by A. D. Flint
Vilson ate Jake’s meals with a strange mixture of gusto and resentment, like a last supper on death row. And Jake had had to stop him washing himself under the outside tap. He wouldn’t wear any of the clothes Jake offered, stubbornly sticking to his favela uniform of ragged shorts and faded Flamengo AFC shirt. He had found a big tablet of soap the colour of earwax under the kitchen sink and had taken to washing his outfit by hand.
The ageing landlady lived in one of the apartments on the other side of the house. She had spotted Vilson washing outside on his first day and was straight on Jake’s case. “I don’t know what you’re getting up to in there but he has to go,” she had said.
“He’s only staying for a few days,” Jake had assured her.
“Where’s he sleeping?”
“There.” Jake had opened the door wider to show her the sheets on the couch.
“I know where he’s from, what he is.”
This place was less of a drain on his very finite resources than the budget hotel he had started out in, but his initial joy at finding somewhere so close to the beach had been chipped away over the following two days of traipsing round the city, getting the rental papers verified, stamped and signed and then getting them re-verified, counter-stamped and countersigned. Brazil did a good line in tortuous bureaucracy.
He didn’t want to go through that again. This was his home. Something needed to happen.
He turned the TV off again when the novela ended. “Where are we now? I mean, I never went in for that miracle-and-fate garbage, that’s not why I got involved…”
Vilson got up while Jake was still talking and went through to the kitchen. Jake followed to find him picking a papaya from the fruit bowl.
“I thought that would make us straight,” Jake continued, “but you’re acting like I’ve done something wrong.”
Vilson ignored him, rattling through the drawers for a knife.
“I asked you a question.”
Vilson grabbed a paring knife, turning it on Jake. “Fate wasn’t served on the beach.”
Jake looked at the small knife. The handle and blade were worn but it was sharp. Jake had sharpened it. Was this for real? The kid hadn’t had it in him on the beach that night, and he doubted he had it in him now. Jake stood his ground, but he was ready. Adrenaline, fear. And then the anger. The dogs wanted to go. “Go on, do it,” he said.
Vilson’s arm was tensed, shaking with effort. He was staring at the knife, like he was willing it to do something. His eyes were shining. Fear and anger and frustration. Jake could see all of it swimming around in there.
Vilson let out a big breath and his arm dropped. Beaten. He turned to the sink, his head dropping as he stared into it, before picking up the papaya, slicing the soft skin from the fruit with shaking hands.
“What did you mean about fate?” Jake said, catching the tension in his own voice.
“Nothing, it doesn’t matter.”
Jake wanted to understand what was going on with this kid, but patience didn’t come naturally. He touched the puckered scars on his face; it was becoming a habit. Yes, the bullet had saved him but it had also half killed him. And Jake had then climbed the hill to drag this cryptic little mute off it. He deserved at least a thank you. Or something other than this.
There wasn’t going to be any buddy movie here. He needed to move this kid on. “Do you have anyone you can go to?”
“I’m going to find my mother.”
“She doesn’t live in the favela?”
“She had to go away when I was a child. I never saw her again.”
The hairs lifted on Jake’s neck.
That changed everything.
He instantly saw a way to erase things that were stuck on him as permanently as the scars. Ugly, hidden scars he had carried his whole life that had festered and suppurated. He couldn’t bring himself to accept the intervention of a higher power, but something had opened up, something he could really hit for.
*
Marinho
Nogueira slammed his fist on his heavy desk, making the stuff on it shudder. “Just one simple thing,” he shouted at Marinho. “That’s all I asked. Get it done. And now I have this shitstorm to deal with.”
The door to the small office was closed but everyone outside would have heard.
Marinho knew it was deliberate and now Nogueira breathed, composing himself, his face turning to stone. This was when he was most dangerous. He spoke quietly now. “I would shoot you right here, right now, if I didn’t need dead gangsters more than I need dead cops.”
He still had the face on a few minutes later when Marinho followed him through to the cramped room he had chosen for the press conference. Nogueira settled himself behind the long table with a fan sitting on it that blew cool air into his face. Marinho had to stand to one side. Journalists were still taking up the rows of plastic chairs and jockeying for position in the spaces at the sides and back.
“Close the door, cabo,” he instructed Marinho once they had all crowded in.
The atmosphere was close. Just how Nogueira wanted it, Marinho realised. Everyone bar Nogueira was hot and fractious, the journalists squabbling with one another and complaining about the lack of air-con and mobile-phone signal.
“This press conference started five minutes ago.” Nogueira quietened the room with that. “You have ten minutes left.”
One of the journalists started to protest. He dried up the instant Nogueira flicked his eyes over to him. There was only the sound of journalists fiddling with notepads and recording equipment now. They preferred softer prey.
Nogueira hadn’t said it in his rant back in the office, but Marinho was guessing he had called the press conference ahead of having his hand forced by the Commissioner. Nogueira would want to take control before the fallout from Anjo’s star turn on the TV news became a runaway train. Marinho had met the Commissioner a couple of times in Nogueira’s company and it was clear that he was intimidated by Nogueira. A bureaucrat who just wanted his take and to be left alone, he didn’t bother Nogueira if he could help it. But he was the type of guy that would swing whichever way the wind blew him, and this thing was becoming a stir that was too much to ignore.
A journalist cleared his throat, a new member of the pack. “Is the police force now so inept that it has lost the right to protect the city? Or is there something more sinister at the heart of this – corruption perhaps?” He wanted to make a mark, but his voice had a slight crack.
Nogueira fixed him with a stare. “I’m guessing you had the benefit of a good education; you should be ashamed that you’ve wasted it.”
“It’s a valid question.”
“It’s soft, liberal stupidity.” His eyes and face were hard, impenetrable. Immovable.
The journalist reddened and a few others chuckled. If they could smell blood it wasn’t on the other side of the table.
When more questions came, they were watered down, easily dealt with by Nogueira. Marinho looked around the room impassively, the sweat pouring from him as it was from all the journalists. Nogueira was bossing this thing and his audience knew it.
A journalist put up his hand, determined to get some kind of score, to restore a little professional pride if nothing else. “Why does no one know what happened to the boy that you arrested that night?”
Nogueira didn’t miss a beat. “I can only tell you what we know. We took him to a hospital when it was clear that his injuries were serious. We are still trying to find out what happened to him after that, but it could be that a criminal gang targeted him. We think he might have been involved in a feud.” He looked at the sweating faces in front of him and at his watch. “Time’s up, folks.”
“Captain Nogueira.” It was a female voice tucked away in the corner of the room. Marinho’s stomach lurched. He had somehow missed her coming in.
“I don’t know if you remember me?” Eliane continued evenly to Nogueira. “I know what happened that night. You murdered the boy.”
&n
bsp; Chapter 16
Vilson
That afternoon, Vilson was perched on a little wooden stool in Jake’s sitting room. He was staring at nothing in particular on the TV in the hope that the lawyer would do the same and stop talking at him. It wasn’t really working. She had told him that she had come straight from some press conference. It was all about the fight for him and the fight to get justice for Babão she had said, and then she had gone on to batter him for the last hour. “What do you remember? Tell me again. I need every tiny detail. It might not seem important but it could be vital. Tell me one more time. There might be something you missed.”
What did it matter? What could she do? “We have to believe that the system can be fixed,” she kept saying. “If we don’t, we’ll never get away from the corruption and injustice. It can only change from the top down and that’s where we must put the pressure. It has to be done the right way.” On and on she went.
It seemed like she actually believed what she was saying. A comfortable bed and a safely locked door probably made it easier to believe. Vilson carried on staring at the TV without watching. He wasn’t going to be her pet project. Or the gringo’s.
The gringo, the crazy goddamned gringo. Vilson had meant to kill him. He knew that he had never had killing in him, but this was to rebalance fate. It was the gringo who should have died on the beach, not Babão. The balance had to be restored to clear the path for Vilson to find his mother. He was sure of it. He had to kill the gringo. Next time he would not fail. He must not let another chance in life get away from him, like so many others had. His body twitched. He wasn’t sleeping at night.
A buzzer went by the door. Someone was at the metal entrance gate.
Eliane came from the kitchen. “I’ll get it.”
Vilson hadn’t moved.
She went out the front door and across the courtyard to open the gate.
The young cop came in behind Eliane, out of uniform. That didn’t make him any better. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Vilson hadn’t figured his angle yet, but he had to have one. Everybody wanted something.
Eliane went to the kitchen. “Coffee?” she asked over her shoulder.
Marinho closed the front door behind him and leaned against it. Even without looking directly at him, Vilson could tell he was stewing. The cop didn’t even acknowledge him. “Coffee?” His voice was low, controlled, but the anger lit him up. “You thought my boss wasn’t angry enough before? Is that why you crashed his press conference?”
Eliane came back with a Thermos of coffee, sugar and three small cups with saucers and spoons on a tray. She placed it on the cheap coffee table.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she replied. “I thought it would be less risky if your surprise was genuine.”
“It was definitely that all right.”
“And I wanted to try to catch him out in front of those journalists.”
“And how did that one work out?”
“Not great. It doesn’t feel like we’re any further on.”
“Apart from making him angry enough to want to bury you.”
“He can’t come for me. I made sure that all those journalists knew my name and why I was there. Although that’s getting me into trouble at work.”
“Your job is the least of your worries, believe me,” said Marinho. “He’s got a million ways to get to you. You better be careful everywhere you go now, in everything you do. Before you were just an annoyance – a fly in his beer – now you’re in his way. Trust me, he doesn’t allow people to stand in his way.”
Marinho shook his head in frustration and for the first time looked at Vilson in his baggy shorts and football shirt. “You shouldn’t be dressed like that, not even in here. Neighbours passing, they can see, rumours get around, connections get made. Get the gringo to lend you some stuff.”
Vilson finally looked up from the TV. “I’m going to leave tonight.”
“No way,” Marinho said. “She’s stirred up a hornet’s nest. Someone catches you out on the streets and we’re all dead. By the way, where is the gringo?”
Vilson shrugged.
“You need to give me a bit more than that because I’m losing my patience here,” said Marinho.
“He took off. Said he needed to go away for a couple of days. Said something about family.”
“He went back to England?”
Vilson shrugged. “Didn’t say.”
“You knew about this?” Marinho asked Eliane.
She shook her head. She was also shocked. “He told me he didn’t have any family.”
“He’s split then,” said Marinho. “That’s it. It got too hot for him and he left us sinking in the shit. Selfish son of a bitch.”
Chapter 17
Jake
“You’re lucky to get one at such short notice,” the woman at the ticket office said to Jake.
Turning up at the Novo Rio central bus terminal in the city in the late afternoon with no idea of the schedules, it was a long wait for his bus. Low-lit grubby concrete and diesel fumes and uninterested queues for marathon journeys. Jake’s destination was a nineteen-hour ride away. The map on the wall by the ticket office showed it as no more than a finger’s width across the vast splayed hand of the country.
“Mum, look,” a small boy in a queue said, pointing at Jake in horror. “What happened to his face?”
The mother pulled the pointing hand down and told him off in a whisper. Jake smiled his crooked half smile. The kid was only saying what everyone else was thinking.
He wasn’t experiencing the head-spin and breathing-through-a-straw feeling amongst the milling queues in the enclosed space, but the aftershocks of the shooting were still rolling through him. People tried not to recoil when they saw his face but it was definitely a kind of buffer. It kept them at arm’s length. That wasn’t a bad thing.
Night had fallen by the time his bus finally nosed its smoke-spewing way into its designated bay. It looked long on mileage and a little frayed around the edges. And, like most things in Brazil, it was spotless. The driver stepped off the bus to check everyone on board before reversing it out of the parking bay, out of the station and away into the evening.
There was enough of a gap left in the drawn curtain for Jake to watch the roadsides from his aisle seat. Buildings and advertisements and road signs flickered past, the colour leached from them by the endless dull street lighting. The bus pulled through the night to the growl of engine and the whine of transmission.
Jake reclined his seat the few degrees it allowed. Whichever way he shifted and rearranged himself, his knees were still wedged against the seat in front. He couldn’t get comfortable, the air-con nozzle only creating a chilly flue in the musty hot fug. The other passengers looked comatose, many wearing sleep masks. They were used to these journeys, it seemed.
Broken roads bumped and shook him from snatches of sleep that seemed to last no more than a few seconds. His backside and legs cramped and twitched and ached. Right through the night. He was too tired to even switch on the overhead light to read. And then the uncertainty started to gnaw at him.
Dawn came, grey, bleeding through the thin curtain. He needed to relocate the feeling that had put him on the bus.
When Jake had told Eliane in the hospital that he had no family, it wasn’t the truth. He had had two families, and he had broken with both.
The arguments and fights between his mother and father were the only consistent thing in his childhood, until the day his father had walked out the door to go to the pub and never came back. And then Jake’s mother had turned her venom on him. She was probably a manic depressive, maybe schizophrenic, he didn’t really know because she would never go near a doctor who might tell her something was wrong with her head. What he did know, most definitely, was that she was a drinker – about the only thing she had in common with his father. And she was not a good drunk.
He could have grown into one of those saintly types that took on the burden of carer; he had been
through phases when he had tried. But his mother had never warmed to the role of grateful, bedridden invalid. He could never get anything right when she was in her bad places. Sometimes she would flip to exuberant affection, and he had craved those moments, but he also learned to distrust them because they were never more than a brief sunny spell. Anger and frustration grew up with him and he couldn’t stop fighting her. He became a shit of a kid. He became what she kept telling him he was.
He had wandered into an army recruitment office at eighteen on a whim, joining up to get away from home. An easy escape. A permanent way out. Forever in trouble at school, he had been heading for more out of it. The army had taken him in, saved him. The army was a predictable, solid family. Routine and order. Jake had baulked when he had first joined up, but it soon began to fill a gap that he’d never even realised was there. Joining as a squaddie, his CO told him he had potential and he was put forward for officer training within a few months.
When the cancer had come for his mother the army had given him leave, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted it. That wasn’t a great feeling and it was made worse by her genuine delight at seeing him. He experienced an unsettling reversal of his childhood, the warmth and affection prevailing over the moments of her lashing out when the pain consumed her wasting body. She told him she was at peace with herself, ready, but at the end she clung on for as long as she could in an unwinnable, grim wrestle with death. It was four weeks from diagnosis to the funeral.
“So fast,” his father had said, shaking his head. “It’s just you and me now, son. I want to make up for all those lost years.” He had barely been in touch in the last fifteen.
“What for?” Jake had asked. The man was a shambles at the wake, in tears for most of it, maudlin and drunk and falling over. But he had at least managed to say nice things about Jake’s mother, even if he hadn’t meant them.
