Requiem for a Killer Read Online Free Page B

Godfather.
    “Dying is part of life.”
    “But like that, ditched in the mud for the
vultures to feed on! Whatever happened to human dignity?”
    ‘ Is it now going to be the Councilman’s
turn to rant on about communism to me?’ thought the Inspector
before going on.
    “You called me here, sir, hinting you have
information I don’t.”
    “That’s true,” said Nildo while he settled
in the chair like a chicken hatching eggs. “Inspector Joaquim
Dornelas, you know I occupy this seat due to the confidence the
less favored classes deposited in me. I am the voice of the poor
and the needy on the City Council, the voice of those who struggle
for a dignified life, who want nothing more than their own homes,
safe streets and good schools for their children. Look at what we
pay the teachers! It’s a disgrace, Inspector. Walk around the
streets and see the deplorable state the city’s in: clogged up
gutters and open air garbage dumps that contaminate our water. A
calamity, Inspector. A calamity.”
    Dornelas sighed and nodded his head heavily
while he imagined the magnetic effect this performance would have
at a political rally: the crowd with arms raised in the air,
jumping up and down while screaming wildly and waving little
banners to the tune of a carnival march loud enough to drive you
out of your mind.
    “Well then. You must also know that the
least favored region of our beloved city, the poorest, to put it
frankly, is on Monkey Island, on the other side of the bay.”
    “Uh-huh,” mumbled Dornelas, visibly bored.
Impossible to remember how many times in his career he had been
forced to listen to politicians’ dull speeches, always the same
tedious bullshit.
    “Great. Because it is due to my close
contact with these people that I received information early this
morning that the dead man was part of a drug trafficking gang
operating in the city, much to the population’s distress since they
have to live with this kind of danger at their doorsteps. A damn
shame, don’t you think?”
    It was so tiresome and at the same time so
simple. All Nildo had to do was give him a name. Dornelas felt like
leaping over the desk and violently shaking the man’s identity out
of him the way you shake pennies out of a piggy-bank.
    “Do you have a name, sir?” he asked
dryly.
    The music stopped, the crowd fell silent,
the rally disappeared.
    “José Aristodemo dos Anjos, better known as
White Powder Joe.”
    Dornelas had thrown out the bait not knowing
he was going to catch such a big fish. Nildo went on.
    “According to my information he was making
his way up the hierarchy.”
    “Threatening the Doorman?”
    “I wouldn’t doubt it.”
    The Doorman was the big boss of drug
trafficking in the city. From Monkey Island – which actually became
a peninsula after the city canalized part of the riverhead – he
commanded a small army of young boys and adolescents who spread
nickel bags of cocaine, marijuana and especially crack all over the
city.
    He was known as a violent man who stops at
nothing to eliminate his rivals, no matter who they are. It’s a
long list. Nobody knows where the nickname came from. Some say it’s
in honor of his first kill, when he crushed a guy’s head in a car
door. Others say it goes back to when he was a doorman at a club at
the beginning of his career. And still others claim he got it in
Hell itself, so large was the myth surrounding him.
    “I’ve only heard of White Powder Joe by his
nickname. The pictures we have of him aren’t good,” said Dornelas.
“It’s difficult for us to enter some parts of the island. I don’t
want to send my men in and have them be executed in cold
blood.”
    Unlike Rio de Janeiro, which possesses elite
troops specially trained to enter the slums, equipped with
bullet-proof vehicles and weapons more powerful than those of the
Civil and Military Police, the resources available to Dornelas were
ridiculous even compared to those used by the drug dealers.
    While