She even dared to talk about Renato being shot to death.
Fatima’s phone had obviously been fed with a hacked SIM card. It was part of the modus operandi of local drug factions. Renato had made that clear. Claire was probably someone monitoring Fátima’s line. When she noticed the outgoing call to the US Embassy, she intercepted the line, and began her play.
I could see it all. She even used my pain, my grief on losing Renato, to trample my feelings.
I could trust no one. Now I understood why Renato had been so opposed to using cell phones in Gloria Santa. They had been used to weave threads of corruption, which created the filthy mesh that covered the whole of Rio.
I thumped my foot against the ground. The world receded from its turmoil and recovered its steadiness. I raised my arm, eyes throbbing, and threw the phone . It smashed into the red bricks and bounced on the ground, its case splitting apart. The screen flicked on, although shattered into many cracks, before turning off to blackness.
One less node in the net of corruption pervading Rio.
A window squealed open on its rusty hinges. A teenager glowered at me from inside the crooked home, someone who in Atlanta I would regard as a poor, hungry and deprived young girl. But in Gloria Santa, I could only perceive eyes of dismay, and a set of teeth that would give me away to those who were sniffing behind me.
A sound came from down the alleyway. Something rattled on the ground. A sheet of metal, an aluminum pot? I heard murmurs coming up, trailing along the hillside through veins of stairs and cement. Voices searching for me.
The girl closed the door. She seemed frightened, that look as though I were the menace, not them. Not everyone else.
I grabbed the broom. Balanced myself on it. The deadline just around the corner, I had to find a way out.
I walked my way back up Gloria Santa. Back to the old man with the smoldering pipe in his mouth. Up to where I had been kept by Fátima, to where she had been left paralyzed. That place was the only one I could consciously walk to, the only one I knew. And also where I might find a key to my escape.
I limped along the alleyway ever so hurt, ever so slow. Voices were coming closer, I heard them escalating the mountain, the rattling of metal in their hands. Strangers came out of their homes, of their squeaking doors, ready for a work day. But they all passed by me as mere extras on the stage of terror and ruin into where my life had been sliding since day one in Rio.
The old man was not on his bench anymore. Of course he wouldn’t be. He had seen me. And he knew a squad was coming. I found Fátima’s door the same way I left it: closed.
Fátima wouldn’t be inside the room anymore. She was already gone, everyone in the area was gone. Violence was a regular, faceless visitor to their lives. It never left witnesses behind.
I turned the doorknob and pushed it open, willing to conceal myself from the voices coming in my wake. I walked through the door, swung it shut, and then I saw it.
Fátima was lying on the ground. She was in the same, exact position I last saw her. And she didn’t budge when I went back inside her home, except for her eyeballs.
Was it really that bad? I somehow believed that Fatima’s paralyzation would be only a short-term effect due to her falling against the freezer. A minute long despair that would soon disappear. But after a several minutes, it hadn’t.
I walked toward her to stand slightly bent over the broom, right beside her head. Her eyes were red and wide and wet.
“Where is it, Fátima? Where is the gun?”
I tried to sound nonchalant, hopeful that indifference would promptly repulse any plea that she might consider bringing to the mirror of her eyes.
She only stared at me, stiffly.
“The gun, Fátima!” I shouted. I had no idea whether her hearing had been affected by her fall. But I heard voices seeping in through the crevices in the wall, and I had to be quick.
Fátima’s eyes froze on me, but for a brief, split of second moment, her eyelids flickered and she looked up, toward a bent kitchen cabinet.
Her body language betrayed her. Her eyes went straight to where she had hidden the gun. Had she tried to tell me where it were, she would not glimpse so fast at it.
The Glock G17 had been wrapped in old newspaper, put away inside the kitchen cabinet.
I heaved myself across the room, a breeze of energy brushing over my skin. I was the same person as before, but now, the gun in my hand, I had means to defend myself.
Chapter 32
I heard my name in the wind. The vowels sounded weak, sprinkled in the draught passing through, but I heard it. Someone concealed in Gloria Santa alleyways had cast my name around the slum, either trying to lure me into a trap, or passing directions to a partner in crime.
My body was weak, but my mind sharp enough to avoid falling into their claws.
With my name, another sound reached my ears, propelled by the gust that swept the Gloria Santa gutters. A rusty sound that screeched high in the sky, a rattling of steel
