Gringa

Book 2: São Paulo Quartet

by Joe Thomas

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

'As vibrant, colourful and complex as South America's largest city'

São Paulo, 2013: a city at an extraordinary moment in its history.

Mario Leme, a detective in the civil police, has developed a friendship with a young English investigative journalist, Ellie. When she goes to meet a contact in central São Paulo, Mario observes from the street as she walks into a building and doesn't come out. Inside, he discovers the dead body of a young man he doesn't recognise, and Ellie's phone lying on the floor.

Told partly from Leme's point of view, partly from Ellie's, Gringa takes us through five days during the redevelopment of the centre of Sao Paulo in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup. Ellie's disappearance links characters at every level of the social hierarchy, from the drug dealers and civil and military police to the political class she witnesses the feral brutality of urban breakdown.

Gringa, with shades of Don Winslow and James Ellroy, is a portrait of São Paulo

in all its harshness and dysfunction, its corruption and social divisions, its kaleidoscopic dynamism, its undercurrent of derangement, and its febrile, sensual instability, executed with a deep knowledge of the city's a

PRAISE FOR JOE THOMAS

'Brilliant' The Times
'Feverish energy' Guardian
'Wonderfully vivid' Mail on Sunday
'Sophisticated, dizzying' GQ
'Vivid and visceral' The Times
'Superbly realised vivid and atmospheric' Guardian
'Original' Mail on Sunday
'A stylish, atmospheric treat an inspired blend of David Peace and early Pinter' Irish Times
'Sparse, energetic, fragmented prose' The Spectator
'Vibrant, colourful, and complex' Irish Independent
'Stylish, sharp-witted, taut. A must for modern noir fans' NB Magazine
'Definitive confident and energetic' Crime Time
'Brilliant manic energy' Jake Arnott
'Wildly stylish and hugely entertaining' Lucy Caldwell
'Vivid, stylish, funny' Mick Herron
'Gripping, fast-paced, darkly atmospheric' Susanna Jones
'Snappy, thoughtful, moving' John King
'Exciting, fresh, incredibly assured' Stav Sherez
'Happy days!' Mark Timlin
'Utterly brilliant' Cathi Unsworth
'Had James Ellroy and David Peace collaborated on a novel they'd have written something like this' Paul Willets

Release date: February 15, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 348

Sample

Paraisópolis Favela, Central São Paulo

Late spring 2012, a little after midnight

Dragging a piece of shit favela-fuck dealer out the back of a car through Paraisópolis for a few minutes didn’t, it turned out, kill him. There were six of them in the ride along. Five military police and this guy Leme, a detective with the civil lot. Two vehicles. The driver of the first – a young recruit – pulled over. The car behind did the same.

The young militar driver kept an eye. Wing mirror. There he was, the little fuck – pulled out from behind the second pimped-up SUV. Alive, yes. Just.

Shaking. Groaning. Swaying all over the place – light-headed, dazed. Poor cunt.

Gold tooth glint. Dreadlocks. Cheap, dirty T-shirt. Shorts.

Mate, you are well and truly, entendeu? the young militar thought.

The other five bounced – engines killed, doors slammed.

‘Vamos, caralho!’

The dealer was muscled inside.

They were high up in Paraisópolis – a militar favela safe house. Dust and brick. A hollowed-out Beetle in front. Corrugated doors squeaked shut. The lights around them dipped and throbbed as the electricity growled down illegally tapped cables. Cicada-silence. The slum bumped down steep either side. Circled by condominium-wealth, balconies and pools, barbecues and tennis courts.

The young militar nervous – scared by what he was seeing.

‘Stay down here, certo?’ Carlos – his senior in the military police. Could be a bit of a nasty bastard, old Carlos.

No argument.

What next?

He didn’t want to know. He’d sit tight and keep an eye.

They hustled the kid into a favela shack.

That Polícia Civil stooge Leme – Carlos's friend – went too.

What next?

Nothing but keep your finger on the trigger of an automatic and hope to fuck no boys from the PCC drug gang appear out of the slum gloom.

Eyes – peeled. That's all there is to it.

Nada mais. Do what you’re told.

The young militar waited. He scoped the favela. They were there because of Leme, Carlos's contact. Leme's wife had been killed by a bala perdida, a stray bullet, a year before, he’d heard, and Carlos had a tip – the unfortunate little fuck they’d just bundled into the shack. Two birds situation, then, right? Running a favour for a friend and ridding the favela of one of their less productive, less civic-minded residents. The old middle-class attitude to heavy-handed policing: menos um – one less crook.

The young militar didn’t care to know exactly what was going on in the shack above him, but it didn’t sound like great fun for old Gold Teeth. Maybe they were just going to put the frighteners on him, send him away, into the city proper, exile on fucking Main Street, entendeu? That was how old Carlos always described it. The young militar didn’t get the reference, but he got the gist.

He heard water splash, muffled thumps, the sounds of a struggle. He knew the drill. Plastic bag over the head, filling with his blood. Bucket of water to bring him back. Then the bag again. And whatever else they could find. In a shit-show like the empty shack they’d picked out, he imagined broken furniture. Chair legs. Collapsed shelves. Kitchen utensils, if there were any lying around. Can do a lot of damage with a spatula of a certain size. Porra, the young militar thought. When did this get so fucking routine, eh?

Routine, but still scared. One thing to normalise a beating, but another to be the guy making sure you’re not caught doing it. There's your fear: flip-flops and assault rifles snaking up the favela, and, in a shudder, a flash, it's done, acabou, ciao.

So he kept an eye. And waited. He counted – seconds, blows, rounds of violence.

Fuck this, he thought. Vamos, Carlão, let's go, ne?

His finger tight on the trigger.

His eyes tight. His chest tight. His mouth tight.

Come on, caralho.

This Leme character had better be grateful. Polícia Civil pussy, needing us to sort out his little domestic.

OK, he thought, chega. Two minutes and I’m going up there. This ain’t worth the risk.

Then: a door slamming. Old Carlos skipping down steps.

‘Drive, porra,’ he barked at the young militar.

Carlos and Leme in the back. The young militar checked the wing mirror. The others coming down more slowly, checking the perimeter, loading up the second SUV.

‘Vamos, ne, caralho.’ Carlos was leaning back, looking behind him.

The young militar gunned the engine, lurched forward, then left, aimed the SUV at the bottom of the favela pit. Lights off. Ghosting down the half-roads in a fast creep, smooth, in and out of the corners, avoiding the pockets of activity at this time of night: one or two bars still open, the odd drunk yelling injustice, the odd playboy popping into a boca de fuma to score, the odd puta whore winding back home after a house visit up the hill. Eyes – peeled. Nada.

It was quiet and dark. The half-houses closed up for the night. The window-gaps in the brick half-filled by dirty blankets – bedtime. The air still thick with the stale smell of stewed beans and cheap pork. No rain that night and the air heavy, not yet ready to crack.

The young militar knew a quiet route out, straight into the thick vegetation at the edge of the favela. A road half-buried under yawning, aching trees and shrubbery. No one there even during the day. The SUV popped, and there they were, out, and round the corner from Leme's apartment building.

He eyed the rear-view mirror. Carlos and this Leme were talking quietly. Old Carlos had his arm round him. Reassurance. Leme sat stoic – said nothing. Eyes down – face downcast.

Carlos kept up the quiet chat – nodding. Leme – nothing.

The young militar pulled into Leme's condominium building and waited for Carlos to give him instructions.

He thought: what's with this Leme pussy? Some kid-dealer gets ironed out and he's got a fucking conscience? The same kid-dealer put a bullet in his wife. What goes around, bitch, entendeu?

Whatever. The young militar was breathing, and at this point that's all that mattered to him.

He heard Carlos say: ‘It's over now, you can move forward. And you can trust my boys, sabe? Good kids. Staunch as fuck. This goes no further.’

The young militar nodded to himself. That much is certainly true.

Leme hopped from the car and dragged his feet home.

Carlos watched him. Satisfied Leme was through the doors, Carlos turned.

‘Embora, cara,’ he said. ‘Let's get a fucking burger. We’ve earned it, ne?’

The young militar gunned the engine, smiling.

São Paulo, Marginal Freeway

15 October, morning rush hour

Leme's phone yapped. He checked the traffic ahead and behind. His borrowed car was landlocked on the Marginal. Boxed in – tight. He leaned forward, unstuck his back from the leather and fished his phone from his bag.

Text message from Ellie, the English girl:

I know you’re following me, detective ;) xx

Porra. Ellie was right though: he was following her. He could see her head through the taxi's back window, a few cars in front.

She was too busy enjoying herself to turn around and wave. Leme concentrated on the road.

The traffic flexed and settled, stopped, black exhaust belching from trucks. He lurched forward alongside the river.

River –

More like an open sewer, dark, ghostly men fishing out rubbish ?

Industrial waste baked in the heat, the stink drifting in through his open windows.

No air-con – hot as fuck inside this rust bucket, Leme sweating something fierce.

He’d bummed this piece of shit car from a funcionario kook who worked in his building.

The kook loved to help when Leme was on a case. Leme fed him stories.

Leme told him: ‘Always good to rotate cars when you’re looking for a dead body’

‘Bit hot to be looking for a corpse,’ the kook said.

Leme agreed. The very idea of it, decaying. Melting –

Migraine-heavy.

Leme popped two aspirin, dry.

He was angling out towards São Paulo's international airport, following the English girl, the journalist. She had a tip she’d said, a contact she was meeting, and she wanted him there –

You never quite knew with her.

The traffic eased and Leme floored it, keeping the taxi close. He passed the cavernous all-you-can-eat meat restaurants, the love motels with their discreet entrances, their Greek statues and their heart-shaped advertising boards, the Evangelical churches, like neon-lit, God-sponsored aircraft hangars.

And everything you need:

Meat, sex and religion

Order and progress

No surprise the gringos loved it here so much. And Ellie was one of them.

The taxi bent right and into the city, round towards Lapa and the crawl back into the centre. Leme followed and there was Ellie, waving this time. Moving her head from side to side as if she were laughing at him, opening her mouth, he thought, delighted by all this.

‘Puta que pariu,’ he muttered and grinned.

Leme loved this girl. She was a hoot. Menina louca: real wild-child type.

He had met her, what, a year earlier? A young journalist – twenty-two? Twenty-three? He wasn’t sure – working for one of those cultural magazines that had started to delve into investigative political reporting now the World Cup and Olympics were coming up, not to mention the election. She’d been a friend of the victim of Leme's last murder case. And Ellie had been helpful. She was nuts, for sure, but she was well-intentioned and surprisingly resourceful for a gringa who’d been here only a year and a half.

His phone. Ellie again:

Try and keep up, querido xx

She seemed to think it was her right, her duty as a journalist or something, to pester Leme at his office in the delegacia, as if by getting involved in whatever he was doing, she would be helping him.

And another message buzzed in:

We’re stopping.

Leme watched the taxi roughly pull into a parking spot by a small, neighbourhood lanchonete restaurant. A few manual workers sat at the bar and tut-tutted in appreciation when they saw Ellie's white legs swing out of the car.

Leme breathed heavily –

Here we go.

He wondered what it might be this time. Too often with Ellie it was a hurricane in a glass of water. But there was something about her that always made him sit up –

You never did know.

He saw her take the table furthest from the bar and position herself so as to keep an eye on the entrance and exit.

Leme went to the bar and ordered a coffee. He felt the looks of the workers slide off him. ‘Policial, vai se foder,’ he heard someone whisper. Old Bill, you can go fuck yourself. He stared at the bar, challenging who’d said it to meet his eye.

No one did. More tut-tutting, tongue-clicking ?

Leme caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the counter. He did look like a fucking cop. He sipped at his coffee, deliberate, slow. He looked straight ahead. He felt sweat prick at the back of his neck. He was nervous but couldn’t work out why exactly. Anticipation or anxiety, being in a strange place with strange people.

A young man came in and paused before heading over to where Ellie was sitting. Leme studied him in the mirror. He was handsome. He was cheekboned and tanned, relaxed. He wore expensive soft leather shoes. He was dressed in navy blue cotton trousers and white shirt, rolled up to the elbows.

He wore a middle-class uniform –

Playboy masquerading as a cuntman:

None of the shiny, cheap polyester of the boys from the favela who had managed to land a job in an office. There was confidence in the way he sat and ordered.

And his hair: it wasn’t styled or sculpted –

Just an expensive-looking cut.

This was rare in the young men Leme had any contact with. He thought: pretty style king.

The workers rubbernecking, twisting on their stools trying to get a look.

Ellie and the man chatted for a few minutes. Once or twice she caught Leme's eye in the mirror and opened her mouth and eyes wide as if to say, ‘Gosh, aren’t I naughty!’ Leme looked away each time. The man didn’t notice. The angle was such that he couldn’t have.

He drank his coffee in one go, and pushed a piece of paper and what looked like a Carteira de Trabalho, the official employment document, across the table to Ellie. He kissed her, ran a finger along her arm and bit his lip, stepped out of the lanchonete, lit a cigarette and got into his car.

Leme noted the number plate. The car was a Ford, a Fiesta, Leme thought, and it looked old: the windows weren’t tinted and it needed a clean. Normally, if you could afford a car like that, you added in the precautionary blacked-out windows, and you had it cleaned every couple of weeks.

Or you had your maid do it.

The car didn’t quite match the man, and Leme thought that it was probably deliberate.

‘Hello, stranger,’ Ellie said in English as Leme sat down at her table.

Dust kicked up from the road as a truck shuddered past. Ellie waved for more coffee. Angled her cup at Leme in a question. He nodded. She lifted two fingers and snagged the barman, who, in response, raised his eyebrows. The barman shrugged, and smiled. She had that effect on men –

Leme was coming to realise this.

‘You’re hardly a stranger, Ellie,’ he said.

The coffee arrived. The barman placed Ellie's in front of her, tucking a napkin under the saucer. He dumped Leme's on the table so that it spilled slightly and stained the sides of the cup. Leme used his finger to stop it dripping onto the table. He licked it. He looked at the documents on the table and nodded at the door through which the man had left.

‘So,’ he said, in Portuguese. ‘That was your contact, then. He didn’t look very threatening.’

‘Not quite, querido.’

Leme looked at his watch. Still early. His partner Lisboa wouldn’t be at the delegacia for another two hours at least. He could afford this, even if it came to nothing.

‘So who was the kid then?’ Leme asked.

‘Kid? You jealous, detective? He's the one giving me the contact's details,’ Ellie said. She shifted in her seat, serious now. ‘He's a lawyer, but, you know, one of those humanitarian ones, not like that corporate hussy girlfriend of yours.’ Leme let that pass. ‘And he's been working with a social housing group, trying to help the residents in Cracolândia.’ She paused. Made a face that said gosh, danger. ‘You know about that, right?’ she said.

Leme nodded. Of course he did. Crackland. The isolated blocks in the centre of São Paulo where the addicts – the noias, as they were known, the paranoid hophead fuckheads – and down-and-outs lived.

Ellie was right to make that face: it was not a place to visit.

Leme had been there as a young recruit and it was how he imagined the end of the world might look. Hollow-eyed, desperate, emaciated, toothless addicts slumped in the doorways of broken-down shacks with plastic sheets for roofs, lying on corners.

And then the prowling, sharp-eyed young men carrying guns in their belts, barking instructions –

Every man for himself and God for all.

Leme had a cop friend who took a spark there, way back when: shivved, whacked up something nasty. Tetanus and other shots were the thing: you didn’t know where that knife had been.

Leme touched the table. ‘And these?’ Meaning the documents.

Ellie picked them up. ‘The details, detective? Just a name and an address.’ She showed Leme the paper. ‘Leandro Bastos. And a phone number, his, I assume. The address is in Paraíso.’

Leme nodded.

‘And this is his Carteira do Trabalho,’ Ellie said. ‘Which he gave me to prove Leandro's credibility, you know, prove he's a good contact, that he does actually work at the company. They keep them at work, for these intern types. So he says. Can’t think why.’ She pushed it across the table. ‘I have to give it back.’

Leme could think why. It helps control them.

Leme flicked through the passport-sized book and found the photo of Leandro. He was a young black man of about twenty with a thin goatee beard and a serious expression on his face. Leme turned the pages until he found the employment records. One job only. And still doing it, according to the book. Leme checked the salary amounts and holiday allowance. Fuck all. It wasn’t quite slave labour, but it wasn’t far off.

‘You know this company?’ Leme asked, showing Ellie the name in the Carteira.

‘Uh-huh,’ Ellie said. She jerked her thumb towards the door. ‘The lovely Fernando works there too. Rather more senior, entendeu?’ She smiled.

The lovely Fernando, Leme thought. He said, ‘And how do you know him?’

‘You know,’ Ellie said.

Leme thought he could probably guess ?

The first time he’d met Ellie properly, she’d told him about her latest boyfriend.

‘And I said to him,’ she’d laughed, ‘“Thank God for that. My last boyfriend's cock was so big I had cystitis pretty much constantly.”’

She’d laughed louder.

‘I’m kidding, caralho.’

Then she’d paused, drunk down the rest of her beer, and said, ‘Well, sort of. You know.’

Leme liked her a lot.

She had an electric and restless enthusiasm that kicked something off in him that he hadn’t felt for a while: a desire to work.

She was efficient, but playful, didn’t seem to take anything too seriously. This was very important to Leme; it made dealing with the sorts of crimes he did bearable.

More bearable.

‘Então,’ he said. ‘Why am I here? You seem awfully relaxed.’

‘Ah,’ she said, with impressive Brazilian intonation, ‘I don’t know exactly what we’ll find, to be honest. I called you for – what? – protection, entendeu? As young Leandro here is going to show me something. Which means – as you’re following me, you weirdo – he's going to show you something too. We’re going to his place. Know it?’

Leme nodded and looked back to where he was parked. ‘I do. Thing is, your taxi's gone.’

Ellie arched an eyebrow. ‘No, it hasn’t,’ she smiled.

She slid a ten reais note under the bill and secured it under the napkin dispenser.

‘Called multitasking,’ she said and she stood and grabbed Leme's hand.

‘Come on.’

They feathered their way towards the city centre, the traffic lighter.

Ellie sat in the back. ‘In case anyone sees us,’ she’d said, you’re my driver.’

Leme knew she just enjoyed playing, talking to him when he couldn’t properly examine her face as she spoke. She enjoyed the proprietary dynamic. Why not? This was a better morning than he’d had in a while.

Not for the first time he wondered what the fuck Ellie was really doing in São Paulo.

She did seem to like it though, he thought, seemed to thrive on the chaos, on that tension and violence where luxury meets despair. He remembered her saying something like that herself. He’d dismissed it as a writerly affectation: she wasn’t a war reporter, though she apparently thought she was.

The magazine she wrote for was in English, and not widely circulated. It was aimed at expats, and Paulistanos who felt superior enough to buy English press. But, as Ellie remarked, the website was part of the global publication brand, and so, theoretically at least, millions of people had access to her articles.

‘Doesn’t any website create that potential?’ Leme had said.

‘Not quite what I mean, stupid,’ she’d replied. But she didn’t bring it up again.

They cut towards Avenida Paulista up the hill from Pacaembu stadium, passing rich students who flirted in cafés.

Ellie scoured the pavements, wound down her window.

‘Looking for someone?’ Leme asked.

She closed the window. ‘How's ... Antonia?’ she said.

Leme eyed her in the rear-view mirror. ‘She's very well.’

‘Very well? Oh. How nice. Must be nice to have, you know, a girlfriend.’

‘It is very nice.’

‘Yes, it must be.’

‘It is. We’re moving in together, actually.’ Leme smiled.

‘Like I said...’

Ellie tap-tapped on her phone. ‘How long, do you think?’ she asked.

‘Fifteen minutes. Depends.’

She nodded and carried on tapping.

They reached Avenida Paulista, back in the heart of the city. She could have asked him to meet her here instead of teasing him into tailing her halfway out to the airport. Though she had no idea, presumably where this Leandro lived.

Paraíso. Where the fantasy of São Paulo – the wealthy, brimming capital of Latin America – disintegrates. It starts at the end of the slick, glass-fronted corporate strip of Avenida Paulista.

And disintegrates is the right word.

It's not even an especially poor neighbourhood.

But the contrast is sharp –

It falls away, either side of the hill, down from the main drag and into the burrows of the city.

Swank Jardins to one side, the American bars and cruising streets of Augusta and Frei Caneca on the other. Streets Leme knew he was lucky never to have to work again.

He crunched through the gears, doing an illegal turn to get off Paulista. A motorbike courier slapped his bonnet and swore. Leme ignored him.

He knew Parafso. He grew up across the way in Bela Vista. When he was a teenager he called the place by three names:

If he was with a girl, he lived in Jardins, played posh.

If he was with a student, a hipster-type, he lived in Bela Vista.

If he was with a mano, a brother, it was Bixiga.

Bixiga: the bladder of São Paulo.

Eye-talian canteens and rent-boy botecos.

‘Just here, I think,’ he said, aiming the car down a tiny side street off a steep hill.

Ellie stretched and yawned like a cat. She smiled at him in the mirror. ‘Just pull round in front and wait for me,’ she said. ‘Five minutes and I’m back for you. Don’t want to scare young Leandro off too early, now do we, entendeu?’

Leme jammed the brakes and pointed at a rusting, narrow gate, the number painted in a wobbly script. ‘That one. I’ll wait in the car.’

Ellie winked and skedaddled.

She knocked on the door. There were plastic bags of rubbish sweating to one side. She pushed a toe into one of them and it gave. She held her nose in an exaggerated gesture for Leme to see. Rubbish been there a while, he thought.

She knocked again. No one answered –

She turned and shrugged.

Fucksake, Leme muttered. . . .