Chapter Nine
His name was Joao Miranda.
Most people called him by his nickname: Cobra.
The word, in Portuguese, means snake, any snake, not just those of the mantled variety. As it happened, however, the snake depicted in Cobra's tattoo was one of those. It started on his chest, went up to encircle his neck and ended just below his ear. That's where the mouth was, and the mouth was red, and open, and had a little pink tongue flicking out as if it was trying to touch his earlobe.
Cobra loved that tattoo. It had been with him since he was sixteen years old. He'd chosen it out of a book in a oneman tattoo parlor wedged between a bar and a cheap hotel in Pelourinho. That had been back in Bahia, long before he ever thought of coming south to Sao Paulo.
The original design was smaller, and the snake was coiled up. Making it bigger and having it twist around his neck was Cobra's idea. The guy with the needle was so pleased with his work that he'd asked Cobra to let him take a picture. He wanted to put it into his book and offer the same tattoo to other people. He thought Cobra would be pleased.
Cobra wasn't. That tattoo was his, his and nobody else's. The very next night, just as the artist was closing up shop, Cobra had gone back and slit the man's throat.
People in Sao Paulo, if they thought about it at all, figured that Cobra's nickname came from the tattoo. It wasn't true. The kids in the favela where he grew up were already calling him that before he was thirteen. The name fit, because little Joao Miranda, just like a snake, was quick to anger, quick to strike, and had eyes that showed no compassion at all.
By the time he was eighteen, he was already well known-too well known for his liking-to the cops in his native city of Salvador. Back in those days, he was just an ignorant kid, still learning how to steal and kill and get away with it. They'd busted him more times than he had years, even managed to keep him behind bars for a while, until his brothers raised enough money to buy him out. By that time, he'd learned that only chumps served out their sentences. And that was only if they were sentenced in the first place, which they generally weren't, because the cops and the judges were just as crooked as the prison guards.
The situation, he soon discovered, was no different in Sao Paulo. With one exception: the Municipal Police. They were real bastards, as bad as anybody working the street. They'd shake you down just because they didn't like the color of your skin, or the clothes you were wearing, or for no reason at all. But, he didn't let it bother him. He'd steal from others, and they'd steal from him. It was just a cost of doing business, right? One thing they hardly ever did was to put him away. It just didn't happen if you weren't stupid. This time, he'd been stupid.
He'd just smoked his last rock, and he was uptight about where he was going to get another one. Without the crack in his system, or if he hadn't been in such a hurry, he would have pegged the two guys sitting at the bar as the off-duty cops they were. Hell, one of them was even wearing the trousers that went with his uniform. There were red stripes on the outside seams, and they ran all the way up his legs. Who else wore that kind of pants? Answer: nobody. Just cops.
They had their pistols out less than a second after he'd pointed his own at the guy behind the cash register. He was lucky that the cachaca the cops had been drinking had made them mellow. Lucky, too, that he'd had the presence of mind, high on crack or not, to drop the gun the instant they told him to.
So here he sat, stuffed into an overcrowded cell packed with drunks, transvestites, and juveniles. It just took one kick to somebody's balls to communicate to his cellmates just where he stood in the pecking order. And when he went a little further, and smashed the guy in the face with his steeltipped workman's shoes, they even cleared a corner for him.
He'd hit the bar in the early hours of a Monday morning. Another mistake. There was bound to be a big backlog of cases from the weekend. It could be two days, maybe even three, before he'd be called up for arraignment. Three days in the stench and the shit. He didn't even want to think about it. God help him if he fell asleep.
Before they'd brought him to the cell, one of the cops showed an interest in his tattoo. Cobra didn't find it unusual. A lot of people were interested in that tattoo. After all, it was the only one like it in the whole world, at least as far as he knew. But what Cobra did find unusual was that the cop pulled out a measuring tape, measured the snake from head to tail, and wrote the measurements down in a little book.
"What the fuck are you doing that for?" he'd asked.
"Watch your mouth when you talk to me, you fucking punk," the cop said, and walked off.
Then, at around three o'clock on Tuesday morning, almost twenty-four hours after they'd locked him up, something else happened.
He wasn't asleep, not even dozing. He'd propped himself up with his back against the wall, and was keeping a wary eye on his cellmates, when he heard the jangling of keys in the corridor. He lifted his head and watched a guard insert one of those keys into the lock on the door of his cell. The guard was a young guy, somebody Cobra hadn't seen before, and he wasn't alone. The guy next to him was wearing a gray suit and had cold, black eyes and a thick mustache on his upper lip. Cobra pegged him for a detective.
"Where's Joao Miranda?" the cop called out.
It was a common name. Two men stood up. Cobra wasn't one of them.
The cop shook his head. "The Miranda with the tattoo," he said, impatiently. "The one with the snake."
Heads turned toward Cobra's corner.
"You," the cop said. "Get on your feet and get over here."
Cobra took his time about it. He figured to be back in the cell before long, and his cellmates would be all over him if he let a couple of cops intimidate him.
"Hurry up, you punk," the guard said.
When he reached the door, the man in the gray suit pulled out a pair of handcuffs and spoke for the first time. "Turn around. Put your hands behind you," he said, in an emotionless voice.
"For Christ's sake," Cobra said, "It's the middle of the night. Can't a guy get some sleep?"
"Shut up and turn around." This time the man let a bit of irritation show.
Cobra figured he'd done enough. He'd made a show for his cellmates, but he didn't want to wind up getting the shit kicked out of him. He turned and allowed the cop to shackle him, staring down the other men in the cell while it was happening. Most of them avoided his eyes, proof that he'd played it right. To solidify the impression of a tough guy, he didn't speak again until they'd gone through the steel door and into the corridor outside.
"Where you taking me?"
"Brasilia," the guard said.
"Brasilia? Why Brasilia?"
"You'll find out soon enough."
Silva was surprised when he saw the little man in the cell. For almost seven years he'd been imagining someone who was tall and strong. The punk who offered his wrists to be cuffed didn't even reach his chin, and Mario Silva wasn't a particularly tall man.
But the tattoo was there, and it was just as his mother had described it. There couldn't possibly be another one like it. Or could there? Doubt plagued him. He'd have to get the punk to open up. He'd have to be sure.
Getting Joao Miranda out of the delegacia was no problem. The military dictatorship had ended in January, but it had persisted for twenty years and old habits die hard. Silva was a federal cop. He'd come all the way from Brasilia. He had clout.
The SPPD was all too happy to deliver their charge, and even happier when Silva told them they could dispense with the paperwork. Someday, some bureaucrat might discover forms that showed they'd once had a punk by the name of Joao Miranda in one of their holding cells. Someday, someone might even remember that a federal cop had come in, given them some story about Miranda being a material witness in a drug case, and taken him away.
But, even so, nobody would give a damn, and in the unlikely event that they did, Silva had a story all worked out. There would be an escape report filed away in a place that no one would look for it un
less he told them it was there.
Ostensibly, he'd been bringing Miranda over to the federal building for questioning in a drug case he was working on. They'd stopped at a light. He'd seen a couple of punks trying to assault an old couple. He'd hopped out of the car to help. When he got back the felon was gone. End of story.
Silva shackled the punk's thin ankles together with a second pair of handcuffs, tossed him into the back of his rental car, and started driving through the early morning streets. There was little traffic. The punk gave him the silent treatment for a while and then started to talk. By the time he did, they were already outside of town and climbing into the Serra de Cantareira.
"What kind of a cop are you, anyway?"
"Federal," Silva answered shortly.
"Your colega said you were taking me to Brasilia? Why Brasilia? I didn't do anything in Brasilia."
"Meaning that you only did stuff in other places?"
"Meaning nothing. What's this all about?"
"It's about a rape and a murder."
"I don't know nothing about no rape and no murder."
"It was a long time ago. Seven years."
"Seven years! Shit, I can't remember back seven months. Except I never raped nobody. Never had to pay for it neither. I got women lining up to fuck me, I do."
Silva drove on in silence, giving no sign that he'd heard what Miranda had said. The car began to jolt when he hit the unpaved road. A light rain had been coming down when they left the delegacia, but had tapered off before they entered the forest. The air was heavy and tinged with the smell of rotting vegetation. When Silva braked to a stop, it was gray dawn over the road, still dark under the shade of the trees. The place hadn't changed since his last visit. The little depression in the ground, the surrounding vegetation, the large rock with the flat face, all were just as he remembered them. Silva had been back to this place many times over the course of the last seven years, at first to walk the ground and investigate, later to meditate about what he might do here, and to pray for his father's soul.
He opened the back door, pulled Joao Miranda out by his heels, and started dragging him across the ground.
"Hey," the thug said when his head hit a rock. "Hey, no need to get rough. Let me up. Let me walk."
Silva didn't respond. He kept dragging Miranda until they reached the place his mother had pointed out to him, the place where his father had been shot.
"You know where you are?" he asked. "You know why you're here?"
The punk shook his head. Silva gave him a kick in the ribs. "Answer me," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about you and a friend of yours. I'm talking about a man you shot to death, here on this spot."
"I didn't shoot nobody."
Silva kicked him again. The punk assumed the fetal position, protecting his soft parts, his genitals and his abdomen.
"Talk, you filho da puta."
"I told you, I didn't shoot nobody."
"The next kick is going to be in the balls."
That was the only threat Silva had to make. Despite his facade, the punk was a coward at heart. "It wasn't me," Miranda said. "It was Escorpiao. Escorpiao did it."
The name meant scorpion.
"Who?"
"Dante Correia. Escorpiao. It was an old guy, right? We were gonna do his wife and he came on strong, and he took a swing at Escorpiao and Escorpiao shot him in the head."
"How many times?"
"Twice. He shot him twice."
"Where's this Escorpiao now?"
"Dead."
Silva kicked him again. "Don't lie to me."
"No. I swear. You know the Commando Vermelho?"
The Commando Vermelho was a drug gang, one of the largest. They were in constant warfare for control of the trade. The battles were fought out in the favelas, the shantytowns.
"Yeah, I know the Commando Vermelho," Silva said. "What about it?"
"He was one of their soldiers. Got himself shot dead, maybe five years ago. I swear. You're a cop. You can look it up. Dante Correia. Escorpiao. It was in all the papers."
"And he pulled the trigger on the old man who was shot here? Is that what you're telling me?"
"That's what I'm telling you. Why are you making such a big thing out of this? It was years ago, for Christ's sake. What's it to you?"
"The man was my father. The woman you raped was my mother."
Joao Miranda's eyes got so big that Silva could see white encircling both pupils.
"Jesus," he said.
"Yeah," Silva said, and pulled out his revolver.
He had a shovel in the trunk of his rental car, a new one he'd bought just for the purpose. He dug a hole, stripped the handcuffs from Miranda's wrists and ankles, and buried him just below the place where his father had died.
He'd been looking forward to doing that for seven years, but in the end, it didn't bring him the satisfaction he thought it would.
When he'd been at Quantico, he'd heard a lecture from some psychiatrist. The man talked about "closure." Closure, like you could just walk away and close a door behind you and that would be it. Could it be that there really were people who could do that?
The next day, he looked up the records on Dante Correira, the man Miranda had called Escorpiao. Miranda had been telling the truth. Correia had been dead for almost five years.
Silva felt a little surge of relief. He'd never before killed a man in cold blood. He didn't want to do it ever again.
But two years later, he did.
Chapter Ten
Carla, Mario Silva's only sibling, shared her mother's name and her father's features. She had the same jetblack hair, the same black eyes, and the same determined set to her jaw.
In character, she resembled her brother. Once she'd made up her mind that something, or someone, was worth pursuing, she did it with singleminded determination.
In September of 1974, she made up her mind about a fledgling electrical engineer named Claudio Costa. In August of 1975, they were married.
At first, her parents greeted the news of her engagement with protest. Not that they didn't like Claudio. They just thought the match was premature. The young people had, after all, known each other for such a short time. Then there was the matter of Carla completing her education at the University of Sao Paulo.
Carla admitted, and promptly brushed aside, the matter of the relationship's short duration. As to the degree, she said, one thing didn't preclude the other. She'd keep on studying.
Dr. Silva and his wife had to admit that they'd never known Carla to promise anything she couldn't deliver. Backed into a corner, they reluctantly gave their consent. A very pregnant Carla Costa was awarded her diploma in June of 1976. Her son, Hector, was born a week later. He was two years old on the night his grandfather died, eleven when he witnessed the murder of his father.
IT WAS a Saturday, a week before Christmas. The Costas lived in Granja Viana in those days, a residential suburb about twenty kilometers from the city center. On the morning of the murder they were stuck in a traffic jam, mostly composed of people who, like themselves, were on their way into town to do some shopping.
Claudio was behind the wheel. Carla was seated next to him, her attention absorbed by a notepad into which she was jotting names and gift ideas. Hector was in the back seat, manipulating a little plastic puzzle.
They heard the man before they saw him.
"Your watch," he said. "Hand it over."
Carla looked up to see a man with a day's growth of beard pointing a revolver at her husband's head. The man was standing just outside the car, on the driver's side. The muzzle of the gun protruded through the open window.
Carla looked around for help. People in the neighboring cars were staring straight ahead or in other directions. They'd seen the gun. Nobody wanted to get involved. Carla looked back at the gunman. The muzzle of the revolver was trembling, the man's brown eyes glazed and distant.
Drugs,
she thought.
"Do it," the man said to Claudio. "Do it, now. Take off the goddamned watch." As if to emphasize what he said, he cocked the revolver.
Carla watched the cylinder spin, heard the click, saw Claudio's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. Both of her husband's hands were frozen on the wheel. She knew the watch had been his father's, knew he didn't want to give it up.
"Claudio," she said, calmly. "Please. Take off the watch and give it to him."
But Claudio didn't. Instead, he made a sudden lunge for the revolver, trying to grab the barrel.
The man with the beard took a quick step backward, extended his arm, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet caught Claudio in the chest. Carla screamed. Little Hector started to bawl. The man opened the flap of a leather haversack, put the revolver inside, and walked away. No one tried to stop him.
The police did what they usually did in such cases: They wrote up a report and took no further action.
The day after the funeral, her brother, Mario, came for her. "Would you recognize him?" he asked.
She nodded. Recognize him? She'd never be able to forget him.
"Come with me," he said, reaching out and taking her hand.
They spent the next few days searching the neighborhood, the same streets, over and over again, centered on the place where it had happened. She drove. He sat on the front seat beside her.
Mario had been a cop for almost nine years by then. She knew almost nothing of his professional life, but she knew her brother. He would be good at anything he turned his hand to.
Once, years earlier, he'd talked to her about vengeance for their parents. She'd told him she didn't want to hear anything about it, that it wouldn't change anything. He'd never brought the subject up again. Now, with Claudio, she felt differently. By the third day she was beginning to wish that Mario wasn't a cop, that he wouldn't be forced to act like a cop was supposed to act, that they could just deal with the assassin themselves rather than deliver him to judgment by the court.
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