaki shirt, and a habit of chewing gum with his mouth open,
all of which Dom Felipe Antunes, the Bishop of Presidente
Vargas, found distasteful. But it was nothing in comparison
to Dom Felipe’s distaste for the helicopter.
   The bishop glanced at his watch, wiped his sweaty palms
on his silk cassock, and resumed a death grip on the aluminum
supports.
   Forty-seven blessed minutes in the air. Forty-seven minutes.
   “It won’t be long now, Your Excellency.”
   Was that amusement in the man’s voice? Was he enjoying himself?
   Did he think fear was funny?
   On the floor beneath Dom Felipe’s feet there was a thin (he
was sure it was thin) window of Plexiglas. He tried to avoid
looking down, but some perverse instinct kept drawing his
eyes back to that dreadful hole in the floor. They were over the
river now, sand bars protruding through chocolate-colored
foam. The sand looked as hard as the rock-strewn banks.
   Do helicopters float?
   A rowboat drifted in mid-river, two fishermen aboard, a
huge net piled high between them. They looked up at him,
shielding their eyes against the morning sun. One waved.
Reflexively, Dom Felipe waved back. Then a flash, like
the strobe on a camera, caused him to snap his head upward
and seek the source of the light.
   Far ahead of him, beyond the bug-flecked windshield, the
flash came again. He squinted and . . . yes, there it was.
Sunlight of an almost blinding intensity reflected off an
expanse of glass. It couldn’t be anything other than the
Great Window. And that meant that the brand-new church
of Nossa Senhora dos Milagres was in sight.
   The window was almost five meters in diameter and had
come all the way from the Venetian island of Murano at a
cost of almost 200,000 reais, not including the shipping,
which, together with the insurance, had amounted to
R$30,000 more. When the sun hit it just right—as it was
doing now—the window would cast rays of glorious blue
light all along the nave of the new church.
   Dom Felipe made a conscious effort to hold that image,
focusing on the blue light, as if it were a meditation. But
then the pitch of the engine changed, dragging him back
into his dreadful reality.
   The Lord is my shepherd. . . .
   A landing spot had been marked out: a Christian cross in
stones the size of golf balls, and just as white. A rectangle of
sere grass surrounded it, hemmed by dusty palm trees. Yellow
plastic tape ran from tree to tree, holding back the crowd.
   Men in the gray uniforms of the State Police were stationed
at intervals along the length of the tape, their backs to the
cross, keeping the landing area clear.
   The crowd started moving like a living thing. Signs of
welcome were raised. Others, already aloft, were turned to
face the approaching helicopter. White and brown faces
looked upward. And there were banners, too.
   Dom Felipe bit his lip in vexation. The banners were red,
blood red, the unmistakable standards of the Landless Workers’
League. The league seldom missed an opportunity—no matter
how inappropriate—to turn a gathering into a political
event. The bishop knew that. Still, he’d been hopeful that,
in this case, the consecration of the new church . . .
There was the slightest of jolts as the helicopter’s skids
met the grass.
   It’s over! Hail Mary, full of grace. . . . Never again.
   Julio pulled a lever and threw a switch. The engine died.
Above the swish of air from the still-spinning rotor blades
Dom Felipe could hear, for the first time, the cheers of the
crowd. He took off his headset, handed it to the pilot, and
raised his right hand in benediction.
   Insolently, the red banners waved back at him.
   Dom Felipe suppressed an uncharitable thought and bent
over to retrieve his miter, untangling the lappets before placing
it on his head. Then he composed his features into a
beatific smile and waited for the pilot to open his door.
   Julio, unaccustomed to ferrying bishops, finally seemed to
realize what was expected of him. He removed his headset,
skirted the nose of the aircraft, and reached Dom Felipe’s
side just as the bishop opened the door himself.
   Dom Felipe waved off the pilot’s offered hand, put his feet
on solid ground, and started searching the crowd for the face
of his secretary, Father Francisco, the man who’d hatched
the helicopter plot.
   If Francisco thinks I’m going back to Presidente Vargas the
same way he got me here, he’s got another think coming. I’ll
return by car, he’ll have to find one, and it had better be one with
air-conditioning.
   Francisco was nowhere in sight, but Gaspar Farias was.
Dom Felipe could clearly see his corpulent body, wrapped in
a black cassock, standing in the shadow of the vestibule.
   Involuntarily, the bishop scowled.
   A choir of adolescents dressed in identical cotton robes
was standing against the tape, a rectangle of blue in the multicolored
collage that made up the crowd. The children were
close enough to read the bishop’s scowl and seemed to be
puzzled by it.
   With the skill born of practice, Dom Felipe forced a smile
onto his lips. The youngsters’ puzzlement vanished, replaced
by beams of welcome. A woman in an identical robe, her back
to the bishop, her face toward her charges, started to wave her
arms and the children broke into song, their young voices
murdering the English words, “Why do the nations . . .”
   Handel? A Protestant? Who in the world chose that?
   Dom Felipe raised his hand in another benediction and
silently mouthed words of thanks, conserving his voice for
the sermon and for the all-important interviews that...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1569474702
ISBN 13 
9781569474709
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
324
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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