Selling Hitler's Trousers

SELLING HITLER’S TROUSERS
Chapter One

City Bus Station
Cuiabá, Central Brazil

The pressure from the air conditioning made the glass door open with a damp sucking noise as the grimy young back packer entered the café. He carried his rucksack by one strap and picked his way carefully between the yellow plastic-topped tables and matching chairs until he reached a spot farthest from the door. He slumped into a vacant seat with his back against the wall and looked around. A tired-looking girl in a stained apron and pink cotton dress materialised beside him clutching a notepad and pen that she held poised to take his order. The back packer pushed his long greasy brown hair out of his eyes and gave her what he hoped was a winning smile as he asked her for a “Coca Cola Light”. The smile had no effect upon the waitress who was clearly unimpressed by the torn and faded blue T-shirt commemorating a long forgotten Alice Cooper tour of Europe. She was equally unimpressed by the stained green combat trousers, the trekking sandals on grimy feet and the overall appearance of penniless squalor.

Deciding that such an order did not justify using a page from her notebook, she pushed it back into her apron pocket and carefully clipped her ballpoint to the front of her dress. Moving effortlessly between the tables like a fish swimming through reeds she crossed the room with the grace of a samba dancer to the glass fronted drinks refrigerator. She took out a can and returned to the backpacker, scooping a plastic drinking straw from a container on the counter as she passed. She avoided his eyes and his smile as she unceremoniously dumped the can and straw on the table in front of him.

The click and hiss of the can’s ring-pull caused another young man sitting at a table in the centre of the room to glance towards the backpacker. He was wearing a navy blue polo shirt, crisp brown chinos and matching deck shoes. He was clearly not Brazilian but there was no expression of the acknowledgement that often passes between strangers of similar backgrounds when a long way from home. Instead he returned his attention to the bulky black leather pilot case that he had placed on a chair beside him. His fingers fiddled with its brass combination lock and he glanced at his watch before looking out of the café window at the traffic passing on the busy road to Chapada dos Guimares.

Gradually the café emptied as customers left to catch buses to destinations within the heart of Brazil. Only an old man in a crumpled brown suit remained seated at a distant table smoking cigarettes and stirring the bottom of his coffee cup with a teaspoon. Suddenly the young European with the case jumped to his feet and took it with him through the door bearing the universal pin-man figure indicating the male toilet.

The back packer began idly tracing the Coca-Cola logo with his grimy finger in the condensation on the can. He then expanded his endeavour into a design on the wet plastic tabletop. His sketch had just begun to resemble a half-timbered country house when the lavatory door opened and the European in the polo shirt returned to his table with a thoughtful expression on his face. He placed the pilot case carefully on the floor beside him and resumed his vigil of the road and bus station outside.

Barely a minute passed before the glass door opened and four very young Brazilian men dressed in smart leisure sportswear burst in like an invading army. They stood by the door, scanned the room and immediately approached the young man with the case. The back packer could not hear what was said but could see that the European was being pleasant and sociable while the Brazilians were distant and assertive. They refused the other’s invitation to sit down and glanced around them in a way that suggested they were nervous or impatient. The eldest of the Brazilians, a short man barely into his twenties held out his hand and the European reached below his table and gave him the pilot case. With the faintest nod of gratitude he tested its weight in his hand and then, as one, the group turned and filed out of the café.

The young man in the polo shirt watched them leave and, as he signalled to the waitress for his bill, he noticed a large grey car pull-up at the kerb in front of the four Brazilians. It was then that the world erupted into a ragged explosion of noise and flying glass. The wide café window collapsed inwards and small vitreous crystals sprayed through the room. The glass fronted refrigerator crazed and burst like a broken windscreen and ruptured drink cans sprayed their contents outwards in a carbonated mist. Objects on the café counter leapt backwards and the room filled with the dusty smell of nitro cellulose gun powder.

The backpacker did not remember throwing himself to the floor but when the noise stopped abruptly he found himself hunched beneath a table beside the European. They exchanged looks of alarm and horror but could say nothing until their hearing had recovered from the cacophony of gunfire.

Eventually the backpacker raised his head cautiously above the table and looked around the café. The girl in the pink dress was slumped on the floor, her back against the counter and legs stretched out in front. Blood streamed from a wide gash in her cheek and she sobbed and trembled uncontrollably. The old man was bent backwards across a table, his head was twisted unnaturally to one side and his brown suit had turned black where deep arterial blood soaked into the fabric and dripped into a wide puddle on the concrete floor below him. A man in a dirty white chef’s tunic rushed out of a back kitchen. His wide eyes took-in the destruction at a glance and without hesitating he ran to the girl and pressed a handful of clean paper napkins against her wound.

The backpacker dropped back below the table where the European was staring unseeing at the glass-dusted floor.

“I think we’d better get out of here,” he said urgently.

The European turned his head towards him and looked at the scruffy traveller with wide eyes. “Shouldn’t we stay and lend a hand?” he asked uncertainly indicating the trembling girl.

“Not unless you want to spend the next six weeks in a police station while they think of ways to blame you for what happened,” he said sourly. “Anyway, she’s being looked after and I don’t think we can do much for the old guy. Come on, let’s leg it.”

He grabbed the strap of his rucksack and led the young European across the room towards the door, their feet crunching on the broken glass as they walked. Outside the café the heat and sunlight hit them like a molten wall. The four young Brazilians lay sprawled on the pavement like discarded tailor’s dummies, their arms and legs flung in unnatural postures. Dark blood spread across the pale grey concrete and their expensive sportswear looked ragged and dishevelled. The eldest of the three, the one who had spoken to the European, lay on his back like a starfish, his lifeless eyes staring into the bright sunlight and the space where his jaw had been was now a pulped mass of bone, gristle and broken teeth. One leg of his pale grey shell suit had ridden-up half way to his knee exposing a tanned leg wearing a new Nike trainer and a bright white sock. The pilot case was gone, as was the grey car.