The task Silva gave him presented Arnaldo with a dilemma: The only people who could help him find a street kid were other street kids. But trying to start a casual conversation with a street kid wouldn't work. The kid would either clam up or run. And he couldn't just go out and arrest one. Without some kind of a charge that would stick, even a federal cop couldn't get away with that. And, besides, where could he take him? Bringing him to Ferraz's jail would be useless. The kid would be so terrified that he'd never open up. Taking him to the hotel would attract too much attention, and might have fatal consequences if the colonel found out about it.
Arnaldo considered going to a seedy part of town and flaunting his wristwatch and wallet. But, no, that wouldn't work either. He was a big guy, so they'd have to set on him in a group or leave him alone. If they left him alone, he'd be wasting his time. If they set on him in a group, he'd have to pull a gun, but then somebody was liable to get hurt.
Finally, and somewhat reluctantly, he came up with a way to go about it.
The desk clerk at the Hotel Excelsior, the one who looked like an Indian, frowned when Arnaldo asked him the question. "A boy?" he said. "You want a boy who-"
Arnaldo didn't let him finish. "You heard me. And wipe that look off your face. I'm after information, not sex."
"Information, huh?" The clerk smirked.
"Answer the question. Where do they hang out?"
"I wouldn't have any idea." The clerk's smirk was carrying over into his voice.
"No?"
"No. Now, if it was a girl you wanted-"
"I told you what I wanted, and I just told you why. And don't tell me you don't know, because this is a small town and everybody knows things like that. Don't make me lose my temper. You won't like it."
The clerk absorbed Arnaldo's change in attitude, and crumbled.
"The rumor is that they hang around Republic Square," he said, lowering his voice even though they were alone in the lobby. "But they're like tapirs. You don't see them much in the daytime."
Arnaldo thought about it. His first reaction was to go to his room, have a nap, and hit the street after sunset. But, if he did that, Ferraz might find Pipoca first and it would be goodbye Pipoca.
"Where is this Republic Square?"
The clerk gave him directions, adding that it was "in the old part of town."
Until he got there, Arnaldo figured that "old" was a misnomer. Cascatas wasn't really old as towns go, but this part of it sure as hell looked old. The square was as dirty and rundown as anyplace you could find in Sao Paulo, which was almost four hundred years older.
The clerk at the hotel hadn't bothered to mention that there was an open-air market in the square every Tuesday and Friday. That was annoying for Arnaldo, but was a good thing for the businesses that surrounded the square. Because if the market vendors hadn't hosed down the place, as they were doing when he arrived, it might never have been cleaned at all. Unfortunately, the storm drains were mostly blocked with garbage, which meant that the hosing simply served to concentrate the detritus on top of the grates. The air was heavy with the smell of rotted fruit and spoiled fish. The elaborate cast-iron lampposts, once the pride of a new city, were rusting, and in two cases broken off just above the ground. Arnaldo noticed that there was something else about the lampposts: Every single globe was broken. He suspected it had been done on purpose to assure that the square would remain a dark place after sundown.
The buildings surrounding the square were all of a pattern and all four stories tall. Some of the windows on the upper floors bore signs: a homeopathic doctor, a tarot card reader, and several businesses identified only by their names. At ground level, offices were interspersed with a few shops: One sold herbs, small statues and other artifacts for use in the spiritualist rituals of Candombh and Macumba, Brazil's equivalent of voodoo. Another was occupied by an ironmonger. The proprietor had stacked wooden boxes containing horseshoes, and funnels of all sizes, beside his door. The ironmonger was flanked, on one side, by a place heaped with secondhand furniture and, on the other, by a bar.
The bar had only a handful of clients, all wearing the aprons that identified them as vendors from the market. They were seated around a rusting collapsible table and drinking straight cachaca. An old man with a day's growth of beard was hovering nearby, making a halfhearted attempt to sell lottery tickets and trying to cadge a drink. One of the men at the table stood up, offered his almost-empty glass to the ticket seller, and strolled off in the direction of his stall. The old man lifted the mouthful of cachaca to his lips and drained it in one gulp.
The housewives had already bought their fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish and had departed. With the exception of the drinkers, the vendors were packing up. Arnaldo decided to wait it out.
It didn't take long.
Half an hour after he arrived, all vestiges of the market were gone, the bar had closed, and the square was virtually empty. It was almost two o'clock by then and getting into the hottest part of the day. Arnaldo went back to where he'd parked his car, stripped off his tie and threw it on the front seat. He left his jacket on to cover his holster. Then he went back and started trolling, walking around and around the square in a clockwise direction.
He was beginning to think he was wasting his time when he heard a voice: "Looking for company, senhor?" The voice wasn't brazen. It was soft, young, almost embarrassed. He looked around for the source and spotted a kid looking at him from the alleyway between two of the crumbling redbrick buildings. The boy might have been a teenager, but Arnaldo doubted it. He looked to be eleven, twelve at the most, and had eyes grown large with hunger. The eyes reminded Arnaldo of a character in one of those Japanese cartoons that his son, Julio, liked to watch on television. A dirty sweatshirt from the PUC hung low over the kid's faded jeans. The PUC-The Pontificia Universidade Catolica- was one of Sao Paulo's institutions of higher learning. The shirt was as close to it as the kid was ever going to get.
Arnaldo had been offered the bait. Now he snapped at the hook.
"Sure," he said. "How much?"
"Fifty reais," the kid said.
"Twenty."
You never agreed to give a whore, any kind of a whore, the first price they asked for. They'd think you were crazy, or stupid, or maybe they'd think you were a cop.
"Forty," the kid said.
"Thirty," Arnaldo said. "And a tip if I like your work."
"Where?" the kid said.
It was broad daylight, so it wasn't going to happen in the alley. Arnaldo assumed that the kid had a deal with 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 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.