by Jeremy Brown
“Two . . .”
He was getting the arm whether I gave it to him or not.
With brute force, a dollop of terror, and a flash of shock on Aviso’s face, I twisted right, lifted him off the canvas, and pulled my left hand closer to my right until I clasped them together, palm to palm.
“One.”
Aviso yanked.
He dropped back and pulled with everything, the cords on his neck strumming against the light fixtures above the cage.
I welded my hands together and roared into the back of his knee, the tendons slicing into my face and choking what little air I could find. Something in my left elbow popped.
Aviso eased a fraction of the tension and yanked harder, trying to shock my grip apart.
I tried to crush my hands into one lump. The bones ground against each other. The damn gloves were slick with sweat, and I felt my fingers slip.
Aviso leaned forward and slammed his right fist into my eyebrow, splitting the cut open. I kicked my feet in protest.
He snaked that hand through the crook of my left elbow and got his forearm against mine, pulled again and found some good bone-on-bone agony. The elbow joint seemed to stretch, pull apart.
“We still on one, man. I feel it going.”
My fingers slipped again. Something in the elbow clunked. I had no strength in my left arm—the grip was the only thing keeping Aviso from snapping it.
“I gonna break it now. And you never even hit me.”
I released my grip.
In one movement—no one would call it graceful—I jerked my left thumb toward Aviso’s right hip like a spastic hitchhiker, popped my left shoulder up against the backs of his legs and pulled my right shoulder underneath me.
If Aviso was going to break my elbow, he’d have to get the arm straight—wrist, elbow, and shoulder aligned. Then he’d force the elbow into an unnatural peak in the middle of that straight line, breaking the joint and pushing it the wrong way.
By hitchhiking and lifting my shoulder, I took the arm out of alignment and raised the level Aviso would have to exceed to break my elbow.
But I wasn’t done.
I kept my left hand near his hip, faced his feet and started running along the canvas, pivoting clockwise on my right shoulder. This gave the escape its name—the coffee grinder—one of Gil’s favorites because it reminded him to buy more coffee.
Aviso scrambled to pull my wrist up and straight and tried to block my progress with his legs, but I kept going, spinning so my head was tucked beneath his hamstrings, kept going until it popped out the other side.
Aviso still had my left arm between his legs, my wrist clamped in his hands, but now I was up on my left knee, my right leg posted out and my chest crushing his left hip, trapping him against the canvas.
Best of all, my right hand was free.
And his face was exposed.
“You ready?”
The first punch felt so good I sighed.
After chasing, missing, defending, panicking, I smashed my knuckles into his face and felt the solid, satisfying impact, like chewing steak after years of pudding.
Aviso’s face screwed shut.
I hit him again and again, six times in two seconds.
He scrambled and let go of my wrist to cover up.
I sank against his side and hammered everything above the shoulders. My left arm was dead from the elbow down, so Aviso only got the right. Blood fell between his gloves onto the canvas. He rolled onto his knees and elbows, showed me his back and exposed neck.
I smelled another trap.
He was baiting me, offering a chance at a choke so I’d stop smacking him around. If I went for it, we’d be back in his world.
I punched him in the neck, the ear, and the neck again.
He got the memo—I wasn’t interested in any chokes.
Aviso wrapped his forearms around his head and got a foot under him, drove forward to push me off-balance. I let the momentum lift me onto my feet and stepped back. Aviso followed, stood up and immediately shot for a takedown.
The coffee grinder escape wouldn’t work again. I was slightly baffled it had worked the first time. My other escapes weren’t half as good, and Aviso wouldn’t give me the time to try them anyway. In the brief window I’d had to land punches, I’d closed his left eye, split that cheek open, and squirted blood out of his right ear. If he got me down again and got hold of my dead arm, he’d take it home with him.
So I retreated, let him come in for the double-leg.
I planted my right foot.
Speared a left knee into his belly hard enough to feel vertebrae against my patella.
Aviso’s arms came down from his face. His mouth gaped, pulled down in the universal mask of someone who’d been gutshot.
My left elbow wouldn’t work. The fist dangled at the end like deadweight.
Or a wrecking ball.
I threw the left hook, all hips and shoulder.
It landed on Aviso’s square, stubbled jaw, kept going as his head cranked sideways and eventually turned, tugging his body around in a ragdoll spin as he crumpled to the canvas.
I didn’t bother following him.
Gil managed to get a t-shirt over my head, slipping the left arm through first and stretching it around everything else. He and Antonio squeezed and poked the soft tissue around the elbow while a crowd of officials woke Aviso up, got him on a stool, and asked him about current events.
The crowd roiled and sang and chanted, got louder when Jim Lincoln announced me as winner by knockout and Davie Benton stuck a microphone in my face.
“Woody, leading up to this fight Aviso said he was going to break your arm. It looks injured—did he break it?”
I tested the elbow. It didn’t move and sent a hot twang up to my neck. “It’s fine.”
“Fine or not, you knocked him out with that hand.”
“That’s correct.”
Davie waited for more, then said, “All right, well, there were rumors before this fight that if you won, you’d be next in line to fight for the belt. After this impressive performance, do you think your next fight should be for the heavyweight championship of Warrior?”
The correct answer: I’ll leave that up to Mr. Takanori and the matchmakers. I’ll fight whoever they put in front of me.
What I said: “Yup.”
Davie’s eyebrows popped. “Well, you seem content letting your fighting do the talking, but is there anything you’d like to say to Aviso and his fans?”
“I’m glad I knocked his ass out. And he smelled great. Like sandalwood.”
17
Carrasco, Malhar, and Eye Patch waited outside the prep room. The Arcoverde brothers stood inside the door, sizzling on the verge of violence.
Marcela was stuck to my left hip, helping me hold that arm against my ribs.
Carrasco smiled at her. “Hello, Pomba Gira.” He turned to me and dropped the smile, thumped his walking stick on the floor. “You won. Congratulations. Exu appreciates this. Now we go.”
Antonio stepped close to Marcela and put a hand on her shoulder.
Gil tried to push me into the prep room. “We need to look at his elbow.”
“No,” Carrasco said.
“It might be broken.”
“If so, it is what Exu wishes.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Gil said. “His arm’s broken and his face is busted up. He needs medical attention.”
“You are delaying?”
“He can’t go like this.”
Carrasco said something to Eye Patch, who pulled a phone out of the duffel and hit a button, held the phone so we could see the screen.
It was an image of the Academia de Arcoverde. The street was dark and deserted. The broken glass on the sidewalk glittered from the flames inside the shattered windows.
Gil swore.
Antonio grunted like he’d been kicked in the gut.
Marcela hardened against my side.
Eye Patch swiped t
he screen, showed us again.
This one was shot through the gate of the Arcoverde estate, showing the driveway, dim landscape lighting, and front door. The photo caught the silhouette of a woman walking past one of the windows.
Along the bottom of the shot were the backs of at least fifteen heads. They belonged to people kneeling outside the gate, waiting to break it down.
“We are done delaying,” Carrasco said.
I held my hands out to Gil. The left arm stayed bent at the elbow. The hand shook. “Cut ’em off.”
Marcela hugged her uncle and cousins and pressed her cheek against theirs. Their tears mixed as they whispered in choked Portuguese.
I scanned the hallway for Rubin, any of his men. Warrior and arena staff hustled by and didn’t give us a second glance.
Carrasco waited until she was finished. “You are ready, my Pomba Gira?”
Marcela cuffed her cheeks, put an arm around my waist, and nodded.
Carrasco turned to me. “You?”
“Let’s go.”
His mouth twitched in a smile. “You have not said your goodbyes.”
“I’m not saying goodbye. I’ll see them in a few hours.”
“Maybe so. If Exu wills it.”
He limped away. Malhar and Eye Patch stayed, our escorts.
Gil said, “Woody.”
I couldn’t look at him. Or Jairo or Antonio. Any of them. “I’ll see you soon.”
We started walking. Away from our family, away from the phone with Rubin’s unanswered warnings. I told myself he and his men were in motion, rolling heavy toward the Axila da Serpente.
Marcela looked up. “Are you praying?”
I kissed her forehead. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s okay. I will pray for both of us. I will keep us safe.”
The weight of what she was doing landed against my chest, knocked the breath out and locked my legs. I could not face Gil and the Arcoverdes to tell them goodbye, but I had no trouble looking each man in the eye when I turned and said, “She is safe. They won’t touch her.”
It didn’t feel like a lie at the time.
They took us through the loading dock to a waiting Suburban. The driver helped Carrasco into the passenger seat. Malhar pointed Marcela and me to the rear bench, then climbed with Eye Patch into the seat in front of us.
The Suburban had been police or military at one time. A tight steel mesh ran to the ceiling behind our headrests, blocking access to the back doors and cargo area. I peeked back and saw metal rings bolted to the floor with handcuffs looped through.
Malhar caught me looking and grinned, nudged Eye Patch. If we wanted out, we’d have to get through them.
The Suburban rolled into traffic.
No one spoke.
Marcela touched my left elbow. “How is it?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Bad.”
She stuck two fingers into my palm. “Squeeze. Go, now.”
“I am.”
She muttered in Portuguese. “Can you straighten the arm?”
I tried. Pain lanced from the elbow to my neck. My face twisted like a wrung towel.
“Woody, you can’t use it.”
“Hold on.” I tried the shoulder, got full range of motion. Slapped my right palm against the left elbow a few times.
No pain.
I slammed the elbow into the headrest behind Eye Patch. He turned, his one eye huge, and raised the suppressed Mac-10.
“Just checking something.”
Malhar scowled over the back of the seat and chewed something stringy.
When they relaxed and faced forward again I nodded to Marcela.
“We’re good.”
“Good?”
I put my mouth against her ear and whispered, “We get there, we find a safe place and we hide.”
She frowned. “No. We have to get down the hill.”
“We don’t want to go down there. Trust me. We’ll be fine. We hide, and we wait.”
“For what?”
Eye Patch turned again. “Shut up. No talking.”
Marcela said, “Why not?”
He blinked his eye. “Just be quiet.”
I squeezed Marcela’s hand with my good one. We rode in silence through swift traffic, along darkening streets, and finally cut along a narrow road with abandoned buildings on the left and black jungle on the right. The empty windows watched us pass.
Through the windshield I caught a glimpse of the four Dumpsters on the right, filled with concrete and rebar blocking the base of the Axila da Serpente.
The armpit of the snake.
One of the pickup trucks nosed out of the alley on the left. The men in the bed confirmed who was inside our Suburban. A horn blasted twice.
Two rusty and dented forklifts emerged from somewhere within the Axila. They scooped up the middle Dumpsters and hauled them aside, then idled, waiting. A man ran over and folded the Suburban’s side mirrors back, making us about a foot skinnier.
The Suburban turned into the narrow entrance, killed the headlights, and began to climb.
The Suburban’s running lights cast a yellow glow onto the road ahead. Road was too classy—this was more of an uppity goat path. Illumination scraped along the edges of the trash heaped in the gutters and the rickety buildings yawning toward each other.
The driver knew the route, probably could have driven it blindfolded. I pressed my face against the window and held my breath, scanned for landmarks, choke points, bunkers we could duck into.
Every light in the Axila was blacked out.
Except the damn candles.
A red one burned in every black window we passed. It gave the favela a sense of great expanse, endlessness, cramped alleys stretching away from the road and changing their shape in the flickering shadows.
A face rushed out of the darkness and hovered on the other side of my window, invading my reflection and turning it into a mongrel’s. The face belonged to a young, hungry-looking man with too many scars for his age. He stared at me, chin forward as if marking me or demanding I remember him when we met again, then tapped a short piece of steel pipe against the window.
He drifted into the Suburban’s taillights, chin out and pipe ready.
Another man stood at the window. His breath puffed a brief veil across the glass. He tapped it with a wooden club and stepped back as the Suburban crept on.
“Woody.” Marcela slid away from her door, closer to me.
A fat man with an aluminum baseball bat across his shoulders had his tongue pressed against her window. It sounded coarse and left a gluey streak. The man next to him tapped the fluid with an ax handle.
Ahead, the Suburban’s running lights showed legs and feet lining the road, waiting for us to pass, like we were touring a deep-sea cave of butchers. I checked the back window. As the red lights crawled forward the men were peeling away, diving into the shadows to claim their favorite nook for beating someone to death.
The hierarchy intrigued me. Did seniority mean you got a spot near the top, action more likely, or was that for the unproven who wanted to show what they could do?
I got my answer when the Suburban cut a hard left, crept across the face of the hill, and pulled into a tight 180-degree switchback that angled up as we spiraled closer to the top.
The red candles winked and danced, beckoning.
One by one, the men along the road rapped the windows, but most of them didn’t have pipes or chains or machetes.
They tapped with bare knuckles.
These were Exu’s true killers. And they’d be the first ones we faced coming down the spine of the cobra.
Marcela breathed deep and slow next to me.
Getting ready.
Eye Patch turned in his seat. “Heads down. Between your knees.”
“Why?”
“This part, only Exu’s people can see.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“Put your fucking head
s down. And no talking.”
We bent, foreheads touching. I reached for her hand, found it searching for mine.
The thumps against the windows stopped.
The Suburban swayed, dipped, and climbed, then the engine howled as we tilted to what felt like a forty-five-degree angle. We accelerated into the slope, then rocked forward onto a plateau. Level ground felt alien. The tires crunched over some kind of stone and the brakes whined once as we eased to a stop.
The driver killed the engine.
I squeezed Marcela’s hand, listened her breathing.
Carrasco said, “Welcome home, Pomba Gira.”
We stepped out of the Suburban into a wide, circular area covered with pale crushed concrete. The night sky was overcast, like the moon and stars took a vote and decided they didn’t want to see any of this.
Malhar stood at the edge of the concrete, his back to the route we’d come up. The road was so steep the space behind him dropped into nothing. Far beyond that were the warm lights of Rio, none of them concerned with what was about to happen. The thick hush of the favela pressed in from all sides. It set off primal alarms, and I couldn’t zero in on it.
Eye Patch stayed near the Suburban. He had the Mac-10 out and pointed at the ground near our feet.
I said, “Are we supposed to run now?”
Nobody answered.
I rolled my neck and shoulders, tried to bend the left elbow again.
Nothing.
I squeezed that hand into a fist and told it to stay.
Marcela wound her hair into a tight bun with some strands spouting. Hugged herself a few times and moved her hips in circles.
She put her hands on my chest. “Ready?”
“I’m with you.”
We walked toward the edge. Malhar grinned, his greasy lips sliding over pointed teeth.
If he was the first obstacle, it was going to be a long fucking night.
“Wait,” Carrasco said.
He was walking away from us, grinding his walking stick into the crushed concrete with each step toward the black house at the top of the Axila da Serpente. The mural at the bottom, in the room where Carrasco and Exu had offered my first no-choice choice, had depicted the place as a black skull with red eyes.
