The helicopter rumbled in the sky. The intensity of its whirr drifted away, soaring high.
I looked for gunshot holes on my body, fresh blood blemishes on my clothes, nothing. Renato opened his eyes, bloodshot from barely escaping from death, and squeezed his good arm around me as if in gratitude for being alive.
“He’d have killed us,” Renato stammered, “but snipers on the helicopter caught him. We must keep moving.”
I helped him up. Once on his feet, Renato seemed steady, stiffer, thanks to Fátima’s herb potion and to the adrenaline pulsing in his veins.
We waded over debris to leave the makeshift shelter under the building. The body draped in a black and red striped t-shirt laid twisted along the steps, a doubled up knee propped up against an unpainted wall. Fresh blood streamed down the steps, coming from many holes.
“What did he want from you?” I said, hardly taking in the entirety of what had happened.
Renato checked outside the shelter, scanning for additional threats, ignoring the dead body.
“The helicopter is not over us anymore. But we must tread carefully. This man’s partner is still around,” he said.
I remembered I’d brought a secret tucked in my pants. In the heat of the moment, when the rifle was aimed at us, all senses of reaction vanished. Using weapons was out of the question to me, at least in my regular life. But here, in Gloria Santa, those who didn’t handle a gun might end up dying a coward’s death—without ever posing a threat to their murderer.
“The other man at the clinic forgot his pistol next to my bed,” I said, then looked down and caught view of the pistol grip poking out. “What did they want from you?”
Renato insisted on the first subject. “I saw when you picked it up,” he narrowed his eyes and in a single glare grasped the reasons for that handgun to be left by my side. “And I can only imagine why that motherfucker tossed his pistol by your bed. Are you okay?”
“Nothing happened,” I said. “The fireworks saved me.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Renato said. He turned his head around, scanning the alleyways.
I sensed an urgency in him.
“This body belonged to João Cavalo, number two in Gloria Santa’s drug hierarchy. He wanted information. He wanted to know why Flávio Beirario’s faction has been searching for you. And, most of all, why I’ve brought you here.”
Renato averted his eyes, looked down, as though resentful of the punishment he had to endure. “I lied to him. I told him you were not the American woman Flávio Beirario was looking for. He didn’t believe me. It was a good thing your passport was taken when you were mugged. He . . . ,” Renato pursed his lips and his eyes welled up. “The hardest part was not getting beat, the hardest part was hearing he had entered my grandma’s house, turned it upside down, in search of you.”
My lips opened, astonished.
“What? Is she ok?” I muttered, frightened by what his response might be.
“Grandma remained asleep while they searched every corner of her home, according to Fátima. She was afraid for my grandma too.”
Violence in that world had no limits. Not even an elderly hunchback woman would have her life spared from the aggression and the wickedness of drug lords.
Renato wiped his eyes on the back of his hand. I sensed an invisible danger looming around us. Whether it was from the gunshots echoing through the wind, the cries of women, or the splashing of feet and debris on the ground—I didn’t know. We needed to get out of that slum as fast as we could.
I walked to the staircase, a few steps over from where the body had fallen. Renato came after me, pushing himself up with the help of the wall on the side. He could finally move by himself.
We climbed the stairs and entered a new pathway between buildings that were three stories high, and from there neither snipers, nor sunrays, could reach us.
Once we had the protection of the bare brick walls, the din of the war lessened, but the wail of lonely kids and the gnawing of lurking rats increased, reaching my ears with a terrifying clarity.
Renato guided us through the labyrinth of buildings and alleyways. Uncollected garbage and the stench of rotten food turned my stomach. On our way up, we saw the faces of children, snot dripping from their noses, left alone at home while their parents were off at underpaid jobs.
I tried to focus my mind, my muscles, on getting past that wretched scene. There was just too much tragedy. Renato’s condition slowed our advance, yet we managed to reached the top of the slope. A plateau appeared, a clearance to the summit of Gloria Santa, the ground compact sand. Two soccer goalposts were placed far apart, and a helicopter had landed in the center. It billowed a constant smoke of dirt into the air.
The police helicopter were the bullets that killed João Guilherme came from.
A suit-and-tie man hopped out, followed by three heavily armed men in SWAT uniforms, their faces covered. Renato and I huddled against a wall, on the last steps of the stairs that led us up there—trying to hide.
“Merda. We won’t be able to escape because of the helicopter,” Renato said.
We surely wouldn’t. The soccer field seemed to be at the uppermost edge of the favela. Looking past the helicopter, I caught sight of the remains of Mata Atlântica, damp and leafy and tall, filtered through the wire fence mesh that encircled the field.
The police walked sideways across the soccer field and gradually faded away from our sight. Renato leaned his head against the wall, his face in despair, he
