by A. D. Flint
“Ah. I thought you were pretty upbeat for someone who just lost their job and apartment.”
“With my family behind me, I know I can do this thing. Not for revenge on Nogueira but to bring him to justice.” She took a sideways look at Jake’s borrowed clothes. “By the way, what’s with the disguise?”
Jake laughed. It felt like a stranger to him. “What do you mean? This is the pick of Padre Francisco’s summer collection.”
“You know, you seem better.”
The stares bounced off Jake now, but he was still aware that he looked like what he was – a young man broken apart and put back together. “Yeah. I’m still getting a bit of pain but definitely on the mend.”
“I didn’t mean better that way.”
As they walked toward the sunset along Ipanema, seeing the best of Rio, he was aware that there was something still lodged down in the base of his brain. It was like a strobe light, but dulled, pulsing away somewhere over the horizon. He wondered how long it would stay out of sight. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
“If it sounded like I was blaming you for what happened back out on that farm, I wasn’t. Everything felt like it was out of control and I was just scared. I did at least get confirmation that the ILO is working with those people. What I don’t know is if anything will really be better for them in the end.”
A man’s voice behind them, breathing hard. “Don’t look round. Walk.”
It was Marinho. He stayed behind them as they walked, in his running gear. “What the hell did you do to that kid out in the sticks for him to come back with a bigger death wish than you?” he asked, trying to catch his breath as he pulled up his knees, stretching his hamstrings.
“I need to know when’s the best time to go in there to get him and what’s the best way,” Jake asked.
“You won’t get that lucky a second time. You need to understand the hornets’ nest the kid has stirred up on the hill. The whole place is convinced he’s returned as a ghost – it’s the only reason he hasn’t been killed yet. They’re too scared. Anjo is going nuts, they’re all going nuts up there, and there are some very itchy trigger fingers. Other gangs are starting to look in, wondering if territory might be there for the taking. The whole place is on the brink of a turf war.”
Eliane said, “Listen, I’ve made contact with a reporter at Globo interested in blowing this thing up – the story of the tourist and the ghost kid who shot him. It’ll put Vilson in the spotlight too so we need to have him safe before it breaks. I think it’s all we’ve got left to get Nogueira – if they make enough of it, that he knew Vilson was alive but was making out otherwise, then maybe people up the food chain will let him burn rather than take the heat themselves. And that’s before they even get to what happened with Babão.”
“Your only chance of getting Vilson is at night when they’re all cowering inside their homes. As for how, let me think about that,” Marinho said. “But I didn’t think you liked the limelight, gringo, after what happened to you in the army?”
“I changed my mind.” He had let Eliane talk him into it. Give doing it the right way a last chance, at least part of the way.
“But this reporter is in a hurry,” Eliane said to Marinho. “Her world has a short span of attention. Globo means big exposure, though – you know that.”
Marinho puffed. “What’s the timescale?”
“Monday,” she replied.
“Goddamn. My fight is this weekend, that’s what I should be concentrating on. Not this shit.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t take the fight,” Jake said without conviction.
“Are you crazy?”
In that scrubby garden back in the rodeo town the young girl, Yara, had left a big impression on Jake. But out there was a very different place. “Look, I know how crazy this might sound but I saw a girl out in the sticks – a medium. She did shows and stuff but I think she was maybe the real deal—”
Marinho cut across him: “No. I don’t want to hear about that kind of crap – I can’t hear it. You don’t understand what Nogueira has on me. And I know him well enough to know what he’ll do if I don’t fight.”
Jake wasn’t going to get any further. He recognised himself in Marinho’s look. “Just think about it. And one last thing – Vilson knows that it was you who shot Babão.”
“I can handle the kid if he comes for me. I’ve been looking over my shoulder long enough. Has it struck you that if he has gone crazy he might be more likely to shoot you than throw his arms around you?”
Chapter 45
Marinho
Taking a slug of water from his water bottle, Marinho waited with a knot of people on the beach side of a pedestrian crossing on the main Leblon drag. The little green man lit up and everyone drifted across. Marinho started jogging ahead. It was seven kilometres home from here. A slow, relaxing run. Enjoyable. But his legs were twitchy and he kicked his heels up behind him to stretch his quads a little. The twitch was going all the way through him. It seemed to happen every time he had contact with the crazy gringo and the lawyer. The most unsettling thing was the medium stuff. Marinho was no more or less religious than the next man, but there were unseen things that were not part of the everyday world.
He shook it off and carried on down a road that ran away from the beach, into the deepening shade of a tall apartment block on the corner.
Up ahead of him, a guy stepped out from between the line of parked cars, past the line of trees on the pavement and stopped, looking down at his phone, blocking Marinho’s way. Marinho swerved to run on the narrow part of the pavement between the parked cars and trees. The guy moved that way too, without looking up, and Marinho slowed. Wary now.
The guy had a bandana tied on his head with a loud baseball cap sitting on top, and big, mirrored aviator shades. Wearing a huge sweatshirt and shorts that hung almost to his ankles, he looked like a wannabe hip-hop star. But there was something familiar about him.
He looked up from his phone. It was Franjinha, Anjo’s right-hand man, out of his favela-gangster uniform.
Marinho recoiled, sweeping a foot back to take a defensive stance, coming onto the balls of his feet. With the iron rails of the apartment block’s security fence at his back, he whipped his head around to check that no one was racing up to blindside him. The pavement was clear and he whipped straight back to Franjinha.
“Whoa, man, chill out,” Franjinha smiled. He lifted up his tee shirt, showing his torso and clean waistband. “I’m not carrying, see? Walk with me a little.”
“I’m okay right here.”
“A little wired, aren’t you?”
Marinho came down from the balls of his feet but kept his feet apart, ready to fight.
“Wow,” Franjinha said, “you need to work through your trust issues, brother. You like my disguise? It’s good, no?” Franjinha was as poker-faced as ever, but he was clearly getting a kick out of his showboating.
“Looks like you’ve been rehearsing this,” Marinho said. “It probably went better in front of the mirror, huh?”
“And how did your chat down on the beach go with that dude and the hot girl?”
“Not that it’s anything to do with you but it was no one, just some guy asking about training.”
Franjinha made a game-show buzzing sound. “Nope, sorry, wrong answer, friend. I’m guessing that dude is the gringo who got shot. Am I right? Yeah. Sure I’m right. See, I know things. Lots of things. Like that night when you tried to grab Vilson from the favela I had this feeling that I’d seen you someplace before. And then it all clicked when you came with Nogueira to meet us in the shop. But I said nothing, bided my time. Smart guys hold onto their cards.”
“You’re sure about that, are you?”
Franjinha made as if he hadn’t heard, moving his head to one side, making a show of looking at Marinho from another angle. “You know, when I saw the ghost back in the favela, I was scared, man. Really spooked. And then I took some time to think, and I tho
ught about you again, and then I started to add it all up. You had me going, man, it was a good scam.”
“And let me guess, you haven’t told your boss yet?”
“Hey, you’re not as dumb as you look.” Franjinha’s attempted smile was more a grimace. “Your boss wants me as his inside man. He knows Anjo’s losing it, and he knows I’m a guy on the up. One day I’ll be one of the famous bosses. Everyone will know me, down here in the city, maybe across the world. Who knows, they might even make a movie about me.”
“Good luck with that,” Marinho said, making to move past him.
“I’m not done with you yet,” Franjinha said, his voice hardening. “You know, your boss doesn’t trust you.”
Marinho stopped and turned.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Franjinha, “I thought that might get your attention. He’s ready to throw you under the bus whenever it suits him – if Vilson doesn’t get to you first. But I’ll look out for you.”
“You will, huh?”
“Sure. And you just give me eyes in return. See, I don’t trust your boss. I need to have me a man on the inside.” Franjinha flapped a hand, like a bored emperor conferring some honour.
Marinho shot his right hand out, gripping the back of Franjinha’s and twisting hard on his wrist. With the lock coming on, he moved to Franjinha’s side, pulling his arm back. As it bent at the elbow he drew Franjinha closer, pushing the wrist up toward his armpit. The lock was on. Tight.
Franjinha’s scream of pain was cut short as Marinho grabbed his throat with his free hand, a powerful claw, crushing the arteries either side of his windpipe.
Franjinha tried to break away, hitting out with his free hand. Marinho ratcheted up the torque in the wrist, the agony stripping the fight from Franjinha. He was up on his tiptoes, trying to release the pressure. And then he sagged, the restricted blood supply starving his brain of oxygen.
Marinho eased off on his throat a little. “Don’t you ever assume I’m one of yours. And you mention what you saw today to my boss and I’ll finish wringing your worthless neck. Is that clear?”
Across the road, a couple of young men on the way back from the ocean with surfboards under their arms had stopped. Marinho could see that they were debating whether to come over.
“I said, is that clear?” Marinho repeated, and then turned an ear to Franjinha to catch his reply.
“Yes,” Franjinha managed to croak.
“Then we’re all good.” Marinho released Franjinha and he dropped to his knees on the pavement, coughing and retching. He nursed his wrist and rubbed gingerly at the livid marks Marinho’s fingers had left on the sore, burned skin of his throat.
The two surfers were crossing the road now. Marinho waved a peaceful gesture but they eyed him suspiciously and kept coming.
Franjinha saw them too and was emboldened. “You’re an asshole, man,” he shouted at Marinho, coughing some more. “A complete fucking asshole, you know that? All I did was come down here to offer you a way out. Well, fuck you. You just better hope the other guy tears your head off in that fight because if you do manage to crawl out of the cage you’ll be taking a slow, painful ride to hell.”
“What’s going on?” the lead surfer asked as they filed between parked cars.
Marinho backed away. “Everything is cool, just a disagreement between friends.” He held his palms out, non-threatening.
The other surfer stooped to help Franjinha up. “You okay, man?”
Franjinha got to his feet and slapped the help away. “Get your fucking hands off me,” he said. He stood for a moment, glowering at Marinho, before lurching off toward the beach.
Whatever was coming, Marinho had to stay with the programme. Act normal and keep training. The next morning he was hard at it in his local fight gym. The wooden parquet flooring was the best bit of the place; the rest was all cracked walls and stained ceilings. It smelled of stale sweat and floor polish. There were no fancy machines, just weights, scuffed kick pads and lumpy, taped-up punchbags. But the sparring mats were new and the place was spotless. Only Marinho and his trainer were in the place.
The skipping rope whirred around Marinho, the tendons in his neck standing up as he wound it faster and faster.
“Last thirty seconds,” his trainer called out. “I want every last drop.”
Marinho jumped, pulling his knees high, the rope making two revolutions before his feet hit the ground again. He kept on jumping, the rope whipping the parquet floor, even with the energy bleeding away from him.
His trainer called time, Marinho doing a couple more jumps – higher than ever – before taking both handles in one hand and letting the rope wind itself down. Dropping it to the floor, he hunched over, hands on his knees, taking in gulps of air. Sweat ran in tickling rivulets through the close-cropped hair of his scalp and onto the wooden floor.
“Okay, that’s enough rest. Onto the bags now,” his trainer said, “then mat drills.”
“Let my boy have a drink.”
Marinho hadn’t seen Nogueira come in. He was in uniform, proffering a cold bottle of water, frosted droplets running down it.
Marinho nodded thanks and took a slug.
Nogueira spoke to the trainer. “Give us a couple of minutes of privacy, uh?”
“This session is high intensity – he can’t stop,” the trainer protested.
Nogueira turned his face to stone.
The trainer huffed before instructing Marinho, “Make sure you keep moving, you need to stay warm.” He shuffled off, swearing under his breath.
Marinho whirled his arms around, shook them out and started rolling his head across his chest to stretch his neck, all the while keeping his feet moving on the spot. He didn’t want to look Nogueira in the eye.
“How’s it going?” Nogueira asked.
“Good.”
“Ready to fight?”
“On track.”
“That’s good,” Nogueira said. And then he chuckled. “That dumbass kid and his ghost thing – who saw that coming, uh?”
The good humour wasn’t fooling Marinho. He could feel Nogueira’s eyes boring into him as he dropped to the floor for push-ups. “He up to something, or just crazy you think?” Marinho said.
It was a while before Nogueira spoke again. He was rubbing his belly. “My doctor says I’ve got an ulcer. That’s what these fools have done to me, and it burns like hell when I hear of crap like this. But then I got to thinking that maybe this kid becoming a ghost is a stroke of genius. I had my hunch that it was better to keep him alive a bit longer, and now he might just turn out to be the ace in the pack.”
Chapter 46
Anjo
It went straight to voicemail again. Anjo paced around his lounge. Why wasn’t he answering?
A handful of his soldiers were hovering near the reinforced front door, nervy.
“Fuck this,” Anjo shouted, hurling his mobile against the wall. It burst apart, components skittering across the tiled floor. The nearest soldier flinched as a shard hit him.
The minor act of violence calmed Anjo a little. He had found things to do in the last couple of days that had kept him too busy to do anything about the ghost. When Franjinha was around, which didn’t seem to be much these days, he kept whispering in his ear that he was going to lose face if he didn’t step up against the ghost. The day before, Anjo had finally agreed that it would be today and Franjinha had immediately announced it to the soldiers. Anjo couldn’t back out now. “You’ll see, it’ll be fine,” Franjinha had said to him afterwards, and then he had disappeared again. Gone all night and still no sign.
The muted daytime activity of the favela drifted through the hot metal of the shuttered windows. Even small children were subdued – the threat of a visit from the bogeyman enough to keep even the unruliest of them in line. Anjo’s watery guts were telling him it was more like dead of night, terrors creeping, hidden in the shadows. The gentle ticks of the house and electric hum were loud cracks and incessant buzzing
. Screams had shaken him from agitated sleep that morning. Just a few doors up, a young woman had woken to find her husband dead on the mattress next to her. His eyes and mouth open. A look of terror in his face, they said. A doctor was called, and heart failure was pronounced the likely cause of death. Natural causes.
But everyone knew. The dead man wasn’t yet thirty. Always begging favour with Anjo and Franjinha, he also liked to throw his weight around with people at the bottom of the food chain. He had bullied Vilson.
Outside Anjo’s earshot, all anyone could talk about was the ghost and his dead eyes. Stories were going round of people waking in the night to find him standing over them. He bored into them with those sightless eyes, and then he faded silently away. People were now saying that everyone in the favela would receive a visit from him. One by one. He would get to you. You’d better hope you weren’t one of those who had done him wrong, even if it was only once that you had shown him unkindness or taunted him. If you had, then he would push his cold, bony fingers through your ribcage and crush the life from your heart.
Few people could remember showing him kindness.
Where the fuck was Franjinha? Things had settled between them since Tôca had died, but Anjo was starkly aware that Franjinha was handling this ghost thing better than he was. He wondered how many others were noticing. Trails of paranoia snaked in, blinding him, confusing him. His head throbbed and there was an itch all over his body that made him want to tear his skin off. His heart sputtered in his bony chest.
All this was happening to him, tormenting him, and the world just spun mercilessly on, threatening to flick him off into the deep, unknown space. He sat down in his leather beanbag, holding onto the sides. He seemed to be sinking into it as the walls yawed away. He was shrinking, becoming the tiniest, most insignificant grub that could be popped beneath a fingernail.
He could blitz all of this with a couple of lines, get relief from the blown wreckage inside his head. The respite was increasingly short-lived these days and the paranoia was claiming more ground every time. But it was respite all the same.