The first of the five to be eliminated was she herself, unless she was insane, and if she were insane she wouldn’t be able to set a trap for an intelligent and shrewd guy like Rat, besides which she wouldn’t be wasting her time trying to figure out who had set the trap. Rat’s two friends and protégées could be at most snitches, but even so would lose out, plus were lacking the brains to set up a betrayal scheme with the police. That left Japa and his sister, the two closest both physically and historically. But Japa also would lose out; he lived on and supported his sister on the division of the income obtained through the scheme organized and maintained through Rat’s activities; furthermore, the two had been close friends since adolescence, plus the fact that Japa was rarely sober, spending most of his days and nights inebriated. That meant it had to be Zilda. Caregiver for her alcoholic brother, resentful and angry, but she too had little to gain... unless the booty, which she had been the only one to mention, was a significant amount of money.
Disappearance and death were the same thing, according to Zilda. And she could know of Rat’s disappearance by the simple fact of him not being seen in the district, but how could she know he had died? And if there was booty or money, who had the right to it? Finally, how could Zilda say, when she answered the door, that she knew who Rita was, if Rita had only come into his life two months after he’d left Cinelândia?
The train arrived at the Siqueira Campos station. The slope up Tabajaras was a bit steep, but Rita was so deep in her thoughts that she began the ascent as if walking on level ground. The fact is, she had already raised a few questions for which she’d found no answers, and before completing the climb she had decided to go back to Zilda’s apartment to settle her remaining questions. Among them, Rat’s money being withdrawn from the bank, the booty that Zilda had asked whether she had come for. And also, how did Zilda know who she was?
The next morning she left before dawn, hoping to catch Zilda still sleeping.
She had already lost Rat. She had nothing left to lose.
The Return
by MV Bill
Cidade de Deus
By walkie-talkie Bolha passed the order along to his managers: “Look alive there! It’s one bundle for Sergeant Gonçalves’s squad, two for Corporal Tenório, and the fireworks only if you don’t recognize the vehicle, understand?”
He found it funny for the people down below to refer to a raid as something positive. In the favela it was different. A raid had never saved anybody’s life. A police raid only sank the guy even deeper. And sinking wasn’t in Bolha’s plans. He’d gotten into trafficking through the front door, at the age of fourteen, as successor to his older brother after seeing him fall, never to rise again, his rifle clutched to his chest.
Since the time he was a kid, the older traffickers had watched him carefully, as if seeing some potential in him. They appreciated his fervor in kite battles and his ability with guns. Years later, by then manager of a drug cartel, he was cruel to adversaries and very good at bookkeeping. At eighteen, he was already setting out to conquer other areas, always of course within Cidade de Deus, his community of origin.
Bolha’s charisma and courage reflected positively on the dealings of the traffickers. Because of these talents there was no opposition when he was nominated to assume the role of head of the Cidade de Deus drug traffic. And the community fell in line. No one would dare object because Bolha gave large amounts of money to the church, brought the beer to funk parties, underwrote medicine for the neediest families, and was generous in handing out Christmas presents. His motto was, Take good care of the child of today, ’cause he’ll be the soldier of tomorrow. He assumed a regal posture, a benefactor of the favela. The dependable welfare-providing that he had learned so well from the old-time traffickers.
That Friday evening, things looked promising. The packaging was proceeding at full steam. Dozens of people were engaged in the task of cleaning and weighing the drugs on scales so they would be ready for retail sale during the late-night hours.
Friday nights in Cidade de Deus were famous the world over!
And as the hours went by, the favela boiled. To the sound of funk, half-naked women, playboys from street level, and junkies mingled in the narrow passageways, high on drugs, alcohol, and a permanent state of tension as if at any moment it could all fall apart.
In the face of such success, only one thing bothered Bolha: the decision of the Special Battalion to change the troops responsible for patrolling the favela, because the new cops, led by Sergeant Gonçalves, weren’t into bribery and raids were becoming more and more frequent. And with them, the bloody gunfights and the losses represented by captured weapons and drugs.
To complicate matters, sources had dried up. His contacts in the barracks had been removed, so he was no longer getting advance word of which garrison was going to strike. Without that information it was impossible to make plans.
Bolha was lucky to be able to count on Representative Saci. Not only Bolha, but the country’s entire trafficking circuit. Representative Saci had connections in Colombia and acted as middleman for a supply network of weapons and drugs. He said the guns came from FARC, the rebel army, but no one knew if that shit was true.
What was true was that Representative Saci was glib. A large, smiling guy always well dressed who wore nothing but linen. They said that in childhood he’d been in a car accident and had a fake leg. Bolha had never had the courage to ask, but he’d spent hours watching the representative’s leg and had never seen any difference. That shit must just be a rumor, he thought. Like that story about the guns he gets from FARC.
Bolha didn’t have time to complete the communication with the drug sites before he heard the rattle of the first burst of gunfire. With a rifle resting on the windowsill, a pistol in his hand, and his pockets filled with ammunition, Bolha assumed an alert position. He observed the confrontation outside through the scope on his AR-15. In ecstasy, he watched one of his soldiers, a skinny teenager, discharge all his rifle’s ammo into a military policeman. The pride he felt! One less worm in the world.
Losing no time, Bolha went up to the roof and braced himself against the water tank; framed in the crosshairs of his rifle was the head of a cop shielding himself behind a post. Fun to see the guy’s head explode and stain the air red — two thousand meters in one second! Bolha remembered the words of Representative Saci when he sold him that marvel. What a beauty. Those FARC guys really know how to live.
But his joy was short-lived.
Amid the adrenaline of the moment and the elegance of the headless body writhing on the ground, Bolha saw his soldiers in flight, running toward the interior of the favela. Those still carrying weapons shot into the air at random, disoriented. The majority simply fled in panic and dropped their guns on the ground, as if trying to avoid being caught red-handed. The police came behind, collecting the treasures abandoned in the middle of the road. Considerable battle reinforcement for the predators’ next invasion.
Fuck! Bolha thought. I’m on my own in this shit!