kill you if they think you talked. Since when would they kill you for giving somebody a blowjob? Isn't that how you pay for the stuff they sell you? How old are you?'
'Sixteen.'
'One more lie, just one more, and I'm on my way downstairs. Then, after I finish with that filho da puta, I'm going to find some other kid who'll tell me whatever I want to know. I won't bother to come back looking for you because within a day or two you're going to be dead. With two hundred reais, on the other hand, you could easily afford a bus ticket out of town. It's your choice.'
He didn't expect the kid to tell him cops weren't supposed to do what he was doing, and the kid didn't. This kid had seen cops do much worse.
Rambo ran his hand through his hair, muttered something under his breath and finally met Arnaldo's eyes. 'Give me the two hundred,' he said.
Arnaldo handed it over. He was getting low on cash. He'd have to stop by an ATM.
'They're looking for him, too,' the kid said, taking the money. He counted it, folded it and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. Then he started putting them on.
'Who?'
'The cops. The State Police. Anybody who finds out where Pipoca is gets five hundred reais. Anybody who tells you guys anything gets a bullet in the back of the head.'
'What do they want him for?'
'He owes them money. For dope.'
'You know that for a fact?'
'No. But that's what it usually is. You stop buying, they beat you up; you don't pay them what you owe, they make a ham out of you.'
'Where is he?'
'I don't know.'
Arnaldo shook his head and stuck out his hand. 'Give me the two hundred back,' he said.
'Wait. Will you fucking wait for a second? Listen to me. Honest to God, I don't know. If I did, I would already have told them. Shit, man, they would have given me five hundred reais. You only gave me two hundred.'
The kid had a point. Arnaldo dropped his hand. 'Where's he from, this Pipoca?'
'Around here.'
'What do you mean by `around here'?'
'Around here. Cascatas.'
'Look, Rambo'-Arnaldo tried to keep the sarcasm out of voice when he used the kid's street name-'if I don't find Pipoca before your friends do, they're going to kill him.'
'They're not my friends.'
'And they're not mine, either. Give me some help here.'
The kid thought about it. After a while, he said, 'I heard him say he has a mother.'
'Everybody's got a mother.'
'A mother he visits. A mother he talks to. Somebody who cares about him.'
The kid made it sound as if having someone who cared about you was a marvel, like it was the rarest thing in the world.
'Now we're getting somewhere. You got a name?'
Rambo didn't. And he didn't have anything else that would have helped, other than a vague memory that Pipoca seemed to be pretty familiar with a favela by the name of Consolacao.
Favelas are shantytowns. There are no numbers on the shacks; there are no names given to the streets; they aren't to be found on municipal maps; there's no mail delivery. If Souza's mother lived in a favela, it might not be easy to find her. Arnaldo recognized that he was going to need help, local help. Not the kid. He'd scamper off at the first opportunity.
'Take my advice,' he said. 'Use the money to get out of town.'
The kid swallowed. 'And you won't tell? You won't tell anyone what I told you?'
'No. Put your clothes on and get the hell out of here.'
He let Rambo leave first. After a minute or so, he followed him downstairs and walked up to the desk.
'You owe me twenty reais.'
Fat Boy lowered the magazine and looked at his watch. 'You figure?' he said, insolently.
'Yeah, I figure.'
Fat Boy looked Arnaldo up and down. Arnaldo was a head taller and at least twenty kilos heavier. None of it was fat.
Fat Boy reached into his pocket.
Their parting was about as cordial as could be expected. Fat Boy didn't thank Arnaldo for his business, and Arnaldo didn't give in to the temptation to beat the crap out of Fat Boy.
Arnaldo walked around until he found an ATM that would accept his bankcard. The limit was R$500, so he withdrew that. And then he went looking for a taxi.
Chapter Twenty-four
'Roadblock,' Hector said, taking his foot off the accelerator pedal.
He put the gearshift in neutral, lightly tapped the brake, and glided to a stop behind a blue truck piled high with bunches of green bananas. On the tailgate, the truck's owner had made his contribution to popular literature:
Kids are like farts. Most people can only tolerate their own.
The majority of Brazil's owner-operated commercial vehicles display something similar, pithy expressions of folk wisdom dreamed up by the drivers themselves. This one was surrounded by little painted roses, white and pink.
Silva got out and assessed the extent of the traffic jam. The space between their car and the roadblock, a distance about the length of a soccer pitch, was packed with all kinds of vehicles, mostly trucks.
He got back in. 'Plenty of room on the right shoulder,' he said.
Hector put the car in gear, spun the wheel, and drove the hundred meters or so to the roadblock.
A man with a paunch, and a gap where his two front teeth should have been, wearing a State Police uniform with sergeant's stripes, saw them coming. He walked toward them with a scowl on his face, flapping his hands at the wrist as if they were wet and he was trying to shake the water off.
'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he said as soon as he was close enough not to have to exert himself by raising his voice. He lisped. It would have been difficult not to with those missing teeth, but it was still funny, coming from such a big man.
Silva suppressed a smile and reached for his badge. 'Federal Police.'
'You Silva?' the cop said, not in the least impressed. It came out 'Thilva.'
Silva nodded.
'We weren't expecting you so soon. The colonel said to bring you up when you got here.'
'What are you talking about?'
The sergeant scratched the bulge of flab that hung over his belt.
'You're here to see the body, right?'
'What body?'
'Muniz. They found him.'
The entrance to the Fazenda Boa Vista was a stone's throw from where the cops had set up the roadblock. The sergeant got into their car and went with them to show the way.
'You go left at the fork,' he said as they drove through the front gate.
A right turn at the same fork would have brought them to their original destination, a cluster of pavilions surrounding a red banner on a long pole. There must have been at least fifty of the structures, fluttering roofs of black plastic. Around and among them were gathered people of both sexes and all ages. There was a smell of
