Arnaldo didn't think It would be a good idea to take a rental car into a favela, so he took it back to the hotel and left it in the garage under the building. Then he found a place under the shadow of a jacaranda tree and looked up and down the dusty, deserted street. There was no sign of a taxi. He was thinking about going back inside and asking them to call one when a white-haired lady, trailing a poodle of the same color, came out of a neighboring apartment building. While the dog sniffed at Arnaldo's crotch, and they both tried to ignore it, the lady directed him to the nearest taxi stand.
It turned out to be a three-minute walk away, on a parallel street called the Rua Tiradentes, and consisted of a telephone box bolted to a lamppost. A yellow Volkswagen Beetle with both doors open was parked along the curb. The passenger's seat, the one next to the driver, had been removed to facilitate access.
"We're going to a favela called Consolacao," Arnaldo said, folding his considerable bulk into the back and slamming the door on the passenger's side.
The driver, who'd been fanning himself with a magazine while leafing through another, turned around and stared at him. He was a black man with a day's growth of white beard and a bald head. "No, we're not," he said. "Not me. Those people will slit your throat for a few reais."
Arnaldo took out his badge and flashed it. "Consolacao," he said, "or the nearest police station."
"Merda," the driver said, but he slammed his door, started the engine, and pushed down the flag.
"Isn't this thing air conditioned?" Arnaldo asked.
"No," the driver said. "Why don't I bring you over to the cab stand near the bus station? You can get an especial with air conditioning and the whole bit. You'll be a lot more comfortable."
"Forget it. Get moving."
"No charge. I'll take you for free."
"Get moving, I said. Now, listen up. When we get there you're going to help me find a woman-"
"Look, senhor, if all you want is a whore I can-"
"Shut up and drive. I was talking."
What passed for the favela's main street was an unpaved alleyway lined with shacks built of scrap lumber. Every now and then a narrower alleyway branched off to the left or to the right. There was no room for the driver to maneuver, no way for him to avoid the water-filled potholes, any one of which might have been deep enough to engulf one of his wheels. He bounced ahead slowly, cursing under his breath.
"Stop next to that woman," Arnaldo said. "We'll try her first."
The woman in question was carrying a blue plastic washtub on her head and picking her way through the garbage that lined the street. The windows in the back of the cab didn't open, so Arnaldo had to lean over the driver's left shoulder to talk to her.
"Senhora?"
She stopped and gave him a wide, curious smile.
"I'm looking for a woman who has a son named Edson Souza."
"Sorry," she said, "I don't know her." And then, almost as an afterthought, "Senhor?"
Arnaldo leaned forward hopefully.
"If I were you, I wouldn't go driving around this neighborhood."
"You see?" the taxi driver said as they pulled away. "Now you heard it from somebody else, and she lives here, for Christ's sake. Let's get out of here."
"Keep going."
They came next to a group of five youths standing in a circle.
"Stop here."
"Senhor, for the love of-"
"Stop, I said."
The driver stopped and looked down, writing something on a clipboard, avoiding the five pairs of eyes.
The youngest kid was about thirteen, the oldest maybe seventeen. They were all dressed in clothes that looked several sizes too big for them, and they all had shaved heads. Arnaldo was reminded of the school of barracudas he'd once seen while scuba diving. He'd been about thirty meters down, on the wreck of the old Principe de Asturias, just off the north coast of Ilha Bela. The damned fish had looked at him then just like the kids were looking at him now, as if they were deciding whether it would be safe to flash in and take a bite.
"What?" the oldest kid said.
No greeting, no smile, just the single word. Arnaldo asked the same question he'd asked of the woman with the washtub.
"What's it worth to you?" the kid asked.
"Five reais."
"Go fuck yourself."
"Ten."
"Let's see the ten."
Arnaldo fished out his wallet. Probably a mistake, he thought. The wallet was fat with the money he'd taken from the ATM. He held it low, so that the kids couldn't see into it, and took out a ten-real note.
The kid stuck out his hand.
"First the information," Arnaldo said.
The kid snarled, then pointed up the street. "You see the house with the blue plywood?"
Arnaldo squinted through the windshield. "Yeah."
"That's it. Give me the ten."
Arnaldo did, and the kid turned his back on him. It was a sign for the rest of the school. They all turned their backs on him, too.
Without being told, the driver crept forward again, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror.
"Meninos da rua," he said. Street kids. He sounded frightened.
He stopped at a shack that had a piece of blue plywood patching a hole to the right of the entrance. Entrance, not door. A piece of rotting canvas hung down to close the opening.
"Keys," Arnaldo said.
"What?"
"Shut off the engine and give me your keys."
"That's not necessary, senhor. I'll be right here, waiting for you when you come out."
"Sure you will. And the Tooth Fairy exists. Keys."
The driver sighed, turned off the engine, and handed them over.
A little too easily, Arnaldo thought. "You have a set of spares?"
"No, senhor, no spares."
"Okay, get out."
"Why, senhor?"
"Don't argue, just do it."
When he did, Arnaldo told him to go around to the back of the car, remove the distributor cap and take out the rotor.
The driver's eyes rounded in fear. He ran a hand over his bald pate.
So he did have another set of keys. "I won't be long," Arnaldo said, pocketing the rotor. "Anybody gives you any trouble, just yell."
"There are five of them, senhor. Five."
"And I'm carrying a pistol with ten rounds in the magazine. Ten. If they come over here, tell them I'm a cop. It will save me the trouble, and I can start shooting right away."
"Please, senhor, I don't want any trouble. I have a wife. Three children. You don't know those kids, they-"
"I know kids like them. And, yeah, I know that at least a couple of them are carrying."
"Carrying, senhor?"
"Certainly knives. Maybe a gun or two."
"Senhor, for the love of God-"
"Okay, okay, come with me. Stand in the doorway and keep an eye on your car. If they touch it, tell me."
With a furtive glance at the kids, the driver nodded, and followed.
Arnaldo didn't know what the protocol was when it came to canvas curtains instead of doors. He tried clapping his hands.
It worked. A moment later, the canvas was swept aside, and he was looking into the mistrusting eyes of an old mulatto woman. She had what might have been a piece of firewood in one hand. Or it might have been a club. She stared at him without speaking.
"I'm looking for the mother of Edson Souza."
"Not here."
When she opened her mouth he could see she was toothless.
"Souza's mother doesn't live here?"
"Not here," the woman repeated, smacking her gums. And then added, grudgingly, "She's working."
He'd come to the right place. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Who are you?" the woman said.
He showed her his warrant card. She squinted at it.
"Can you read?"
"No," she said.
He showed her his badge. "Federal Police."
She drew back slightly and took in a breath. "Didn't do anything," she said.
He was beginning to think she wasn't quite right in the head. "I didn't say you did. Can I come in?"
She stepped out of the opening, pulling the canvas aside as she did so.
Inside, the shack smelled of lamp oil, sweat, and human excrement. Arnaldo remembered that places like these didn't have toilets. They dug holes in a corner and used that, covering the holes with boards, sometimes sprinkling lime if they could afford it. They'd fetch their water from a communal spigot. Electricity, if any, would come from an illegal tap.
There were no windows. In the dim light, he could make out that the interior was nothing more than one small room. Three children, the oldest about six or seven, and the youngest no more than two, lay entangled on the bed like a litter of cats. The bed was made of jute coffee bags, sewn together and stuffed with something. There was a single three-legged stool, and there were three wooden crates, but no other furniture. One of the crates supported a small blackand-white television set with a rabbit-ear antenna.
The television was tuned to a channel that was showing an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. The oldest kid, a girl, took her thumb out of her mouth and glanced at Arnaldo when he came through the door. The other two didn't take their eyes off the screen.
The stool and the two remaining crates looked incapable of bearing his weight. If Arnaldo wanted to sit, it would have to be on the bed next to the kids. He decided he'd remain standing.
"Yours?" he said to the old woman, inclining his head in the direction of the listless children.
"Marly Souza's," she said. "I take care of them when she's at work."
"Siblings of Edson?"
"What?"
"Brothers or sisters of Edson?"
"Two sisters, one brother. Different fathers."
"You a relation?"
"What?"
"Are you their aunt or their grandmother?"
The woman shook her head.
"She pays me."
"What's your name?"
"Lia."
"Okay, Lia. You know Edson?"
She nodded.
"Where is he?"
"Gone away."
"Where?"
"Don't know."
"When did he go?"
"Don't know."
"Where's his mother?"
"Working."
"Yes, you told me. Where?"
She put a veined hand to her cheek and closed her eyes, thinking. Then she opened them again and went over to one of the wooden crates. She came back with a wrapper from a bar of toilet soap. Lux. THE SOAP OF THE STARS, the label read. There was a photo on the front: one of the actresses from last year's eight o'clock novela on Rede Mundo.
Arnaldo turned the wrapper over. On the white paper someone had laboriously block-printed something in pencil. He took it closer to the light from the doorway and put it near his nose so he could read it. The paper still smelled faintly of the bar of soap it had once enveloped, an artificial smell, only vaguely reminiscent of flowers.
"We going now?" the cab driver asked hopefully. He'd been standing in the doorway, holding the canvas aside and occasionally craning his neck to keep an eye on the teenagers.
Arnaldo showed him the writing on the wrapper:
Dona Marcia Rua das Bromelias, 142 Jardim Jericoara
"Can you find this place?"
The taxi driver squinted at the paper, moving his lips silently as he spelled out the words. "Sim, senhor. It's not far. Maybe ten kilometers."
"Let's go then."
The driver let the canvas fall and was gone.
The only light in the shack was now coming from the television. In its glow, Arnaldo could dimly see the faces of the occupants. While he'd been talking to the driver, the old woman had taken a seat on the bed. She was holding her elbows in her hands and staring at the screen.
"Thanks," he said, but the woman didn't even look up. Outside, the driver had the hood open. He stuck out his hand. Arnaldo put the rotor into it and stood there, waiting, while he installed it. Then he handed him the keys.
To get out of the favela they had to make a U-turn and pass the predatory kids. No one made a move, but Arnaldo saw the driver swallow when they got close and continue to shoot nervous glances at his rearview mirror once they'd gone by. When Arnaldo turned in his seat, and looked out of the rear window, five pairs of eyes were fixed on the retreating cab.