Chapter 7

WEDNESDAY Dec 26

One of the girls woke me before dawn. “Mike, Amelia de la Monte is waiting in your study. She says it’s important.”

I thanked her and threw on a robe as I headed for the study. Amelia greeted me with a kiss.

“Mike, O Globo has an article about The Corporation on the front page today. They’re offering five thousand Reals to the first person who tells them who Crazy Larry is. All the drivers working for the paper refused to make their deliveries and were fired. They’re flying in drivers from São Paulo right now. I’m afraid that there might be violence if the new drivers try to move the trucks,” she explained. I could tell that she was worried. I called Jorge and told him to get some men down to the newspaper office immediately. I didn’t want any violence. I wanted them to go ahead and let the papers be delivered. I’d take care of the rest, including getting the drivers’ jobs back. Then I had Amelia call the TV and radio news stations as well as Emanuella du Montoya at the Tribuna da Imprensa and tell them what was happening. I thanked her for the heads up, and got the phone number for the main office in São Paulo from her before she headed in to work.

Then I called the São Paulo offices of O Globo. When I told them I was Crazy Larry, they immediately put the call through to Mattos Meira, editor in chief of O Globo. Mr. Meira was surprised that I would call. I promised that, if he would meet with me this morning, I’d tell him who I was and why I didn’t want my identity released. I’d leave the final decision about what to do up to him. He jumped at the chance and said he’d be at the Rio offices as soon as he could get a flight, probably two or three hours. I told him to ask any of The Corporation people who would be stationed outside his offices and they would bring him to see me.

I laughed when he expressed concern about his safety with one of the gang members. “You’re safer riding with one of them than you will be walking past the drivers who got fired this morning. I sent my people down there to prevent any violence and to tell them to let the papers be delivered. If you’re worried, though, have Amelia de la Monte accompany you. She knows me quite well although she doesn’t know that I’m Crazy Larry.” He consented, and said he’d be here soon. I called Jorge, who was just arriving at the local O Globo building and told him what was going on.

I made several more calls and set things up, then watched the news for an hour. While we’d calmed the drivers down, it seems like a sizeable portion of the city was practically on strike, out in the streets with hand-written signs denouncing O Globo. News crews were having a field day driving up and down the streets to show the city’s support for Crazy Larry. I called the main radio station, using a device that changed my voice and told them that I appreciated everyone’s support, but that I was meeting personally with the Editor in Chief of O Globo and wanted people to go back to work. They still had families to support.

By the time I left for the meeting, people were starting to go back to work. I took my new 800 series BMW since the windows were all tinted and nobody could see in. The radio station announced that Mr. Meira had just arrived at the O Globo offices and was talking with the leader of The Corporation members there. A few minutes later, they announced that he had come back out of the building with Amelia de la Monte and was getting into a van with The Corporation leader at the site.

Ten minutes later, Jorge’s van pulled into the underground garage of Santo Diablo’s. Immediately, other The Corporation vans blocked the entrances to keep out the reporters who had followed them. Amelia was quite the actress. “Mike, you’re Crazy Larry?” she asked, sounding extremely startled. I kissed her, and asked how her husband was. “He’s fine. How is your bedroom full of beautiful women?” she teased. While several of our vans began leaving the underground garage, each heading in a different direction, Mr. Meira and I sat inside of what was going to be the armory. Amelia waited outside with Jorge. Two hours later, our meeting was over, and Mr. Meire wouldn’t be a problem again.

When interviewed later that afternoon on the front steps of O Globo’s office he told everyone that I had explained my plans for the city, and then told him how they couldn’t happen if I had to spend all of my time dodging people taking pot-shots at me to prove that they were tougher than I was. He got everyone laughing when he told them that the kicker had been when I threatened to buy the Tribuna da Imprensa, steal most of his top reporters and columnists, and then sell the papers for half of what he charged until his paper went bankrupt.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he could and would do it,” he admitted.

When I got back to the villa, Malesia, the young, battered girl I had sent to the hospital Christmas Eve, was sitting with a woman I didn’t recognize and was clinging tightly to her. She introduced herself as Malesia’s mother. She said that she had to take Malesia home or her husband would beat her to death. Instead, I offered to let her stay here until we could find a job for her. She warned me that her husband would come looking for them.

“I hope so,” I said, grinning sadistically.

He did show up, two days later. I let Yuko play with him for a few hours, using her Christmas present on him when she was finished. I’d had a small branding iron with The Corporation logo made for her. I had told the guy who made it that it was for leatherwork, but I don’t think he believed me. She left him with one brand on his left ass cheek and one on his chest. “If I ever get you in here again, I will use it on both eyes,” she warned.

By New Years Eve, we controlled half of the city. News had gotten out about the defections from and the mergers with other gangs. Every day we processed as many new members as we could. I put Luis Alencar in charge of the people working with the mind-altering drugs. He’d been a leader of a gang with only twenty members and a territory hardly worth noting. The other members of his gang had now been absorbed by the gang whose territory was right next to theirs. I left each former gang leader in charge of the same territory they had before joining us. By New Years, Luis had fifty fully trained people. We also controlled a fair number of members from gangs that hadn’t joined us. They had asked us to let them quit their gang and join us, but we sent them back to act as spies and to help set up our eventual takeover.

By the end of January, we controlled the entire city and had over five thousand gang members. Jorge had five hundred Weasels in various stages of training. Luis had named his group the Inquisitors. The Inquisitors had a The Corporation logo and an exclamation point on their IDs, shirts, and uniforms.

With so many members, we began patrolling the favelas; the police still wouldn’t go in there. Before I took over, the military had to be called to go in there. Anybody we had to deal with for stealing, selling drugs in our territory, or beating a spouse or child spent a few hours playing with Yuko. If it was a guy, she usually had another guy stop by to initiate the guy’s ass, capturing all of it on film. We hadn’t realized that there was such a big market for gay rape and torture films. This way we killed two birds with one stone: punished the offender in a way they would never forget and would never want to endure again and made some extra cash on the side. There were soon a couple of hundred people sporting new brands. Word quickly spread and crime in the favelas dropped to almost zero within a month.

Our patrols drove small four-wheel drive pickup trucks due to the narrow, steep, and treacherous nature of the roads in parts of the favelas. They were used more as a bus service, though, carrying residents who didn’t have cars down the hills to where they could catch buses to work, and carrying weary residents home after work. I eventually had metal racks built for the beds of the trucks. There was a luggage rack over the cab, and a well-padded framework of round three-inch metal tubing welded together in the back for the people to hold. It wasn’t uncommon to find twenty people standing, crammed together like sardines in the back of the trucks as they left the bus stop at the bottom of the hill after work to begin their ascent. There were stepladders welded on the back and both sides to make it easier for people to get off at their destination. Thank God, I’d had the heaviest engines, transmissions, and suspensions put on the trucks.

Aside from acting as a bus service, their most common use was carrying water uphill for all the families since there were no utilities. We bought thirty-thousand heavy-duty twenty-liter plastic containers that were designed to hold gasoline. Several more trucks were purchased and pressed into service. We set up distribution points in all the areas that didn’t have any utilities, dropping off stacks of filled water jugs. For the first few days, we left someone there to explain to everyone to bring the jugs back when they were empty and exchange them, and we would refill them again.

WEDNESDAY Jan. 25

Amid much fanfare and hoopla, Santo Diablo’s opened tonight. Upon entering the ground floor nightclub, the first thing everyone saw was the six-foot statue of Santo Diablo and his massive two-foot cock. It quickly became a tradition for each girl who entered to stroke his cock, although some of the bolder ones licked or sucked it briefly. Many nights, one or two of the drunkest and boldest girls would actually bring a chair over and try to fuck themselves on it, much to the amusement of the rest of the patrons.

The first floor was simply a nightclub. Anyone who was at least eighteen, or who looked eighteen and behaved, was allowed in to party the night away. Sixty girls from the brothels who wanted to find a different vocation had gone through a crash course at a bar tending school and were the bartenders at the bars on the first, second, and third floors. There was a dance floor with live music and dozens of tables for two or four people scattered around the first floor.

Several elevators allowed access to the second and third floors. The second floor was where most of the action was. Men (and women) could choose from between two and three hundred nearly naked women every night. There was a series of small two-meter by two-meter rooms along two outside walls where a guy could get a quick blowjob or simply bend a girl over and do her right there. There was also a smaller bar here. If the man wanted a room with a bed, the couple (or group) would go to the fifth or sixth floors and take the first available room they came to. The doors of available rooms would be open. Many of the younger girls from the favelas worked here changing sheets and towels, and doing laundry all day and all night instead of having to sell their bodies to make enough to survive. Each floor had one room that was a combination laundry, small kitchen, and barracks for the girls who worked on that floor to call home if they needed it.

The third floor was the LGBT club. Singles and couples could come here to drink, dance, look for an unattached partner, or they could come here looking to pay for an hour or a night of sex. Unlike the second floor, there were no private rooms along the walls. They had to use the rooms on the fourth floor. The 9th, 10th, and 11th floors were living quarters for the girls. The seventh and eighth floors were unused for now, but would be pressed into action for Carnaval week. The 12th floor became the headquarters for The Corporation.

Half of the first level of underground parking had been partitioned off. Five steel doors opened into that part of the garage. Eight additional doors accessed the armored vans, and two doors the armored trucks. Three-quarters of the walled in area was a new armory, complete with racks for the weapons and stacks of the crates the Russians and rebels donated to us. There was also a ten-lane firing range. We’d quickly outgrown the one at the villa.

Rodolfo’s old place had been purchased and would be turned over to the Sisters tomorrow. Juan’s crews would be there tomorrow morning at 7:00 to tear the place apart and put it back together again. Soon, the Sisters’ dream would be a reality. His crews would work around the clock, seven days a week to finish.

WEDNESDAY Feb. 1

The city was abuzz, especially the favelas. Carnaval, known as Mardi Gras in much of the world, would begin in fifteen more days. There was also additional excitement in the favelas. I had purchased six lots from the city, lots that sat near the middle of the poorest sections of the favelas. Those lots had been home to between six and ten families each. We moved those families into homes farther down the hill that had previously been inhabited by families of The Corporation members who had moved into better lodgings. Each lot was going to have a medical clinic built on it, albeit a budget operation. The building would be a no frills cinder block unit. Inside would house 12 exam rooms, two small basic operating rooms, a small X-ray room, a receptionist’s/records office, two small dental cubicles, and a small pharmacy. It was nothing fancy.

Used X-ray and ultra-sound machines, basic operating tables and lights, and the standard equipment you’d find in an HMO doctor’s office furnished each office. We had generators to provide electricity to run everything since there were no utilities up here. We also installed CB radios with a signal booster and had our dispatch operators on the 12th floor of Santo Diablo’s monitor the clinics, well as monitoring the CBs from our patrol trucks.

Once again, Amelia got the Rio socialites behind the effort, one billed as a joint effort between the city and The Corporation. Basically, the city let me buy each practically worthless lot for 100 Reals, the Brazilian dollar, but it was about politics, not money. The lots were worthless to the city since they couldn’t even get to them safely. Having everyone focused on the joint effort by the city, the socialites, and The Corporation didn’t leave anyone wondering about the CEO of The Corporation.

Ramon was the publicly acknowledged leader and dealt with most of the day-to-day stuff where a face was necessary. Between the fund-raising, corporate arm-twisting, and networking the socialites provided, I got away practically unscathed from the effort. New and used medical and other equipment was donated or purchased by the socialites. Aside from paying for the land and the construction, I got off easy. They even got several pharmaceutical companies to make regular donations of many basic medicines, and to provide the rest at a greatly reduced cost. I managed to contract with eighteen doctors, three for each clinic, and left it to them to find interns and nurses they would be responsible for supervising.

Clerical staff and security would be provided by The Corporation. We had plenty of qualified people among the gang members and our hookers to fill all those positions.