Blood of the Wicked

by Leighton Gage

The television was tuned to a channel that was showing an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. The oldest kid, a girl, took her thumb out of her mouth and glanced at Arnaldo when he came through the door. The other two didn’t take their eyes off the screen.

  The stool and the two remaining crates looked incapable of bearing his weight. If Arnaldo wanted to sit, it would have to be on the bed next to the kids. He decided he’d remain standing.

  “Yours?” he said to the old woman, inclining his head in the direction of the listless children.

  “Marly Souza’s,” she said. “I take care of them when she’s at work.”

  “Siblings of Edson?”

  “What?”

  “Brothers or sisters of Edson?”

  “Two sisters, one brother. Different fathers.”

  “You a relation?”

  “What?”

  “Are you their aunt or their grandmother?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “She pays me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lia.”

  “Okay, Lia. You know Edson?”

  She nodded.

  “Where is he?”

  “Gone away.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “When did he go?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where’s his mother?”

  “Working.”

  “Yes, you told me. Where?”

  She put a veined hand to her cheek and closed her eyes, thinking. Then she opened them again and went over to one of the wooden crates. She came back with a wrapper from a bar of toilet soap. LUX. THE SOAP OF THE STARS, the label read. There was a photo on the front: one of the actresses from last year’s eight o’clock novela on Rede Mundo.

  Arnaldo turned the wrapper over. On the white paper someone had laboriously block-printed something in pencil. He took it closer to the light from the doorway and put it near his nose so he could read it. The paper still smelled faintly of the bar of soap it had once enveloped, an artificial smell, only vaguely reminiscent of flowers.

  “We going now?” the cab driver asked hopefully. He’d been standing in the doorway, holding the canvas aside and occasionally craning his neck to keep an eye on the teenagers.

  Arnaldo showed him the writing on the wrapper:

  Dona Marcia

  Rua das Bromelias, 142

  Jardim Jericoara

  “Can you find this place?”

  The taxi driver squinted at the paper, moving his lips silently as he spelled out the words. “Sim, senhor. It’s not far. Maybe ten kilometers.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  The driver let the canvas fall and was gone.

  The only light in the shack was now coming from the television. In its glow, Arnaldo could dimly see the faces of the occupants. While he’d been talking to the driver, the old woman had taken a seat on the bed. She was holding her elbows in her hands and staring at the screen.

  “Thanks,” he said, but the woman didn’t even look up.

  Outside, the driver had the hood open. He stuck out his hand. Arnaldo put the rotor into it and stood there, waiting, while he installed it. Then he handed him the keys.

  To get out of the favela they had to make a U-turn and pass the predatory kids. No one made a move, but Arnaldo saw the driver swallow when they got close and continue to shoot nervous glances at his rearview mirror once they’d gone by. When Arnaldo turned in his seat, and looked out of the rear window, five pairs of eyes were fixed on the retreating cab.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  THE LEAGUE ENCAMPMENT BEGAN at a rise bordering the road, swept on through a depression in the ground, and petered out at the edge of an empty field. It consisted of tents fashioned from black plastic sheeting supported by limbs freshly cut from the neighboring trees. In deference to the heat of the day, most of the walls had been rolled upward and tied to the crossbeams, affording protection from the sun and allowing a view over the entire campsite. There were at least two hundred people settled there. All but about fifty were children. The smell was a mixture of unwashed bodies, wood smoke, garlic, and onions. At the center of it all, on a flagpole that had recently been the trunk of a scrawny tree, the blood red standard of the Landless Workers’ League waved in a listless breeze.

  It was there, at the base of the pole, that Pillar had been talking to the reporters. Now he’d drawn aside and was involved in an animated conversation with a heavyset individual wearing a league T-shirt. When he saw Silva and Hector approaching him, he broke off and turned to face them.

  “So you decided to grace us with your presence,” he said. He laid a hand on the shoulder of the man next to him. “Chief Inspector Silva, Delegado Costa, let me introduce Roberto Pereira. I’m here at his invitation.”

  Pereira offered the cops a hand, but not a smile. His rimless spectacles were as thick as bottle glass. They magnified eyes that were brown, hard, and wary.

  “You must have known Aurelio Azevedo,” Silva said.

  “He was like a brother,” Pereira said. “Why are you asking?”

  “Just curious. How about Muniz Junior? You know him?”

  Pereira looked down at his dirty tennis shoes, cheap ones that had never seen a tennis court and never would.

  “That murdering fuck? Yeah, I knew him.”

  Knew?

  Past tense. The word hung in the air.

  “They found the body,” Silva said. “buried on the top of that hill.”

  Pillar looked in the direction that Silva was pointing. Pereira didn’t.

  “Buried alive,” Silva continued. “Old man Muniz, Junior’s father, is at the gravesite. He’ll be down here any time now and there’s going to be trouble.”

  “Let the old man come,” Pereira said. “I shit on people like him. He’ll only be fighting for his personal interest. We fight for our principles. We’ll win, because we have justice on our side.”

  “Save the rhetoric for the reporters, Pereira,” Silva said. “If you’ve got a judge on your side, which isn’t at all the same thing as justice, you might have a chance of winning this thing. Otherwise, by trespassing on his property, you’re giving old man Muniz an excuse to react and, believe me, he’ll be looking for one.”

  “Muniz is getting off cheap,” Pereira said. “One life for four, five if you count the little seven-year-old that he—”

  Pillar squeezed his companion’s shoulder, silencing him. “Would you believe it, Chief Inspector? This was once the most peaceful of men. Preached a philosophy of absolute nonviolence. Now he’s a firebrand.”

  “If I am, it’s people like Muniz who made me that way,” Pereira said. “Fuck him and all his kind.”

  “You see?” Pillar said. “If Roberto had been born forty years ago, he’d have been down in Bolivia, fighting with the campesinos and Che Guevara.”

  “Remember what happened to Guevara,” Silva said. “He died for nothing.”

  The smile faded from Pillar’s face. “We may die, Chief Inspector, but it won’t be for nothing. The league is, by far, the largest and the most significant social movement in all of South America. We have the support of the entire world.”

  “Not when you invade private property, you don’t.”

  “What else do you expect us to do? Back off? Well, we’re not going to do that. We’ve waited long enough. We want land reform, and we want it now.”

  “Do you know how big this fazenda is?” Pereira chipped in. “More than half the size—”

  “Of Denmark,” Silva said. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

  “Think about it. A piece of land half the size of the whole fucking country of Denmark and all of it owned by one selfish son of a bitch. Is that right? You tell me.”

  “I’m not a philosopher, Senhor Pereira. I’m just a cop. But, as a cop, I can tell you this: If you don’t clear your people off his land, Muniz will evict you and I don’t trust him to do it gently.”

  “We look forward to having him tr
y,” Pereira said. “We welcome it.”

  He’d raised his voice almost to a shout. Silva looked around. Sure enough, all of the journalists were looking at them, some of them were moving closer and a couple of video cameras were pointed his way. Had he said anything to Pereira or Pillar that the director wouldn’t like to see on television? He didn’t think so. In any case, it would be a good idea to cut the conversation short before he did say something compromising.

  He looked around for a way to do it and caught sight of a familiar figure: a tall man in a league T-shirt and jeans, Father Brouwer. The priest was seated crosslegged on the ground in front of a tent. A little girl was in his lap, and he was feeding her with a wooden spoon.

  “Excuse me,” Silva said, and walked away from Pillar and Pereira, trailed by Hector.

  The priest saw him coming, nodded, and went on feeding the child. She had big eyes, a swollen belly, and looked to be about four years old.

  “Cornmeal mush, Chief Inspector?” Brouwer said, holding out the spoon.

  “Thank you, no,” Silva said.

  “Maria likes it a lot. Don’t you, Maria?”

  The little girl nodded her head gravely and opened her mouth for another bite.

  “You see the results of greed, Chief Inspector?” Brouwer said, gently tapping the fingers of his free hand on the child’s distended belly. “Malnutrition.” He pointed at her legs. “Rickets. This is what people like Muniz bring about.”

  “It turns out you were right about him,” Silva said. “The younger one, I mean. He’s dead.”

  The priest didn’t seem in the least surprised. “Poor man,” he said. “He should have changed his ways. Our Lord said it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. You’ll find the same passage in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.”

  “Listen to me, Father. Old man Muniz is on the top of that hill where his son’s body is. He’s going to be down here any time now. He’s got gunmen with him. He’s got that bastard Ferraz and his men from the State Police with him. This is his property. Remember what happened last time?”

  “Oh, yes, Chief Inspector, I remember. I remember very well. I was here.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I’ve been fighting social injustice all my life. It’s my vocation. I never learned to preach a good sermon. I’m not sure I was ever capable of writing one. But this, Chief Inspector, this I can do.” He clucked at the child, gave her another spoonful of cornmeal mush and continued. “I sense you’re a good man, that you want the best for everyone, but sometimes that’s just not possible. Sometimes there has to be suffering to achieve progress. Jesus showed us that.”

  He smiled down at the child and the child smiled back, a smile so sweet that Silva found himself smiling too.

  “There’s really nothing you can do,” the priest said. “So please, go away and let us get on with it. What’s going to happen now is in God’s hands, not yours.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  THE UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS CONDOMINIUM called Jardim Jericoara was less than ten kilometers from the favela of Consolação, but in socioeconomic terms it was in another galaxy. Access to the property was by way of two entry lanes, one of them labeled RESIDENTES and the other VISITANTES. A metal gate blocked each lane, and each gate was controlled from a guardhouse with what looked to Arnaldo like bulletproof glass on the windows.

  When the taxi stopped, the four rent-a-cops in the guardhouse gave it a thorough once-over through the glass, and then three of them went back to watching a daytime soap opera on their little television set. The fourth, a husky fellow with a revolver on his hip, carrying a clipboard, came out of the door and approached the taxi. He ignored the driver and spoke directly to Arnaldo.

  “Senhor?”

  The form of address was polite. The man’s tone of voice wasn’t. Arnaldo’s taxi was a Volkswagen Beetle, not even a taxi especial. A resident (or a friend of a resident) of Jardim Jericoara wouldn’t have been caught dead in one. The conclusion was obvious: Despite his suit and tie, Arnaldo had to be either a household servant or some other kind of service provider. In either case, he didn’t merit first-class treatment.

  “I’m here to see . . .”—Arnaldo consulted the paper the old woman had given him—”Dona Marcia on the Rua das Bromelias.”

  The guard narrowed his eyes at the soap wrapper and made an annotation on his clipboard. “About?”

  Arnaldo flashed his badge. “Police business.”

  The guard’s attitude changed completely. He stood up a little straighter, the sneer on his face vanished, and a tone of respect crept into his voice.

  “You want me to call?”

  “That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”

  The guard nodded. “That’s the procedure,” he confirmed, “for any visitor.”

  “Then you’d better do it.”

  “Can I hold on to some ID? Sorry. But that’s the procedure, too.”

  Arnaldo took out his national identity card and handed it over.

  The guard walked into the shack, said a few words to his companions and picked up a telephone. Three pairs of eyes turned toward the taxi and stared at Arnaldo. Arnaldo stared back. They redirected their attention to the TV screen.

  The guard returned in less than a minute. “Okay, she’s expecting you.” Then, for the first time, he addressed Arnaldo’s driver. “Bromelias is the first right off the second left.”

  The driver nodded. Arnaldo sank back in his seat. The barrier lifted and the taxi started to roll.

  The condominium was no housing project. Every house was unique, and every house was set well back on a tailored lawn. It was a little island of luxury in a sea of poverty. After the first turn, Arnaldo could no longer see the high walls that surrounded the place.

  A group of teenagers was hanging around on one of the street corners. They were similar in age to the kids Arnaldo had seen in the favela of Consolação but there the similarity ended. These were wearing clean T-shirts with slogans in English and French. One of them, not older than twelve, was sitting on a motor-driven scooter, gunning the engine. There wasn’t a dark skin among them.

  The driver had no problem finding Dona Marcia’s house. She was standing at the curb, and she started waving to them when they turned into her street. It wasn’t a friendly wave. She was only doing it to get their attention.

  Dona Marcia was a slender woman, closer to forty than thirty. Above her designer jeans she, too, was wearing a T-shirt with something written on it in English. This one said: FIVE REASONS WHY A BANANA IS BETTER THAN A HUSBAND, and went on to enumerate them. None of the first four were complimentary to males. Arnaldo, whose English wasn’t that good anyway, couldn’t read the fifth. It was tucked in under her belt.

  The taxi driver offered his keys when Arnaldo got out of the cab.

  “Keep them,” Arnaldo said, and then to the woman, “Dona Marcia?”

  “Sim.”

  She didn’t ask him what he wanted, didn’t ask him anything at all, just stood there frowning at him.

  “You have a woman working for you? A woman by the name of Souza?”

  “What’s she done?”

  “Nothing. She hasn’t done anything. I just want to ask her some questions. Is she here?”

  “Could I see your badge, or something?”

  Arnaldo had his police ID ready.

  She took a moment to study it, compared the photo with his face. “You’re not from around here?”

  “No, Senhora, Federal Police, based in the capital.”

  By which they both understood him to mean São Paulo, the capital of the state, and not Brasilia, the nation’s capital, which everybody always refers to by name.

  “Look, Agente, I’ve got a couple of young kids in this house, and my husband travels a lot. If Marly’s been involved in anything illegal, I’ll fire her so fast her head will spin. And I want you to tell me, right now, if she has.”

  She
was a woman used to getting her way and not in the least fazed by being in the presence of a cop. She knew what cops were for. Cops were to protect people like her.

  “She hasn’t. I told you, I just have some questions to put to her.”

  Dona Marcia hooked a thumb under her jaw and tapped perfectly manicured fingers on her cheek. It wasn’t a wholly unconscious gesture. She was wearing a gold ring with a large diamond—three carats, at least. After he’d had a good look at it she said, “I suppose you’d better come in.”

  He followed her through the front door. She led him through a sunken living room with white leather furniture and onto a wooden deck overlooking a swimming pool.

  “Sit there,” she said, indicating a plastic chair. “I’ll get Marly. I think she’s doing the bathrooms.”

  The woman she brought back looked to be a good deal older than her employer but probably wasn’t. Marly Souza’s best feature were her eyes, which were large and brown, and at the moment, fearful. She’d done nothing to conceal the streaks of gray in her black, kinky hair. Her lips were generous and still showed the signs of some carmine lipstick. Arnaldo thought she might have been quite pretty, once.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Dona Marcia said, and went away without so much as offering Arnaldo a cup of coffee.

  “Bitch,” he said softly to her retreating back.

  One corner of Marly Souza’s mouth twitched. A smile or a nervous tic? He wasn’t sure. She brushed a strand of hair from her right eye with a hand that showed faint traces of crimson nail enamel.

  “She’ll fire me for sure,” she said.

  “Why? You haven’t done anything, have you?”

  Marly looked down at her ragged sneakers, once white. She was wearing them without socks. Bits of the dark skin of her feet showed through the holes.

  “Have you?” Arnaldo insisted.

  She looked up. “You don’t get it, do you? I brought a cop to her home. That’ll be reason enough.” She sounded angry, and maybe she was, but the fear was still there. She still hadn’t asked Arnaldo what he wanted. And she didn’t. Instead, she looked around to make sure they were alone and said, “Not yet.”