Rip Crew

by Sebastian Rotella

  Pescatore recalled Fatima Belhaj’s term for loiterers in the Paris housing projects: hitistes. Hit was “wall” in Arabic; hitistes leaned on walls. He hadn’t talked to Fatima since the interrupted phone call in San Diego. At dinner last night, he had discussed his romantic woes with Facundo. Facundo had given him a loud, lengthy lecture. The gist: Based on his forty-three years of marriage, Facundo believed Fatima’s ambivalence amounted to rejection in slow motion. He had recommended that Pescatore act accordingly.

  Pernambuco had a rolling, deliberate walk in his white clogs. He led the way across a footbridge over train tracks. Pescatore understood most of what he said. It was possible to enter the favela by car, but the route was roundabout. Pernambuco did not want the local drug traffickers to mistake them for the police or enemy bandidhos.

  “We walk in nice and easy, nothing to hide,” he said, puffing as he descended metal stairs.

  Pescatore had never been in a favela. During past visits to Rio, he had seen the slums topping the green hills above the beachfront high-rises. The favelas of the coast were alive with vivid colors and panoramic views. They were the sites of police pacification campaigns and economic revitalization programs. Their feral mystique inspired music, movies, even tours.

  Jardim do Fogo was a long way from the beach. The warren of dusty streets spread in a flatland enclosed by the tracks, an elevated highway, and a lagoon with a sulfur smell. Dogs trotted. Kids scampered. A radio blared Brazilian funk. A hairdresser did a woman’s braids at an open-air beauty shop. Men drank standing up at the window counter of a grocery. They called out, “Oy, Pernambuco!” and “All good?”

  “All joy.” Pernambuco raised a hand high with the palm turned inward, like a politico acknowledging the crowd at a rally.

  Pescatore noticed that the walls around him were pockmarked. He recognized the spatter of impacts from automatic-weapon fire. Someone had used the bullet holes to paint connect-the-dots flowers on the walls.

  Pescatore had trouble figuring out Rio. He compared it to places like, say, Detroit. Detroit looked the way it was: cold, mean, and ugly. Rio fooled you. It was breathtakingly beautiful. The people mixed together in a kaleidoscope of races and colors—friendly, relaxed, sexy. But the city was dangerously divided between o asfalto, the asphalt enclaves of the well-to-do, and o morro, the hill—the unpaved combat zones of the favelas.

  “Epah,” Facundo said. “Here we go.”

  Two youths on bikes rolled toward them, raising dust in the haze. The cyclists wore caps, shorts, and T-shirts. Pescatore spotted walkie-talkies and pistols in their waistbands. They were too young and thuggish to be cops. His hand strayed to his shirttail near his gun while his eyes searched the lane for cover. No cars, no trees, nothing.

  The cyclists came to a stop. They sat on their bikes watching the outsiders advance. The stiffness in Pernambuco’s stride indicated that he didn’t have much clout with the teenage triggermen of the drug trade. Facundo ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. Pescatore resisted the urge to draw. Facundo was fond of quoting a line from My Darling Clementine, his favorite Western: “When you pull a gun, kill a man.”

  The cyclists made eye contact with Pernambuco. Barely a nod. Once the visitors had passed, the duo glided off again.

  Facundo exhaled.

  Pescatore said, “I’m assuming that wasn’t the neighborhood watch.”

  “Hah. The narco watch. The traffickers rule this place.”

  They rounded a corner and came across three boys lugging buckets.

  “Youngsters,” Pernambuco exclaimed. “Say hello to my visitors. High-class people, refined people. Show them what you’ve got there.”

  The tallest boy was about eight. He had a sand-colored Afro. Grinning, he hefted his bucket. It was full of used bullets and spent cartridges.

  “Tell them where you take those,” Pernambuco said.

  “The sculptor!” the boy said. “At the House of Solidarity.”

  The boys hurried off. The bookie explained that the children of the favela retrieved bullets after firefights. A sculptor at the community center paid a penny a bullet and used the bullets in his statues.

  Pernambuco shrugged. “Life where the asphalt ends.”

  Tayane Pires lived on a slight rise known as the Heights. The homes were bigger and better-kept. The Pires house had a satellite dish. Pernambuco said the two-story hodgepodge of colors and materials had been built in stages by the woman’s father, who was a line supervisor at the factory across the bridge. That made sense to Pescatore. For many inhabitants of the favelas, the concept of foreign travel—passports, visas, planes—was like going to the moon. The relatively few Brazilians who migrated illegally to the United States were not the poorest of the poor. That group was too busy just surviving. The immigrants were, by Brazilian standards, at least lower middle class.

  Tayane Pires answered the door. As Chiclet had said, she was a mulata—a blend of African and other. Her eyes were golden green, her hair golden brown, her skin copper gold. She had dressed for the visit in a velvety jacket, purple slacks, and sandals. Silver earrings framed her round open face. Tall and on the heavy side, she moved with casual grace.

  “I speak a little English,” she said. “I was living near Boston.”

  Pernambuco introduced Pescatore and Facundo as the important personages from the United States he had told her about. After assuring her she was in good hands, he left. He didn’t know the particulars behind the visit, and he didn’t want to know.

  Tayane served the obligatory coffee—she called it cafezinho—in an enclosed porch on the second floor. When Facundo admitted he had quit coffee for medical reasons, she went to get him a papaya juice instead. Pescatore used his forearm to brush away the ants marching across the plastic tablecloth toward the sugar bowl. He had heard and seen adults and children in the cluttered maze of a house as Tayane led them upstairs. Because of the Latin American tendency to receive guests in groups, he had thought relatives would be present for moral support, but Tayane was handling this alone.

  Although Facundo was fluent, he had decided Pescatore would be the lead interviewer. He knew the case and was, Facundo said, More simpatico for the ladies than a grumpy old moishe.

  When Tayane came back with the juice and sat down, Pescatore pulled out his notebook. He took his time. He wanted to put her at ease.

  He started by apologizing for his Portuguese. It was a stew of Spanish, French, and Italian spiced with Portuguese phrases and intonation. His success at communicating in Brazil mystified him.

  “I understand you,” she said. “Just speak slowly.”

  “Obrigado.”

  At his request, Tayane spelled her name.

  “I’m named for Princess Diana,” she explained. “My parents improvised the spelling.”

  Pescatore said he was investigating a murder-kidnapping in California and a multiple homicide in Mexico. He had reason to believe Tayane was a witness and a victim and had narrowly escaped being a casualty. Knowing it was traumatic for her, he was sorry but he had come to ask for her help.

  Her golden eyes reflected the sunlight sliced by bars on the window.

  “I have not told anyone, not even my family, the whole story,” she said. “It has been eating me up inside. I am glad you are here. Frightened too. But I am glad I can finally talk to someone.”

  “The U.S. government will make every effort to protect you,” he said. “There’s a chance you could be brought to the United States to testify. If you’re willing.”

  He added the last words when he saw her flinch at his mention of testifying.

  After a moment, Tayane started talking. Her voice was husky, her gaze direct. She was twenty-five. She had married four years ago. Her husband, Leandro, wasn’t from the favela. He had more money than she did, and how he made it wasn’t entirely clear. He had Brazilian friends who had gone to Boston, and he wanted to try his luck there. The couple traveled on tourist visas and remained illegally. Except for
the harsh winter, Tayane had enjoyed the adventure at first. She found a job in a supermarket. Leandro schemed and hustled.

  “Sure enough, he got me in big trouble,” she said.

  One night in the spring, the police pulled her over. The car turned out to be stolen and her husband had left a bag of marijuana in the trunk. Tayane refused to implicate him. She agreed to a plea deal: deportation instead of prison time. She was sent back to Rio. Leandro laid low and avoided arrest.

  “You must think I’m a fool, taking the fall like that,” she said.

  “No, ma’am,” Pescatore said.

  “Who can criticize a faithful wife?” Facundo dried his brow with a napkin. “Unfortunately, Leandro was a bit of a malandro.”

  She laughed ruefully, her first laugh since their arrival.

  Nice one, boss, Pescatore thought. Malandro was slang for a trickster or con man. Facundo was a comforting presence in interviews, a big shaggy uncle who forgave human frailties.

  “I should have stayed away from him,” she said. “I let him sweet-talk me over the phone. He convinced me to go back to Boston, he said that we could still share a life there. Mainly, I just wanted to be with him.”

  Leandro wired her money to hire a smuggler, a Somali based in Rio. The Somali handled a thriving market in East Africans; there were more of them coming through Brazil than there were Brazilians going north. In early August, Tayane flew with six African women to Mexico City. Mexican smugglers took them to Tijuana, where another five African women waited at a safe house. The conditions were uncomfortable, but the Mexicans did not mistreat them.

  “The driver of the van looked like a bandit. He was okay. A joker. When we crossed, he made a production of it. ‘Ladies, welcome to the United States!’”

  “Exactly how did that happen, the crossing?” Pescatore asked.

  Tayane shrugged. “They just put us in the van. They didn’t really hide us. It was arranged with an American border policeman. We stopped. I heard the driver speak English, show papers. We kept going.”

  She had been talking with her head down. She looked up into his eyes.

  “The driver…he got shot right in front of me. It was horrible.”

  “Take your time, Tayane.”

  “Living here, I’ve been around guns, shooting. But not like this. The driver stopped at a store. He was looking at his cell phone. All of a sudden, his head exploded.”

  After commandeering the van in San Diego, the two gunmen in cowboy hats terrorized the twelve women, screaming threats, ordering them to duck down and cover their eyes. Tayane didn’t realize they had crossed back into Mexico until the women were herded into a motel room. Chiclet took charge. She described the smuggler’s pompadour and battered, leering face.

  “A drunk pig,” she said, shuddering.

  Pescatore felt a pang of regret at not having thumped Chiclet when he’d had the chance. He said he knew this was difficult. She could take a break if she wanted. She shook her head. Her composure impressed him.

  The second woman whom Chiclet pulled out of the room with Tayane was named Abrihet, an Eritrean in her thirties.

  “When he ordered us to go to another room with him, we did what we were told. We were petrified.”

  Tayane’s account was consistent with Chiclet’s. She had pleaded with him to let her call her family. He dialed the Rio number into his phone and promised to let her call later. He ordered the women to drink with him, then started pawing them, but the barrage of gunfire outside interrupted. After he escaped through the window, the two women huddled on the floor.

  “The shooting ended. But we could hear them walking outside, banging on doors, yelling. Abrihet said we had to get out of there. She said the killers were looking for us. She heard them calling her name. Then she noticed the drunk had left a money clip and his watch by the bed. About five hundred dollars, thank God.”

  Eventually, Tayane and Abrihet fled through the window, across the roof, and down a back stairway. As they ran, they saw a half a dozen police cars parked in a street behind the motel.

  “No lights, no rush, just sitting there like they were waiting for the killers to finish,” she said, closing her eyes. “They were all in league together.”

  Tayane looked up as a woman came into the room. The woman looked like an older, shorter, lighter-skinned version of Tayane. She put a plate of coconut cookies on the table. Facundo thanked her effusively, eliciting a shy smile as she retreated.

  Tayane resumed the story. She said she and the Eritrean stumbled through dark streets at six a.m. No identification, no phones, no jackets, nothing except Chiclet’s cash and watch. They didn’t know exactly what had happened at the motel. They didn’t know what city they were in. Every noise frightened them, every shadow. Tayane was hysterical. Abrihet calmed her down.

  “A small girl, but strong in her body and mind,” Tayane said. “She was educated. The others were kind of, you know, from the countryside. Abrihet spoke good English, and Spanish mixed with Italian. It seemed like she knew Mexico. She figured out we were in the city of Tecate.”

  “How?”

  “She saw a big sign on a factory. They make a famous beer there. The sun was coming up, and she said we had to leave. The bandidhos would be hunting for us.”

  On a roadside lined with early-morning commuters, the two found a station-wagon taxi that charged thirty-five dollars for a ride to Tijuana. They shared the taxi with four other passengers. An hour later, they were eating sandwiches at a counter in the Tijuana bus station. A television showed the motel in Tecate, emergency vehicles, news bulletins about thirteen corpses.

  Tayane studied her bright purple nails. Her voice was slow and hollow.

  “All dead. I almost fainted from the shock. Abrihet kept saying we had to stay quiet, the police would spot us. She said we had to split up. She gave me money for a bus ticket to Mexico City. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go to the border and turn ourselves in to the American police, tell them everything. She got angry. She said the Americans were involved with the bad guys too. We had been kidnapped on the U.S. side. We couldn’t trust anyone. She told me to go to the Brazilian embassy in Mexico City and ask for help.”

  She paused. Pescatore thought she had stopped talking because she was choking up. But she didn’t cry. He exchanged glances with Facundo.

  Finally, Pescatore said, “What did Abrihet do? Where did she go?”

  “She didn’t say. The important thing was for me to get away from her.”

  “Why?”

  “Safer for me, she said.”

  “And the Brazilian embassy flew you home eventually?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the Brazilian police interview you? Contact the Mexican police? Take a statement about the killings, that kind of thing?”

  “I didn’t say anything about the killings.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. I said I was abandoned by smugglers in Mexico, nothing else.”

  “Tayane, I gotta ask you: Why didn’t you tell them about this horrible experience you’d been through?”

  She raised her chin, her full lips pursed in a look of defiance and fear. He realized that she was shaking.

  “Abrihet asked me not to.”

  After buying the bus ticket for Tayane, the Eritrean had taken her aside, embraced her, and talked in an urgent whisper.

  “Abrihet said it was all her fault. She was convinced the killers had been looking for her. She had gotten in trouble with some very powerful Americans in New York, at a place where she worked. These Americans had sent people to hunt her down. ‘I am the reason this happened,’ she said. I said that was crazy. She said she didn’t have time to explain, but it was true, that was why they took our pictures. That’s why the killers called her name.”

  “Did you say the gunmen at the motel spoke Spanish?”

  “Yes. From what I could tell, they looked Mexican.”

  “Who were these Americans, then? What was that all about?�
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  “I don’t know. She asked me to keep quiet. For my sake and for hers. I made a promise and I kept it. I am telling you the truth now because Pernambuco says you are good people. And Pernambuco has known my family since I was little.”

  Facundo’s elbows were propped on the table, a half-eaten cookie forgotten in his hand. Pescatore wasn’t sure what to do. He put his phone in front of Tayane and asked her to look at some pictures.

  She identified Chiclet and the three dead kidnappers. Next came the photo of the Eritrean woman.

  “Abrihet,” she said.

  Tayane picked up the phone and mimed a soft kiss, her lips almost touching the screen. The gesture caught Pescatore off guard. He felt a lump in his throat.

  “My sister,” she said. “I don’t even know her full name, but she’s my sister now. May God protect her.”

  Pescatore did his sad duty. One at a time, pausing on each face, he showed her the photos of the ten dead women.

  “Yes,” Tayane said. “I recognize them.”

  And then, at last, she wept.

  The moon glowed blue over Copacabana.

  On the sound system of the rooftop bar, the rich somber voice of Virginia Rodrigues serenaded the moon with “Lua, Lua, Lua, Lua.”

  Pescatore surveyed the bay, thirty stories below. Traffic flowed on the beachfront avenue. Lights glittered like diamonds in the hills, on the water, and along the urban reef formed by high-rise buildings. Barefoot soccer players shadow-danced on the sand. The games had been going on in front of the hotel all day. He wanted to go down and play, sprint in the surf, lose himself in the simple pleasure of sport.

  He signaled the waiter for another round of caipirinhas.