But except for it swaying sideways, the cable car didn’t budge. Not in the first minute, not in the first ten minutes. I didn’t have my watch anymore, but I could tell the time thanks to the watch on the wrist of the dead man.
Time went by. I spent minutes sitting on the floor, safe from blood. Then I would clamber to the windows and peek outside, only to see if anything had changed in the sky.
After a while, it had. About half an hour after first appearing, the helicopter flew away.
Why would they wait for so long? It had been obvious that the helicopter had seen me. Obvious. It hovered over Gloria Santa, the bulk in its nose was a camera that kept turning around to keep its focus on me. Why would they wait so long to bring me down?
A defect. The cable car was as badly maintained as anything else in the slum. That’s why it stopped. Service stops must be a constant problem, just like violence was a constant dweller.
Only a defect.
But why did the helicopter leave? No interest in seeing my face anymore? Was I a minor problem, easily forgotten?
I tried to stop my hands from shaking, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t drop the pistol. I’d keep it even with unsteady hands. A gunshot accident would not happen to me.
The helicopter returned. Another one, from another news channel judging by the black and green stripes on its body. The fluttering in my stomach reduced, but didn’t stop. The stench of that man’s blood was unbearable, its crimson freshness disappeared and gave way to something darker and thicker on the floor.
I dragged my body up, hands clutched to the windowsill, and looked outside, sideways from the cable car. “Bring me down!” I bellowed, my mouth wedged on a crack between sheets of glass. I just hoped it reached the helicopter standing between me and my redeemer. “Bring me down!”
My knee had swelled to a bright purple, my brain unable to detect which portion of my body ached the most. All I wanted was to take a look at the gas station by the foot of the hill. I knew the end of that nightmare would come by way of there. I knew it. As I motioned toward the front part of the car, my feet dipped in a gelatinous blood, the trolley started moving again.
It stuttered, screeched, and slid aside. My body arched inside the car, head swaying back, but I remained on my feet. I was finally on my way to be free of this dreadful dimension of pain and death and back into my reality.
I reached the prow of the cable car. Looking down, I saw the bottom platform grow bigger. I scurried my eyes over to the buildings surrounding the platform. Rooftops that I would see for the last time, that I hopefully wouldn’t remember anymore.
But I would remember them, of course. Because as my eyes rolled, I found the gas station. And all along the street where it stood, I saw a parade of cars displaying sirens, red and blue lights, as if waiting for a criminal about to run into them.
The trolley went down and got closer to the bottom. I heard the blaring. It was the police waiting for me.
Chapter 35
The trolley entered the cable car platform at the bottom of Gloria Santa. Uniformed policemen had gone through the turnstile to form a human belt along the whole extension of the loading area. They had guns ready, all of them waiting for my arrival.
The car lost speed inside the loading platform, its doors creaked, ready to slide open. Two policemen walked alongside it, waiting to hop into the car and arrest me, deliver my head to their faction’s lords somewhere else in Rio.
The doors rattled open and blood flooding the ground came into their view, as did the body of the men twisted at the front of the car. I huddled inside. I was not afraid. If anything, I was cautious. The blood everywhere probably made the two men outside ponder whether they should go through the mess of stepping on it.
They walked alongside the sliding car, and gestured for me to come out. I didn’t move.
The car passed the point of unloading its passengers. It went around the platform, around those eyes in uniforms, and started trailing back to the main cable that would take me up to the top. Its door started sliding shut as the policemen tugged on the edges to keep it from closing, but suddenly the whole structure came to a halt.
This time I didn’t fall. The car stopped at the end of the platform, its door open, wide enough for someone slim to pass through.
It was a dead end. I had no way to get through those uniformed bandits. Besides, the cable car wouldn’t take me away to the relative safety of the upper parts of the slum, where the policemen did not dare to enter.
But going back would only make this nightmare stretch. And I’d rather see it finished, no matter the outcome.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I shouted, my mouth dry. “I’m not afraid!”
I was counting on the chance that the helicopters had broadcasted my face on TV, and that news would reach the US Embassy as fast as possible.
The cops stirred, but I had no idea if any of them had actually comprehended what I had said. They were gangsters who only understood money. Drug money.
One of them tried to squeeze himself through the door, trying to grab me and drag me outside. I raised the gun.
For whatever reason, he hadn’t seen it yet, even though I had been holding it the whole time. Maybe
