Carla, Mario Silva's only sibling, shared her mother's name and her father's features. She had the same jetblack hair, the same black eyes, and the same determined set to her jaw.
In character, she resembled her brother. Once she'd made up her mind that something, or someone, was worth pursuing, she did it with singleminded determination.
In September of 1974, she made up her mind about a fledgling electrical engineer named Claudio Costa. In August of 1975, they were married.
At first, her parents greeted the news of her engagement with protest. Not that they didn't like Claudio. They just thought the match was premature. The young people had, after all, known each other for such a short time. Then there was the matter of Carla completing her education at the University of Sao Paulo.
Carla admitted, and promptly brushed aside, the matter of the relationship's short duration. As to the degree, she said, one thing didn't preclude the other. She'd keep on studying.
Dr. Silva and his wife had to admit that they'd never known Carla to promise anything she couldn't deliver. Backed into a corner, they reluctantly gave their consent. A very pregnant Carla Costa was awarded her diploma in June of 1976. Her son, Hector, was born a week later. He was two years old on the night his grandfather died, eleven when he witnessed the murder of his father.
IT WAS a Saturday, a week before Christmas. The Costas lived in Granja Viana in those days, a residential suburb about twenty kilometers from the city center. On the morning of the murder they were stuck in a traffic jam, mostly composed of people who, like themselves, were on their way into town to do some shopping.
Claudio was behind the wheel. Carla was seated next to him, her attention absorbed by a notepad into which she was jotting names and gift ideas. Hector was in the back seat, manipulating a little plastic puzzle.
They heard the man before they saw him.
"Your watch," he said. "Hand it over."
Carla looked up to see a man with a day's growth of beard pointing a revolver at her husband's head. The man was standing just outside the car, on the driver's side. The muzzle of the gun protruded through the open window.
Carla looked around for help. People in the neighboring cars were staring straight ahead or in other directions. They'd seen the gun. Nobody wanted to get involved. Carla looked back at the gunman. The muzzle of the revolver was trembling, the man's brown eyes glazed and distant.
Drugs, she thought.
"Do it," the man said to Claudio. "Do it, now. Take off the goddamned watch." As if to emphasize what he said, he cocked the revolver.
Carla watched the cylinder spin, heard the click, saw Claudio's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. Both of her husband's hands were frozen on the wheel. She knew the watch had been his father's, knew he didn't want to give it up.
"Claudio," she said, calmly. "Please. Take off the watch and give it to him."
But Claudio didn't. Instead, he made a sudden lunge for the revolver, trying to grab the barrel.
The man with the beard took a quick step backward, extended his arm, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet caught Claudio in the chest. Carla screamed. Little Hector started to bawl. The man opened the flap of a leather haversack, put the revolver inside, and walked away. No one tried to stop him.
The police did what they usually did in such cases: They wrote up a report and took no further action.
The day after the funeral, her brother, Mario, came for her. "Would you recognize him?" he asked.
She nodded. Recognize him? She'd never be able to forget him.
"Come with me," he said, reaching out and taking her hand.
They spent the next few days searching the neighborhood, the same streets, over and over again, centered on the place where it had happened. She drove. He sat on the front seat beside her.
Mario had been a cop for almost nine years by then. She knew almost nothing of his professional life, but she knew her brother. He would be good at anything he turned his hand to.
Once, years earlier, he'd talked to her about vengeance for their parents. She'd told him she didn't want to hear anything about it, that it wouldn't change anything. He'd never brought the subject up again. Now, with Claudio, she felt differently. By the third day she was beginning to wish that Mario wasn't a cop, that he wouldn't be forced to act like a cop was supposed to act, that they could just deal with the assassin themselves rather than deliver him to judgment by the court.
On the afternoon of the fourth day she saw the killer hurrying down the street. He'd shaved, but he had the same leather haversack dangling from his shoulder.
"There," she said.
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure. It's him."
"Go home. I'll call you later."
"What are you going to… "
She let her voice trail off. Her brother had already slammed the door and was following the man with the haversack.
The driver in the car behind her leaned on his horn.
She did what Mario had told her to. She went home.
As promised, he called her. It was just after midnight, more than five hours after he'd left her car.
"You were right," he said. "It was him."
"He confessed?"
"He confessed. It's late, Clara. Go to sleep."
"Tell me about him, Mario."
"No."
"No? Mario, he-"
But her brother had hung up.
The next day, and the following day, she scanned the paper looking for news of the arrest.
There wasn't any.
They never discussed the subject again.
Some families seem to be cursed with tragedy. Mario Silva's was one of those, and his suffering wasn't over.
In the years that followed the death of his parents, the lights of his life had been his sister, her family, his wife, and his son. The next light that died wasn't snuffed out with the suddenness of a gunshot. It faded slowly.
Irene and he had married in the summer of 1980. Their son was born in 1981. It was a difficult birth, rife with medical complications. When it was over the doctors told him their baby was destined to be an only child.
They named him Mario, after his father and grandfather before him. He was a baby who hardly ever cried, an infant who always smiled, a toddler who old ladies passing on the street wanted to pick up and hug. In late 1988, he contracted leukemia. It took him five months to die. His parents dealt with it in entirely different ways. Mario threw himself into his work. Irene started to drink.
First, it was just a little, to help her, as she said, "to get through the night." First, it was sweet concoctions, caiparin- has, with the rinds and juice of limes, or batidas made with mango juice, or coconut milk. Then, gradually, she'd eased off on the fruit juice and the sugar, claiming they were making her fat. Within a year it had become straight cachaca, pure cane spirit, with no sugar and no juice at all.
The stuff was killing her as surely as the leukemia had killed their son. Perhaps Irene knew it, but she wasn't willing to admit it. She insisted that she was still a "social drinker" even though almost all of her imbibing took place at home and when she was alone. She only drank at night, but it was every night, and her nights started at five o'clock in the afternoon. She was generally sleeping it off when Mario left for work, drunk by the time he returned home.
In the beginning, he tried drinking along with her, trying to be companionable, seeking common ground through a haze of alcohol. But the solace he found was only temporary, and the hangovers weren't worth it. In the end, he communicated with her by trying to call her several times a day, trying to catch her when she was still sober. He never contemplated divorce, nor did he sleep with other women but what remained between them was only the ghost of what their relationship had once been.
As for Hector Costa, having his father shot to death in front of him turned him into an old little boy. For almost a year he lost the gift of laughter.
Carla thought it best to get him out of Sao Paulo, away from the memories. They moved to Campos de Jordao, a little town in the mountains, north of the road linking Sao Paulo with Rio de Janeiro.
It was a place where people went in the wintertime to sit in front of fireplaces, bundle up in woolen sweaters, and drink hot chocolate; where the summers were times of empty hotels and unending boredom, and where people who shot people tended to know their victims.
Mario had always doted on Hector, but after the death of his son, and the boy's father, the two of them reached out for each other. The little boy came to idolize his uncle. By the time he was fifteen, he'd already decided he wanted to follow in Mario's footsteps and become a cop.
At first, Carla treated it the same way she'd treated his previous aspirations: to be a teacher, a fireman, a soldier. But time passed, and he mentioned no other vocation. She was momentarily relieved when Hector started law school. You had to be a lawyer to achieve officer rank in the Brazilian Federal Police, but she remained hopeful he'd become enchanted by some other aspect of the law and find something else to do with his life.
But he didn't. Even before he'd received his law degree, he submitted his application to join Silva's organization.
She hoped he'd be rejected.
He wasn't.
Six months later, he was posted to Sao Paulo. As far as Carla was concerned, that was just about the worst thing that could have happened. There was no more dangerous place for a cop to work.