The John Milton Series Boxset 4

by Mark Dawson

  Aldo made it all the way around the Subaru and rapped his knuckles on the hood, just above the distinctive bug-eye headlights. “You change your mind, you let me know.”

  “I will.”

  “You know you ain’t gonna beat me tonight, though, right? I don’t care how nice your wheels are. There ain’t any way they gonna be faster than mine.”

  He gestured across the open concrete space to the Evo. It had been given an aggressive red paint job, and the scoop on the hood suggested that Aldo had been working on the engine.

  “Five hundred horses,” he said proudly.

  “Doesn’t matter if you’re scared to use it.”

  “I ain’t scared,” he said with a grin, but Paulo could tell that he had gotten under his skin. “You ready?”

  “Sure,” Paulo said. “We’re going first? I’m going to take all your money.”

  “Speaking of money,” Aldo said, nodding in the direction behind Paulo. “Looks like someone wants to speak to you about that.”

  Paulo turned. It was Palito.

  6

  Palito was not slender, as his nickname—Toothpick—might have suggested. He was a large man, a big six-footer, and overweight with it. He was wearing an oversized New York Knicks singlet that was stretched around his belly. His arms were flabby, with every spare inch taken up with lurid tattoos and gang tags that proclaimed his allegiance to ADA, the Amigos dos Amigos gang. There was a running joke among locals that Palito’s loyalty depended upon who was offering him the best terms, and that he had covered up previous tattoos signalling his devotion to Red Command and Third Command, the other gangs who vied with ADA for power in the favela. No one made that joke when Palito was around, at least not after the head of the last person to bring it up had been found at the side of the road at the top of Rua Um.

  He lumbered up to Paulo. He had come with two of his crew, but both men—tooled up with pistols that they made no effort to hide—stayed on the other side of the garage, next to Palito’s Lexus. It was a calculated snub. Palito was signalling that he did not consider Paulo to be a threat.

  He bared his teeth and grinned, exposing gold caps. “Where you been hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding anywhere,” Paulo said.

  “But I ain’t seen you since last month. You know what I think about that, right? I mean, I’m sure we spoke about that when you came to ask me for the money. I forget to tell you?”

  “No,” Paulo said. “You told me.”

  “So, given you know what happens to those who try to avoid paying me what they owe—”

  “I’m not trying to avoid paying you.”

  Palito stepped up until he was right in Paulo’s face. “Given you know what happens,” he started again, “why is it that you’ve missed the last two payments? You need to explain that to me, kid, because, right now, it looks like you’re trying to make me look like a fool.”

  Paulo’s heart raced. Palito had told him all about the consequences of missing payments, but it had been unnecessary; his brutality toward defaulters was legendary throughout Rocinha. There were stories of beatings, of bones broken with metal bars, and fingernails pulled out with pliers. Paulo would have preferred to do business with practically anyone else, but his choices were limited. One of the other consequences of Palito’s reputation was that no one else would risk going into business with one of his competitors. He owned the market in Paulo’s part of the favela, and bad things had happened to loan sharks who had tried to muscle into his territory. His jealousy was not limited to his rivals; there were stories of beatings for potential clients who had eschewed his services in favour of lenders in other parts of the city.

  “I’ll have your money,” Paulo said.

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” he said.

  Palito put out a fat hand.

  “After the race,” Paulo said. “I’ll cover the payments I’ve missed and the next two.”

  “How much to enter the race?”

  “A thousand,” Paulo said, aware that that would be enough to pay off the money that Palito wanted.

  The fat man pursed his lips and paused, seemingly weighing up the offer. “Payment’s gone up,” he said. “Interest on top of the interest.”

  “Fine,” Paulo said. “You’ll get what I owe.”

  Palito grinned at him again, his gold caps sparkling in the artificial light. “What if you lose?”

  “I won’t,” Paulo said.

  Palito turned and looked at the Impreza. “If you lose, I’ll take that.”

  Paulo knew that he had no choice. “Fine.”

  Palito grinned again. “Good luck.”

  7

  The starting point of the race was beneath an overhead sign that identified the bus lane on the Avenue Rodrigues Alves. The route followed the coast for half of its length, heading east and then south so that they passed through the neighbourhoods of Santo Cristo, Centro, Glória and Botafogo, before they cut due south to Copacabana, Ipanema and the three-quarter mark at Leblon. They turned north there, for a straight burn-out through Lagoa and Humaitá and then the final stretch along Avenue Paulo de Frontin to the start-finish line.

  There were four cars in the first race. Paulo had his Subaru, and Aldo was driving the tricked-out Mitsubishi that he had shown off inside the garage. A teenager called Rafael was at the wheel of a lurid green Nissan Skyline with an all-black hood and spoiler, and a woman called Kat was racing a Toyota Supra that sat so low to the road that it looked as if the underside would scrape against it the moment they set off. The four of them lined up side by side. Paulo was on the inside, with Rafael next to him. There was a raised kerb that separated their two lanes from the two lanes to their left; Aldo was next to the kerb on the other side and Kat was outside him.

  Paulo reached down into his pocket and took out the rosary beads that his mother had given him half a lifetime ago. He held them to his mouth and kissed them and then hung them over the stem of the rear-view mirror. He reached into his pocket again and took out the picture of Eloá. It was his favourite picture of her: she was playing on a swing boat on the beach in Leblon, the sun shining bright and her smile shining brighter still. He had a little sticky-tack on the dashboard and he pressed the picture against it, holding it in place. He kissed his forefinger and index finger and touched them against her lips.

  He pressed down on the clutch and fed the car just enough gas to rumble the engine. He could smell the faint odour of the exhaust, and that, combined with an underlying note from the fresh oil, made him feel at home. He knew the car inside out: the distance between the wheel and the gearshift, the slender gap between the brake and the accelerator.

  He took out his watch and checked the time: nine fifty-nine.

  The flag girl strutted onto the raised kerb between Rafael and Aldo and raised her hands above her head.

  Paulo pushed down a little more with his foot, revving the engine. The four cars strained like chained dogs, and their engines filled the night with their hungry whines.

  The flag girl threw her hands down.

  Paulo lifted off with his left foot at the same time as he stomped down with his right. Paulo knew his car perfectly and knew exactly how to set off without spinning the wheels. The car lurched for a moment before the rubber bit on the pocked asphalt, and then he darted ahead with enough force to press him back into his seat.

  The girl was gone in a flash, and, as he glanced up in his mirror, he saw a quick glimpse of her as she disappeared into the distance. He could feel the vibration of the engine in his seat, and the noise was so loud that he could feel it in the middle of his gut. He shifted up and then up again and again, stomping down on the clutch and driving the gearshift down and then up and then down again with sharp, practised, forceful stabs.

  The first mile was dead straight and practically a drag race until they reached the Aquarium. The road cut through an industrial district, and it was almost empty at this time of the evening. All of them were able to dri
ve flat out without having to worry about traffic getting in the way. Paulo focussed on the road ahead, the derelict warehouses and factories on either side of him passing by in a blur. Rafael kept pace with him and then started to pull ahead. The Skyline was faster than the Subaru, but Paulo was the better driver; he let the kid get ahead and ducked in behind him, slipstreaming him as they reached a hundred miles an hour and kept climbing. He looked to his left and saw, amid the flash of the colourful graffiti on the walls of the buildings, that Aldo and Kat were alongside each other. The raised kerb was still to his left, preventing him from changing lanes, but he didn’t care about that. He was happy to stay where he was. He knew the course. He knew his best chance was in biding his time.

  The bus lane merged with the rest of the road, and the raised kerb disappeared. The four cars formed up: Rafael took the lead in the Skyline, followed by Kat in the Supra, Aldo in the Evo, and Paulo at the back. The engines buzzed like locusts, and backfire flamed out of the Skyline’s exhausts. The warehouses disappeared to be replaced by gleaming metal and glass buildings and the cranes of the harbour east of them. The road started to bend to the right, swallowed by the two-mile-long tunnel of Prefeito Marcello Alencar. The road’s three lanes became enclosed by sheer concrete walls and lit by two rows of harsh lamps that were suspended by metal rods from the ceiling. The road banked as it turned to the right, and Paulo allowed the car to drift down to the bottom. The noise of the four straining engines was deafening, echoed and amplified by the enclosed space. Paulo looked to his left, up the banked turn; Aldo was next to him, and, for a moment, their eyes locked.

  They raced out of the tunnel and into the neon-stained night. They were on Avenue Alfred Agache, heading south toward the Museum of Modern Art and Glória. Paulo was still at the back of the pack, with perhaps a hundred metres separating him from Rafael at the front. He glanced ahead: the Supra started to jerk left and right, its fishtail becoming more and more pronounced as Kat failed to bring it under control. Paulo saw the flap of torn rubber from the rear right wheel and knew that she had had a blowout. The back end swung all the way around to the side and the front lost traction, the car whirling around into a full spin. The car slid over the central reservation, narrowly missing a tree, and spun out onto a grass run-off that separated the road from the city’s second airport. The grass was replaced by gravel, and the scree brought the Supra to a stop, a parabola of loose chippings spraying into the air as the car beached.

  He turned his attention back to the road. One down, he thought. Two to go.

  8

  They had raced through Flamengo and Botafogo, along the gilded ribbon of Copacabana, and now they were tracing the road west through similarly rich Ipanema. The traffic was busier here, and now they had to slow down in order to pick a path through the slower-moving vehicles. Rafael was still in the lead, with Aldo close on his tail; Paulo had held onto them both as they blazed their way south, knowing that he would be able to reel them in now that his driving ability was more important than the straight-line performance of their cars.

  They raced along Avenue Vieira Souto with the ocean to their left and the gleaming high-rises to their right. Paulo drew closer to Aldo and Rafael, swinging out into the eastbound lane and picking a path through the sudden oncoming rush of traffic. He swung the wheel left and right, swerving between a taxi and a minibus, then slid around a second taxi, over the kerb and into the cycle lane and then onto the sidewalk. He stomped down on the gas and felt the acceleration press him back into his seat. He raced ahead, eating up the distance between the Subaru and its quarry, wrestling the wheel hard left to swerve off the sidewalk and back onto the road just in time to swoop around the tables from a restaurant that had been allowed to encroach onto the path.

  The engine roared, a constant backdrop against the regular outraged blaring of horns. Paulo looked left and saw Rafael and Aldo suddenly fall behind a slow-moving clot of traffic. The Skyline ran out of road, and Rafael had no option but to slam on the brakes and stop; Aldo had the space to react and launched the Lancer over the kerb and into Paulo’s lane.

  Two down. It was just him and Aldo now.

  Paulo hammered the accelerator, and Aldo reacted, edging ahead. They burned through Ipanema and Vidigal, with Aldo ahead but nothing really between them.

  Paulo readied himself as they approached the hard right turn where Avenue Niemeyer switched back through ninety degrees as it raced toward the Royal Tulip hotel and then picked its way up the flank of the rugged ground leading to the Hill and up to Rocinha.

  He nudged up closer to the Mitsubishi, trying to give Aldo the impression that he was going to take him on the inside. Aldo had to defend the move, and he turned the wheel and swung his car over, shutting the door. Paulo drifted back, hoping that Aldo might think he would wait for a chance to go by him again, but then, as they roared onto a stretch of narrow road where the speed of the corner made overtaking almost impossible, he yanked the wheel to the right and swung inside the Evo. Aldo saw him make the move and tried to cut him off; the Evo swung right, too, its back end almost clipping against the front wing of the Subaru. Paulo stomped on the brake. His feints had distracted Aldo, and he was taking the right-hander ahead much too quickly. He had no choice but to brake; the Lancer lost its speed and Paulo yanked up on the handbrake, sending the car into a controlled power slide that sent it gliding around the corner through the space that Aldo had just been forced to vacate.

  The two cars turned together: the Lancer on the outside, the Subaru on the inside. Paulo could feel the traction on the inside right tyre, the whole car seeming to pivot around it as the rear end swung around. He was going too fast, too, but the rear end touched the Mitsubishi, and the bump held the car in the turn. And it added a little extra momentum to the Lancer that made it impossible for Aldo to control.

  The Mitsubishi’s wheels screeched as Aldo braked, bringing the car under control just before it could slam into the concrete facing of the structure on the outside of the turn. Aldo had to slow almost to a halt; Paulo whooped as he came out of the turn and buried the pedal, racing away up the hill in first place, the Evo surely too far back now for Aldo to be able to catch him.

  He gripped the wheel and let the thrill of the adrenaline buzz through him. He looked down at the picture of Eloá on the dash. His advantage allowed him the luxury of thinking about how much he stood to win, and the difference in her life that he would now be able to make.

  He was on the final part of the course. There was no sense in pushing too hard, so he dabbed the brake in an attempt to bleed a little speed off. The pedal felt wrong. It was soft—almost spongy—and it travelled farther down than it should have. He tried again and, this time, the pedal went all the way down to the floor without slowing the car at all. He glanced down at the speedometer and saw that he was doing eighty; he knew the road ahead and knew that there was a hairpin right-hander that he would not be able to take unless he was able to cut his speed all the way down.

  He downshifted to fourth and then third, the engine protesting loudly as the revs increased. He pumped the brake pedal up and down, again and again and again, trying to build up brake fluid pressure. Nothing happened; the brakes were completely gone.

  The hairpin was coming up fast. The terrain was hilly, and he knew that there was a sheer face of rock to the left of the turn. He would crash into it unless he was able to slow down. The road climbed a little, enough to slow the car to sixty, and then Paulo saw the guardrail on the right-hand side. There was a twenty-foot drop on the other side and the rail looked flimsy, but he didn’t have any other option if he wanted to avoid wiping himself out against the rock. He turned the wheel to the right and steered into the rail, scraping against it gently and then, once he was confident that it would hold, turning a little more aggressively so that the car ground against the metal more firmly. Sparks flew up, a cascade that alighted on the windshield before vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared.

  The friction slow
ed the car and, as the hairpin approached, Paulo was able to drift over to the other side and then turn in, taking the apex once again. He was still going too fast to manage the turn completely, and the car veered across the road until the fender crunched into the bare rock. The hood lodged against an outcrop and the rear end spun out; the car skidded through a hundred and eighty degrees, its momentum finally arrested as the opposite side crunched into the rock.

  The Impreza was left facing back down the road. Paulo slammed his hands against the wheel as, below him—but climbing fast—he saw the lights of a car moving at speed. The lights followed the bend as it ascended and, after disappearing behind an outcrop for a moment, they emerged in a blaze of light on the road that led to the hairpin. It was the Lancer. Aldo sounded the horn as he took the turn, putting his arm out of the open window and extending his middle finger. He gunned the engine as soon as he was around the bend and hit the horn again—once, twice, three times—and then disappeared up the road and out of sight.

  Paulo slumped forward, his forehead resting against the wheel.

  This was not the way he had seen the night finishing.

  9

  Paulo called Marcos and told him what had happened. His boss was at home and had grumbled about being disturbed just as he was about to watch the latest episode of Supermax, but then he must have heard the desperation in Paulo’s voice. He told him to stay where he was, and that he would come out in the truck and pick him up.

  Paulo got out of the car. It was late and the road was quiet. Two cars had already gone by, but, as he looked back down into the valley, there was no sign of anyone else approaching. He took his phone out of his pocket, switched on the flashlight, and slid underneath the front of the Impreza. He pushed, sliding on his back until he was underneath the car, and then turned the flashlight onto the mechanics. He followed the brake lines from the hood, checking the driver’s side rear wheel first. The line was steel to start with, and, as he had expected, it looked fine. He traced it back, running his finger along it until the steel line was replaced with rubber.