They wouldn't dare, Orlando thought.
But they did.
The man gripping the toggles changed hands and started pulling outward, tightening the garrote around Anselmo's neck.
Anselmo's tanned brown face began to flush, only slightly at first, and then becoming redder and redder, as if he was lifting a heavy weight. The capanga's mouth opened and his tongue popped out, but no sound escaped his lips. He needed air in order to cry out and he wasn't getting any. His legs scrabbled, as if he was running in place. Suddenly, the room filled with the smell of excrement, and a spreading stain appeared on the front of Anselmo's faded jeans. His eyes rolled upward and his legs collapsed.
The man in the red T-shirt kept up the pressure until he was quite sure the capanga was dead. Then he motioned to a short man with a prominent Adam's apple just visible under the fall of his hood. Together they dragged Anselmo's lifeless body out of the room.
Orlando was waking up fast. His throat was so dry he had to swallow, twice, before he could utter a word. The word he chose to utter was 'please.' That was about all he could manage, but it seemed to help. He could hear them relaxing, shuffling their feet, some of the tension going out of them.
'Please? Did you say please?' the spokesman said.
'Yes. I said please. Please, don't hurt me.' The words were coming easier now.
'Did Aurelio Azevedo ask you not to hurt him when you nailed him to a tree? Did he ask you not to geld him like one of your cattle? Did his wife and children beg you to spare their lives?'
Orlando started shaking his head, stopped when he felt the shooting pain behind his eyes. The brandy always gave him a headache when he didn't have time to sleep it off. 'I had nothing to do with any of that,' he said.
The spokesman put his hooded face only a few centimeters from Orlando's own, so close that Orlando could smell the tobacco on his breath.
'No?'
He searched Orlando's eyes.
'No,' Orlando said. But he looked away.
'You're lying,' the spokesman said, and then, raising his voice only slightly, 'Carlos.'
The man with the red T-shirt, the man he'd called Carlos, came back into the room, his garrote doubled back into a loop and dangling from his right hand.
'Kill him.'
The executioner stepped forward and slipped the white cord around Orlando's neck.
'No. For the love of God-'
'Answer me, then. What did Aurelio do when he knew you were going to nail him to that tree?'
Orlando shook his head. He lifted one hand and got two fingers between his throat and the cord. The man with the garrote gave a little pull on the toggles, enough to let his victim sense that mere fingers weren't going to be enough to save him.
'We know you did it. So tell us the truth,' the spokesman said, 'or die now.'
'It wasn't me. I swear. It was Anselmo. Anselmo did it.'
Some of the men in hoods looked at each other, but the spokesman didn't take his eyes off Orlando.
'And cutting him? Whose idea was that?'
'Anselmo. It was Anselmo's idea. He said it would frighten the others, said that real men are more afraid of losing their cocks than losing their lives.'
'Did Aurelio beg you not to kill him?'
'No. No, he didn't. He spit in Anselmo's face.'
'And then?'
'And then Anselmo… well, he got angry… and he did what he did.'
'And you made Aurelio's wife watch you murder him?'
'Not me. Anselmo.'
'What happened next?
'She started to cry. Asked Anselmo not to kill the kids.'
'But you did anyway, didn't you?'
'We had to. Can't you see? They weren't babies anymore. They saw our faces.'
Orlando swallowed.
The spokesman inclined his head, giving a sign. Orlando wet himself in fear, certain that the garrote was going to tighten, but he was wrong. To his immense relief, he felt it being slipped from his neck.
They dragged him down the long hallway, through the living room where embers were still glowing in the fireplace and the smell of brandy still hung heavy in the air and out onto his front porch. One of his trucks was standing at the foot of the steps, the engine already running.
The early morning air and the adrenaline that was pumping through his veins helped to clear Orlando's head. He still had a headache, but now he was able to think. How did they get into the house? Where the hell are the rest of my bodyguards? Where are they taking me? How am I going to explain this to the old man?
The old man was his father, Orlando Senior, who had never thought much of his son's abilities even at the best of times and the best of times were several years in the past. These days, fed up with Orlando's drinking and mismanagement, he'd gotten to the point of threatening to cut Orlando off without a cent.
Money! That's it! This is all about money. About ransom. Suppose they ask for too much? What if the old man says no? What then? And how much is too much, anyway? A million? Would he pay a million?
They hustled him down to the truck, pausing at the tailgate. The spokesman went up front and climbed into the cab. They bound Orlando's hands behind his back with a piece of wire and tossed him into the bed like a sack of garbage. He landed hard on one shoulder, his head bouncing against the metal floor.
For a moment, he thought he was going to pass out, but he didn't. When the dancing black spots faded, he found he was looking at the answer to one of his questions. The other capangas were with him in the truck, and like their boss, Anselmo, they were dead. All six corpses were crammed, one on top of the other, into an area between the side of the truck and an oblong object covered by a piece of tarpaulin.
His abductors found places on the floor, on the oblong object, and even on the bodies of the dead. The last man to climb aboard was the man in the red T-shirt, his garrote now dangling from his belt like a watch chain, the toggles stuffed into a pocket of his jeans. He signaled to the driver by pounding on the roof of the cab with his fist. The truck set off with a jerk.
Orlando twisted his body and craned his neck to look back at the house. His front door had been smashed. Splinters of blue wood were lying on the porch. The shutters, blue like the door, were still closed and locked.
Why didn't Anselmo stop them? He must have been drunk. All of them must have been drunk. Stupid bastards! The old man, damn him, had been right again: If you're only willing to pay peanuts, what you're going to get is monkeys. He'd hired Anselmo for peanuts. And Anselmo had hired the others for peanuts. And now the old man was going to tell him that it would never have happened if he'd been smart enough to hire good people.
Dust welled up behind the truck, blocking the view of his home. Tears began to run from Orlando's eyes. It's the dust. Just the dust. But he knew it wasn't. And it wasn't fear, either. It was rage, rage and frustration. Every damn time his father came to the fazenda, it was nothing but criticism, criticism, criticism. And now this. The old tyrant was richer than Croesus, but he parted with every centavo like it was the last one he had in the world. No matter what the amount of the ransom was, he'd bitch about it forever.
They passed the tobacco sheds, where the leaves were cured, and the old deposito, where they kept the coffee. The driver didn't hesitate when he came to the fork. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, but it still surprised Orlando when they suddenly screeched to a stop. Surprised him, because the driver had stopped in the middle of nowhere. There were no nearby buildings, no other vehicles. There was nothing but a steep hillside on the right and level cane fields sweeping off to the left. The cane had been harvested less than a week before, and except for some stubble, the land was bare. Orlando could see all the way to the trees hemming the river, almost a kilometer away.
Two of his abductors grabbed his arms and bundled him, none too gently, out of the truck. The spokesman and the driver climbed out of the front seat. Four of the men removed the tarpaulin from the oblong object and lowered it to the ground. It turned out to be a wooden box about two meters long. The other two dimensions were about a quarter of that, no more than fifty or sixty centimeters wide and high.
