The name on his birth certificate was Jose Luis Ignacio Braga, but nobody called him that. The people who’d known him as a child nicknamed him Lula, and that’s what they still called him. The whores who worked for him called him Senhor, and sometimes Senhor Braga; but most people called him The Goat, or simply Goat.
He’d grown up in a little shack on stilts, wedged in among several hundred other shacks on stilts, all of them lining the banks of the Rio Negro, and sometimes, during the rainy season, in the Rio Negro.
The rainy season was both a curse and a blessing.
It was a curse, because you couldn’t get out of your shack unless you had a boat. And if you did, there was always someone trying to steal it. It was a curse, too, because the river could kill you, creep up on you at night like some stealthy beast and knock the stilts away, and carry you and your whole family out into midstream, where the current was swift, and the water a hundred meters deep.
But the rainy season was also a blessing, because it was then that the water covered the garbage-strewn, human-waste-littered mud that held up the stilts and supported the shacks. The noxious odors arising from that mud changed so often you could never get used to the smells. They got into your hair and your pores, and wherever you went people wrinkled their noses and knew exactly where you came from.
Only the poorest people smelled like little Lula. Anyone who had a bit of money to spare built his home well above the high-water line. It was still a slum, but it was a cut above the houses on stilts.
There were places, farther upstream and down, where higher ground made it possible to live on the river without occasionally having to live in the river, but those places were prime real estate. There were big houses there, and docks for boats, and gardeners tending lawns of grass. But in little Lula’s neighborhood, there was no high ground, only gently shelving flats of black mud, even blacker than the water itself. The mud got its color from raw sewage. The water got it from tannins leached out of leaves farther upstream. The mud was filthy, but the water wasn’t. You could put an oar into it and still see the tip, even if you held it upright.
Little Lula’s family consisted of his mother, three older sisters, and himself. The mother and the sisters were whores, but they doted on him, and that, for little Lula, had been the greatest blessing of all. They’d worked to send him to school, recognizing that education was the key to financial success, hoping he’d support them in their old age, when they got to be forty or forty-five and could no longer attract even the poorest customers. So The Goat had gotten his start in life from prostitution. Now, more than forty years on, he still drew sustenance from it.
His education lasted through eight grades of primary school. That had been enough to get him into the municipal police. He’d never had a shot at being a delegado, of course. But he’d attained the respectable rank of sergeant before leaving the force and dedicating himself to running a string of girls full-time. There had only been three of them in the beginning, friends of his sisters in need of protection.
Protection was a concern of all the girls. If you worked the streets, you had to have a strong man to watch your back, to assure you didn’t get stiffed for your fees, to assure that, if you got beat up, it was only a little. It was a job cut out for The Goat. He was a head taller than most of the men he had to deal with, and he was adept at wielding a truncheon, something his police training had taught him. He was adept at wielding something else too. Back in those days, he was sexually insatiable. One of his whoring buddies, a reprobate carioca with a serious drinking problem and a classical education, once remarked that there was only one difference between Lula and a satyr: a satyr, being only half-goat, wouldn’t fuck just anything, but a goat would. And so would Lula. Thus was his new nickname born.
The Goat had mellowed down through the years. These days, girls in his house were seldom summoned to service the boss. And he seldom mistreated them, which is to say he was never more violent than he had to be. Occasionally, it was true, he beat one of them with a rubber hose. But he only did it because he felt they deserved it, not because he enjoyed it. He was generally even-tempered. He had friends. He had money. He had a stable business. It was a business that most women in town didn’t approve of, but the vast majority of men did. He was, therefore, not stigmatized, but rather enjoyed a limited degree of celebrity. He had a nice house, and a fishing boat, and a loyal subordinate in Roselia. He should have been a happy man, and he was, in every respect but one: he could never shake free from a morbid fear that some day he was going to wake up and find himself back in that shack on stilts. He was deathly afraid of being propelled back into the poverty and misery of his youth. He wouldn’t be able to tolerate that. Not anymore. He’d do anything to prevent it. Anything.
“When are you leaving?” The Goat asked. He was in his office, tucked in behind the boate, gazing through the window at the Rio Negro.
His boat was down there, not fifty meters away, moored to the dock. Beyond it, in midriver, a large ship was making a turn. The ship moved slowly at first, but then the current caught the bow, swung it over and started to sweep the vessel downstream. Intent on watching it pick up speed, The Goat hadn’t bothered to turn around when he’d asked the question.
Instead of responding, Roselia posed a question of her own. “How’s your hand?”
He’d been holding Marta with his left hand while he beat her with the right. She’d twisted under the blows, and he’d inadvertently struck his own knuckles. He flexed them, studied the discolored flesh, and grunted.
“When are you leaving?” he repeated.
“I don’t think I should go at all,” she said. “Not while a federal cop is sniffing around.”
She’d been planning a trip downriver to Santarem to troll for new girls.
“Pinto says all the guy’s doing is hanging around the delegacia and looking at rap sheets,” The Goat said.
Pinto had just left, having traded the information for the services of a girl who was eleven years old and a bottle of Scotch that was twelve. He’d sampled the Scotch on the spot and taken the rest of the bottle away with him.
The Goat didn’t care about the girl, a renewable resource, but he did care about the whiskey. He’d bought it from a contrabandista, but it had still set him back almost eighty dollars, American, and gone was gone.
“Maybe it has nothing to do with us,” Roselia said.
The Goat had a feeling that it did, but he wasn’t ready to admit it.
“Maybe it has something to do with Carla Antunes,” she said. “She’s sending girls to European brothels. That’s international trafficking, a federal rap. And most of those girls used to be our girls. What if they nail her, and she talks?”
The Goat thought for a moment. “I could have a talk with her,” he said. “Make it clear it would be… unhealthy if her business fucked up our business.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Okay. I was planning on talking to her anyway.”
“About what?”
“About this Marta Malan.”
“What about her?”
“I’m ready to give up.”
“You? Give up?”
“Christ, Roselia, I’ve gone about as far as I can go. I don’t want to kill her.”
“Of course not. But are you really ready to give up? It’d be the first time.”
“You know what she did this morning after I gave her the treatment with the hose?”
“What?”
“She spit in my face. There she was, with bruises all over her, and a broken tooth, and she spits in my face. Starving her didn’t make any difference. Giving her the solitary treatment didn’t make any difference. Letting her talk to the other girls didn’t make any difference. We let her loose on a customer, she’s gonna bite him and scratch him. Either he’s gonna run out of the room and create a scene, or he’s gonna kill her. Either way, it’s bad for business.”
“So you’re going to sell her?”
“To Carla. It’s the best way. At least we get some money out of it. Then she’s not around to talk to the other girls, she’s not in the country to talk to the federal cops, and she’s somebody else’s problem.”
“Seems like a nice, clean solution,” Roselia said.
The house was in the old colonial style with a red-tiled roof, whitewashed walls and blue trim. The Sao Paulo industrialist who’d built it told his wife it was a fishing lodge.
His wife told him he was full of shit. She knew it was underage whores, not fish, that drew this paulistano to Manaus. But she could never prove it.
On those rare occasions when she tried to stage a surprise visit (the paulistano always knew when one was coming because his pilot had strict instructions to advise him if she commandeered the plane), he’d board the seventeen-meter motor yacht he kept tied up at the bottom of the garden and come back late in the evening, surrounded by his so-called fishing buddies, ostensibly delighted to discover her there.
The Goat, as Manaus’s premier supplier of underage whores, had been a frequent visitor to the lodge, but he’d only been there on three occasions since the death of the man who’d built it.
The first of those occasions was in response to a telephone call from a fourteen-year-old whore named Geralda Mendes. Geralda had been leaning over an armchair, letting the pau-listano fuck her doggy fashion, when the magnate suffered a massive coronary and collapsed on Geralda’s back. As soon as she realized he wasn’t simply gathering energy for a final assault, she wriggled out from under him and grabbed the telephone next to the bed. Fifteen minutes later, The Goat showed up to give advice. After a quick evaluation of the situation, he suggested that the paulistano’s fishing buddies wash his genitals, clothe his naked body, and haul it onto the yacht before calling the police.
They’d agreed, except for the washing part. They made Geralda do that.
The true circumstances of her husband’s death never became known to the widow in Sao Paulo, but the story was told and retold in the bars and boates of Manaus.
One of the people who got considerable mileage out of it was a well-known raconteur named Miguel Marcus. It was Marcus who started calling Geralda “The Kiss of Death.” The nickname stuck, and for some months thereafter The Kiss’s services were in great demand. Some people said it was bravado on the part of the older customers, others that any girl who could bring on a heart attack in an otherwise healthy man of fifty-seven must be very hot stuff indeed and had to be tried. But the novelty didn’t last. After six months of constant attention, the first four by reservation only, The Kiss’s popularity began to decline. The Goat, ever attentive to the needs of his customers, promptly sold her to Hercules, a friend of his who owned a boate in Santarem.
Within a week of his demise, the paulistano’s widow put his house and yacht up for sale. The yacht wasn’t a problem. It was bought within a week. The house remained empty for almost six months, and six months is a long time to weather in the Amazon: paint peels; termites and other insects bore into wood; bats take up residence under rafters; snakes and rats creep into drains.
The widow was getting fed up with the cost and aggravation of maintaining the property by the time a woman who styled herself Carla Antunes came along.
Selva Macieira, the real estate agent who handled the transaction, was more than a little surprised when Carla declared an intention to make her home in Manaus.
Selva, an Amazonense herself, knew as well as anyone that Manaus was a cesspool of filth, that it suffered from a dreadful climate, that the inhabitants were mostly limited in their intellectual capacity and that they were overwhelmingly lethargic.
Intelligent people, if they could afford to do so, moved out of Manaus. They didn’t move in. Not unless they had a compelling reason to do so. Carla Antunes was obviously intelligent, so she must have had one. Selva, one of the nosier women in the city, was anxious to find out what it was.
“You have relatives here?”
“I want a place on the river,” Carla said.
“Ah. The river. We have quite a few people who come for the river. Scientists mostly. Are you a scientist?”
“Preferably with four bedrooms,” Carla said, “and preferably with a dock at the back.”
Except for the fact that there were five bedrooms instead of four, Carla could have been describing the paulistano’s place. Selva lost interest in the woman’s background and concentrated on the sale. In the end, she managed to dump the place for a little less than half of what it had cost the paulistano to build it, which was pretty good considering the fact that there had been no previous offer.
The widow wasn’t overjoyed with the deal, but her husband had been worth millions, and the fishing lodge was only a minor issue in the brewing legal battle between her and the paulistano’s kids from his former marriage.
The Goat’s second post-heart-attack visit to the house was when the new owner invited him to discuss what she’d called “a business deal.”
She’d received him with two thugs who apparently lived with her, both of whom she treated like servants, not lovers. “I understand you run a stable of girls,” she’d said.
“What’s that to you?”
“The European market. I have contacts.”
“You want me to get you whores?”
“Yes.”
The Goat drained the whiskey she’d offered him, put the glass on the table, and got to his feet.
“Forget it,” he said. “Why should I sell you any of mine? Go get your own.”
One of the two thugs, a guy with bags under his eyes, took a step forward, but the woman held up her hand.
“I want the ones you’re finished with,” she said.
“I already got people I sell them to,” The Goat said.
The guy with the bags under his eyes let out a low growl, like a watchdog, but The Goat ignored him.
“You don’t understand,” the woman said. “I want the ones you can’t sell.”
The Goat shook his head. “You don’t want them,” he said. “They’re too old.”
“Not for Europeans,” the woman said.
“Oh, yeah?” The Goat said. He sat down again and held up his empty glass.
T HE G OAT’S next visit to the lodge was when he finally gave up on Marta. By that time, Carla had already purchased thirteen of his girls and had, he believed, shipped them all off to Europe.
She received him on the terrace overlooking her floating dock. The whiskey she offered him was brought by a capanga – tough guy-with bags under his eyes.
“Thanks,” The Goat said.
The capanga grunted like a pig and made himself scarce. While The Goat was making his proposition, the mayor’s yacht went by. The old buzzard was sitting there in the stern with one of The Goat’s girls. They were being served drinks by a guy in a white coat who The Goat knew for a fact was on the city payroll.
The Goat waved and the mayor waved back.
“How come you’re being so generous?” Carla said, when The Goat was finished with his sales pitch.
“What do you mean?” The Goat said innocently.
“Come off it,” she said. “I get your rejects. I know that. It’s fine. It suits my clientele. But now you come along and tell me you want to sell one of your young ones. What’s wrong with her?”
The Goat looked pained. “She’s trouble,” he admitted.
“Trouble?”
“I couldn’t break her. I tried everything, but I couldn’t break her.”
The tip of Carla’s tongue came out. She licked her upper lip.
“She’s still a virgin?” she said.
“Yeah, a virgin.”
“Why don’t you fuck her yourself? That should bring her around.”
“It won’t. She’s like a wildcat. She’d bite off my ear or something.”
“Tape her mouth shut. Tie her spread-eagled so she can’t move.”
The Goat sighed and shook his head. “You don’t have to teach me my business,” he said. “If I thought it would help, I’d do it. But it wouldn’t. I could never trust her with a customer.”
“So what you’re basically asking is if I’ll take her off your hands?”
The Goat took a pensive sip of his whiskey.
“Maybe in Europe she’d act differently, being so far away and all. Maybe she’d even like being over there. It’s a different life. I met a girl once, friend of my middle sister. She worked in Switzerland, later in Holland. Got enough money to come back here and buy a house. Except she didn’t come back here. She went to Bahia.”
“What kind of shape is she in?”
“Over the hill. She admits to being thirty-seven, but I think she’s at least-”
“Not your sister’s friend. The girl.”
“Split lip, chipped tooth, some bruises. Look at this.” He displayed his discolored hand. “I hit myself while I was taking a hose to her. It made me mad, and I kind of got carried away. Beat her like I never beat anybody, and when I was finished she spit in my face.”
“Messed her up, did you?”
The Goat shook his head.
“I know how to hit a girl. She’s not too bad. Give her a couple of weeks, and she’ll be as good as new-except for the tooth.”
“So I’d have to keep her until her looks improve?”
“Her looks aren’t that bad now. Anyway, we could do a deal. You pay me up front, and I’ll keep her for you.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred a week.”
“Don’t make me laugh. At those prices, I’d keep her myself.” “So you’re interested,” The Goat said.
She made him wait for an answer.
“Maybe I could use her,” she said.
The Goat started to smile.
“However,” she continued, “if I took a chance on somebody like that, there’s no way I’d pay you full price.”
The Goat’s smile became a scowl.
“You mean full price for a chick.”
In the parlance of the trade, a chick was a girl under eighteen. Hens, girls who looked older, were cheaper.
“No, not the full price for a chick,” she said. “And not even the full price for a hen. Tell you what: I’ll give you two thousand American dollars.”
“Two thousand? You’ve got to be kidding. She’s worth more than that.”
“To whom? You think you can get a better deal? Two thousand and that’s it. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it,” The Goat said.
Carla went inside to get the money. The Goat sat there, watching the river, remembering the day The Kiss had called him, remembering the dead paulistano’s flabby body, the way he looked when he’d seen him last, his organ still partially distended.
Unpleasant thoughts.
Like his conversation with Chief Pinto about the federal cop.
Carla came outside again with a glass of beer in one hand and a wad of banknotes in the other.
She sat down, put the beer on the table and started counting the money. When she finished he scooped it up, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
“When do you want to pick her up?” he said.
“Tomorrow. Around noon.”
She took a sip of her beer.
“Suits me,” The Goat said. “There’s something else I gotta talk to you about.”
She didn’t say anything, just sat waiting for him to tell her. “There’s a federal cop snooping around town,” he said.
She suddenly got very still. Her eyes locked on his.
“How do you know that?” she said.
“Chief Pinto. He tells me things.”
“And what did he tell you about this federal cop?”
“It’s like this: a while back a request came in from Brasilia, asking about Damiao Rodrigues. Remember him?”
“Sure I remember him,” she said. “That pistoleiro. Friend of Chief Pinto’s.”
“‘Friend’ is a stretch. More like a business associate. By the way, have you seen him around lately?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Funny. He hardly ever missed a Friday night. Anyway, the federals had a picture of him. They asked the Manaus PD to match it with a name.”
“And?”
“And they did, and it was Damiao. The clerk who handled it, some rookie, shot off a reply before checking with his boss. Asshole. Trying to show how efficient he was.”
“And then?”
“Chief Pinto heard about it. He knew Damiao did me the occasional favor, knew I wouldn’t appreciate having the federal police mucking around.”
Carla sipped her beer. She feigned unconcern, but he didn’t buy it. She was definitely acting.
“Pinto called in the clerk and reamed him,” he said, “told him to make himself scarce. Then he trashed the file, told the feds it had gone missing and the clerk had quit.”
Carla put down her glass so violently that it was a wonder it didn’t break.
“It sounds to me,” she said, “like there are at least two assholes in the Manaus PD, and one of them is Chief Pinto. Didn’t it occur to him that acting like that would bring the feds down on him like a swarm of hornets?”
“Apparently not. Anyway, the swarm turned out to be just one guy. He started asking questions about the exploitation of minors and all that kind of crap. He had authorizations from the mayor and the governor, and he wanted personal access to the archives. The chief said he’d be happy to help. The Fed said no, he’d do it himself, and he didn’t want any company. One of the chief’s guys peeped through a crack in the door while the fed was working. The fed had a bunch of photos, and he was comparing them to rap sheets from the archive.”
Carla’s pupils seemed to dilate. Her eyes hadn’t left his. Her mouth was slightly open.
“This federal cop,” she said, “what’s his name?”
The Goat rubbed his forehead.
“Armando something… or maybe Arlando something.” “Not Costa,” she said. “Not Hector Costa.”
The Goat shook his head.
“The chief told me, but I really don’t-”
“Silva?” she said. “Mario Silva?”
“Silva?”
Now, she’d surprised him.
“Silva?” he repeated. “Hell, no. Not him. Him, I woulda remembered. What makes you think a big shot like Silva would be interested in people like us? Unless, maybe, there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Nonsense.”
“Is there?”
“What is this?” she said. “An inquisition?”
The Goat sat back in his chair and took another sip of whiskey.
“All right, Carla,” he said. “I don’t tell you my business, why should you tell me yours? But you’d better make goddamned sure that yours doesn’t interfere with mine. And if the feds pick you up, you’d better keep your mouth shut. You don’t say a word about me. Not a goddamned word, understand?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Are you threatening me?” she asked.
The Goat drained his glass and stood up.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”