Drink the Sky

by Lesley Krueger

  “You thought he was dead,” the voice prompted.

  “It didn’t come through.”

  “What?”

  “It didn’t come through properly. It’s all wavy.”

  “Oh, sorry. I’ll try again.”

  As the voice hung up, Todd felt himself slipping toward hysteria. “Who are these clowns?”

  “Chega,” Tânia said sharply.

  When the fax clattered to life again, Todd watched an enlarged photograph of Jefferson emerge. He was holding a Manaus newspaper headlined with stories proving the photograph had been taken only two or three days before.

  “He didn’t give it to me,” Todd shouted, when the telephone rang. “It wasn’t him. You let him go. He had nothing to do with this. He’s just some poor shit off looking for his wife and daughter. He doesn’t know anything about documents. He can’t even read.”

  “You seem glad to learn he isn’t dead.”

  “I never thought he was dead. Why would I think he was dead? Why did you think I did?”

  All the while thinking, Celso, Celso.

  “Everybody did,” the voice answered mildly. “So who died?”

  “His name was Antônio Rosa. He was killed a couple of weeks ago in Copacabana. He did research for me in the archives. Let the other poor guy go.”

  There was a moment of confusion on the other end. Jubilation?

  “Now do I get my kids?” Todd yelled.

  “That’s just the first step,” the voice answered. “We’ll call back later.”

  Both Tânia and Holly stared at Todd as he hung up. Female judgments. Female eyes.

  “So,” Tânia said. She did not look pleased.

  “I’m sorry. I never thought they had Jefferson. How could they have got Jefferson?”

  “Did he give you the document?”

  “Tânia, I can trust you?”

  “More to the point, can I trust you? Well. Now they’ll have to phone Paris and speak with my uncle.” She checked her watch. “It’s too late. He’ll be asleep, and they won’t want to wake him. We have a little time. You might as well tell your wife and me what you haven’t, to prevent further surprises.”

  “I don’t know who I can trust,” Todd cried.

  “Yes, very Macchiavellian,” Tânia said. “Slip me in here, and get you to tell me what’s going on.”

  She shook her head, and this time didn’t turn to Holly.

  “I hate my uncle. Does that answer your question? I gather you know he’s the father of my son. Doesn’t it sounds dreadful to say that? My uncle is the father of my son. And it was dreadful and I hated him, I hated him very passionately for years.”

  Tânia looked wounded and bitter, far more vulnerable than seemed possible, with that hawklike nose, the narrow, knowing, lucid eyes. “You’ve met Eric. It must have occurred to you that, my God, thirty years ago, my uncle was a remarkably handsome man. Sophisticated, with an enormous amount to offer a clever young girl. I always hated him, but I always waited for him, and hated myself even more. You can’t possibly imagine how difficult it was for me to run away to New York. And when I came back, after seventeen years, don’t you think he was there again? Panicking me into an embarrassing marriage. Why did he have to do this, Todd? What did he need me for, on top of everything else? It’s only so lately I’ve begun crawling out from under him. And then what does he do? He kills my poor Antônio, and before the earth even settles on his grave, he comes and takes your babies. Such innocents, all of them, used by him. If I think about it closely I want to scream.”

  Tânia’s hands shook, and she clenched them. When she opened them again, she looked over at Todd helplessly. “Why not trust me? I haven’t ever been able to trust myself, but you might as well try. I am. Holly is.”

  “I’m sorry, Tânia.” Todd replied.

  “Well.” She shook herself, and after a moment, added briskly, “Wanderley’s still trying to get a description of the kidnappers out of Cida. She’s just too traumatized, and silly. We’ll have to wait. What’s the time difference to Paris? Six hours? Nothing will happen until three, four in the morning here. Plenty of time for you to tell me the whole story, please Todd. And then perhaps both of you can get some sleep.”

  Finally Todd told the whole story. But he couldn’t sleep; didn’t even bother going upstairs. Hunkered down in his armchair, Todd thought of their bedroom as a parched sort of place, when he was already dying of thirst.

  27

  “Senhora?”

  It was Cida’s brother on the cell phone.

  “Wanderley, meu filho,” Tânia said. “I hope this is good news.”

  “I have an address.”

  “My God, what brilliance. But how can you be sure?”

  “I’ve been talking to my sister.”

  “Yes?”

  “Unfortunately, I have to tell you that the visit she received yesterday wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

  “My God.”

  “She was phoned that morning. She didn’t want to say who called at first. She was afraid of getting in trouble. But it had to be someone she knew, okay? Otherwise she would have been too frightened, and talked to our mother. And it also had to be someone she knew was connected to a certain party.”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember how he bought his driver Edison a house not far away from us?”

  “I suggested the area.”

  “We know Edison.”

  “So.”

  “He’s been doing well. He just bought himself another house to rent out. People talk. ‘Edison’s doing well. Have you seen his new house?’ I’ve seen it. It’s about four blocks away from here. People living on his street didn’t like talking about who’s been going in and out, but we got lucky. A kid showed up carrying a bag of groceries. He said he was just out buying some cereal, but when we showed him to my sister, she screamed.”

  “My dear, you are obviously the expert in this, but I wonder if that was strictly necessary.”

  “You said we didn’t have much time.”

  “True.”

  “I also wanted him to see her, and understand we weren’t very happy. It helped get answers to some questions.”

  “So?”

  “Now I’m just waiting for some friends to come over. They get off duty at midnight.”

  “This is going to be useless if the children are hurt.”

  “The thing about this house is the second floor. It has a second floor, and they’ve got the kids locked up there. Usually the men stay downstairs in the kitchen. There aren’t that many of them, either. A front and back door. We know the lay-out.”

  “They’re going to get nervous about the boy not coming back.”

  “They sent him off on a bus to find cereal. They probably think he got lost.”

  “Thank you, Wanderley.”

  “Senhora? My sister thought they were going to take the kids’ father. She fought when they took the kids.”

  “Yes,” Tânia said. “We have to do that.” She puckered her lips. “Do you know the crêche run by Sister Celeste?”

  “Yes, senhora.”

  “You can take the children there.”

  After Tânia hung up, Holly said, “The crêche. For my children. Underneath it all, I felt so superior to people who used it. Now my kids need it, too.”

  “Don’t you think I did?” Tânia asked. “Come on, now. Into the car.”

  28

  Outside the house, Wanderley had everyone in place. Some of his friends had already jumped the fence into the back yard. Others had the cereal kid ready to play shield in front. The kid would knock, and they’d go in from both sides. It hadn’t been hard coming up with a team. Wanderley thought he was going to be asking his friends for a favour, but it turned out he was granting one. They couldn’t believ
e their luck in cornering Gilson Ribeiro, whom the kid assured them was inside. Not long past midnight, there were enough of Wanderley’s friends on hand to be sure Gilson would take a very long trip. The children had become almost incidental, although everybody liked kids.

  “You remember we don’t want to shoot?” Wanderley asked the boy.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This isn’t going to go hard on you. You and your brother are going to get out of here okay. You remember I’m a friend of your friend up the morro.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re going to remember to tell him that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good boy,” Wanderley said, clapping him on the shoulder. Then he nodded to one of his friends, who walked the boy into the yard. There were already shadowy forms lined up on either side of the door. The kid raised his knuckles to knock.

  “They’ve got me!” he screamed. “They’ve — “

  They burst in shooting from both sides of the house. Seu José was nodding off on a chair in the back bedroom and fumbled onto the floor dying as he reached for his gun. The brother in the centre hallway put his hands up, but went down anyway. At the front, in the kitchen, Gilson Ribeiro managed to unholster his gun and fire while sliding to his knees, but his shots were wild, into the air, and he died before he had time to kill anyone else.

  “Hold fire! Hold fire!”

  “Jesus,” Wanderley said in the silence. “Anybody hurt?”

  One of his friends had been grazed in the arm, one had twisted his ankle.

  “All accounted for?”

  Five bodies were counted out, including the kid outside, although one of the men looked puzzled when he found Wanderley in the kitchen.

  “The American was already dead,” he said.

  “What?”

  They showed him the body in the front bedroom. Wanderley looked at it a while.

  “The kids,” he remembered. “Make me a clean route out the door.”

  His friends clapped him on the shoulder in jittery high spirits as he passed. Gilson Ribeiro! Gilson Ribeiro!

  Wanderley found the little boys shaking in a corner upstairs.

  “It’s okay,” he said, kneeling without getting too close. “It’s okay, I’m Cida’s brother. Your Mommy and Daddy are waiting for you over at the crêche.”

  The boys just looked at him, shaking and gulping. He decided not to rush them, and sat back on his haunches.

  “Are you a policeman?” one finally asked.

  “They’re downstairs. I’m Cida’s brother, Uncle Wanderley. Do you want to come with me?”

  “You’re not going to hurt us?”

  “Naw, I’m going to take you to your Mommy and Daddy.”

  But they couldn’t seem to trust him, and eventually he had to carry them both to the car.

  “I don’t like this,” Seu José had told Gilson, while the American was in the bathroom.

  “It’s stupid,” Gilson said. “If we had the guy here, we could get it all out of him at once.”

  “You remember that name? Antônio Rosa?”

  When Gilson shook his head blankly, Seu José reminded him of Copacabana.

  “Caralho! What’s going on?”

  “Psychology,” Seu José said, and spat. Both he and Gilson looked down at the table when Powell came back in the kitchen.

  “Where the hell’s that kid with the food?”

  “There’s probably a shortage of Choco-Krispis,” Gilson said.

  “Anybody bother to check if they want anything else?”

  “They don’t look hungry,” Gilson said.

  “What kind of answer is that?”

  Powell was jittery, dancing toward the stairs.

  “You don’t go up there,” Seu José said, not looking over from the table.

  “So what if I do?”

  “And they see you?” Gilson asked. “What do you plan to do with them afterwards?”

  Seu José turned slowly in his chair to stare at Powell.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Powell asked. Gilson glanced at Seu José. “It’s a question of training and sophistication. Didn’t I find out who gave him the document? Didn’t I? You don’t think Paris is going to like that?”

  Seu José looked down at his lap, then bit a thumb.

  “I’m going to check on the children.”

  He was almost at the stairs when Seu José darted up, a big man fast on his feet. He shoved Powell against the wall, then had Gilson and the remaining brother gag him, get him into the front bedroom, and hold him there. Delicately, showing distaste, Seu José opened the American’s trousers and pulled both trousers and shorts to the ground. Then he unsheathed his knife and sliced off Powell’s genitals. Afterwards, Gilson held the jerking man’s head back by the remaining fringe of hair and Seu José slit his throat.

  Washing his hands, the old man said, “He had it coming. Pervert. Now get that damn ecologista on the phone and we’ll do a trade.”

  But it was ridiculous. The answering machine directed them to a cell phone number, and when they tried that, they got a message saying the service was down. They were going to have to wait.

  “Psychology,” Gilson spat. “Technology.”

  Seu José grunted, and went to sit in the darkened back bedroom to wait.

  Holly and Todd each carried one of the boys into the crêche from the car. Both were wrapped in blankets, so it was hardly possible to tell which was which until they got them inside. When the blankets dropped, the children stood like new-hatched chicks feeling their legs for the first time. They wavered from side to side and blinked their eyes vacantly.

  “How’s my guys?” Holly asked, in a voice she tried to keep casual. “My guys are all right. They’re all right now. It’s all right,” she cooed. Then Evan broke and threw himself at her, and Conor followed. She held them both tightly, trying not to cry in their baby hair, feeling the warm living weight of them and conscious, every moment, of poor Todd, who’d knelt and stood up empty-handed behind her.

  Tânia came over and put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back.

  “They got them all?” he asked, without turning.

  “Todd, all five of them are dead. Wanderley’s friends had to go in shooting.”

  “Oh my God. The boys didn’t see it?” Todd walked around the room before coming to a stop in front of Tânia. She sketched the broad outlines of what happened, focusing on the death of Antônio’s three killers, the well-known gunman and his two hired boys.

  Todd looked back at Holly and the boys. “They can’t be told about this. Such an awful burden on their lives.”

  Tânia pursed her lips. “The American was also there.”

  Todd swung around. “My God, don’t tell her, either.” Then he whispered, “He didn’t touch them, really?”

  “Seu José killed him first. We know this. The American was dead before Wanderley got there.”

  Todd looked distracted, unable to grasp what was happening.

  “And Celso?” he asked.

  “I can’t understand your obsession with this Celso,” Tânia said. “Don’t you see? If he’d been in with them, he never would have given you the document. And if they’d got to him afterwards, none of this would have had to happened. It sounds as if they approached him casually and he gave them some small portion of the truth.”

  Todd shook his head. “That’s the thing about Celso. I don’t think he’s ever told anyone the whole truth. He’s just scattered bits and pieces of it wherever it’s suited him.”

  “É muito brasileiro,” Tânia told him. Very Brazilian.

  Todd met her eyes for the first time, and caught himself half smiling. “I couldn’t have said that.”

  “You should thank him. He’s saved your piece of forest.”

  “I
t isn’t mine, Tânia, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, nitpicking,” she said. “He saved a piece of forest. You’re still going to have to leave the country, of course. But without Seu José, my uncle is rendered a little toothless for the time being. And it’s quite a crucial time, you know.”

  It occurred to Todd that Tânia looked disturbingly pleased with herself. But she’d won, hadn’t she? The next generation was about to take over.

  “Good-bye Seu José. Hello Wanderley,” he said.

  “That’s really very cutting, Todd. Do you really mean to be so hard on me?”

  He turned back to Holly and the boys. “I’m very hard on everybody, all the time.”

  Holly took the children into the kitchen, talking with a middle-aged nun and a boxy, mannish-looking woman.

  “Don’t get bitter, Todd,” Tânia said. “I really wouldn’t, you know. I’ve tried not to. And I have far more reason for it than you.”

  He turned back toward her. “What are you going to do now, Tânia?”

  “Well you see, I’m an artist. But artists have to know something about business, or society wouldn’t allow much room for us, would it? So I do a little business, I do a little art, and cherish my private fantasy that artists really can make the best of the world. It’s a question of investigation,” she said. “And catharsis.”

  “All the killing. That’s some catharsis. What makes you think it isn’t just going to be the same thing over and over and over and over?”

  “It’s been said that art is a process of making things new.”

  “By Ezra Pound. A fascist.”

  “Oh! You’re terribly hard to live with. Do you mean to be?”

  “No,” Todd answered, and started to cry.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Conor asked.

  “In the next room,” Holly answered. “Shall I go get him?”

  She found Todd leaning on Tânia’s shoulder. When Tânia saw her, she patted his back twice and walked into the kitchen.

  “The children want you,” Holly said.

  “Are they going to be all right?” he whispered.

  She decided it was time to move past this. They were adults. They had children to take care of.