They eat shrimp with garlic and oil along with sliced French bread. The laptop is closed on Harley’s knees. Otto carefully puts away the camera, a wish-list item that Francisca made a reality for his birthday in 2009. They yield to dispiritedness. After such high expectations, the sudden deceleration is depressing. Two bipolar days, extreme highs and lows. Enthusiasm and disappointment back to back. Frights and deferred redemption. Silently, they gaze at the sea. They pay the bill and walk toward the condo. Otto finally breaks the silence.
“You were right. It was absence, not excess. What’s strange is the absence of a link. I can’t conceive of anything that connects the two of them.”
“The connection is unlikely, Otto, it seems unbelievable, absurd, but it exists.”
“Which makes any hypothesis possible and none consistent. We’re back to square one.”
Harley stops suddenly. He often halts abruptly when walking, when he has an idea. Otto turns around and is surprised to see his partner’s happy face.
“What?”
“Remember Francisca’s phone call yesterday, when we were at Rocinha? You even commented that she was hysterical.”
“She was hysterical.”
“And what did she tell you?”
“That she wanted to get out of here.”
“She told you she wanted to leave São Conrado because she couldn’t stand the violence anymore, didn’t she?”
“So what?”
“From what you said, she was ready to unload the apartment for whatever she could get, no matter how bad the moment to sell, because the important thing was to get away and take Rafa.”
The two men share a dense, vibrant silence.
Harley points upward: “Look.”
They are on the sidewalk by the beach, in the shadow of the highest tower on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, thirty-four stories in the shape of a tube, built in 1972. Planned by the celebrated Oscar Niemeyer, hanging gardens conceived by the landscape architect Burle Marx, with a convention center for 2,800 people, a theater housing 1,400, in the most coveted area in the city. The building was designated a historical site in 1998. The hotel had gone under three years earlier. After a lengthy court battle, it was transferred to an autonomous federal agency accountable to the Treasury Ministry, which was preparing to auction it off. Otto and Harley are familiar with the history and recall it whenever they pass by there, perplexed at the sight of the most valuable building in the city abandoned, its windows broken, corroded by the sea air, moldering.
No words are necessary. For several minutes they contemplate, dumbfounded, the dirty, sordid tower that thousands of bats invade at nightfall. Harley whispers, as if sharing a secret, “The whole time, it was staring us in the face.”
Otto murmurs: “There’s just one thing, Harley: This changes the scale of the problem. Drug traffickers and militia are child’s play next to this. This is the crown jewel, but the speculators will have a field day. There’s no limit. The guy’s going to swallow up the entire district.”
“When all is said and done, the problem really was excess, not absence. You were right: it was an excess of evidence, the magnitude of the value at stake, the dimension of the risk. What’s going to become of us, my brother? Where are we going to request exile? I’m serious, Otto. Even if we say nothing, we become a danger to ourselves.”
“We’re going to need a lot of calm and coolheadedness.”
Otto and Harley walk along the seafront, wet their feet in the cold foam, trying to stay calm. An emergency session with Ecio Nakano may be necessary.
“Don’t you want to give it a try, Harley?”
RJ-171
by Guilherme Fiuza
Leblon
They were within one hundred meters of the top of the hill. Narguilê carried two rifles on his back that together weighed almost half as much as his body. He was panting and beginning to puff, attracting the attention of Lizard, who was marching firmly some ten paces ahead.
Lizard stopped and turned, irritated. “What’s this shit, Narguilê?! You dyin’?!”
His comrade, out of breath, didn’t answer. He continued to climb the hillside, almost dragging, motivated only by awareness that in the position he occupied, showing any sign of weakness was fatal. Lizard decided to wait for him. Resting his rifles on a large rock, he took something from his vest pocket. Narguilê staggered toward his colleague and was about to rest his weapons on the same stone, but Lizard stopped him.
“Don’t put them down, ’cause if you do you won’t be able to pick them back up. Have a bit of oxygen.”
He handed him a silver straw and with the other hand lifted a piece of broken glass close to his face. Narguilê snorted the “oxygen” in a single breath and the smile of a veteran lit up his childish face. He returned the straw and set out climbing the hill in strong strides, now with the breath even to speak: “Move it, Lizard! You’re too slow.”
From that point upward it was totally dark and progress was possible only with the aid of a flashlight. And the pair had powerful flashlights—from the first world, like the rifles. In front of a huge tree, which marked exactly fifty meters to the top of the hill, the two stopped again. Time for military protocol. From the other vest pocket Lizard took out a two-way radio.
“Robocop, read me?”
A quick response from the other side: “Affirmative.”
“Lizard and Narguilê here, requestin’ authorization to enter the security zone.”
Radio: “Take it easy. Just the two of you?”
“And our Almighty Father in Our Heart.”
Hearing the password, Robocop immediately cleared the ascent. Even so, when they arrived at the summit they were in the laser sights of two machine guns that only ceased to point at them when Robocop flashed over their faces the security spotlight stolen from Maracanã Stadium during renovations for the World Cup. Narguilê was puffing again, and although he tried to disguise it, the fact wouldn’t go unnoticed by the men of the General Staff. A very strong mulatto with shaven head and serene expression, Robocop had laser-sharp eyesight. Nothing escaped him.
“The soldier’s tired?” asked Robocop.
Lizard answered for Narguilê, knowing that his colleague couldn’t speak: “The Germans showed up unexpected at the foot of the hill. Narguilê had to shoot it out with them by hisself, then he hightailed it to the grotto—”
“How come I didn’t hear no shots up here?” said Robocop suspiciously.
“It was right at the time a jackhammer was breakin’ up the sidewalk at McDonald’s, they never stop workin’ on that,” ventured Lizard.
Robocop’s serene expression didn’t waver. “I’m reminding both of you: a tired soldier is a dead soldier.”
Narguilê gulped and followed Lizard, who followed Robocop, who had issued the warning as he withdrew, without a backward glance at the pair.
Through a narrow passageway that forced the security chief to turn his powerful body sideways, the three went in single file into what looked like a bunker—descending a long stairway carved into the rock, finally a respite for Narguilê’s exhausted lungs. After crossing a crude corridor that was more like a ruin, they came to an immense, luxurious room. Home theater, cinematic lighting, new overstuffed furniture, a large marble table with chairs trimmed in gold, a sliding glass wall revealing a deck with a pool from which came an intense blue glow as if there were uranium under the water.
Robocop and the two skinny soldiers stopped before the large table, almost at attention, joining three other armed young men already there. No one said a word or greeted one another with a look. In two minutes a thin, muscular man entered the room, medium height, darker than mulatto, thin nose and lips, large greenish eyes. He nodded and everyone sat down around the table.
“There’s two matters,” the chief said softly as he sat down at the head of the table, the gold chain engraved with Zéu, his nom de guerre, swinging over his lilac-colored silk shirt. “The first is that the police have decided
to raid. Not to plunder, to take over. There’s gonna be war.”
Zéu’s soldiers absorbed the information impassively, among other reasons because the chief didn’t like to be interrupted—by either word or gesture. The only one who moved was Lizard, placing his rifle on the table when he heard mention of war. Zéu stopped talking, got up, and walked silently around the table. Coming to a position behind Lizard, he hit him on the ear so violently that the soldier fell to the floor, taking the chair with him.
The chief returned quietly to the head of the table and sat down. “I already explained it’s bad manners putting a gun on the table.”
Zéu went back to the topic of the raid but was interrupted again, this time by a sudden noise outside that caused everyone to look through the glass wall. A person had jumped into the pool. The troop was startled, and the chief seemed surprised. For an instant all fingers were on triggers, until they saw the figure emerge from the dive. It was a woman, beautiful and nude from the waist up.
Each soldier felt, in a fraction of a second, that the delightful sight was a cruel punishment. You don’t look at the chief’s girlfriend, especially with her breasts exposed. The entire troop quickly shifted their eyes to the floor, aware that this front could be bloodier than the battle with the police.
But Zéu surprised everyone: “Take it easy, that one there you can look at. She ain’t worth nothing.”
The enormous relief wasn’t enough for them to lift their gazes from the floor. No one wanted to take the chance. But they would see the girl up close, because she’d left the pool, wrapped a small towel around her breasts, slid the glass wall, and entered the room, still dripping. She was white, with nice skin and an affected manner—a broad from Leblon. She went straight to Zéu and planted a kiss on his mouth, adding a disconcerting comment about the armed troop: “How cool, Zéu. So this is your gang?”
The trafficker, who didn’t like being called a trafficker, swallowed his hatred. It was against his principles to be rude to women. He told her to go change in his bedroom while he arranged her return. She asked the outlaw when they would see one another again.
Then Zéu became less cordial: “Who the hell knows. Set it up with your husband.”
When the woman withdrew, the chief made contact by radio, saying, “Drop off the judge’s wife on Delfim Moreira,” and returned to the agenda of the meeting. “I’m moving on to the second matter, then we’ll get back to the police raid. It’s this: I ordered Roma brought up here. He should be getting here now. I’m going to interrogate him, and I want the guy in your sights, that way he won’t lie as much. I think Roma is doing business on the side.”
Robocop raised his hand asking permission to speak. Granted.
“Zéu, Roma’s put together a band. Narguilê went to see it yesterday, ’cause he plays bass drum, but he was kept out. Roma ordered him to come back unarmed.”
The chief exploded: “Ordered?! Who ordered, you shitass? Just who gives the orders in this fucking favela?”
Robocop lowered his head. “Sorry, chief. Of course Roma don’t give no goddamn orders, but he likes to think he—”
He was interrupted by Zéu, who directed his feared dead-fish stare toward another soldier: “And you went back to that fucker’s circus without your gun, Narguilê?”
Lizard knew his friend had returned there unarmed and had spent hours snorting cocaine and playing the drum in Roma’s band. Now Narguilê was panting again beside him, in a cold sweat. Lizard tried to maneuver: “If you want us to, Zéu, we’ll go there and shut him down for good.”
The chief didn’t buy it: “Shut up, Lizard! Answer me, Narguilê. Did you go back to that shithole unarmed?”
Narguilê answered, averting his eyes from the chief: “No, I didn’t, Zéu. I went to get some sleep, ’cause I had a cough . . .”
Zéu’s dead-fish gaze turned to Robocop. “Take Narguilê out there and give him some cough syrup.”
Robocop rose and told the skinny soldier to follow him. Choking back a sob, Narguilê said he was better and didn’t need syrup. Zéu stood up and said that in that case he’d take him personally. Narguilê then agreed to follow Robocop, crying copiously. Less than five minutes later, the troop heard two gunshots from the roof of the bunker. Lizard lowered his head. No one said anything.
Zéu waited for the return of Robocop—who sat down with the same serene expression as always—before resuming his speech. He began with a rapid message about the summary execution of Narguilê: “A tired soldier’s a dead soldier. If he’s alive he’ll end up in the hands of the police saying things he shouldn’t. Any guy who’s supposed to guard the chief and goes to play music unarmed is a goner.”
On the wall behind the chief, framing his philosophy, was a painting of the medieval conqueror Genghis Khan smashing a foe with the hooves of his horse. Narguilê died because, in Zéu’s dictionary, a weak ally becomes an enemy. But the trafficker was impatient and seemed to have already forgotten the murder.
“Where the fuck is Roma?”
“Easy, Zéu. I’m here.”
Brought by two more of Zéu’s soldiers, Roma entered the room at the exact moment the chief had uttered his name. Despite the tenseness of the situation, his expression was one of nonchalance.
“Shee, it’s nice here, huh? You’ve really done all right, Zéu. Can I sit down?”
“No. Stay on your feet. Here’s the story, Romário. I been hearing ’bout some double-crossing going on, and you’re gonna have to explain.”
“Wow, such a long time since anybody uttered my real name. I must be real important now.”
“Shove it up your ass, Romário.”
“Shee. Now you went and spoiled it, Zéu. It started so good—”
“Are you fucking with me, goddamnit?!”
“No way. I may be crazy but I’m not suicidal.”
The troop was visibly upset by Roma’s arrogant presence. A strong black man with slanting eyes and a wide smile, twenty-seven years old—the same as Zéu—he had been born the day the famous footballer Romário first played for the Vasco team. His father had no doubts about what to name him, declaring that his son was also going to be a striker. But Roma grew up without any talent for football, nor did he join the ranks of traffickers. He was a different sort of guy. It was he who advanced the conversation.
“Well . . . what now, Zéu? You ordered me to climb this hill and I can’t even sit down. So tell me: what’s going on?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Fuck, Roma! You want Robocop and Lizard to beat the shit outta you?”
“No thank you.”
“You been takin’ a lot of liberties, man. Out with it: what’s this shit about you cozyin’ up to the pigs and hangin’ with some guy from Leblon? My spies said you been talkin’ to the cops.”
“Not to cops. To the chief of police.”
Roma’s reply paralyzed Zéu. The statement was so serious that it seemed as if the outlaw couldn’t process it. Knowing he was with an intelligent guy, Zéu stared at him—with a gaze more of curiosity than of a dead fish—as if waiting for Roma to decode the nonsense. Then Roma continued.
“Shit, Zéu. You know I’m no rat. If there’s a guy on this hill who’s never betrayed you, it’s me. The police kidnap one of your soldiers and charge you ransom. The ones who get busted are the ones who can’t take you anymore, their heads are fucked up. What I’m doing is recruiting those guys to play in my band, and I made an agreement with the police: they leave them alone, they can’t kidnap or question them. Know why?”
Zéu remained silent.
“Because the governor likes my project. He says it’s a sociocultural action. I don’t give a shit what he calls it. What I do know is that the police are respecting ‘my’ ex-traffickers. By the way, I want to tell you that Narguilê guy, one of your soldiers, is loony, nuts. He’s one helluva musician, and I’m grabbing him. You can relax, the Man isn’t going to touch him—”
&nb
sp; “Narguilê is history,” Zéu interrupts.
Now it’s Roma who’s speechless. He looks at Robocop, who averts his eyes, then at the chief again. “I can’t believe you did that, Zéu.”
The outlaw becomes irritated: “You got your methods, I got mine. Don’t fuck with me!”
Roma starts to answer but Zéu talks over him: “Here’s the thing: the police, your buddies, have a plan to raid the favela. Not just to roust us out and get in the papers. They wanna occupy the hill.”
“I know.”
Robocop stares at Zéu in fury, revolted by the level of information Roma has about the police.
Zéu feels the same way but tries to stay cool: “Great, you know. Then you oughta know too there’s gonna be war. And starting right now nobody in the community can talk to the police—not merchants, not mototaxis, or the owner of a band, or NGOs, no-fucking-body. You know the way our operation works here—when the shit hits the fan the pigs are gonna flay you and you’ll tell ’em everything.”
Now it’s Roma who avoids everyone’s eyes. He speaks looking at the floor, his voice muffled. “I can’t promise you that. I can’t just stop talking to the chief of police.”
Robocop loses his cool: “Let’s burn this guy right now, Zéu! The fucker’s a snitch! He’s sellin’ you out! Let’s waste this asshole right here and now, before he fucks everything up!”
This time Zéu doesn’t look at Robocop, despite the soldier’s exasperation, which the chief tolerates only because his adrenaline has also gone through the roof. His dead-fish gaze foretells the order in a low voice: “Kill him.”
* * *
The room service attendant went to check with the kitchen on whether the bottle of Dom Pérignon had been sent to room 901. When he learned it had been, he confirmed this with the guest on the telephone. But she replied at the top of her lungs that the attendant was an idiot. After a moment, the man understood that she wasn’t complaining about the bottle that had already been sent up but the other one, which hadn’t yet arrived—more precisely, the third one, ordered a little less than two hours after the first.
Rio Noir Page 9