"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.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The league encampment began at a rise bordering the road, swept on through a depression in the ground, and petered out at the edge of an empty field. It consisted of tents fashioned from black plastic sheeting supported by limbs freshly cut from the neighboring trees. In deference to the heat of the day, most of the walls had been rolled upward and tied to the crossbeams, affording protection from the sun and allowing a view over the entire campsite. There were at least two hundred people settled there. All but about fifty were children. The smell was a mixture of unwashed bodies, wood smoke, garlic, and onions. At the center of it all, on a flagpole that had recently been the trunk of a scrawny tree, the blood red standard of the Landless Workers' League waved in a listless breeze.
It was there, at the base of the pole, that Pillar had been talking to the reporters. Now he'd drawn aside and was involved in an animated conversation with a heavyset individual wearing a league T-shirt. When he saw Silva and Hector approaching him, he broke off and turned to face them.
"So you decided to grace us with your presence," he said. He laid a hand on the shoulder of the man next to him. "Chief Inspector Silva, Delegado Costa, let me introduce Roberto Pereira. I'm here at his invitation."
Pereira offered the cops a hand, but not a smile. His rimless spectacles were as thick as bottle glass. They magnified eyes that were brown, hard, and wary.
"You must have known Aurelio Azevedo," Silva said.
"He was like a brother," Pereira said. "Why are you asking?"
"Just curious. How about Muniz Junior? You know him?"
Pereira looked down at his dirty tennis shoes, cheap ones that had never seen a tennis court and never would.
"That murdering fuck? Yeah, I knew him."
Knew?
Past tense. The word hung in the air.
"They found the body," Silva said. "buried on the top of that hill."
Pillar looked in the direction that Silva was pointing. Pereira didn't.
"Buried alive," Silva continued. "Old man Muniz, Junior's father, is at the gravesite. He'll be down here any time now and there's going to be trouble."
"Let the old man come," Pereira said. "I shit on people like him. He'll only be fighting for his personal interest. We fight for our principles. We'll win, because we have justice on our side."
"Save the rhetoric for the reporters, Pereira," Silva said. "If you've got a judge on your side, which isn't at all the same thing as justice, you might have a chance of winning this thing. Otherwise, by trespassing on his property, you're giving old man Muniz an excuse to react and, believe me, he'll be looking for one."
"Muniz is getting off cheap," Pereira said. "One life for four, five if you count the little seven-year-old that he-"
Pillar squeezed his companion's shoulder, silencing him. "Would you believe it, Chief Inspector? This was once the most peaceful of men. Preached a philosophy of absolute nonviolence. Now he's a firebrand."
"If I am, it's people like Muniz who made me that way," Pereira said. "Fuck him and all his kind."
"You see?" Pillar said. "If Roberto had been born forty years ago, he'd have been down in Bolivia, fighting with the campesinos and Che Guevara."
"Remember what happened to Guevara," Silva said. "He died for nothing."
The smile faded from Pillar's face. "We may die, Chief Inspector, but it won't be for nothing. The league is, by far, the largest and the most significant social movement in all of South America. We have the support of the entire world."
"Not when you invade private property, you don't."
"What else do you expect us to do? Back off? Well, we're not going to do that. We've waited long enough. We want land reform, and we want it now."
"Do you know how big this fazenda is?" Pereira chipped in. "More than half the size-"
"Of Denmark," Silva said. "Yeah, I've heard."
"Think about it. A piece of land half the size of the whole fucking country of Denmark and all of it owned by one selfish son of a bitch. Is that right? You tell me."
"I'm not a philosopher, Senhor Pereira. I'm just a cop. But, as a cop, I can tell you this: If you don't clear your people off his land, Muniz will evict you and I don't trust him to do it gently."
"We look forward to having him try," Pereira said. "We welcome it."
He'd raised his voice almost to a shout. Silva looked around. Sure enough, all of the journalists were looking at them, some of them were moving closer and a couple of video cameras were pointed his way. Had he said anything to Pereira or Pillar that the director wouldn't like to see on television? He didn't think so. In any case, it would be a good idea to cut the conversation short before he did say something compromising.
He looked around for a way to do it and caught sight of a familiar figure: a tall man in a league T-shirt and jeans, Father Brouwer. The priest was seated crosslegged on the ground in front of a tent. A little girl was in his lap, and he was feeding her with a wooden spoon.
"Excuse me," Silva said, and walked away from Pillar and Pereira, trailed by Hector.
The priest saw him coming, nodded, and went on feeding the child. She had big eyes, a swollen belly, and looked to be about four years old.
"Cornmeal mush, Chief Inspector?" Brouwer said, holding out the spoon.
"Thank you, no," Silva said.
"Maria likes it a lot. Don't you, Maria?"
The little girl nodded her head gravely and opened her mouth for another bite.
"You see the results of greed, Chief Inspector?" Brouwer said, gently tapping the fingers of his free hand on the child's distended belly. "Malnutrition." He pointed at her legs. "Rickets. This is what people like Muniz bring about."
"It turns out you were right about him," Silva said. "The younger one, I mean. He's dead."
The priest didn't seem in the least surprised. "Poor man," he said. "He should have changed his ways. Our Lord said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. You'll find the same passage in Matthew, Mark, and Luke."
"Listen to me, Father. Old man Muniz is on the top of that hill where his son's body is. He's going to be down here any time now. He's got gunmen with him. He's got that bastard Ferraz and his men from the State Police with him. This is his property. Remember what happened last time?"