Vector

by James Abel

  I was armed with a crumpled slip of paper with Rooster’s purplish scribble on it, already half faded. Everything in the Amazon is wet. Moisture eats shoes. Paper. People. Ink. Even water seems wetter.

  I rushed downstairs to find a cab—they usually idle outside the hotel—but the desk clerk again waved me over, more forcefully. Muito importante! This time I came. There was something urgent in his face.

  “Did the woman find you, Dr. Rush?”

  “What woman?”

  “The beautiful one. The photographer,” he said with admiration. His hands moved in an hourglass shape. “She said she thought she knew you. She was the one who sat at your breakfast table this morning.”

  I frowned. “No one sat with me.”

  “No? But I pointed you out. She said she was going over. Next time I looked, you were gone and she was there and your dishes were not even cleared away yet. Other tables were empty. So I thought you’d talked.”

  “She said she knew me from where?”

  A shrug. “Last night she said she was going to knock at your door. Didn’t she do that?”

  I felt a tug in my chest, a faint ticking of alarm, but I kept my voice casual, as if I’d missed a friendly opportunity. “I was out. Can you describe her?”

  He put both hands to his heart, meaning, Beautiful! “Small and dark, like the Lebanese man who sells newspapers on the plaza, but not that dark. And copper hair, worn up. Very nice lips. And green eyes, like the dark green under the water at the reef in Rio Grande. She asked to see your passport photo, to make sure you are the man she knows. I did not let her, of course.”

  I grinned, but did not feel like grinning. “You sound in love, Tarsisio.”

  He smiled. With her, that would be easy!

  “She’s a photographer, you said?”

  “She is with her brother, a very tough-looking man! They are taking photos of the garimpeiros, the seringeiros, the índios. For a book, they said. A big one for the table on which you place coffee.”

  Photographers go everywhere, talk to everyone.

  “Are you sure I can’t see her passport photo, Tarsisio? Maybe it will help me remember her.”

  He looked sad to turn me down. “We respect privacy.”

  She sat at my table immediately after I left? She chose my table when others were open? Why?

  I opened my wallet to offer cash, but Tarsisio looked pained. Apparently bribery was not allowed in the hotel of lost causes, honesty being a virtue that came with access to this normally pleasant, throwback place.

  “Joe. Please,” he said, reddening. “Izabel Santo is in room 215, and her brother is in 311. They are not there now. Maybe you will see her later.”

  “Tarsisio, one last question.”

  “Anything.” Clearly, he felt guilty at disappointing me by not taking the bribe.

  “Would you know if any cutlery or glasses were missing from my table this morning, after breakfast?”

  He drew himself up and frowned. “Did you see someone take things?”

  No, but I think someone did, for my DNA or prints.

  “Just curious.”

  He looked relieved. “Everyone who works here has been with us for years. They are honest.”

  I hurried from the lobby, into the night heat, where three ethanol-powered, battered taxis waited. I climbed into the first and handed the driver the slip of paper with the address that Rooster had given me. The driver was a heavy, bespectacled Sikh, wearing a cobalt-blue turban. His Fiat smelled of curry. He frowned at the note, and said, in Portuguese-accented English, “This place, sir . . . do you know it?”

  “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Maybe you should go to a different place. It is not just a bowling alley for games.”

  I leaned forward. “It’s what? A bowling alley? I thought it was a restaurant or bar.”

  “Oh, in one place, yes, but in the other rooms . . . bad things! People get hurt. If you are hungry, my cousin owns a nice pizzeria. He puts real tomato sauce on the pies, not ketchup, like the other places, and there are no rats and . . .”

  “Just go.”

  The driver worked gears and pulled his smoke-belching Fiat into the busy cobblestone square as church bells pealed 11 P.M.

  Who is she? I thought. Is this connected to Eddie? Is she connected to what we were asked to find? I never met any Izabel Santo. What does she want?

  I also wanted to make sure that Anasasio was really gone, so I turned to check if any headlights were following. I saw two, yellowish, a block behind, spaced widely apart, and high, the left one shining weaker than the right. Anasasio’s Land Cruiser was equipped with bluer headlights. So this was not him.

  The yellow headlights made the first turn after we did.

  The yellow headlights made the fourth turn as well.

  SIX

  There were no streetlights by the river. The driver pulled to a halt before an eight-foot-tall iron gate and whitewashed wall topped by razor wire. We idled behind a Dodge Ram truck. Its driver stuck a hand out the window to wave at a camera angling down from above. The gate swung open. The Ram surged forward. The gate slammed behind it as a pair of headlights turned a corner behind us, left one weaker than right. The headlights pulled over, and shut off.

  To reach Rondon Street we’d passed through descending layers of civilization: private home area to shantytown to warehouses to mud road, the red surface turned slick by a tropical downpour that lasted five minutes and stopped as quickly as it had begun.

  The Sikh said, “I’m not going in there. I will drop you here.” He let me out and drove off.

  I smiled up at the camera and waved like the previous driver. The gate did not open, but dogs began barking behind it. I banged on the steel. Up the street, no one had exited the silhouetted vehicle. The steel gate creaked open, and a lean, shirtless man blocked the way, holding a pistol at his side. His eyes bulged as if he were drugged, and glitter—multicolored sequins—stuck to his muscled chest. The guard couldn’t decide if he wanted to party or shoot. His white capoeira pants—Brazilian jiujitsu clothes—were worn loose, above Reeboks. He had the sinewy frame of a habitual drug user. The dogs sounded closer. The man’s pupils seemed to vibrate. I didn’t understand the words he spat at me, but the challenge was clear.

  “I want to go bowling,” I said, thinking how stupid it sounded, hoping it was code, like “tea” during prohibition.

  “Boliche?” he said suspiciously, stepping forward.

  That was close enough, so I nodded.

  “United States?”

  “Yes. USA.”

  He snapped out an order and raised both hands in pantomime. I need to frisk you. I glimpsed another guard, shotgun over his shoulder, in the shadows, holding two Doberman pinschers on leashes. The compound was larger than it had looked from the street, lit by portable floodlights powered by a roaring generator. It was nice inside and big. There was a horseshoe-shaped parking area packed with four-wheel-drive vehicles: Toyotas, Jeeps, pickups. I saw three buildings set at least fifty yards apart, including a central main house, generously two stories high, antebellum style, with colonnades, as if in Mississippi. I saw candles flickering on a veranda, tables, a waiter with a tray, couples dining, as if it was a country club. A club with guards.

  To the left across a lawn was a long, low building that might actually contain a bowling alley. A third, squarish, hulking structure seemed more warehouse, except I watched a man and woman, arms entwined, disappear into it, passing two women in halter tops and tight dresses shimmying out. There’s not a city in the world that doesn’t provide a location for the rich and the violent to meet on the common ground of dissolution. In Kabul it had been a converted warlord’s mansion; in Baghdad, an underground bunker once used to store arms, now a bar, whorehouse, casino.

  Is Rooster even here? I thought as I felt rough h
ands move up my thighs and into my crotch and squeeze.

  The guard stepped back, and a sickle moon appeared. I followed the slope of ground—gravel path and manicured lawn—toward the buildings and black river. At night it seemed clean. It would look filthy in daylight.

  The note that Rooster shoved in my pocket said he would be here with the Indian.

  On the curving river was a long dock and outboard boats tethered to pylons like horses. Approaching running lights meant more customers were arriving. Hip-hop music blasted from the warehouse. This place was an Amazon version of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, offering an evening of heightened sensation: gambling, cocaine, a blood fight or a sirloin steak.

  Pick a building and look for Rooster. The fine restaurant is a less likely destination for a miner. The whorehouse will be more likely. I hope Anasasio isn’t here.

  Behind me, the gate swung open and a vehicle drove in, its left headlight flickering. Whoever had followed me had access here without being frisked. To get the best view of who got out, I bent to tie my shoelace in a shadow, to see two people exit the vehicle and walk toward the main house/restaurant, arm in arm.

  One small, a woman. One a large man. I bet it’s the people from the hotel.

  The woman’s hair fell below the shoulder. She walked on her toes, light. I saw no camera, but she had a large shoulder bag. The man towered over her in a tropical floral shirt that fell loose over his hip, where, if he was armed, would be his weapon. They were looking around, so I ducked into the “bowling alley” door.

  Holy shit, I thought, walking in to the crash of pins.

  • • •

  It was a real bowling alley, all right, but nothing like the twenty-lane Bowlmor that I used to go to in high school. No cluster of preening eighteen-year-old football players or giggling cheerleaders, eating burgers. No retirees from Sunny Acres. No Tuesday night ladies’ league, shrieking with glee at a strike or pounding the polished floor at a gutter ball. No Red Sox game on TV.

  Keep moving. Find Rooster.

  This bowling alley might have been designed by Hieronymus Bosch. In one lane were a dozen roaring miners, in flip-flop sandals, throwing gutter balls two at a time and snorting cocaine. In another, three women in halter tops drank beer, while a man sprawled on the floor, passed out. Mirrored spheres rotated on the ceiling. Red and emerald lights crisscrossed the faces of a mob by the bar, downing cachaça or drinking from long-necked beer bottles. In lane nine, two middle-aged couples bowled and chatted as if none of the other stuff was going on. Suburb meets hell.

  I didn’t see Rooster, but I spotted four Federal Police, in unbuttoned uniforms, bowling in lane two, and guzzling beer from bottles. One man was the officer who had grilled me when Eddie disappeared.

  There was no Rooster in the men’s room, or in a long hallway where I passed a room inside of which I glimpsed men playing cards, and another housing a man with a hand scale at a small table, weighing gold dust while a guard looked on and two grungy-looking men never took their eyes off the scale. Miners changing gold for cash.

  No Rooster in the bar area, where the TV showed a CNN news alert from the U.S.: Miami shootout with terrorists. Normally that would have stopped me, but not tonight.

  Outside again, the moon was sickle shaped, misty, and anemic. I heard macaws scream in the trees lining the path, and the moans of a couple enjoying themselves in the bushes. The river smelled of diesel fuel. I saw, upriver, the public wharf from where ferries left to head north, where Rooster claimed that Eddie had disappeared.

  “Joe! Is that you? Joe! My good friend!”

  Anasasio, coming up behind me, was grinning.

  “You changed your mind! You came!”

  He was drunk, showered, scented with cologne, and wearing a white button-up guayabera over chocolate-colored trousers. A gold watch now, instead of silver. He threw his arm around me, breath more alcohol than carbon dioxide, but then he frowned. He was the last thing I needed here.

  “How did you find this place, Joe?”

  “You said Rondon Street, so I asked the taxi driver if there was a good spot there to have fun.”

  “Ah! Smart! Now we find you a sexy woman!”

  I didn’t want a woman and I didn’t want Rooster spotting me with Anasasio, but I allowed him to steer me into the warehouse building, and a carpeted room where a half dozen women in bikinis lounged on stuffed couches, did their nails, or watched TV. The room smelled of perfume and mildew. The women managed to smile like they meant it. A range of female faces regarded us; middle-aged and painted to very pretty to much too young.

  “What do you prefer, Joe? Blond? Vigorous?”

  The women were as provocative as a menu in a Chinese restaurant. Frank Sinatra’s voice sounded over wall speakers. “These little town blues . . .” A long hallway beyond beaded curtains probably led to bedrooms. A fat guard stood in a corner and made eye contact with Anasasio, and they both nodded. They were pals. Great.

  “The bill is on me,” Anasasio said. “My treat. Choose.”

  “The small brunette on the left.”

  “You have a good eye, Joe! I have had her many times, and she is vigorous!”

  Anasasio threw his arm around a blonde in a one-piece bathing suit that accented her large breasts. Her high heels made her six inches taller than he. She stiffened at his touch, and I noted that the other women looked relieved that he’d not chosen them. Anasasio steered the blonde down the hall, behind me. He winked as he disappeared into the next room, leaving me with the small brunette.

  What if Rooster isn’t here at all? What if I misread the play on that boat, and the miners and Anasasio work together? What if the next person to disappear is me? Lure him to a whorehouse. Get his clothes off . . .

  “I am Agatha,” the brunette said in our “room,” unhooking her halter top, revealing small, pert breasts. The cubicle lacked a window, offered a single bed, smelled clean, and featured a ski poster of TELLURIDE, COLORADO! No matter where you are, everyone wants to be somewhere else.

  “You are shy?” she said, at a sink in the wall, waving me over, soaping up her hands. Her bikini bottom remained on.

  “You speak English?”

  “I just did, didn’t I?” Amused, she tested the hot water on her wrist. She was pretty: violet eyes, pink lip gloss, no mascara, musical voice. She held out a terry washcloth. “Come. I will clean you.”

  Rooster’s instructions had been to meet thirty minutes ago. But he’d not told me there were three buildings. I stopped her hand before she could touch my zipper. I kept my voice low as a shriek of feigned female delight erupted from behind the thin wall, Anasasio’s room. I whispered that I did not want her to tell Anasasio what I was about to say, it was embarrassing, and she smiled, understanding.

  “Ah! You like men!”

  “It’s not that. I have a disease.”

  “Show me the sore.”

  “No, when I piss, it hurts. I don’t want you to get sick also.” I pulled out my wallet. I gave her money. I asked her to tell Anasasio that I’d gotten over excited and finished early, grown angry, and stormed out.

  “I understand. You like men,” she repeated knowingly, then winked and folded away the money.

  “Just tell him what I said, okay?”

  “You are not alone. You would be surprised. Do you want the address of the place for sex with men?”

  I took it from her and tried to look more embarrassed. If she told Anasasio this part, he would go off on a wild goose chase to the place where the male prostitutes were.

  I left.

  Midnight. Too late. If he was ever here, he’s gone.

  But I tried the last building anyway, ducked across the grounds and reached the mansion, stairs, and dining veranda. It was a churrascaria, I realized, a restaurant serving meat, lots of it, endless platters offered by circulating waiters u
ntil patrons were too stuffed to eat more. The waiters carved meat strips off the bone at your table. Serrated knives flashed to the right and left. Rooster had lied, or never shown up, or had misled me or—

  I saw him!

  He was at a table for four, with big plates, a candle, a bottle of wine, and a pale, soft-faced woman and another man who had a barrel chest, long, straight, rib cage–length hair, and Asiatic features of an Indian. Rooster was cleaned up, in a tennis shirt. His hair was brushed sideways, and he and the woman held hands. The Indian had a round face with a sharp nose. He was finishing a pork chop. I arrived at the table at the same time one of the circulating waiters did, offering a wooden platter heaped with charred sausages. The Indian took two. He was clearly more interested in the meal than in talking.

  “I did not think you were coming,” Rooster said.

  “You didn’t tell me which building in your note.”

  He grinned. “Yes, I thought of that after, but I had to write the note fast. You looked for me with the whores, yes? Because I am a miner, yes? This is Elizabe, my wife, who would kill me if I went there. She moved to Porto Velho with me from São Paulo. She makes sure I don’t waste the money that we are saving for a little farm. And this is Cizinio Karitiana. He doesn’t speak English.”

  Rooster’s easygoing mood turned urgent when I told him that Anasasio was here. He spoke rapidly to Cizinio, who turned his impassive face to me and began to speak. Clearly, he’d been prepped. Rooster translated as quickly as any pro at the UN. Apparently, the name Anasasio got everyone moving around here. Everyone feared the union.

  “The old doctor lived on the island when I was a boy,” Cizinio said. “He treated us and he was kind. He asked many questions about illness. Then a year ago a different doctor came. And other foreigners, with guns. They told Indians not to come anymore. The old doctor now won’t talk to us.”

  I asked, “How do you know the guards are foreigners?”

  “They speak another language.”

  “My language?”