Buried Strangers

Chapter Twenty-one

Babyface Goncalves learned about the Portellas’ whereabouts the hard way-by getting hit on the head. The wound was painful, but it could have been worse. If his assailants had found his credentials, they would have killed him, that being the protocol for handling cops who stick their noses into favelas after dark.

Fortunately, the two punks who came up behind Babyface simply mistook him for an easy mark. After they’d hit him behind the left ear with a lead pipe, they limited them-selves to patting down the places where people normally carried their wallets. When they found his, they took it and made themselves scarce. They never discovered the special pocket he used for carrying his badge and police identifica-tion card. And they never found his Glock.

Unlike most cops, Babyface Goncalves didn’t carry his gun where people could see it. He carried it in a special holster in the small of his back, which is where the woman who found him put her hand when she helped him to his feet. She pulled back as if she’d been burned and took two steps away.

Babyface stood there, groggy, still tottering. For a minute, he thought she was going to run.

“I’m not one of the bad guys,” he said, when he saw that her eyes had assumed the dimensions of saucers. “I’m a cop.”

“Sweet Jesus,” she said.

Other than the yellow glimmer of kerosene lamps shining through cracks around ill-fitting doors, the street seemed to be devoid of human presence. She sighed and seemed to come to a reluctant conclusion. “Alright, damn it. Come with me,” she said, her voice angry now, but scarcely more than a whisper.

She led him through the mud and stopped at a hovel not twenty meters from where she’d found him. Like the other shacks lining the unpaved street, the place was built from scraps of wood and sheet metal. She reached into her purse, removed a key, and started fumbling with a padlock. A moment later, Babyface heard the squeak of rusty hinges. She pushed him ahead of her into the dark.

Inside, it smelled of lamp oil, excrement, and urine. It was Babyface’s second visit to a favela and the first time he’d been under someone’s roof. He’d been told they seldom had electricity, almost never had indoor plumbing. The smells confirmed it.

“Wait,” the woman said.

He heard her strike a match. It flared, illuminating her face. She was black, white haired, appeared to be about sixty, not as tall as he was, but probably heavier. And she looked like she’d just taken a big swig of milk and found it sour. She lit the wick of a kerosene lantern and covered it with a glass chimney. Then she hung the smoking lamp from a hooked piece of wire suspended from the ceiling.

“Sit,” she said, indicating a pile of coffee sacks.

Babyface sank down. The contents of the sacks squeaked. He put his hand onto the jute and squeezed broken pieces of foam plastic. The jute seemed sticky.

“Watch what you’re doing with that hand,” the woman said. “Get it off my bed.”

He did as he was told and looked down. It wasn’t the jute that was sticky; it was his hand, bloody from the wound behind his ear.

“You’re one hell of a mess,” she said.

“They hit me,” he said. “Stole my wallet.”

“If you really are a cop, you’re lucky they didn’t kill you.” She picked up a cloth, moistened it with water from a plastic jug, went around behind him, and started dabbing at his wound.

“Ouch,” he said.

“Should have left you where you were,” she said. She sounded less frightened, but no less angry.

“Why?”

She stopped her dabbing and walked around to look him in the eye.

“Who do you think you’re fooling?”

“Senhora, I appreciate your helping me, I truly do, but you seem to be angry about something and honest to God, I’ve got no idea what it might-”

“No idea, huh?”

“No.”

“And never heard of the Comando Vermelho either, right?”

“Comando Vermelho? Sure. They’re a drug gang, in Rio.”

“In Rio and right here in Jardim Tonato, Senhor Policeman, and don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”

“But I didn’t know that.”

“And didn’t know either, I suppose, that they kill people who help cops? That they’ll kill me if they find out you’re here?”

“No, I-”

“Should have left you right where you were. Stepped right in the shit this time, I did. Good and proper. Umm-hmm. Really put my foot in it. What’s your name?”

“Goncalves. Agente Goncalves. Federal police. And, at this moment, I don’t give a damn about the Comando Vermelho or their drug business. I’m not here because of them.”

“No? Then why are you here?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

“He’s okay, ” Hector said, when he called his uncle at eleven the next morning to report on Babyface’s condition, “but he came out of it with a bump on his head the size of a walnut. I made him go to the hospital to have it looked at. They wanted to keep him there under observation, but he wouldn’t have it. Says he feels like a jerk for letting some lowlife punk get the drop on him like that.”

“I guess they didn’t find his badge.”

“Nope. Nor his gun either. He had it in the small of his back.”

“Babyface is one lucky boy. I expect he knows that.”

“He does.”

“Did we get anything out of it?”

“We did.”

Hector told him about Babyface’s benefactor, whose name was Samantha Cruzeiro, and how she’d turned out to be a friend of Clarice Portella, the woman they were looking for.

“Clarice,” he said, “has a younger sister who’s getting married. The two of them, Clarice and her husband, left yes-terday for the wedding. It’s way the hell up in Pernambuco. They’re supposed to be gone for two weeks.”

“Merda,” Silva said.

“From what Samantha told Babyface, Ernesto-that’s the husband-shares your sentiments. He can’t stand his wife’s family, and she had a hell of a time convincing him to shell out for the bus fare. Until the wedding came along-a some-what hasty affair as I understand-he had the money ear-marked for a down payment on a television set.”

“What’s he do for a living?”

“Works in construction.”

“And the woman?”

“A faixineira in Fazendinha, a different lady for every day of the week.”

“Fazendinha?”

“A luxury condominium right next to the favela.”

“Charming.”

“Big fence all around it, big houses on the inside. Babyface went there directly from the hospital.”

“Boy deserves a raise. Too bad there’s a salary freeze.”

“A freeze that doesn’t seem to apply to directors’ salaries.”

“Heard about that, did you?”

“It’s all over the office.”

“Here’s something to add fuel to the fire: Sampaio got it in exchange for a promise not to give a raise to anyone else.”

“Filho da puta.”