Rio de Janeiro's favelas are the dregs of a
city, teeming slums where the crime rate makes Harlem tame by
comparison. The pastel-painted shantytowns with their deceptive
names—”Pleasure Hill,” “Peacock,” “Heaven”—breed hoods with monikers
like “Tidal Wave,” “Uncle Horrible” and “Dried Meat.” The cops are helpless, always patrol in groups and only during daylight.
Except one. For the past 25 years, favela law, or what there was of it,
largely rested on City Detective Perptuo de Freitas da Silva. To win authority in the slums, Perptuo had to be good, clever—and
lucky. He never bothered to arrest small-timers, passed out candy to
the kids, found jobs for dozens of ex-cons, personally sent food and
clothing to mothers widowed by killers he had not caught up with in
time. He could draw his .45 faster than any thug, could shoot so
straight that crooks often surrendered when they heard he was after
them. Bullets missed him so often that it seemed they would never learn
the way. He once climbed unscathed up a hill through a hail of slugs to
collar two pistol-happy punks, another time managed to arrest a gunman
who emptied his revolver at him from point-blank range. By Mistake. Three weeks ago, “Bulletproof” Perptuo's luck finally
failed. His downfall began when a convicted murderer, “Horseface”
Manuel Moreira, got a parole “by mistake” and, once out of jail, shot
a close colleague of Perptuo's. Enraged by the bureaucratic sloppiness
that released Horseface in the first place, Perptuo dropped everything
and went after the killer. Though the rest of the force was stymied, he
had a good lead within two days. But while he was waiting in a bar for
Horseface to show up, two cops from another district wandered in.
Jealous of Perptuo's fame, they argued over who had jurisdiction,
started fighting. Suddenly one of them pulled a gun, while the other
pinned Perptuo's arms. Then, as he stood helpless, Bulletproof
Perptuo, 51, was shot dead by one of his fellow policemen. His funeral drew the high and mighty. But Perptuo belonged to the
favelados, and 5,000 of them turned out to march in the procession,
and crowd around his coffin for a last look, or touch, or tear. After
the burial, leaders of the “Skeleton” favela solemnly met to discuss
changing the name to “Perptuo” favela. “He would have liked that,” was
the explanation. By the Mob. If favelados were saddened by the loss of the only policeman
they ever liked, the cops were left completely at loose ends. Though
Perptuo's killer was quickly captured at the scene, Horseface was
still at large, and a milling, uncoordinated hunt for him was mounted.
In the last two weeks police have pulled in 500 smalltime hoods for
their own brand of “questioning,” have descended en masse on dozens of
favelas. Brandishing machine guns, they burst in on one surprised
family and so frightened the father that he died of a heart attack.
Last week the police said they were still searching. But the word
around the favelas was that the cops had found Horseface all right, had
killed him and hidden the body rather than risk judgment in Brazil's
notoriously lenient courts.
