City of God (24 page)

Pipsqueak managed to deceive his mother for quite some time, saying it was quicker to get to the city centre from his friend's place, and lugging that stool home every day would make him very tired. At first his mother believed him, then she started noticing Pipsqueak's nervous face whenever he came home. His manners, his way of speaking, that quick, shrill little laugh, the wads of money in his pockets. And the mates who came looking for him she swore looked like thugs. Her mother's intuition – together with the evidence – was spot on. When she eventually found a .32-calibre revolver hidden in the backyard, she decided to leave things in God's hands. First, however, she woke Pipsqueak up with a boxing about the ears. Holding the revolver and crying, she asked:

‘What's this for? What's this for?'

‘It's for muggin', killin' and bein' respected!'

From that day on he never returned to his mother's house, staying either in São Carlos or with his godmother, who had also managed to get a house in the estate. On one of his visits to City of God, he made friends with Night Owl, Carrots, Hellraiser, Squirt, Hammer and the other gangsters, who liked hearing about his adventures in the city centre, São Carlos and the Red Light District.

The day they held up the motel, Pipsqueak ran to Taquara, stuck his revolver in a taxi-driver's face and made him take him to São Carlos, where he tried to set himself up for good.

After serving for two months as a snare for muggings, the shoeshiner's stool became known to the police, so they started doing pedestrians instead. From Estácio it was easy to go and mug people in the city centre and the neighbourhoods of Tijuca, Lapa, Flamengo and Botafogo. Pipsqueak went out to make a living every day. He didn't like being skint – that was for workers and shoeshiners. He squandered money on his friends in São Carlos: almost every day he bought several wraps of cocaine, beers for the prostitutes and ate at what he considered to be the most expensive restaurants.

Sparrow, Slick and Night Owl, who had started hanging around with them, led the same life. Ari Rafael, a dealer in the
favela
, was jealous and began to hassle the new gangsters. Whenever the boys went to the den, he took their things, asked for money, and didn't pay them back. He started beating them up for no reason at all and charged a toll to enter the
favela
. Until one day Pipsqueak refused to sell him a gold chain for the ridiculous price he'd offered. Because of this he copped a thrashing and had all his belongings taken before being thrown out of the
favela
along with Slick, Sparrow and Night Owl. The
four of them returned to City of God penniless and unarmed. It occurred to them to do a hold-up on the bus ride back but Pipsqueak, who was depressed, thought better of it because it was an unlucky day.

‘You skint? Why didn't you say so, you fuckwit?! I was gonna give you some money, but you been racin' through so quickly lately and haven't stopped to chat. All you been talkin' about is São Carlos, São Carlos … Remember that motel you tipped us off about?' said Hellraiser after listening to Pipsqueak.

‘Yeah.'

‘Well, man! I've got a bit of dough for you, but I haven't got it all on me now.'

‘I'd forgotten about it.'

‘Don't look so down in the mouth, man. One of these days you can kill that Ari Rafael. You know Sting? He's a really good guy. He only goes in for good jobs and he's always ready to go for it. If you go up to him now and say: “Hey, wanna try for the jackpot?” he'll be in right away.'

Pipsqueak looked seriously at Hellraiser, paced around in a circle in the tiny alley on Block Thirteen, looked around to make sure no one was coming, went over to the wall, unzipped his fly and took a leak. Hellraiser followed suit and explained with a smile:

‘When one Brazilian pisses, we all piss!'

Ignoring his friend's joke, Pipsqueak said:

‘You know this money you wanna give me? Tell you what – gimme a shooter … gimme a shooter, a long-barrelled .38, and forget the money. And take me to see this Sting guy now. I wanna talk to him right away.'

They headed down Middle Street in a hurry, as Pipsqueak only walked, talked, ate, mugged and killed people in a hurry; he only slackened his pace when he had money. During their walk
Up Top their silence went uninterrupted. Hellraiser, who thought Pipsqueak was stronger, more serious and more violent in his behaviour, whistled in front of his friend's house as the clock struck noon that sunny Wednesday. Sting didn't take long to ask them in. Before his visitors even had time to say why they were there, he said he needed to do a job.

‘Can two go?'

‘Yeah, but it's like this: if you gotta kill, you gotta kill – there's no gettin' arrested! The joint's got security, right? If we had one more partner … Where you from?'

‘This is Pipsqueak, the kid I was telling you about. He's a good kid. He hasn't been around here for a while, but some guys over in São Carlos've been givin' him a hard time, and he's back here with us again.'

‘So you're Pipsqueak? Everyone talks about you. It's a pleasure! Really nice to meet you! I'm just gonna take a leak, then I'll give you the low-down.'

Pipsqueak's expression was less gloomy now.

‘The place is over in Barra da Tijuca,' continued Sting from inside the bathroom. ‘A really busy petrol station. I've already sussed it out. There's a safe that the suckers stuff full of dough all day long. Then around six, two cars show up. One of them's got two suckers in it and the other one's got four. The first two don't have nothin' and the rest've all got shooters. They pick up the dough and piss off. We gotta round up the four, get the shooters off 'em, grab the dough, get in the car and drive back …'

‘Were you goin' by yourself?' asked Hellraiser.

‘I was if I didn't get myself a partner! I don't like bein' skint.'

‘You're outta your skull! Risking a joint like that by yourself!' exclaimed Hellraiser.

‘I don't like bein' skint either, you know! But everythin's fine. We're gonna get lucky …' said Pipsqueak.

‘Sure you don't wanna come, Hellraiser?' asked Sting.

‘No, man. I'm takin' things easy. I don't feel like it today. Go for it, man.'

Pipsqueak and Sting arrived well before six o'clock and hung around near the petrol station pretending to be beggars. The cars appeared at 6.15 on the dot. They overpowered the four without much effort. To their surprise, the owner of the petrol station reached for his gun and got a bullet in the chest from Sting's revolver.

‘Open this shit quickly, man!' Sting bellowed at the manager, after collecting the security guards' guns.

Pipsqueak noticed one of the men sidling away, so he put a bullet through his head. He had to kill someone. He was really pissed off with Ari Rafael, he was penniless, he couldn't go to the Red Light District to screw the pros, and there was that dickhead of a guard risking his life for money that wasn't even his. The manager opened the safe. Sting filled a bag, put it in the back seat of the car and broke the back window before taking off.

‘If the pigs show up, let 'em have it!' he said as he sped along.

They hid the car in an alley and crossed Edgar Werneck Avenue taking just the money in the bag. They got themselves a plastic bag in the Prospectors' rehearsal square so it would be easier to carry the guns. Pipsqueak went ahead checking street corners. They stopped off to let the thieves know there was a hidden car to be stripped. They arrived at Sting's house without any problems.

They laughed as they remembered the two they had killed. Sting said a good partner was like that: fearless and ready to kill. They would do it every day so they could scrape together enough to buy a house in the country. If they got the equivalent
of two prizes in the sports lottery in one shot they'd be rich for the rest of their lives.

The sun was blazing in the cloudless Thursday sky. Well before midday Pipsqueak woke up at his partner's house, where he had settled down on the sofa after drinking a bottle of whisky, snorting twenty wraps of coke and smoking five joints with Sting and Hellraiser the night before.

Looking into the bedroom, he saw Sting asleep holding a gun in his right hand and another in his left. He smiled. The guy was a good pal – he didn't give bad luck a chance and he was upfront. He got up, noticed he was sweaty and jumped into the shower. His head was pounding – perhaps he'd be better off sleeping a bit more. He tried, then decided to rouse Sting. He awoke pointing both guns at Pipsqueak, who exclaimed:

‘Fuckin' hell, you never chill out!'

‘Yeah, man. Can't take any risks.'

Soon Hellraiser arrived with bread, milk and coffee, and a newspaper with a photo of the men killed in the hold-up.

‘Is it in the paper already?' asked Sting, surprised.

‘Sometimes it takes a couple of days to appear … This time it was quick …' said Hellraiser.

‘Know how to read? Know how to read?' Pipsqueak asked Sting, knowing Hellraiser wasn't a very good reader.

‘No,' he answered, shaking his head emphatically.

‘Then I'm goin' over to Sparrow's so he can read this stuff for us.'

Pipsqueak ate his bread without margarine and didn't wait for Sting to make the coffee. He ran to the corner and looked around, thinking it strange that there were no no-goods hanging about at that hour. He felt something weird in the air and considered turning back, but he wanted to know what the paper
said. He hurried to his friend's house and was lucky enough to catch him opening the gate on his way out.

Back at Sting's place, Sparrow read the paper, stumbling over the intonation of longer sentences. Even so, Pipsqueak sat on the ground with his head propped against the sofa, like a child listening to a fairy tale. What most worried him was the news that the police believed that the criminals responsible for the hold-up and two fatalities were from City of God. His concern didn't last very long, however, because as soon as Sparrow had finished reading, Sting – without commenting at all on the content of the article – said that on Gabinal Road there was a printer's that paid its employees every Friday dinnertime. They had to do another joint soon so they wouldn't run out of steam.

‘We're the men for the job!'

‘But we'll need a set of wheels, man. The guy that tipped me off said they've got this thing there that if you turn it on the police come runnin'. We've gotta go in, grab the guy, maybe even put a .22 slug in his leg so no one'll cotton on, and say we know about the thing, right, man? Then we tell him to turn it off and move his arse.'

‘What we can't do is leave the wheels here, OK? The kids didn't even have time to strip the other one 'cos the cops showed up too fast. Leaving the car here's too much of a giveaway,' said Sparrow.

‘So we go on foot. We can leave through Saci Alley, head into the bush over at Gardênia Azul and spend a day and a night there … Remember the time you finished off that grass?' said Pipsqueak, looking at Hellraiser.

Over in the Sixteenth District Police Station, Beelzebub was compiling information on Sting. In addition to an identikit
picture, he'd had anonymous phone calls telling him about one of his lodgings. Certain residents were not fond of Sting; he was trigger-happy, he harassed people for no reason, he had killed a guy after unfairly accusing him of cheating in a game of cards, he mugged people and refused to pay in bars, he'd raped women … There was to be a raid the following Friday at noon on the house in which the four were now organising their next job.

The gang spent the day inside. Sparrow arranged for an errand boy to go and buy them five meals, then they had an after-dinner smoke and examined the five guns taken in the hold-up. As they had already noticed, one from the military stood out from the others.

‘You just have to show this one here and the suckers'll hand everything over really fast!' said Sting.

Night always comes as a surprise to those who wake up late. They hung around planning and replanning the following day's operation. No one felt like snorting. Their best bet was to have a smoke so they'd feel hungry, then stuff their faces and hit the sack, get up early, take a stroll to get a feel for how the day was shaping up and find out if Officers Portuguese, Lincoln and Monster were on duty. All they'd have to do was ask the heads, because they always knew everything – they even knew if the Civil Police had done the rounds. They went to bed after watching the Montilla Rum wrestling and two films on Sting's new TV. That queer Ted Boy Marino beat Red-Beard Rasputin again, just as the Black Horseman always beat his adversaries. Rin Tin Tin was always sniffing out the bandits, but it wasn't a problem – with a .45 in your muzzle, vultures become canaries, snakes become worms and roosters lay eggs. All hell would break loose when they got to the printer's.

* * *

They woke up early and had a quick slurp of coffee and a cigarette. No getting wasted before they did the job. They combed the entire estate with restless footsteps. Orange said he hadn't seen any police in the street the night before or that morning. They found Night Owl, Carrots and Slick playing pool at Dummy's Bar with a carefree attitude that got up Pipsqueak's nose, because real gangsters couldn't afford to be carefree.

‘You lot're fartin' around, aren't you? Fartin' around … If you wanna fart around you gotta stick a lookout on each corner and keep a cocked shooter at your hip!' said Pipsqueak jokingly. He was hoping, however, for Sting or Hellraiser's approval. He then ate three slices of mortadella that were sitting on a plate on the bar counter and asked Sting to show his pals his .45. The three were enthralled with the .45 and enjoyed meeting Sting, about whom Hellraiser had told them so much. Pipsqueak even tried to beat Slick in a game of pool, but when he saw he was going to lose, he stuffed the balls into a pocket, making his friends laugh.