Animals, the two of us, and I didn’t even notice the glass on the table that fell off and shattered, the two of us clinging to each other as if welding in hot combustion. Horns and drums covered my scream of orgasm as I felt his broad back and ass, and I felt the welded metal stretch and thicken inside me, the flood of him as he came …
I opened my eyes, looked into his. We shared a gasp of revelation. That… That was powerful. Neither of us expected something so raw, so urgent, to be so good. Right-to-the-core good. We held each other tight, and beyond probability in this noisy, bustling club, we had privacy of time suspended for another minute. Naked in his arms like that, and he was still thick and hard inside me, arms wrapped around my back and waist as I rested precariously on the edge of the table. If he hadn’t let go, muttering about how we ought not to push our luck, I think I would have clung to him for even longer.
♦
In the Beetle again.
“I’ll drive you back to your hotel.’
“This is good, this is it,’ I said. We were at a red light in the Flamengo district. I’d have a brief ride on the Metro or maybe I’d catch a taxi.
“This isn’t your hotel.’
“How would you know?’
He offered me a patient smile. “I know we moved pretty fast tonight, and I’m hoping you don’t think it’s a mistake. I’m a nice guy—honest.’
“Who says I want a nice guy?’
“ Uh-huh. Ohhhhhh-kay! I want to see you again, Teresa. If you let me drive you to your hotel, I promise not to stalk you.’
I told him I was at the Glória, and he knew it, steering the old Volkswagen through the winding avenues. Every so often we caught a glimpse of Guanabara Bay in the distance.
“Where do you live?’ I asked.
“I rent one of those hotel apartments in Botafogo. Let me give you my cell number.’
I fished a pen out of my handbag and scribbled it into a notepad I always keep with me.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?’ he asked.
“Can’t.’
“Night after that?’
“Mmm, still can’t promise.’ His disappointment was so sudden and like a boy’s that I quickly added, “It’s not you, I’ve got to go out of town for a bit.’
“What, another film producer ripped you off?’
“No, no. But it’s… business of a kind.’
“Want company? You sound like a girl who gets into trouble a lot.’
I laughed. If you only knew, boy.
“Don’t you have a boat to run, Cap’n?’
“Hey, I set my own hours, and I’m doing well enough I can take a couple of days off.’
“Tempting,’ I said. “Let’s just see each other when I get back. I’ll give you a call.’
He groaned, and I shut him up with a long kiss. Things were heating up all over again in the car, but I finally pulled free—reluctantly. I would have asked him up, but I could see a lazy morning turning into a lovemaking session lasting into the afternoon, and it would be even harder banishing him so I could get some work done.
“I will call,’ I promised.
“You’d better!’
♦
If you do happen to go to Brazil, let me confide that I do not recommend the prisons. Between Rio and São Paulo is a lovely city called Taubaté, a nice university town, and I didn’t get to see any of it because I was steering a rented car up to the gates of a penitentiary. Big granite walls. Chain -link fences. Towers. Jumpsuits. Echoes of shouts and the smell of strong bleach.
That’s not what gets to you. What’s disturbing is the look combined with those walls, the look in the eyes of trapped men who have become feral with the slow agony of time dripping out, a puddle of time that has the stench of urine in an alley. Their eyes inspect you and imagine every inch of your body with more than lust, with this creepy cannibalistic rage, eyes that want to hurt you and cut you and don’t care who and what you are. Eyes without pity, and what good is remorse in a place like this anyway? It wouldn’t even come into their line of sight.
Forget about empathy with the trapped. There is no empathy here. You’re quite sure the walls are holding you in with them, no matter how temporary that is. You don’t see this longhaired thug with his leg chains rattling and consider what it would be like for you to be sentenced. No, you thank God you get to go out and never see him again.
Bad riots had happened here recently, just as they’d ignited at other prisons in São Paulo state. This was the birthplace of Primeiro Comando da Capital, or First Capital Command, one of the strongest and nastiest of the Brazilian prison gangs. And if it wasn’t the birthplace, it had at least played midwife to the creation of the gang run by José Ferreira. Now here I was, signing in under one of my aliases, going behind the electronic locked doors and the thick bars to visit Ferreira himself.
You’re right. I must be completely mad.
Helê had told me so. It was when I asked her back in London to translate a couple of Googled Rio newspaper pages mentioning Ferreira’s gang. My logic was that the quickest way to get to Ferreira was through his lawyer. Every underworld figure’s got one, right? José Ferreira’s particular weasel was a man named Andrade. A little more homework told me the lawyer was fluent in English, having taught seminars in Miami on banking law in South America. His receptionist was less than fluent, but she was smart enough to put me through when I dropped the name of Luis Antunes.
“Excuse me, Miss Knight, but I have no idea why you are calling me,’ said Andrade. “You have quite the nerve after murdering our friend Luis.’
“You don’t have to pretend,’ I said tightly. “I think you know very well who had Luis killed.’
“Yes. And you followed Henrique Marinho’s orders to do it.’
“Rubbish. If you don’t believe me, maybe your boss will when I tell him to his face.’
The lawyer thought that was rich. “You really want to go tell Mr. Ferreira in person? I would like to see that very much.’
“I’ll give you the chance.’
“Maybe José Ferreira does not want to see you. From what I hear, you are on the run, Miss Knight. It’s quite foolish for you to wander close to a prison.’
“I came to Brazil to take down Henrique Marinho,’ I said. “I think your boss will be interested, and maybe he can offer me information that will help that.’
Andrade was really laughing now. “You will take down Henrique Marinho all by yourself? Yes! Oh, yes, I think Mr. Ferreira will find you very amusing!’
And so I was here.
I was led by guards through the labyrinth of thick concrete walls painted a hideous green, and then into a peculiar visiting area. Not what you would expect—there was no glass barrier with telephones on either side, and it wasn’t a regular cell either. It was a large open room divided by a barred gate, and perhaps it was used for a waiting area or delousing or something.
Andrade had already arrived. Solicitors always announce themselves through their suits and attitudes, and his suit was a surprisingly loud powder blue, his foxlike head with tiny eyes accentuated by his goatee and spectacles. He sat in a corner on a folding metal chair, his briefcase by his side, going through papers. To him, I was an inconvenience his client would quickly dismiss.
Ferreira wasn’t so much led in as the guards followed him like an entourage. He wore no handcuffs, no leg chains, and except for the orange jumpsuit, you might have thought he ran the place. I’m sure in many ways he did. From what I had read and understood from Helê, to be a guard in a Brazilian prison was a grim probation itself, with inmates like Ferreira quite willing to have you shanked if you treated them disrespectfully. There was a concession that as a guard, yes, you had a job to do, but never forget you must feed the lions.
Ferreira’s physique had an aura of menace. He was an animal—not a stolid bull or a wild boar, not a sleek deadly creature like a jaguar or a snake, but something that implied stealth and strategy. Hard to believe he had ev
er been this unassuming, clever engineer. I bet he was a crude, vulgar Leviathan when he stomped and punched and raped, a being of flesh pounded by a meat tenderizer instead of sculpted by any weight-lifting regimen in the prison yard. If he was ever good-looking, it had been beaten out of him in his youth. His nose had been broken more than once, and he had a scar on his throat that had a paleness to it. You’d think his large head had been sewn back onto his body. Best bet was that whoever gave him that scar got a deeper, le thal one.
Ferreira looked over his shoulder to his lawyer. The drunken lout in a pub on comedy night, looking forward to the opening act. He spoke in quick Portuguese: “Se vocé soubesse quern eu sou, vocé nem sonhava em entrar na minha casa. Vocé é muito magrinha pra mim. Eu espero que vocé seja divertida como Andrade disse que vocé é.’
Andrade translated. “He says, ‘If you had any idea who I am, you wouldn’t dream of coming to my house. And you are a little too skinny for me, so I hope you are as amusing as Andrade tells me.’”
“I didn’t come here to entertain you,’ I snapped.
“ Vocé veio vender alguma coisa, e se não é seu rabo preto, en-táo pra que perder meu tempo com vocé?’
Andrade translated again. “ ‘You came to sell something, and if it’s not your black ass then what do I waste my time with you for?’”
What a way to look at the world: every woman a potential whore.
“I would think,’ I said, trying to be patient and choosing my words carefully, “you would willingly arm an enemy of Henrique Marinho with information.’
“That is, if you are not working for him,’ said Andrade. It was the lawyer talking, not Ferreira. He cocked his head, explaining to his client what he had just said, and Ferreira gave a faint nod.
“I’m not with Marinho. I’ve never been with Marinho, and I didn’t kill Luis Antunes. Your enemy did a very good job of framing me. Luis was murdered by someone who knows capoeira, and then his body was thrown off a balcony.’
“‘Capoeira is for tourists who like to see the pretty dances in the streets,’” said Ferreira through the lawyer. “ ‘When Brazilians murder, it is not pretty.’”
“Yes,’ I agreed. “When you kill. But I’m the one who was implicated—so Marinho made it look ‘pretty.’ Does it make sense to you that he’d use a gringa to kill Antunes? It’s clear what you think of women. Would you use one as an assassin? Would Marinho?’
Andrade translated all this, and almost a full minute went by as they debated my point. I sat down in the metal chair left in front of the barred gate. I could tell I had opened their eyes to something they hadn’t noticed for themselves.
And to wake them up once and for all, I added: “I wasn’t framed to fool you. I was framed to fool someone else. You didn’t enter into the equation.’
The dark feral eyes studied me hard. “ ‘Why not?’ ‘ Andrade translated.
“Because you know who benefits,’ I replied. “Marinho needed Luis out of the way because he was about to rip the lid off his slave girl operation in Britain.’
Okay, I didn’t know if Marinho had a slave girl operation in London—Luis discovered he’d sold one girl, Matilde. But I had to sound to these guys like I knew what I was talking about.
“I think there’s another reason Marinho wanted him killed,’ I went on. “I think you two know what it is. You guessed right away that Henrique Marinho was behind the murder, so who cares who did the actual killing? You didn’t need to concern yourself whether I’m innocent or not.’
Ferreira laughed cruelly. “ ‘I still need not concern myself,’ ‘ the lawyer translated.
“Except if I can be useful in harming your enemy.’
Another look between client and lawyer. Andrade folded his legs in an almost effeminate manner, lacing his fingers behind his head. “He says, ‘Antunes was soft. He takes a wife from a favela, he gets stupid ideas that women can think.’ ‘
“Yeah, we’re real stupid. I’m not the one in a cell. When they hunted me, I got away.’
Andrade stiffened. No one talked to his boss like this.
The dark eyes narrowed, and a hand with thick sausage fingers and blackened nails rubbed the bulbous chin. “Tem uma diferença entre você ter culhao e pensar que tem porque, na verdade, o que você teve foi sorte.’
“Mr. Ferreira says: ‘There is a difference between having balls, and thinking that you have them just because you got some luck.’”
And then Ferreira’s hand reached out—
And yanked back the barred gate—
Open. Open all this time. Oh. My. God.
Yes, he had enough power in here through bribes and intimidation to arrange this. He offered me a lewd twisted grin of uneven teeth, framed by sweat beads. I jumped out of my foldout chair and backed away. He didn’t move to follow. He didn’t have to. There was no point in shouting for the guards, in calling for any help at all. I would leave when he said so. When he was done with me.
Unless I took him down. It was starting to look like I would have to.
Oh, yeah, Teresa? And what then? You’re in a prison.
He wanted to play, but he was intrigued enough by the points I had made. There was the possibility I might be useful for something besides being a rape victim.
“What did Luis Antunes learn that Marinho needed to kill him for?’
I backed up a couple of steps. Granite walls, locked door. I felt like muttering nice doggy.
“He says this is bullshit, that your job is to find out what he knows so you can take it back to Marinho. And then Marinho’s spies in here will make their attempt. An assassination.’
“Marinho did not send me here!’
Show your panic, and you’re dead.
He began to unzip the orange jumpsuit and reveal his naked torso. He had a barrel-shaped chest, the pecs defined, but no six-pack. There were grim black tattoos on his biceps, ugly and repulsive in their vulgar style, the ink dull with age.
“What are you doing?’
And now Ferreira was pulling off the brightly colored outfit, along with his underwear. Showing me his tree trunk legs, two columns simply designed to hold this tank of a human being.
I’ve seen lust. I’ve seen passion and tenderness. We’re told that rape is a crime that’s not about sex, that it’s about rage and power. I still don’t understand it, and I don’t want to. I can tell you this was the first time I had ever seen a man’s erection prompted by a desire to hurt. And to hurt me. It made me almost physically sick, even as it prompted the base instinct to smash his face in. Here was this bastard taking a step forward with a glowering red, rude hard-on.
“Nêga é de quem pegar primeiro!’ He laughed.
And the lawyer cackled like a chattering mascot gargoyle and translated for me. “He quotes a saying we have here. It goes: ‘A black woman belongs to the first one to put his hands on her.’”
Charming.
“We have a saying where I come from, too,’ I replied. “The Brazilian walks funny because he didn’t keep his hands to himself.’
“That’s not a saying,’ sneered the lawyer.
“No, it’s a billboard. Take the hint. If I have to yank something hard to throw him on this cement, three guesses what I’ll pick. And I haven’t clipped my nails.’
“What did you come here for, bitch?’ It was the lawyer asking, not Ferreira, and the phrasing sounds harsher than the way he put it. He sounded almost bored, using bitch the same way Marinho did, as if it were an afterthought of salutation picked up from American gangster movies. A punctuation mark.
“Why would Luis Antunes need your help to stop a documentary about Islam? Especially when there is no documentary on Islam?’
Ferreira got a look in his eye like a confused wolfhound, its prey not tracking where it expected. I didn’t like the fact that his penis was still hard. He said several fast things in Portuguese.
“He calls you a pizza girl,’ translated the lawyer. “Now say what you really came to sa
y.’
It took me a couple of seconds to decode the reference. Pizza, delivery…Okay.
“No, I’m not a messenger for anyone.’
“Bullshit.’ This time the lawyer barely waited for Ferreira’s answer. “Go ask Marinho why he wanted Luis Antunes killed. And you may tell him we will skin his ass when we catch up to him.’
Then Ferreira added a comment in English. He was even more disturbing when he tried to speak my language. Looking at me with his dead eyes, he told me in his thick accent: “The British always fools.’
Now what the hell did that mean?
More Portuguese. From what I could tell, the lawyer began to suspect I was telling the truth. Ferreira was less sure.
Finally the lawyer said in a bored voice, “If you really are this ignorant, you have no part in this. Go home. We will take care of a bastard like Marinho.’
Ferreira offered me a goodbye leer. “I see you again,’ he laughed in his halting English.
Andrade breathed on his spectacles and wiped them with a handkerchief. “Did you know that Mr. Ferreira is due for release in three days? You better fly home, gringa. You stick around, and the next time he sees you… Let us say the locks out there are even easier than the ones in here.’
I went to leave, inwardly grateful that a couple of guards had arrived to escort me to the gate.
“Andrade. You tell your boss that works both ways. He comes for me, he’s going to wish there were still iron bars between us.’
Tough girl. Yeah, right. I held it together until I reached the rental car. Then my body shook in terrified spasms, and it was five minutes before I could even grip the key to turn in the ignition.
♦
I had walked out of the prison with more questions than answers. Ferreira seemed to know why Marinho had had Luis murdered, but he didn’t trust me enough to give me the reason. And what did he mean that the British are “always fools’? Could he possibly know I was hired by MI6 to look into the porn makers?
Okay. Desmond Hodd had sent me to investigate Luis which meant he was really investigating Marinho. And MI6 didn’t care about internal criminal feuds—like every other Western espionage group these days, it cared about ter rorism.
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