“The connection is unlikely, Otto, it seems unbelievable, absurd, but it exists.”
“Which makes any hypothesis possible and none consistent. We’re back to square one.”
Harley stops suddenly. He often halts abruptly when walking, when he has an idea. Otto turns around and is surprised to see his partner’s happy face.
“What?”
“Remember Francisca’s phone call yesterday, when we were at Rocinha? You even commented that she was hysterical.”
“She was hysterical.”
“And what did she tell you?”
“That she wanted to get out of here.”
“She told you she wanted to leave São Conrado because she couldn’t stand the violence anymore, didn’t she?”
“So what?”
“From what you said, she was ready to unload the apartment for whatever she could get, no matter how bad the moment to sell, because the important thing was to get away and take Rafa.”
The two men share a dense, vibrant silence.
Harley points upward: “Look.”
They are on the sidewalk by the beach, in the shadow of the highest tower on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, thirty-four stories in the shape of a tube, built in 1972. Planned by the celebrated Oscar Niemeyer, hanging gardens conceived by the landscape architect Burle Marx, with a convention center for 2,800 people, a theater housing 1,400, in the most coveted area in the city. The building was designated a historical site in 1998. The hotel had gone under three years earlier. After a lengthy court battle, it was transferred to an autonomous federal agency accountable to the Treasury Ministry, which was preparing to auction it off. Otto and Harley are familiar with the history and recall it whenever they pass by there, perplexed at the sight of the most valuable building in the city abandoned, its windows broken, corroded by the sea air, moldering.
No words are necessary. For several minutes they contemplate, dumbfounded, the dirty, sordid tower that thousands of bats invade at nightfall. Harley whispers, as if sharing a secret, “The whole time, it was staring us in the face.”
Otto murmurs: “There’s just one thing, Harley: This changes the scale of the problem. Drug traffickers and militia are child’s play next to this. This is the crown jewel, but the speculators will have a field day. There’s no limit. The guy’s going to swallow up the entire district.”
“When all is said and done, the problem really was excess, not absence. You were right: it was an excess of evidence, the magnitude of the value at stake, the dimension of the risk. What’s going to become of us, my brother? Where are we going to request exile? I’m serious, Otto. Even if we say nothing, we become a danger to ourselves.”
“We’re going to need a lot of calm and coolheadedness.”
Otto and Harley walk along the seafront, wet their feet in the cold foam, trying to stay calm. An emergency session with Ecio Nakano may be necessary.
“Don’t you want to give it a try, Harley?”
RJ-171
by Guilherme Fiuza
Leblon
They were within one hundred meters of the top of the hill. Narguilê carried two rifles on his back that together weighed almost half as much as his body. He was panting and beginning to puff, attracting the attention of Lizard, who was marching firmly some ten paces ahead.
Lizard stopped and turned, irritated. “What’s this shit, Narguilê?! You dyin’?!”
His comrade, out of breath, didn’t answer. He continued to climb the hillside, almost dragging, motivated only by awareness that in the position he occupied, showing any sign of weakness was fatal. Lizard decided to wait for him. Resting his rifles on a large rock, he took something from his vest pocket. Narguilê staggered toward his colleague and was about to rest his weapons on the same stone, but Lizard stopped him.
“Don’t put them down, ’cause if you do you won’t be able to pick them back up. Have a bit of oxygen.”
He handed him a silver straw and with the other hand lifted a piece of broken glass close to his face. Narguilê snorted the “oxygen” in a single breath and the smile of a veteran lit up his childish face. He returned the straw and set out climbing the hill in strong strides, now with the breath even to speak: “Move it, Lizard! You’re too slow.”
From that point upward it was totally dark and progress was possible only with the aid of a flashlight. And the pair had powerful flashlights — from the first world, like the rifles. In front of a huge tree, which marked exactly fifty meters to the top of the hill, the two stopped again. Time for military protocol. From the other vest pocket Lizard took out a two-way radio.
“Robocop, read me?”
A quick response from the other side: “Affirmative.”
“Lizard and Narguilê here, requestin’ authorization to enter the security zone.”
Radio: “Take it easy. Just the two of you?”
“And our Almighty Father in Our Heart.”
Hearing the password, Robocop immediately cleared the ascent. Even so, when they arrived at the summit they were in the laser sights of two machine guns that only ceased to point at them when Robocop flashed over their faces the security spotlight stolen from Maracanã Stadium during renovations for the World Cup. Narguilê was puffing again, and although he tried to disguise it, the fact wouldn’t go unnoticed by the men of the General Staff. A very strong mulatto with shaven head and serene expression, Robocop had laser-sharp eyesight. Nothing escaped him.
“The soldier’s tired?” asked Robocop.
Lizard answered for Narguilê, knowing that his colleague couldn’t speak: “The Germans showed up unexpected at the foot of the hill. Narguilê had to shoot it out with them by hisself, then he hightailed it to the grotto—”
“How come I didn’t hear no shots up here?” said Robocop suspiciously.
“It was right at the time a jackhammer was breakin’ up the sidewalk at McDonald’s, they never stop workin’ on that,” ventured Lizard.
Robocop’s serene expression didn’t waver. “I’m reminding both of you: a tired soldier is a dead soldier.”
Narguilê gulped and followed Lizard, who followed Robocop, who had issued the warning as he withdrew, without a backward glance at the pair.
Through a narrow passageway that forced the security chief to turn his powerful body sideways, the three went in single file into what looked like a bunker — descending a long stairway carved into the rock, finally a respite for Narguilê’s exhausted lungs. After crossing a crude corridor that was more like a ruin, they came to an immense, luxurious room. Home theater, cinematic lighting, new overstuffed furniture, a large marble table with chairs trimmed in gold, a sliding glass wall revealing a deck with a pool from which came an intense blue glow as if there were uranium under the water.
Robocop and the two skinny soldiers stopped before the large table, almost at attention, joining three other armed young men already there. No one said a word or greeted one another with a look. In two minutes a thin, muscular man entered the room, medium height, darker than mulatto, thin nose and lips, large greenish eyes. He nodded and everyone sat down around the table.
“There’s two matters,” the chief said softly as he sat down at the head of the table, the gold chain engraved with Zéu, his nom de guerre, swinging over his lilac-colored silk shirt. “The first is that the police have decided to raid. Not to plunder, to take over. There’s gonna be war.”
Zéu’s soldiers absorbed the information impassively, among other reasons because the chief didn’t like to be interrupted — by either word or gesture. The only one who moved was Lizard, placing his rifle on the table when he heard mention of war. Zéu stopped talking, got up, and walked silently around the table. Coming to a position behind Lizard, he hit him on the ear so violently that the soldier fell to the floor, taking the chair with him.