It’s one thing to know the president is corrupt, the governor is corrupt, the secretary of security is corrupt. But the guy who’s been working with you for seven years? Right beside you? Who has lunch and dinner with you? Who comes to your house? Joel? The one who taught me everything? I’d hold my hand over a flame for Joel. If Joel, Tranqueira, who calls me Sweetheart, is corrupt, if he’s like that, then everyone in the precinct must be on the take. Nowadays there aren’t any thieves without partners, corruption is a network, a pack. So why should I worry if my boyfriend steals a kilo of coke from someone who’s already dead? Of course you shouldn’t have gotten involved with Ramirez, but the truth is you haven’t killed anybody. You haven’t hurt anybody. You’re not a murderer. Or a rapist. That’s what matters. If you had taken someone’s life, in that case there’s no forgiving a homicide. But you’re not a pedophile. Not that I condone what you did, but it’s one thing to pick up a gun and kill, and another to do what you did. You’re not a killer. That’s why I’m here. Of course if you were arrested I could wait. But I’m already waited so damn long. I don’t want to give up on our life or our plans. And our family needs us.
Now, she said, taking my hand, tell me about your plan.
23
My plan is like a fishing story. Imagine a solitary fisherman in his boat on a calm, sunny day. You know, there’s everything in these Pantanal rivers. Truly horrible things. Otters and lizards so big they look like alligators. And alligators with sawtooth tails that resemble dragons. And piranhas that are miniature sharks with jaws that jut out and teeth as sharp as Swiss knives. And twenty-foot-long anacondas that can swallow an ox whole. Dreadful animals. Venomous. But the worst of all, the most threatening and dangerous, the most pitiless and predatory, is our solitary fisherman, who amuses himself on a sunny day. Really something awful. There he is, smoking a straw cigarette and thinking about life as he waits for some fish to take his bait. And suddenly he sees something caught in the branches of the vegetation. What is that? He approaches the right bank of the river and sees a body floating. Actually, it is what is left of the body of our pilot.
All of that, I continued, happened three months ago, when the accident and the pilot’s disappearance in Corumbá was all over the news. The fisherman understands the deal immediately. He watched the reports on television and knows the accident took place in the vicinity. And his life is hard. He’s unemployed and has no money. And he knows the Berabas. Who doesn’t? Rich people from the city. And then, right there, while the sun bakes his brains, he concocts an incredible plan.
Sulamita, in bed, nude, her arms behind her head, listened to my plans, her eyes glued to me.
The jails are full of people with incredible plans, she said.
Imagine, I continued, that the fisherman recovers the body and buries it somewhere without telling anyone. Now, like in a film, you skip ahead in time. Three months later, the police have given up the search and things have calmed down. What does the fisherman do? He phones the Beraba family and says: I have the body of your son. If you want to bury him, all you have to do is pay me $200,000. And hangs up.
And are they going to pay? Sulamita asked.
They’ll pay any amount, I guarantee it. Haven’t you ever heard the saying “a man only begins to be a man when he buries his dead”? It’s the gospel truth. There are no civilizations without death rituals. Without burials. Without them, we go back to the caves. Without them, you don’t honor the deceased, his memory, you don’t pay homage to him, you don’t have a tomb to visit. We turn into zombies if we leave our dead to rot on the ground. On a personal level the tragedy is greater. I remember once on All Souls Day finding my mother crying in the kitchen and she said to me: “If at least there were a tomb for us to visit.” My mother was suffering because my father had died. She was suffering because she couldn’t declare that death.
Won’t they involve the police?
No. Dona Lu will do whatever it takes to obtain the body.
You’re pretty confident, she said.
“The dead kill the living,” I replied, ever hear the saying?
You’ve got a lot of sayings.
Know what it means? Until we bury our dead, they go on living, killing us. That’s what it means. They kill us by hammering at our awareness that we haven’t done our part. We don’t allow them to return to dust. It’s not only us, the living, who want to bury the dead. They themselves also want to be free of our world.
I explained that I really liked Dona Lu, truly. Believe me, I said, we won’t be hurting her or her family, we’re just going to let her hold her son’s funeral. And $200,000 means nothing to those people. It’s probably the cost of a single milk cow, and they’ve got thousands of them. We’re going to kill three birds with one stone: she’ll have her son’s body, I’ll have $50,000, and you’ll realize your dream of leaving the morgue and having a ranch. All your own.
Our dream, she said.
Of course. Our plan. I’ll pay Ramirez with the ransom and we’ll buy a ranch.
You’re going to bluff?
Bluff who?
The Berabas. Are you going to bluff or hand over the body?
That’s where you come in. We have to provide a corpse.
Hmm. I know.
I’d really like to help Dona Lu’s dream come true. To bury her son. Believe me, she dreams about the day. Dona Lu is a very good person. You’ll like her.
We fell silent for a time, then I asked if she could get a cadaver from the morgue.
There’s monitoring of the receiving and dispatching of bodies. It’s not easy.
Without a body we have no plan.
Promise me one thing, she said. Whatever happens, we’re not going to kill anybody.
We’re not murderers.
I need some time to think.
There’s got to be a way.
We’re not murderers.
Of course not.
And if we do get a cadaver, it’ll be just a cadaver, Sulamita said.
What do you mean?
It’s not enough for Caesar’s wife to be honest. She has to be above suspicion.
What’re you saying? Who’s Caesar?
We don’t need merely a cadaver, any old cadaver. They have to believe it’s Junior’s cadaver. They’ll want some guarantee that we have their son’s cadaver.
You’ll have to handle that too.
I asked whether we ran the risk of Junior’s body turning up floating somewhere. The real body.
After three months? In this heat? she said. Hardly. My opinion is that he had his belly perforated. In drowning cases, if the belly is pierced the bodies sink and don’t rise to the surface again.
I kissed Sulamita.
I knew you’d help me, I said.
Neither of us slept that night. Hour by hour I would raise a new question, a new detail. We spent the night like that. In the dark, full of ideas.
24
At eight in the morning I parked the van. Go by yourself, Sulamita said, it’s better. I’ll wait here. Leave the key, I’ll stay in the car because of the air conditioning. And make it quick, try not to draw attention to yourself. Don’t talk any more than necessary.
Leave it to me, I answered.
Before I got out, she pulled me to her. Give me a kiss, she said.
We kissed.
Tell me you love me.
I love you, I said.
A lot?
A lot.
How much?
Goddamn, Sulamita, let me take care of this business.
I got out of the car and walked to the pawnshop, which seemed like a cave in contrast to the light outside and the blue sky. It took me several seconds to get used to the darkness.
I came for my watch, I said.
The old man took my receipt, went to the back of the store, and soon returned with Junior’s gold watch.
He wasn’t very happy about it; those guys make their living out of our misfortune.
I paid and went bac
k to the car.
Did he ask any questions? Sulamita wanted to know.
Nothing.
She looked at the watch. Pretty, she said. And it’s running. I’m going to have to work on it too.
Ten minutes later I dropped Sulamita in front of the morgue.
We agreed to meet at home at nightfall.
The rest of the day was calm, except for an unpleasant encounter with Carlão when I went to the bank to pay the Berabas’ bills. Carlão was with his ex-wife and looked like an obedient lapdog carrying the woman’s purse, a red purse stuffed with baubles that didn’t look good on the shoulder of that repentant brute. Actually, it was the ex, surely ignorant of the real reason for the separation of Carlão and Rita, who came to speak with me. Come over one of these days, she said, I’m taking back the restaurant at the gas station. Carlão looked at me with the same interest as a wooden stick. We need to see more of each other, she said, after all, you’re cousins.
As soon as the woman took her eyes off me, he sent a signal: go fuck yourself, he said with that hairy hand of his.
When I got back to the Berabas’, Dalva said Serafina was on the phone.
She threw me out, the Indian woman said.
Who are you talking about?
Eliana. She told me to find somewhere else to live.
I spoke with Dona Lu, asked for permission to leave early, and went to have a talk with Eliana.
If you’re so worried about that Indian, she said without pausing from the grub she was preparing for the children, which judging by the smell I figured must be fried crow, if you’re so worried, why don’t you take her with you?
That’s what I plan to do. But I need some time. For now, she doesn’t have anywhere to go, I argued.
Yes she does, that tribe in the middle of nowhere. All she has to do is get her stuff and leave. The government pays for those people to go back.
You don’t feel sorry for your mother-in-law?
Mother-in-law? That good-for-nothing? And when did Moacir ever feel sorry for me? Or our children? Did he leave any money to pay my bills?
How much do you need?
For what?
To pay your bills.
Eliana’s expression showed her displeasure.
How much do you want? I asked.
Five hundred.
I took out my wallet and gave her everything I had. I’ll get the rest, I said. But you’re going to have to keep Serafina until I get my life organized.
I turned my back and left.
A tramp, Eliana. And to think that because of her Moacir fucked up his life.
So far, so good, over. I’m safe inside my house and there’s no ill wind here. Or rain. Good weather, everything in its place, over. Everything’s going to work out. That was my thought as I watched a TV program about tornadoes.
Sulamita arrived at seven and stayed beside me, her legs in my lap. The images on TV were impressive: barns, cars, fence posts being sucked up by an invisible pump. It looks like some special effect, Sulamita said. We remained there, in bed, holding hands, feeling protected while we talked about how those people, the owners of cars and houses, the inhabitants of those cities, were fucked. Other people’s misfortunes, she said, are a form of entertainment, don’t you think? Fun to watch, I added.
That’s disgusting, we agreed. They do it to sell stuff, I said. And it sells, we agreed. They sell because we buy.
After the program, Sulamita turned off the television and suggested we go out for a pizza.
I didn’t want to leave; I felt vulnerable and couldn’t stop looking to all sides, behind me, all the time scared of taking a bullet to the head.
If Ramirez gave you a month to pay off the debt, Sulamita said in the pizzeria, he’s not going to kill you like that, suddenly, what Ramirez wants is the fifty thousand. It doesn’t make sense to kill you ahead of time.
I agreed with Sulamita’s arguments, but that didn’t keep me from looking all around me. We should sit with our backs to the wall, I said. And we moved to a table in the rear.
During the meal, she showed me Junior’s watch. Dirty, scratched, and broken. We had talked a lot the night before about the type of proof we should offer.
We have to take into account that the watch was in the water until the fisherman found the cadaver. That’s how we talked, about the fisherman, as if it were some other person, over, and not ourselves doing it.
You think of everything, I said.
Where is Junior’s cell phone? she asked.
I had brought it but said I didn’t know if it was a good idea to use it. Follow my thinking. We’re assuming the backpack wasn’t with Junior at the moment of the rescue, therefore neither was the telephone. Besides which, if it was, the phone would be broken because it would have been in the water for several hours.
You’re right, she said, but if they have caller ID the number that shows will be Junior’s.
Of course, I said, kissing Sulamita. Logic be damned.
After dinner, we crossed the Jacaré Bridge and parked in a quiet spot as if we were going to make out.
Use this, she said, handing me the flannel cloth from my van’s glove box. And disguise your voice.
Wouldn’t it be better for you to talk?
No, she said. The fisherman has to be a man.
I dialed, and Dalva answered.
I’d like to talk to Dona Lourdes Beraba, I said in a deep voice.
Who’s calling?
A friend, I replied.
Seconds later I heard Dona Lu’s gentle, receptive voice.
Who is it? Hello?
I hesitated for an instant. Then I spoke.
I have your son’s body with me. Don’t call the police. You’ll receive instructions. If you involve the police you’ll never hear from me again, I said.
I hung up. Or rather, the fisherman hung up.
It was that simple.
25
I didn’t want to go on feeling like that all the time. Hunted, a deer running in an open field. A rabbit in frightened flight. Ramirez couldn’t make another mistake. I always paid everything, I mean. I’m a reliable payer, one of those who can’t sleep when they owe something. A trait inherited from my mother, actually. That was our religion, to pay everything on time. Debt was a kind of sin in our house.
On the veranda of his factory in Puerto Suárez, Ramirez didn’t even look at me. He was more interested in his brand-new black Mitsubishi parked in the garage. Stolen probably, over. In the living room some people, maybe more swallowers of cocaine capsules, were talking with Juan.
Sulamita had told me that people line up for that kind of work and that at the precinct she’d seen women with bundles of drugs the size of a tennis ball in their pussy.
It’s not good business to kill me, over. You’re going to lose fifty grand. Lose a partner. I was there to say that, had come very early, without phoning, which didn’t sit well with them. I’m gonna give you a tip, Porco: we don’t like surprises around here, Juan had said. But I had to straighten out the situation. Make a pact with Ramirez. An oath. I swear it, I was going to say. My legs were shaking, I was panting like a dog and couldn’t get out even a sentence of the speech I had rehearsed in the car en route to Puerto Suárez. All I said was shit, lies, while hearing my internal radio, over, saying I was about to fuck myself up. I told him about Moacir and how he’d been found in his cell. And how he’d belched when they removed the sheet he had used to hang himself. The final sigh of the hanged, I said. If you’re strangled, I said, not understanding why I was going down that crooked road, you don’t belch. And you don’t ejaculate, isn’t that interesting? They told me Moacir had a hard-on when he was found. Covered in cum. And I laughed as if that was funny.
Porco says the damnedest things, said Ramirez. You running some angle?
Huh?
You got something special to tell me?
No, it’s that Moacir –
I don’t give a shit about Moacir, Ramirez interrupted. I�
��m going to pay, I said. You don’t have to worry about me. Ramirez guffawed.
I’m absolutely sure you’re going to pay, he replied.
Then he yelled to Juan, Bring me my notebook.
Juan left the house and returned a short time later with a large book with a black cover, the kind accountants used in the past.
That’s how these guys get screwed, I thought, by keeping spreadsheets like the CEO of a multinational. And now my name was there among all the other traffickers.
It’s written here, Ramirez said. Porco, sixty thousand dollars. You’re Porco, ain’t you?
Yes, I said.
Okay then, you already know.
You had said fifty, I ventured.
I did? And even so, you come here to jerk my chain? Now you know, it’s sixty, he said, making the change in the book.
He paused before adding the rest.
Every time you come to my house with bullshit, I’m adding ten thousand dollars to what you owe.
He added that I had twenty-four days to settle the debt. And that I ought to consider the grace period a goodwill gesture. I ain’t usually so generous.
The Body Snatcher Page 10