Rio Noir

The Booty by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Lapa

He was known as Rat. Short, skinny, with a head shaped like a rodent’s. People found him repulsive. Not because of the clothes he wore or his personal hygiene. He always wore a suit and tie, both secondhand and rather used, but of good quality. His shoes and clothes had gone through various repairs, some by his own hand, and he kept them clean and intended to go on wearing them as long as possible. Until recently he had worn a wide-brimmed felt hat, a gift from a habitué of Cinelândia. It was a lovely hat, but Rat finally convinced himself that it made him look even smaller than he was, though it had the advantage of hiding his face, which was indeed repulsive thanks to his tiny, pointed, widely spaced teeth. This general appearance made him seek out from an early age somber and poorly lit places, not always easy in a sunny city like Rio, unless one becomes the solitary, nocturnal sort. Which is in fact what happened, not because of his repulsive appearance but because of the police.

It was when he still lived downtown, in the area stretching from Cinelândia to Lapa. During the day he circulated around Cinelândia and the narrow streets, almost alleyways, that go from the square toward Lapa. At night he frequented the bars in Lapa. In Cinelândia he managed and protected the minors who committed petty thefts on pedestrians; in Lapa he managed and protected the prostitutes, not all of them, of course, but a sufficient number to maintain his lifestyle. In both businesses he kept the accounts himself and was good at it. There was also Japa, an intelligent and crafty lawyer, despite being an incorrigible alcoholic, who resolved his run-ins with the law. Besides the two of them, there were three security men who took turns maintaining order and protection from the “Germans,” as the police were called. Finally, there was a network of underage lookouts who served quite efficiently as short-range radar. Rat had never dealt with drugs and traffickers, whom he considered very violent and likely to attract the police. He also neither possessed nor used guns. He was in the habit of saying his weapons were his short stature, his sharpened teeth, and the ability to disappear almost instantly when necessary. He always thought of himself as an entrepreneur. The boys he protected were required to attend school; otherwise they couldn’t be part of his team. The women had regular classes in basic English, which facilitated their contact with foreign tourists. And both the boys and the women were directed by him, when necessary, to an outpatient medical clinic that received a monthly contribution from Rat and Japa for services rendered to the underserved downtown population.

Things were going smoothly, without major internal conflict and without problems of law and order, until the day the police realized that everything was going too well with him and his lawyer partner and that they, the police, had so far not received any benefit from it.

“Procuring, inducement to commit a crime, and corruption of minors, forming a criminal band... Serious offenses, seeing as how the second is considered a heinous crime. Know what that means, you shitass Rat? It means you’re gonna spend the rest of your life behind bars just like your brothers that serve as guinea pigs in laboratories. The difference being that you won’t be treated nowhere near as good as them. The researchers that’re gonna take care of you will be your cellmates, and they won’t be as gentle as the scientists in research labs. Because of the nature of your crimes I can take you straight from here to jail. Forget about paying bail and going back to drinking beer. Your crime is unbailable. Rat is what they call you and what you call yourself. You’re gonna envy the rats that crawl over your body while you’re sleeping... if you ever do manage to sleep.”

That was the speech given by the policeman, who judging by his physique must belong to some shock troop. He accosted Rat at night on an abandoned street in Lapa, where no one was around for him to ask for help.

“What can we do for none of that to happen?” asked Rat in a small voice.

“No ‘we.’ Here you’re the rat and I’m the cat. I’ll expect you here tomorrow, at this same time, with 50 percent of what you made last month. Pay attention, I’m not demanding this or that amount, I’m demanding a percentage, 50 percent, half the money you took in last month — which will in fact be your last month if you try to screw me. If you got any doubts about the possibility of me making you into a lab rat, ask your partner and lawyer, who now that I think about it oughta be called Skunk.”

Rat had no intention of returning the following night to give the cop half his earnings from the month before. But neither did he plan to go on hanging around Cinelândia or Lapa. He never had the calling to be a laboratory rat. The only solution was to disappear. Taking with him half the money collected in the last month — the other half Rat put in a thick brown envelope, taped it shut, and gave it to his partner — Rat became a fugitive, at least to his way of thinking. He wasn’t wanted “dead or alive” by the police in the city, but the mere existence of that gorilla and his accomplices sufficed to make him vanish like smoke.

The next day, at dawn, it was still dark when he left his felt hat on the bench where he usually sat in Floriano Square in Cinelândia. A souvenir from Rat for those who remained.

The day had brightened by the time he left the Siqueira Campos subway station in Copacabana, the only district he knew as well as the downtown area, though he had no acquaintances there. Like a rat, he knew the geography of the district, not exactly its surface and its daytime inhabitants but the underground geography and some of its nocturnal dwellers. As a precaution and from fear of the cop and his team, he started moving solely in the actual underworld of Copacabana. His small stature and his skinniness facilitated his rapid disappearance and displacement in the rainwater networks of the Copacabana subsoil. To do this he had to rid himself of the suit and shoes — all that he took in his flight — and arrange for some secondhand clothing of a municipal worker. The next step was to rent a room in a fifth-rate boardinghouse on the Tabajaras slope. In reality, not a room but half a room divided down the middle by a sheet of plywood. In each half there was space for only a single bed and, underneath it, a small chest with a padlock for storing the tenant’s clothes and belongings.

The plywood dividing the room didn’t reach the ceiling, only the top of the door, where it forked, allowing entrance to the two halves of the room. But for someone who spent the early part of the day at the rainwater networks, that half a room was at least a one-star hotel.

Two months went by without news of the cop and his team. Rat figured that they must not operate in the South Zone. Fortunately, he had yet to be noticed by any of them. True, during the day he wore the overalls of a city worker. And his current fear was being stopped by some municipal car and being asked for his ID. He of course had no work papers from the city. Before he could arrange an identity, which would cost some money, he needed to enlarge his crew. He had two women who took care of him and he took care of them, the same setup as Cinelândia, and he also had some boys who brought in a bit of change from objects boosted from foreign tourists, objects that he passed along to fences. Two months’ rent was paid in advance, and he didn’t go hungry. That’s how Rat is, he thought. The Chinese horoscope says that the rat always does well in the labyrinths of life. He didn’t know if this was exactly what it said, but it was something like that.

One night when he had taken off the municipal overalls, showered, and put on his nocturnal suit, the two girls who already worked with him brought a third. Young like them. She had the look of someone experienced enough to have written on her face and body that this was no choir girl. She was of the same height as he, which was rare, a shapely body despite some signs of having been around the block a few times, eyes that were alert, expressive, and intelligent. When she spoke to him, her voice became melodious.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Rat,” she said when she was introduced.

“My dear, anyone called Rat can’t go by Mister or Doctor or Sir. Call me Rat. That’s what everybody calls me. And you, what’s your name?”

“Rita.”

“Rita! Just think, Rita and Rat. Made for each other.”

Rita smiled. Standing next to each other they looked like a brother-and-sister circus act: the same height, same physical type, same hair color, only their features showed no resemblance. Rita didn’t have a ratlike face.

Four more months went by — six all told since he had left Cinelândia — and Rita never left Rat’s side. She was observant, alert about those she approached, and possessed an intelligence that surprised Rat daily. Without his asking, Rita began to take care of him, not only emotionally but also physically, despite not having the stature of a bodyguard, though her two friends assured him that Rita knew tactics of attack and defense should they prove necessary.

Rat wanted Rita to become acquainted with downtown. He himself was beginning to miss the square, Lapa, the friends who had stayed behind without his having had time to say goodbye. The cop no doubt continued controlling the area; it was how he made money and maintained his tough-guy reputation. Rat was certain that if he were caught, one of two things would happen: either his body would be discovered floating in the Bay of Guanabara or he would wake up locked in a cell after spending the night in a hospital. One thing he was sure of: the cop wouldn’t forget him, and he had a face easy to remember. Before risking his life by showing up in Cinelândia, it was best to get in contact with Japa to find out how things were.

On Wednesday night, good weather, nice temperature, he arrived in Lapa through the busiest street, in Rita’s clothes and with light makeup to hide the shadow of his beard, wearing a feminine hat with a brim, prescription glasses, and sneakers. It wasn’t enough to attract attention as a woman, but the important thing was not to attract attention as a man. He called Japa from the street. The phone rang until it disconnected automatically. He went to the bar he used to frequent and asked a waiter whom he knew where he could find Japa.

The waiter paused a bit before answering: “From what I hear, in the cemetery, Rat.”

“Killed?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Who did it?”

“All I know is they killed him. How or who it was, I don’t know.”

“When was it?”

“Right after you disappeared. We thought that you too—”

“Make sure they go on thinking that.” He gave the waiter a generous tip and went about disappearing from the area.

To avoid any risk of bumping into the cop, he walked to the Glória station instead of catching the subway in Cinelândia, only a block from where he was.

He arrived at the boardinghouse well before he expected. He removed Rita’s dress and accessories, put on the city worker overalls, and waited for Rita to return, something that depended on luck and her ability of seduction in her work on Avenida Atlântica. He had learned over time to live with that conflict-laden waiting, and he began to understand why pimps frequently beat their women. It wasn’t because they didn’t like them, but because they did. These thoughts ran through his mind at the same time as the memories of Japa. A supercool guy, intelligent, a friend... The cop must have beaten Japa badly to find out where he was. And not even Rat himself would be able to say... He wasn’t anywhere, or rather, he was in a non-place. That son-of-a-bitch cop had killed Japa. If Rat hadn’t run away, though he had alerted his friend, the cop would have had no reason to do what he did. But an outlaw’s life is like that. Rat was sure the cop had decreed an end to his own life on earth. From that day on, he could be killed without further notice.

Rita arrived while Rat was sleeping. He woke up and beat her without making a sound. He didn’t want to wake up whoever was sleeping on the other side of the divider. And he also didn’t want to hurt her. Rita asked him not to do that anymore. “It’s not necessary,” she said, “I’ll stay with you as long as you want.”

Shitty life. He had to leave the city. He had no way of hiding indefinitely. Anyone who had seen him even once would be able to pick him out of a crowd. He had to change cities or even states. The balance he had accumulated with Japa in the savings account, which was now solely his, should be enough to start over someplace where he didn’t have to hide all day and go out only at night. He wasn’t a bat, he thought, despite it being said that bats and rats were related. If that were true, at least he had gotten the good part; he didn’t fly, but he also wasn’t blind.

The next morning, after reconciling with Rita, he decided to go out to check the status of the bank account he had with Japa. The bank was on Rua do Catete, four stations beyond Siqueira Campos. He took a shower, put on a clean pressed suit, a dress shirt and tie, got his ID and bank card. He descended the Tabajaras slope as if on his way to pick up his car parked on Siqueira Campos but instead he entered the subway station, bought a round-trip ticket, and in a few minutes arrived at the Catete stop. Depending on the balance in the account, he would leave for São Paulo or Vitória. He couldn’t say why one or the other. Maybe the size of the city, the number of people in the street, the behavior of the police...

“Yes sir?” said a guard at the turnstile, where bank customers received tickets to see a clerk.

“I want to check the balance in my savings account.”

“For that you don’t need a ticket, you can check it on the ATM. Any one that’s unoccupied. Over there, in that row of ATMs. Just use your card.”

He took the card from his pocket, checked the password on a small piece of paper kept in his wallet, and went to the first available machine. He chose the options that he wanted, typed in the two passwords requested by the machine, and removed the printed slip with the balance. He didn’t immediately understand what it said. He ordered another printout, then went to look for the clerk who was helping customers and asked the meaning of what was printed on the yellow slip of paper.

“What is it you want to know?” asked the clerk.

“I want to know my balance.”

The clerk took the paper and looked at it for several seconds, then said, “Your balance is zero, sir. Your savings account was closed.”

“Zero? Closed? I never closed any account. Where did my money go?”

“You had best speak with the manager. I only help customers in the use of ATMs.”

It was a ground-floor apartment in the rear, with windows that looked out only on a deteriorating wall two meters beyond the living room window. The apartment door had never been painted and the doorbell hung from the hole that should have housed it. At least it worked. At the second ring, a middle-aged woman opened the door halfway and hung onto the knob with one hand.

“Good evening, my name is Rita, I’m—”

“I know who you are,” said the woman in an openly unfriendly manner. “Are you here for the booty or for your man?”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you, ma’am? I’m Rat’s partner’s sister. And I’ll repeat the question: are you here looking for the booty or for Rat?”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Of course. The same place he sent my brother to.”

“He’s in jail?”

“No. He’s dead.”

Silence. The two women were still at the threshold, one inside grasping the doorknob, the other outside, arms hanging loose at her side. No sound came from inside the apartment; an indistinct noise came from the street, as if it were far away.

“Dead?”

“Or disappeared, which is the same thing.”

“And the other thing you asked if I came looking for?”

“The booty? You don’t know what it is? It’s what’s stolen from the defeated, the product of illegal work, robbery. Or do you think what Rat did was legitimate work?”

“You said your brother and he were partners.”

“My brother was a lawyer. What he did was get his man out of jail or keep him from getting arrested. Rat paid my brother for his work as a lawyer. They didn’t do the same thing.”

“I don’t know your name.”

“Zilda.”

“I don’t know why you’re talking to me like this. And I didn’t know your brother or you, ma’am. I came here because Rat said, in case of a problem, to look for his partner and gave me this address. I’m not here to fight or ask anybody for anything. I just want someone to tell me what they did with Rat.”

“I already told you. Probably the same thing they did to my brother. Beat him to death, then throw his body in a hole somewhere.”

Rita stared at Zilda without knowing what to say. She waited for the other woman to say or do something, but she just went on gripping the doorknob with both hands. Rita turned and left in the direction of the building’s entrance.

Dead. With each passing day the word took on the most varied meanings. Some days it even meant its opposite, life, but this word too lost its value, coming to mean merely “not dead.” Rita’s head had not been nurtured enough with ideas capable of filling the emptiness she felt since Rat had disappeared. Zilda made no distinction between Rat’s death and the death of her brother. They were cheap deaths, second-class deaths, devoid of ceremony or emotion. So poor that neither of the two bore a true name. One of them called himself Rat and the other was known as Japa.

Rita didn’t know what to say, and she had difficulty figuring out how to express her feelings, as if for the privileged classes there were catalogs of sentiments, one for every situation, and she had no personal or literary references to orient her at such moments. So she didn’t suffer, for fear of suffering the wrong way. Rat was her only reference in situations like this.

She walked away without knowing which way to go. Rat spoke a lot about Cinelândia, just as he spoke of the activity in Lapa. Rita didn’t like Lapa, or didn’t like Japa’s sister who lived in Lapa, and she extrapolated her displeasure to the rest of the neighborhood that she hadn’t even gotten to see properly. She asked someone the shortest route to Cinelândia and followed the instructions, hopeful of finding Rat or some trace of him. She wasn’t wearing her “work” clothes and her petite size and absence of makeup made her look like a young woman recently out of adolescence and curious about adult life. She’d been told this was the busiest night in Lapa and its surrounding areas. But she wasn’t interested in the liveliness of the place, she wanted only to be able to move in the midst of the crowd without being noticed. That was what Rat used to do. And because of this she couldn’t understand how Rat had been caught. Ever since leaving Cinelândia he was extremely careful; besides which, he knew how to disguise himself. Even with his peculiar physical type and physiognomy he managed to pass unnoticed among people he had known for a long time. How could he have been caught? While she looked for the subway entrance, Rita tried to put herself in Rat’s place and think as he would if he were caught.

To her, Rat would only be caught if he was the victim of a trap resulting from a tip-off. This was her first thought. He wouldn’t be caught because of distraction. And who would be capable of setting that trap? He had no real friends, he didn’t even socialize, he spoke only when necessary. Few knew of his life and habits. And even fewer could set a trap for him. The first such person, Rita had thought, was Japa, because he knew Rat intimately, in addition to being his business partner and lawyer. The second was Zilda, Japa’s sister and caregiver, who had known Rat as long as her brother. The third was she herself, Rita, who lived with and slept with Rat but to whom Rat was still a mystery. And, finally, the two female friends who introduced her to Rat and were protected by him and knew where he lived. Those were the five people who could have set a trap for Rat or acted as informers for the police.

The first of the five to be eliminated was she herself, unless she was insane, and if she were insane she wouldn’t be able to set a trap for an intelligent and shrewd guy like Rat, besides which she wouldn’t be wasting her time trying to figure out who had set the trap. Rat’s two friends and protégées could be at most snitches, but even so would lose out, plus were lacking the brains to set up a betrayal scheme with the police. That left Japa and his sister, the two closest both physically and historically. But Japa also would lose out; he lived on and supported his sister on the division of the income obtained through the scheme organized and maintained through Rat’s activities; furthermore, the two had been close friends since adolescence, plus the fact that Japa was rarely sober, spending most of his days and nights inebriated. That meant it had to be Zilda. Caregiver for her alcoholic brother, resentful and angry, but she too had little to gain... unless the booty, which she had been the only one to mention, was a significant amount of money.

Disappearance and death were the same thing, according to Zilda. And she could know of Rat’s disappearance by the simple fact of him not being seen in the district, but how could she know he had died? And if there was booty or money, who had the right to it? Finally, how could Zilda say, when she answered the door, that she knew who Rita was, if Rita had only come into his life two months after he’d left Cinelândia?

The train arrived at the Siqueira Campos station. The slope up Tabajaras was a bit steep, but Rita was so deep in her thoughts that she began the ascent as if walking on level ground. The fact is, she had already raised a few questions for which she’d found no answers, and before completing the climb she had decided to go back to Zilda’s apartment to settle her remaining questions. Among them, Rat’s money being withdrawn from the bank, the booty that Zilda had asked whether she had come for. And also, how did Zilda know who she was?

The next morning she left before dawn, hoping to catch Zilda still sleeping.

She had already lost Rat. She had nothing left to lose.

The Return by MV Bill

Cidade de Deus

By walkie-talkie Bolha passed the order along to his managers: “Look alive there! It’s one bundle for Sergeant Gonçalves’s squad, two for Corporal Tenório, and the fireworks only if you don’t recognize the vehicle, understand?”

He found it funny for the people down below to refer to a raid as something positive. In the favela it was different. A raid had never saved anybody’s life. A police raid only sank the guy even deeper. And sinking wasn’t in Bolha’s plans. He’d gotten into trafficking through the front door, at the age of fourteen, as successor to his older brother after seeing him fall, never to rise again, his rifle clutched to his chest.

Since the time he was a kid, the older traffickers had watched him carefully, as if seeing some potential in him. They appreciated his fervor in kite battles and his ability with guns. Years later, by then manager of a drug cartel, he was cruel to adversaries and very good at bookkeeping. At eighteen, he was already setting out to conquer other areas, always of course within Cidade de Deus, his community of origin.

Bolha’s charisma and courage reflected positively on the dealings of the traffickers. Because of these talents there was no opposition when he was nominated to assume the role of head of the Cidade de Deus drug traffic. And the community fell in line. No one would dare object because Bolha gave large amounts of money to the church, brought the beer to funk parties, underwrote medicine for the neediest families, and was generous in handing out Christmas presents. His motto was, Take good care of the child of today, ’cause he’ll be the soldier of tomorrow. He assumed a regal posture, a benefactor of the favela. The dependable welfare-providing that he had learned so well from the old-time traffickers.

That Friday evening, things looked promising. The packaging was proceeding at full steam. Dozens of people were engaged in the task of cleaning and weighing the drugs on scales so they would be ready for retail sale during the late-night hours.

Friday nights in Cidade de Deus were famous the world over!

And as the hours went by, the favela boiled. To the sound of funk, half-naked women, playboys from street level, and junkies mingled in the narrow passageways, high on drugs, alcohol, and a permanent state of tension as if at any moment it could all fall apart.

In the face of such success, only one thing bothered Bolha: the decision of the Special Battalion to change the troops responsible for patrolling the favela, because the new cops, led by Sergeant Gonçalves, weren’t into bribery and raids were becoming more and more frequent. And with them, the bloody gunfights and the losses represented by captured weapons and drugs.

To complicate matters, sources had dried up. His contacts in the barracks had been removed, so he was no longer getting advance word of which garrison was going to strike. Without that information it was impossible to make plans.

Bolha was lucky to be able to count on Representative Saci. Not only Bolha, but the country’s entire trafficking circuit. Representative Saci had connections in Colombia and acted as middleman for a supply network of weapons and drugs. He said the guns came from FARC, the rebel army, but no one knew if that shit was true.

What was true was that Representative Saci was glib. A large, smiling guy always well dressed who wore nothing but linen. They said that in childhood he’d been in a car accident and had a fake leg. Bolha had never had the courage to ask, but he’d spent hours watching the representative’s leg and had never seen any difference. That shit must just be a rumor, he thought. Like that story about the guns he gets from FARC.

Bolha didn’t have time to complete the communication with the drug sites before he heard the rattle of the first burst of gunfire. With a rifle resting on the windowsill, a pistol in his hand, and his pockets filled with ammunition, Bolha assumed an alert position. He observed the confrontation outside through the scope on his AR-15. In ecstasy, he watched one of his soldiers, a skinny teenager, discharge all his rifle’s ammo into a military policeman. The pride he felt! One less worm in the world.

Losing no time, Bolha went up to the roof and braced himself against the water tank; framed in the crosshairs of his rifle was the head of a cop shielding himself behind a post. Fun to see the guy’s head explode and stain the air red — two thousand meters in one second! Bolha remembered the words of Representative Saci when he sold him that marvel. What a beauty. Those FARC guys really know how to live.

But his joy was short-lived.

Amid the adrenaline of the moment and the elegance of the headless body writhing on the ground, Bolha saw his soldiers in flight, running toward the interior of the favela. Those still carrying weapons shot into the air at random, disoriented. The majority simply fled in panic and dropped their guns on the ground, as if trying to avoid being caught red-handed. The police came behind, collecting the treasures abandoned in the middle of the road. Considerable battle reinforcement for the predators’ next invasion.

Fuck! Bolha thought. I’m on my own in this shit!

For some time he had known it was problematic not to have the payoff to the police on his books anymore. Suicide to go on operating in the favela without a contact inside the Battalion. And just as one thought leads to another, Bolha was surprised when he descended from the roof and, out of nowhere, found himself facing Representative Saci.

“What you doing here, congressman?”

“The civil police called me and said you needed help,” replied the representative, trying to be heard above the sound of gunshots. “But I didn’t know there was an operation here in Cidade de Deus. The entire police force is out there, Bolha!”

“I know that!” said Bolha, confused. He paced back and forth, not knowing what to do.

“You need reinforcements.”

“Yeah. I don’t know how many are still with me... My security men were all out there in front,” explained the trafficker. “I seen lots of my men running away, terrified. I don’t know nothing no more.”

“How much do you have to lose now?”

“Now? Beats me. Maybe some—”

Before he could complete the calculation, the representative’s body shook. His eyes widened and he raised his hands to his chest, where a huge stain was turning his shirt red.

“Shit, I’ve been shot, Bolha!” Saci shouted. “Get me out of here!”

The favela was now completely surrounded by police. Getting the representative out was the same as surrendering. Bolha tried to think of an escape, but it was difficult to find any trace of lucidity in his brain.

“My car... my car,” stammered the representative. “They won’t suspect my car.”

Bolha had seen thousands of people die. And the enormous amount of blood spurting from the representative’s chest left no doubt: he wouldn’t last long. An hour at most.

The problem was that his death created a major difficulty for Bolha, not only because he was a public figure, but also because the representative was much loved in the world of trafficking. If in any way his death were to be linked to Cidade de Deus, everyone would be after Bolha’s head. Even the militias, if he screwed up. Saci provided the best representation of the underworld in the government. No one would forgive Bolha for it.

“Stay calm, congressman,” said Bolha, “I’m gonna get us out of the favela.”

Finding strength from God knows where, Bolha lifted Saci onto his shoulders and carried him to the car, braving the crossfire. The favela was in tumult. Not a soul in the streets. Everyone huddled in some corner, fleeing the death that rampaged there.

Bolha opened the trunk, placed the representative inside, and promised to do his best to help him, though he knew that even his best would not be enough.

“Look, whatever happens—” Saci was out of breath and couldn’t finish.

When someone says “whatever happens” it’s because something is surely going to happen. Almost always something bad. Bolha needed to get Saci out of there as soon as possible; after all, who would be aware of his death in Cidade de Deus? Some innocent person, no doubt. For a screw-up that wasn’t going anywhere, this had already gone too far.

Bolha shut the trunk, got in the car, and drove off aimlessly. By then a hospital wouldn’t do any good. Bolha knew that what he carried in the trunk was now a corpse.

In the humid night, Bolha wiped his forehead to dry the sweat. He went through Barra, Recreio, and only in Grumari did he find what he was looking for: a vacant lot covered with brush. No houses nearby, no signs of civilization. The perfect spot to dump a body.

Bolha left his headlights on low and moved around to the trunk of the car. He had seen thousands of corpses in his lifetime, but the body of the representative all twisted inside there made him shudder. With great difficulty he managed to pull it by the legs and get half the cadaver out of the trunk.

Then something startling happened.

The right leg simply detached from the representative’s body. Bolha fell backward with the leg in his hands, while the rest of the body lay there in the trunk.

“Ugh!” Bolha clenched his teeth and felt bile rise in his esophagus, or his stomach, one of the two. He didn’t vomit because he was a badass dude. But after fifteen seconds of panic, he understood: Saci really did have an artificial leg.

Bolha examined the plastic leg he held; he had never seen one before. And, his eyes wide with surprise, he noticed there was a card stuck in the hollow of the leg. Bolha used his fingernail to remove the tape and tossed the leg into the undergrowth. It was a white magnetic card, resembling a credit card, except instead of a chip it had a bar code and the inscription H.L.S.201. Bolha lowered his head and closed his eyes. He was facing an enigma, he knew, but without the slightest idea of how to decipher it. Bolha couldn’t waste any more time. He urgently needed to get rid of the representative’s body and decide what to do with his own life. He couldn’t go back to Cidade de Deus. Not in this condition, poor and discredited. He needed a miracle, some kind of grand idea. That was what he had to concentrate on.

So, without time for the mystery at that moment, Bolha stuck the card in his pocket and went about dumping the body. He would do what must be done. He checked the representative’s pockets, took the dead man’s watch, gold chain, and wallet. Four hundred and thirty-seven reais and some change.

As for the documents, he didn’t know whether to leave them or not. Someone might come along before the police and steal them. But who would show up there in the middle of nowhere?

Uncertain, he decided to leave the representative’s ID. The other documents, he opted to take with him.

He put his hands under the dead man’s armpits and dragged him to a tree. He took the trouble to place the fake leg back into the linen trousers so that when the press arrived they wouldn’t photograph the representative missing a leg. As vain as the man was, he would have been embarrassed. Afterward, Bolha said a prayer he made up on the spot and when he felt there was nothing more to be done, he got in the car and drove far away to take care of the second part of his mission: getting rid of Saci’s automobile.

Bolha checked the time on the representative’s watch, almost three a.m. He felt it was an excellent time to park the car at the beach at Recreio and contemplate the sea. He felt almost relieved after dumping the body, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the card he had discovered inside the fake leg. It must have some value, some important meaning, because no one would hide anything like that on his person if it didn’t.

H.L.S.201. Bolha took the card from his jeans pocket and reread the inscription, racking his brain for an explanation. All he remembered was a crime film he had seen with his older brother the one time he had ever gone to the movies. At thirty-two, Bolha hardly noticed the years passing. Pressure, fear, and rebellion occupied his mind, leaving no time for joy and amusement. Except those connected to trafficking: women, funk parties, and drugs.

When the sun began to rise, Bolha took a dip in the ocean. It had been years since he’d last gone to the beach. He had forgotten the strength of the waves and how the saltwater stung the eyes. He would have stayed there longer if the day hadn’t brightened, bringing the first kiosk workers and the first society types strolling with their poodles on the sidewalk.

Bolha drove to a shopping center in Barra and abandoned the car in the parking lot. Then he stopped at a newsstand and joined the group of workers reading the headlines while waiting for the bus. “Under Heavy Fire, Police Retake Cidade de Deus” was the headline of a leading paper. Another, more provocative, said: “Drug Trade Driven Out of Cidade de Deus.”

It hurt to read that.

But although the papers mentioned his name, none carried his photo. The closest was an artist’s sketch so badly done that it elicited laughter from Bolha. He thought the drawing more closely resembled a well-known footballer than him. What a farce, he thought, with a mixture of triumph and disquiet.

But if the safety of anonymity calmed him, there was nothing encouraging about being driven from his own community in humiliation. Shit, he had done so much for Cidade de Deus, been so cautious, so careful to make sure the bloody battles took place far from the eyes of the media, and now he couldn’t even return home. From boss of the drug traffic he had been reduced to a homeless nobody. All he had was 437 reais, the congressman’s belongings, and that white magnetic card whose use he had yet to figure out.

Without guns, money, and prestige he was just like everybody else. And he no longer had a partner he could trust. With the death of Saci, everyone would be after his head. That was a fact.

Lacking any real plan, Bolha entered a store and bought some new clothes. As a safety measure he also bought a hat. He liked seeing pagoda singers on television wearing Panama hats. For a brief moment he found it cool to be a free man and able to wear whatever hat he wanted. But the mystery of the white card and H.L.S.201 came back into his mind like restless ghosts.

That was when he spotted an Internet café and had an idea.

“How much time do you want?” asked the girl behind the counter, indifferently, engrossed in her cell phone.

“An hour,” he replied.

“Three reais.”

Bolha didn’t hesitate. On the Internet he would surely make some progress. He sat erect in the chair, put on the earphones, and began his search with the same tenacity that James Bond had displayed in the film he’d seen.

First he tried H.L.S.201, then 201H.L.S., with spaces, without spaces, with periods, without periods... It was only when he tried H.L.S. by itself that things became clear.

HOTEL LAVRADIO STAR came up as the first search result.

“Of course!” Bolha said aloud. “Hotel Lavradio, room 201. That’s it.”

What Bolha held was the key to a hotel room — of that he had no doubt. His hands shaking at the magnitude of the discovery, he jotted down the address and left, with the card in his pocket and the unshakable idea in his head: he was going to find out what Saci had kept so hidden in his fake leg, even if it cost Bolha his own life.

Despite a traffic jam, it wasn’t too difficult to get downtown. The Hotel Lavradio Star was located on a square, though on Rua Constituição, not Lavradio.

Unnoticed, Bolha entered the hotel forthrightly as if he were any other guest. He nodded at the receptionist, but she kept her eyes on the computer. The security men also ignored him, and Bolha continued confidently to the wooden staircase. He knew that any tentativeness could cost him his life — or worse, his freedom, locked up in one of those maximum-security prisons in Mato Grosso.

On the second floor, he saw that 201 was at the end of the corridor, but before heading that way he noted the locks on the other doors. He saw exactly how to insert the card to open them.

And did so.

At the end of the corridor, standing before 201, he inserted the magnetic card in the slot and a small green light came on. Bolha smiled to himself. It had never been so easy. He looked to both sides, making sure no one was around. Then, feeling his body pouring liters of adrenaline into his bloodstream, he carefully turned the doorknob.

The grandeur of what he saw dazzled his eyes.

Bolha lost his breath.

He opened and closed his eyes.

His mouth agape, he succeeded in getting a bit of air into his lungs and exclaimed to himself, Thank you, Saint George!

It was the representative’s private arsenal. Guns, ammunition, and explosives of every kind. It was impossible to quantify at first sight, but with a quick glance he took in what the congressman kept there, in a third-rate hotel room: veritable treasures. Machine guns, shotguns, rifles, pistols, carbines, M16s, AK-47s, ParaFal 7.62mm assault rifles.

Bolha laughed.

Bolha knelt.

He guffawed with happiness.

With this arsenal, the only way Cidade de Deus wouldn’t be his was if he didn’t want it.

Weekend in São Conrado by Luiz Eduardo Soares

São Conrado

Nine o’clock Saturday morning, August 20, 2010. The earth shakes in São Conrado, a sophisticated district of Rio de Janeiro, where Rocinha, the largest favela in Latin America, is located. Perhaps it would be more accurate to put it the opposite way: the earth shakes around Rocinha, at whose edges cluster sophisticated buildings and elegant mansions. Burning tires force the closing of the tunnels. Panicked drivers abandon their cars on the Lagoa-Barra freeway. Fleeing gangs brandish military weapons. Helicopters fly over the international hotel and withdraw toward the ocean, regrouping for another run over the area in flames. Sunbathers seek shelter. Pedestrians drop to the ground. Traffic on the freeway, always slow, is now a kind of motionless apocalypse. Seen from the air, the community suggests a large-scale art installation, a critic’s intervention in the city’s routine, dramatizing the degradation of urban life.

Eight o’clock in the morning. Without knowing what awaits him, Otto Mursa tries to relax and concentrate on the green floor tiles in the small space that the condo’s exercise room allows the acupuncturist to use. He stares at the more or less subtle color variations, inspects the granulated undulations, counts the dark streaks on the right side, the abundant gray on the left, adds one to the other, divides by the number of sessions already paid for, and multiplies by the cost of each one. He tries to ignore the nervous itch at the tip of his nose and contemplates his modest salary as a civil police inspector in the state of Rio de Janeiro. His health is good, but his back is a recurring martyrdom of a herniated disk and other older problems with his spine. The legacy of sports. Lying prone on the table, his face buried in the anatomical opening, his back punctured by twenty-four needles, he feels like a slaughtered animal being marinated for a barbecue.

Every week, in his white lab coat, Ecio Nakano welcomes Otto. Methodically, he repeats the same liturgy: questions, examination, and a prolonged taking of the pulse. He identifies the points with extreme precision, from head to toe, and places the needles in two movements, the pinch and the light blow that seats them deeper. The ritual is not a pleasant one, but the effects are startling. Nakano quickly leaves the room while the patient, in semidarkness, absorbs the energy of the needles, soothed by the hypnotic arpeggios of sitars, intoxicated from the wafts of incense.

Strictly speaking, Otto shouldn’t be there. The condo has only authorized access to the exercise room and physiotherapy to residents. Luckily, the São Conrado apartment had gone to his girlfriend in the division of property with her ex-husband. Friday nights last into the late hours and the morning therapy makes up for the excesses. And serves as his alibi. It’s enough to wander down to the playground like any other owner, a towel over his shoulder, newspaper under his arm, slippers and a blasé air, the mark of class and distinction. No one would question his presence or find odd the pochette clipped to his Bermudas or the pocket bulging with his cell phone. Accoutrements of the rich aren’t kitsch, they’re exotic, personality traits. The address automatically promotes Otto Mursa to a status not his own, one to which he has never aspired. Futility isn’t his thing. Just the opposite: mixing with the elite makes him queasy.

Situated between the largest favela in Latin America and Barra da Tijuca, the tacky homeland of the nouveau riche, São Conrado is a valley with a few kilometers of beach, one or two rows of buildings, and a freeway that cuts the district from end to end and divides the two sides, sea and mountain. Houses and mansions ascend Tijuca Forest to the summit. At the far extreme from the vertical clamor of Rocinha stands the Gávea stone, solemn and silent. In the middle of the route, cutting across the landscape, the golf club — exclusive, aristocratic. Seen from above, one would say the district serves as its frame and adornment. The Global Golf Club isn’t situated inside the neighborhood; rather, the neighborhood marks its outline.

It is 8:09. Otto is there, hovering between sleep and tension, exorcizing the bothersome expectation that his nose is going to itch, that a sneeze is inevitable, that something is going to make his survival totally irreconcilable with this ridiculous position. He imagines himself a porcupine, paralyzed by some kind of moral blackmail only intelligible to the mind of a porcupine. He goes back to staring at the green floor, the dark stripes. At 8:10, rifle fire shakes body and soul, table and floor. More than that. The reports explode close enough to make the building vibrate. The walls seem to tremble. The needles shock as if electrified. In Otto’s mind, two instincts fight for command: the provoked cop and the pierced patient. Antagonistic mental forces launch him upward and downward at the same time, calling him to action and forcing him to immobility. He rises to his knees on the table and shouts for Nakano. He pulls out the accessible needles but feels others burying themselves in his flesh when he moves.

The acupuncturist turns on the light and orders him to wait. The gunfire comes closer and closer. Now cries can be heard. Even though he’s accustomed to the confrontations that have become routine in Rio de Janeiro, Otto is on the verge of losing control. The war is out of synch. Saturday mornings there are children running around everywhere. His stepdaughter Rafaela, who is seven, went out early to play. Otto takes the pistol from his pochette, slips on his Bermudas, and dashes barefooted to the stairs. As he reaches the last steps, the sound of gunfire continues, deafening. Otto is familiar with this experience: it feels like the shots are vibrating in his body and echoing inside his skull. The policeman creeps from the stairway to the reception area. Doormen and attendants have taken refuge behind anything that acts as a shield. Breathing raggedly, they remain on the floor, some minutes after the final burst of bullets. They ask one another if the criminals have left. Otto is the only one standing, his eyes sweeping the immediate surroundings, gun in hand, his carotid artery throbbing, sweat burning his eyes, his mouth dry.

The space between the buildings of the condominium is silent; men, women, and children are too frightened to yell. They don’t want to draw attention. Here and there whirling dust is visible, probably heated by fragments of gunpowder. Bullet casings everywhere. The walls of the buildings are perforated, windows shattered. A few cars parked beside the entrance gate have suffered major damage. No one is wounded. A near miracle considering the number of shots. Otto finds Rafaela and two friends hugging each other on the grass, beside overturned bicycles, behind the walnut trees that separate the tennis courts and the pools. He breathes, relaxing at last. He feels like crying with them and hugs them. Slowly, his blood pressure returns to a tolerable level. He needs to reassure Francisca.

“Run home, Rafa, tell your mother everything’s all right. You too.” The girl hates it when she’s called Rafa, because it’s a man’s name, she says, but this time she doesn’t censure her stepfather. All her neurons are concentrated on her rebirth and jumping into her mother’s arms.

Doormen and residents begin to move about, haltingly. They shout words of comfort to one another, speaking nonstop, repeating in unison what they all witnessed as if relating for the first time an unlikely story to an incredulous and amazed audience: the flight of the criminal army that crossed the condo toward Rocinha, firing their rifles behind them, indifferent to both residents and circumstances.

Nervous chatter and the sudden sound of children crying announce the end of the scene of terror, whose meaning is soon explained in the tangle of recounting. Francisca has come down in the elevator with a few neighbors and reaches out to Rafa as soon as she sees her daughter running toward her.

Little by little, heads cautiously appear in the windows of the twenty-story towers. Otto identifies himself. He recommends that everyone go back to their apartments and stay away from the windows. He instructs the condo workers to return to the inside areas and check the security camera tapes. He calls Harley: “Sorry, man, you must’ve been sleeping since your shift was yesterday, but this looks like a dress rehearsal for the end of the world and it doesn’t smell good at all.”

The cops in the area, both civil and military, have to be alerted immediately. Detective Harley Davidson da Silva is his only childhood friend who’s neither in prison, dead, nor on the take.

What the doormen whisper among themselves, inhabitants of working-class districts and favelas, including Rocinha, is obvious: the police have tried to increase the “bundle” — the bribe paid by the drug traffickers to be left alone. Since the boss trafficker refused, the cops involved in the negotiation decided to do something unprecedented: “Hit head-on the packed streetcar coming back from Vidigal.” The phrase, from one of the workers interrogated by Otto, meant the following: late every Saturday night, or early the next morning, the ringleaders of the Rocinha drug trade would come home after spending the evening at the dance sponsored by their partners in the Vidigal favela, situated between Leblon and São Conrado. The Rocinha traffickers customarily traveled together, in two or three vans, armed with rifles and grenades to discourage any repressive intervention; the precautions were not actually very rigorous given that the route, the date, and the approximate schedule were widely known. That morning, frustrated by the refusal to increase the size of the bribe, the police decided to scare the traffickers, without any actual intention of carrying out arrests. They didn’t want to overwhelm the predictable armed resistance, because that would necessitate greater support than was available and involve risks they were unwilling to take. They had waited for the traffickers’ vans at a street corner near the condo and staged an initial confrontation which they did not follow up on, content with the dispersal they’d incited. The ambush, if for real, would never have taken place on a sunny Saturday morning, in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, amid dozens of women and children. As outlined in the script of the farce, the traffickers fled and the police withdrew. It was enough; the message had been sent. If the new amount wasn’t accepted, the traffickers would have problems.

Internal communication among the various doormen in the condominium and the narrative of pedestrians seeking shelter in enclosed spots paints the picture that a call from Harley Davidson da Silva confirms: police reinforcements have no way of getting there because the traffickers have shut down the tunnels connecting São Conrado and neighboring districts. They have also blocked alternative routes via Tijuca Forest and the oceanfront. By the time the first shock troops manage to break through, the traffickers’ leader and his henchmen will have escaped. Everything indicates that avoiding arrest is the sole motive for his acts. The subsequent sequence of events will confirm the hypothesis. The tunnels remain blocked, police troops are slow to clear the roadway and get to São Conrado, traffic is interrupted, and drivers abandon their vehicles on the freeway.

Abandoned cars, people in flight — everything conspires to increase the climate of terror that sweeps through the district. Radio stations interrupt their regular broadcasts to announce that their reporters are unable to get to São Conrado and that the police so far have nothing to say. They interview residents by telephone. The frantic tone of the live statements does nothing to calm spirits. What Otto knows at the moment is that traffickers coming from Vidigal to Rocinha were ambushed by police and escaped, splitting up. One group, which included the leader, ran toward Rocinha, cutting through the condominium and crossing the freeway. Another group fled in the opposite direction, probably to confuse the police, making the leader’s escape easier. That was the group that invaded the international hotel, located between the condo and a shopping center, and took some of the guests hostage. The sequence of events suggests that the intent was to concentrate the cops’ efforts on hostage negotiations until the leader was far away, and safe. The police broke through the barricade of burning tires and had no problem obtaining the surrender of the men who invaded the hotel. They gave up without resistance, sacrificing themselves for their boss. They had accomplished their mission. The next day, the attack on a five-star hotel full of foreign tourists, in the rich and cosmopolitan heart of Rio de Janeiro, would be a worldwide headline in the media. The violent and provincial Rio was winning one more battle against the symbolic construction for the coming Olympics, the pole of business and entertainment.

Otto returns to the acupuncture room, dons his T-shirt, puts on his sandals, goes up to Francisca’s apartment to make sure she and Rafa are okay, and cancels the plans for Saturday — the beach, feijoada, children’s theater at the shopping center, and a frugal night of films on TV. It is impossible to guess when he will be back. Even though it’s his day off, he considers it his duty to assist his colleagues in the actions still in progress at the hotel. He says this to his girlfriend. What he doesn’t say is more important. He will take advantage of the meeting with the cops to gather information about that irresponsible ambush. What unit of the military police could have done that? Who was in command? The correct adjective that occurs to him is not irresponsible. He has no words to describe an ambush that could have resulted in the death of dozens of innocent people including children, including Rafa. He adores the little girl, but that doesn’t matter, he thinks. The action of the police was criminal, even if the motivation had been just. The doorman didn’t believe in the virtue of the motivation. Nor does he. Otto knows police institutions very well, both the military and his own, the civil. He has experienced intensely the lacerating anguish of being and not being part of a corps that degrades itself day by day, spilling into the gutter the blood that so many honorable professionals shed in the line of duty. After all, his father’s heroic death could not have been in vain. If the institutions of the police and his work stop making sense, what will remain of the memory of Elton Mursa? Will Elton be remembered as a fool who believed in the illusion of the democratic rule of law? A poor naïve fool who took pride in his office, whose mandate he always had at the tip of his tongue: to guarantee the rights of citizens, by performing a public service of the utmost necessity? A deceived democrat, resigned to his humiliating salary, who refused bribes and rejected the usual patterns of police brutality? Elton was black, militantly antiracist, and Otto insisted on identifying himself as black despite his light skin inherited from his mother’s side of the family. He knew, however, that his appearance was a passport for circulating freely in places frequented by the middle class and the elite of Rio de Janeiro. His father taught him from an early age how cunning and perverse Brazilian racism was.

At the hotel, he doesn’t discover much. Everyone is occupied freeing the hostages and avoiding a tragedy. He learns that a young woman did in fact die in the exchange of gunfire. She was said to be part of the criminal gang. Even so, the news is no less deplorable. Just the opposite — the fact only increases the burden of guilt for whoever conceived and carried out the ambush. Two questions are in the air: why did the police act that way, and why didn’t they take measures to arrest the traffickers, especially the leader, if the date, the time, and the route were common knowledge and repeated weekly? It seems obvious that the doormen’s interpretation is the only reasonable one, although the authorities, playing out their melancholy role, talk about an unexpected and surprise encounter between the traffickers’ vans and the military police patrol. In the first official statement the police spokesman had mentioned an ambush. The repercussion was so negative that he disappeared, taking the original explanation with him, which was quickly replaced by the fable of the accidental encounter.

The farce mixes the worst in the police force and its promiscuous relationship with politics: extreme irresponsibility toward the suffering of people and blatant corruption. All of that in contrast with the bigwigs’ rhetoric that covers up police misconduct under the pretext that it is necessary to preserve the image of the institution, even if those to blame are investigated and punished, as if there were any real image to protect and as if punishment of the guilty individuals ended the moral epidemic. Contemplating the circus put together for the media, Otto’s blood boils. He looks upon the sham as a personal insult.

“Harley, wake up, man, and come over here. This shit can’t end like this.”

His partner is more phlegmatic than Captain Nemo and as refined as David Niven in the role of ambassador of the British Empire. He is black, tall, and thin. The two friends plan to celebrate their fortieth birthday together. Their having been born on the same day meant something. The two were the target of homophobic jokes at the precinct. The relationship was symbiotic, yes, but Otto had never felt himself attracted to men, nor was he disturbed by the preferences of Harley, who knew very clearly how to keep work and love life separate.

“Otto, out of respect for you, for decades of friendship, my father’s esteem for your father, the marvelous Saturday that spreads its wings over us, and last but not least in honor of a dear friend with whom I share a glorious breakfast, I’ll leave out the curse words. Is that enough, or you want some more?”

Otto is the most practical of men: “You have no idea, man. You at home or in a motel? If you’re at home, turn on the TV. My cell phone will be waiting for your call. Turn on the TV.”

Harley replies patiently: “You and me are assigned to Del Castilho. Our precinct doesn’t have jurisdiction to act in São Conrado. Besides which, noble colleague, our precinct belongs to a district, not a specialization. Kidnapping isn’t something we deal with. Neither is drug trafficking. Did you get the chief’s okay? Does the Cyrano de Bergerac of the Rio suburbs, the venerable Mr. Costinha, know that the restless spirit of Inspector Otto is contemplating sticking his nose where it shouldn’t go?”

Otto cuts the conversation short: “Turn on the TV. I’m waiting for you.”

Two o’clock. On the Rocinha hillside peace reigns. Seen from up there, the pacific panorama would suggest that nothing happened. But the community is still shaken up. Tension fills the air, vying with the dueling kites, amid the antennae and the tangle of wires diverting unmetered electricity.

Otto and Harley are leaning against the low wall on the terrace at the home of Hamilton, a courageous Northeasterner brought up in the community. In the local vocabulary, the small platform jutting out over the abyss is called a slab and sticks out from the house like so many other ingenious add-ons, work of the labyrinthine architecture nurtured by the ingenuity of the people. There the baroque is not a style but the involuntary result of maximizing the use of space. The three men share a beer and recall the afternoons of soccer from their adolescence. Hamilton does freight work — that is, he transports whatever will fit in his old VW station wagon. He knows the favela from one end to the other. He gets along with all types of people, including the owners of the hillside, the traffickers. As is inevitable, he also knows who’s who among the police, because the payment of bribes and the agreements take place in the light of day. The “bundle,” the agreement between traffickers and cops, has become institutionalized as part of the collective imagination, part of Rio tradition, as honorable as the illegal and ubiquitous lottery known as the “animal game.” Hamilton has found that adaptability is necessary to survive. Among his virtues, discretion is foremost. “Anybody who blabs ends up with ants coming out of his mouth, pushing up daisies, in the grave.” No sin is more serious and dangerous than informing. Therefore, being an informant — X9, in the common parlance — is fatal. There is no accusation more damning. An X9 works for the police, infiltrating the suspects. Once identified, he is summarily condemned to death by the traffickers. But it’s no different on the other side. If someone without backing — read poor, an inhabitant of the outskirts or a favela — denounces a policeman, he runs the risk of being executed. So prudence and the instinct of self-preservation demand obsequious silence. The rule of the favela can be summed up thus: No one saw, heard, or knows anything about anything whatsoever.

Harley and Otto have never gotten involved with informants. Besides being likely targets of violence, they seem drawn by a moral curse that contaminates everyone around them. When a cop pays an X9 and benefits from his information, deep down he reviles the individual serving him. In addition, he considers him unreliable, a potential double agent. Everything happens as if betrayal is an addiction, a sick and irresistible obsession. Otto and Harley prefer to keep their distance from those actors so frequently found in the police universe. Therefore, whenever they need information they contact people proven to be reliable, with whom they enjoy sufficient credibility to share what they know. Friends of that kind, especially those knowledgeable about territories in conflict, represent an extraordinary asset to investigators. Yet it’s also important not to overdo it, because the feeling of being used is discomfiting. They fear losing precious sources by going too far. And they demonstrate absolute loyalty at every opportunity.

Hamilton is one of those partners. As Otto and Harley are not known in Rocinha, they see no problem in going to their friend’s residence. Before asking the question that brought them to visit him, they talk about their respective families and soccer, the lingua franca among Brazilians.

After the second bottle, they are not spared their host’s bitterness: “When safety in the neighborhood becomes a headline, the government’s reaction is only a matter of time, and it’s the favela that pays the price. Armed invasion is usually the political response to the media’s complaints. And in a raid, when the walls are fragile and the weapons military-grade, no one is safe, not even inside their homes.”

Otto agrees, adding, “If such an operation occurred even once in an upper-class part of the city, everybody would be out of a job: the secretary of public safety, the chief of the military police, the head of the civil police, even the governor.”

The elder Mursa would repeat the same phrase at the dinner table. He didn’t raise his son to be a policeman. Despite his love of the institution, he eventually yielded to skepticism. He hoped that the end of the dictatorship and the new constitution in 1988 would change the police, the mind-set, the approaches, priorities, and practices. He died frustrated, a decade later, assassinated by criminals in revenge for extralegal executions. A tragic irony. There had been no one more radical than Elton Mursa in his opposition to police brutality. Otto inherited that skepticism and never fully overcame the desire for vengeance, whether against the murderers of his father or the fellow officers who acted like criminals and ended up provoking Elton’s death.

Harley asks Hamilton if he has any idea what happened, and he relates the same account that Otto has heard from the doormen that morning. To remove any doubt, he says he heard the explanation from one of the leaders of the drug trade. The VW van was stuck in the jam and there was a delivery to be made. He saw the guy go by with a heavily armed group and asked if the lane would be clear soon. That was when he heard the story, though hurriedly and without details. The cop who jacked up the bribe and led the fake ambush was a corporal well known in Rocinha, one Vito Florada, a.k.a. Mindinho, with a record that would be the envy of the most perverse killer. He ran a militia famous for violence in a favela in the West Zone. Rocinha being virtually a sideline for Mindinho. He made a lot more money through his militia, extorting merchants. Rocinha interested him only for the contacts it provided.

They continue the conversation in order to enjoy the scenery and reduce the impression of a professional call, but they already have what they came for.

Otto’s phone vibrates and he descends to a lower level to answer privately. The name Francisca shows on the screen.

“I can’t take it anymore. I’ve had it. You should see Rafa. It hurts. I don’t want to stay here any longer. No one can live like this. She doesn’t want to go to the theater, or go out to play, she says she’s not going back to school. I’m going to sell this apartment even though I know this isn’t the right time to do it. Who’s going to buy a place in the middle of a cross fire? Last year it was one faction against another that was trying to invade Rocinha. Shooting everywhere, we were crawling around inside our home. I’ll sell for whatever they pay, Otto. I’ll take what I can get and leave. I confess that if I could I’d leave Rio. That’s what I wanted. But there’s my job, Rafaela, I can’t do just anything that comes into my head. The thing to do is look for a place that’s calmer, an area with no favela, without gun battles. A decent place to live and raise my daughter.”

Otto says she shouldn’t make any hasty decisions, that the violent episodes are isolated events, that she and Rafa are right to feel bad, but it won’t be long before things return to normal. Francisca doesn’t like her boyfriend’s paternal tone and thinks he underestimates her intelligence and the gravity of what happened, because he doesn’t want to admit that the police have failed in Rio and that the work to which he dedicates himself no longer makes sense.

“You should be here with me if you’re trying to be useful. Don’t give me that idiocy that you’re doing your duty and thinking about the overall good. You’re thinking about yourself. For a change.”

Otto returns heavier than when he descended. He isn’t dazzled by the sea, the mountains, the blue sky dotted with hang gliders. He refuses another glass of beer and says goodbye to Hamilton. The two cops descend via the main artery of the community, dodging the dozens of scooters and mototaxis.

Harley notices his change of mood: “What’s eating you?”

“Francisca’s not okay. She wants to leave the area, sell the apartment right now, when prices are bottoming out, when everybody’s doing the same thing. She’s willing to get rid of the property for a pittance. At least that’s what she says. I don’t know if it’s just drama, or blackmail for me to feel guilty and give up the job and come home. She’s hysterical.”

“Not without cause, Otto. You really should go home, stay with her and Rafa. Let me...”

Otto doesn’t reply but looks at Harley the way he looks at Harley when he’s deeply irritated.

They continue in silence down the hillside. Harley is convinced it’s worthwhile to butt in where they’re not invited, despite the risks. He shares with Otto repugnance for what is happening in both police forces, military and civil. He agrees about the need to act, even if it’s the last thing they do before being demoted to desk duty or resigning.

“Either we change this shit or everything’s going to hell.”

“You’re right, my man, those machines of death will grind us up and destroy everything we think we are until nothing’s left — not memory, not desire.”

They decide to carry out a clandestine investigation in parallel with the Internal Affairs investigation, in which they have no confidence. If they obtain proof, they will give it to a serious and respected journalist, Harley’s former boyfriend, and the scandal of police corruption, putting children’s lives at risk in the heart of touristic Rio de Janeiro, affecting the international image of the city, will lead to a transformation of some kind. Maybe not. Other scandals have exploded without producing changes. In any case, it would be a step. Probably enough for the two friends to postpone leaving the force. They like so much what they do that they can’t imagine themselves in a different profession. And the dream of a police force deserving of the work is worth the trouble.

“At least as homage to the dear departed Elton,” says Harley.

“At least as homage to the old man,” murmurs Otto.

“Next step?”

“To get the most information possible about Mindinho.”

“I know that, Otto. The question is how to go about getting the maximum possible information on Corporal Vito Florada of the Military Police on a sunny Saturday at three in the afternoon.”

“Torturra.”

“Who’s Torturra?”

“What do you mean, Who’s Torturra? The congressman. Torturra.”

“Ângelo Torturra?”

“Is there another member of the Chamber of Deputies with that surname?”

“I can just imagine what Francisca goes through with you. You’re not easy to put up with. I had no idea you were on such good terms with the congressman that you could interrupt his family’s privacy on a weekend. I’d be embarrassed if I were you. However much he might have given me the okay to call him, I’d be super embarrassed.”

“I’m not going to feel the slightest embarrassment.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to look for the guy.”

“No?”

“Negative.”

“Otto, didn’t you just say the next step would be to go to the congressman?”

“Yes.”

“Then how can you say you’re not going to look for the man?”

“I’m not. You are.”

“You’re crazy, Otto. I’m not going, period.”

“While you’re at his house, I’ll find out who’s heading up the team that handled the crime scene investigation this morning. I want to find out if there’s anything fishy about the story. It’s too perfect. Everything fits together too well.”

“You’re right about that. I have the same feeling. Something’s wrong when everything fits together so neatly. The challenge is to find out what’s missing, what was left out that we didn’t notice.”

“Or what’s left over, the residual, the excess. In this case, I would bet on excess, Harley. There are too many things fitting together and fitting together too easily and too quickly.”

“The incident itself was excessive, Otto. You’re right. I get the feeling there’s something there.”

“True. Excessive. Rifle fire among children and gardens in the city’s international five-star hotel on a sunny Saturday, in the morning.”

“Another detail, Otto. It may be nothing, I know, but hey, we’re brainstorming, right? Nelson, my ex, taught me a lot about how the media works. The Sunday edition is the most important and the most read. And it goes to press the day before.”

“Every edition goes to press the day before.”

“The Sunday edition goes to press at noon on Saturday because it starts being distributed Saturday afternoon. Either it was one hell of a coincidence, or whoever planned the spectacle did it just right to achieve the greatest repercussion possible.”

“You think it has to do with politics?”

“Doesn’t seem like it. No.”

“In any case, the increase in the bribe doesn’t explain everything.”

“It did contribute, Otto, but it certainly doesn’t encompass the whole truth.”

At five o’clock, Harley is sitting in the office of Ângelo Torturra’s apartment, a space packed with books and documents, in the São Francisco district of Niterói, separated from Rio de Janeiro by the ocean and linked by a bridge that even today bears the name of a general-president, decades after the end of the military dictatorship.

“That’s Brazil, inspector, that’s our country. It treats the crimes of the dictatorship with euphemisms and kid gloves. They torture, kill, whatever, and the democratic governments, once the dictatorship falls, turn a blind eye and wink at the audience. The elites always end up understanding one another. It’s the people who get fucked.”

Harley thanks the congressman for his courtesy. After all, to be received on a Saturday in his home is a courtesy. Torturra praises Otto, to whom he is grateful for having helped him in some investigations conducted by the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, for which he had written the report. They had ended with the indictment of over two hundred militia members — active and retired police organized like local mafias.

“Any request of Otto’s is my command.”

Harley explains the reason for the visit. They talk about the episode that morning in São Conrado. He addresses his partner’s absence: they have divided the tasks because of the need to follow the forensics team’s work first-hand, and that is Otto’s forte. Harley would like access to the findings of Corporal Vito Florada’s investigation. He knows the materials are public and can be researched in the archives of Rio’s Legislative Assembly and in the electronic data bank, but there’s no time or personnel available to invest in such a large-scale effort. Harely is cut short by the congressman. Ângelo Torturra can’t resist the opportunity to talk about the PCI. He of course remembers Vito, a.k.a. Mindinho. He quickly opens a file on his laptop and shares every detail of the investigation with his visitor.

Ten o’clock Saturday night. Otto and Harley evaluate what they have collected, sitting side by side on the sand of a deserted beach in the moonlight and in the metallic illumination of the São Conrado oceanfront. Nothing unusual in the forensic report. A lot of data from the visit to Torturra.

Complaining of back pains, Otto lies down, resting his head on Harley’s backpack. The key seems to lie in the odd contacts of Mindinho. Intimate contacts with individuals quite distant from Rocinha and the poverty-stricken West Zone. There is something beyond traffickers and militias. Characters not identified by Torturra’s investigation, which ran into legal barriers imposed by the Justice Ministry. The congressman isn’t sure, but he believes that a powerful firm of attorneys acted indirectly, protecting Vito and, above all, his network of relationships. He doesn’t know what that means, nor did he have any way to demonstrate the judicial relevance of expanding the investigation to include those contacts of Vito’s. Because, in fact, nothing indicated that those persons had any connections to any crimes. The congressman had no choice but to suspend the investigations.

After listening in silence to Harley’s account, Otto admits he is exhausted and lost. Ready to throw in the towel. He doesn’t know who could be the target, what is at stake, or how to go forward. But his partner has an idea. It’s Harley’s turn to inject adrenaline and change the mood.

“The congressman said one thing that struck me. He went into a long exposition, interesting but interminable, and I wasn’t able to follow his reasoning, there were so many names, the crimes, the ins and outs of the investigation — until he mentioned the Global Golf Club.”

Otto perks up.

Harley continues: “Mindinho frequents the Global Golf Club.”

“How can that be?”

Harley doesn’t answer.

“Impossible. There has to be some mistake. Are you sure? Is Torturra sure? That place is a bunker for aristocrats. Know how much you pay to be a member? One million dollars. The guy pays that fortune to prove he’s a millionaire, but that’s not enough. The members have to approve each new candidate. A secret vote, campaign, the whole shebang. It’s a monarchy, man.”

“Plutocracy.”

“He’s not a member. He can’t be. If he frequents the place it’s because he has a friend there, the backing of someone very powerful. But why? A very odd friendship.”

“If we could identify the friend, we’d be halfway there. Could you maybe take advantage of a bright Sunday and visit the club? If Mindinho is a regular visitor and if there’s some connection between today’s events and those weird contacts, he’s not going to waste the Sunday. Tomorrow’s going to be sunny. You could go there with Francisca and Rafa, very innocently.”

“Impossible. Nobody gets in there.” Otto leaps up.

Harley, startled, does the same. Standing, looking at the sea, he continues: “There’s only one way. Do you remember Fábio?”

The next two hours are dedicated to planning for the following day.

Sunday, August 21, eight a.m. Harley’s cell phone rings.

“Guess where I am. A cop’s life has its charms. Does it or doesn’t it? How wonderful. Guess.”

“A cop’s life, Otto, is shit. At six this morning I was in the vicinity of the bastard’s mansion. Corporal Vito Florada lives in a mansion. No exaggeration. A horror, aesthetically beneath contempt. I’ve never seen anything so tacky. It looks like some motel on Avenida Brasil. The guy doesn’t even go to the trouble of disguising his wealth. I spent hours with my ass in this junky little car I bought with my laughable salary, without a bite to eat, without coffee, and on high alert because the guy has his hired gunmen. It’s true, he goes everywhere with bodyguards. If he goes to São Conrado, I doubt the cops enter the club with him. I bet they’re going to follow him to the entrance and from there go to Rocinha and drink, extort traffickers, whatever.”

Nine twenty. Otto’s phone rings. The name Harley appears on the screen.

“On the way. I really think they’re headed for São Conrado.”

Nine thirty-five. Another call from Harley.

“Copy that. You can get ready.”

“I’ve been ready for hours.”

“You like it.”

“I love it.”

Nine fifty-five. Harley calls Otto again.

“Target entering the club. No problem at the reception area. They raised the barrier immediately. He’s known there. He must actually frequent the place. He went in driving his own car, alone. The gunmen stayed in the backup car and went away, in the expected direction. Stolen plates on both cars. Now it’s up to you.”

Otto makes the long-awaited signal to Fábio. He’s hardly slept at all, anticipating this moment.

“You know what to do. Once a champ, always a champ,” Fábio proclaims loudly for all near the ramp to hear. It’s a kind of homage to his old companion of so many cases. Otto smiles proudly, adjusts his belt, rechecks the equipment. In the past, he flew by himself or took someone. It’s the first time he will be taken. Fábio makes his living guiding tourists from Pedra Bonita, at the peak of São Conrado, to the beach, with the possibility of longer flights depending on the weather and the price negotiated for the ride. He has been to Corcovado, flown over Rodrigo de Freitas Lake, the routes vary. This morning he will make a flight for the sake of friendship. Though short, the route will demand precision.

Fábio runs to the end of the ramp, pulling vigorously on the glider’s structure, and hurls himself into emptiness, dragging Otto as passenger. The hang glider dips and rises, the ocean open before it, Tijuca Forest to the left, Gávea Rock to the right. (Otto would dedicate the following weeks to describing to Rafa the sensation of that leap. He would quickly give up repeating it all to Francisca and Harley, who are less tolerant of repetition.)

Obeying Otto’s instructions, Fábio maintains sufficient height so that the flight over the golf course goes unnoticed. Several hang gliders are circulating in the area, and it is not difficult to blend into the landscape. The camera is efficient. Otto has studied Mindinho’s features on the Internet and has no trouble locating him. Otto focuses on the group the corporal seems to interact easily with. He soon moves away with an older man. For the next fifteen minutes he converses and walks, slowly. Mindinho says goodbye. There is no possibility that the militiaman has come to the club to play golf or drink with friends. Otto records the images in high resolution, including the face of Vito Florada’s principal interlocutor. With regret, Otto tells Fábio that he’s ready to descend.

Harley waits for them, sipping coconut water on the patch of beach designated for landing. Fábio receives Otto’s gratitude in the form of a hearty embrace and the promise of a feijoada. Harley photographs the leave-taking, posts it on his Instagram account, and sends it to the two friends. They help Fábio fold the glider, forming a long tube, and carry it to the small headquarters of professional flyers in the square next to the sand.

They leave the pilot, extending their effusive compliments, and sit at a kiosk at the edge of the beach that specializes in Bahian food. It’s eleven thirty, early for that spicy lunch. Harley opens his laptop. At his request, a friend at the federal police sent him, half an hour earlier, a pen drive with the list of members of the golf club. A stroke of pure luck, without which there are no conquests in love, gambling, and literature: The feds had done a survey of clubs for the elite when suspicions arose about the influx into Rio of large amounts of dirty money from various sources. Nothing was found at the Global Golf Club, but the data bank was still there and it was recent. “It must be good for something,” the federal investigator told Harley in confidence, wishing him success.

Otto is anxious. He takes over the keyboard and issues the command to open the folder, whose title is explicit: GGC. He selects the images file and navigates to the album of photos. He turns his camera to exhibit mode and selects the close-up of Mindinho’s interlocutor. The powerful zoom permits a clear display of the calm countenance. The man is elderly but healthy, almost athletic, corpulent, tall, and nice looking. The screens on the computer and camera allow a comparison. In short order, the individual is identified. The man is a major player in the real estate sector. There are no charges sullying his record. What now?

They eat shrimp with garlic and oil along with sliced French bread. The laptop is closed on Harley’s knees. Otto carefully puts away the camera, a wish-list item that Francisca made a reality for his birthday in 2009. They yield to dispiritedness. After such high expectations, the sudden deceleration is depressing. Two bipolar days, extreme highs and lows. Enthusiasm and disappointment back to back. Frights and deferred redemption. Silently, they gaze at the sea. They pay the bill and walk toward the condo. Otto finally breaks the silence.

“You were right. It was absence, not excess. What’s strange is the absence of a link. I can’t conceive of anything that connects the two of them.”

“The connection is unlikely, Otto, it seems unbelievable, absurd, but it exists.”

“Which makes any hypothesis possible and none consistent. We’re back to square one.”

Harley stops suddenly. He often halts abruptly when walking, when he has an idea. Otto turns around and is surprised to see his partner’s happy face.

“What?”

“Remember Francisca’s phone call yesterday, when we were at Rocinha? You even commented that she was hysterical.”

“She was hysterical.”

“And what did she tell you?”

“That she wanted to get out of here.”

“She told you she wanted to leave São Conrado because she couldn’t stand the violence anymore, didn’t she?”

“So what?”

“From what you said, she was ready to unload the apartment for whatever she could get, no matter how bad the moment to sell, because the important thing was to get away and take Rafa.”

The two men share a dense, vibrant silence.

Harley points upward: “Look.”

They are on the sidewalk by the beach, in the shadow of the highest tower on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, thirty-four stories in the shape of a tube, built in 1972. Planned by the celebrated Oscar Niemeyer, hanging gardens conceived by the landscape architect Burle Marx, with a convention center for 2,800 people, a theater housing 1,400, in the most coveted area in the city. The building was designated a historical site in 1998. The hotel had gone under three years earlier. After a lengthy court battle, it was transferred to an autonomous federal agency accountable to the Treasury Ministry, which was preparing to auction it off. Otto and Harley are familiar with the history and recall it whenever they pass by there, perplexed at the sight of the most valuable building in the city abandoned, its windows broken, corroded by the sea air, moldering.

No words are necessary. For several minutes they contemplate, dumbfounded, the dirty, sordid tower that thousands of bats invade at nightfall. Harley whispers, as if sharing a secret, “The whole time, it was staring us in the face.”

Otto murmurs: “There’s just one thing, Harley: This changes the scale of the problem. Drug traffickers and militia are child’s play next to this. This is the crown jewel, but the speculators will have a field day. There’s no limit. The guy’s going to swallow up the entire district.”

“When all is said and done, the problem really was excess, not absence. You were right: it was an excess of evidence, the magnitude of the value at stake, the dimension of the risk. What’s going to become of us, my brother? Where are we going to request exile? I’m serious, Otto. Even if we say nothing, we become a danger to ourselves.”

“We’re going to need a lot of calm and coolheadedness.”

Otto and Harley walk along the seafront, wet their feet in the cold foam, trying to stay calm. An emergency session with Ecio Nakano may be necessary.

“Don’t you want to give it a try, Harley?”

RJ-171 by Guilherme Fiuza

Leblon

They were within one hundred meters of the top of the hill. Narguilê carried two rifles on his back that together weighed almost half as much as his body. He was panting and beginning to puff, attracting the attention of Lizard, who was marching firmly some ten paces ahead.

Lizard stopped and turned, irritated. “What’s this shit, Narguilê?! You dyin’?!”

His comrade, out of breath, didn’t answer. He continued to climb the hillside, almost dragging, motivated only by awareness that in the position he occupied, showing any sign of weakness was fatal. Lizard decided to wait for him. Resting his rifles on a large rock, he took something from his vest pocket. Narguilê staggered toward his colleague and was about to rest his weapons on the same stone, but Lizard stopped him.

“Don’t put them down, ’cause if you do you won’t be able to pick them back up. Have a bit of oxygen.”

He handed him a silver straw and with the other hand lifted a piece of broken glass close to his face. Narguilê snorted the “oxygen” in a single breath and the smile of a veteran lit up his childish face. He returned the straw and set out climbing the hill in strong strides, now with the breath even to speak: “Move it, Lizard! You’re too slow.”

From that point upward it was totally dark and progress was possible only with the aid of a flashlight. And the pair had powerful flashlights — from the first world, like the rifles. In front of a huge tree, which marked exactly fifty meters to the top of the hill, the two stopped again. Time for military protocol. From the other vest pocket Lizard took out a two-way radio.

“Robocop, read me?”

A quick response from the other side: “Affirmative.”

“Lizard and Narguilê here, requestin’ authorization to enter the security zone.”

Radio: “Take it easy. Just the two of you?”

“And our Almighty Father in Our Heart.”

Hearing the password, Robocop immediately cleared the ascent. Even so, when they arrived at the summit they were in the laser sights of two machine guns that only ceased to point at them when Robocop flashed over their faces the security spotlight stolen from Maracanã Stadium during renovations for the World Cup. Narguilê was puffing again, and although he tried to disguise it, the fact wouldn’t go unnoticed by the men of the General Staff. A very strong mulatto with shaven head and serene expression, Robocop had laser-sharp eyesight. Nothing escaped him.

“The soldier’s tired?” asked Robocop.

Lizard answered for Narguilê, knowing that his colleague couldn’t speak: “The Germans showed up unexpected at the foot of the hill. Narguilê had to shoot it out with them by hisself, then he hightailed it to the grotto—”

“How come I didn’t hear no shots up here?” said Robocop suspiciously.

“It was right at the time a jackhammer was breakin’ up the sidewalk at McDonald’s, they never stop workin’ on that,” ventured Lizard.

Robocop’s serene expression didn’t waver. “I’m reminding both of you: a tired soldier is a dead soldier.”

Narguilê gulped and followed Lizard, who followed Robocop, who had issued the warning as he withdrew, without a backward glance at the pair.

Through a narrow passageway that forced the security chief to turn his powerful body sideways, the three went in single file into what looked like a bunker — descending a long stairway carved into the rock, finally a respite for Narguilê’s exhausted lungs. After crossing a crude corridor that was more like a ruin, they came to an immense, luxurious room. Home theater, cinematic lighting, new overstuffed furniture, a large marble table with chairs trimmed in gold, a sliding glass wall revealing a deck with a pool from which came an intense blue glow as if there were uranium under the water.

Robocop and the two skinny soldiers stopped before the large table, almost at attention, joining three other armed young men already there. No one said a word or greeted one another with a look. In two minutes a thin, muscular man entered the room, medium height, darker than mulatto, thin nose and lips, large greenish eyes. He nodded and everyone sat down around the table.

“There’s two matters,” the chief said softly as he sat down at the head of the table, the gold chain engraved with Zéu, his nom de guerre, swinging over his lilac-colored silk shirt. “The first is that the police have decided to raid. Not to plunder, to take over. There’s gonna be war.”

Zéu’s soldiers absorbed the information impassively, among other reasons because the chief didn’t like to be interrupted — by either word or gesture. The only one who moved was Lizard, placing his rifle on the table when he heard mention of war. Zéu stopped talking, got up, and walked silently around the table. Coming to a position behind Lizard, he hit him on the ear so violently that the soldier fell to the floor, taking the chair with him.

The chief returned quietly to the head of the table and sat down. “I already explained it’s bad manners putting a gun on the table.”

Zéu went back to the topic of the raid but was interrupted again, this time by a sudden noise outside that caused everyone to look through the glass wall. A person had jumped into the pool. The troop was startled, and the chief seemed surprised. For an instant all fingers were on triggers, until they saw the figure emerge from the dive. It was a woman, beautiful and nude from the waist up.

Each soldier felt, in a fraction of a second, that the delightful sight was a cruel punishment. You don’t look at the chief’s girlfriend, especially with her breasts exposed. The entire troop quickly shifted their eyes to the floor, aware that this front could be bloodier than the battle with the police.

But Zéu surprised everyone: “Take it easy, that one there you can look at. She ain’t worth nothing.”

The enormous relief wasn’t enough for them to lift their gazes from the floor. No one wanted to take the chance. But they would see the girl up close, because she’d left the pool, wrapped a small towel around her breasts, slid the glass wall, and entered the room, still dripping. She was white, with nice skin and an affected manner — a broad from Leblon. She went straight to Zéu and planted a kiss on his mouth, adding a disconcerting comment about the armed troop: “How cool, Zéu. So this is your gang?”

The trafficker, who didn’t like being called a trafficker, swallowed his hatred. It was against his principles to be rude to women. He told her to go change in his bedroom while he arranged her return. She asked the outlaw when they would see one another again.

Then Zéu became less cordial: “Who the hell knows. Set it up with your husband.”

When the woman withdrew, the chief made contact by radio, saying, “Drop off the judge’s wife on Delfim Moreira,” and returned to the agenda of the meeting. “I’m moving on to the second matter, then we’ll get back to the police raid. It’s this: I ordered Roma brought up here. He should be getting here now. I’m going to interrogate him, and I want the guy in your sights, that way he won’t lie as much. I think Roma is doing business on the side.”

Robocop raised his hand asking permission to speak. Granted.

“Zéu, Roma’s put together a band. Narguilê went to see it yesterday, ’cause he plays bass drum, but he was kept out. Roma ordered him to come back unarmed.”

The chief exploded: “Ordered?! Who ordered, you shitass? Just who gives the orders in this fucking favela?”

Robocop lowered his head. “Sorry, chief. Of course Roma don’t give no goddamn orders, but he likes to think he—”

He was interrupted by Zéu, who directed his feared dead-fish stare toward another soldier: “And you went back to that fucker’s circus without your gun, Narguilê?”

Lizard knew his friend had returned there unarmed and had spent hours snorting cocaine and playing the drum in Roma’s band. Now Narguilê was panting again beside him, in a cold sweat. Lizard tried to maneuver: “If you want us to, Zéu, we’ll go there and shut him down for good.”

The chief didn’t buy it: “Shut up, Lizard! Answer me, Narguilê. Did you go back to that shithole unarmed?”

Narguilê answered, averting his eyes from the chief: “No, I didn’t, Zéu. I went to get some sleep, ’cause I had a cough...”

Zéu’s dead-fish gaze turned to Robocop. “Take Narguilê out there and give him some cough syrup.”

Robocop rose and told the skinny soldier to follow him. Choking back a sob, Narguilê said he was better and didn’t need syrup. Zéu stood up and said that in that case he’d take him personally. Narguilê then agreed to follow Robocop, crying copiously. Less than five minutes later, the troop heard two gunshots from the roof of the bunker. Lizard lowered his head. No one said anything.

Zéu waited for the return of Robocop — who sat down with the same serene expression as always — before resuming his speech. He began with a rapid message about the summary execution of Narguilê: “A tired soldier’s a dead soldier. If he’s alive he’ll end up in the hands of the police saying things he shouldn’t. Any guy who’s supposed to guard the chief and goes to play music unarmed is a goner.”

On the wall behind the chief, framing his philosophy, was a painting of the medieval conqueror Genghis Khan smashing a foe with the hooves of his horse. Narguilê died because, in Zéu’s dictionary, a weak ally becomes an enemy. But the trafficker was impatient and seemed to have already forgotten the murder.

“Where the fuck is Roma?”

“Easy, Zéu. I’m here.”

Brought by two more of Zéu’s soldiers, Roma entered the room at the exact moment the chief had uttered his name. Despite the tenseness of the situation, his expression was one of nonchalance.

“Shee, it’s nice here, huh? You’ve really done all right, Zéu. Can I sit down?”

“No. Stay on your feet. Here’s the story, Romário. I been hearing ’bout some double-crossing going on, and you’re gonna have to explain.”

“Wow, such a long time since anybody uttered my real name. I must be real important now.”

“Shove it up your ass, Romário.”

“Shee. Now you went and spoiled it, Zéu. It started so good—”

“Are you fucking with me, goddamnit?!”

“No way. I may be crazy but I’m not suicidal.”

The troop was visibly upset by Roma’s arrogant presence. A strong black man with slanting eyes and a wide smile, twenty-seven years old — the same as Zéu — he had been born the day the famous footballer Romário first played for the Vasco team. His father had no doubts about what to name him, declaring that his son was also going to be a striker. But Roma grew up without any talent for football, nor did he join the ranks of traffickers. He was a different sort of guy. It was he who advanced the conversation.

“Well... what now, Zéu? You ordered me to climb this hill and I can’t even sit down. So tell me: what’s going on?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Fuck, Roma! You want Robocop and Lizard to beat the shit outta you?”

“No thank you.”

“You been takin’ a lot of liberties, man. Out with it: what’s this shit about you cozyin’ up to the pigs and hangin’ with some guy from Leblon? My spies said you been talkin’ to the cops.”

“Not to cops. To the chief of police.”

Roma’s reply paralyzed Zéu. The statement was so serious that it seemed as if the outlaw couldn’t process it. Knowing he was with an intelligent guy, Zéu stared at him — with a gaze more of curiosity than of a dead fish — as if waiting for Roma to decode the nonsense. Then Roma continued.

“Shit, Zéu. You know I’m no rat. If there’s a guy on this hill who’s never betrayed you, it’s me. The police kidnap one of your soldiers and charge you ransom. The ones who get busted are the ones who can’t take you anymore, their heads are fucked up. What I’m doing is recruiting those guys to play in my band, and I made an agreement with the police: they leave them alone, they can’t kidnap or question them. Know why?”

Zéu remained silent.

“Because the governor likes my project. He says it’s a sociocultural action. I don’t give a shit what he calls it. What I do know is that the police are respecting ‘my’ ex-traffickers. By the way, I want to tell you that Narguilê guy, one of your soldiers, is loony, nuts. He’s one helluva musician, and I’m grabbing him. You can relax, the Man isn’t going to touch him—”

“Narguilê is history,” Zéu interrupts.

Now it’s Roma who’s speechless. He looks at Robocop, who averts his eyes, then at the chief again. “I can’t believe you did that, Zéu.”

The outlaw becomes irritated: “You got your methods, I got mine. Don’t fuck with me!”

Roma starts to answer but Zéu talks over him: “Here’s the thing: the police, your buddies, have a plan to raid the favela. Not just to roust us out and get in the papers. They wanna occupy the hill.”

“I know.”

Robocop stares at Zéu in fury, revolted by the level of information Roma has about the police.

Zéu feels the same way but tries to stay cool: “Great, you know. Then you oughta know too there’s gonna be war. And starting right now nobody in the community can talk to the police — not merchants, not mototaxis, or the owner of a band, or NGOs, no-fucking-body. You know the way our operation works here — when the shit hits the fan the pigs are gonna flay you and you’ll tell ’em everything.”

Now it’s Roma who avoids everyone’s eyes. He speaks looking at the floor, his voice muffled. “I can’t promise you that. I can’t just stop talking to the chief of police.”

Robocop loses his cool: “Let’s burn this guy right now, Zéu! The fucker’s a snitch! He’s sellin’ you out! Let’s waste this asshole right here and now, before he fucks everything up!”

This time Zéu doesn’t look at Robocop, despite the soldier’s exasperation, which the chief tolerates only because his adrenaline has also gone through the roof. His dead-fish gaze foretells the order in a low voice: “Kill him.”

The room service attendant went to check with the kitchen on whether the bottle of Dom Pérignon had been sent to room 901. When he learned it had been, he confirmed this with the guest on the telephone. But she replied at the top of her lungs that the attendant was an idiot. After a moment, the man understood that she wasn’t complaining about the bottle that had already been sent up but the other one, which hadn’t yet arrived — more precisely, the third one, ordered a little less than two hours after the first.

“I’m the one who’s drinking and you lose track? Shit,” ridiculed the guest.

When the waiter arrived at 901 with the new bottle, no one came to the door. The employee heard female cries coming from inside the room. He thought about calling the manager. Then he heard giggles among the shouts and did an about-face.

Tall and slim at forty-three, with slightly exaggerated fake breasts and lips, but elegant even so, Laura Guimarães Furtado was a hurricane. Often mentioned on gossip sites, the Rio socialite overshadowed many a TV actress. A well-known newspaper editor even said he regretted the demise of the society page because of Laura. “Her adventures alone kept Zózimo’s column going,” murmured the old editor, citing the father of Rio society column — writing in the seventies and eighties. Now Laura Furtado was unconscious on the floor of a suite in the Sheraton.

Upon being put back on the bed, she opened her eyes and spoke, still in the arms of her younger lover: “Oh, you’re still here?”

The consort was a bit confused. “Yes... wasn’t I supposed to be?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know. I blacked out, and you had just screwed me... Most of them go away when that happens.”

Her lover replied rather awkwardly, “It’s that I still got a thing to discuss with you.”

“A thing? How sweet... Let’s ask about that bottle of champagne that’s missing, and you tell me about your thing.”

“It’s serious, Dona Laura.”

Laura had an attack of nervous laughter. “Dona Laura? You want me to jump from the ninth floor now or after we have a toast?”

“Excuse me — Laura. That comes from my family there in the favela. We usually call a married woman Dona.”

“Oh, how nice of you to remind me I’m married. By the way, mind if I make a quick phone call to my husband?”

“It’s about him that I wanted to talk to you.”

Laura was taken aback. “Oh no! Three is too many. And my husband doesn’t go for that. He’d kill me!”

“It’s nothing like that! I already told you the thing is serious. Isn’t your husband close to the governor?”

“My husband tells the governor what to do.”

Laura saw her partner’s eyes flash — as much or more than when she undressed for him. She even felt jealous of her husband with the lover, which was a crazy inversion of the situation. The young man then asked her to arrange an audience for him with the governor.

Irritated, the socialite cut him short: “Impossible! Who are you, boy, to be received by the governor?!”

The youth from the favela was obstinate and said that the governor knew him. Naturally, Laura Furtado didn’t believe him.

“You people from the hillside are funny. You come down here to the streets and just because you’re sexy you start to think you own the place, as if Leblon were the outskirts of Greater Rocinha. Back up, kid.”

The young man found “Greater Rocinha” amusing and picked up on the game: “You people here on the outskirts are very prejudiced... Why can’t the governor know me?”

“In the first place, I said you people think that Leblon is the outskirts. This here is São Conrado.”

“Oh... Leblon, São Conrado... it’s all the same. It’s all Greater Rocinha,” he retorted with a sly smile.

The spirited charm of the dark, muscular youth melted Laura’s defenses, and she laughed and pulled him on top of her. Their tongues intertwined, but the able negotiator moved away and played his trump card.

“Hold on. First we have to decide the matter of the governor.”

Laura was furious at this blackmail: “Governor my ass! Take a look at yourself, you nobody! If you go to the governor’s palace you’ll probably leave the place in handcuffs!”

The youth didn’t take offense; he knew what he wanted. He remained serene and tried to convince the socialite that the governor really did know who he was and admired his sociocultural work with the band he had formed with a group of ex-traffickers — the RJ-171, whose name referred to the statute of the Brazilian penal code dealing with fraud. Laura was a fan of the band and had met her lover several months back at a show he had given for wealthy people on Delfim Moreira Avenue. Even so, she remained unmoved.

“It won’t work, Roma. If I ask my husband to take you to the governor, he’ll suspect something.”

Romário felt it was time to play the ace up his sleeve: “What if I get you a meeting with Zéu?”

The feared chief of Rocinha was the terror of cougars from Rio’s South Zone. With the exacerbation of the confrontation with the police, however, a visit to Zéu’s bunker atop the hill could turn into a ghost-train, and the trafficker himself had begun avoiding that type of operation. But Laura knew that Roma was familiar with the geopolitics of the favela and would be able to take her safely to a tryst with the outlaw.

What the socialite didn’t know was what Romário had promised Zéu in exchange for his life. That was how he had escaped being shot. He knew the chief of the hillside was crazy about Laura, despite knowing her only through Google and YouTube. A second before Robocop was about to pull the trigger, Roma had sworn to the chief that, if he didn’t kill him, the coveted socialite would be his.

Zéu was going to kill Romário more from depravity than as a tactic. Roma had offended the New Order (zero contact with the police), but the boss of the hill didn’t actually believe the leader of the RJ-171 band had been informing the enemy. And when he promised him Laura Furtado, Robocop had been told to lower his weapon immediately. Roma had managed what was almost a miracle in Zéu’s territory: negotiation. The trafficker was aware that Romário knew Laura and had even seen photos of the two together after a show. He didn’t imagine just how closely they knew each other — if he had, he might have shot him simply from jealousy.

The outlaw accepted the agreement. The moment Laura Guimarães Furtado was naked in his bed, Roma’s life would be saved. But if the promise wasn’t kept, it was curtains. Except that, in this case, Robocop would be authorized to exercise his favorite hobby: killing slowly.

In the suite at the Sheraton, the hyperactive socialite felt suddenly ecstatic. The offer to meet with Zéu made her eyes shine more than at any other time with Roma. And there had never been a lover happier to be in second place. The glow in Laura’s eyes foretold the success of Romário’s masterly ploy: to save his skin, and to reach the governor. But she was stubborn.

“Why do you want to meet the governor so badly?”

Using his final reserves of sangfroid, the maestro of the band said, “Because I want power.”

Laura guffawed. “Power?! You want power?! You don’t know what power is, my dear! You just came down from the favela yesterday with your little 171 band and already want a front-row seat?!”

Romário continued unruffled: “The 171 is my band and it’s only a parody of crime. But the crimes of your husband’s firm are no parody.”

Laura was about to reply, offended, but this time Roma didn’t let her speak.

“You don’t need to defend the family honor. Here between four walls we know the story. I want money and power, but I have a plan for the city. And the governor’s going to submit to me.”

“Okay. So go there and ring the governor’s doorbell, because I’m not going to usher into the palace some nobody who attacks my husband and then wants his help.”

“Fine. From what I see, you don’t really care about meeting Zéu...”

It was the last bluff Romário had left. If Laura knew he was marked to die and she was his salvation, she would trade one thing for the other, and goodbye to an audience with the governor. But Laura didn’t want to miss out on the tryst with the trafficker, so her lust spoke up: “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll put your name on the governor’s list. But first you have to set up my meeting with the sultan of love.” Roma assented.

Laura asked for the check. The third bottle of Dom Pérignon had arrived and would be charged to her bill, without having been opened. The socialite didn’t even notice. She took a wad of money from her purse — the proper way to pay for misbehavior — and asked her partner to handle the checkout. She would go directly down to the garage. He would exit the Sheraton on foot (with a bottle of champagne in his hand).

As he was walking down Avenida Niemeyer toward Leblon, a police car stopped beside him. A light-brown-skinned man, almost mulatto, coming out of the Sheraton on foot carrying a bottle of Dom Pérignon was by definition suspicious. The questioning was about to begin, but Roma forestalled it.

“Look, I was going to drink this with the governor. But I think you’re thirstier than he is,” Roma said, sticking the bottle in the patrol car and walking away without looking back.

The policemen didn’t refuse the present. The diplomat of Greater Rocinha knew the people of his territory.

Now all that remained was to conquer the palace and escape the death sentence.

The two blows to Lizard’s face resounded so loudly that Zéu heard them from inside his bedroom, with the air-conditioning on. He came out and found Robocop in the game room wearing his usual frozen expression and Lizard looking panicky.

“Why’re you smackin’ the soldier around, Robocop?”

“Caught the son of a bitch talkin’ to the police, Zéu. That means summary execution, don’t it?”

Zéu scratched his head, still a bit sleepy. “Yeah. I mean — let’s interrogate him first. Lemme have my goddamn coffee. You bring me problems at this hour of the morning and I can’t think straight.”

At that moment a shapely mulatta emerged from the chief’s bedroom, stretching and still in a nightgown. Noticing the tension, she said, “Ah, Robocop... let Lizard go. This habit you guys have of going after people...”

Zéu wasn’t pleased: “Shut up, Adelaide! I’ve told you not to stick your nose in military affairs.”

Lizard ran to Adelaide, kissing her hand and swearing innocence. Zéu threw him onto the pool table.

“Get your hands off her, you traitor! You wanna die slow?!”

The chief sat down at the living room table facing the pool, drank coffee with scrambled eggs, scanned the news on his iPad, lit a Marlboro, and summoned Robocop. During the interrogation, Lizard said he had only spoken with a military police corporal because the cop had accosted him at the entrance to a McDonald’s.

“The guy wanted to sell me information, Zéu. I told him I don’t talk to police, but that was when Robocop showed up and grabbed me by the neck—”

“Liar!” interrupted Robocop. “Lizard was talkin’ to that Corporal Saraiva, who charges us a toll to bring cargo up the hill. Lizard’s in cahoots with the German, Zéu! Let’s put this fucker under the ground right now!”

Lizard begged them not to kill him, seeing Robocop with his finger already on the trigger.

Zéu had one last question: “Okay. You’re sayin’ Corporal Saraiva wanted to sell information. Then I wanna buy that information.”

Lizard was confused. “You’re gonna buy information from the police, Zéu?”

“The punk’s makin’ it up!” snapped Robocop.

“If he’s making it up I’ll know right away. How much does the German want for the information?”

“He said he wants a pretty virgin here on the hill,” murmured Lizard.

“Then it’s settled. How old’s your kid sister, Lizard?”

“No, Zéu, for the love of God—”

“Fuck the love of God! How old is the bitch?! Has she screwed anybody?”

Lizard stared at the floor. “Twelve. She’s still a virgin.”

“Great. Robocop, tomorrow night bring the girl, the cop, and Lizard to the bedroom over Jacaré’s bar. Let me know when they’re all there. Now call that piece-of-shit Romário. And you, Lizard, you know if you run away from the favela your family dies and I’ll hunt you down wherever the hell you go.”

After two tries, Robocop informed the chief that Roma’s cellular was turned off. He took a blow to the face stronger than those he had dealt to Lizard — Zéu had to stand on tiptoe to strike the giant’s face.

“How many times have I told you I don’t wanna know about the things you don’t do, you stupid robot? Find Roma and put him on the line with me.”

Robocop would have avoided the humiliating punch if he had simply told the chief what he wanted to know: he had spoken earlier with Romário, who had said that the socialite Laura Furtado had confirmed for Friday, two days from then, at four p.m. in Zéu’s bunker.

Upon receiving this information, the trafficker turned into a pussycat. He told Robocop he was “fuckin’ great,” and he was invited to watch the Flamengo game that night at Zéu’s home theater. The henchman accepted with a smile, his cheek still red from the blow.

Corporal Saraiva arrived in plainclothes and smelling of cologne for the encounter with the virgin and the trafficker in Jacaré’s bar. Robocop sent him upstairs, where Lizard and his prepubescent sister Keitte awaited. Soon afterward, Zéu arrived, looking sideways at Lizard, who was there as a prisoner — suspected of treason and perhaps of ambush.

The chief didn’t greet the policeman and immediately asked what the information was that he wanted to sell.

“Take it easy, Zéu. Nothing to be gained from haste,” replied the corporal theatrically. “First I want the girl.”

Keitte was an Indian, with the same large prominent mouth that had earned her brother the nickname of Lizard, with the subtle difference that he was hideous and she was pretty. She was frightened, but it was her brother who was crying.

“You’re gonna have the girl. Robocop, take her to Jacaré’s bedroom, lock it, and give the corporal the key,” Zéu ordered.

The giant took the hand of the girl, who began weeping softly but offered no resistance.

With a wide grin, Corporal Saraiva took the key that guarded his prize. He stuck it in the pocket of his tight pants, over which jutted his swollen belly, and cleared his throat: “Okay, now we can start the conversation... Here’s the deal, comrade: I know the day and time the favela’s going to be raided.”

Zéu glanced at Lizard in recognition of his innocence. Robocop gazed at the floor. The trafficker stared at Corporal Saraiva, indicating for him to go on.

The policeman continued, solemnly: “Prepare yourself, emperor. The police are going to raid the day after tomorrow, Friday, at midnight.” And he addressed Lizard, smiling and pointing to the bedroom: “Don’t let my little girl go the dance Friday, cool? It might be dangerous...”

Zéu shifted his dead-fish gaze to Robocop and said without raising his voice: “Kill this pig.”

Corporal Saraiva quickly drew his pistol but was unable to use it. The giant’s rifle had already blown his head off.

Turning on his heels and heading toward the stairs to leave, Zéu commented, “You’ve been practicing, eh, Robocop? That one there doesn’t even know he’s dead... Lizard, take your sister home.”

At the exit to the Guanabara Palace, a police car stopped the man who was leaving the governor’s residence on foot. Romário recognized the same pair who had approached him so curtly as he was leaving the Sheraton. This time, however, they were brimming with politeness.

“The governor told us to take you wherever you want to go.”

Romário kept walking. “Thanks, friends, but where I’m going is too dangerous for you.”

Lounging on a plastic mattress floating in the crystalline waters of the pool, Zéu had the afternoon sun in his eyes and didn’t even see Roma arriving. He only noticed when he heard his panting voice.

“Goddamn, Zéu. With all that money you could install a cable car on this shithole, couldn’t you? Next time we’re going to talk by telephone, ’cause climbing all this way isn’t good for my heart, you hear?”

The trafficker continued to float, without moving a muscle. “The raid’s tomorrow at midnight.”

Roma gulped. He removed his sneakers and sat on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water. “Where’s that coming from, Zéu? Nobody knows the day of the raid... How’d you find out?”

“A friend told me...”

“What friend, man?! You don’t have any friends! I’m your only friend.”

“It’s just to remind you that if Laura Furtado isn’t here tomorrow at four o’clock, you die.”

“What bullshit, Zéu! You’ve got an irritating habit of constantly threatening people! I knew that already, goddamnit. You called me here to repeat that shit?”

“No. I called you here to say that Laura will come up but she won’t go down.”

“Are you crazy?! The woman’s the wife of Fernando Furtado, the biggest entrepreneur in the state. They’ll send the army, the navy, and the air force in here!”

“No, they won’t. The bitch is gonna be my shield. Two hours before the raid, you’re gonna call your friends in the government and tell ’em the bigwig’s wife is up here. And that she’ll only come down alive if the raid is cleared with me, the way it’s always been: I put a couple of old rifles in the cops’ hands, along with half a dozen bags of blow and weed for them to photograph for the papers, and that’s that. You’re gonna tell them that if the raid is for real like they’re sayin’, the bitch dies.”

Romário looked deep into Zéu’s sunglasses. “I’m not saying a goddamn thing. I’m not calling anybody.”

Robocop, who was listening in on the conversation, took a step forward with his hand on his rifle. The chief signaled for him to stand down.

Noting the gesture, Roma decided to speak: “Know where I’m coming from just now? The governor’s office. RJ-171 isn’t a band anymore, it’s an NGO. I have authorization from the government to receive donations. And a multinational wants to bankroll me too. I’ve got a show scheduled in Switzerland. I have the governor’s personal phone number. He received me in his home in Leblon, and he knows I grew up with you, Zéu. And that I go to your house. Know what he asked me about you? Nothing. Know what I told him about you? Nothing.”

Romário splashed his suntanned face with water from the pool.

“You take good care of this water, Zéu. It’s nice and clean... I’m going to honor my agreement with you: the woman will be here tomorrow. And after that I don’t owe you anything more.”

He left carrying his sneakers, and Robocop grabbed his arm. But Zéu intervened: “Let him go.”

The next day, Friday, at three forty-five in the afternoon, Romário received an urgent call. It was Nareba, Narguilê’s brother and an employee of RJ-171, who was taking Laura Furtado to the meeting with the trafficker. The news couldn’t be worse: police security at the entrances to Rocinha was being increased, and everyone going through was being searched. There was no way the socialite could take that chance.

And Roma couldn’t take the chance of not delivering Laura to Zéu. It was certain death. He could abort the plan and hope for Zéu to be killed in the raid. But he didn’t want to see Zéu dead. And he also didn’t want to betray the crazy woman who had opened the way to the governor. That’s how Roma was — principled, as his mother said affectionately; full of tricks, as his colleagues in the favela said affectionately.

Romário told his emissary to abandon the socialite’s car and go up the hill on foot. Halfway up they would catch a mototaxi. To get by the police, she would have to disguise herself as a washerwoman, wearing old clothes and carrying a bundle on her head. Roma prayed the woman would agree to the plan. She not only agreed but became even more excited. Nareba informed Robocop that Laura would be a little — or perhaps a lot — delayed.

It was late afternoon when the socialite arrived, sweaty and unkempt, at Zéu’s bunker. But the sultan of love was acting as general, readying the troop’s resistance to the invasion — which Laura didn’t know would take place. She was cordially greeted by Robocop, who informed her that the chief would see her in half an hour. Fascinated by the gladiator’s size, she asked if he could give her a massage, as the climb had been exhausting. Robocop broke into a cold sweat at the thought of what would happen to him if he did that — and sent Laura to the sauna.

When the trafficker entered his living quarters, the socialite was already on the bed, in a silk robe that emphasized her figure and a glass of champagne in her hand. Zéu stripped without saying a word. As he was about to touch her, he heard the sound of a helicopter, followed by a burst of rifle fire. The police had merely waited till nightfall to begin taking the favela.

“Goddamn shitass informant!” roared the trafficker, pulling on his pants and racing to find Robocop.

With gunfire drowning out Laura’s screams, the giant burst into the room and followed the chief’s orders: now with no sign of cordiality, he dragged the woman to a cubicle where he locked her in after telling her not to cry too much in order to conserve oxygen.

Despite the heavy firepower of Zéu’s men, the peak of the favela was quickly encircled. The army was providing cover for the elite police battalion. In other words, this time the business was truly serious.

Zéu played his trump card: he called Roma.

“It’s like this, Romário: I’m surrounded, but I got the entrepreneur’s wife right here. I’ll hand her over unharmed if the governor lets me get away. If you don’t wanna talk to him, okay. But then the broad is gonna die with me, and I won’t even be the one who kills her.”

A few seconds of silence ensued, until Roma replied, “I’ll call the governor.”

Half an hour later, standing by Robocop’s corpse, shredded by a bazooka blast, Zéu answered Roma’s call.

“Zéu, I spoke to the governor. And he talked personally with Mr. Furtado, Laura’s husband. The son of a bitch told the governor that he doesn’t need to give anything in exchange for his wife. And that if you want to, you can keep her.”

Zéu hung up without saying anything. He went to the cubicle, released the socialite, and said: “Run away through the woods behind here. If the Germans see me leavin’, they’ll shoot me. But maybe you can escape. If you stay here you’re gonna die.”

Laura Guimarães Furtado kissed the trafficker and ran toward the forest.

With the governor, Roma negotiated Zéu’s surrender and saved his life. He argued it was better having him as a prisoner than dead. “There’s always going to be crime, and it’s better for us to be familiar with its face,” philosophized Romário. The governor pretended not to understand, but he agreed.

A month later, Zéu was murdered in prison. His place in the command was taken by an evangelical preacher much more violent and dark, and the NGO RJ-171 began to suffer attacks.

The NGO headquarters soon had to leave Rocinha for Leblon.

“Okay, now we’re in Greater Rocinha,” stated Roma, drawing laughter from Laura Furtado, who had quickly joined RJ-171 and married a former trafficker (whose only defect, according to her, was not having more blow).

Lizard and his sister Keitte also went to work for the NGO, as juggler and dancer.

Saying he was facing death threats, Roma handed the presidency over to Nareba and went to live in Los Angeles with a female executive of the bank that sponsored him. Among other things, he discovered that Los Angeles too was part of Greater Rocinha.