Tony Bellotto - Rio Noir

“A woman has no control over these things...”

“Get off my sofa!”

“I’m so ashamed...”

“Get out! Get out of my house!”

“I’m sorry, colonel...”

“I don’t want to do it! I don’t want to do it! Get out!”

“You’re humiliating me...”

“Get out of here! Out!!”

“Don’t talk to me like that... you coward!!”

It was his grandmother’s voice returning: Coward! Leopoldo, you’re not a man and never were...

From the terrace, Dollar was howling.

“Coward! You don’t talk like that to a lady!” The whore was offended by the grossness...

Bringing home a whore, Leopoldo?

“I don’t want to do that, Grandma!”

The dog howled.

Taking insults from a tramp, Leopoldo? You sissy.

“I don’t want to, I don’t want to, Grandma...”

“Grandma my ass, you calling me old? You shitty two-bit colonel, coward, faggot...”

The dog howled...

You wimp, you were never a man... you weakling...

“You flaming fag!”

“I’m a colonel in the Brazilian army—”

Faggot, she’s right, Leopoldo. Ever since you were a child... I always knew...

The dog howled.

“You queer! I want my two hundred dollars!”

Then the cannibal hurled himself onto the woman, burying his sharpened teeth in the neck of his prey while his hand covered her mouth. The victim tried to escape by striking the executioner, but the man’s trained jaw had tremendous strength and soon the woman surrendered, her blows losing power and her eyes closing as she yielded to death. She emitted a few moans that could have been mistaken for pleasure. And succumbed. The cannibal alternated between the vagina and the neck, leaving the remaining parts for another time. Using the sword, he cut the body into uniform pieces and stored them in the old freezer.

He was a methodical cannibal. Military.

On the terrace, Dollar let loose another howl, sharp; then in falsetto, sounding like a chant of anguish and submission. The animal recognized the smell of blood by instinct inherited from his ancestors and knew one thing: there was a predator in the house, and it wasn’t him.

The cannibal was back.

Lapa

He was known as Rat. Short, skinny, with a head shaped like a rodent’s. People found him repulsive. Not because of the clothes he wore or his personal hygiene. He always wore a suit and tie, both secondhand and rather used, but of good quality. His shoes and clothes had gone through various repairs, some by his own hand, and he kept them clean and intended to go on wearing them as long as possible. Until recently he had worn a wide-brimmed felt hat, a gift from a habitué of Cinelândia. It was a lovely hat, but Rat finally convinced himself that it made him look even smaller than he was, though it had the advantage of hiding his face, which was indeed repulsive thanks to his tiny, pointed, widely spaced teeth. This general appearance made him seek out from an early age somber and poorly lit places, not always easy in a sunny city like Rio, unless one becomes the solitary, nocturnal sort. Which is in fact what happened, not because of his repulsive appearance but because of the police.

It was when he still lived downtown, in the area stretching from Cinelândia to Lapa. During the day he circulated around Cinelândia and the narrow streets, almost alleyways, that go from the square toward Lapa. At night he frequented the bars in Lapa. In Cinelândia he managed and protected the minors who committed petty thefts on pedestrians; in Lapa he managed and protected the prostitutes, not all of them, of course, but a sufficient number to maintain his lifestyle. In both businesses he kept the accounts himself and was good at it. There was also Japa, an intelligent and crafty lawyer, despite being an incorrigible alcoholic, who resolved his run-ins with the law. Besides the two of them, there were three security men who took turns maintaining order and protection from the “Germans,” as the police were called. Finally, there was a network of underage lookouts who served quite efficiently as short-range radar. Rat had never dealt with drugs and traffickers, whom he considered very violent and likely to attract the police. He also neither possessed nor used guns. He was in the habit of saying his weapons were his short stature, his sharpened teeth, and the ability to disappear almost instantly when necessary. He always thought of himself as an entrepreneur. The boys he protected were required to attend school; otherwise they couldn’t be part of his team. The women had regular classes in basic English, which facilitated their contact with foreign tourists. And both the boys and the women were directed by him, when necessary, to an outpatient medical clinic that received a monthly contribution from Rat and Japa for services rendered to the underserved downtown population.

Things were going smoothly, without major internal conflict and without problems of law and order, until the day the police realized that everything was going too well with him and his lawyer partner and that they, the police, had so far not received any benefit from it.

“Procuring, inducement to commit a crime, and corruption of minors, forming a criminal band... Serious offenses, seeing as how the second is considered a heinous crime. Know what that means, you shitass Rat? It means you’re gonna spend the rest of your life behind bars just like your brothers that serve as guinea pigs in laboratories. The difference being that you won’t be treated nowhere near as good as them. The researchers that’re gonna take care of you will be your cellmates, and they won’t be as gentle as the scientists in research labs. Because of the nature of your crimes I can take you straight from here to jail. Forget about paying bail and going back to drinking beer. Your crime is unbailable. Rat is what they call you and what you call yourself. You’re gonna envy the rats that crawl over your body while you’re sleeping... if you ever do manage to sleep.”

That was the speech given by the policeman, who judging by his physique must belong to some shock troop. He accosted Rat at night on an abandoned street in Lapa, where no one was around for him to ask for help.

“What can we do for none of that to happen?” asked Rat in a small voice.

“No ‘we.’ Here you’re the rat and I’m the cat. I’ll expect you here tomorrow, at this same time, with 50 percent of what you made last month. Pay attention, I’m not demanding this or that amount, I’m demanding a percentage, 50 percent, half the money you took in last month — which will in fact be your last month if you try to screw me. If you got any doubts about the possibility of me making you into a lab rat, ask your partner and lawyer, who now that I think about it oughta be called Skunk.”

Rat had no intention of returning the following night to give the cop half his earnings from the month before. But neither did he plan to go on hanging around Cinelândia or Lapa. He never had the calling to be a laboratory rat. The only solution was to disappear. Taking with him half the money collected in the last month — the other half Rat put in a thick brown envelope, taped it shut, and gave it to his partner — Rat became a fugitive, at least to his way of thinking. He wasn’t wanted “dead or alive” by the police in the city, but the mere existence of that gorilla and his accomplices sufficed to make him vanish like smoke.

The next day, at dawn, it was still dark when he left his felt hat on the bench where he usually sat in Floriano Square in Cinelândia. A souvenir from Rat for those who remained.