São Paulo Noir Read online

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Introduction

  PART I: Hallucination City

  Cross Contamination

  Vanessa Barbara

  Mandaqui

  Boniclaide and Mrs. Als

  Ilana Casoy

  Cidade Jardim

  Useless Diary

  Tony Bellotto

  Bixiga

  My Name Is Nicky Nicola

  Jô Soarest

  Mooca

  Teresão

  Mario Prata

  Vila Carrão

  PART II: São Paulo Inc.

  As If the World Were a Good Place

  Marçal Aquino

  Canindé

  Margot

  Drauzio Varella

  República

  24-Hour Service

  Fernando Bonassi

  Morumbi

  The Final Table

  Marcelo Rubens Paiva

  Baixo Augusta

  PART III: Discreet Inelegance

  The Force Is with Me

  Beatriz Bracher & Maria S. Carvalhosa

  Panamericana

  Flow

  Ferréz

  Itapecerica da Serra

  Coffee Stain

  Olivia Maia

  Sé

  Any Similarity Is Not Purely Coincidental

  Marcelino Freire

  Guaianases

  About the Contributors

  Bonus Materials

  Excerpt from USA NOIR edited by Johnny Temple

  Also in Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  About Akashic Books

  Copyrights & Credits

  Introduction

  Land of Mist

  Encyclopedias will say that São Paulo is the main financial, corporate, and commercial center of South America. The census will show that São Paulo is the most populous city in Brazil, the Americas, the Portuguese-speaking world, and the entire Southern Hemisphere.

  Calculations will indicate that São Paulo is the seventh-largest city on the planet and that its population of twenty million is the eighth-largest urban agglomeration. Research will state that São Paulo is the most influential Brazilian city on the world scene, considered the fourteenth most globalized city in the world. The Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network classify it as an alpha global city.

  On its coat of arms appears the Latin phrase, Non ducor, duco, which means, I am not led, I lead. Publicists will affirm that São Paulo is the city that can never stop. Specialists will conclude that in its streets moves (or fails to move) the worst traffic in the world.

  Scholars will inform us that São Paulo is the most multicultural city in Brazil, having received, since 1870, millions of immigrants from every part of the planet, and that it is the city with the largest populations of people of Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, and Arab origin outside their respective countries. Anthropologists will emphasize that the city is the destination of thousands of immigrants, who each year leave the poorest regions of Brazil in the north and northeast in search of better living conditions, and that around 30 percent of the population is of African descent.

  Experts will assure us that São Paulo has a high crime rate. Sociologists will confirm that the city has an area known as Cracolândia (Crackland) and that among the violent and neglected communities spread along its periphery, one bears the ironic name Paraisópolis (Paradise City). Politicians will roar that São Paulo is the engine that drives Brazil.

  Poets will dub it “Hallucination City,” songwriters will nickname it “Sampa,” and the nostalgic will remember it was once called the “Land of Mist.”

  All this information, however, will not aid the reader in understanding the city. I myself, born in Jardim Paulista, know little of the great metropolis that comprises it.

  It is with the help of Olivia Maia, Jô Soares, Vanessa Barbara, Drauzio Varella, Beatriz Bracher, Marçal Aquino, Maria S. Carvalhosa, Mario Prata, Ilana Casoy, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Ferréz, Marcelino Freire, and Fernando Bonassi that I have tried to better understand the city where I was born.

  More than historians and sociologists, writers have always been able to transform cities into great characters. This is the way we decipher devouring sphinxes.

  Tony Bellotto

  March 2018

  PART I

  Hallucination City

  Cross Contamination

  by Vanessa Barbara

  Mandaqui

  “See: I used to fold the corner of the toilet paper, leave the chocolate mint on the pillow, make a swan with the towel. A towel swan! Know what that is? The towels folded on top of the bed in the form of a heart? Now they give me twenty minutes to clean a room where obviously a funk party went down, with like eight guests, a dozen crack pipes, and half a dozen voodoo chickens—and what do they want me to do, spray some lemongrass essence in the air? Or arrange the little bars of soap according to feng shui?”

  That wasn’t right, no sir, exploiting a well-bred chambermaid like that, with experience in the finest hotels in São Paulo, like that five-star in Jardins that hosted international pop stars and where lobby security has to contain crowds of obsessed teenagers who pay up to five hundred reais for the pillowcase Justin Bieber slept on. Not that Cléo was fired just for that; the black market for pillowcases supposedly used by celebrities was just one of the reasons the management of the chic hotel let the maid go. Before that, there were suspicions that she didn’t vacuum the corners and, worse, that she ate the room service leftovers. But none of that was ever proven. And what do half a dozen pillowcases matter to an establishment that charges a thousand reais a night? When her entire month’s salary was barely more than that?

  In any case, Cléo was fired from the luxury hotel in Jardins and, without prospects of working in establishments with sheets of Egyptian cotton and a selection of pillows, she ended up at the Hotel Five Stars in the Mandaqui district. Not that the hotel was rated as such—it was merely the name. The recently inaugurated establishment had forty-four rooms on three floors, fifth-class towels, abrasive toilet paper, a few suites with round beds, and some electrical outlets in strange places that no one could explain. At first it attracted curiosity-seekers from the neighborhood, especially elderly folks who stayed there for a change of air and to have something to talk about at the local bakery. They usually stole the miniature shampoo and soap, drifted off early in front of the television at high volume, and loved ordering room service. They would spend all day in their rooms and liked to supervise the cleaning, even when Cléo asked them to wait in the hall.

  Little by little, the clientele became more diverse. The grannies and grampas from Mandaqui were joined by couples from the Lauzane Paulista, bocce lovers from Imirim, numerous families from Jardim Peri, bachelors for extended stays, prostitutes, taxi drivers, card readers, writers, and all types of bad elements looking for privacy to carry out their nefarious businesses. And Cléo, having daily access to the filthy rooms, knew everything.

  “Can lemongrass spray disguise the smell of a cadaver?”

  * * *

  One fine day, a man turned up dead in room 33. He was a commercial representative for a firm in Campinas, a loyal guest of the Five Stars who came almost monthly for meetings and trade shows in Anhembi. Dr. Otávio was known to all the staff. Normally he would spend only one or two nights in the hotel, sometimes with a woman he knew in the city who he would call to keep him company. He would leave early for work, was discreet in his extramarital adventures, and didn’t quite mess up the place—except when he became irritated with his lover and slapped her around, causing some damage to the room.

  But he always paid for the damages and left
a good tip for Cléo, who didn’t mind cleaning up the bloodstains from the previous night, the broken glasses, and the tufts of blond hair that the man sometimes yanked from his lover’s head. He also said good morning and left a tip of twenty reais when the mess was excessive.

  Therefore it was annoying when he was late checking out and the maid had to enter the room around two in the afternoon and found the following scene: Dr. Otávio lying on the floor beside the bed in a dark pool of wine and blood, with a corkscrew in his jugular. The bedside lamp on the floor, the sheets disheveled and dirty. The body was already cold, pallid, and rigid. In the air, a slight smell of garlic. There was no one else in the room.

  Cléo didn’t let herself be shaken by the scene, merely closing the door and calmly notifying the management, who brought in the police. She continued cleaning the other rooms while detectives photographed the crime scene. At dusk, with the body already removed, Cléo was asked to work overtime and handle the cleanup along with the other maid. But she was left in the lurch, as the other woman had a panic attack and quit, unable to deal with the situation. She said disinfecting a room where someone died wasn’t in her job description. A kitchen aide was summoned to help Cléo, while the cleaning staff brought mops and attempted to calm the remaining guests. They worked three hours without a break, scrubbing the walls and the floor, removing the torn curtains, and sending for more material.

  While she wrung the cloth, Cléo complained of the way management exploited her, her of all people, an experienced professional who knew how to make a bed with ninety-degree corners—but not with those cheap sheets. And not under those terrible work conditions, having to put in overtime in a pool of blood. And she told the kitchen employee, a young woman named Lena: “You have no idea what I have to put up with around here. Like, I once went into the room of a couple I thought were normal, people who seemed refined, who lived near Santa Terezinha. I was sure I’d finish the cleanup in fifteen minutes, but no way. The walls were covered in jelly, there was a video camera pointed toward the bed, and I think others had been through there too. I saw a lot of suspicious puddles on the carpet. I also picked up several hypodermic needles from the floor and two DVDs: Free Willy 1 and 2. Seriously. They filmed an orgy, got high, and watched Free Willy 1 and 2.”

  * * *

  Since the kitchen helper did the cleaning with care, with focus, and without getting sick, the manager promoted her to the second chambermaid position. Which wasn’t exactly good news for Cléo, who now, in addition to having to clean more than twenty rooms a day in that hole, had to train the novice. Lena was so inexperienced that she didn’t even know it was necessary to remove the dust starting from the top in order not to leave dirty streaks on the area already cleaned. She also didn’t know it was forbidden to hold the pillow under your chin, as that was considered unhygienic. Not that this mattered at the Five Star, where a guest swore on TripAdvisor to have seen fungus growing in the closet of her room.

  They began the rounds very early, with Cléo giving instructions: “Careful removing the dirty sheet from the bed, there may be hypodermic needles hidden there and you’ll hurt yourself. And condoms too. The first thing we do when we enter a room is take away all the sheets, pillowcases, and dirty towels. But only the ones that are visibly dirty. Throw them in the basket on the cart.”

  Lena stared at Cléo with the cold expression of someone who wasn’t there to make friends. She followed the maid into the bathroom, where she picked up two soiled towels.

  “Know what these stains are?” Cléo asked, without expecting a reply. “Blondor. Blondor is hydrogen peroxide. The woman thought it was time to lighten her pubic hair, so she sat on the towel and ruined everything. See? She used the glass to mix it in. Hard to believe. What animals. From time to time you get women who dye their hair and ruin the towels.”

  She explained that theoretically the maids should wear caps and masks. But at the Five Stars everything was just theoretical. Besides, in the chic hotels it was forbidden to use the same pair of gloves for cleaning the bathroom and the bedroom, as that could lead to cross contamination. The same logic applied to the mops. In the Mandaqui hotel, however, the glove touching the toilet was the same one that touched the sheets.

  “Glasses you just give a quick rinsing in the sink or use a cloth with glass cleaner so they don’t show any stains. And try not to use the guest’s toothbrush to scrub the drains, because that’s really low.”

  Inspired by the work of the police, who were still investigating the corkscrew killing and trying to discover the whereabouts of the victim’s lover, Cléo pointed out stains and guessed their provenance, showing off for the benefit of the newcomer.

  “Let me show you something else here in 24. Come take a look at this dark circle near the bed. Know what it is? No? Dried vomit. This here was covered in vomit when I came in, about two months ago, and there was no way to get rid of it. The manager said he wasn’t going to change the carpet. So there it is. To this day.”

  Cléo explained that the vomiting guest was a tall bald man and a Rotarian by the name of Osvaldo Oliveira. The Blondor woman was young, a little over twenty, dark, and a business administration student at a college in Vila Maria. She knew this because she never stopped rummaging through the woman’s belongings, opening her luggage and everything. She said she knew the slightest details of the lives of every guest: if they were married or single, adulterers, had fetishes, used dental floss, had a fight the night before, and whether their intestines were in working order.

  “This woman wears a size 5 shoe, she’s fashion-conscious and only buys designer clothes. She has very long hair (or else she accidentally dumped out half a bottle of shampoo) and her perfume is Air de la Vie. Counterfeit. She takes a lot of prescription medicines, like this one here, which I later discovered is for a bipolar disorder.”

  Lena didn’t reply. Cléo suspected the new girl wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about her new job, but that hardly mattered. She continued with her monologue.

  “She brought a guy here but sent him away in the middle of the night so she wouldn’t have to pay the extra occupant charge. They drank five cans of beer, ordered a pizza from Bola’s, broke the remote control, and smoked marijuana in the bathroom, because the bedroom doesn’t have a window. People think we’re stupid. She probably had to stand up on the toilet and smoke with her arm outside the window, but the smell sticks to the walls and if we look in the trash we’ll find the roach . . . There! Didn’t I tell you?”

  Lena limited herself to scouring the toilet, quiet like one who had seen worse.

  “Here there’s none of that business of always changing the bedsheets. If it doesn’t look very dirty, all you have to do it turn the sheet over and everything’s fine. If the mattress is stained, you can flip it too. Just be careful, ’cause sometimes a flea jumps out.”

  The basic rule of management, according to Cléo, was to look clean and never worry about anything. For example, some time ago a woman tried to abort in the bathroom, failed, and left the tiles covered in blood and feces. “None of my business,” said Cléo. Sometimes she found rooms totally turned upside down with dark stains and tufts of hair on the table corners, or heard screams from women being attacked, like Dr. Otávio’s lover—none of it was the maid’s concern.

  Lena flashed an angry look in Cléo’s direction but said nothing.

  “It does no good to look at me like that: your role here is to mop. That’s all. If the guest is given to satanic rituals and likes to sacrifice chickens, for example, or make a pentagram on the floor with lit candles, that’s his problem. You advise the manager to charge the damage against his preauthorized credit card, and that’s that.” In a softer tone, she added: “That’s how we survive in this damn job.”

  * * *

  The newcomer didn’t ask, but during the rounds Cléo said that nothing could get to her. Almost nothing. She once read in the paper a story that made an impression on her for several days.

  Years earl
ier, a body was found in the bed frame of room 222 in the Budget Lodge Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. A twenty-eight-year-old woman had been strangled by her boyfriend, the father of her five children, with the cable that connected the television to the DVD player. The body remained hidden for six weeks in the bedframe, under the side rails and mattress.

  “It was a bed just like ours, you know? Notice that there’s no space underneath because the bedframe is completely enclosed down to the floor. Which I think is great: one less thing for us to clean. The killer lifted the mattress and stuck the body inside. Then he put everything back the way it was and left without checking out.” At least five people slept in the room before someone complained about the smell. “Just think: a body in here for all that time! And couples sleeping on top of it!”

  Cléo shuddered and Lena remained silent as she replaced the toilet paper. Still without making a sound, she folded the top ply, as if it meant something.

  * * *

  In room 25, the cleanup was lighter. The guest was a known trafficker in the region who sometimes used the hotel for rendezvous with lovers. Despite his bad reputation, he was clean and tidy—Cléo thought he had a touch of OCD. He must have had a cold, as the two women found a pile of used tissue and an empty cold-medicine box in the trash. The trafficker usually separated the plastic bottle for recycling and suffered from hair loss.

  Room 26 was unoccupied, and in 27 they found only a few drops of some type of bodily fluid on the sheets, in addition to toenail clippings scattered on the floor. Cléo rummaged through the receipts on top of the table, opened the drawer, found a watch and a chaplet, and deemed the guest very uninteresting. Probably an orderly at the Mandaqui Hospital. She asked Lena to remove the hair from the sink while she swept the floor.

  “I know everything, everything about these people. Like, Dr. Otávio’s lover—nobody knows anything about her, no one has ever seen her come in or go out, probably because the night shift at this hotel is a madhouse. No one awake at reception. But I know: she’s a bleached blonde, on a diet, wears pink lipstick. I think she’s left-handed. And she likes red wine.”