It hurt to read that.
But although the papers mentioned his name, none carried his photo. The closest was an artist’s sketch so badly done that it elicited laughter from Bolha. He thought the drawing more closely resembled a well-known footballer than him. What a farce, he thought, with a mixture of triumph and disquiet.
But if the safety of anonymity calmed him, there was nothing encouraging about being driven from his own community in humiliation. Shit, he had done so much for Cidade de Deus, been so cautious, so careful to make sure the bloody battles took place far from the eyes of the media, and now he couldn’t even return home. From boss of the drug traffic he had been reduced to a homeless nobody. All he had was 437 reais, the congressman’s belongings, and that white magnetic card whose use he had yet to figure out.
Without guns, money, and prestige he was just like everybody else. And he no longer had a partner he could trust. With the death of Saci, everyone would be after his head. That was a fact.
Lacking any real plan, Bolha entered a store and bought some new clothes. As a safety measure he also bought a hat. He liked seeing pagoda singers on television wearing Panama hats. For a brief moment he found it cool to be a free man and able to wear whatever hat he wanted. But the mystery of the white card and H.L.S.201 came back into his mind like restless ghosts.
That was when he spotted an Internet café and had an idea.
“How much time do you want?” asked the girl behind the counter, indifferently, engrossed in her cell phone.
“An hour,” he replied.
“Three reais.”
Bolha didn’t hesitate. On the Internet he would surely make some progress. He sat erect in the chair, put on the earphones, and began his search with the same tenacity that James Bond had displayed in the film he’d seen.
First he tried H.L.S.201, then 201H.L.S., with spaces, without spaces, with periods, without periods... It was only when he tried H.L.S. by itself that things became clear.
HOTEL LAVRADIO STAR came up as the first search result.
“Of course!” Bolha said aloud. “Hotel Lavradio, room 201. That’s it.”
What Bolha held was the key to a hotel room — of that he had no doubt. His hands shaking at the magnitude of the discovery, he jotted down the address and left, with the card in his pocket and the unshakable idea in his head: he was going to find out what Saci had kept so hidden in his fake leg, even if it cost Bolha his own life.
Despite a traffic jam, it wasn’t too difficult to get downtown. The Hotel Lavradio Star was located on a square, though on Rua Constituição, not Lavradio.
Unnoticed, Bolha entered the hotel forthrightly as if he were any other guest. He nodded at the receptionist, but she kept her eyes on the computer. The security men also ignored him, and Bolha continued confidently to the wooden staircase. He knew that any tentativeness could cost him his life — or worse, his freedom, locked up in one of those maximum-security prisons in Mato Grosso.
On the second floor, he saw that 201 was at the end of the corridor, but before heading that way he noted the locks on the other doors. He saw exactly how to insert the card to open them.
And did so.
At the end of the corridor, standing before 201, he inserted the magnetic card in the slot and a small green light came on. Bolha smiled to himself. It had never been so easy. He looked to both sides, making sure no one was around. Then, feeling his body pouring liters of adrenaline into his bloodstream, he carefully turned the doorknob.
The grandeur of what he saw dazzled his eyes.
Bolha lost his breath.
He opened and closed his eyes.
His mouth agape, he succeeded in getting a bit of air into his lungs and exclaimed to himself, Thank you, Saint George!
It was the representative’s private arsenal. Guns, ammunition, and explosives of every kind. It was impossible to quantify at first sight, but with a quick glance he took in what the congressman kept there, in a third-rate hotel room: veritable treasures. Machine guns, shotguns, rifles, pistols, carbines, M16s, AK-47s, ParaFal 7.62mm assault rifles.
Bolha laughed.
Bolha knelt.
He guffawed with happiness.
With this arsenal, the only way Cidade de Deus wouldn’t be his was if he didn’t want it.
Weekend in São Conrado
by Luiz Eduardo Soares
São Conrado
Nine o’clock Saturday morning, August 20, 2010. The earth shakes in São Conrado, a sophisticated district of Rio de Janeiro, where Rocinha, the largest favela in Latin America, is located. Perhaps it would be more accurate to put it the opposite way: the earth shakes around Rocinha, at whose edges cluster sophisticated buildings and elegant mansions. Burning tires force the closing of the tunnels. Panicked drivers abandon their cars on the Lagoa-Barra freeway. Fleeing gangs brandish military weapons. Helicopters fly over the international hotel and withdraw toward the ocean, regrouping for another run over the area in flames. Sunbathers seek shelter. Pedestrians drop to the ground. Traffic on the freeway, always slow, is now a kind of motionless apocalypse. Seen from the air, the community suggests a large-scale art installation, a critic’s intervention in the city’s routine, dramatizing the degradation of urban life.
Eight o’clock in the morning. Without knowing what awaits him, Otto Mursa tries to relax and concentrate on the green floor tiles in the small space that the condo’s exercise room allows the acupuncturist to use. He stares at the more or less subtle color variations, inspects the granulated undulations, counts the dark streaks on the right side, the abundant gray on the left, adds one to the other, divides by the number of sessions already paid for, and multiplies by the cost of each one. He tries to ignore the nervous itch at the tip of his nose and contemplates his modest salary as a civil police inspector in the state of Rio de Janeiro. His health is good, but his back is a recurring martyrdom of a herniated disk and other older problems with his spine. The legacy of sports. Lying prone on the table, his face buried in the anatomical opening, his back punctured by twenty-four needles, he feels like a slaughtered animal being marinated for a barbecue.
Every week, in his white lab coat, Ecio Nakano welcomes Otto. Methodically, he repeats the same liturgy: questions, examination, and a prolonged taking of the pulse. He identifies the points with extreme precision, from head to toe, and places the needles in two movements, the pinch and the light blow that seats them deeper. The ritual is not a pleasant one, but the effects are startling. Nakano quickly leaves the room while the patient, in semidarkness, absorbs the energy of the needles, soothed by the hypnotic arpeggios of sitars, intoxicated from the wafts of incense.
Strictly speaking, Otto shouldn’t be there. The condo has only authorized access to the exercise room and physiotherapy to residents. Luckily, the São Conrado apartment had gone to his girlfriend in the division of property with her ex-husband. Friday nights last into the late hours and the morning therapy makes up for the excesses. And serves as his alibi. It’s enough to wander down to the playground like any other owner, a towel over his shoulder, newspaper under his arm, slippers and a blasé air, the mark of class and distinction. No one would question his presence or find odd the pochette clipped to his Bermudas or the pocket bulging with his cell phone. Accoutrements of the rich aren’t kitsch, they’re exotic, personality traits. The address automatically promotes Otto Mursa to a status not his own, one to which he has never aspired. Futility isn’t his thing. Just the opposite: mixing with the elite makes him queasy.