City of God

by Paulo Lins

  ‘But …’

  ‘But, my arse!’

  They followed Beelzebub’s orders. The detective and sergeant looked at one another again and agreed everything without speaking a word. The first shot from the sergeant’s .45-calibre pistol went through Pelé’s left hand and lodged itself in his neck. The spray of bullets from Beelzebub’s machine gun tore into Shorty’s body. A small group of people tried to help them, but Beelzebub stopped them with another burst of machine-gun fire, this time into the air. He walked over to the bodies and put them out of their misery.

  Shorty had been born with jaundice in the scrublands of Pernambuco State. By the time he was five he had suffered from mumps, dehydration, chickenpox, tuberculosis and so many other illnesses that every time he rolled his eyes, fell into a cold sweat and shivered for hours and hours under the hot sun and blankets brought quickly by the neighbours, family members would begin lighting candles and placing them in his hands so he’d have light if he died, seeing as the creature was a pagan. Medicine had given up on him when he was still in his mother’s belly, but he hadn’t succumbed to the fate of dying as a foetus. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro at the age of twelve with only his mother, as his father had been murdered on the orders of a colonel he had been working for during the run up to an election for mayor and city councillors. People said he had publicly announced his vote for the colonel’s adversary. Shorty and his mother begged for years in the streets of downtown Rio until she was swept away in a flood in Bandeira Square, where she and other beggars had been sleeping. The boy never forgot the scene – his mother was sucked through a manhole while he resisted the tug of the water by clinging to a post.

  As life went on, Shorty worked as a shoeshiner, pushed trolleys in the street markets, sold peanuts, pedalled porn magazines on trains, washed rich bastards’ cars and fucked faggots up the arse in the Red Light District to rustle up some dough. This last employment enabled him to rent a shack in the favela Morro da Viúva. He and the kids from the favela got together to mug old ladies walking through Saens Peña Square. He got his first revolver with the help of a homosexual in the Red Light District with whom he had had sex for two years. When he heard in a bar in the favela that whoever went to Mario Filho Stadium would be given a bowl of soup at mealtimes as well as a home of their own, he didn’t waste time: he joined the 1966 flood victims and everything was as he had imagined. It was at the football stadium that he had made friends with Pelé, his trusty sidekick.

  Pelé was born in the favela of Borel. His father, who claimed to be the grandson of slaves, had been a strong, handsome man who worked as a refuse collector and drank only at weekends. On weekdays he preferred to have a little puff on the slopes of the favela, where he was always respected by wide-boys and gangsters. A sambista with Unidos da Tijuca and a right back with Evereste, a second division team, Cibalena had always been chased by the women in his samba school, and in the favela, and the female supporters of his football team. He used to brag among friends that he had children he didn’t even know, but it was the women’s fault, because they got pregnant on purpose to get him by the balls forever.

  Pelé had been a victim of this underhandedness. He suffered when his mother sent him to look for his father, who would refuse to see him and claimed not to know him. He had been brought up by his mother alone – his maternal grandfather had thrown her out when she got pregnant. The woman whose house she cleaned had done the same. Desperate, she turned to prostitution, even before giving birth. She had friends who were prostitutes, and it was easy to get started in the profession. She then turned to crime, and began stealing from rich housewives in the Barra da Tijuca street markets. As time went on, she began to run drugs and arms for the gangsters in the favela, hiding cocaine and marijuana in her vagina to sell in Rio’s prisons. She slept with the chiefs so she could traffic in the prisons. Pelé had never been to school. He was still a boy when he started stealing food at the markets and picking pockets in the city centre. When he understood that his mother was a prostitute, he never spoke to her again. If he ever ran into those men with their sweets, sinister pats on the head and tomfoolery to keep him quiet, who locked themselves and his mother in the room in the house in the Red Light District where he’d spent his days, he’d kill them. He went to Mario Filho Stadium so he’d be given a house because he’d already been condemned to death in the favela. By the age of fifteen he was a fully fledged gangster. He’d only give up the life when he hit the jackpot.

  His mother didn’t go to his funeral; she had caught a disease that the doctors were unable to diagnose and died a week after her son.

  His maternal grandfather had the compassion to organise the funeral, but at the wake said that the brute had fallen into a life of crime out of sheer shamelessness. He knew several people who had been through worse things and were decent folk.

  Their first blow came down on the left ear, then they laid into the entire body. The head was perforated by blows from a stick with a nail in the end. The left eye popped out. The four limbs were broken in several places. They didn’t stop until they were certain their wild fugitive was dying. A woman begged them to have mercy. They ignored her. They placed the body in a plastic bag, crossed the bridge near The Flats, went down Miracle Street and turned into the first alley.

  ‘The bastard’s movin’,’ said the boy carrying it.

  They threw the bag on the ground and started beating it again mercilessly. The definitive blow, which smashed its head in, came with the help of a paving stone. They continued weaving their way through the alleys until they reached the gate of a house on Middle Street:

  ‘Joe Miaow! Joe Miaow!’ shouted Rocket.

  Joe Miaow came quickly with the money. He had been waiting anxiously for the delivery, as he still had to pull off its tail and head and chop the meat into cubes, season and skewer it. As well as selling barbecued cat in the Red Light District, Joe Miaow sold lemon cocktails, Vaseline, porno magazines and Japanese ointment. After they’d been paid, the boys went to the travelling fair next to the Leão supermarket.

  Hammer expertly drove the Opala they had stolen just minutes before when holding up a timber yard on Geremário Dantas Street. Everything had gone just fine, but they had been unlucky enough to pass the Civil Police van on their way back to City of God. Beelzebub recognised Hellraiser in the back seat. The police fired at them, gaining ground on curves and losing ground on straight stretches. They went down Gabinal Road at seventy-five miles an hour until they reached Motorway Eleven. Squirt told Hammer to take the road to the speedway. They managed to put a good distance between themselves and the police. Yelling at the top of their lungs they decided to head for Bandeirantes Motorway instead of following Hellraiser’s suggestion to dump the car and take off into the bush. They arrived at the estate through New World and had time to cross the river.

  The detectives had radioed for help. When they arrived at the place where the car had been dumped, they searched it and the nearby houses. Boss of Us All hadn’t been on duty, but when he saw the police go past, he joined the chase, swapping his revolver for his partner’s machine gun. He saw the three cross Middle Street. Squirt led the way with a bag of money tied to his right arm. Boss of Us All went around the block to surprise them and poked half his face around the corner. Squirt saw him, fired, and jumped a wall. Hammer and Hellraiser followed. Boss of Us All went after them, enjoying the situation. The cackling of the machine gun riddled walls with holes, frightening the sparrows and every human being who saw or heard the chase.

  Hellraiser and Hammer crossed Main Street and hid in The Plots. Squirt took a side street and almost got shot crossing Middle Street. He passed through the Rec, behind the Leão supermarket, crossed Jaquinha Square, turned into the street where the Augusto Magne Municipal School was and stopped on the corner, where he crouched down, expecting his pursuer to come that way. He’d send him off to meet his maker. He thought it odd that the policeman was taking so long and figured he was worn out.
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br />   Contrary to what the gangster imagined, Boss of Us All had taken the same path as him. Squirt didn’t notice him coming up behind him with his machine gun aimed. Boss of Us All could have fired – he wouldn’t miss a stationary target from that distance – but he wanted him alive so he could get him to talk. Squirt thought the policeman had stopped chasing him and decided to hide out at Lúcia Maracanã’s place, but before he could get up, he felt the cold barrel of the machine gun against his neck:

  ‘Drop the shooter and hit the ground!’

  Squirt dropped his gun on the ground and snapped back:

  ‘No fuckin’ way am I lyin’ down! If you wanna kill me, it’ll have to be standin’!’

  In a quick move, Boss of Us All grabbed his gun, thumped him with the butt, handcuffed him and continued to beat him.

  ‘Go ahead and kill me! Kill me!’ yelled Squirt.

  ‘I’m not gonna kill you, man. You’re my pal. You brought me a shooter and all this dough.’

  Boss of Us All’s irony stung Squirt like the dozens of eyes glued to him, watching Boss of Us All’s trajectory of blows as he hauled him Up Top. In the vicinity of the Bonfim, Squirt decided to black out. When he threw himself to the ground, he realised the handcuffs weren’t tight enough. If Boss of Us All gave him half a chance, Squirt might be able to free himself. Boss of Us All didn’t quite believe his fainting. He started kicking him. The other police officers arrived and joined in. An old man shouted:

  ‘You’re going to kill the boy. He might have done whatever he’s done, but he’s still human!’

  ‘Hey, shut your mouth old boy. This thing ain’t human – this here’s an open sewer, a rabid dog!’ answered Boss of Us All.

  The Civil Police didn’t stay in the estate. They received word via radio that a Fifth Sector patrol car was involved in a shootout in Vila Sapê and headed off in that direction.

  Hellraiser and Hammer were still hiding out in The Plots. Night Owl, Pipsqueak, Sparrow, Carrots and Slick were strolling along the edge of the right branch of the river. They were on their way back from São Carlos with a load of cocaine for Madalena. From afar Slick noticed something abnormal was happening on Middle Street. He warned the others. They backtracked. Boss of Us All ordered the other policemen to go after the rest of the gangsters. Squirt was still pretending to be unconscious. Boss of Us All stopped thumping him. He was alarmed by the crowd around him; someone could suddenly take a pop at him in the middle of all that confusion.

  ‘Hey, I don’t want no audience!’ he roared.

  No one moved an inch. Some even hissed at him. He pointed his machine gun at the sky and pulled the trigger, but it didn’t fire a single shot. Nervously he examined his weapon and realised he was out of ammunition. The crowd noticed and started chanting:

  ‘He’s out of bullets! He’s out of bullets! He’s out of bullets!’

  Squirt half-opened his left eye, saw the policeman’s distress, and waited for him to move into a position where he could get him with a sweep kick. Boss of Us All was slow to fall to the ground and see Squirt turning into the first alley.

  The crowd hissed at the policeman; he was always punching whoever he felt like in the mouth, framing people, and feeling up women with the excuse that he was frisking them. Everyone knew that a few days earlier he had rummaged through a labourer’s lunchbox with the barrel of his gun, looking for marijuana. Angry at the policeman’s actions, the man had thrown away the food and been punched and kicked for disrespecting authority.

  The pain Squirt felt did not stop him crossing the river. He hurt his hands freeing himself from the handcuffs, then went to the haunted fig tree and sat under it. His heart was racing. The sweat on his face and the river water stung the wounds on his body and his hatred was visible in his shaking and the expression on his face. His sight faltered. He was having difficulty breathing, the world was spinning fast, then he blacked out for real.

  Boss of Us All headed back to the police station. The only reason he wasn’t more upset was that he’d taken the money from the hold-up. The agony of only remembering that Squirt’s gun was in his waistband when he was already out of reach throbbed along with his heartbeat. He walked down Middle Street alone, firing the gun to frighten off people who stared at him. When he turned into the street that ran along the right branch of the river, an old woman threw herself at him, holding her grandson’s dead body.

  ‘Murderer, murderer!’

  The word was a sharp pain in his ears. It had been a stray bullet from Officer Jurandy’s gun right at the beginning of the chase. A few people started coming back into the street. Instead of hissing, they opted for silence. Every silence is a sentence to be served, a darkness to be crossed. Boss of Us All started shouting at the top of his voice that it wasn’t him. He fired another shot to make the crowd back off. No one moved. The silence exploded again. For Boss of Us All their looks were the echoes of a horror he imagined to be the greatest of all. The grandmother, holding the body of the five-year-old boy, trailed after him as if to say, ‘Here, take him, now he’s yours’. Boss of Us All tried to shake her off by walking back and forth. Blood spurted from the boy’s neck, formed arabesques on the ground and splattered onto the old woman’s feet. It wasn’t long before a van came to take the police officer out of that hell. As the van door banged shut the crowd hissed and threw stones.

  The old woman saw everything spinning, felt her pores slowly opening. The ground slowly vanished from beneath her feet. She wanted to speak, cry, run into the past and snatch Bigolinha off the street. Her blood gathered speed in the straights of her veins, and built up at the curves. Sometimes it spurted from her mouth, or escaped from her anus. She could no longer see a thing; everything had become a light that burned in the flash of an instant. When the light subsided, the two bodies were covered with a white sheet and candles were lit.

  The evening was just getting under way when Hellraiser and Hammer asked customers at the Bonfim what had become of Squirt. They fell about laughing when they heard how their friend had rid himself of Boss of Us All in such a spectacular manner. Now all they needed to find out was whether Squirt had managed to hide the money and where he was at that moment. They decided to comb the estate, but didn’t find him.

  Over on The Other Side of the River, Squirt was still sleeping on the exposed roots of the haunted fig tree. At midnight everything in the world stopped. The silence of things became overstated. Red steam came off the wounds made by Boss of Us All. Everything was very dark. Now the haunted fig tree swayed in its own private wind. The pain in his body disappeared, along with everything in the universe. Only the fig tree swayed, illuminated by a light that came up its trunk from the very ground. Above its leaves hovered a blond man with nervous blue eyes, staring straight into Squirt’s eyes. In complete silence, he transmitted his thoughts to Squirt, telling him everything he wanted to know, and Squirt laughed, cried, was enchanted and agreed.

  The den set up by Silva at The Flats was already known by the addicts in the estate and neighbouring areas, especially because the weed was sold on Gabinal Road, a busy place that was easy to get to. The police would hardly have suspected that someone would have the nerve to deal there. The den was only discovered by the police because Boss of Us All had busted two rich kids from Freguesia, who told the police every last detail about how it worked.

  Cosme and Silva ran the shop in that part of City of God. They took turns selling, but they went to fetch their merchandise, packaged it and managed sales together. None of the other criminals in The Flats dealt and they only rarely helped with sales or packaging. Silva had convinced Cosme to stop doing hold-ups and start dealing, arguing that the risks of the business were lower and the number of addicts had taken a fantastic upward turn.

  ‘It’s in the papers every day; only the blind can’t see it! It’s the brothel owners, rock singers and dealers that’re making money, man!’

  As the days passed, Cosme became convinced that his friend was right. He bought furnit
ure, tiled the kitchen and bathroom, had his living room refloored, and he always had money on him. The den’s turnover was astonishing; their clientele couldn’t have grown any more. But they both knew that sooner or later the den would be discovered by the police. For this reason, every Saturday – when the turnover was the highest – they asked Flip Flop, then ten years of age, to fly a kite and make it dip to the left if the police suddenly showed up.

  One Saturday, Boss of Us All was heading towards The Flats. As usual, he went ahead of the other police officers, leading the operation, checking out things he saw as he moved quickly along. This time he wasn’t thinking about money – if he busted anyone he’d press charges. And if the bastard opened his mouth to say something, he’d pump his face full of lead. He appealed to his pombagira for help as he crossed the tiny bridge over the left branch of the river.

  Flip-Flop dipped his kite and, as it was urgent, gave his friends a warning whistle. Silva and Cosme had time to put out the joint they were smoking and hide their dope under the planks of wood next to the wall of the building where they dealt. Boss of Us All saw what they were doing and hung back, together with the officers in uniform. The dealers could make a dash for Gardênia Azul or head down Gabinal Road, jump the wall of the country manor and hide out in the bush. They decided on the latter.

  Acerola had bought two bundles of weed minutes before Boss of Us All showed up. He saw the police running and thought about making a dash for it, but there wasn’t enough time. His only alternative was to throw the dope into the garden of a building. The police passed by without noticing his nervous face.

  In the grounds of the manor, Cosme and Silva were attacked by two guard dogs. They had to kill the senseless beasts. The two minutes they spent doing this put them within firing range. They zigzagged between the trees, regaining the ground they had lost. They were still being followed when they reached the guava trees. They had to get through them and follow the trail to Quintanilha. Boss of Us All was panting heavily. His stamina was that of a middle-aged man and he was unable to keep up with the twenty-somethings running from him. The other police officers also gave up.