Discards

by David D. Levine

  His dreams were all of pulling and snatching and flying. Happy dreams.

  * * *

  Soon he was doing tolerably well, lifting bills, checkbooks, passports, and other small paper objects in a way no other thief could and most people didn’t think to protect themselves against. Operating from a distance, patient, and stealthy, he almost always got away clean; his victims rarely even saw him, and often didn’t immediately notice that they’d lost anything. He earned the respect of the fences and always got the best price for his goods. In a way, he told himself, he was still recycling—turning paper into cash.

  Tiago slept in a warm bed with a full stomach nearly every night. He was making so much money that he could afford to let other street kids crash with him. Some curinga girls, and a few of the boys, were very grateful.

  He made friends. He learned the limitations of his powers.

  He started to get cocky.

  * * *

  One day he found himself in a situation that, just a few weeks earlier, would have seemed completely insane. He was in an enclosed space—a former nightclub, long abandoned, now used as a drug warehouse at the wholesale level—watching from just across the room as a major drug deal went down.

  Fernandinho Oliveira dos Santos, head of the Comando Curinga, had just entered the room. One of Tiago’s fences had let him know that dos Santos would be meeting with the head of a Colombian syndicate to discuss distribution of a new and very potent variety of cocaine. The Colombian would be bringing a sample.

  If Tiago could steal that sample, the fence had assured him, he could write his own ticket. Not only was the sample itself worth thousands, its unexplained disappearance during the meeting would set the Curinga gang and the Colombians at each other’s throats—a situation some others would pay handsomely to precipitate.

  The fence had let Tiago practice on a bag of his cocaine. Tiago had found no difficulty drawing the stuff to himself at distances of up to half a block.

  He was well situated, hidden behind a pile of broken furniture with a door just behind himself. He had scoped out his escape route. He was ready.

  Tiago watched dos Santos carefully as he paced, puffing a cigar and talking on his cell phone. The grande chefe of the Comando Curinga resembled a warthog, very broad of shoulder and belly, with gray skin and enormous tusks protruding from the corners of his mouth. His tailored suit was white and shiny and immaculate, his shoes polished, his open-collared shirt a delicate shade of orchid.

  His hands were big and thick as bowling balls and looked like they could crush stones.

  Tiago swallowed nervously and hoped the pounding of his heart was not as audible outside his head as inside.

  Dos Santos grunted, nodded, and clicked the cell phone shut, then spoke low to his lieutenants. They quickly positioned themselves around the room, covering all the entrances and exits—except for the door behind Tiago, which was half-collapsed and seemingly led nowhere. Only Tiago knew that a fast and skinny kid could slip out of the back via that route, leaving larger and slower pursuers floundering in heaps of broken wood, fallen plaster, and torn-up carpet.

  The Colombian, a slight and elderly nat, entered with two of his own lieutenants, one of whom carried a briefcase which was attached to his left wrist by a chain. After cordial greetings in Spanish and a toast of cachaça, the briefcase was unfastened and opened.

  Tiago tensed. He might not have much time to make the snatch. And the two drug chieftains were both leaning very close over the briefcase.

  The Colombian lifted the sample from the case. It was a brick the size of a Bible, wrapped in aluminum foil and sealed in a plastic bag. But the wrapping wouldn’t stop Tiago—it was the plant-based stuff within that his power affected.

  Dos Santos unwrapped the brick and peered at the white stuff inside, sniffed it, then called in one of his lieutenants, who did things with test tubes and colored papers. Tiago noted that no one was even tasting, never mind snorting or injecting, the stuff. None of them were that stupid.

  There was a nerve-wracking amount of discussion, comparison, and inspection … all in Spanish, of which Tiago understood only a tiny fraction. He kept waiting for an opportunity to snatch the sample, but dos Santos or one of his lieutenants kept a tight grip on it at all times. Sweat ran down Tiago’s sides; he fully expected to be spotted at any moment.

  Then Dos Santos set the package down on the table and reached to shake the Colombian’s hand. This might be his only opportunity.

  He tensed to spring, then reached out and pulled the package to himself.

  The shining foil-clad brick flew through the air in plain sight of everyone in the room. They all followed it with their eyes as it flew to Tiago and landed right in his hands.

  Tiago jumped up to flee … and the pile of broken chairs and tables behind which he’d been hiding suddenly collapsed, knocking him down and trapping his foot.

  As if in slow motion, he saw dos Santos and all the other traficantes pull guns from their jackets, belts, and briefcases.

  And Tiago reached out with his power—blindly, unthinkingly, instantaneously, more powerfully than ever before in his life—to pull every bit of stray trash in the room to himself. Papers, plaster, broken furniture, big swaths of rotting carpet, even the Colombian’s jacket … all flew onto Tiago’s body, covering him completely.

  But it did him no good. A moment later he heard the overwhelming sound of multiple automatic weapons firing in an enclosed space, and felt the pain of the bullets striking home. Back, side, legs exploded in agony.

  Shrieking in pain, he jerked to his feet. He stood up …

  … and up, and up, and up.

  He found himself standing with his shoulders pressed against the ceiling, looking down at the stunned, upturned faces of the traficantes.

  Was this death? Was he floating up to Heaven?

  It didn’t feel like death, or like Heaven. Every motion felt ponderous, labored. Even moving his hand through the air felt like swimming.

  He raised the hand to his face … and it was a hand made of trash. A junky, moving sculpture of broken chair legs, bits of plaster, and torn papers in a vaguely handlike shape. He made a fist, and the trash hand moved as though it were his own.

  His whole body was made of junk. And it was enormous.

  With wonder he put his hands to his face. Fingers of plaster and shattered wood touched eyes that felt like two empty coffee cups, their lids blinking at the contact. His tongue felt like carpet, but it tasted his fingers’ filthy plywood.

  How was this even possible?

  Again came the rattle of gunfire, not so loud this time, but again accompanied by the pain of bullets impacting his body. He screamed and backpedaled … and crashed through the wall behind him.

  He fell heavily onto the floor of the room beyond, feeling wood and plaster cascading down on him from the shattered ceiling. When he struggled to his feet, somehow he had become even bigger. As he straightened he found himself looking down at the ceiling joists of the room he’d just left.

  Pops and flashes of gunfire came from behind the mangled wall and ceiling, along with shouts and screams. Points of pain peppered his lower body.

  He turned and ran, smashing through walls, gouging holes in the floor with his enormous feet. And then he was out in the alley behind the former nightclub, the night air cool on his face, his hands, his back. Behind him the building folded in on itself, the ancient, rotting wood cracking and slumping into a haphazard, unrecognizable pile.

  Shuddering with fear and released tension, he collapsed in a heap. Literally. He fell down in the alley and his body—his gigantic trash body—simply collapsed, sloughing off of him, until it was only a heap of garbage all around him, leaving his own, original body unharmed in the middle of it.

  Unharmed. Despite all the bullets he had felt striking him, somehow he was uninjured.

  He was still clutching the foil-wrapped brick of cocaine.

  He threw it into the wreckage and
ran.

  * * *

  Tiago went to ground in his deepest, safest hidey-hole, way in the back of the old abandoned Coca-Cola factory in Nova Brasília. The place was a warren of squats, but he’d found a way to creep along a narrow alley and squeeze through a crack in the wall to a dry, protected space under the floor. He stayed there, shivering with reaction, all night, mind racing and unable to either sleep or concentrate.

  When hunger finally drove him out of there, he kept his head down and his ears open. The word on the street was that the old nightclub had collapsed, killing eight people, including the grande chefe of the Comando Curinga and a major Colombian drug lord. Officially, it had been an accident, though some suspected a bomb. The lack of fire made that theory less plausible, but it was rumored that gunshots had been heard just before the collapse. Whatever the cause, the loss was a major blow to the Curinga gang, and both Terceiro Comando and the Amigos dos Amigos were beginning to muscle in on Curinga territory … including Nova Brasília.

  There were no rumors of a giant man made of trash having been seen at the scene.

  But even if no one but him knew it, he had killed eight people. True, they had been drug lords—terrible people, people the world was better off without—and they had tried to kill him first. But still, it was a terrible burden to bear. And who knew how many more would yet die, because Tiago had interfered?

  With dos Santos dead, the traficantes would have to find a new balance of power. There would be assassinations, bombings, and gun battles all over the favelas as the various gangs struggled for dominance, complicated by the Colombians’ quest for revenge. Dozens or hundreds of gang members would be killed, and unknown numbers of innocent bystanders. People like Tiago’s mother.

  Again, just by existing, Tiago had made things worse.

  * * *

  He slept on and off for nearly an entire day, awakening in the late afternoon to the sound of banging and shouting above him. Curious, he crept up a disused escape stair to the factory’s rafters, from which he could peer through an open inspection hatch into the cavernous main floor.

  A huge swarm of militia in riot gear were evicting the people who lived in the factory, pushing and shoving them along with shouts of “Cai fora!” Behind them, workmen were tearing down the wooden and fabric partitions those people had put up to divide the giant space, tossing the wreckage and the squatters’ furniture into dumpsters. Other workmen were putting up lights, mounting speakers, and erecting a stage.

  A man in a purple suit—his skin was purple too, his ears like fish fins—stood on the half-built stage, directing it all. “Rápido, rápido!” he called, clapping his webbed hands. “Get those squatters out of here! Clear out that garbage! Tonight Comando Curinga is gonna present the biggest baile funk Rio has ever seen!”

  A baile funk—funk dance—was something Tiago had heard of but never experienced. They sprang up suddenly, raved for a night, and then vanished, like poisonous mushrooms. Loud, energetic, and sexy, they were places where playboys and girls from the asfalto mixed and mingled with the denizens of the morros, getting a thrilling taste of authentic “favela chic.” And drugs … lots and lots of drugs. The bailes funk were the place for playboys to enjoy maconha, cocaine, and crack in quantity, and the bands, funded by drug gangs, performed funk proibidão—“prohibited” music—whose lyrics glorified the gangs and their grandes chefes as heroes.

  He had to get away from this, and quickly. But when he went to leave, he found his alleyway and alternate exits blocked by equipment or by gangs of workmen.

  He retired to his hidey-hole under the floor, where he held his ears against the thump and bang of the baile funk setting up above him. It would certainly be worse when the music and dancing started, but unless an opportunity appeared to slip out before the dance began he would just have to wait it out.

  * * *

  The music started at eleven, a vast pounding beat that made Tiago’s belly feel like it was being squeezed and sent gouts of dirt down from between the floorboards. Brightly colored light swept through the cracks, and the smells of maconha and alcohol were strong.

  And then the dancing started, right over his head, and instead of feeling squeezed he felt as though he were being stomped on by elephants.

  He couldn’t stay here. The noise alone would kill him.

  He climbed up the rickety stairs to the rafters. The music here was nearly as loud, but the dancers’ thumping feet were not so punishing, the air was fresher, and he could see what was going on.

  Below Tiago a sea of bodies surged rhythmically—hair tossing, arms waving, heads pumping—thousands of people, driven to a frenzy by the music, the colored spotlights, the band’s shouted lyrics, and the vast quantities of chemicals they’d ingested.

  With the darkness, the smoke, and the strobing, intermittent light there was no telling whether the thrashing figures were dark or pale, curinga or nat, even male or female. There were no individuals, there was only the dance.

  Even though he hated the traficantes who had funded and were profiting from this dance, hated the way they’d evicted so many innocent poor people to have it, hated the damage they did to the community … even so, as Tiago looked down on the throbbing dance floor, he realized that in this melee even a curinga like him could fit in. His parti-colored skin would just look like a trick of the light.

  He didn’t have to partake of the drugs; he could just dance and enjoy himself. He might even meet a girl. A nice girl, a kind girl, an adventurous and openhearted girl who could love a curinga …

  And then the screaming started.

  A wave was spreading through the crowd from somewhere below Tiago’s point of view—people trying to run away from something, crashing into other people, pushing them onto the dance floor. There were enough of them, screaming loud enough, that the noise could be heard even over the pounding funk.

  Then the source of the wave and the screaming came into view. It was a large group of men—nats, from what Tiago could see, big and brawny, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying long machine guns. They were walking in phalanx, yelling at the crowd and pushing toward the stage.

  A group of burly leather-clad curingas—Comando Curinga soldiers—came rushing from the stage area to meet them. But the invaders had the Curingas outmaneuvered and outgunned, and they were cut down by automatic weapons fire from both sides as well as from the main, visible group. Many audience members fell as well. The music stuttered to a halt.

  Panic ensued, the crowd surging back and forth, but the invaders had men at all the exits. Then one of them raised his weapon and fired a long burst into the ceiling; Tiago heard the bullets ricocheting around the rafter space. The screaming intensified.

  The man who had fired his weapon pushed his way to the stage, jumped up onto it, and grabbed the microphone from the lead singer. “Shut up!” he said, his words booming across the hall along with a squeal of feedback. “Shut up shut up shut up shut up!” he continued, until the crowd finally did just that. “Okay, listen up!” he shouted over the remaining moans and whimpers. “We are the Amigos dos Amigos and we are taking control of this dance, this favela, and this complexo. You will all line up over here”—he gestured to his left—“and give these nice men your money and your drugs. You can keep your phones and watches; we can’t be bothered.”

  “Fuck you!” came a voice from the back of the hall, followed by a hail of bullets. It must be the Curingas, counterattacking; apparently the Amigos hadn’t gotten them all. The Amigos returned fire. The packed crowd heaved and flowed in every direction, running and climbing and crawling over one another as they tried to get away.

  Tiago shook off the horrified paralysis that had overtaken him with the first gunfire. He should get to the stairs, get down to ground level, and get out of the building, right away.

  That was what he should do.

  But what he did instead was far stupider.

  He jumped through the inspection hatch.

  As he
fell, he pulled with his power, harder than he’d ever pulled before. From the dumpsters in the corners of the hall, where they’d been shoved by the workmen who had cleared the squatters out, came huge quantities of trash—broken partitions, torn curtains, shattered tables and chairs—flying through the air and melding on to Tiago’s plummeting body.

  He hit the floor with an enormous crash, which stunned him and knocked the wind out of him. But then he shook his head and hauled himself up.

  And up.

  He was already twice as tall as even the biggest of the bandido soldiers, but he needed more. Again he pulled, and more trash sailed through the air from the dumpsters and the heaps in the corners and the piles behind the bar.

  Tiago became enormous—a gigantic statue of a man made of wood and cardboard and empty drink bottles and torn posters. He stood in a bare patch of dance floor, the colored lights still swirling all around, as the crowd and both gangs scrambled to get away from him. But one of the Amigos took a shot at him as he backpedaled.

  Instinctively Tiago raised a hand to protect himself. With a splintering crack the bullet smashed one chair-leg finger.

  Tiago cried out—it hurt like a sonofabitch. But it was only wood; no matter how much their bullets had hurt his huge body of junk, the drug lords at the abandoned nightclub had not managed to injure the real body inside it. He shook the hand hard and it re-formed, pieces shifting and grinding, until it had five fingers again.

  Then he reached down with the renewed hand and smacked the Amigo into the bar, where he lay still.

  More Amigos opened fire on him. Or maybe they were Curingas. It didn’t matter. He charged into the group, ignoring the tearing pain of the bullets striking his trash body, and picked up one bandido after another, flinging them into the dumpsters with the other garbage. Maybe some catador at the landfill would find them and make something useful of them.

  Screaming from behind Tiago drew his attention. A huge wave of people was trying to leave through the front door, but they had crashed into a countercurrent: police in riot gear coming in. They were firing indiscriminately, hitting innocent audience members as well as bandidos.