A (true) scary story from Rio de Janeiro, for Halloween

We moved quickly without speaking across a darkened playground, wary of the empty streets but scrutinizing the attendant silence for any sign that we were followed.

Uneven pavement grabbed at our toes, disrupting our stride. It was well after three in the morning. Thoughts of fumbling once more at those four locked doors–previously a source of minor irritation and frequent teasing–became distressing and went unremarked. These were the midnight streets of Rio de Janeiro: the devil that might be behind may be no match for unknown devils lurking in the darkness.

We were fewer than five blocks from safety when the vehicles appeared.

They came in from our right, and they ran nose-to-bumper. The lead car’s headlights were dark until we came into view; then the lamps snapped on and the vehicle sped away. The second car pasted us with brights before flashing blue splashes ‘cross the pavement: a patrol car! The police! Now we had cause to be afraid.

***

Six hours before we had climbed up into a favela, thrilling in its own right, and fraught with its own risks; but this was Friday, so our obvious status as outsiders was cloaked beneath the heaving crowd. We walked uphill dodging mopeds, which came from in front and behind. One woman, whose inventiveness with nylon challenged the depths of my churning imagination, clambered onto the back of a man’s motorcycle, evidently a stranger, for she negotiated a fare as he carried her up the mountain. She sat sidesaddle.

We were to join a roof party, an oasis of relative safety on these gang-run and drug-addled streets, and when we left, we left sober and early; it was only 2 AM, the party just hitting its stride, but we had a difficult road home. We sought to be alert and clear of mind.

The moment we began our descent down this same roadway, our being Yankees became impossible to hide. Mopeds motored past, drivers shouting “Cocaína!” as loud and direct as the men selling bread outside our building every morning. “Co-co, co-cocaína!”

At bottom we waited for a passenger van called a kombi, which runs pre-set routes at a fixed fare. not unlike the dollar vans of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. We waited beneath the spread neon legs of the hotel Sinless.

The van arrived and its driver, a jovial, baby-faced man missing one tooth, roared at some joke my friend made. Next to him sat a colleague–a friend or fellow driver who comes along for the sake of security–and in the back were three or four other late-night commuters. All was going well.

We swept past the beach at Ipanema and then wound through the city, dropped at last near a central bus station. Like all such hubs this place crawled with unsavory characters. Small crowds milled about, chatting loudly and drinking; food vendors worked small grills as they argued with the drivers, who leaned on their van doors and swilled large cups of beer.

My friend asked one such driver about our destination. The man asked my friend a few questions, sipping occasionally from the beer in his hand. (A bottle of Johnnie Walker Red dangled by its neck from the other.)

He pointed us to a vehicle, and we climbed in.

The van had been scraped of its interior, save for the upholstery on the seats, and would not depart until those seats were full. We studied the wires visible beneath the dashboard, and the dented metal of the ceiling, and took bets as to whether the man who had pointed us to this van would also be its driver.

Half an hour later, nine or ten men filled the eight seats in the rear. Lo and behold, here came Johnnie Walker. The bottle entered first and was followed by the driver, who was joined by an associate in the front passenger seat.

My friend fielded every question put to us and I maintained my foreigner’s silence, permanently ignorant to the conversation.

We flew through red lights without honk or hesitation, whipped around corners, landed hard for every drop-offs. Jamming my shoulder into the van window was the only way to avoid assaulting my friend, who sat beside me.

The driver made jokes and asked questions as we hurtled down empty roadways, his eyes on us in the rearview mirror as often as they were on the street. His cohort only fiddle with the radio, silent and doleful. Nameless avenues with unmarked lanes lit in jaundiced yellow. Rio, I jotted in my notebook, is sprawl, scrawled.

Half the passengers had been disgorged when we ran into a snarl: the driver had slowed to catcall three girls, and when we rounded a bend we drove into a party, a block party with scores or even hundreds of people drinking and dancing. An army unit had arrived only moments before us and were gathered on the edges, shouldering their weapons and looking dubiously (or maybe with envy) upon the revelry they were about to end.

A young man in the crowd spoke rapidly to a young woman whose face was contorted in anger. The movement of the man’s hands suggested supplication, but then he jerked his shoulders forward and smashed his head into her mouth. The woman spun and reeled, and as she struggled to find her balance the young man kicked her hard across the thigh, knocking her legs out. Before her body hit the pavement our van had sped away.

The fare was three reals and I readied exact change for a quick, efficient exit.

When we stopped we stood beneath Carioca shopping center, fewer than fifteen minutes walking from home. As we exited the van I passed over my six reals.

“Twelve,” the driver responded, only in Portuguese. I grimaced but handed over another six reals.

“Twenty-four,” the driver smiled coldly. I couldn’t translate the number, but I sure knew he meant more. At this I balked, and my friend stepped over to lodge a gentle protest.

The driver’s smile vanished and his eyes clouded. With a sweep of his arm he hurled what sounded like an accusation. My friend’s response was immediate and curt. The driver moaned in disbelief and stepped out of the van.

Chills seized my stomach. Here it comes, my mind declared, picturing a knife or a pistol or a truncheon. When his hands came into view though they were empty–but they could curl into fists. He was not a small man.

A string of spittle-dripping words flew from the man’s mouth, and his associate (henchman, my mind now proclaimed) continued to wordlessly fiddle with the radio. My friend answered every charge and question in an even, steady tone, speaking quietly but firmly.

I could only stand there, trying hard (and probably failing) to look calm, unflappable, stoic, self-possessed and capable of defending myself physically. (For this I attempted to channel my brother, who is all of these.) Then my friend turned abruptly on his heel and walked away.

The driver goggled. I squinted narrowly and then turned to follow, feet steady but heart racing. The driver swore and hollered after us. A door was opened and slammed shut; then came the roar of an engine and the pealing of wheels. The kombi shot past us and disappeared into the night.

“Let’s get off the main drag,” I suggested, relieved to at last be able to contribute, and my friend agreed at once. After skirting the shopping center we darted down a side street and cut across that darkened playground.

***

Immediately after the lead car drove off and the patrol car bathed us in lights, a third vehicle appeared at our left. It was the kombi.

Two cops exited the patrol car. The first, a hulking, hairless man, spoke only once, and not to us: “Eu aposto que você nunca dormem!” “I’ll bet you never sleep!” This he shouted at a passing prostitute, who responded with two sharp words and continued walking. After this he stood in silence, staring at us and chewing on gum, a semi-automatic rifle slung across his billboard chest.

The second cop was smaller in build and wore wire-rimmed glasses, which, apart from his bundle of body armor, gave him the appearance of a graduate student. He left his rifle on the hood of the patrol car and demanded our passports, which we handed over.

The driver of the kombi exited the van and began to make complaints. He pleaded and cajoled, pointing at us and to his van. The cop ignored him and studied our passports.

“Você não falam Português?” he asked me.

“No,” I responded, understanding this at least.

“Qual é seu nome?” he asked me in Portuguese anyway, and I told him my name in full, exactly as it is written in my passport. Grimacing, the cop turned to my friend and spoke with disgust. “Eu não consigo entender uma coisa foda, ele diz.”

No kidding, buddy.

A debate raged on in Portuguese, with the driver whinging, the student-cop lecturing, my friend patiently explaining, the big cop leering, the henchman fiddling with the radio and me standing there, silent and useless. The driver insisted he had gone out of his way and that he was owed more money. We were robbing him! We were treating his van like a taxi! The least we owed him was four times the fare.

For nearly half an hour questions were put to answers, and vice versa. Then at one definite moment the driver’s prodding appeared to pierce the patience of the small cop, who turned to the driver with a pointed question.

The pressure shifted: I could feel it. The driver backed away and his tone became conciliatory. He gestured haplessly at us but the cop was having none of it. My friend spoke to me in quick, quiet English: “This is good. Just stay calm. Things are turning in our favor.” I nodded, but my eyes stayed on my passport, which was still in the hands of the cop.

The driver made one last plea before returning to his seat. The cop, I later learned, had asked to see papers for the kombi and, since the van was probably operated illegally, the driver had decided to drop his argument and leave, bottle of whiskey  and henchman in tow.

The small cop looked at us with flashing eyes and spoke a series of careful phrases to my patient friend, who then turned to me.

“He wants you to repeat what I say to you.”

“Okay.”

“‘X’ is ‘X’ and ‘Y’ is ‘Y.’ A taxi is a taxi and a kombi is a kombi. We should not treat a kombi like a taxi.”

It was all I could do to not guffaw. “If we should’t treat a kombi like a taxi, why are we entertaining a kombi driver who is asking to be paid like a cabbie?”

“Jack,” my friend said. “Logic is not our friend here.”

Nodding, I repeated the phrases. “‘X’ is ‘X’…”

With one last admonition, the cop returned our passports. “Você não deveria estar aqui fora. As pessoas ficam asaulted a cada hora.” The patrol car sped away.

Moving quickly without speaking, we trotted across these last few blocks as the dawn began to etch itself along the edge of the mountains. We slipped through those three locks without trouble, and into our covers, where for an hour we would giggle with nervous exhaustion, recounting every moment we thought we might have been lost.

It was probably five before we drifted off to sleep, marveling at the luxury of a locked door and an air mattress. We had made it home.

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[Translations thanks to Google Translate.]