by T. R. Ultra
But not humans. We are fallible. Humans deviate from the straight path when living in crooked houses.
I needed to get down. Divine providence had already acted on my life. It had sent the helicopter to the sky, the rotor blades that would connect my face to true people, to those that would be willing to help.
I had to consider my boss had read the email I had sent her. She always checks her inbox. Maybe the US Embassy in Rio, the real one, had by now taken notice of my situation. I could feel the universe conspiring to help me. It would all end up well. I only needed the trolley to go down, down to the bottom of the hill. A few more seconds of pulleys rolling and cables running. Just a bit more.
But except for it swaying sideways, the cable car didn’t budge. Not in the first minute, not in the first ten minutes. I didn’t have my watch anymore, but I could tell the time thanks to the watch on the wrist of the dead man.
Time went by. I spent minutes sitting on the floor, safe from blood. Then I would clamber to the windows and peek outside, only to see if anything had changed in the sky.
After a while, it had. About half an hour after first appearing, the helicopter flew away.
Why would they wait for so long? It had been obvious that the helicopter had seen me. Obvious. It hovered over Gloria Santa, the bulk in its nose was a camera that kept turning around to keep its focus on me. Why would they wait so long to bring me down?
A defect. The cable car was as badly maintained as anything else in the slum. That’s why it stopped. Service stops must be a constant problem, just like violence was a constant dweller.
Only a defect.
But why did the helicopter leave? No interest in seeing my face anymore? Was I a minor problem, easily forgotten?
I tried to stop my hands from shaking, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t drop the pistol. I’d keep it even with unsteady hands. A gunshot accident would not happen to me.
The helicopter returned. Another one, from another news channel judging by the black and green stripes on its body. The fluttering in my stomach reduced, but didn’t stop. The stench of that man’s blood was unbearable, its crimson freshness disappeared and gave way to something darker and thicker on the floor.
I dragged my body up, hands clutched to the windowsill, and looked outside, sideways from the cable car. “Bring me down!” I bellowed, my mouth wedged on a crack between sheets of glass. I just hoped it reached the helicopter standing between me and my redeemer. “Bring me down!”
My knee had swelled to a bright purple, my brain unable to detect which portion of my body ached the most. All I wanted was to take a look at the gas station by the foot of the hill. I knew the end of that nightmare would come by way of there. I knew it. As I motioned toward the front part of the car, my feet dipped in a gelatinous blood, the trolley started moving again.
It stuttered, screeched, and slid aside. My body arched inside the car, head swaying back, but I remained on my feet. I was finally on my way to be free of this dreadful dimension of pain and death and back into my reality.
I reached the prow of the cable car. Looking down, I saw the bottom platform grow bigger. I scurried my eyes over to the buildings surrounding the platform. Rooftops that I would see for the last time, that I hopefully wouldn’t remember anymore.
But I would remember them, of course. Because as my eyes rolled, I found the gas station. And all along the street where it stood, I saw a parade of cars displaying sirens, red and blue lights, as if waiting for a criminal about to run into them.
The trolley went down and got closer to the bottom. I heard the blaring. It was the police waiting for me.
Chapter 35
The trolley entered the cable car platform at the bottom of Gloria Santa. Uniformed policemen had gone through the turnstile to form a human belt along the whole extension of the loading area. They had guns ready, all of them waiting for my arrival.
The car lost speed inside the loading platform, its doors creaked, ready to slide open. Two policemen walked alongside it, waiting to hop into the car and arrest me, deliver my head to their faction’s lords somewhere else in Rio.
The doors rattled open and blood flooding the ground came into their view, as did the body of the men twisted at the front of the car. I huddled inside. I was not afraid. If anything, I was cautious. The blood everywhere probably made the two men outside ponder whether they should go through the mess of stepping on it.
They walked alongside the sliding car, and gestured for me to come out. I didn’t move.
The car passed the point of unloading its passengers. It went around the platform, around those eyes in uniforms, and started trailing back to the main cable that would take me up to the top. Its door started sliding shut as the policemen tugged on the edges to keep it from closing, but suddenly the whole structure came to a halt.
This time I didn’t fall. The car stopped at the end of the platform, its door open, wide enough for someone slim to pass through.
It was a dead end. I had no way to get through those uniformed bandits. Besides, the cable car wouldn’t take me away to the relative safety of the upper parts of the slum, where the policemen did not dare to enter.
But going back would only make this nightmare stretch. And I’d rather see it finished, no matter the outcome.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I shouted, my mouth dry. “I’m not afraid!”
I was counting on the chance that the helicopters had broadcasted my face on TV, and that news would reach the US Embassy as fast as possible.
The cops stirred, but I had no idea if any of them had actually comprehended what I had said. They were gangsters who only understood money. Drug money.
One of them tried to squeeze himself through the door, trying to grab me and drag me outside. I raised the gun.
For whatever reason, he hadn’t seen it yet, even though I had been holding it the whole time. Maybe because of the blood scattered everywhere, even the gun. But now, he eyed the barrel glistening past the layer of red in my hand, and froze. I could tell by his look that he evaluated the odds of aiming his gun at me.
He did nothing but to shout in Portuguese. Not to me, but to his partner, even though his eyes were riveted at mine.
“Back off. I’ll shoot you if I have to,” I said.
He took a glimpse of the man on the floor and swallowed hard. As if grasping the idea that I was actually able to pull the trigger, he raised his hands and started backing out of the trolley.
Then that ghost came again. The one who had called for me everywhere in the slum, the one who after shouting my name in the wind disappeared without leaving the slightest clue of where it had gone.
“Emily Bennett,” it said.
My hands trembled, the gun barrel quivered. I would not look for the voice anymore. It was just a noise, probably inside my head. Something else that would go away once the stress clogging my throat had been released.
But it called me again, clearer this time.
“Mrs. Emily Bennett.”
The policeman stepped away from the car, hid his body behind the door and through the window I could see him reaching for his gun, but he did not point it at me. Instead, he just tightened his grip, and waited.
I pricked my ears to catch a hint of that voice. Would it come up a third time? I could hear the whirr of the helicopter in the sky, its cameras now focused on the dark blue bandits all over the platform and on my red face inside the car. But instead of hearing my name, I saw that shadow, that ghostly face, burst through the policemen belt and move toward me.
It was officer Paulo Pinto. In his wake, came Roberto Rôla.
Paulo Pinto looked at me and next scanned the car. Roberto Rôla, the body language reader, squinted in my direction from behind Pinto’s back, in a position that concealed his hands.
They remained outside. Instead of going straight for the door, they walked along the platform to stay directly across from me.
“Mrs. Emily Bennett, we’re here to help you. I c
an only imagine what you’ve been through, but please, put your gun down. It won’t help.”
“The things I’ve been through . . . ” I sighed. “Yes, I know what you mean. You want me to make your job easier, isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Mrs. Bennett. It’s almost noon, we all here have families and kids, and we want to go back to them as soon as possible. Drop your gun and come outside. There’s an ambulance waiting for you.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. My knee failed me. I had been struggling to keep myself straight, leaned against the hull of the car. But my stamina was at its end, my body about to collapse.
“Yes, I’m sure. You’ll be taken care of. The US Embassy will send an attorney to look for you. We just need you to cooperate,” he said.
His words struck me. His deceit had passed all boundaries of reason. An astute way to kidnap me, of course. The moment I lowered the gun, they’d rush into the car, put handcuffs on me and take me to who knows where.
I chuckled.
Paulo Pinto twisted his nose and looked back. Roberto Rôla contorted his face, wrinkled his forehead, and they exchanged looks. Two minds collaborating over the same purpose, complementary to each other in the realm of evil. I couldn’t hate them more than I did.
“I’m not leaving my gun unless a US Embassy representative is brought before me. And a news channel reporter. I know what your real interests are.” My knee throbbed, a sharp pain spreading through my legs, into my groin. My body stiff. I went on, “I won’t be used as a bargaining chip. I’ve learned to fight,” I finished.
I got them by surprise. Paulo Pinto trembled, as though fetching the right words to say. He stopped his body from looking back, from taking a glimpse of his accomplice. Did he notice any twist in my body, any faint glimmer in my eyes that might give the truth away?
Paulo Pinto went on, “Mrs. Bennett, anyone put under such a great pressure as you’ve been is expected to make mistakes. We understand that. You’ll be named a proper attorney, as I said, to help you with all legal actions you might need. But now, I need you to cooperate. Drop your gun off. You’re now safe. We are here to help.”
The strangest part of that situation—inside a blood-splattered trolley, surrounded by police, the helicopter, and stalked by people that crowded the surroundings of the platform—was that it all appeared to be real. That setting was consistent even with Atlanta standards. Put bodies and blood together in a random place—the tighter, the better—and the outcome is the same. Police, cameras, throng.
Would those police officers dare to kidnap me after having so many people see my face? What were the odds of not having someone trustworthy, clean of corruption, among all these people?
Maybe they changed their plans. Everyone knew I was alive in Rio. My face was on the news. There was a high probability that the US Embassy had taken notice of my showing up inside the trolley. Of course Paulo Pinto and Roberto Rôla had changed their plan. They ought to. Instead of putting shackles on my wrists in darkness, where nobody could see, they’d do it in daylight.
It was only a matter of having the right motive. And they surely had it, otherwise, why would they come up with this whole “name you an attorney” thing? They planned to make me liable for a crime. That was their intention. Afterward, once in prison, nobody would be able to protect me. Brazilian prisons were no man’s territory, a chunk of land where the worst type of people were kept, where even the State didn’t dare enter. The power there emanated not from the people or government, but from drug money. Like a favela.
Once imprisoned, once shackled, my life would be in a drug lord’s hands.
“Come on, Mrs. Bennett. Walk outside. It’s safe now,” said Paulo.
I had been captured by my thoughts, which led me to stare at the mirror of blood created on the trolley floor. But then Paulo Pinto diverted my line of thinking into something else. Safety is subjective. Stepping into a lion’s cage barehanded is safe, but only for the lion.
“There’s no safe place for me in Rio,” I said.
Pinto looked at me. Roberto Rôla craned his neck to whisper into his partner’s ear.
“We’ve neutralized the one who threatened you,” said Pinto.
“As far as I can see, you’re still standing before me,” I replied.
“I’m not the threat, Mrs. Bennett. I’m talking about your kidnapper.”
“My kidnapper?” I said. I noticed the images on the corner of my eyes going blurry, my head too big a weight for my neck to heft.
I clutched, with one hand, the windowsill, the other one holding the pistol pointing downwards.
I couldn’t keep it raised anymore.
Pinto went on.
“The one who drove you from the airport. The man who killed Carlos, your original driver, and who lured you into a trap to profit out of it. I’m talking about Renato Santos, Mrs. Bennett. He is the threat we’ve neutralized.”
Chapter 36
I slid my back against the trolley to sit on its floor, my ass and my glock dipping into blood puddle. I was on the verge of fainting, and as I stared outside, through the car’s barely opened doors, I saw officer Pinto walking toward a position from where he could keep staring at me. From where he could keep trying to convince me to give up.
Using bland words to sugarcoat their dreadful deeds is a common trait of cowards. And in Rio, I discovered it was also a common trait of corrupted cops.
I’ve killed and hurt people due to being under a state of desperation. Even though I wish I had never stained my hands with gunpowder nor blood, I had done it. I would never sugarcoat the dreadfulness of my acts by addressing them as a mere pushing of people out of my way, or going over obstacles, or neutralizing threats. I had killed human beings and hurt them. And had I not done so, I’d be the one rotting away right now.
I’m not proud of what I did, but I have enough guts to say it.
Officer Paulo Pinto, on the other hand, verbalized a murder through soft words. He and his man had coldly killed Renato from long range. They should be men enough to state it. But they weren´t.
Yes, I could see it all. Paulo Pinto had a dark soul. A man experienced in haggling with criminals, poised to enter people’s minds and make them faulter, creating distress. He and Roberto Rôla wanted to sooth me into that false assumption that I had been kidnapped by Renato. Into the wrong perception that those who held us captive in the makeshift clinic, who tortured Renato, who tried to rape me, who pursued us and tried to give us away, were actually the good guys in the story.
What they really wanted was to blame me. Somebody had to be liable for that body inside the cable car. The self-defense argument, or my state of need, would never prevail. They would successfully arrange against me in court. And so they would pave my way into a Brazilian prison, and their foreseen outcome would finally become true.
“It’s been too many days. . .” I said as I eyed officer Pinto. The words came out sluggishly, as though the very force that had put them out was coming to an end. “. . . since I’ve been running away. I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not doing it anymore . . .”
My hands trembled. I still kept hold of the pistol. But my legs would not push me forward anymore. My body was ragged, undernourished, weak and wounded. I was unable to run away.
But that didn’t mean I would give in.
Officer Pinto looked back at Rôla and they exchanged another glance.
“It’s been more than a month, Mrs. Emily Bennett,” he said. “We knew since the beginning that you were inside Gloria Santa. But finding someone hidden in the slum is like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
Another lie. Another absurd lie. It’s been less than a week since I had arrived in Rio. Only a week. Even though getting hurt and scarcely eating made that week seem much, much longer.
A man of no scruples, Paulo Pinto was using my fragility to try and deceive me. And now I had no one to rely on, nothing except the Glock to put my reality back on track.
I looked o
ver my body, my doubled up knees poking out of that disgusting blood stained dress. My thighs were thinner than I could ever remember and my knees looked swollen, not only by the injuries they carried, but due to the protruding bones amidst a desert of body fat.
And then I realized how much weight I had lost. What about my face? Would it be as thin, bones-nudging-out as my thighs were?
I raised my hand, rubbed it against my face, the skin lacking tenderness sucked into my cheeks. The moment was appropriate for weeping, but I shed no tears.
The time I spent inside Gloria Santa, that terrible week, the officers, the cops, and everyone else who collaborated with the drug lords were killing me softly, a small portion a day. Everyone could tell it by just looking at me. It was just a matter of time, of taking a few more slices, before my heart stopped beating.
So, no more weeping for me. They had dried my lifeforce altogether with the substance of my tears.
But not my courage. Not my courage.
Paulo Pinto, noticing despair, said “I’m coming in, Mrs. Bennett. Let me take care of you.” That was a moment of victory for him. A pervaded beast, who actually mimicked what Renato had said days before. The will to protect. But from Pinto’s mouth those words assumed another meaning. To capture, to conceal, the will to cuff and to gag.
From that moment on the predator would take on its prey. Paulo Pinto had won the fight. He and all those under bribery had thrived. Because now they would have an uncontested criminal before them.
And the whole world would be able to notice it through the eyes of the helicopter.
When I touched my face, confused, and my eyes scurried side to side fetching pieces of my faulty memory, Paulo Pinto stepped ahead to enter the car. He would be the one to touch the asset before anyone else. And the hand that would touch the asset would not as much be the one of a corrupted cop as it would be of a dead one.
