The Panic Zone

21

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A fine rain was falling the next day when Gannon returned to the diner to meet Alfonso, his guide into the slum.

He was waiting in the street, straddling a motorcycle and wearing a helmet and a baggy flowered shirt. He waved, and Gannon approached him.

Alfonso pointed to the gas tank and the hills and held up four fingers. Gannon gave him about forty reais, roughly twenty bucks U.S. Alfonso stuffed the bills in his jeans and nodded for Gannon to strap on the spare helmet and climb on behind him.

“You will take me to the parents of Maria Santo, Pedro and Fatima Santo?”

Alfonso gave him a thumbs-up, the motorcycle roared and they raced off along the crowded streets. Small shops, kiosks and parked cars blazed by as the commercial fringe of Zona Sul morphed into a narrow road, twisting into a lush jungle gateway to the favela.

The road continued slimming, coiling up and up. The engine growled as Alfonso shifted gears, threading through traffic. His body slid back and Gannon saw something sticking out from Alfonso’s waistband. When a breeze lifted Alfonso’s shirt, he saw the butt of a pistol.

They climbed for an eternity, the hills growing steeper, the road shrinking until finally they stopped at a side street.

The engine sputtered into the quiet of Ceu sobre Rio on a Sunday.

Gannon turned to the God’s-eye view of downtown Rio de Janeiro, the beaches, the bay, the statue of Christ on Corcovado Mountain. The upward sweep over the endless jumble of rooftops was amazing. Shacks and multi-story houses covered every speck of land, every outcropping; they were crushed together, battling for sun, angling to stand free as somewhere church bells tolled.

Alfonso led Gannon to a stairwell slicing between buildings and taking them higher. As they climbed, Gannon extended his arms, touching the lichen-laced walls on either side of the canyon they passed through. From time to time he saw large nests of wires and cables, common in favelas where residents spliced illegally into city utilities.

Drenched with sweat and breathing hard, Gannon guessed the temperature at more than a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, when they veered down a tight passageway that led to a side street.

Here, the low-standing concrete walls in front of the houses were coated with graffiti and bullet-pocked from gang shootouts with police.

They pushed on, passing more walls and shacks, then a pack of dogs yipping at children who were using sticks to probe garbage in the middle of the street. Watching them were several teenaged boys, smoking pot and sitting on a seat ripped from the rear of a car. Each of them had a gun and regarded Gannon as if he were new merchandise.

Alfonso gave a little whistle and led him down an alley that was slivered into yet another ascending canyon of stairs. This one opened to an oasis of well-kept houses, painted neatly in coral pinks, blues and lavenders. They were small houses with clean stone walls and ornate metal gates. Most had flower boxes in the windows.

Pretty, Gannon thought, as Alfonso stopped at one and unlatched the gate. They stepped into the cramped stone landing that welcomed them to a sky-blue house with a bone-white door.

“Santo.” Alfonso nodded to the door, holding out his hand for payment.

Gannon gave him another forty reais then knocked.

The door opened to a man in his fifties. His haunted, tired eyes went to Alfonso then traveled sadly over Gannon. His white mustache was like snow against his leathery skin.

“Pedro Santo?” Gannon asked.

The man nodded.

Alfonso spoke to him in Portuguese and the older man looked at Gannon.

“Do you speak English?” Gannon asked

Pedro Santo shook his head.

Gannon turned to Alfonso who shouted in Portuguese to some girls down the street who were skipping with a rope. One, who appeared fourteen or fifteen, approached them. Alfonso spoke a stream of Portuguese to her. She looked to Gannon and said in English, “Hello, sir. My name is Bruna. I will try to help you. I am learning English from the British ladies at the human-rights center where Maria Santo has many friends.”

Bruna listened intently as Gannon told her that he was a journalist from New York with the World Press Alliance and needed to talk to Pedro Santo and his wife about Maria. After Bruna translated, Pedro opened his door wider, inviting them inside.

The house was immaculate but small with a living room and adjoining kitchen. Pedro Santo introduced his wife, Fatima, who was washing dishes at the sink. Pedro spoke to her in Portuguese and she gave Gannon a slight bow then began fixing him a fruit drink, indicating he sit in a chair at their kitchen table.

A moment of silence passed.

Over his years as a crime reporter, Gannon had come to learn a universal truth-that it didn’t matter if it was Buffalo or Rio de Janeiro, a home visited by death was the same the world over, empty of light. Like a black hole left by a dying star, its devastation was absolute.

When Fatima Santo set a glass before him, Gannon noticed her hands were scarred and wrinkled from years of cleaning the houses of the rich. Her eyes were dimmed with tears, her body weighted with sorrow. A gold-framed photograph of her murdered daughter was perched on the shelf above the TV, draped with a rosary.

“Please tell them-” Gannon turned to Bruna “-that I give them my sympathy for the loss of their daughter.”

Bruna nodded then translated, softening her voice as she grasped Gannon’s intentions. That small act, the inflection of Bruna’s voice, won his immediate respect, for he realized that in Bruna, he had the help of an intelligent young girl.

Gannon began by asking Pedro and Fatima to tell him about the kind of person Maria was. Bruna put the question to Fatima, who buried her face in her hands and spoke in a voice filled with pain.

Bruna translated, “She says that Maria was a good girl who went to mass and worked hard at important jobs in big offices. They wanted her to leave the favela for a better life but she insisted on remaining in Ceu sobre Rio. Maria wanted to make life better for everyone, the children of the favela, the whole world.”

Pedro spoke in a deep, soft voice to Bruna, who nodded.

“He says that is why Maria worked with the human-rights groups, the earth groups, the unions. She was committed to social justice.”

A motorcycle thundered by, rattling the door, distracting Gannon momentarily as he resumed taking notes.

“I am interested in the kind of work Maria did for these causes.” Gannon gestured. “Did she keep files, records or notes here?”

Bruna translated and Pedro led them to a small bedroom, neat and evocative of a monk’s cell. It smelled of soap and contained a single bed, a dresser with a mirror, a desk, posters from Amnesty and other global and environmental groups. In one corner stood a four-drawer steel file cabinet.

As Pedro spoke to Bruna, there was a burst of shouting outside and the sound of people running near the house. It lasted a few seconds then Bruna turned to Gannon.

“He says you can look at anything, but be respectful.”

Gannon and Bruna immersed themselves in Maria’s files, which were all in Portuguese, spreading them out on the desk, floor and bed. Items on the dresser began ticking from the vibrations of loud hip-hop music pounding from someone’s sound system nearby.

Bruna raised her voice a bit as she translated excerpts of reports, studies and news clippings on human rights, child labor, human smuggling, environmental issues, police corruption, religious and political persecution.

Gannon noticed something: A low side drawer on the desk had a very slender sleeve inside holding a leather-bound notebook. He opened it to pages filled with dates and notes written in longhand in Portuguese.

A diary.

Outside, the music’s volume increased, and Gannon never heard the front door latch click over its menacing throb, never heard the living room floor creak as the house filled with people.

Gannon had passed Maria’s journal to Bruna and she was reading over the entries for the last three days of Maria’s life.

“I have located the documents the law firm thought it had destroyed. It proves what we have suspected. I have copied the thirteen pages and shared them with SK at the center.” Bruna paused.

Gannon held up his hand before he reached into his back pocket and unfolded the documents he’d found near the bomb scene. He had pages two, five and nine. There were thirteen in all. He needed to see all of them.

Who was SK at the center? What center?

As Gannon nodded for Bruna to resume, “We agree we must go to the press with these records-” he noticed a flash in the mirror, a diffusion of light “-I will contact the WPA and give the documents to a journalist-”

Music hammered the air, and in a heartbeat Gannon turned to glimpse Pedro and Fatima held at gunpoint by people-a dozen, maybe more-brandishing automatic guns, their faces covered with bandannas.

Without warning Gannon’s head was swallowed by a large black hood.

His head exploded into a starburst of sudden pain.