Once imprisoned, once shackled, my life would be in a drug lord’s hands.
“Come on, Mrs. Bennett. Walk outside. It’s safe now,” said Paulo.
I had been captured by my thoughts, which led me to stare at the mirror of blood created on the trolley floor. But then Paulo Pinto diverted my line of thinking into something else. Safety is subjective. Stepping into a lion’s cage barehanded is safe, but only for the lion.
“There’s no safe place for me in Rio,” I said.
Pinto looked at me. Roberto Rôla craned his neck to whisper into his partner’s ear.
“We’ve neutralized the one who threatened you,” said Pinto.
“As far as I can see, you’re still standing before me,” I replied.
“I’m not the threat, Mrs. Bennett. I’m talking about your kidnapper.”
“My kidnapper?” I said. I noticed the images on the corner of my eyes going blurry, my head too big a weight for my neck to heft.
I clutched, with one hand, the windowsill, the other one holding the pistol pointing downwards.
I couldn’t keep it raised anymore.
Pinto went on.
“The one who drove you from the airport. The man who killed Carlos, your original driver, and who lured you into a trap to profit out of it. I’m talking about Renato Santos, Mrs. Bennett. He is the threat we’ve neutralized.”
Chapter 36
I slid my back against the trolley to sit on its floor, my ass and my glock dipping into blood puddle. I was on the verge of fainting, and as I stared outside, through the car’s barely opened doors, I saw officer Pinto walking toward a position from where he could keep staring at me. From where he could keep trying to convince me to give up.
Using bland words to sugarcoat their dreadful deeds is a common trait of cowards. And in Rio, I discovered it was also a common trait of corrupted cops.
I’ve killed and hurt people due to being under a state of desperation. Even though I wish I had never stained my hands with gunpowder nor blood, I had done it. I would never sugarcoat the dreadfulness of my acts by addressing them as a mere pushing of people out of my way, or going over obstacles, or neutralizing threats. I had killed human beings and hurt them. And had I not done so, I’d be the one rotting away right now.
I’m not proud of what I did, but I have enough guts to say it.
Officer Paulo Pinto, on the other hand, verbalized a murder through soft words. He and his man had coldly killed Renato from long range. They should be men enough to state it. But they weren´t.
Yes, I could see it all. Paulo Pinto had a dark soul. A man experienced in haggling with criminals, poised to enter people’s minds and make them faulter, creating distress. He and Roberto Rôla wanted to sooth me into that false assumption that I had been kidnapped by Renato. Into the wrong perception that those who held us captive in the makeshift clinic, who tortured Renato, who tried to rape me, who pursued us and tried to give us away, were actually the good guys in the story.
What they really wanted was to blame me. Somebody had to be liable for that body inside the cable car. The self-defense argument, or my state of need, would never prevail. They would successfully arrange against me in court. And so they would pave my way into a Brazilian prison, and their foreseen outcome would finally become true.
“It’s been too many days. . .” I said as I eyed officer Pinto. The words came out sluggishly, as though the very force that had put them out was coming to an end. “. . . since I’ve been running away. I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not doing it anymore . . .”
My hands trembled. I still kept hold of the pistol. But my legs would not push me forward anymore. My body was ragged, undernourished, weak and wounded. I was unable to run away.
But that didn’t mean I would give in.
Officer Pinto looked back at Rôla and they exchanged another glance.
“It’s been more than a month, Mrs. Emily Bennett,” he said. “We knew since the beginning that you were inside Gloria Santa. But finding someone hidden in the slum is like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
Another lie. Another absurd lie. It’s been less than a week since I had arrived in Rio. Only a week. Even though getting hurt and scarcely eating made that week seem much, much longer.
A man of no scruples, Paulo Pinto was using my fragility to try and deceive me. And now I had no one to rely on, nothing except the Glock to put my reality back on track.
I looked over my body, my doubled up knees poking out of that disgusting blood stained dress. My thighs were thinner than I could ever remember and my knees looked swollen, not only by the injuries they carried, but due to the protruding bones amidst a desert of body fat.
And then I realized how much weight I had lost. What about my face? Would it be as thin, bones-nudging-out as my thighs were?
I raised my hand, rubbed it against my face, the skin lacking tenderness sucked into my cheeks. The moment was appropriate for weeping, but I shed no tears.
The time I spent inside Gloria Santa, that terrible week, the officers, the cops, and everyone else who collaborated with the drug lords were killing me softly, a small portion a day. Everyone
