São Paulo Noir

by Tony Bellotto

  Neia brought down a chair on Cardim’s head. He turned around and shot her in the chest. Oh Jesus! Blood flew to the ceiling. Accomplice jumped on Cardim’s back and they rolled onto the floor, Cardim with the gun in his hand. Accomplice held Cardim’s arm. My Virgin Santissima! They rolled on the floor again. I continued my prayer. It was like something out of a Western.

  I began to pray more loudly—the final part of the prayer: “. . . Blessed be the fruit of thy womb, O clement, O merciful, O gentle Virgin Mary.”

  The second gunshot rang out.

  “Amen.”

  Accomplice was under Cardim. Blood ran between the two. Lots of blood. He pushed, and Cardim’s body rolled underneath the table. Accomplice stood up.

  I was in tears and shouting the prayer: “Pray for us, Holy Mother of God, so we may be worthy of Christ’s promises! Amen!”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  The two of us walked in silence. The only words spoken in two blocks: “Neia was good people.”

  Accomplice put his right arm over my shoulder because I was shaking so badly.

  Far away, very far away, the sound of a siren. We pretended not to hear it and said nothing.

  I sensed his body, all the affection, the respect.

  He asked: “Where are we going?”

  The sound of the siren was closer.

  “Bauru, are you familiar with it?”

  “Yes, in the interior. Why Bauru?”

  “It has one fuckin’ great sandwich!”

  The sound drew nearer. It was at our backs.

  “Have you ever been in prison?”

  “Twice.”

  I would lose weight like mad in prison, I thought, and smiled at the men who leaped from the car. Carrying guns and billy clubs to subdue vagrants.

  Finally, I was going to lose weight.

  Part Three

  I resume writing.

  Teresão, with illusions of Boileau-Narcejac, only confused me.

  I didn’t understand the end of the narrative.

  What was the function of Accomplice in the whole story?

  At one point I even thought he might be with the police. But Cardim wouldn’t be that big of an idiot.

  And why did they walk away so calmly like someone going to a movie theater to see an Iranian film? To eat a Bauru sandwich?

  And why didn’t they hide the minute they heard the siren in the distance?

  Could it be that Teresão had already had time to imagine losing weight in a torture chamber?

  And how could Teresão be so sure she would be found guilty? The ones who set up the fake kidnapping with her were dead. Accomplice had nothing to gain by talking. And it was better to remain friends with the neighbor of Paulo Maluf who was going to get a divorce (Teresão, not Dr. Paulo) and reap a huge reward.

  Why would she be arrested?

  And why so much blood in the final scene of her captivity (my God!), if up to that point the story was advancing with subtle humor?

  * * *

  Some five years later I met with Teresão. I confess that it was hard to recognize her. She hadn’t gotten any thinner, but she had short gray hair and brown lipstick. Almost a hippie. And smiling happily in a robe of every color in the rainbow and a few more.

  I hadn’t seen her since the trial. She was convicted of forming a gang, extortion, and complicity in a homicide. After four years she got out of prison. Dr. Paulo!

  The meeting was a joyful one.

  Teresão, with total tranquility, self-assurance, and peace, declared, bringing an end to the story: “My problem wasn’t fatness! It was my head! Shall we go have a few drinks and a smoke?”

  “Of course! What about Accomplice?”

  “That’s another story. I’ll tell you later. Is your weed good? In prison we had some great weed! Third world stuff, heavy and social at the same time, you get me? How about you, writing much?”

  “Trying to sell your story for a miniseries.”

  “Wonderful. But you gotta show the time I spent inside.”

  “Let’s start in that bar over there. You owe me two stories: Teresão’s Accomplice and Teresão in Prison.”

  PART II

  São Paulo Inc.

  As If the World Were a Good Place

  by Marçal Aquino

  Canindé

  For Mafra Carbonieri

  1

  With resigned impatience, old Ambrósio was dragging his semiravaged carcass toward eighty when a suburban redhead, whose existence the decennial census had recorded only twice by the period in question, crossed his path. Because of her, Ambrósio, who was already transferring control of his businesses to his son and preparing for a peaceful retirement at the side of his invalid wife, resurfaced. Revived. He had his dentures polished, as people say about old men who get turned on to life once again. He became vain: he got hair implants, dyed his mustache, bought that belt that disguises the belly—not to mention baths, cologne, and lotions.

  The man who had previously worn the same clothes for days suddenly took an interest in designer shirts, bespoke pants, and expensive shoes that appeared in magazine ads. I myself accompanied him on various trips to malls from which he emerged happy as a shopaholic, loaded down with colorful boxes and shopping bags. He even hired a gay guy to tutor him on good manners.

  An impressive metamorphosis.

  All in the futile attempt to gain the favor of someone who, to tell the truth, wasn’t worth the effort to clip his toenails. A creature who, if run through a press, wouldn’t yield a drop of affection for anyone.

  A vulgar and crafty bitch with more tricks than a cruise-ship magician, said Ambrósio Junior. The two detested each other from the first time they met.

  Naturally.

  The emergence of the woman slowed the ascent of the younger Ambrósio. Reinvigorated, the old man resumed control of the businesses, and the son had no alternative but to suck it up and go back to a supporting role. He didn’t like it. No one would.

  Once, in the car on the way to a festival in Barretos, he said, “A galo to anyone who gets rid of the redhead.” (A galo equaled fifty thousand in his dialect.)

  The driver Silêncio kept his eyes on the road and a firm hand on the steering wheel.

  “I want this car,” I said. And I turned in the seat to see whether Ambrósio Junior was serious.

  (He was extremely possessive when it came to his Mercedes. He didn’t like leaving it in the hands of valets and only trusted Silêncio.)

  Wearing a hat, shirtless, snorting coke between two hookers dressed as cowgirls, Ambrósio Junior let out his bloated chortle. “Out of the question. I’ll give you the money and you buy the car you want, you hear?”

  Silêncio reduced speed when we passed by a highway patrol checkpoint. Ambrósio Junior asked one of the women to lower the window, touched the brim of his hat, and formed a gun with his thumb and forefinger, messing with the men monitoring the traffic. The cops must have thought: Another rich asshole. But they smiled, taking the joke good-naturedly and waving back. It was a splendid morning.

  Just as the morning was splendid when old Ambrósio first laid his cataract-clouded eyes on the redhead. I testify: the old man said he had dreamed about his mother, an ignorant and foul-mouthed Calabrese woman who made money by iron-fisted exploitation of tenements in Canindé. Dona Gina. She lived to be over a hundred. It’s said she was the origin of the clan’s meanness.

  “La bruta della vecchia whispered some numbers to me, Poet.”

  Ambrósio called me Poet because of my love of books.

  He mentioned the story about the numbers right away, when I went to pick him up at home; he said he needed to place some bets. But we didn’t have time until the end of the day. Which was a stroke of luck: I stopped the car in front of the first lottery establishment I saw, with greater interest in the bar across the street—it was hot and I was dying for cold water or maybe a beer, depending on Ambrósio’s mood after placing his be
t.

  He entered and ran his gaze over the small mob engaged in spending their change on dreams. Then he leaned over the counter and took from his pocket the piece of paper he’d jotted the numbers down on. I stood beside him with the thought of also taking a chance, although I didn’t much believe in it; I’ve never had any luck with that kind of thing.

  Ambrósio rasped: “You’re not gonna copy my bet, are you?”

  To avoid a scene, I wadded up the slip I had started to fill out and walked away. It wasn’t long before the old man asked for help reading one of the numbers. He pointed to a scrawl on the paper. “What do you think that is, a seven?”

  “Looks like a two.”

  “A two my foot, it’s a seven! Think I don’t understand my own writing?”

  “Well, to me it looks like a two,” I insisted.

  And suddenly I had my doubts: maybe it actually was a seven.

  Cazzo.

  The girl in a nearby booth overheard our discussion and sang a song of simplicity: “Why don’t you fill out two slips?”

  I’ve spent several years with old Ambrósio without ever really discovering what pleases him. But I’ve had time and the good sense enough to learn the list of things that he doesn’t tolerate. Cold coffee, for example. A newspaper that’s already been read. People who show up late for appointments. The word no (perennially first in the ranking). The old man also harbored a special hatred for anyone who butted into the conversation of others, like this young woman, a redhead with white skin and light-colored eyes, had just done.

  Gorete, according to the green name tag pinned to the shirt pocket of her uniform.

  I watched intently as Ambrósio snorted and raised his head to confront her. The jugular vein pulsed in his neck. An encounter like this could lead to a harsh response. An insult. Or even worse, a slap in the face.

  The redhead seemed to capture the powerful wave of energy ready to sweep over her. And she faced it with no sign of fear in her pale eyes. (A small mustache of sweat graced her mouth with its fleshy lips, full of personality.)

  The old man’s breathing hissed. Here it comes, I thought.

  But something happened.

  Ambrósio turned blue.

  He stood there paralyzed and mute from enchantment, with the numbers slip in his hand and his face lit up like I had never seen it. The expression of a saint on the day he discovers he’s a saint. He looked at me in search of complicity.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Ambrósio went up to the ticket window and asked with unexpected delicacy, “Can you do that for me, please?”

  If she had known how unusual that gentleness was, perhaps Gorete would have smiled. But no. She merely took the slip and went on chewing her gum with an attitude somewhere between arrogance and insolence, as she entered the bets in the machine. Just once did she deign to look in the direction of the old man. To support me: “It’s a two.”

  Ambrósio clapped me on the shoulder, excited. “Didn’t I tell you it was a two, Poet?”

  I said nothing. Gorete raised her head and afforded me the grace of her attention for a second, if that. She was, in fact, beautiful. More than beautiful, exotic. An unlikely flower. I appreciated how in her expression there was a touch of boredom, a certain impatience with the others of her species.

  Ambrósio took the receipt, paid, and told her to keep the change. Gorete thanked him and wished him luck. The old man kissed the paper, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. And left the establishment floating on air, his eyes glued to the redhead in the ticket booth. When he landed in the car, he tasked me with a mission: “I wanna know everything about her. And I mean everything, capisci?”

  I looked at him in the rearview mirror. Ambrósio was still half bluish. His face was bright. A different gleam in his eyes. A dash of adolescent craziness.

  2

  As soon as I turn on my cell phone it begins to ring, which startles me so much that I almost drop it. I answer because I recognize the number on the screen. Dr. Fontes, mezzo lawyer, mezzo adviser to Ambrósio.

  “The old man’s very upset with you,” he says. “How could you disappear at a time like this?”

  “I had my reasons, I know you understand . . .”

  “Where are you?”

  “Look, sir, don’t take it the wrong way, but I have to hang up. I don’t want to be traced.”

  “Stop being paranoid, man! Ambrósio only wants to talk to you.”

  “I know.”

  “He wants to hear directly from you how it happened. I think that’s fair.”

  “With due respect, sir, data venia, tell me another.”

  Dr. Fontes laughs, then coughs. It takes awhile for him to recover his breath. Emphysema. “Listen: the old man is only interested in the black guy.”

  Silêncio is sleeping facedown, wearing striped trunks. He’s sweating profusely. I’m certain the hand hidden under the pillow is grasping his revolver.

  “What happened was fate,” I say.

  “Come and tell the old man that personally.”

  “The only one to blame in the story is Ambrósio Junior himself.”

  “Okay, I’m sure he’ll understand,” lies Dr. Fontes.

  The playing cards we used for endless games are scattered on the floor. Silêncio grunts something incomprehensible from the land of sleepers. Laughs. Then opens his eyes and, still without moving, cautiously observes the world around him. He is a bit frustrated by what he sees.

  “What guarantee can you give me?”

  “He thinks of you as a son . . .”

  “That’s not much.”

  Dr. Fontes reflects for a moment. Silêncio sits up in bed and stretches his slim body, cracks his knuckles.

  “Hand over the black guy. Then you’ll be in good shape. I give you my word.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You think we don’t know where you are?” Dr. Fontes is bluffing. I know his methods. “The underworld talks, you know.”

  He’s right about that: the underworld does talk. And any information is available, all you need is patience.

  “Call me,” Dr. Fontes says. And he advises, “Careful,” before hanging up.

  Silêncio gets up to smoke near the window.

  “It was Dr. Fontes,” I say.

  Silêncio considers the information for a second.

  “He wanted to know if we needed anything . . .”

  Silêncio smiles in his economical way.

  The sound of steps in the hallway puts me on alert. Then I hear a key opening the door of the neighboring room and relax. I mean, as far as anyone in my situation can.

  3

  At the time of this story, Maria Gorete França Cavalcante was renting a room in a less-than-modest house in New World Park, in the most unpaved part of the district, bordering on Fernão Dias. She had just turned eighteen. And she was not at all happy with the life she was leading. She was fed up with everything and everybody, dying to get away.

  And I saw no reason to disagree with her.

  During the day, at the lottery establishment, for eight hours Gorete handled the bets of strangers for a miserable wage; at night, she shared the poorly lit space of a public school with classmates who did drugs, got pregnant, killed, or died in gang wars. And on the way home she depended on a bus that took forever.

  Not that she was in any hurry to arrive.

  In the only bedroom in the house, she shared a bed with her mother, a depressed woman incapable of intimacy, with two suicide attempts on her record (gas and razor blade). Marlon, Gorete’s brother, slept on the sofa in the living room, although it might be more appropriate to say he lived on that dirty sofa, where he spent most of the day fingering a guitar and watching silent images on TV. Averse to work, he used the excuse that someone had to be around to watch over their mother. He took in a few coins by diverting some of the pills she was supposed to take to neighborhood junkies.

&nb
sp; Marlon was lame, his right foot deformed from birth, a misfortune that made him the beneficiary of pitying tolerance on most people’s part.

  At first, he was my main source of information. We became “old friends” at the small grocery on the corner, after I sprang for several rounds of cognac and beer and a few greasy snacks. I didn’t need to reveal the nature of my interest in Gorete. Marlon didn’t care about that. Just the opposite. He even played the role of go-between without my asking, and informed me about his sister’s amorous past.

  Apart from the inconsequential flirting with lottery customers, Gorete had had two relationships worth mentioning: the first, with a mechanic from the neighborhood, an adolescent romance; the second, a tumultuous affair with an older guy, a photographer who had a studio downtown.

  Marlon pointed out the mechanic: a short guy with kinky hair and oily skin who spent his weekends restoring antique cars in a dilapidated workshop. He figures in Gorete’s biography only because he was the man who deflowered her. He would never have the ability to provide her with the luxuries she felt the world owed her.

  Gorete considered herself special. And in a certain way, she was. She was lucky, very lucky. She was just waiting for an opportunity to change her life.

  There was no reason to condemn her. Lots of people lived like that, awaiting some great event. A turnaround. Nothing wrong with that.

  The only problem: it was taking a long time to happen, and that made Gorete impatient and quarrelsome with those around her.

  Marlon was waiting too. In a different way than his sister. Him and his twisted foot. It didn’t bother him to be the target of others’ pity, or even of mockery. Marlon had other preoccupations, a head full of dreams. He wanted to be an artist. He composed romantic songs on his guitar with the hope of one day recording an album and becoming a successful musician. Marlon imagined that music could lift him out of the hole in which he lived.

  In case that didn’t work out, he had an alternate plan. He knew that if his sister achieved something, he wouldn’t be left behind. He therefore rooted for her.