Blue Labyrinth (18 page)

T
he entrance to the City of Angels lay at the end of a narrow dogleg on a street in Rio’s Zona Norte. At first glance, the
favela
beyond did not look much different from the neighboring region of Tijuca. It consisted of drab boxes of concrete, three and four stories tall, crammed tightly together, above a warren of streets almost medieval in their crookedness and complexity. The closest buildings were gray in color, but the colors changed to green and then to terra-cotta as the vast shantytown climbed the steep slopes stretching away to the north, trailing a thousand plumes of smoke from cooking fires, hazy and wavering in the hot sun. It was not until Pendergast noticed the two youths lounging on empty gasoline drums, wearing shorts and Havaianas flip-flops, machine guns slung over their bare shoulders—lookouts, checking everyone who came and went—that he realized he was at the gates into an entirely different part of Rio de Janeiro.

He paused in the alleyway, swaying ever so slightly. The drugs he had taken—while necessary for endurance—had dulled his mind and slowed his reaction time. In his condition, it would have been too risky to attempt a disguise. Pendergast could speak only a few words of Portuguese, and in any case he never would have been able to master the patois, which varied from
favela
to
favela
. If the drug dealers or their guards in the Cidade dos Anjos took him for an undercover cop,
he would be immediately killed. His only option was no disguise at all: to stand out like a sore thumb.

He approached the youths, who watched him, unmoving, through slitted eyes. Overhead, the electrical wires and cable TV lines that crossed and recrossed the street were so dense they cast the street into perpetual gloom, sagging under their own weight like some huge and ominous web. It was oven-hot in the fetid street, the air stinking of garbage, dog feces, and acrid smoke. As he approached, the youths—while not rising from their perches on the gasoline drums—let their machine guns slide down off their shoulders and into their hands. Pendergast made no attempt to pass them, but instead walked up to the older of the two.

The boy—he couldn’t have been more than sixteen—eyed the agent up and down with a combination of curiosity, hostility, and scorn. In the sweltering heat, wearing his black suit, white shirt, and silk tie, Pendergast looked like a visitor from another planet.

“
Onde você vai, gringo?
” he asked in a menacing tone. As he did so, the other youth—taller, with his head shaved bald—slid off his own drum, raising his machine gun and casually aiming it at Pendergast.

“
Meu filho
,” Pendergast said. “My son.”

The youth snickered and exchanged a glance with his compatriot. No doubt this was a common sight: the father looking for his wayward son. The shaved one appeared in favor of shooting Pendergast without asking any further questions. Instead, the shorter youth—who seemed nominally in charge—overruled this. With the barrel of his gun, he gestured for Pendergast to raise his hands. Pendergast complied, and the bald youth frisked him. His passport was removed, then his wallet. The small amount of money in the wallet was taken out and immediately divided. When the lookout found the Les Baer .45, an argument broke out. The shorter youth grabbed the gun from the bald one and shook it in Pendergast’s face, asking angry questions in Portuguese.

Pendergast shrugged. “
Meu filho
,” he repeated.

The argument continued, and a small knot of curious onlookers gathered. It appeared as if the bald one would get his way, after
all. Reaching into a secret inner pocket of his suit jacket, Pendergast extracted a wad of bills—one thousand reais—and offered it to the shorter lookout.

“
Meu filho
,” he said yet again, in a quiet, non-threatening voice.

The youth stared at the money, but did not take it.

Pendergast again reached into his pocket, drew out another thousand reais, and added it to the wad he was proffering. Two thousand reais—a thousand dollars—was a lot of money in a community such as this.

“
Por favor
,” he said, waving the money gently in front of the lookout. “
Deixe-me entrar
.”

With a sudden grimace, the youth snatched the money away. “
Porra
,” he muttered.

This elicited another outburst from his shaven-headed companion, who was evidently in favor of simply shooting Pendergast and taking the money. But the shorter one silenced him with a volley of curses. He handed the passport and wallet back to Pendergast, keeping the gun.

“
Sai da aqui
,” he said, waving Pendergast on dismissively. “
Fila da puta
.”

“
Obrigado
.” As Pendergast walked past the makeshift guard post he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the shaven-headed youth detach himself from the assembled group and disappear down a back alley.

Pendergast wandered up the central street of the
favela
, which quickly split into a confusing labyrinth of ever-narrower roads that crossed and recrossed, turned at odd angles, and—occasionally—dead-ended abruptly. People eyed him silently as he passed by, some with curiosity, others with suspicion. Now and then he stopped to ask someone, “
meu filho
,” but this was greeted with a quick, silent shake of the head and a hurrying past, as if to avoid the mutterings of a madman.

Working through the dullness of the drugs, Pendergast pushed his senses to take in everything. He needed to understand. The alleyways were relatively clean, with the occasional chicken or slinking, emaciated dog. Besides the two guards he saw no weapons, drug
dealing, or open criminality. Indeed, the
favela
seemed to display more order than the city outside. The buildings were decorated in a wild profusion of garishly colored posters and handbills, much of it peeling off and fluttering. The sound was almost overwhelming. From open windows poured Brazilian funk music, conversation, or loud argument; the occasional expostulation of “
Caralho!
” or some other invective. The air smelled overpoweringly of frying meat. Mopeds and rusted bicycles passed by infrequently—there were almost no cars. At each intersection there was at least one
barzinho
—a corner bar with grubby plastic tables, a dozen men inside gathered around an ancient TV with bottles of Cerveja Skol in their hands, cheering on the inevitable soccer game. Their voices rose from every point when a goal was scored.

Pendergast stopped, took his bearings as best he could, then started climbing the mountain face that the Cidade dos Anjos was spread across. As he ascended the winding streets, the character of the buildings changed. The three-story concrete structures began being replaced by shacks and shantyhouses of remarkable decrepitude, slats and sections of wood wired or tied together and covered—if they were covered at all—with roofs of corrugated iron. Now garbage appeared, strewn about, and the smell of bad meat and rotting potatoes lingered in the air. Adjoining buildings leaned against each other, apparently for support. Laundry hung in every direction from an impossible tangle of crisscrossing lines, dangling limply in the tremendous heat. Passing a small, improvised soccer field in a vacant lot, surrounded by the remains of a chain-link fence, Pendergast could make out, far below, the stately outlines of the high-rise apartment buildings of Rio’s Zona Norte. They were a mere mile or two away, but from his vantage point they could have been a thousand.

As the pitch grew steeper, the surrounding landscape changed to a confusing welter of terraces, rickety public staircases of badly poured concrete and wooden lathe, and narrow switchback lanes. Dirty children peered at him through barbed wire and broken slats. There was less music here, less shouting, less life. The stillness of poverty and despair infected the muggy air. Lashed-together structures
rose up all around, each at its own level and angle, with seeming disregard to the surrounding buildings: a three-dimensional maze of back alleys and passageways and common spaces and tiny plazas. Still, Pendergast mumbled to all he passed the same pathetic phrase: “
Meu filho. Por favor. Meu filho
.”

As he passed a small, grimy upholstery store, a dented and scarred Toyota Hilux four-door pickup stopped in front of him with a screech. It was barely narrower than the alleyway itself and effectively blocked his progress. While the driver stayed behind the wheel, three young men in khaki pants and brightly colored knit shirts burst out from the other three doors. Each carried an AR-15, and each had his weapon trained on Pendergast.

One of the men stepped quickly up to him while the other two held back. “
Pare!
” he demanded. “Stop!”

Pendergast stopped. There was a tense moment of stasis. Pendergast took a step forward, and one of the men stopped him with a rifle butt, pushing him back. The other two closed in, pointing their own weapons at Pendergast’s head.

“
Coloque suas maos no carro!
” the first man yelled, spinning Pendergast around and pushing him against the pickup. While the other two covered him, the man frisked Pendergast for weapons. Then he opened the nearest rear door of the pickup.

“
Entre
,” he said roughly.

When Pendergast did nothing but blink in the bright sunlight, the man took him by the shoulders and propelled him into the rear seat. The other two followed, one on each side, weapons still pointed. The first man slid into the front passenger seat; the driver put the pickup into gear, and they shot away down the dingy street, raising a cloud of dust that completely obscured their departure.

O
ne of the duty cops stuck his head into D’Agosta’s office. “Loo? You’ve got a call waiting. Somebody named Spandau.”

“Can you take a message? I’m in the middle of something here.”

“He says it’s important.”

D’Agosta looked over at Sergeant Slade, sitting in his visitor’s chair. He was, if anything, grateful for the interruption. Slade, Angler’s errand boy, had stopped in at Angler’s request to “liaise” on their two cases, the Museum murder and the dead body on Pendergast’s doorstep. Just how much Angler knew about what the two cases had in common, D’Agosta wasn’t sure… the man was playing his cards close. And so was Slade. But they wanted copies of all the case files—everything—and they wanted them now. D’Agosta didn’t like Slade… and it wasn’t just the disgusting licorice toffee he was so fond of. For some reason, he reminded D’Agosta of the toady of a schoolboy who, if he saw you doing something wrong, would tell the teacher as a way of currying favor. But D’Agosta also knew Slade to be clever and resourceful, which only made it worse.

D’Agosta held the phone up. “Sorry. I’d better take this. Might be a while. I’ll check in with you later.”

Slade glanced at him, at the duty cop, and stood up. “Sure.” He left the office, trailing an aroma of licorice behind him.

D’Agosta watched him walk away and lifted the phone to his ear. “What’s going on? Has our boy recovered his marbles?”

“Not exactly,” came Spandau’s matter-of-fact tone down the line.

“What is it, then?”

“He’s dead.”

“
Dead?
How? I mean, the guy looked sick, but not
that
sick.”

“One of the guards found him in his cell, not half an hour ago. Suicide.”

Suicide. This case was a ball-buster. “Jesus, I can’t believe this.” Frustration put an edge to his voice that he didn’t intend. “Didn’t you have a suicide watch on him?”

“Of course. The full works: padded cell, leather restraints, fifteen-minute rotations. Just after the last check, he struggled out of the restraints—broke a collarbone in the process—bit off the big toe of his left foot, and then… choked on it.”

For a moment, D’Agosta was shocked into silence.

“I tried calling Agent Pendergast,” Spandau went on. “When I couldn’t reach him, I called you.”

It was true: Pendergast had vanished into thin air again. It was infuriating—but D’Agosta wasn’t going to think about that now. “Okay. Did he ever get lucid?”

“Just the opposite. After you left, what little lucidity he had vanished. He kept raving, saying the same things over and over.”

“What things?”

“You heard some of it. He kept mentioning a smell—rotting flowers. He stopped sleeping, was making a racket day and night. He’d been complaining about pain, too; not a localized pain, but something that seemed to affect his whole body. After you left, it grew worse. The prison doctor did some tests, administered meds, but nothing seemed to help. They couldn’t diagnose it. In the last twenty-four hours, he really started to go downhill. Nonstop raving, moaning, crying. I was making arrangements to have him transferred to the facility hospital when word of his death reached me.”

D’Agosta fetched a deep breath; let out a long, slow sigh.

“The autopsy is scheduled for later today. I’ll send you the report when I get it. Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”

“If I think of something, I’ll let you know.” And as an afterthought: “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t have better news for you.” And the line went dead with a click.

D’Agosta leaned back in his chair. As he did so, his eyes moved slowly—unwillingly—to the stack of files that covered his desk, all of which had to be copied for Slade.

Great. Just frigging great.