“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.
22
Gannon was drowning.
Oh, Christ!
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. His head was wrapped in cloth and held underwater. His lungs were splitting, he struggled but his hands were bound behind his back.
God, please!
Mercifully, his head was pulled up. As he choked on air, he was tossed onto a mattress in a darkened room.
Who was doing this? Why? Where was he?
Someone jerked him upright, yanked the cloth hood from his head. Blinding light burned his face and a voice he didn’t recognize mocked him in accented English from the darkness.
“Jack Gannon, reporter, World Press Alliance, New York.”
Gannon coughed.
“Your card identifies you as an American reporter. Is this true?”
Gannon said nothing, then a fist smashed the side of his head. He tasted blood, gritted his teeth and was pulled to his feet.
“Answer! You are an American reporter?”
“Yes.”
“You lie. You work for police. You’re here to frame us for the bombing!”
“No, I don’t know who you are. I’ve come to learn about Maria Santo.”
A knee flattened Gannon’s groin. Lightning flashed in his eyes, and he doubled over, groaning in agony.
Gannon wheezed, “You’re making a mistake.”
“There is no mistake.”
The man barked in Portuguese. A small video player was shoved into Gannon’s face. He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the light.
It was a TV news report of him talking to Detective Roberto Estralla beyond the yellow tape at the crime scene of the attack on the Cafe Amaldo. The report cut to Gannon close up. The video player vanished, then newspapers were thrust before him, a flashlight haloed on the photograph of him taken with Estralla at the scene.
“Did you think you could walk into our turf and plant evidence in the home of Maria Santo?”
“No. No, you don’t understand,” Gannon said.
“We are going to send a message to your police friends that we had nothing to do with the bombing.”
A chrome-plated revolver materialized. Gannon’s captor spun its cylinder, showing the empty chambers, then he held up a bullet before sliding it into one of the chambers. He spun the cylinder then clicked it into the frame.
“Don’t. Please.”
The barrel was drilled into Gannon’s mouth, he tasted metal.
“Our message will be written on your corpse.”
Gannon’s stomach heaved, a finger squeezed the trigger. As it went back, he shut his eyes.
God help me.
Click.
Empty chamber.
Laughter filled the room.
The gun was removed, Gannon’s heart nearly burst.
“So you live a little longer. Spend the last moments of your life dreaming of your execution.”
A sudden blow to his head sent Gannon falling to the mattress and falling back through his life…
He is ten years old in the Buffalo Public Library where his big sister Cora is telling him he must read books because he’s going to be a writer…I see it in your eyes, you don’t give up…his mother, the waitress, in her white apron…his father in the rope factory, his blistered hands…his mother sobbing…they’ve lost Cora to drugs…she’s run off…they can’t find her for years…he resents Cora for the pain she’s caused…he loves Cora for his life follows the course she envisioned…he’s a news reporter with the Buffalo Sentinel…he meets Lisa Newsome on assignment from the Cleveland Plain Dealer…Lisa wants to get married and have kids…he could be cutting his lawn in suburbia, taking the kids to the mall…not him…he breaks Lisa’s heart…ghosts will haunt you…his parents keep looking for Cora…she may have children…she may have a new life…what became of Cora?… A New York State Trooper, standing at his apartment, hat in hand…a pickup driven by a drunk driver has smashed into his parents’ Ford Taurus, killing them both…he aches to get out of Buffalo but is afraid to leave… ghosts…nominated for a Pulitzer… for convincing the brother of the suicidal Russian airline pilot who plunged his jet into Lake Erie to talk…think of the dead, their ghosts will haunt you…he got what he wanted…Buffalo behind him…working for the World Press Alliance…wasn’t that what he wanted?… No one to mourn him…he was alone… Wasn’t that what he wanted?… To die in the slums of Rio de Janeiro…ghosts will haunt you…don’t ever give up, Jack…
Jack…
“Jack Gannon.”
His eyes opened then squinted.
He was on a bed in a bright room with an open window, fresh air. He had been moved. A woman was sitting near, tending to his face. She had a British accent.
“Can you hear me, Jack? I only have a few minutes.”
He turned to her, a woman in her early thirties with brown hair and dark eyes filled with worry.
“My name is Sarah Kirby. I’m Maria’s friend from the Human Rights Center, at the bottom of the favela.”
“Help me get out of here.”
“I’m trying. You must listen. You were taken by the Blue Brigade, the drug gang that controls the Ceu sobre
