City of God

by Paulo Lins

  By that Wednesday, there was only one revolver left to sell. Mango told everyone that he had a revolver going cheap, since revolvers were no longer of interest to Tiny, who now only bought pistols.

  ‘Gimme a look at the shooter then,’ said a thief near Batman’s Bar who made his living holding up buses and mugging people.

  Something in the thief’s gaze told Mango that he wanted to steal the revolver, and his mistrust was spot-on.

  ‘Hey, playboy, this shooter’s mine!’ he said without checking the weapon.

  ‘Yours!?’ said Mango, exaggerating an ironic calm.

  ‘You’re a playboy, man! Your dad’s got money! You look smart, you can get a job anywhere you want, you don’t need money … It’s mine! The shooter’s mine!’ he finished, not knowing that Mango was now a much more dangerous criminal than he was.

  ‘OK then, keep it, but you know what?’ said Mango. ‘You’re takin’ it to hell, you fuckin’ cunt!’ he said, pulling a 7.65 mm pistol from the back of his waistband.

  It was only then that the thief realised the revolver wasn’t loaded. He suddenly fell to his knees and begged Mango for God’s sake not to shoot.

  ‘Hit the ground!’

  Acerola and Orange came over when they heard Mango’s voice in Batman’s Bar. Even after they’d heard their friend’s story, they tried to get him to spare the thief, and eventually managed to convince him.

  ‘But get out of the favela today, or you’re dead!’

  The three left together and spent the night at Mango’s house snorting coke and drinking whisky. At first Acerola said he didn’t want to snort, but after Mango said: ‘Just once won’t hurt,’ he decided to keep his friends company.

  They talked about crime, football and women. Only in the morning did Mango tell them that he and his partners were going to do a good joint that afternoon. They’d rustled up some doctors’ clothes, 007 briefcases, sunglasses and prescription glasses, watches and new shoes to make them inconspicuous; Tião and Coca-Cola were white and tall like him.

  ‘C’mon, man, don’t get involved, you don’t need it, your dad’s a lieutenant … You should ask ’im for help, you know. Go back to school …’ Acerola advised him.

  Mango shook his head, said he couldn’t stick studying any more, and even if he did study, he’d never be as rich as he wanted to be. He said he’d only be a gangster for a while. He’d rustle up some more dough, add it to what he’d already saved and buy a farm in the farthest flung corner of the country. He might even go to Paraguay and take up bee-keeping, a dream he’d had ever since he’d heard his science teacher talking about it.

  Acerola and Orange said goodbye and went their separate ways, each thinking up excuses to tell their parents when they got home. Mango showered, had another shot of whisky, heard someone clapping outside and picked up his pistol. Peering through the hole he’d made so he could look out into his front yard without being seen himself, he saw his partners and shouted that the gate was open. They went over their plan, had a sleep – his partners had also stayed up all night – then headed off after dinner.

  Tiny’s gang appeared on the street around midday, the waking hour for gangsters according to the teachings of Zeca Composer, a composer for the local samba school. One of his sambas went:

  As long as there are suckers in the world,

  gangsters will wake up at midday.

  They all headed for Almeida’s house. Almeida, one of the cool guys, had promised to prepare a nice dinner for Tiny and his gang.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ went Almeida’s rooster, suspiciously eyeing Tiny, who’d asked Otávio to buy twenty pounds of potatoes and five chickens to put towards the dinner.

  Otávio sped off. He couldn’t wait for the dinner that everyone had talked about so much during the week.

  Before the sun had even risen, the rooster, having heard so much talk on the subject of his existence, cunningly pecked at the string that tied him to a bamboo stake in the ground until it was weak enough to break at the slightest tug. He was going to run away, but only after Almeida had thrown him the corn kernels he so liked, which he still hadn’t done.

  Almeida’s rooster didn’t actually understand things all that well – he thought like a rooster – but when he saw that bunch of niggers with their mouths full of teeth, drinking beer, glancing at him out of the corners of their eyes, smoking dope and saying they weren’t going to snort so as not to lose their appetites, he didn’t sing as he usually did. He kept to himself, waiting for his meal.

  Otávio arrived by taxi with the five hens rolled up in newspaper, their feet tied together. Marcelo helped the boy take the hens into the kitchen. Tiny told them to throw them into the yard so the rooster could bang them and die happy. He believed this would make the meat tenderer and more tasty. Almeida’s wife said the rooster should be the first to go into the pot, as it would take longer to cook. Forgetting everything, the rooster jumped on a hen, then quickly went after another one, and everyone clapped while Almeida waited, holding an enormous knife. The rooster didn’t give the chickens a chance. Although he was certain that everything had to do with him being cooked, he thought he was going to die, and then again he didn’t. Rooster logic. But when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the knife in the hand of the one he’d always believed to be his friend, he realised that everyone around him was conspiring towards his death. On his first try he freed himself from the string, which had grown weaker as he was servicing the hens, dodged between the guests and took off running through the alleys.

  ‘Grab ‘im, grab ‘im!’ cried Tiny.

  The gang took off after the rooster, but favela roosters are wild as hell. He wound in and out of alleys, as swift as a panther, dodged back and forth, forth and back, ran crouching so he wouldn’t be seen from afar, only stuck half his head around corners to see if the coast was clear. From time to time he flew some fifteen to twenty feet, and ran desperately towards the New Flats, making it difficult to catch him. The gang laughed their heads off as they chased their dinner. Turning into an alley, Tiny bumped into a man selling pots and pans and fell to the ground with him. He leaped up, told the guy to fuck off and shouted:

  ‘Shoot the rooster!’

  And the shooting began.

  The rooster flew over the left branch of the river with bullets whistling past his ears and tearing up the ground, and went between Buildings Seven and Eight. By making short flights, he could climb The Hill or head for the square in The Flats. He chose the latter. Never had so many shots been heard in The Flats. Even those who always peered out of the window during shootouts to have a quick gawk didn’t dare this time, for fear of stray bullets.

  The gang did its best to catch the rooster. Whoever killed it would be more respected by Tiny, who was still in the alley beating the pots and pans seller with the butt of his gun so he’d never bump into him or swear back at him again.

  At that moment Slick was strolling towards The Flats, but when he heard the shots, he did an about-turn and hid, thinking it was the police.

  The rooster ran into the middle of a grove of guava trees, a place even the sunlight didn’t really penetrate, looking for a perfect hiding place, but Tiny’s gang plunged in after him, firing at random. Unable to fly, he panicked, ran even faster over that rough terrain and hurt himself, but had no time to feel pain. After a few minutes, the shots ceased. He hid under some dry leaves and waited for his hunters to give up trying to catch him.

  After an hour the rooster came out of hiding, headed for the grounds of an abandoned mansion, ran to the other side, came out on Edgar Werneck Avenue and disappeared forever.

  Back at Almeida’s house, everyone was talking about the rooster’s cunning. They laughed, smoked joints and drank beer.

  ‘It was for the best, because rooster can be a bit tough,’ said Almeida’s wife.

  Half an hour later there was a cry from Otávio:

  ‘Bread for sale! Bread for sale!’

  Five policemen were approac
hing, holding guns. ‘Bread for sale’ was their warning for when the police showed up. The gang was about to make a run for it when Tiny said:

  ‘No one run! Guns cocked. If I shoot everyone shoots, but to kill, to kill …’

  The gang stood up. There were more than thirty men holding .38s, 9 mm and 7.65 mm pistols. Faced with this offence Sergeant Linivaldo squinted. Both he and the other policemen immediately understood that to tell them they were under arrest would be to sign their own death warrants. They pretended nothing had happened and sidled off as if they hadn’t seen a thing.

  On their way back to the police station, Sergeant Linivaldo told his men they’d have to keep working as they had been: without going out on the beat. They didn’t have the men or the weapons to arrest the gangsters and, since there hadn’t been any complaints of muggings, theft or rape, they had no reason to worry.

  Three o’clock, an extremely blue sky and stifling heat in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Mango, Coca-Cola and Tião went into the building dressed as doctors, wearing sunglasses, prescription glasses around their necks, fancy wristwatches and well-ironed clothes. They greeted the doorman and the liftboy, and went to the top floor, the thirteenth, because both the gold dealer and the exchange bureau were there.

  The gold dealer had a bullet-proof glass door through which the whole inside corridor was visible. One of the security guards saw the three slowly approaching. Before any gesture from the trio, the door was opened.

  ‘Good afternoon, sirs,’ said the guard to the three.

  Inside the room, there was only one other security guard, an employee and the owner of the establishment. Coca-Cola asked how much they were paying per gram. On hearing the answer, he commented that the price was very low. He pretended to be thinking about it and coughed three times. Mango and Tião immediately drew their guns and said it was a stick-up.

  After making the owner open the safe, they tied everyone up with telephone cord and hit them all over the head three times with the butts of their guns.

  Everything went off without a hitch at the exchange bureau too.

  ‘Let’s go!’ said Mango in the corridor.

  ‘No way – now that we’re here, we might as well do the rest.’

  They held up offices and businesses all the way down to the sixth floor, where Mango looked out of the window and saw several police cars in front of the building and a crowd gathered on the pavement.

  The police had been called by the exchange bureau’s office boy, who’d arrived after the robbery.

  Nervously, they checked whether it was possible to jump over onto the neighbouring buildings, but then decided to stick with their plan. They ran down to the second floor and took the lift, where they straightened themselves up, mopped their sweat with a hand-towel they’d stolen from the bathroom of the last shop they’d held up, and walked out. Coca-Cola asked a police officer what was going on.

  ‘The building’s being robbed, sir! Where are you comin’ from?’

  ‘From the second floor … I didn’t see anything strange.’

  Three months later, Mango was back in the favela. Well dressed, a new car in his name, documents to show he was self-employed, a thick gold chain around his neck, two pistols. He’d become the official driver for one of the leaders of the organisation as well as a cocaine distributor in the favelas around Leopoldina.

  ‘You know them bank robberies that happened all at once?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I did three, man! We called it Operation Pinpoint,’ bragged Mango in front of Jackfruit, Orange and Acerola. ‘If you wanna snort, if you wanna smoke, go over to Fogueteiro and I’ll fix you up with whatever you want,’ he went on.

  They hung about talking until around midday, when Mango went to Aristóteles’ house. He’d known Aristóteles since he was a child, but they’d only become friends when they were older. They’d become such good friends that Mango was like one of the family; so much so that ever since he’d been disowned by his own family, he ate at his friend’s house every day, slept there, borrowed his car and took various other liberties that only the best of friends can take. Aristóteles welcomed him with the same smile as always, went to buy beer and told his wife to serve dinner.

  That night, the two of them snorted cocaine on the slopes of the favela with some friends, and when they were alone, completely drunk, Aristóteles looked Mango straight in the eye and said:

  ‘Man, I gotta talk to you about somethin’ serious, OK? Look, I’m unemployed and my girl needs to have an operation on a lump they’ve found in her stomach. She doesn’t wanna have it done through the public system ’cos you know what it’s like, don’t ya?’

  ‘Want some money?’

  ‘No! I want you to rustle me up some stuff to sell on the quiet, know what I’m sayin’? I don’t wanna sell my car and I wanna fix up the house a bit. I need to make some good money. I’ve got these pals over in Vila Sapê. If you get me the stuff, I’ll sell it really fast.’

  ‘Look, I can do business with you, but you gotta wise up – we can’t afford to have any cock-ups.’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘I’ll give you an answer next week.’

  Coca-Cola did everything he could to stop Mango from giving his friend the five pounds of dope to resell, but in the face of so much insistence, he gave him the green light to sell two and a half pounds, with a long list of conditions and warnings.

  Aristóteles sold everything, earning enough credit to get another seven and a half pounds, which he also sold quickly.

  After a few months, he was receiving fifteen pounds of dope a week. Even when he hadn’t sold the last batch, he had enough money to pay up front with the cash earned selling dope to his friends and small dens in neighbouring areas. His wife was operated on in a clinic for the rich; he built extensions to his house, bought a new car, a motor scooter for his son, and beers for the cool guys. After a time, he started frittering away money and then, one awful day, he received some old dope; because it was old, it was weak. He managed to resell it, but the guys who smoked it didn’t feel a thing.

  ‘This fuckin’ grass only makes you hungry, thirsty and sleepy. You couldn’t get off your face on it even if you smoked five big ones,’ they said.

  When Aristóteles had tracked down Mango near Batman’s Bar, he complained about the quality of the weed. His friend told him that that’s how things were between crops, and that he had to keep selling, especially now that Tião had been arrested.

  ‘Pal, the pigs are chargin’ a fortune to let the guy go. I’m gonna have to give his wife something today to take down to the station so he won’t have to sign a confession. And next week we’ll have to send more so they’ll let him go, otherwise he’ll be charged and slapped in the slammer. I wasn’t even comin’ down here today ’cos I’ve got heaps of problems to sort out, but I wanted to ask you to lend us some dough, know what I’m sayin’? I’ll pay you back on the tenth.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Fifty thousand.’

  ‘Fuck! I’ve got a shitload of bills to pay. I don’t reckon I’ll be able to …’

  ‘See! When you were up shit creek, we gave you a hand, but now that we’re a bit tight, this is how you return the favour.’

  ‘OK, OK! I’ll help you.’

  That same day, the owner of the den in Vila Sapê sent an errand boy for Aristóteles.

  ‘Hey, man, the weed you sold us was really weak shit. I’m gonna have to get rid of a shitload of the stuff so I don’t run the risk of gettin’ caught for nothin’. Know what I’m sayin’? But hey – reckon you can get us some good shit so we can get things movin’ again?’

  ‘No problems!’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, man. And don’t tell your pals I’m bein’ difficult. I’m askin’ you to do me this favour, ’cos I’m really skint, OK?’ said the Vila Sapê den owner, thinking Aristóteles was involved with big-time dealers.

  Two weeks later Tião was back from the lock-up. It was time to get fi
nances back in order even though they only had stale weed to sell.

  Aristóteles believed that the only thing he could do to be given good weed on Thursday afternoon was to think positively. It was the only way it would sell and the only thing he could do to get out of that situation. He should have taken his wife’s advice: pay for everything up front and stop selling that damn dope. He’d been stupid, really stupid. The reason he’d bought things in instalments was so he’d always have money in his pocket and could give everyone freebies. Now he was kicking himself.

  Like Mango, both Coca-Cola and Tião believed Aristóteles had money stashed away; all his worrying was just greed, money-grubbing. In spite of their suspicion, they didn’t hesitate to give their bad shit on a sale-or-return basis to Aristóteles, who claimed to be broke.

  But when he smelled the dope, the owner of the den in Vila Sapê said he wouldn’t be taking it. He rolled a joint, took a toke, and repeated that he wasn’t going to buy it.

  In spite of his problems, Aristóteles found a way to pay his friend back. Thinking he was in the clear, he got sloshed, then bought and snorted an excessive amount of coke even before paying his outstanding bills. He’d had enough money left over to clear his past debts and, God willing, he’d rustle up the money to pay off the following months’ debts too. He also believed he could hold off paying for the dope he’d had on sale-or-return. But Mango was tough on him.

  ‘Look pal, the guys want the money by Saturday, OK? The guys’ve gotta help in a breakout. And we’ve gotta buy shit too, so think of somethin’.’

  * * *

  At around eleven o’clock on Saturday, Mango clapped his hands at Aristóteles’ front gate. Aristóteles hid and told his wife to say he’d gone out early. Mango thought the wife was acting strange and left feeling suspicious. He stopped at Batman’s Bar, where he asked everyone who passed if they’d seen his friend. He went to his girlfriend’s house, had dinner and slept until six o’clock in the evening, when he decided to go to his friend’s house again.