by Jeremy Brown
“I want my hands free,” I said.
Marcela took the bag and walked toward the academy. I moved a step ahead of her on the right.
Eye Patch stayed between us and the door.
“Get out of the way,” Marcela said.
“I’m here to tell you something.”
“I don’t care.”
Jairo stood on her left. Past him Gil held one of the bags by the strap, like a flail, his breathing deep and even.
Eye Patch scanned us, a pro at risk assessment. His duffel bag was unzipped at his side. He held it open and showed us the combination assault rifle and grenade launcher inside. Six baseball-sized hand grenades were nestled beside it.
“Okay?” he said.
The other three duffels looked heavier than his.
“Easy,” Gil said. “Easy.”
Eye Patch stared at Marcela. “You want the message or not?”
“Yes.”
“Say please.”
She took a deep breath. I wanted to crush Eye Patch on his blind side, knock him stiff, and use him like a poleax on the other three.
“Yes please.”
“Seu Exu envia o seu amor.”
He smiled and walked away. The rest followed, nobody bothering to look back.
I seared all of their faces, silhouettes, movement patterns into memory. “What did he say to you?”
Marcela closed her eyes for a moment, tugged the door open and went into the academy.
I asked Jairo, “What did he say?”
The muscles in Jairo’s head rippled. “Your Exu sends his love.”
The inside of Academia de Arcoverde was a temple. The front room, with its white walls and low ceiling with exposed girders and wiring, took up the entire width of the building. A dozen fans hung between the girders, churning the thick air. The floor was wall-to-wall green mats with a three-foot white border around the perimeter.
Marcela stayed on the white as she cut left inside the door, then right at the corner toward the back of the building.
I followed.
Twenty kids—boys and girls—in white Arcoverde BJJ gis rolled on the green mats, their breathing broken by the occasional grunt when somebody found the right angle on an armlock. The instructor, who wore the dark green gi of a family member, crawled among them on his hands and knees, moving elbows and tilting heads by fractions to get the right results.
He smiled and nodded as we passed but did not take his attention from the students. We turned right again at the back wall and I had to duck left through a wide doorway to keep up with Marcela. Gil and Jairo came in behind me. We were in a small square room with doors on all sides—women’s dressing area on the left, men’s on the right with an opening next to it showing stairs leading up to the top floor. There was a tiny office with a closed door on the back wall. The office had a window that looked out through the opening behind me to the mats.
Marcela went toward the women’s door.
“Wait,” I said.
She turned.
“What just happened?”
“Family business,” Jairo said. He tugged my arm toward the men’s door.
“Those guys are family?”
Jairo scowled. “Those dogs have no family. They are garbage.”
I asked Marcela, “Who is Exu?”
She didn’t look at me. “Woody, just focus on your fight.”
“The fight happens whether I focus on it or not.”
“Marcela,” Gil said. “You know he won’t let it go.”
“Tell him to.”
“I’m actually with Woody on this. You say it’s family business, we like to think we’re family. What’s going on?”
Jairo shook his head. “There is family, and there is blood. This is blood.”
I held my wrists out to him. “How much you need?”
Jairo looked at Marcela. A tear slipped from her eye and fell down her cheek. She slapped it away and nodded.
Jairo pulled in a deep breath and started up the stairway. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
The stairs had one switchback before we emerged on the second floor into the Arcoverde version of an MMA gym: two Thai bags hanging along the back wall and three sections of gray fence angled around a stained canvas. The rest of the space was covered in green mats.
Check out a fighter’s gym, you’ll see how he thinks he’s going to win.
Jairo took us to the corner and opened a white door made of wooden planks, led the way up a tight set of shallow steps. Marcela walked in front of me with her head down. Before I started up I glanced back at Gil to see if he had any clue—he shrugged and looked as confused as I felt.
We came out onto the roof, a rectangle of patched gray tarpaper still soft from the afternoon sun. A disturbing number of electrical wires converged from all angles and formed a dangerous nest on a wooden post at the opposite corner.
The academy was on top of a small rise in the urban sprawl west of downtown Rio. Roofs fell away on each side as the land dipped. To the east, the coastline high-rises were starting to light up.
Jairo asked Marcela, “You want to tell them?”
She shook her head. I put my arm around her and she stepped away, almost to the edge of the roof.
Jairo said, “You know what a favela is?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Gil said.
I gave him a look—it didn’t matter what he knew.
“It’s a slum,” Marcela said. “A hell.”
Jairo waited, making sure she was done. He pointed west at a series of rolling hills. The slopes were clustered with small buildings of every shape and color. From where I stood it looked like they were stacked on top of each other, overlapping into one continuous growth.
“Favela Buraco Quente. And the favelas are more than slums. They are cities within the city. The people inside have nothing but each other. No money, nothing.”
“The drug lords who protect them have plenty of money,” Marcela said, her back still to us.
Jairo turned. “I thought you weren’t talking.”
“I won’t, you tell them the truth.”
Jairo shook his head and pointed south. “Favela Coreia.”
The large, dome-shaped hill might have been green once—now it looked like a tumor of crumbling concrete and warped sheet metal bulging out of the landscape.
Southwest, a distant hillside with buildings painted in pastels: “Favela Sumare. Any way you look, you find one.”
He pointed southeast, the direction Marcela faced, and let his arm drop like it had grown too heavy. “Favela Axila da Serpente. You can’t see it, but it’s there. On the far side of the mountain.”
Gil frowned, his lips working through the translation. “Armpit of the snake?”
Jairo nodded. “One of the worst.”
“Not one of,” Marcela said.
Jairo said, “It’s run by a drug lord named Carrasco. The Hangman.”
I already wanted to get my hands on him. “He hangs people?”
“No,” Marcela turned toward us. I expected to see more tears, but her face was dry and hard. “He was hung. And shot, and stabbed.”
“And set on fire,” Jairo said, holding a finger up. “At least one time.”
Marcela said, “But it was after the hanging, when he came back from the dead, that he got the name Carrasco. Because he believes he came back as Exu, the spirit of Quimbanda.”
I put my hands out. “Wait a minute.”
She said, “You saw the rings of red candles and cigars and rum at the intersections? The knives? Those were crossroad offerings to the spirits of Quimbanda, requests for Exu to bring harm to someone. Quimbanda is evil. It is black magic. And Carrasco thinks he is the Lord of Quimbanda. His followers believe him, like those dogs on the street, the ones who delivered the message. They kill and steal and burn, all in his name.”
I said, “Their message was from him. Your Exu sends his love.”
Her knuckles popped a
s she rolled her hands into fists. “He thinks I am his queen.”
I had questions.
What the hell was Quimbanda?
Who or what was Exu?
Carrasco?
Most important of all: Was there anyone I could elbow in the neck to make it all better for Marcela?
I didn’t get a chance to ask any of them. Jairo’s brother Javier stuck his fat head out of the roof access and yelled at us for almost collapsing the ceiling instead of getting ready for Saturday. He waved us inside. Jairo and Gil followed him down.
I touched Marcela’s arm at the top of the stairs. “Stay up here and talk to me.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“I disagree.”
“What, you’re going to do what you did in Vegas, take Jairo and go around kicking everyone, shaking your finger in their face and talking tough?”
“Mostly the kicking.”
“No, Woody. Not here. Here, you turn the wrong corner and a minute later you are dead, covered in flies. I don’t want your help.”
“Have you told the police?”
She palmed her forehead. “Of course! So simple! No, no police. Not for Carrasco. Not for a favela. There are some good police, but most would take the money Carrasco would pay them to go away. And they would not go into the Axila da Serpente without an army. You’re going to leave this alone. Promise me. I don’t want Carrasco to know about you.”
“Uh, everybody knows about me.”
She fought the smile. “So stupid. If he finds out about you, about how I love you, he will hurt you.”
“He’ll try.”
She pressed her hand against my cheek. “You don’t know how bad he is. Just stay here, with me. Stay safe. Do your fight and go home.”
“Then what?”
Her hand fell away. “I start missing you again.”
6
When I dropped from the narrow stairway onto the second floor, Marcela was gone.
Jairo rolled through warm-up drills with Javier and Edson, the three of them just starting to sweat. Gil stood along the edge of the mat with Antonio, the patriarch, who had his hands clasped behind his back and a forward-leaning posture, like he was ready to dive in. They pointed at Jairo’s technique and grunted at each other, nodding.
I found a tiny bathroom and changed into my training gear, hoping no one paid any attention to me at all. I had some issues to discuss with the Thai bags and didn’t want any bullshit critiquing or pressure. My plan was to hit the leather hard and loud enough to send Carrasco a message in Morse code. Maybe cause a landslide that brought the whole Armpit down around him, take care of the problem for good.
When I opened the door, Antonio Arcoverde, master of Brazilian jiu jitsu was there. The laughing, smiling grandfather from the picnic was not.
“Come,” he said. “You’re going to show me everything Gil has taught you.”
Shit.
I was on my back, knees bent. The mat was warm under the soles of my feet. Javier knelt beyond them, relaxed.
Jairo was in the same position as me a few yards to my left, with Edson squatting nearby.
Antonio paced between us, hands clasped. “I will use English for Woody. But if I can’t explain what I am meaning, someone tell him.”
Gil stood to my right and gnawed a thumbnail, eyes flicking between me and Antonio. He took a break from the nail to hold the thumb up for me. “Do well, Woody.”
Back to the nail.
All the training Gil had taken me through, all the fights we’d prepped and executed, I’d never seen him nervous.
“Full guard, please,” Antonio said.
Javier crawled forward. I wrapped my legs around his sides, crossed my ankles at the small of his back and locked him in. Muscle memory took over and I grabbed both of his wrists to make sure he couldn’t pound my face into the floor.
Antonio’s bare feet made no sound as he padded all the way around us. He tugged on my ankles, prodded my right elbow with his foot, reached down and nudged my head.
He clucked his tongue. “Why so much tension?”
“I go loose, he’ll get out.”
“Yes, here.” Antonio touched my knee, my head. “Not here. Relax your throat. Let your neck open.”
I puffed my cheeks out. Behind Antonio, Gil closed his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Antonio said.
“I’m not sure.”
“Like this,” Javier said. He wafted a hand toward his neck, which looked the same as it always had.
“Oh, right.” I inhaled a few times to everyone’s disappointment.
Antonio jabbed two fingers into my ribs. “Relax here. Sink into the floor.”
“What if he punches me?”
“Then you go tense. Not before.”
I tried to relax my ribcage. Physiology said: Really?
Antonio said, “Now sweep to mount.”
I hooked Javier’s left leg with my right so he couldn’t stick it out, wrapped his left arm with mine and bridged him up as I rolled right. He went with it, landed on his back with me on top, my knees wedged against his sides.
“Too much muscle,” Antonio said.
I thought it was a compliment.
“You want to beat Aviso, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if I win, Eddie will—”
“No no no. You want to win to prove you are better.” He held a hand toward Gil. “To prove what your teacher has given you is better than what Aviso has been given.”
I nodded.
Antonio said, “So far, you are proving you will lose.”
An hour into it, I’d regressed five years in my jiu jitsu training and lost ten pounds of sweat. Marcela hadn’t come back and my questions about Carrasco kept bumping into the techniques Antonio called out.
“Mount into arm triangle, from the side.”
Techniques I didn’t plan on using against Aviso.
“Arm triangle into side control.”
Because most of the techniques I planned on using involved knees and elbows to Aviso’s skull.
“Side control to Kesa Gatame.”
And trying Antonio’s commands against a guy with Aviso’s skill in Brazilian jiu jitsu would get me strangled.
“Kimura from Kesa Gatame.”
And embarrassed.
“Kesa Gatame to full mount.”
I fumbled through with help from Javier, little twitches and cues that let me know important things like: This elbow, not that knee.
“Full mount to triangle.”
When I was done flopping and yanking my way into it, Antonio stood over me with his hands clasped. He said to Gil, “I thought you taught him the Arcoverde way.”
“I did,” Gil said. “Well, the parts he needs to know.”
Antonio raised an eyebrow.
Gil said, “We have the basics down. Everything else, we’ve kind of fine-tuned to fit Woody’s style. His attributes.”
Antonio studied me with no expression. I still had Javier in a loose triangle choke from the top, which felt rude.
Antonio said, “Attributes?”
“Striking,” Gil said. “We use the principles of Arcoverde jiu jitsu to keep him out of too much trouble, mostly, and put him in the best position for his striking. Punches, kicks, knees, elbows. Headbutts, before those were illegal.”
Antonio looked like he’d swallowed a bug.
Gil said, “We can show you what we’ve been drilling to get ready for Aviso. Lots of armbar defenses. Some are pretty slick, I think you’ll like them.”
Antonio sniffed. “Triangle to armbar.”
When Antonio was done with the technique work—or just tired of my version of it—he moved on to Jairo and Edson to go over the plan against Preston on Saturday. They spoke Portuguese, so the only part I got was “Preston.”
I knelt and sat back on my heels, dripping. Javier patted my shoulder on his way to towel off. Poor guy had my panic swe
at all over him. Gil wandered close enough to whisper, “Sorry. I didn’t know that was going to happen.”
“You remember the first time we rolled? When I thought I knew what I was doing?”
“Yeah.”
“You made me look like a baby. A fat, slow baby.”
“Sounds about right.”
“This was worse.”
He dropped into a squat. “Don’t let it get to you.”
“I don’t know shit.”
“He can have that effect. Makes him a good teacher. A great one.”
“Hey, the Wednesday before a fight? I don’t want a teacher. I want a punching bag.”
“I hear you,” Gil said. “Everything else okay? You came down from the roof like you were walking to the cage already.”
“I need to find Marcela.”
Gil pulled a face.
“Don’t start,” I said.
“I started when Eddie offered this trip. Bad idea to see her before the fight. You’re distracted.”
“I’m fine. Well, I was, until I found out I don’t know a damn thing about grappling.”
“Pretty sure I’ve been telling you that for a while too.”
I didn’t laugh.
Gil handed me a water bottle. “You and I, we know what we’re doing. We’re ready for Aviso. You know it. And come Saturday, you try any of the shit I just saw, I’ll jump in the cage and break your arm myself. You know that too.”
“Is Marcela downstairs?”
“Last I saw. I don’t want to ask, because this has nothing to do with Aviso, but are you two okay?”
I shrugged. Gil made his face again, and we both turned to the stairway. Loud voices were coming up, talking about lighting and acoustics. I saw two guys I didn’t know before the blue fauxhawk rose into view, that face below it.
Banzai Eddie.
I’ll give Eddie credit: he got off his phone long enough to bow to Antonio Arcoverde.
Then he was right back at it, pacing the mats in his thin blue socks and yelling at someone about the banners hanging roof-to-street on the outside of the Rio arena not being big enough.
“Too late now, unless you can make the building shorter. No? So why am I talking to you?”
He dropped the phone in a pocket and said something to the two guys he was with. They were thin and pale and winded from the stairs. Not fighters. They carried black bags with camera brand names embroidered in white on the sides. I recognized one of them—Kevin something—the Warrior producer who’d interviewed me before the Burbank fight. Tried to bait me into taking the fight personally, make a statement on tape about what I was going to do to Burbank in the cage.