some high-rotation establishment.
'You got a place?' he asked.
The kid nodded. 'There's one around the corner. It's twenty for half an hour.'
'Good enough.'
'Follow me,' the kid said. 'Not too close.'
He sashayed out of the alleyway, wriggling his butt in a travesty of someone of the opposite sex and twice his age. Sewn to one of his hip pockets was a crude red heart, cut out of some feltlike material.
Arnaldo let the kid get about twenty paces ahead and followed. The hotel was a five-minute walk, the building a fourstory walkup that looked like it had been constructed to cater to traveling salesmen and had gone downhill from there. The exterior was painted a sickly green.
The guy behind the counter was young and fat, reading a computer magazine. His light blue shirt had sweat stains from the armpits all the way down to the roll of lard above his belt. He leered at Arnaldo and asked for forty reais.
'I thought you said twenty,' Arnaldo said to the kid.
It was the fat guy behind the counter who answered: 'Twenty for a half-hour, twenty for the deposit. You clear out of there by two-fifty-five'-he'd already shaved a couple of minutes off the time-'you get twenty back. You're not gone by three-twenty-five, I come in and pull the kid off your dick.' 'You take credit cards?'
'You out of your fucking mind?'
Arnaldo handed over the forty reais, knowing it would be useless to ask for a receipt, thinking about how he was going to get Silva to reimburse him.
The guy didn't even pretend to put the bills into a cash drawer. He just stuck the money in his pocket. Then he reached behind him, took a key from a row of hooks on the wall, and handed it to the kid.
'Enjoy it,' he said to Arnaldo. 'They tell me the kid has a mouth like a vacuum cleaner. Personally, I wouldn't know. Me, I like girls.'
'Come on,' the kid said. 'It's this way.'
He led Arnaldo up a flight of stairs. They walked along a dim hallway lit by a few unfrosted bulbs and came to a door. The kid checked the number on the key against the number of the room, nodded, and turned the knob. The door wasn't locked. Once they were inside, he stuck the key in the lock and turned it.
The room's only furniture was a double bed with thin sheets, gray from many washings. Through an open door, Arnaldo could see the interior of a closet where a few metal hangers hung suspended from a crossbar. There was a rusty sink, but no bathroom. An aluminum ashtray was perched precariously on the windowsill. The place stank of leaky plumbing, mold and old cigarette smoke. There was no air-conditioning.
'Thirty reais,' the kid said, sticking out his hand.
Arnaldo reached for his wallet and paid him. The kid put the money in his pocket and started to undress.
Arnaldo scanned the room. No mirror, so no two-way glass. Some holes in the wall, but the superficial ones showed plaster, and the deeper ones showed brick. A shade on the window, but it was pulled down. They weren't being watched.
The kid was down to his shorts now, and he was staring at Arnaldo.
'You can hang your stuff in the closet,' he said.
'No.'
'Suit yourself, then. Throw it on the floor for all I care. Or just drop your pants and I'll do you standing up.'
'I'm not here for sex. I'm here for information.'
The kid took an involuntary step backward. 'What kind of information?' he asked suspiciously.
'I want to know about a kid who calls himself Pipoca. His real name is Souza.'
The kid started scrambling for his clothes. 'I don't know any Pipoca.'
'No?'
'No. And no Edson Souza, neither.'
The kid grabbed his sneakers and made a move for the door. Arnaldo got there first and pulled the key from the lock.
'Who said his name was Edson?' he said, softly.
'Caralho,' the kid said, realizing his mistake. 'Leave me alone. They know me here. All I got to do is scream.'
'Go ahead,' Arnaldo said.
'What?'
'Go ahead and scream. Let's see what happens.'
The kid's eyes darted toward the window.
'Long way down,' Arnaldo said, but he glanced that way anyway.
Which must have been what the kid wanted because suddenly there was a switchblade in his hand. Where he got it from was a mystery. The kid wasn't wearing anything but a pair of jockey shorts.
'Drop it,' Arnaldo said.
But the kid didn't. Instead, he stretched out his arm and leaped forward, aiming the point at Arnaldo's gut.
He'd picked the wrong guy. Arnaldo was skilled in capoeira, the Brazilian martial art. In capoeira, blows are delivered by the feet and they're stronger than any punch. The agente tried to be as gentle as he could, but the art hadn't been developed to be gentle; it had been developed to maim and kill. The kid went flying head over heels and wound up in a heap in the corner. On the way, the knife flew out of his hand. Arnaldo retrieved it, snapped it closed and put it in his pocket.
'I'm a cop,' he said.
The kid scrambled to his feet and backed up against the wall, as if Arnaldo had said, 'I'm a murderer.' He held his hands up in front of him, the palms toward Arnaldo, as if he was fending him off. He looked terrified.
'Look, kid… What's your name?'
The kid swallowed, twice, before he got it out: 'Rambo.'
Arnaldo wanted to smile, but didn't. 'Okay, Rambo, listen up. I'm not from here. I'm not one of Ferraz's men. I'm a federal cop, and I come from Sao Paulo. Look.'
He reached into his coat, saw the kid flinch when he caught sight of the shoulder holster, then relax when he pulled out his wallet, not his gun. He showed the kid his badge and warrant card. It didn't help. Rambo remained as skittish as a colt. Arnaldo could only think of one reason for him to be acting like that.
'You've been warned about us, right?'
The kid licked his lips.
'Told that anybody who talks to us is going to get hurt?'
The kid blinked.
'Killed?'
The kid looked at the door.
'Okay. Here's the way it's going to be. You're going to tell me what you know about Edson Souza-'
'No. I don't know anything.'
'Shut up and listen. You're going to tell me what you know about Edson Souza, or I'm going downstairs and tell that asshole at the reception desk that you did.'
'What?'
'I'm going to tell him I'm a cop, show him my badge and tell him you spilled your guts all over this room, tell him you told me everything I wanted to know. Then I'm going to question him, and when he refuses to talk, as he will, I'm going to beat the shit out of him.'
'You can't. You can't tell him I told you anything. That would be a lie-'
'No shit? Now if, on the other hand, you tell me what I want to know I'm going to give you two hundred reais, and I'm going to walk out of here with a smile on my face just like somebody who got his dick satisfactorily sucked. I'm not going to like that, first, because I'm going to have to advance you the two hundred from my own pocket and, second-'
'They'll kill me.'
'-and, second, because I really would like to beat the crap out of that tub of lard downstairs. Kill you? They'll
