Abandoned cars, people in flight — everything conspires to increase the climate of terror that sweeps through the district. Radio stations interrupt their regular broadcasts to announce that their reporters are unable to get to São Conrado and that the police so far have nothing to say. They interview residents by telephone. The frantic tone of the live statements does nothing to calm spirits. What Otto knows at the moment is that traffickers coming from Vidigal to Rocinha were ambushed by police and escaped, splitting up. One group, which included the leader, ran toward Rocinha, cutting through the condominium and crossing the freeway. Another group fled in the opposite direction, probably to confuse the police, making the leader’s escape easier. That was the group that invaded the international hotel, located between the condo and a shopping center, and took some of the guests hostage. The sequence of events suggests that the intent was to concentrate the cops’ efforts on hostage negotiations until the leader was far away, and safe. The police broke through the barricade of burning tires and had no problem obtaining the surrender of the men who invaded the hotel. They gave up without resistance, sacrificing themselves for their boss. They had accomplished their mission. The next day, the attack on a five-star hotel full of foreign tourists, in the rich and cosmopolitan heart of Rio de Janeiro, would be a worldwide headline in the media. The violent and provincial Rio was winning one more battle against the symbolic construction for the coming Olympics, the pole of business and entertainment.
Otto returns to the acupuncture room, dons his T-shirt, puts on his sandals, goes up to Francisca’s apartment to make sure she and Rafa are okay, and cancels the plans for Saturday — the beach, feijoada, children’s theater at the shopping center, and a frugal night of films on TV. It is impossible to guess when he will be back. Even though it’s his day off, he considers it his duty to assist his colleagues in the actions still in progress at the hotel. He says this to his girlfriend. What he doesn’t say is more important. He will take advantage of the meeting with the cops to gather information about that irresponsible ambush. What unit of the military police could have done that? Who was in command? The correct adjective that occurs to him is not irresponsible. He has no words to describe an ambush that could have resulted in the death of dozens of innocent people including children, including Rafa. He adores the little girl, but that doesn’t matter, he thinks. The action of the police was criminal, even if the motivation had been just. The doorman didn’t believe in the virtue of the motivation. Nor does he. Otto knows police institutions very well, both the military and his own, the civil. He has experienced intensely the lacerating anguish of being and not being part of a corps that degrades itself day by day, spilling into the gutter the blood that so many honorable professionals shed in the line of duty. After all, his father’s heroic death could not have been in vain. If the institutions of the police and his work stop making sense, what will remain of the memory of Elton Mursa? Will Elton be remembered as a fool who believed in the illusion of the democratic rule of law? A poor naïve fool who took pride in his office, whose mandate he always had at the tip of his tongue: to guarantee the rights of citizens, by performing a public service of the utmost necessity? A deceived democrat, resigned to his humiliating salary, who refused bribes and rejected the usual patterns of police brutality? Elton was black, militantly antiracist, and Otto insisted on identifying himself as black despite his light skin inherited from his mother’s side of the family. He knew, however, that his appearance was a passport for circulating freely in places frequented by the middle class and the elite of Rio de Janeiro. His father taught him from an early age how cunning and perverse Brazilian racism was.
At the hotel, he doesn’t discover much. Everyone is occupied freeing the hostages and avoiding a tragedy. He learns that a young woman did in fact die in the exchange of gunfire. She was said to be part of the criminal gang. Even so, the news is no less deplorable. Just the opposite — the fact only increases the burden of guilt for whoever conceived and carried out the ambush. Two questions are in the air: why did the police act that way, and why didn’t they take measures to arrest the traffickers, especially the leader, if the date, the time, and the route were common knowledge and repeated weekly? It seems obvious that the doormen’s interpretation is the only reasonable one, although the authorities, playing out their melancholy role, talk about an unexpected and surprise encounter between the traffickers’ vans and the military police patrol. In the first official statement the police spokesman had mentioned an ambush. The repercussion was so negative that he disappeared, taking the original explanation with him, which was quickly replaced by the fable of the accidental encounter.
The farce mixes the worst in the police force and its promiscuous relationship with politics: extreme irresponsibility toward the suffering of people and blatant corruption. All of that in contrast with the bigwigs’ rhetoric that covers up police misconduct under the pretext that it is necessary to preserve the image of the institution, even if those to blame are investigated and punished, as if there were any real image to protect and as if punishment of the guilty individuals ended the moral epidemic. Contemplating the circus put together for the media, Otto’s blood boils. He looks upon the sham as a personal insult.
“Harley, wake up, man, and come over here. This shit can’t end like this.”
His partner is more phlegmatic than Captain Nemo and as refined as David Niven in the role of ambassador of the British Empire. He is black, tall, and thin. The two friends plan to celebrate their fortieth birthday together. Their having been born on the same day meant something. The two were the target of homophobic jokes at the precinct. The relationship was symbiotic, yes, but Otto had never felt himself attracted to men, nor was he disturbed by the preferences of Harley, who knew very clearly how to keep work and love life separate.
“Otto, out of respect for you, for decades of friendship, my father’s esteem for your father, the marvelous Saturday that spreads its wings over us, and last but not least in honor of a dear friend with whom I share a glorious breakfast, I’ll leave out the curse words. Is that enough, or you want some more?”
Otto is the most practical of men: “You have no idea, man. You at home or in a motel? If you’re at home, turn on the TV. My cell phone will be waiting for your call. Turn on the TV.”
Harley replies patiently: “You and me are assigned to Del Castilho. Our precinct doesn’t have jurisdiction to act in São Conrado. Besides which, noble colleague, our precinct belongs to a district, not a specialization. Kidnapping isn’t something we deal with. Neither is drug trafficking. Did you get the chief’s okay? Does the Cyrano de Bergerac of the Rio suburbs, the venerable Mr. Costinha, know that the restless spirit of Inspector Otto is contemplating sticking his nose where it shouldn’t go?”
Otto cuts the conversation short: “Turn on the TV. I’m waiting for you.”
Two o’clock. On the Rocinha hillside peace reigns. Seen from up there, the pacific panorama would suggest that nothing happened. But the community is still shaken up. Tension fills the air, vying with the dueling kites, amid the antennae and the tangle of wires diverting unmetered electricity.
Otto and Harley are leaning against the low wall on the terrace at the home of Hamilton, a courageous Northeasterner brought up in the community. In the local vocabulary, the small platform jutting out over the abyss is called a slab and sticks out from the house like so many other ingenious add-ons, work of the labyrinthine architecture nurtured by the ingenuity of the people. There the baroque is not a style but the involuntary result of maximizing the use of space. The three men share a beer and recall the afternoons of soccer from their adolescence. Hamilton does freight work — that is, he transports whatever will fit in his old VW station wagon. He knows the favela from one end to the other. He gets along with all types of people, including the owners of the hillside, the traffickers. As is inevitable, he also knows who’s who among the police, because the payment of bribes and the agreements take place in the light of day. The “bundle,” the agreement between traffickers and cops, has become institutionalized as part of the collective imagination, part of Rio tradition, as honorable as the illegal and ubiquitous lottery known as the “animal game.” Hamilton has found that adaptability is necessary to survive. Among his virtues, discretion is foremost. “Anybody who blabs ends up with ants coming out of his mouth, pushing up daisies, in the grave.” No sin is more serious and dangerous than informing. Therefore, being an informant — X9, in the common parlance — is fatal. There is no accusation more damning. An X9 works for the police, infiltrating the suspects. Once identified, he is summarily condemned to death by the traffickers. But it’s no different on the other side. If someone without backing — read poor, an inhabitant of the outskirts or a favela — denounces a policeman, he runs the risk of being executed. So prudence and the instinct of self-preservation demand obsequious silence. The rule of the favela can be summed up thus: No one saw, heard, or knows anything about anything whatsoever.