by Paulo Lins
‘I’d forgotten about it.’
‘Don’t look so down in the mouth, man. One of these days you can kill that Ari Rafael. You know Sting? He’s a really good guy. He only goes in for good jobs and he’s always ready to go for it. If you go up to him now and say: “Hey, wanna try for the jackpot?” he’ll be in right away.’
Pipsqueak looked seriously at Hellraiser, paced around in a circle in the tiny alley on Block Thirteen, looked around to make sure no one was coming, went over to the wall, unzipped his fly and took a leak. Hellraiser followed suit and explained with a smile:
‘When one Brazilian pisses, we all piss!’
Ignoring his friend’s joke, Pipsqueak said:
‘You know this money you wanna give me? Tell you what – gimme a shooter … gimme a shooter, a long-barrelled .38, and forget the money. And take me to see this Sting guy now. I wanna talk to him right away.’
They headed down Middle Street in a hurry, as Pipsqueak only walked, talked, ate, mugged and killed people in a hurry; he only slackened his pace when he had money. During their walk Up Top their silence went uninterrupted. Hellraiser, who thought Pipsqueak was stronger, more serious and more violent in his behaviour, whistled in front of his friend’s house as the clock struck noon that sunny Wednesday. Sting didn’t take long to ask them in. Before his visitors even had time to say why they were there, he said he needed to do a job.
‘Can two go?’
‘Yeah, but it’s like this: if you gotta kill, you gotta kill – there’s no gettin’ arrested! The joint’s got security, right? If we had one more partner … Where you from?’
‘This is Pipsqueak, the kid I was telling you about. He’s a good kid. He hasn’t been around here for a while, but some guys over in São Carlos’ve been givin’ him a hard time, and he’s back here with us again.’
‘So you’re Pipsqueak? Everyone talks about you. It’s a pleasure! Really nice to meet you! I’m just gonna take a leak, then I’ll give you the low-down.’
Pipsqueak’s expression was less gloomy now.
‘The place is over in Barra da Tijuca,’ continued Sting from inside the bathroom. ‘A really busy petrol station. I’ve already sussed it out. There’s a safe that the suckers stuff full of dough all day long. Then around six, two cars show up. One of them’s got two suckers in it and the other one’s got four. The first two don’t have nothin’ and the rest’ve all got shooters. They pick up the dough and piss off. We gotta round up the four, get the shooters off ’em, grab the dough, get in the car and drive back …’
‘Were you goin’ by yourself?’ asked Hellraiser.
‘I was if I didn’t get myself a partner! I don’t like bein’ skint.’
‘You’re outta your skull! Risking a joint like that by yourself!’ exclaimed Hellraiser.
‘I don’t like bein’ skint either, you know! But everythin’s fine. We’re gonna get lucky …’ said Pipsqueak.
‘Sure you don’t wanna come, Hellraiser?’ asked Sting.
‘No, man. I’m takin’ things easy. I don’t feel like it today. Go for it, man.’
Pipsqueak and Sting arrived well before six o’clock and hung around near the petrol station pretending to be beggars. The cars appeared at 6.15 on the dot. They overpowered the four without much effort. To their surprise, the owner of the petrol station reached for his gun and got a bullet in the chest from Sting’s revolver.
‘Open this shit quickly, man!’ Sting bellowed at the manager, after collecting the security guards’ guns.
Pipsqueak noticed one of the men sidling away, so he put a bullet through his head. He had to kill someone. He was really pissed off with Ari Rafael, he was penniless, he couldn’t go to the Red Light District to screw the pros, and there was that dickhead of a guard risking his life for money that wasn’t even his. The manager opened the safe. Sting filled a bag, put it in the back seat of the car and broke the back window before taking off.
‘If the pigs show up, let ’em have it!’ he said as he sped along.
They hid the car in an alley and crossed Edgar Werneck Avenue taking just the money in the bag. They got themselves a plastic bag in the Prospectors’ rehearsal square so it would be easier to carry the guns. Pipsqueak went ahead checking street corners. They stopped off to let the thieves know there was a hidden car to be stripped. They arrived at Sting’s house without any problems.
They laughed as they remembered the two they had killed. Sting said a good partner was like that: fearless and ready to kill. They would do it every day so they could scrape together enough to buy a house in the country. If they got the equivalent of two prizes in the sports lottery in one shot they’d be rich for the rest of their lives.
The sun was blazing in the cloudless Thursday sky. Well before midday Pipsqueak woke up at his partner’s house, where he had settled down on the sofa after drinking a bottle of whisky, snorting twenty wraps of coke and smoking five joints with Sting and Hellraiser the night before.
Looking into the bedroom, he saw Sting asleep holding a gun in his right hand and another in his left. He smiled. The guy was a good pal – he didn’t give bad luck a chance and he was upfront. He got up, noticed he was sweaty and jumped into the shower. His head was pounding – perhaps he’d be better off sleeping a bit more. He tried, then decided to rouse Sting. He awoke pointing both guns at Pipsqueak, who exclaimed:
‘Fuckin’ hell, you never chill out!’
‘Yeah, man. Can’t take any risks.’
Soon Hellraiser arrived with bread, milk and coffee, and a newspaper with a photo of the men killed in the hold-up.
‘Is it in the paper already?’ asked Sting, surprised.
‘Sometimes it takes a couple of days to appear … This time it was quick …’ said Hellraiser.
‘Know how to read? Know how to read?’ Pipsqueak asked Sting, knowing Hellraiser wasn’t a very good reader.
‘No,’ he answered, shaking his head emphatically.
‘Then I’m goin’ over to Sparrow’s so he can read this stuff for us.’
Pipsqueak ate his bread without margarine and didn’t wait for Sting to make the coffee. He ran to the corner and looked around, thinking it strange that there were no no-goods hanging about at that hour. He felt something weird in the air and considered turning back, but he wanted to know what the paper said. He hurried to his friend’s house and was lucky enough to catch him opening the gate on his way out.
Back at Sting’s place, Sparrow read the paper, stumbling over the intonation of longer sentences. Even so, Pipsqueak sat on the ground with his head propped against the sofa, like a child listening to a fairy tale. What most worried him was the news that the police believed that the criminals responsible for the hold-up and two fatalities were from City of God. His concern didn’t last very long, however, because as soon as Sparrow had finished reading, Sting – without commenting at all on the content of the article – said that on Gabinal Road there was a printer’s that paid its employees every Friday dinnertime. They had to do another joint soon so they wouldn’t run out of steam.
‘We’re the men for the job!’
‘But we’ll need a set of wheels, man. The guy that tipped me off said they’ve got this thing there that if you turn it on the police come runnin’. We’ve gotta go in, grab the guy, maybe even put a .22 slug in his leg so no one’ll cotton on, and say we know about the thing, right, man? Then we tell him to turn it off and move his arse.’
‘What we can’t do is leave the wheels here, OK? The kids didn’t even have time to strip the other one ’cos the cops showed up too fast. Leaving the car here’s too much of a giveaway,’ said Sparrow.
‘So we go on foot. We can leave through Saci Alley, head into the bush over at Gardênia Azul and spend a day and a night there … Remember the time you finished off that grass?’ said Pipsqueak, looking at Hellraiser.
Over in the Sixteenth District Police Station, Beelzebub was compiling information on Sting. In addition to an identikit picture, h
e’d had anonymous phone calls telling him about one of his lodgings. Certain residents were not fond of Sting; he was trigger-happy, he harassed people for no reason, he had killed a guy after unfairly accusing him of cheating in a game of cards, he mugged people and refused to pay in bars, he’d raped women … There was to be a raid the following Friday at noon on the house in which the four were now organising their next job.
The gang spent the day inside. Sparrow arranged for an errand boy to go and buy them five meals, then they had an after-dinner smoke and examined the five guns taken in the hold-up. As they had already noticed, one from the military stood out from the others.
‘You just have to show this one here and the suckers’ll hand everything over really fast!’ said Sting.
Night always comes as a surprise to those who wake up late. They hung around planning and replanning the following day’s operation. No one felt like snorting. Their best bet was to have a smoke so they’d feel hungry, then stuff their faces and hit the sack, get up early, take a stroll to get a feel for how the day was shaping up and find out if Officers Portuguese, Lincoln and Monster were on duty. All they’d have to do was ask the heads, because they always knew everything – they even knew if the Civil Police had done the rounds. They went to bed after watching the Montilla Rum wrestling and two films on Sting’s new TV. That queer Ted Boy Marino beat Red-Beard Rasputin again, just as the Black Horseman always beat his adversaries. Rin Tin Tin was always sniffing out the bandits, but it wasn’t a problem – with a .45 in your muzzle, vultures become canaries, snakes become worms and roosters lay eggs. All hell would break loose when they got to the printer’s.
* * *
They woke up early and had a quick slurp of coffee and a cigarette. No getting wasted before they did the job. They combed the entire estate with restless footsteps. Orange said he hadn’t seen any police in the street the night before or that morning. They found Night Owl, Carrots and Slick playing pool at Dummy’s Bar with a carefree attitude that got up Pipsqueak’s nose, because real gangsters couldn’t afford to be carefree.
‘You lot’re fartin’ around, aren’t you? Fartin’ around … If you wanna fart around you gotta stick a lookout on each corner and keep a cocked shooter at your hip!’ said Pipsqueak jokingly. He was hoping, however, for Sting or Hellraiser’s approval. He then ate three slices of mortadella that were sitting on a plate on the bar counter and asked Sting to show his pals his .45. The three were enthralled with the .45 and enjoyed meeting Sting, about whom Hellraiser had told them so much. Pipsqueak even tried to beat Slick in a game of pool, but when he saw he was going to lose, he stuffed the balls into a pocket, making his friends laugh.
It was already after eleven when they headed separately to the printer’s as arranged. Everything went better than they’d planned. They didn’t even need to shoot Sting’s informer in the foot: in fact, they didn’t even see him. They ran down Gabinal Road, turned into Saci Alley and went through the bush to the Big Plot without being chased. From the Big Plot they heard police sirens wailing desperately through the streets of the estate.
Beelzebub realised how unlucky it had been to raid Sting’s house while the printer’s was being held up. He was now sure Sting wouldn’t return home and some lookout would tell him he had been there. He felt like breaking the police car radio.
‘Now we’re fucked. Coming here and not catching him’ll just make him go to ground somewhere else, won’t it?’ complained Detective Beelzebub. He then asked for more detailed information on the hold-up.
The only thing he found out was that the thieves had taken a lot of money. His mouth watered. His desire to find the no-goods went beyond professional interest. If he found them he’d keep all the money and send them off to their graves. He waited around a little longer in the hope that Sting would return home. His intuition told him he was involved in the two hold-ups. After an hour he decided to scour every alley and every corner of the estate, but saw nothing unusual. The other detectives kept repeating that it was no good looking for him that day so he ended up telling the driver to head for the station, where the identikit picture of Sting was ready.
‘It’s him, didn’t I tell you …? It’s him – the same guy that’s been doin’ all these places in Jacarepaguá, and from what they say on the phone, it’s Sting alright! He’s hangin’ around with Hellraiser …’
‘Let’s wait a bit – let him think everything’s settled down before we do a raid. Keep your cool. Don’t screw things up,’ advised the chief inspector at the Sixteenth District Police Station.
Beelzebub didn’t say a thing, tossed the handful of papers he was holding on the desk and left the chief inspector’s office. He went into the kitchen, poured himself half a cup of coffee, went overboard on the sugar and drank the hot coffee slowly, making an unpleasant noise. He removed his gun from its holster and sat on an old chair. Every thought that entered his mind was violent, because he was violent, his name was violent, the way he talked, his thought. The idea of being able to order everyone around had always appealed to him. He lit a cigarette and glanced at a detective who had also gone over to the Thermos. He continued to think about how to move up in the force without having to do a law degree. Maybe if he bought a diploma … He had to show them what he was made of, and that to be a cop you had to catch no-goods, not go to university. Catch Sting – that’s what he’d have to do, because he was the most wanted criminal in the Rio metropolitan area. His name was in the news almost every day: ‘City Patrol’, ‘The City Against Crime’ … The police were asked to do something about him on every radio programme that went to air.
The wind at Barra da Tijuca always blows colder than it does elsewhere in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Beelzebub zipped up his leather jacket and headed for the chief inspector’s office. He told him he was going home to spend the rest of the afternoon nursing a headache. He took the identikit pictures of Sting without consulting the chief inspector and drove home at a leisurely pace.
At home, he examined the pots on the stove. He wanted to eat something, but nothing looked appetising. The job of superintendent was appetising. He thought again about buying a diploma so he could make chief inspector and then become superintendent. He’d heard of a lawyer, Violeta, and a professor, Lauro, who sold diplomas; as soon as he had some time he’d look those guys up. He decided to rest up so he could go out that night in his own car to catch Sting and show up at the station with the mettle of a superintendent.
Over in the Big Plot, the gangsters were eating the bread and mortadella that Sparrow had bought. They’d split the money equally and planned new jobs. Hellraiser didn’t think they needed to sleep out there in the bush. He was sure the police would have already arrested someone to pin the crimes on. He wanted to go home so he could screw his wife later on. Pipsqueak was against the idea and wanted to stay there for two more days. He didn’t want to play into Kojak’s hands, because two big jobs in a row was enough to keep the police on the prowl day and night. All four of them felt like smoking a joint. Sparrow chided himself for not having swung past the den in The Flats to buy some dope when he’d gone to the bakery.
‘Who’s going Up Top to get some?’
‘No one,’ Pipsqueak told Sting.
Pipsqueak argued that they needed to sleep to make time go faster. The craving for dope would pass. Sparrow gathered up some dry twigs that were lying around to make a campfire; it would keep the mosquitoes away and keep them warm, but Pipsqueak said the fire would attract attention.
‘A little fire!’ said Sparrow, with a mild chuckle.
He made the campfire, fed it with the dry twigs he’d piled up between his legs and sang several sambas. After a time, Sting and Sparrow fell asleep. Pipsqueak couldn’t get to sleep and tried to start a conversation with Hellraiser, who couldn’t get comfortable, wouldn’t answer him, wanted to leave. He looked at Sparrow’s watch. 4.30. Judging by the hour, he figured that if he tried hard enough he’d fall asleep. He found a place to lie down and f
ell into a light sleep until seven in the morning.
With his gun cocked, Beelzebub combed City of God on foot, passing in front of Luís Sting’s house several times. It was always closed up.
At around six o’clock in the morning, he returned home and had the custard his wife had made him. He was going to head back to the station, but decided not to when she told him that the chief inspector had called and left orders for him to get back to the station as quickly as possible. He wouldn’t take orders. He considered sleeping, but the thought of being able to say whatever he wanted to the chief inspector if he caught or killed Sting perked him up. He armed himself and went back to City of God. He parked outside the estate and went into the alleys full of children spinning tops and women gossiping or sweeping their doorsteps.
‘The poor are like mice. Look how many children there are in this shithole!’ he thought aloud.
He headed in the direction of Sting’s house again, as if drawn there by fate. His tired eyes were out of kilter with the rest of his body, and his mind shook when he remembered the chief inspector and a terse conversation they’d had a few days before about his habit of beating up prisoners. The strong light of day made him put on his sunglasses, which covered more than half his face. He approached street corners stealthily.
Slick spotted him from afar, snuck off in the opposite direction and stopped at a corner to see where he was headed. He remembered the friends he hadn’t managed to track down. The day before he had been to Hellraiser’s place twice. He thought it best to go to ground.
From the first alleys up to Middle Street, Beelzebub’s presence didn’t cause the slightest alarm or perceptible fear in passers-by. Their calm irritated him. He was used to the frightened stares and tension his appearances caused. He decided to walk more quickly, shake the peace of that morning, reinstate fear. He’d be superintendent if he bought a law degree.
‘I’m outta here, OK? I’m gonna stop by Teresa’s, score a few bundles of weed and get myself some decent shut-eye …’
