City of God (48 page)

Peering over a wall with his left eye, Tiny identified his enemies. There were nine of them. He thought they could surround them and kill them all at once. Knockout would be his – he'd put a bullet through the middle of his forehead with the rifle. He now knew the secrets of the weapon. Imagining he was a general, under the effects of the dope he'd smoked beforehand, he organised the ambush in a near whisper.

‘Look, we've gotta take out Tiny, Slick, Bicky and Russian Mouse as soon as we can, right? They're the most dangerous, but we can't forget about the pawns 'cos they all wanna get in Tiny's good books, know what I'm saying? We've gotta go in through Gabinal Road, 'cos they probably think we're gonna hit through Red Hill, OK man?' said Carrots, oblivious to the ambush.

Nervous and ready for action, the soldiers were waiting for Tiny's first shot before they attacked their enemies. Examining a pistol that the father of one of Tiny's murder victims had given
him as a present, Knockout fired several shots into the air. And the shootout began. Knockout saw two of his allies fall to the ground writhing. Carrots skilfully shot an enemy and jumped over the nearest wall, which he then used as a shelter from which to fire. Knockout ran into the middle of the square firing with both hands. Tiny levelled the rifle, took aim at Knockout's head, held his breath, fired and missed. Luckily for his opponent, the rifle jammed. Tiny's shot rang out and frightened the members of Knockout's gang, who beat a quick retreat to the Two-Storey Houses, where they ran into Blubber, Slick and Night Owl. Two were grazed by bullets and another keeled over dead with one of Slick's bullets in his head.

Knockout pointed both the revolver and the pistol at Tiny and walked towards him with his tongue in the corner of his mouth, staring, which perplexed Tiny. The bastard wasn't even afraid of rifles. When one of Knockout's bullets whistled past his left ear, he turned and ran. Knockout turned to face the members of his enemy's gang still cowering there, and shot at them, forcing them to disband.

Bicky, Russian Mouse and Beep-Beep managed to corner Steak-and-Chips. They grabbed the boy's gun and took him to a place far from the combat zone, beating him as they went.

‘Kill 'im and get it over with!' ordered Russian Mouse.

‘No, if he tells us where Knockout holes up, we'll let 'im go …' lied Bicky.

‘Get fucked, you son of a bitch … I ain't tellin' you fuck all.'

Tiny appeared with Black Stump. Bicky, infuriated by Steak-and-Chips' response, ordered him to the ground. The boy said he'd die standing, because real men died standing. A single tear slid down his smooth face. That's how tough guys cry – the only thing that changes at the hour of death is a tear. Black Stump hit him over the head with the butt of his gun and said:

‘One way or another you're goin' down.'

Steak-and-Chips fell to the ground unconscious. Bicky asked Tiny for the rifle, placed the barrel in the boy's mouth and fired eight times, moving the barrel of the rifle in a circle so he'd never again insult his mother. Then Black Stump stabbed him repeatedly so he'd never again disobey his orders. The boy's body was reduced to a mass of bloody pulp.

Knockout sent for candles and lit them himself around the bodies of his men. Steak-and-Chips' mother's nervous breakdown, as she tried to gather up the parts of his head splattered across the ground, looked like an epileptic fit. Knockout felt responsible for that horror. A piece of Steak-and-Chips' head on one side of the alley, one of his eyes sitting there intact, as if looking at him, small pieces of bloody flesh scattered about, and only the bottom of his head attached to his neck. The previously deserted streets filled with people in an instant. Mothers crying over their children's bodies.

Over in The Flats, the atmosphere was festive: just one casualty. Bicky bragged about how he'd blown Steak-and-Chips' head to smithereens. Tiny praised him, bought him beers, put his arm around him, said he was the coolest guy in the gang, hoping to encourage the other pawns.

For the next few days, Knockout was not seen on the streets. In hiding at Carrots' place, he saw his name in all the newspapers; he, Tiny, Night Owl, Slick and Carrots were even mentioned on TV. The reports said the war was over dens. When Tiny found out his name was in all the newspapers, he was so excited that he got Russian Mouse – the only member of the gang who could read and write – to read him the newspapers every morning. Russian Mouse said they only had to read the police pages, but Tiny insisted that he read every section of every newspaper in the city, including the classifieds, hoping to find his name. The police
patrolled Up Top and The Flats day and night for the rest of the week.

To Knockout's surprise, he received overwhelming support from the residents Up Top. After the deaths of some of their men, new allies appeared – people he didn't even know offered to do him favours and reported where they'd seen Tiny's men. Men from the Two-Storey Houses and the Short-Stay Houses also joined his gang. But they were unarmed – there weren't enough revolvers or ammunition to go around. Mousetrap suggested a gun shop in Madureira, saying it would be a piece of cake to do. If they had three more partners they could trust, they'd land themselves a lot of guns. Carrots promised to help, as did Hairy Beast and Turtle.

The robbery didn't yield enough guns for the entire gang, but half of the twenty-six men were armed. Carrots took it upon himself to get the ammunition. They decided to take Tiny's den Up Top to raise the money to buy weapons. Carrots also thought it a good idea to take over Slick's den in Block Thirteen. They needed to dominate the parts of the
favela
where there were houses because, if they managed to pull it off, it would then be easier to take The Flats, since Block Thirteen was strategically located in relation to Tiny's area.

One Friday at two in the morning, Knockout and Carrots led eighteen men through fine rain and deserted streets to attack Block Thirteen. They were hoping to find Slick working the den.

They headed down the street that ran along the right branch of the river, crossed the small bridge, passed Augusto Magne School and reached the Nut Cracker, where they planned the raid. They split up: one group took the street where the kindergarten was and the other crossed Middle Street. They
entered a square parallel to the Block Thirteen Short-Stay Houses and, at 2.15, broke into them as planned. Everything was deserted. They searched high and low, but found nothing. All of a sudden, a shootout began. From a rooftop, Slick, Butterfly and My Man hit two of Knockout's allies, fatally wounding them. Then, from other rooftops, the rest of the gang began shooting at the invaders, who took off in fright when they heard the machine-gun fire.

Predicting that Carrots might be plotting to take Block Thirteen, Slick had armed his assistant and put two lookouts around the Rec day and night. One of them had seen Knockout arriving with his men and ran to tell Slick.

Carrots and Knockout were now the enemies of two gangs.

Butterfly, My Man, Butterfly's brother Moth, Two-Wheeler, Foxy and Earthquake were Slick's main allies. Gangsters since childhood, they were streetwise and held up buses, homes and pedestrians. They and Slick commanded twenty kids with a similar background to their own. Truth to tell, they weren't all that fond of the members of Tiny's gang. But they'd join forces with them to safeguard the den, which was, after all, on their turf, even if they didn't have a share in its profits. The gang was made up of brothers, brothers-in-law, friends, cousins and childhood friends. Two of the members were Niftyfeet's kids and one was Hellraiser's only son. Knockout would have to fight a clan.

Furious at having lost the den Up Top, Tiny and the gang from Block Thirteen showed themselves to be superior in weaponry and men in another two raids. They killed two of their enemies and sent the rest of the gang running for their lives. At the shops, Tiny spoke in a loud voice and cursed Knockout, as he desperately snorted coke, then suddenly turned to Slick and said:

‘Call the gun guy, call ‘im, go on … Tell 'im to get his arse over here now.'

In less than an hour, the gun supplier was at the shops. Without greeting him, Tiny demanded:

‘I want ten of the most up-to-date shooters you got, right? The sort they're usin' in the Falklands War. Send me ten 'cos I'm gonna blast the shit out of everythin'. I want the ones that you fire like this and the bullet goes after the bastard until it gets ‘im. Bring me that kind!'

‘What's this about shooters from the Falklands, man?'

‘It was in the paper, Russian Mouse read it to me … Ain't that right, Russian Mouse?'

‘Yeah. It's this type of rifle that's really fuckin' powerful!'

‘It's gonna be hard to get my hands on them.'

‘I don't give a shit! I want that rifle, right? I'll pay whatever you want.'

‘I ain't got that sort.'

A week later, the supplier had only managed to get one machine gun and five sawn-off shotguns from a civil policeman.

Knockout's gang also grew, but its new members were practically children and had never handled guns. Even without them, they went to the front line as scouts or got together just to scare their enemies in Block Thirteen with pieces of wood tucked into their waistbands and toy revolvers. They'd creep up to the enemy zone to swear and throw stones, then run back when fired at.

Knockout's decision to move from the
favela
was completely forgotten after his first attack on Tiny. He'd learned to kill and even found it easy. Besides, killing a gangster wasn't a sin – on the contrary, he was doing the locals a favour in sending those no-goods off to the Devil. He wasn't leaving with his tail between his legs, because he wasn't the one who'd gone looking for
trouble. He was going to avenge his grandfather, his ex-girl-friend's rape and the deaths of his friends killed in combat. His mother entreated him to place everything in God's hands and tried to make him abandon his foolish ideas of revenge, because only the Lord can judge us. She begged him to resign himself to the truth in the face of the test placed in his path by the Lord. When she didn't manage to convince him, she threw herself into prayer at the Assembly of God Church, together with her husband and others of the congregation. Faced with the possibility that Tiny might storm his house, Knockout gave his brother Antunes a pistol and always left two of his allies on guard in the area, day and night.

Antunes had also given up his job. He slept little, didn't leave the house, and was alert, always alert, like a scout. He'd taken it upon himself to help Knockout in everything he needed, because he believed in the justice his brother was seeking and would support him to the end. Since he was out of work, Knockout found himself obliged to carry out his first hold-up. He went through with it, but told his partners not to shoot anyone under any circumstances. But on his third job he was surrounded by several security guards, and ended up having to kill one of them during the getaway.

Carrots was against doing hold-ups because it was dangerous. Again he offered half of his den's profits. Knockout accepted because he knew that the risk of killing innocent people in hold-ups was very high. Faced with the options, he decided that selling drugs was the safest. Besides, people only bought drugs if they wanted to.

One Saturday, Tiny's entire gang went to attack Up Top. Otávio stayed at the shops in The Flats to take care of the den. Scrawny and short, he could barely handle the weight of the pistol. He'd recently been promoted from errand boy and was happy
with his new position as assistant. He laughed at anything and everything and made a point of showing off the pistol and a plastic bag containing bundles of dope and wraps of cocaine. He sat on a chair in a bar in the shops and ordered a beer, having hidden the drugs under a rock. He lit a cigarette, gulped his beer down, ordered another one, colder this time, and drank it in the same manner. Elated, he greeted everyone that went past, whistled at women, and bought sweets for the children under a relentless sun.

The traffic flowed down Gabinal Road towards Barra da Tijuca beach. Hundreds of cars went past on sunny mornings. Highwayman and his friends had piled up dozens of paving stones by the edge of the road. They did this because they only had two revolvers. They knew Tiny could give them a hard time for staging a hold-up there, but feeling they had no alternative, the nine Empty Pockets threw the paving stones at nine cars all at once, then waited for the drivers to lose control so they could hold them up. They smashed in the heads of a man and two women, killing them in their first and only attack, and took everything they could in a matter of minutes. Everything had been planned by Highwayman, who'd got up early and left home forever the morning after he was beaten up by his stepfather for arriving home with no money. He'd started sleeping at friends' houses or on the street. He didn't join Tiny's gang because he didn't like taking orders. Of the five revolvers he'd got in a house robbery, Tiny had confiscated three. The plan was to hold up the cars, head through The Flats to the bush, and come out at Quintanilha, where Tube, another gang member, had rented a shack. Otávio spied them during the getaway. At gunpoint, he made them stop, took them behind Building Seven, took the loot and money from the hold-up as well as their two guns, and hit the kids his own age. Satisfied with
his work, he let out a little laugh. He ordered them to put their noses against the wall and their hands up until Tiny got there.

Two hours of shooting in the alleys Up Top. Tiny killed another of Knockout's allies. There were now fifty of his men against thirty-five hiding in the bush. The superiority of Tiny's gang in terms of weapons grew with the Block Thirteen gang on their side. His men fought with two revolvers each. Slick had a machine gun, Tiny had the rifle, and his five main soldiers had the sawn-off shotguns. In the bush, some of Knockout's men were taking turns with a single revolver. Even Knockout beat a retreat. The only man killed was riddled with almost one hundred bullets in the Soviet-style attack that Tiny so enjoyed: the whole gang stood around the body and fired two bullets all at the same time.