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In a back street situated amidst the slums of Eirunepé Lt Col Claudio Luiz de Oliveira of the Federal Police sat in the back of a cherry red series 6 coupe BMW listening to the rap song Querido F.B.I. by the band Calle 13 blaring out from the speakers. The storm that had hit the city the day before was still raging overhead and the rain came lashing down upon the roof of the car with a loud hissing noise as a result of its perpetual enfilade.
The car was parked in a secluded part of the city slums that only criminals and the police frequented. Usually though the police only entered the area whilst fully armed and in military issue body armour in targeted raids to take out drug dealers and gun smuggllers, but Lt. Col Oliveira was no ordinary police officer.
He had been a corrupt cop for almost three decades, a man who had made a fortune from working both sides in the cocaine and gang wars that had perpetually wracked the slums of the city. He had blood on his hands that went back to the late 80's. In his late forties he was a tall, slim, muscular man with a bushy black well trimmed beard and peircing brown eyes. Many people said he looked like Al Pacino in the movie Carlito's Way, though unlike Pacino he was not a midget, being almost six foot tall in his para-military police boots.
Tonight he was off duty and doing business.
The man that sat in front of him in the driving seat, Claudio Figuentes was a local small time drug dealer and gangster. He was busy snorting up a thick white line of cocaine up both nostils from the cover of a compact disc. Claudio turned round and passed the disc cover to Oliveira who also took a long snort of the drug with a rolled up one hundred dollar bill. Oliveira pinched his nose, leant back and sniffed the powder deep into his sinus cavities, feeling it slide onto the mucous membrane of his nostrils.
Claudio grinned at Oliveria, revealing that most of his upper and lower front teeth had replaced by gold teeth, and gave Oliveira the thumbs up with his right hand. Claudio's pupils had shrunk almost instantly as the drug took effect and he sniffed constantly as chunks of the white powder fell from his large nose and down over his black sleeveless T-shirt. Claudio was a fat, ugly man in his late thirties. A pederast, mass murderer, drug dealer and a pimp. He had born in one of the favelas in Brazil, joined a gang, learnt his trade and then came to Eirunepé to claim his own territory. He had carved this out with a gun and a knife earning both fear and respect from the police and criminals as he climbed his way up the bloody pole. His long greasy black hair fell down flat over his face and down to his shoulders, knotted and snarled with dirt and sweat. He had a straggly beard, greasy with fried chicken fat and speckled with bread crumbs, and gang tattoos that covered his arms, hands and shoulders.
" I told you man, this is the good shit ".
Oliveira closed his eyes and felt the cocaine first numb his nose, then his face and then hit his bloodstream in a rush of cold energy. It was like a lightbulb going on in his head. His blood rushed through his veins and his heart began to beat, beat, beat faster. Everything became clearer and more focused as his pupils dilated. Colours brightened and the mundane became almost magical. He looked over at Claudio and grinned back.
" You are right Claudio, this shit is fucking great. Where did you get it from ".
Claudio's expression suddenly changed from one of relaxed drug induced jocularity to furtive, then almost afraid. Then he became angry. His eyes slitted and he leered over at Oliveria.
"What the fuck does that matter man, I just got it okay. You want the shit or are you fucking me around hommes ". His voice had grown shrill and restless, his eyes twitchy with a wild feral look.
"Did you rip it off from Benitez Torrio, Claudio ? ".
Claudio's eyes darkened, his voice rose an octave and became an angry snarl, " No man. I aint ripped no shit off of no one man. And even if I did, it aint got shit do with you, mother fucker ". As he said this leant forwards and into the back of the car, and with his fingers joined formed a gun shape which he pointed down at Oliveira's chest.
He snarled at Oliveria, "You want me to fucking kill you man. I aint afraid of no fucking pig. I killed pigs plenty times in the past man. ".
"Okay Claudio. Calm down " replied Oliveira, " As you say its not my business where you got the shit from. I am here just to buy it and then sell it on. I dont care who it came from or how you got it, all I care about is how much profit I can make from it. How much of it have you got on you ".
Claudio smiled " Thats more like it man. I got ten kilos man, its in the boot of the car. If you got the cash hommes, then we got a deal ".
Oliveira grinned back at Claudio and patted the large sports bag that sat on his lap. He pulled the zip back on the bag , leant it forwards a little and showed Claudio the piles of dollars bills inside the bag.
"That make you happy Claudio ? "
Claudios face lit up, " Shit bitch, I got a fucking boner now " and grabbed his crotch and began to bounce up and down in the seat, banging the roof of the car with his right fist.
Oliveira laughed. The song on the car stereo had now changed to the NWA song Fuck The Police.
"I love this song Claudio. Turn it up man ".
Claudio turned round and turned the stereo up by turning the dial on the front of the car stereo set in the dashboard. The bass began to pound out loudly making the windows thud with the boom of the bass box.
Oliveira reached down with his right hand, quickly withdrew a loaded and cocked 9mm semi-automatic pistol from a small leather holster hidden inside his right leg sock, placed it at the base of Claudio's skull and pulled the trigger.
The flash filled the car as Claudio's head jerked forwards and bounced off the steering wheel. Blood splashed all over the widow. Claudio slumped down in his seat and laid still. Oliveira then shot him once more down from the top of the skull which made the body twitch in the seat. He then dropped the gun into claudios lap where it nestled in his crotch.
Oliveria climbed out of the car with the sports bag with the cash inside it, opened the boot and saw that a plastic suitcase lay in the back of the car. The rain was still pouring down and he turned the collars on his knee length designer black leather jacket up to keep the rain from running down onto his shirt. It was a Georgio Armani shirt and he didnt want to ruin it. He opened the locks on the suitcase and pulled the lid up. Inside were ten plastic wrapped see through packages of white powder.
He closed the lid then took the suitcase out and put it on the ground. Then from the bushes nearby where he had stashed it earlier he walked over and pulled out a large jerry can of petrol. Oliveira unscrewed the cap poured the contents of the can over Claudio's body, over the back seat, over the outside of the car and in the boot. Then he threw the jerry can in the still open boot.
He picked up both the bags and walked back about ten feet from the car.
From the inner pocket of his jacket he pulled out a small signal flare, pulled the
cord to ignite it and as it began spluttering and smoking with a red flame he threw it into the boot of the car. The petrol ignited instantly and a bright flash of flame erupted from inside the car.
Oliveira walked quickly away from the car as the flames took hold and consumed the vehicle. Then as he was about a hundred yards away and walking down the deserted street, the vehicles petrol tank exploded sending a bright flash of flame with a loud crump into the sky.
A non descript black Toyota saloon car was parked up beside the pavement in the street and Oliveira opened the boot with a key. Then he put the bags inside the boot and then locked it back up. He walked around the side of the car, opened the drivers side door with the key and and got in, started the engine and drove away.
He drove for around an hour or so until he he came to the docks in the city. He parked the car but left the windows and doors open with the keys inside after taking the bags out of the boot of the car. He knew that the car would probably be stolen in less than an hour and then either stripped down or burnt out.
He walked away and after walking down one of the side streets came out of an alleyway into a well lit main street. Fizzing street lamps lit the pavements with a sickly yellow light so that the place appeared almost jaundiced in their nimbus.
The street was filled mainly with cheap hotels for the dock workers and other transient labour, and was a place where prostitutes prowled after dark in short skirts and high boots seeking drunks and tricks to turn. Without exception their eyes were glazed over as a result of the heroin and crack that coursed through their veins and which drove them out on to the streets to sustain their addictions. It was the gaze of the living dead, whose who knew that sooner or later they would be found dead with a needle in their veins or dumped in a ditch as a result of some perverted punter going too far and they no longer cared. For them all that mattered was the next dollar bill, the next hit of crack and the next spike of heroin jammed deep into an infected and collapsed vein.
In the rain the make up and thick black mascara painted on the eyelashes of the prostitutes had begun to run down their faces, forming long black streaks that slid down their pale gaunt cheeks. They appeared like sinister skeletal puppets staggering unsteadily on their high heels through the filthy, muddy puddles that littered the street and pavements. Clothing made wet by the rain had stuck to the flesh of some of them and then turned transparent, revealing their ribs and the black roses of fresh bruises abloom on their skin beneath. Their pimps would drive up and down the street in souped up cars, revving their engines menacingly with their arms hanging out of the windows and making gang signs as they drove past the bars making sure no other whores or pimps were at work in their territory. Loud music blasted from the open windows and doors of the bars and nightclubs where steroid pumped muscle dummy bouncers wearing bullet proof vests watched from doorways with wary eyes the passing cars and people. Drunks, alone or in small groups, staggered down the street shouting and singing as they went from bar to bar. Vomit lay splashed in clumps along the pavement, clotted with chunks of congealed chilli and rice whilst rats ran along the gutters flitting to and fro from the reeking drains. The acrid smell of crack rocks being smoked drifted out of dark alleyways where the huddled bodies of tramps could be seen writhing in rags on the ground like maggots in a festering wound. A police car passed down the street slowly, neither of the officers inside the vehicle even gazing out at the scene outside.
It turned the corner of the street and dissapeared into the darkness.
2 comments:
I really like this.
It has that classic noir feel and style but with twists of modernistic juxtapositions embellishing the light/shade axis. It's very unlike your poetry which is on the shit axis and one of the components of the Bristol Scale.
I don't see how this South American stuff has any relevance to the struggle against genocide. Why not write a novel about an idealistic young white lawyer who is discriminated against by a Chinese restaurant. He doesn't have enough money to pay for a lawyer, so he represents himself and wins and then goes on to become the leader of Britains anti-genocide movement.
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