City of Brick and Shadow

by Tim Wirkus

  “It’s closed,” said Elder Schwartz.

  “Clearly,” said Elder Toronto. He hitched up his pants and yawned, his exhaustion no longer concealable. “Well.” He yawned again. “I’m out of ideas for now.” He rubbed his eyes. “Maybe I just need some rest.”

  And with that, to Elder Schwartz’s pleasant surprise, they walked home to their apartment.

  “I’m going straight to bed,” he said as Elder Toronto unlocked their front gate.

  The two missionaries walked down the tiled staircase, Elder Schwartz already loosening his tie and undoing the top button of his shirt. Elder Toronto unlocked the door of their dark downstairs apartment and they stepped inside.

  “Don’t turn on the light,” said a voice from the darkness. “I have a gun. I want you to close the door behind you, and then lie on the ground, face-down, with your hands behind your heads. If you do what I say, you won’t get hurt.”

  “Okay,” said Elder Toronto, and the two missionaries lay down on the ground.

  CHAPTER 13

  The owner of the voice turned on the light and Elder Schwartz twisted his head to look up. The owner of the lanchonete stood over him aiming a Beretta 92 at his head. She wore a crisp, gray skirt and a sleeveless, black blouse. She had a large, red handbag slung over her shoulder.

  “Keep your face down,” she said when she saw him looking up at her. She leaned over and pressed the barrel of the gun against his skull. Elder Schwartz lost control of his bladder. The woman crouched down, gun still pressed to the trembling missionary’s head, and frisked him. She found, apparently, nothing of interest, and moved her attentions, and her gun, to Elder Toronto. She reached into his pocket and removed Galvão’s black notebook. She opened the book with her free hand, pausing to read the small, neat handwriting at the front of the book. She flipped to the back and pulled the photograph from its paper compartment with her thumb. She set the notebook on Elder Toronto’s back and unfolded the photograph. She looked at it, and then slipped it back into its paper compartment.

  “All right,” said the owner of the lanchonete. “I want you boys to sit up. Slowly.”

  The two elders maneuvered their bodies into a sitting position. In an attempt to hide the dark stain at the front of his pants, Elder Schwartz pulled his knees up to his chest. A puddle remained on the floor where he had been lying, and the sharp smell of urine began to fill the room.

  “Where did you get this notebook?” said the woman.

  “I bought it from a stationery store,” said Elder Toronto. “It’s just something I keep track of addresses in.”

  “No,” said the woman, stepping forward and leveling the gun at Elder Toronto’s head. “It belonged to the man in the brown suit. Tell me how you got it.”

  “Who are you?” said Elder Toronto.

  “You’re really not in a position to ask questions,” said the woman, smoothing her skirt with her free hand. She spoke in the same measured, professional tone that she had used in the lanchonete and, overall, seemed very comfortable holding a gun.

  “Please,” said Elder Schwartz, breaking into the conversation, “don’t shoot us.”

  “What did he say?” said the woman to Elder Toronto.

  “He asked you not to shoot us,” said Elder Toronto, sounding almost bored.

  “Then tell me where you got the notebook,” she said.

  “How do I know you won’t just shoot us once we’ve told you what you want to know?” said Elder Toronto.

  “That’s not how I do business,” said the woman. “But if you don’t tell me, I will shoot you both. I can promise you that.”

  A whimper interrupted the conversation. Elder Schwartz had started crying and was attempting, unsuccessfully, to keep his sobs inaudible. When he saw the other two looking at him, he turned away, wiping at his tear-stained face. The woman took a step back, gun still aimed at Elder Toronto’s head.

  Elder Toronto said, “He’s had a long day.”

  The woman looked back at Elder Toronto.

  “I’m not sure why both of you aren’t crying,” she said. “Who, exactly, do you think you are?”

  “I’d say I’m someone who wants to help Marco Aurélio,” said Elder Toronto. “I’d also say that I’m someone who doesn’t respond well to threats.”

  The woman rolled her eyes. She looked down at the puddle of urine and then at Elder Schwartz. She nodded at the gun and said, “If I put this down for a minute, can we talk like civilized people?”

  Elder Toronto said that it seemed a little late for polite conversation. She shrugged.

  “A woman has to take precautions,” she said. “I’m not going to apologize for that.”

  “You can put the gun away if you want to,” said Elder Toronto.

  “I don’t want to unless I have your word as missionaries that you’re not going to try anything funny.”

  Elder Toronto looked at Elder Schwartz, who nodded.

  “As long as things stay civilized, we’re not going to cause you any trouble,” said Elder Toronto.

  “Good,” said the woman.

  She pulled the chair out from Elder Schwartz’s desk and sat down in it. She set the Beretta on the desktop and rested her hand within grabbing distance of it.

  “I’m not your enemy,” said the owner of the lanchonete.

  “Okay,” said Elder Toronto. He scooted back and leaned against the wall. “Who are you then?”

  “That’s not important,” said the woman, “I just want to know how you got that notebook.”

  Elder Toronto stretched out his legs.

  “Why should we tell you anything?” he said.

  “Because we both want to help Marco Aurélio,” she said. “And because I still have a gun.”

  “How did you find our house?” said Elder Toronto.

  “Don’t change the subject,” she said.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’d really like to know.”

  “How did you get this notebook?”

  “How did you find our house?”

  “I’m the one asking questions,” said the woman.

  Elder Toronto shrugged and looked away. The woman smiled.

  “You want to know how I found your house?” she said. “I asked, ‘Where do the two American kids who dress like bus drivers live?’ and everyone pointed me here.”

  Elder Toronto looked back at her.

  “If you think you’re well-hidden here, or safe from whoever Aurélio’s mixed up with, you’re wrong,” she said. “You’re a couple of sitting ducks.”

  Elder Toronto didn’t respond. Instead, he picked at a loose thread in his tie, his face like a sulking turtle’s. Elder Schwartz sniffled quietly.

  “Listen,” said the woman. “I’m not the bad guy in this situation. I want to help Aurélio, if I can. I just need to know what you two know.”

  Elder Toronto pulled the thread in his tie between his fingers until it snapped.

  “What’s your name?” he said, looking back up at her.

  “Sílvia,” she said.

  “Is that true?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How do you know Marco Aurélio?” he said.

  “I’ll tell you that once you tell me what I want to know.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise,” she said.

  Elder Toronto looked at Elder Schwartz, who had managed to stop crying.

  “You can tell her if you want,” he said, wiping his nose with his handkerchief.

  “Okay,” said Elder Toronto, after a considered pause. “Here’s what we know.”

  He told her about Elder Schwartz’s sighting of Marco Aurélio at the street market, about Ulisses Galvão’s visit to the church meeting, about their discovery of Galvão’s murdered body, and their subsequent encounter with the police. He told her about what he had deciphered from the notebook, about their visit with Grillo and what they learned there.

  “And that’s about it,” he said.

 
; Sílvia said nothing.

  “So?” said Elder Toronto.

  “You’re sure Galvão was dead?” she said.

  “His face was smashed in,” said Elder Toronto.

  Sílvia nodded.

  “Now, we need to figure out how to get to Marco Aurélio before he gets killed,” said Elder Toronto. “Can you help us with that?”

  “No,” said Sílvia. “If what you say is true, then Aurélio is already dead.”

  Elder Toronto shook his head.

  “I disagree,” he said. “I can’t get into all the reasons now, but I think there’s still time to find him.”

  “It would be nice to think that was true,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “He’s still alive.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Sílvia crossed her legs. For a minute, nobody spoke. The smell of urine permeated the room.

  “I told you what we know,” said Elder Toronto. “It’s your turn to tell us how you know Marco Aurélio.”

  She fingered the gun as she seemed to contemplate where to begin.

  “We were married for a while,” she said “when we were younger. Before either of us lived here. When he came into my lanchonete with you two, it was the first time I’d seen him since we’d split up.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Her fascination with criminals began, she told the missionaries, long before she met Marco Aurélio. If any single event could be pinpointed as the catalyst for this fascination, it would be when her grandmother suffered a debilitating stroke on Sílvia’s eighth birthday. Her grandmother wasn’t present at the party, having phoned earlier to explain that she had a terrible migraine, that it would be better if she just stayed home. The headache, as it later came out, had actually been a symptom of her stroke, and as Sílvia was blowing out the candles on her multitiered, fondant-wrapped cake, her father received a phone call that his mother had been hospitalized. Apologizing profusely to the guests at Sílvia’s party, he bustled his wife and daughter down to their armored town car and set out for the hospital.

  The stroke left her grandmother unable to live alone, and so it was decided that she would move in with Sílvia and her parents in their two-story penthouse at the top of the city’s most exclusive high rise, an arrangement that would have previously been unthinkable. Since being widowed in her early fifties, Grandma Eva had remained single, living alone and gaining a reputation throughout her social circle as a force to be reckoned with. She had served on the committees of countless charities, museums, and political causes. She had held a spot on the city council for twelve years running, and there had even been talk of a bid for the mayor’s office.

  Now, her own body had betrayed her. Where a kind of idealistic restlessness had defined her personality in the past, she was now—post-stroke—contentment personified, apparently happy with a life spent sitting in her son’s second living room, and beaming indiscriminately at whoever happened to enter the room. Both the house staff and Sílvia’s parents found this beatific grin so disconcerting that they took to stationing the old woman in front of the TV where she could direct her smiles to the people on the screen. And so she passed her days sitting in an overstuffed armchair watching telenovelas and true-crime programs.

  For the most part, Sílvia avoided her grandmother. They had never been close, and the added dimension of the old woman’s illness only rendered her more alien in Sílvia’s eyes. One day, however, while sitting in her bedroom playing with her toy horses, Sílvia told her nanny Lilian—a stocky, longsuffering woman who had cared for Sílvia since she was a baby—that she had to go to the bathroom, that she’d be right back. But instead of going to the bathroom, she crept, on a whim, upstairs to the second living room where her grandmother sat beaming in front of the TV. Her grandmother turned and smiled at her. Sílvia smiled back, cautiously, and then sat down cross-legged on the porcelain tile floor next to her grandmother’s chair.

  To say that Sílvia had led an insular existence to this point in her life would be an understatement. She spent much of her time playing alone, supervised by Lilian, in one of the many rooms available to her in the apartment. When she grew tired of the solitude, she enlisted Lilian as a playmate or a punching bag. Occasionally, children from the lower floors of the building were invited over to amuse her. If these other children balked at any of Sílvia’s demands, they were sent away.

  When Sílvia went outside, it was to a gated park about half a block away, where she and a handful of playmates—the children of other penthouse dwellers from around the city—interacted under the careful supervision of a cadre of brawny bodyguards, many of whom had been hired away from stellar careers in military and law enforcement.

  Her TV watching was similarly restricted to a narrow list of cartoons and children’s programs. Lilian diligently monitored Sílvia’s viewing habits, ensuring that she didn’t stray from the programs on the list, and so, sitting here on the floor next to her grandmother, what she saw on the TV came as a revelation. The images on the screen alternated between a man in a studio yelling out the details of the city’s most shocking crimes of the day, and footage of the crime scenes themselves, frantically narrated by the same man.

  “. . . TWO WOMEN BRUTALLY MURDERED AND A THIRD CRITICALLY WOUNDED IN A NAIL SALON IN ARAMBÚ,” blared the man in the studio. The show cut to footage of the salon where the two dead women on the floor were being examined by men in uniform. There was blood everywhere. One of the men in uniform waved his hand at the camera, and when it didn’t move, stood, and pushed the cameraman out of the salon.

  “. . . THE GUNMAN, APPARENTLY A FORMER BOYFRIEND OF ONE OF THE DEAD WOMEN, ENTERED THE SALON, GUN DRAWN, TO CONFRONT HER REGARDING HER NEW LOVER. THE WOMAN REFUSED TO LOOK AT THE GUNMAN AND HE OPENED FIRE, SHOOTING WILLY-NILLY UNTIL HIS GUN WAS EMPTY . . .”

  Outside the salon, two police officers loaded a man, presumably the gunman, into the back of a squad car. He was a paunchy, middle-aged man dressed in shorts and a soccer jersey. The surrounding street was like nothing Sílvia had ever seen—dusty brick houses piled one on top of the other; cracked, potholed asphalt; dirty, sullen-looking children lurking at the edges of the police tape. The cameraman moved in close to the squad car, and the gunman looked out the window, directly at the camera.

  “. . . FIRED TEN SHOTS INTO THE BODY OF HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND, YELLING ALL THE WHILE . . .”

  The man in the car didn’t turn away from the gaze of the camera.

  “Why did he do that?” said Sílvia.

  Grandma Eva beamed down at her.

  “He’s a criminal,” she said, “and criminals commit crimes.”

  Sílvia nodded and turned her attention back to the TV. The program transitioned from there to a rape/murder committed in Parque das Palmas, another of the city’s neighborhoods, then to a bank robbery gone wrong in the city’s financial district, then to a car bombing in Vila Barbosa.

  “Come here,” said Grandma Eva when the program cut to a commercial break. She pointed to a spot on the floor just in front of her armchair.

  Sílvia obliged, and stood in front of her grandmother. The old woman smiled invitingly.

  “Here,” said Grandma Eva, beckoning.

  Sílvia took a step closer. Leaning forward, Grandma Eva reached out and held Sílvia’s face in her papery hands. She drew her granddaughter closer. Her watery eyes stared into Sílvia’s. Her perpetual smile disappeared. Dismay registered on her face. Sílvia would have stepped back if her head wasn’t in her grandmother’s grasp.

  Still holding her granddaughter’s face, Grandma Eva said, “Would you like to know something?”

  Nervous but intrigued, Sílvia nodded.

  “Those people on TV,” said Grandma Eva in her wavering voice, “you’re no better than they are. Let me be clear—I’m not telling you, Sílvia, that everyone in the world is good on the inside or that everyone is a little bit guilty. No. That’s not what I mean. Some of us, such as myself, your father, your mother, are decent people
. Good people. On the inside. These people on the TV? They’re criminals. And I look at you—I truly look at you—and I can see that you’re no better than they are. In your heart, is what I mean. You have a criminal heart, Sílvia.”

  Grandma Eva removed her hands from her granddaughter’s face, eyes narrowed. Sílvia, unsure how to respond, nodded and sat back down. The TV program resumed, and with it, Grandma Eva’s smile. After a minute, Sílvia heard footsteps coming up the stairs and spun around. Lilian emerged into the second living room and saw what was on the TV.

  “This is not for young ladies,” she said, leading Sílvia out of the room by the arm. “You’re not to watch those programs.”

  In spite of her nanny’s prohibitions, Sílvia slipped into the living room at every opportunity to watch the crime show with her grandmother. It wasn’t that she enjoyed watching it, at least not in the same way she might enjoy eating a Popsicle or spending a day at the beach. In fact, the show usually left Sílvia’s head slightly dizzy, her palms sweaty. Still, she felt compelled to watch, compelled to confront the expanded view of reality that she had encountered. She thought often about what her grandmother had told her, and was convinced that if she kept watching the crime TV shows, her grandmother’s statement might someday make sense to her.

  Lilian became increasingly exasperated with Sílvia’s disobedience, never letting her young charge out of her sight. Somehow, Sílvia still found ways to catch fleeting segments of the program. Finally, at Lilian’s request, both the grandmother and the television were permanently relocated to a previously unused room with a locking door, effectively barring Sílvia from the crime program. Her grandmother spent her days stationed alone in that room for another year, until her health deteriorated further and she passed away. The TV was given away to charity.

  Sílvia’s interest in crime, however, only increased. She took to waking up early in the morning before anyone else was out of bed, and bringing in the newspaper from the front doormat. She sat at the long, granite dining table skimming the thin, gray pages of the paper for its reports on crime in the city—a shootout with police in the Praça do Imperador, a series of carjackings in Aranté, a murder/suicide in Vila Barbosa. She read the articles carefully, committing to memory which neighborhood the crime took place in, what methods were employed in its committing, what suspects were being questioned, which detectives were assigned to the case. Then when she was done reading, she carefully refolded the newspaper, returned it to the front mat, and went back to bed. Reading about these crimes in the newspaper left her feeling nervous and slightly ill. But the thought of not knowing about these things, of not trying to understand them, left her feeling even more uneasy. At the heart of her studies lay the initial question she had asked of the crime show—who were these people who committed these crimes? The question continued to trouble her, her grandmother’s pronouncement gaining greater purchase in her young psyche.