The Burning Hill

by A. D. Flint

  Vilson knew the cops wouldn’t be following but he was still too scared to light the place. He sat on the dirt floor in the darkness, breathing in the rank air as the sweat ran from him.

  An hour later he noticed his heart was no longer pounding and the roar of blood in his ears had faded. The sweat had dried to an uncomfortable stickiness on his skin. His anxiety for Babão was a hot stone in his belly and the words of his regular prayers kept darting into the dark corners, hiding from him.

  When exhaustion finally overcame him, he slept fitfully in the couple of hours before dawn.

  On waking, he shuffled to the door, trying to stretch the stiffness from his joints, peeking out into the half-light. This was the safest time of day, there was hardly anyone about. And there was still no Babão.

  Vilson lit the paraffin burner and stared into its pure flame. He tried to still his mind, to get a clean grip on faith, praying to every saint he could remember. But something cold kept snaking in on him. Would they even hear his prayers after what had happened down on Copacabana? Hugging his knees, the tears came silently in the flickering gloom. Que coisa – What a thing.

  The knock on the door made him jump. His heart skittered – he was back. Another knock – a playful rat-tat-tat. Babão couldn’t resist a joke even after a night like that. That was Babão. Vilson went silently to the entrance and hauled open the makeshift door, going with the joke, a big grin on his face, ready to hug his friend. The saints had heard, and they had answered. Graças a Deus.

  Terror slid through him. He tried to hold his grin, but his facial muscles betrayed him, twisting it into a withered grimace.

  In front of him stood the boss of As Formigas Vermelhas – The Red Ants – the drug gang that ran the favela. Anjo was propping himself against the door frame with a sinewy forearm, a gun hanging loosely in his hand, a laconic smile belying the joy at seeing Vilson’s fear. His black eyes glittered. Vilson knew that fear was the commodity that Anjo most prized. Fear was respect.

  Vilson had known Anjo before he was in a gang, before he had murdered his way to the top spot. He wasn’t sure if Anjo’s skin had grown paler over the years, making the contrast with his black eyes more stark, or whether he had just become more terrifying. Anjo’s features were almost sleek, small ears flat to his skull, but there was a tautness, a simple cruelty fixed in his expression, like that of a young boy bent on doing nasty things to small creatures. Behind Anjo was Franjinha, his second in command. A vacant, unreadable face draped with lank hair.

  “Hey, Canela,” Anjo said affably. “That dopey look tells me you don’t have my money.”

  Anjo was not quite out of his teens, just a year older than Vilson. Canela, the skinny bit of the ankle – Anjo had called him that since they were kids. Vilson hated it.

  “I’ve got some,” Vilson said, struggling to keep his voice even. He pulled out the money they’d taken from the gringo. He had counted it several times and knew it was short.

  Anjo passed the money over his shoulder to Franjinha, keeping his smile on Vilson. Skewered by the intense gaze, Vilson clutched himself, shoulders hunched, eyes darting about.

  Franjinha thumbed through the notes carelessly. “Fifty Reais light.”

  The shortfall was less, but Vilson dared not protest.

  “Where’s Babão?” Anjo enquired, tilting his head to look inside.

  “He’s just— He’ll be back soon.”

  “Not trying to run out on me, I hope?”

  “No, no way, he knows better than that.”

  “You know, I was up all night worrying about you.” Anjo was joking but there was no smile. “I’ve had no sleep, and I climb all the way up the hill to your shithouse shack and he’s not here. And then you tell me you don’t have all my money. It’s a lack of respect.”

  “We’ll get the money, I promise. If you can just give us until the end of the month.”

  “Listen, I’ll do you a favour for old times’ sake. You’ve got until the end of next week to get busy and find the rest.” Anjo shifted himself off the doorframe. “Plus, let’s say,” he continued, looking over his shoulder, “what, fifty percent interest?”

  Franjinha nodded impassively.

  “And tell Babão it’s no use trying to hide from me,” Anjo said. “There’s nowhere I won’t find him.”

  He lifted his handgun and pressed it lightly to Vilson’s forehead, a ring of cool metal against his skin.

  Anjo made a show as he cocked the hammer, savouring the click-clack of the metal ratchet. “Entendeu?” Understood?

  Vilson acknowledged him with the slightest of nods and bug-eyed terror, “Entendi.”

  Chapter 4

  Marinho

  Early that same morning, the pair in the upstairs apartment woke Marinho thirty minutes after he had finally managed to get to sleep. He could hear muffled shouting as they thumped around on the thick floorboards of the old building. It was daylight but it was too early for this. He reached for his handgun lying on the bedside table and wearily knocked the butt on the metal downpipe between the bedside table and bed. The pipe ran through all three storeys and everyone would hear the hollow clang. It went silent for a moment upstairs and then there was more shouting. He couldn’t tell if they were shouting at him or at each other or both. He wasn’t getting back to sleep now. He should get up and get out for his fifteen-kilometre run, and later in the morning he was due in the gym. A good training partner was lined up for a sparring-and-groundwork session before his shift later in the day. He was disciplined with his training but he really didn’t feel up for it today. His arms, his legs, everything felt heavy.

  His apartment was in the Jardim Botânico district of the city, although not in the good part. It was tiny, the bedroom barely accommodated the small double bed. He was the only one sleeping in it. It had been like that for too long – the unsociable hours of his job and the fight training that he stuffed in around it kept it that way. He had to get where he needed to get to before he could think about that kind of stuff. Marinho wasn’t born-and-bred Carioca, he was from the state in the very south of the country and hadn’t lost the accent. He had come to Rio for the opportunities. A cidade maravilhosa – the wonderful city. He was glad that he had insisted that his parents and younger sister didn’t follow him. He was as vague about his family with his colleagues as he could get away with.

  Kicking the sheet off, he got out of bed and went to the pokey bathroom. There was a bucket of discoloured water sitting in the tiled shower cubicle. Pulling his uniform shirt from the bucket, he held it out for inspection as the water cascaded from it. Some of the blood had lifted out but he was going to have to scrub hard to get rid of all the stains. Marinho was cabo – corporal – Marinho Palmano. Wiry and agile, he had the poise of an athlete. He had a fighter’s nose, thickened at the bridge, and yet his eyes, smudged with scar tissue, had a tranquil quality. It was adrenaline that had kept him from sleep almost until morning. Adrenaline and the images from the previous night that he could not shake.

  The reel started running in his head again: as Vilson was making his escape from Copacabana with Marinho’s lumbering captain firing shots after him, Marinho was chasing down Babão. He was the only one of the three cops armed with an FN carbine, its dated, slender build lacking the snap of modern assault rifles, but it was accurate enough. He had squeezed off one round as he exited the truck and then made a quick decision, lifting the barrel.

  He watched Babão plunge across the lanes of traffic, only just skipping clear of a collision of two cars that would have crushed his legs. Making the central reservation, Babão cut back past the patrol truck. He crabbed along behind the protective line of cars before straightening and running onto the opposite carriageway. Marinho could see him again. Babão glanced over his shoulder now that Marinho wasn’t firing on him. He ran blindly into an oncoming taxi that had just turned onto the main drag from a side road.

  The taxi braked and swerved but the wing mirror and windscreen pilla
r clipped Babão, spinning him away and dumping him on the asphalt of the middle lane. The yellow taxi didn’t hang around.

  Babão was back up on his feet in an instant. Marinho could see the kid was running on instinct, staying in the lane for a few metres before his wits kicked back in, then veering toward the pavement and the sanctuary of the side street ahead.

  All the while, Marinho was moving. Picking his way through the chaos of the first carriageway, loping along the central reservation, sticking close to cover. He dropped to one knee beside a thin tree, leaning against it to steady himself. He hadn’t put himself in a foot race – heavy, ragged breathing would disrupt his rhythm. He had just wanted to get to a clear line of fire.

  He drew the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, hooked his left elbow through the shoulder strap and pulled tight to keep the weapon steady. Lifting the barrel above Babão’s head, he took two slow, calm breaths. He let the barrel feather down until he was sighted on the centre of Babão’s back, over a hundred metres away and stretching rapidly.

  Marinho’s mind emptied of everything beyond his connection with his rifle, its bullets and their target. He squeezed off a round. He saw it snag Babão’s tee shirt at the shoulder. He didn’t see the small plug of flesh and bone fragment twisting away in a puff of pink spray.

  Babão was again taken off his feet in a grotesque pirouette. Again, he managed to pick himself up, his will quicker than his body this time. He was facing Marinho for an instant as he rose and staggered back, trying to fix his balance. The second bullet hit him in the gut. He folded, falling to the pavement, five metres short of the side street. Agony stiffened and curled his limbs.

  He was on his side, keeping off his shattered left shoulder, when Marinho got to him, rifle still locked in, head cocked into the sight. Marinho shifted his grip to pat him down one-handed, the barrel propped in Babão’s back.

  The kid was clean and Marinho rested the rifle in the crook of his elbow to take a closer look at the wounds. It was only then that the kid seemed to become aware of his presence, eyes wide, pain searing his body. He stared up at Marinho in silence. Fear in his face.

  Marinho’s captain, Nogueira, arrived and immediately doubled over, chest heaving. Nogueira was powerfully built, with a gut that had been testing the lower buttons of his shirt long before he had hit middle age. Sweat was beading up on his balding pate and soaking into his shirt. He swore through snatched breaths.

  Marinho had heard Nogueira’s shots, counting at least seven. “Did you hit the other one?” he asked.

  “Not sure.” Nogueira looked up. “This one still kicking, uh? Why haven’t you got the cuffs on him?”

  Arguing that the kid was no longer a danger to anyone and in no condition for cuffing would do neither him nor the kid any good. Marinho complied, Babão screaming as his wrists were pulled together behind his back.

  “Your friend ran out on you,” Nogueira said flatly. “He’s probably back up the hill already, dug into whatever hole in the dirt you two crawled from.”

  The patrol truck, lights on and honking plaintively, barged slowly through the clogged lanes of the opposite carriageway, bumped over the central reservation and rolled the wrong way up the carriageway to them.

  The driver, Branca, ambled over from the truck. “Chief, heard on the radio that some gringo’s been shot on the beach.”

  “Dead?”

  “Still alive when the ambulance got to him, but they blew his face off, so not for much longer, I guess. Bet your friend there could tell us all about it.”

  “Well, let’s take a little trip and find out.”

  Babão’s eyes rolled in fear. “No, not that. Put me in the ambulance, I’m begging. Take me to hospital.”

  “Hospital, huh?” Nogueira said. “And who’s going to pay to fix you up?”

  Babão’s eyes drifted and then locked on Marinho. “Don’t let them kill me, man, please don’t let them kill me.”

  “Take it easy, no one’s going to kill you,” Marinho said. He couldn’t swear to it to the kid though. He noticed a fleck of spittle on the kid’s lower lip as he lay there on the Copacabana pavement, quivering as the painful breaths rattled in and out.

  “Open the tailgate,” Nogueira commanded Marinho, and turned to Branca, dipping his head toward the truck.

  Branca nodded and tried to haul Babão to his feet without getting blood on his uniform. Babão screamed and collapsed, something giving inside, more blood gouting from his stomach wound, soaking his shirt. Branca cursed and kicked at him.

  “What are you doing?” It was a shout of alarm, the cops turning in surprise, a young woman running from a loose group of onlookers who were keeping their distance.

  “What is he to you?” Nogueira squared up.

  She took a breath, composing herself. “I’m a lawyer. This boy needs an ambulance.”

  Marinho was on the back foot, as was Branca, but their boss was unfazed. “He’s a murderer. The ambulance people are out there on the beach right now, picking up the brains of the gringo he shot. But don’t worry, we’ll get him to hospital.”

  “Was he even armed? Did you shoot an unarmed boy?”

  “He and his gangster friend shot at me and my officers, bullets flying all over the place. Do you get that? Putting members of the public in danger. People like you.”

  “Where is his gun?”

  “I think you need to be careful.”

  “I’ll take all your numbers right now – this is not justice.” Her eyes were ablaze, but Marinho could see that she was within herself, alive to the danger in Nogueira’s stony face.

  Nogueira made the slightest of movements toward her, enough to show intent. “You’ve said your piece, you can go home now and tell your rich friends how you stuck it to the underpaid cops who keep you safe. Go on, we’ll clear up the mess here. Go on. Disappear.”

  His eyes still fixed on hers, he issued an order, the words drawn out with a slow, deliberate calm. “Get him in the back.”

  He had called her. There was no bluster, and Marinho just hoped that she could see that this was not a man to back down. She stood her ground, chin set, but she couldn’t hide the first tremors of suppressed anger and frustration. And fear.

  She might not like it but it was better for her this way, Marinho thought, shouldering his rifle. He got Babão up again, sticky blood daubing his hands and uniform. Branca grabbed his legs and they heaved him into the back of the truck. Babão moaned before passing out on the scratched metal floor. Marinho climbed in to take one of the fold-down seats lining either side.

  “Let’s go – I’ll ride in the back with our friend,” Nogueira said to Branca, his eyes never leaving the young woman. “Goodnight,” he said courteously, his face ghoulish in the milky glow of the street lights.

  Marinho was concentrating, trying to run through the full reel from the night. If he went through every part in turn, he felt he might be able to reassure himself that there was nothing else he could have done, that there was only one way the thing was ever likely to go. But his mind kept cutting to the worst parts and looping them over and over. He needed a distraction. Wringing out his sopping, stained shirt, he stepped from the shower. There was a stiff wooden brush under the kitchen sink and a big bar of laundry soap. Laying the shirt out on the stone drainer, he rubbed the soap bar into the stains, and then scrubbed. It was how his mother had washed the family’s clothes in their outside sink all his life. His parents still didn’t have a washing machine and neither did Marinho. If he didn’t get the stains out of the shirt, he would have to buy another out of his own pocket.

  Chapter 5

  Jake

  Jake awoke two evenings later with the nasty sensation of having overslept on a train, arriving at the end of the line. Some bleak, abandoned place. His eyes felt as if they had been grilled and then welded shut. There was a chemical taste in his mouth, like insect spray.

  He could only get his eyes open as far as slits. It was a white room. The ligh
t burned his eyes but he could see enough to know he was in hospital. Dread lurched through him, and confusion, and he had to crunch his mind through the gears before he was clear. He wasn’t in that hospital. That had been a bad place. He had difficulty dragging himself away from the memory.

  Terror jabbed him. The beach. The gun. Then he remembered the ambulance. This must be the place after that. It seemed like he had made it.

  He was thirsty, his mouth dry and furred. Dabbing with the tip of his tongue, he explored the injured side of his mouth, finding smooth holes in his upper jaw – the spongy sockets of missing teeth. He could feel the notches and prickly stubs of fine stitches everywhere. A deep channel cut diagonally through his upper jaw, the path of the bullet, he guessed. It was raw, as was the smooth network of ridges inside his cheek. The kid had shot through the side of his face. He had kind of missed.

  His eyes were beginning to function properly. Turning his head for a look around sent a bolt of agony through the top of his skull to the base of his neck. Acid nausea spat up from his stomach. He brought his head back in tiny, painful increments and stuck to a survey of the room within the limits of his swivelling eyes.

  “Acordou.” The voice was deep, a man’s, beyond Jake’s vision. He couldn’t remember what the word meant. Maybe he’d never heard it before.

  Light, squeaky rubber soles on the floor. A female nurse appeared above him. She spoke in a high voice, too quickly.

  He tried to line up some words in Portuguese, but nothing would come. He was struggling to remember anything. He started to panic. “Am I okay?” he asked in English.

  His voice was distant and unfamiliar. There was pain where previously there had been a dull ache around his jaw. And it felt like he was speaking with a mouthful of cotton wool laced with needles.

  He could see out of both eyes and he was breathing. He was grateful for that. But what he really wanted to know was what was left of his face.