Chapter 4
We sat at that table talking for a long while, but no relevant information emerged beyond what he’d already told me.
I stuffed my face with whole-wheat bread and cake, listening to him repeat the same story in different ways.
Every now and then, I’d interject with something vague from my arsenal of ready-made lines: “It’s going to be okay” or “Come on, violence doesn’t solve anything.
” The truth was, I was scared shitless. If Arthur kept on digging, only one of us was getting out of this alive.
It wasn’t easy to keep smiling with those kinds of thoughts racing through my head.
As we were saying goodbye, using the most casual tone I could muster, I asked him to email me Ruth’s article. Arthur agreed without hesitation and sent it from his phone while I was standing there.
“We’re in this together,” he said before shutting the door.
It was already afternoon. In fifteen minutes I was back at the apartment, which was empty and quiet.
I was overwhelmed by a sudden and profound fatigue, so I allowed myself a nap under the covers with a playlist on shuffle, but when I woke up it was already the middle of the night.
Even after twelve hours of sleep, I felt exhausted.
I drank a glass of milk and went back to bed.
I got up early on Monday with a clear objective in mind: to go downtown and get the name of the owner of the Audi and the house in Jardim Botanico.
Cora was sitting on the kitchen stool in her nightgown eating a cheese and tapioca pancake.
She offered to make me one and I accepted, opening the fridge to help myself to some orange juice. I felt the cold floor on my bare feet.
“You’re up early,” I said.
“Piglet went out and I couldn’t fall back asleep.”
“Wait a minute, let me get this straight … You’re telling me Piglet already woke up, got ready, and left the house?”
It was certainly unusual, worth commenting on, but Cora kept her stony expression.
“He went to meet up with his weirdo friends,” she said, angrily tearing off a paper towel to grab my pancake. “Apparently they found some clues on Vladimir.”
“That’s great.”
“I don’t like it when he hangs out with those creeps, the hackers and stuff. Anyway, we’re going for lunch later in Leblon, at his favorite greasy spoon. Wanna come?”
“I’ve got a thousand things to do today, I don’t know if I’ll have time. But I’ll call you, okay?”
She nodded. I scarfed down the pancake, crumpled up the paper towel, and gave her a kiss goodbye. “I have to go.”
I climbed in an Uber waiting out front. About an hour later, I got out at the DMV on Avenida Presidente Vargas.
Traffic was terrible thanks to all the construction.
Sometimes I forgot how lucky I was to live near the beach and no longer have to leave the house to go to work every day.
I guess God wanted to make up for my stress at being trapped inside the car for so long, because there was barely any line.
I made up a story that I’d been in a fender bender with an Audi with that license plate.
I had to open a public records request. They’d have an answer for me within a few days.
Next I walked to the nearby property appraiser’s office, where I had to fill out a stupid form and pay a fee to request a title certificate for the Jardim Botanico property.
I was free by noon, with no desire whatsoever to go back home.
I spent a few minutes browsing at the Travessa bookstore on Avenida Graca Aranha.
Their bestsellers display was right by the entrance, but nothing looked good.
I saw that Paul Schrader’s new movie was out on Blu-ray, so I bought it.
Spending my money on things like that reminded me how nice it was to no longer have to scrimp and save or worry about overdraft fees.
I didn’t actually miss being a bookseller at all.
I got hungry around one. It was too late to call Cora, so I decided to grab something quick at a Chinese place nearby.
It was packed and the food looked delicious.
I was home by two, stomach full, feeling like I’d had an exceptionally productive day.
I poured myself a glass of wine and toasted myself in the mirror.
I sat at my desk and opened my laptop, hoping the cabernet sauvignon would rev me up to read Ruth’s article.
I’d been avoiding it, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.
I skimmed the first few lines, trying to take in all the information at once.
It was definitely still a draft: There were sentence fragments, incomplete passages, winding paragraphs.
At the end of the document was a transcript of an interview with an unidentified person who claimed to have attended the dinners.
Everything was there: the host (who, according to the witness, was a handsome and attentive young man who made guests feel at ease—I was flattered), the number of guests, the price, and the security measures in place to keep the location hidden. Ruth’s source was onto something.
The only name mentioned was Vladimir, three times.
He’d been expanding operations and was very careful, very discreet.
The most interesting part was that the source claimed to have met an employee at the slaughterhouse who assured him that Vladimir paid his staff well but had never personally made an appearance, which just confirmed Piglet’s theory that Umberto was a fucking liar who’d made Vladimir up.
I was completely focused and nearly fell out of my chair when a crying Cora burst through the door. She wasn’t just crying, she was having a full-on panic attack. Her makeup was a mess and her breathing was ragged like she’d just gotten beaten up or something.
I ran to her and pulled her thin, shaking body into my arms. Cora tried to say something but couldn’t complete a sentence, falling back into heaving sobs.
She was scaring me; I tightened my embrace and stroked her hair, hoping she’d calm down.
My fingers grazed her forehead and I saw she was bleeding.
“Talk to me … What happened?”
“They took Piglet. They’re going to kill him, Dante!”
My blood pressure plummeted. I lifted her chin so she was looking me in the eye.
Cora had two large cuts on her face, one over her left eye and one on her forehead—a trickle of blood ran down the corner of her eye, onto her cheek, down her neck.
I had her take a seat and ran to the bathroom to get gauze and saline wash. She talked while I dressed her wounds.
“We met for lunch … on Dias Ferreira … A car stopped and … there were these guys with guns … They put Piglet in the car … I screamed … They hit me with the gun…”
“They took Piglet?”
“First they shot him in the leg … He said he wasn’t going to get in the car, and they shot him in the leg.”
“What kind of car was it, Cora?”
“I don’t remember…”
She stared at me, helpless. Her eyes betrayed a fragility I hadn’t known existed inside a woman who could disembowel a human body without batting an eye. I pulled out my phone and showed her the photo of the black Audi.
“That’s the one!” she said breathlessly.
Her skin started to feel clammy. She was going to pass out any minute.
“You have to calm down … What did Piglet tell you?”
“Nothing … He didn’t tell me anything … I swear!” she shouted, curling into herself, looking vulnerable and afraid. “He was excited … I think he was onto something…”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No … We’ve got to go to the cops, Dante! I can’t lose him! I can’t! He’s all I’ve got!”
“We can’t go to the cops. Leave it to me.”
I took two Klonopin from my desk drawer and handed them to her, along with my glass of wine.
“Take these.”
“But I don’t want to sleep…”
“It’ll do you good. When you wake up, Piglet will be here, taking care of you.”
She sighed and took the pills. She dropped her head and began to cry softly. Curled up on my mattress, she looked like a scared animal. My mind was racing, but I kept her company while I tried to call Umberto. No doubt the old bastard was avoiding me.
It took Cora half an hour to fall asleep.
When she finally closed her eyes, I cried.
They were tears that had been pushed to the recesses of my soul, and now that nobody was watching, I let them out without fear.
The game was high stakes now, big boys only, but I still felt like a newborn baby.
There was nothing I could do. There was no point in fighting with Umberto, in sweeping the blood under the rug.
Two friends dead—this was the end. My best chance was to escape back to Pingo d’água.
I tried calling Hugo, but he didn’t pick up. A few minutes later, I heard the door slam and ran into the living room, dizzy, clutching at the walls. To my shock, it was Hugo in his black chef’s coat, accompanied by Umberto in a pin-striped suit.
“You son of a bitch!” I yelled, lunging at the old man. Hugo stopped me with one swift movement, grabbing my arms. He told me to calm down. I tried to break free, but he was much stronger.
“He’s got Piglet,” I said. “Let go of me! He’s got Piglet!”
Umberto sneered at me. Then he flashed a wide smile.
“Let him go,” he said. “He won’t do anything.”
Hugo obeyed like a robot and returned to Umberto’s side, for which he got a friendly pat on the shoulder.
“You should be more like your friend,” said Umberto, walking toward me with his hands behind his back. If I punched him, he wouldn’t have time to defend himself. “Stop looking into Vladimir or you’re going to die. I’m honestly surprised you’re still at it—I thought you were smarter than that.”
I wasn’t about to give in to his taunting:
“You’re Vladimir.”
“I wish that were true,” he said, waving a hand in the air.
“If that were the case, you’d already be dead, my boy.
I don’t understand why they haven’t eliminated you yet.
A trashy little gayboy who’s nothing but a glorified door greeter and could be easily replaced by anybody plucked from the line outside the club.
Alas…”—he ran his hands over the lapel of his jacket, flicking away imaginary crumbs—“I just follow orders.”
“Hugo, they took Piglet,” I said, ignoring Umberto’s theatrics. He was still my friend—he couldn’t have changed that much.
Hugo just stared at his feet, his muscular arms slack at his sides, his thick beard growing down to his neck. I repeated myself, though I knew he’d heard me the first time.
“Piglet had to be eliminated,” said Umberto.
“I had to make a choice, Dante,” said Hugo, his head still hanging. “There’s no such thing as good food without sacrifice.”
“You’re a piece of shit, Hugo. You’re a moron who doesn’t know what friendship is, you never knew what it means to be family … I can’t even fucking look at you!”
He looked up at me with red eyes.
“I’m moving out. I already packed my clothes.”
“Those sons of bitches killed Piglet!”
“Nobody in Pingo d’água needs to know. He had no relatives; we were his only friends. Nobody will miss him.”
“I will!”
“This is all very touching,” said Umberto, interrupting our argument in a honeyed, insincere voice. “But you also have a choice to make, Dante. You can’t keep playing the double agent, working against us. Vladimir wants to give you one last shot before he takes more … extreme action.”
“How generous of him,” I deadpanned.
“Yes, very … Now repay his generosity and kill this Arthur fellow.”
“No.”
“You have time to think it over. You don’t need to work Wednesday’s dinner. On Friday, we expect you in uniform, smile on, with Arthur’s body as proof of your loyalty. It’s going to be a special night, our one hundredth secret dinner!”
Umberto clapped his hands, grinning. He opened the door and Hugo followed him, not looking back.
“Where’s Piglet’s body?” I asked, battered.
“Dante, for fuck’s sake, this is a business! We weren’t going to let all that meat go to waste. If you want to see that lazy bum again, come to the next dinner. We’ll be serving crispy suckling pig.”