During his two-hour wait at the bus station in Florianópolis, he has dinner at a coffee shop, explores the streets adjacent to the bus station on foot, and goes to a news-stand to get something to read. A man with a shocking appearance approaches the news-stand at the same time as he does. His whole head is enlarged due to some deformity or elephantiasis, especially his jaw, which is four or five times bigger than that of a normal man. He is fair-haired and is wearing a pair of jeans and a colorfully striped wool sweater. The man peruses the magazines on the stand, taking casual steps from side to side with his hands clasped behind his back in a restful position, seemingly unaware of his effect on the attendant and passersby, who glance away as soon as they set eyes on him. He takes a few good looks at the man’s deformed face, while pretending to choose a magazine. Then he picks up the triathlon magazine he intended to buy from the outset, pays, and returns to the bus station waiting area, trying to retain the man’s features in his memory for as long as possible, but they slip away as they always do.
Once he is settled in his bus seat, he takes a look at the map of downtown Pato Branco that he printed out from Google Maps at the Internet café in Garopaba. The addresses of Zenão Bonato and the hotel that was recommended by the former police chief are written in the margins with a few notes to himself. He got the man’s cell phone number from his security company. Zenão agreed to talk to him without asking many questions. I think I know what you’re talking about, he said in a hoarse voice on the telephone. If you really want to come here, come. I’ll tell you what I can remember.
The bus makes a lot of stops. He sleeps for much of the twelve-hour ride to Pato Branco, listening to music at a low volume on earphones connected to his phone. He wakes up every time the bus parks in a small town in western Santa Catarina to drop off and pick up passengers. He gets out to go to the bathroom and stretch his legs. He eats some of the worst highway diner food of his life and dreams about an icy-cold can of Coke until the next stop. It is dawn when he wakes instinctively at the entrance to the town, feeling the curves and bumpy terrain. It is much colder here, due to the distance from the coast and the altitude. It can’t be any more than fifty degrees. He opens his backpack with cold hands to pull out his jacket. Fields covered with veils of dew and tiny sleeping farmhouses give way to houses with verandas that increase in density until suddenly, to his surprise, the bus is in an urban center with wide avenues, shopping arcades, and malls. He takes a taxi from the bus station to the hotel. The car climbs steep streets paved with impeccable tarmac. When the young receptionist hands him the key to his room, she says ceremoniously that his password is ninety-eight.
What password?
For the sports channel, sir.
He calls Zenão Bonato from the hotel room. He says he’ll be busy all day and asks if he doesn’t mind postponing their meeting until quite late, perhaps around midnight. He finds it odd but says it isn’t a problem. Zenão asks him to meet him at a place called Deliryu’s. He jots down the address with the hotel pen and notepad on the bedside table. He thinks it must be the name of a brothel but doesn’t have time to ask because Zenão quickly says good-bye and ends the call.
He turns on the TV and types ninety-eight on the control. It’s a porn film with a story, and right now it’s in the story part. He waits for it to get to the interesting bit and jerks off quickly. Then he takes a twenty-minute shower.
His watch says ten o’clock in the morning. He gets dressed, leaves the hotel, walks down a few steep streets, and arrives at a large avenue with a wide planted area in the middle that forms an attractive, well-kept square. He doesn’t remember seeing such a clean, organized town before. The side streets are almost deserted, but the avenues are busy. The town center is full of modern buildings with more than ten stories, but the flower beds and gardens are like those of a country town. The air smells of carbon monoxide and wet earth. The women are at once both slender and strong. He withdraws some money at an ATM, stops at an Internet café to check his e-mails, and walks in the cold wind and midday sun until he is tired. He has a late lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet and eats so much that he can barely walk. He drags himself back to the hotel, lies on the bed with the heating turned up as high as it can go and the TV on channel ninety-eight, and alternates between snoozing and anticlimactic sessions of self-stimulation. Late in the afternoon he goes out again, heads down to the avenue, and walks through the square a little until he finds a café with large windows and a supersize TV in the outside area. A few spectators are already gathering, some wearing Grêmio jerseys. He enters and asks if they are going to show the Grêmio game. A muscular waiter in a black apron and hat with the name of the establishment written on them says yes. He orders a coffee. The game begins, and in the next two hours he drinks a few draft beers and eats a serving of French fries. Atlético Paranaense beats Grêmio 3–0. His teeth are chattering, and the thermometer in the square says it is fifty-two degrees. He sets off walking through the town again, passing in front of bars full of university students, entire blocks without a soul in sight and gas stations frequented by young people on their way to parties and taxi drivers without customers. It is almost midnight when he returns to the hotel. He doesn’t even go up to his room. He asks the tall young man at reception to call him a cab. He shows him the address and asks if he knows the place. The receptionist presses his lips together and raises his eyebrows.
Hmm.
What?
Who told you to go there?
I have a business meeting with someone. He was the one who gave me the address.
Well, if he told you to go there… but be careful.
Why?
Mafia. The sort you don’t mess with. And the girls there are quick. Real quick. They make off with your money, and you don’t even know what happened. My dad used to say we should steer clear of three things in life: fast women, slow horses, and engineers. I’m giving you the same advice. Just the other day two guests came back early in the morning in a car with the bouncer of the place. With a gun to their heads. They’d spent eighteen hundred reais and didn’t have enough cash on them. They’d thought they were going to spend five hundred each, and the numbskulls weren’t carrying credit cards. They had to drive around with a gun in their ear until six in the morning to withdraw the rest at an ATM.
What a mess.
They’ll kill you if they have to. Mafia. Have a good think if you really want to go there.
I just need to talk to the guy. I don’t intend to hang around there.
The receptionist makes a face as if to say “I warned you,” holds up the palms of his hands, and returns the paper with the address on it. The taxi pulls up at the entrance to the hotel. Inside it smells of wool, and the windows are fogged up. The elderly man in a beret behind the steering wheel reacts as if he already knew his passenger’s destination.
It’s one of the best places around. I can pick you up if you need me to. Here’s my card. But be warned. Don’t spend what you haven’t got.
• • •
The blinking neon of Deliryu’s Nightclub is a few miles out of town, on high ground just off the highway, along a gravel driveway. The square, windowless building is surrounded by a pine plantation. The bouncer, a friendly, hulking bald guy in a black suit, weighing some four hundred pounds, bows ceremoniously and informs him that the cover charge is forty reais. He is given a pay card with his name at the top, and he enters. The place looks much bigger on the inside than it did from the outside and is almost empty. At the back are the bathrooms and a small stage with a metal post. The floor is swept by colorful circles from a spinning spotlight in the middle of the ceiling and green light beams coming from another mechanism above the stage, which picks out the silhouettes of the hookers, who are in two small groups at the back of the club, leaning on the wall, or lounging on sofas, almost hidden in the dim light. Another bouncer, of average stature, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, greets him inside. His gray hair is slicked back with some kind of shiny gel or grease. There are two hookers leaning against the bar, and he can see these ones welclass="underline" a thin, grumpy-looking blonde, who tries to smile when she sees him, and a tall brunette with very white skin and a slightly gothic look, who is talking to a young waiter with a goatee. She is wearing black knee-high boots with metal buckles and is standing on one leg, with the other perched on the round stool. To his right, in an area that has half a dozen booths with tables and sofas, is the only other client in the place, an older man accompanied by a young woman. It can only be Zenão Bonato.