The John Milton Series Boxset 4

by Mark Dawson

  She had been a good sleeper for the first five years of her life. It was only recently that things had changed. They had noticed the weight loss first of all. Paulo and Rafaela had always made sure that Eloá ate first, and the little girl had always been a happy, well-nourished child. But, over the course of a few weeks, she had lost several pounds and her cheeks—once so plump that Paulo found it almost impossible not to kiss them—had hollowed out. She had started to cry more and then had begun vomiting every morning as soon as she awoke. Rafaela said that she thought that the girl was bruising more easily, and then she had found the small pea-sized lump in the armpit beneath the child’s right shoulder. They had no money for the doctor, and, while Paulo was trying to arrange for a small loan from his employer, Marcos, the lump had grown from a pea to the size of a golf ball. They had taken the girl to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals and, there, after two days of questions and tests and, finally, a biopsy of the mass, the diagnosis that had crushed the life out of their little family had been grimly delivered.

  Paulo tried to put it out of his mind. He needed to be reminded of why he was doing what he was doing, but he couldn’t afford for his thoughts to be clouded by it. He stepped across the room and collected his jacket from the futon.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you,” he said. “I have to go out.”

  “You’re racing tonight?”

  “I have to, baby.”

  “But the rain—they’ll call it off. It’ll be too dangerous.”

  “No, they won’t. And we need the money. I have to go.”

  Rafaela got up, too tired to stand without putting her hand down on the side of the chair and pushing herself upright. Paulo went to her and touched her face. “Do you trust me?” he asked her.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m going to make it all better,” he said. “I swear it.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  He kissed her on the lips, took his keys from the hook that he had driven into the wall next to the door, and left the room.

  3

  Rocinha had spread across one of the steep hills that provided Rio with its undulating landscape. No one could remember where or how it had started, but, in the decades since the first slum-dwellers had decided that they would put down roots on the Hill, the favela had crawled in all directions until the entire Hill had been swamped by it. The slum was a mile or two across and the same from the summit to the foot, and the government had estimated that around one hundred thousand men, women and children called it their home. The slum might have been one of the poorest areas of the city, but, even here, there was stratification: the very poorest lived in flimsy shelters with no electricity or toilet facilities; others, like Paulo, had a little more, but to describe anything here as comfortable would have been facetious.

  The Hill had become more than just a shanty; it had stores, several banks, a recognised bus route and its own TV station. The buildings had been painted in a multitude of colours and, from the gilded streets of Leblon and São Conrado, they speckled the lush green of the mountain’s vegetation to form the distinctive patchwork that both shamed and identified the city that had allowed it to grow up there. The cariocas who lived in the favelas called them the Hills. The middle-class areas below were known as the Asphalt.

  Paulo’s apartment was halfway up this particular Hill, and the garage where he worked was at the bottom. It was on the main road, Estrada da Gávea, and comprised a space that was big enough for three cars, with a small office next door. The owner was a grizzled old carioca called Marcos; he had known Paulo’s father before he had been sent to jail, and had offered Paulo a job as soon as he had turned thirteen. He had started by sweeping the floor, but, as the years went by, he had watched and learned, and now he was the best mechanic in the shop.

  Paulo took his cycle and freewheeled all the way, putting down his feet to regulate his speed in the absence of working brakes. He reached Estrada da Gávea and looked down to see the lights of the slum sparkling all the way to the ocean. It was a simple thing to distinguish between the Asphalt and the Hills: the former was brightly lit, but where Paulo was, powered by a mixture of legitimate and illegitimate low-voltage cabling, it was dim and gloomy. He was drenched within moments, but quickly put the discomfort out of his mind.

  The rain continued to hammer down, and as he wheeled down the road to the bottom of the Hill, he saw a thatch of cables that siphoned power from the grid short out in a bright conflagration that scattered yellow and orange sparks onto the sodden ground beneath them. The fizz and spit of the electricity was loud, but it quickly faded away to be replaced by the ever-present thunder of the rain, the angry barking of dogs, and, high above, the screech of the monkeys in the rainforest.

  Paulo passed the last bus stop that served the slum, swung around the corner, and looked down the last stretch of slope to the margin that separated the favela from the more affluent streets of Gávea below. He rolled to a stop next to the garage. It was next to a smoke shop, one of the illicit establishments originally named for the marijuana that had once been enjoyed there, but now offering cocaine, crack and heroin instead. He got off the bike and wheeled it to the rusted iron door, then waited for a drunken couple to stagger past. He dropped to his knees and pushed the tip of the key into the padlock that fastened the door to the brackets that had been sunk into the concrete lintel. He heaved up, the heavy door catching against runners that never seemed to have enough oil, jerking it first left and then right until he was able to slide it up above his head.

  Marcos let Paulo use the space to work on his car. The Subaru Impreza was there now, parked on the runners that suspended it above the inspection pit. The space was tight, and Paulo turned side on and shuffled along the gap between the driver’s side and the wall, opening the door and forcing himself through the narrow gap and into the cabin of the car. He closed the door and sat there quietly for a moment, feeling the firmness of the racing bucket against his spine and smelling the fresh oil that he had changed last week.

  The car was an early edition of the Impreza. Paulo’s father had bought the car when Paulo was still a boy. It was second-hand, but it had still cost him fourteen thousand reais. Paulo was no fool; his father must have used the money he had made through his criminal exploits. Inheriting the Impreza had made Paulo deeply uneasy, but if he could use the car to improve the lot of his family, then it was a compromise he could live with.

  Paulo had needed to modify the car to make it competitive enough to race, and he had fitted it with a Hydra standalone ECU, 850cc injectors and an 18G turbo. None of the modifications had been cheap, and he had borrowed the money to fund the work from a loan shark on the Hill. Until his priorities had suddenly changed, Paulo had been paying off the debt with his winnings.

  He ran his fingers through his wet hair, swiped the moisture from his eyes, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine grumbled to life; he fed the gas, revving the engine, feeling the vibrations through the bucket seat and hearing the gravel-throated roar louder than the rattles of thunder outside. He put the car into reverse, dabbed the accelerator, and rolled off the runners and out onto the street.

  Outside, he put the Impreza in neutral, then stepped out into the rain once more, rolled his cycle inside the shop, heaved the garage door down again, and locked it. He slid back into the vinyl seat, wiped the water out of his eyes again, and, as he reached down for the gearshift, he heard the distinctive chatter of an automatic weapon somewhere higher up the Hill. It wasn’t an unusual sound for Rocinha, and he disregarded it at once. He put the car into first and turned the wheel.

  4

  Drake led the way through the garage to the short-stay area and stopped in front of a white Porsche 718 Boxster. He blipped the lock and went around to open the driver’s side door. Milton opened the passenger door and lowered himself into the seat. The car was obviously new, and the seats still had the smell of fresh lea
ther.

  Milton put his bag on his lap and closed the door. “Nice car.”

  “Thanks,” Drake said, obviously pleased with Milton’s opinion.

  “You’re doing well.”

  “Can’t complain,” Drake said as he fired up the engine and reversed out of the parking space.

  “I don’t even know what you do.”

  “I didn’t say?” Drake said.

  “You said security.”

  Drake nodded. “I’ve got a company,” he said. “Close protection, safety assessments, that kind of thing.”

  “Par for the course,” Milton said. “I’ve lost track of the number of men from the Regiment who end up doing the same thing.”

  “Better than being a mercenary,” Drake said. “There’s a few we were with who ended up like that. Remember Clinton?”

  “Vaguely,” Milton said, although he didn’t.

  “Took a job in Sierra Leone. Got shot last year. Left two kids behind. Fuck that. That’s not going to happen to me.”

  Drake edged the car into a line of traffic queuing to leave the garage via a barrier up ahead.

  “And it’s that much safer here?” Milton asked him.

  “Safer than Sierra Leone? There are areas you don’t want to go to, but this isn’t Freetown. As long as you do your homework and treat it professionally, it’s a piece of piss.”

  They reached the barrier, and Drake lowered the window so that he could insert his ticket into the slot. The machine chattered and buzzed, and the barrier was lifted. Drake rolled through and onto the road beyond. He turned to the south and followed Estrada do Galeão.

  “You ever thought about getting into that line of work?” Drake asked Milton.

  “Not really my thing these days. Getting older.”

  “So, what do you do?”

  “I’m a cook,” he said.

  “What?” Drake exclaimed. “Fuck off. You’re never a cook.”

  “I’m afraid I am. Nothing special—it’s not like I’m Gordon Ramsay—but it pays the bills. I work for a bit and then I travel. I wander around until the money is gone, and then I find a job again. It’s perfect for me. No commitments. Nothing to tie me down.”

  Drake started to sing ‘The Wanderer’ before hammering his hand on the horn as a transit bus pulled out and forced him to swerve around it. He yelled out something in Portuguese, and the driver responded by raising his middle finger. He accelerated away from the bus and slotted back into the same lane again. “You always were weird like that,” Drake said, shining Milton a grin across the cabin. He started to sing the Dion song again as if he hadn’t just been interrupted.

  “You got anything else?” Milton asked.

  Drake took his phone from his pocket, linked it to the car’s stereo, and pressed play. Slash’s distinctive intro to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ started to play.

  “Better?”

  “Much,” Milton said.

  They raced across the bridge that linked Galeão with Ramos and then merged onto the multi-laned Via Expressa Presidente João Goulart.

  “You ever get married?” Drake asked him over the start of Axl Rose’s vocals.

  “I was once,” Milton said. “A long time ago. Not anymore. I’m not the relationship type.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously? Anything I need to know?”

  “I doubt it,” Milton said, knowing very well that now he was going to have to put up with speculation as to why he was on his own.

  “Well,” Drake said, “we’ll soon get that fixed. This is Rio, Milton. Wait until you see the women.” He shone another grin, this one more like a leer.

  Milton allowed himself a rueful smile and looked out of the window as they raced along. Drake had often been a little too laddish for Milton’s tastes; he had forgotten that about him, and now, as the Boxster touched seventy on a road that was surely limited to a speed below that, he could see that it wasn’t something that he had grown out of. It didn’t matter. He was friendly and accommodating, and his heart was in the right place. And Milton hadn’t committed to staying with him for more than the couple of days he had scheduled to enjoy the festival. If he found him to be too annoying, he would just make his excuses and leave. He wanted to strike out deeper into the interior, away from the cities, and it would be a simple enough thing to bring his plans forward a little. He put his reservations to one side and chided himself. He was here to enjoy the music and, what was more, it wasn’t as if he had many other friends. He would try to relax and enjoy himself. A bit of company would be good for him. He had been on his own for too long.

  They sped south through Caju and then São Cristóvão, the road rising and continuing by way of a flyover, a scruffy industrial zone passing beneath them with the cranes of the port lined up like sentries to their left. Drake was in the outside lane, the Porsche effortlessly flying along, when Milton heard the roar of a powerful engine approaching them quickly from behind.

  Drake looked into the mirror and muttered, “What the fuck…” as a midnight blue Subaru Impreza roared by them in the inside lane. If they were doing seventy, then the Subaru must have been doing at least a hundred; it curved back into the outside lane and raced by the truck ahead of them as if it wasn’t even there.

  “Street racers,” Drake grumbled. “They’ve been racing on the coast road the last couple of months. The police said they were going to crack down, but they just change the route and nothing gets done.”

  Milton watched the red of the Subaru’s taillights as it arrowed onto a slipway and disappeared off to the left.

  Drake changed down and pumped the accelerator. “Think I could take him?” he asked with another grin.

  “Just get me back to your place in one piece,” Milton said.

  5

  Paulo turned the Subaru off the rain-slicked main road and rolled up to the gate of the derelict garage. The sign on the wall of the old building said Terminal Rodo - Edifício Garage M. It had once been used as a place where visitors to this part of the town could leave their cars, but it had been shut for several years since a newer replacement had been built during the preparations for the World Cup and the Olympics.

  Paulo flicked on the headlamps and followed their glow into the guts of the building. It wasn’t really necessary; he could hear the sound of the PAs that would provide the soundtrack for the baile funk that would take place during and after the racing. The equipment was portable, brought to the venue in the back of an anonymous panel van and easily removed in the unlikely event that the police were able to find them and coordinate an operation to shut them down in the limited amount of time between the start of the night’s activities and their conclusion.

  Paulo turned a corner, and the garage opened out into a wide space. He saw fifty or sixty people gathered around half a dozen cars. He rolled up to them, slipping the transmission into neutral and revving the powerful engine. Men and women turned to watch his approach and one of the other cars—a 1996 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution—switched on its high beams, making Paulo squint.

  He switched off the engine and stepped outside. He was excited at the prospect of the evening’s racing and had spent the last few days working on the car. The Impreza was notorious for a delicate transmission, and this one had also suffered from various exhaust leaks, a blown turbo and a cracked seal that had led to a loss of pressure in one of the cylinders. Paulo was an excellent mechanic, however, and had been able to keep it in tip-top condition. His winnings had allowed him to save a little, together with making the regular payments to the loan shark, Palito.

  Things had changed since Eloá’s diagnosis. Now, Paulo was forced to cut back on the money that he spent on the car and had put everything else toward the thirty thousand reais that they needed to find for Eloá’s treatment at the specialist children’s hospital in Lagoa. Paulo hadn’t paid Palito for a month, and he had been avoiding the places where their paths might cross. But Palito came to the racing,
and Paulo had expected to see him tonight. He was relieved to see that there was no sign of him. He didn’t know what he would say, and he had been avoiding any consideration of it in the vain hope that the problem might go away if he ignored it.

  A man separated himself from the crowd that had gathered around the Evo, and walked in Paulo’s direction. It was Aldo. He was big, over six feet tall and with a muscular frame that was liberally decorated with tattoos from the six months that he had spent in Bangu for assaulting the traffic cop who had pulled him over a couple of years ago.

  “Hey,” Aldo called out over the drumming of the rain as he approached. “How you doing?”

  “I’m good,” Paulo said.

  Aldo bumped fists with him and then walked around the car, running his fingers over the bodywork. “You sure I can’t buy this off you? Offer still stands.”

  “She’s not for sale,” Paulo said firmly. Aldo always asked that, and Paulo always said no. He had meant it, too, until recently. He knew that he would be able to get ten thousand for it, maybe a little bit more if he dug his heels in, but that was only a third of what he still needed to find for Eloá’s treatment. He could sell it, but then he would have no way to earn the twenty thousand that he would still need. He figured that he needed to win five more races. That ought to be good for twenty-five grand, with another ten for the car making thirty-five. He could take thirty to the hospital for the doctors and the drugs and pay off some of what he owed Palito with the balance.

  He just had to keep on winning.

  Aldo was around the back of the car now. Paulo had never lost to him, and Aldo liked to pretend that it was the car, and not the driver, that was responsible. Paulo let him think that, although he knew that he was much faster. It didn’t serve him to rub that in, though.