Leighton Gage - Buried Strangers

The prisoners themselves did the painting. When they were done, Tanaka called in the press. It was a slow news day, and the journalists thought a shocking-pink holding cell was interesting enough to merit pictures and video footage.

The delegado regional loved it. So did the state secretary for public safety.

The violence continued, but by the time someone stuck a hairpin through the eye, and into the brain, of a petty thief by the name of Marlene Quadros, the murder of a female prisoner had become old news, and Tanaka’s superiors had other things to worry about. It helped, too, that Marlene Quadros was black and that she was ugly as sin, and always had been, even in her youth.

IN THE first week of his new posting, Delegado Tanaka had appropriated the largest room in the building as his office. He still had it. It was one flight up, directly above the (now fading) shocking-pink holding cell and beyond the detec-tives’ squad room. And it was to that sanctum Tanaka fled to escape the hostility of his wife.

Still musing about the outcome of the Corinthians/ Fla-mengo game, and the attendant consequences for the national championship, Tanaka sat down in his chair and started going through paperwork. The third item in the pile caught his eye. He summoned his sergeant, Abilio Lucas, for an ex-planation. Fortunately for Lucas, it was one of the few Friday afternoons he’d elected not to take off.

“What’s this about a family disappearing from Jardim Tonato?” Tanaka asked, tapping the report with his ball-point pen.

A jardim, literally garden, usually meant a rather upscale neighborhood with handsome houses set on spacious lots. Jardim Tonato had neither. Jardim Tonato was a favela, a shantytown, a community of self-constructed shacks occu-pied by the poorest of the poor. Unless they happened to live in one, most people didn’t give a damn about what happened in favelas like Jardim Tonato.

Sergeant Lucas certainly didn’t. He seemed surprised that Tanaka did. Lucas moved closer and Tanaka, a nonsmoker, wrinkled his nose. The sergeant smelled strongly of tobacco.

“That one, huh?” Lucas said, craning his neck to see the report. “Nothing important, Senhor. Not worth your atten-tion. Four nobodies. A stonemason, his wife, and two daugh-ters. You know how it is with those people. They move around.” He coughed a phlegmy cough.

“I’ve got some questions for the couple who made the complaint,” Tanaka said.

The sergeant reached for a cigarette, realized where he was, and returned the pack to his pocket. Lucas wasn’t a street cop. He was an office drone who worked from nine to five, Monday through Friday. Complications on this, the last day of his work week, could lead to overtime and Lucas hated working overtime. As a sergeant, he wasn’t compen-sated for it.

“What kind of questions, Senhor? Maybe I can-”

“You can’t,” Tanaka snapped. “Get them both in here, Sergeant.”

He held out the report.

Lucas hesitated for a beat before he took it.

“Tuesday okay, Delegado?”

“Sooner. This afternoon, if possible. Monday morning at the latest.”

* * *

The couple Tanaka asked Lucas to track down was named Portella, Ernesto and Clarice. Ernesto was a carpenter with no fixed place of work. His wife was a faixineira, a cleaning woman, and divided her days among various clients.

The Portellas, like their missing friends, lived in Jardim Tonato, and Jardim Tonato, like all favelas, was a place with-out telephones. To be absolutely certain of being able to present the couple by Monday morning, Lucas was going to have to work late, or he was going to have to cut some time out of his weekend.

He elected to work late.

By the time the Portellas got home, Lucas had already been waiting for about three hours. It was past 8:00 pm, and he was nervous about being in a favela, no place for a police-man after sunset. He was also royally resentful about the shambles that had been made of his Friday night.

“About fucking time,” he said.

“Oh, pardon me for having to earn a living, instead of sit-ting around behind a desk and sucking on government tit,” Ernesto said.

“You better watch your mouth,” Lucas said, and then, when Ernesto didn’t respond: “My boss wants you people down at his delegacia on Monday morning at seven o’clock sharp.”

This time it was the woman who gave him some lip.

“What for?” she said.

Lucas looked her up and down. She appeared to be the bossy type. If there was one thing he’d learned as a cop, it was you didn’t give people like that any rope. “Fucked if I know,” he said. “Be there.”

“But we both work-”

He didn’t let her finish. “Seven am,” he said, “And not a minute later.” He turned his back and walked away before she could say anything else.

Lucas knew Tanaka wouldn’t be in until nine, but the fucking Portellas, by coming home so late, had trimmed three hours from his Friday night’s drinking.

And now they were going to suffer for it.

On Monday morning, at six forty-five, Clarice Portella dragged her muttering husband through the front door of Tanaka’s delegacia and approached the corporal behind the desk.

“I’m Clarice Portella. This is my husband, Ernesto. Sergeant Lucas said-”

“Yeah,” the corporal said. “He called me. I know all about it. Wait over there.”

“I told the sergeant. We both work. We-”

“Over there.”

Before Ernesto could raise his voice, Clarice grabbed his arm and led him to one of the plastic chairs that lined the wall.

Lucas showed up at quarter to nine. By that time the cor-poral was fed up with hearing Ernesto’s complaints, and Clarice was livid.

“Hey, you, Sergeant,” she began, waving a hand to catch his attention.

“Won’t be much longer,” Lucas said, and strode by with-out breaking his pace.

AT NINE o’clock, Yoshiro Tanaka bustled through the squad room and opened the door to his office. Lucas was standing by the window.

Tanaka sniffed the air. “Have you been smoking in here, Sergeant?”

“No, Delegado.”

It was a lie and both of them knew it.

Tanaka went straight to the wastebasket and looked inside. There was no trace of cigarette ash. Lucas was stupid, but not that stupid. Tanaka went to the window. It was one of those that swung out on a hinge, and it was slightly ajar.

Insufficient evidence.

“What are you doing in my office, Sergeant?”

“Waiting for you, Delegado. Those people you wanted to see? They’re outside.”

“Ah.” The stern look on Tanaka’s face vanished.

Luca’s curiosity ratcheted up a notch. Tanaka didn’t do anything to satisfy it.

“Bring them in,” was all he said.

But we already told everything to the sergeant,” Clarice Portella said a couple of minutes later. She turned and looked at the door behind her, as if she were expecting Lucas to come back and join them. “

“I’m sure that’s what you think,” Tanaka said.

The woman was hunger thin, a mulata with bad teeth, far past the age of childbearing. Or maybe not. Favela people, Tanaka thought, always looked older than they were. And they bred like rabbits, which had a way of aging them still further. This one probably had ten kids at home.

She didn’t look very smart, either. Matter of fact, she looked downright stupid, the way she sat staring at him with her mouth agape. Tanaka figured he’d better spell things out, take it slow and easy.

“Most people think that,” he said. “Most people think they’ve told us everything after they tell it the first time, but it’s been our experience that-”