Carioca Fletch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “I’m quite certain Melville stopped in Brazil on his voyages. Have you even thought of that interpretation of Moby Dick?”

  “Melville meant Brazil is the guiding spirit of the United States?”

  “Maybe of the hemisphere.”

  “Toninho …” Tito’s forearms were flat on the edge of the swimming pool, holding his head up. Water streamed down his face from his hair. His right ear was red from Orlando’s kick. “I think we should do Norival a favor.”

  Toninho looked over at Norival stretched out in the sunlight. Norival bubble-belched. “Yes.”

  Toninho stood up.

  Together Toninho and Tito tipped the slow-reacting Norival out of the long chair.

  Fletch went to watch what new trick they would play.

  Each taking an arm, they dragged Norival, belly down, to the bushes. The towel dragged off him in the dirt. Then, methodically, standing behind him, Toninho and Tito each picked up one of Norival’s feet. They raised him so that his shins were on their shoulders.

  Not all that gently, somewhat from the sides, they kicked Norival’s soft, upside-down belly with the insteps of their feet, once, twice, some more.

  “Arigó” Toninho said, kicking Norival’s upside-down stomach.

  “Empty out the sack,” Tito said. “Very practical.”

  It didn’t take too many kicks for Norival to begin vomiting his four cachaças, his numerous chopinhos, whatever was still in him from the night before.

  Once he began vomiting, they dropped his legs on the ground.

  Tito grinned at Fletch. “Very efficient, yes?”

  “It seems to be working.”

  The other side of the swimming pool, Orlando and Eva were climbing back up the slope.

  “Ah,” Toninho said, watching them. “Five minutes is a long time in the life of such a mulata.”

  Norival now was on his hands and knees, emptying himself into the bushes.

  Bleary, drooling vomit, he looked up at them.

  “Obrigado.” In Portuguese, he said to them, “Thanks, guys.”

  Thirteen

  After lunch, it rained.

  The five young men sat in their muddy towels at a round table on the back porch of the old plantation house playing poker.

  The humidity was complete, and even in the rain Fletch and Orlando and Tito had been in and out of the pool between hands. They would be either wet with sweat or wet with water, and the rain water, the pool water, seemed cooler. The only reason they sat under the roof to play was to keep the cards reasonably dry. Near them, their shorts were still piled on a small table, but the pile was messed up, as Norival had gone to his shorts and swallowed two pills from its pockets. They drank beer. There were many crushed cans near Norival’s feet.

  From under the porch roof, as he played, Fletch watched the rain fall on the pool and make mud puddles in the dead garden. He watched the flower-kissing birds sustain themselves with wings which beat so fast they were almost invisible, like auras on either side of their bodies, as they sucked sugar water from small vessels in the rafters.

  Kick-dancing and flower-kissing birds.

  After two or three hours of poker playing, it was clear who the winner was. Norival was careless, concerned more with his next chope than the cards. He seemed keyed-up anyway—for someone who had had so much to drink, even though properly evacuated before lunch. Fletch yawned. Tito, Orlando, and Toninho played cards in a way odd to Fletch. They did not seem to see the cards as they were, but as something else, something more. Always they believed in the next card too much. They believed in what the cards might be instead of what they were.

  Fletch was collecting all the chips.

  At one point, Toninho said, “of course you cannot understand Brazil, Fletch. Three of us—all but Norival—have been to school in the United States. We cannot say we understand the United States, either. Everyone there is so anxious.”

  “Very nervous,” Orlando said.

  “Worried,” Tito said. “Do I drink too much, smoke too much, make love too much, too little? Is my hair all right? Might someone see that my ankles are fat?”

  “Does everyone like me?” Orlando guffawed.

  “I’m so pretty!” Toninho said in falsetto. “Don’t touch me!”

  Fletch strummed the table with his fingers. “Bum, bum, paticum bum, prugurundum.”

  The noise of the rain pounding on the tin roof increased.

  Eva came through the back door and stood, watching them.

  She stood behind Norival and watched his last chips disappear in careless play.

  She took his feverish head in her hands and turned it sideways, and leaned his cheek against her bare stomach. “Ah, Norival,” she said in Portuguese. “You are getting drunk again.”

  “Arigó,” Toninho said, clearly hoping for a picture card and playing as if he had one.

  Eva rotated Norival’s head so that he was slipping off the chair. The front of his face was against her stomach. He breathed deeply a few times through his nose.

  In a moment, Eva led Norival indoors.

  Tito, Orlando, Fletch, and Toninho played silently.

  Occasionally, concentrating, Toninho’s lips would move as if he were talking, but no sound came out.

  When Orlando won anything, no matter how much he had lost, his face would break into a marvelous grin. He would be ready to lose more.

  At one point, when Fletch was raking in chips again, Tito murmured, “Your peri-spirit is with you.”

  “Is he telling you what cards we have?” Toninho asked.

  “Doesn’t need to,” Fletch said. “I play with what I see I have against what I see you have.”

  From inside there was a short scream.

  Toninho chuckled. “I guess Norival has a few surprises in him yet.”

  “We know he cannot hurt Eva,” Tito said. “He is only a stick in her fire.”

  Then there was another, horrible, long drawn-out scream. It pierced the sound of the rain.

  “They are playing,” Orlando said.

  “Norival!” Toninho called in Portuguese. “Mind your manners!”

  Naked, Eva fell through the back door. “Norival!”

  Her hair was messed up. Her eyes were wild.

  She sucked in breath and spoke in a rush.

  Toninho said, “She says Norival has stopped moving. That he has stopped breathing.”

  Eva was shouting Portuguese over the sound of the rain.

  “He has passed out,” Tito said.

  “No.” Alarmed, Toninho stood up. “She says he has stopped breathing!”

  They all rushed inside.

  More slowly, Fletch went with them, suspecting some new trick.

  In the little room on the first floor, Norival lay on the rumpled, dirty sheets of an extra long bed. He was partly on his side, as if rolled into that position. He was naked and his stomach was slack. There was still a streak of mud on his leg.

  Norival was grinning.

  There was a happy, wicked gleam in his eye.

  From the door, Fletch watched Norival’s grin remain idiotic.

  Norival’s eyes did not blink.

  Fletch joined the Tap Dancers at the side of the bed. With his fingertips he felt for a pulse in Norival’s neck. There was none. Norival’s pleaded eyes did not blink.

  As Fletch watched, slowly the grin disappeared from Norival’s face. The lips became straight.

  The happy gleam remained in his eyes.

  A few inches in front of Norival’s penis, the bed sheet was wet and stained.

  “He is dead!” Orlando said in Portuguese.

  Under his breath, Tito whistled.

  Standing, his back straight, Toninho said, “Norival. You died arigó.”

  “What do we do?” Orlando asked. “Norival is dead!”

  “How did he die?” Tito asked. “Surely he has done this before. It hasn’t been fatal.”

  Orlando said, “He can’t be dead. Wake up, Norival! You’l
l miss Carnival!”

  “He is dead,” Toninho said. “Norival is dead!”

  Eva filled the door of the small, dark room. Talking rapidly but more quietly now, she kept gasping, imitating a belch, grabbing her huge left breast with both hands.

  “Died of a heart attack while copulating, I guess,” Fletch said.

  Orlando said, “Way to go, Norival!”

  “No wonder he was smiling!” Tito said.

  “You saw him smiling?” Toninho asked.

  “Definitely he was smiling,” Tito said.

  Orlando nodded. “When we came into the room, he was smiling!”

  “He is not smiling now,” Tito said.

  “But look at his eyes,” Toninho said.

  “His eyes are still happy,” Tito said.

  “And why not?” Orlando asked. “Why not happy?”

  At the door, Eva was beginning to look pleased with herself.

  “But he’s dead!” Tito said.

  “But how he died!” Orlando said. He looked ready to shake Norival’s hand. “Well done, Norival!”

  “A death in ten million,” Toninho said. “Arigó!”

  Fourteen

  The tall, slim, naked young man stood in the dead garden, the rain pouring down his body, his feet wide apart in the mud, his face up to the rain, his arms held high as if to catch the sky.

  From the back porch, Fletch heard what Toninho said to the sky:

  With God he lays down; with God he rises,

  With the grace of God and the Holy Spirit.

  May Thine eyes watch over him as he sleeps.

  Dead, will You light his way

  Into the mansions of eternity

  With the tapers of Thy Trinity?

  Fletch went down to Toninho in the garden.

  “A prayer.” Toninho’s face and arms lowered. His shoulders sagged.

  Then Toninho looked over the hedges, out into mountain space in the rain. “Not a worry.” Fletch could not make sure if there were tears mixed in with the rain on Toninho’s cheeks. “When you die copulating, you are certain to come back to life, soon.”

  Fifteen

  “Toninho! What do we do?” Tito asked in a hushed voice.

  Toninho shook his head as if to clear it.

  “Still, Norival is dead,” he muttered thickly.

  While Fletch and the Tap Dancers were out of the room, Dona Jurema, the young teenaged girl, and one other woman from the house had washed Norival, put a fresher sheet under him, and laid him out straight.

  Now in the small, dark room, Norival lay on his back, clean, naked. His eyes were closed. In his hands folded over his stomach were a few flowers which had seen better hours. A candle flickered at the head of the bed; another candle at the foot of the bed.

  Leaving a full bottle of whiskey in the room, Dona Jurema left the young men sitting around the bed in straight wooden chairs.

  So they had sat for two or three hours. The thick candles had burned down only a few centimeters.

  There was no measurement tape on that whiskey bottle. Their next drink from it would probably be their last. Fletch had had three or four good swallows from the bottle.

  Even on the straight wooden chair across the bed, Orlando sat with his legs out straight before him, his chin on his chest, his thumbs hitched into the tops of his shorts.

  “We must do something,” Tito said.

  Toninho blinked.

  “We cannot leave Norival here,” Tito said.

  To Fletch, Toninho said, “Norival comes from a rich, important family. His uncle is an admiral!”

  “To die in a whorehouse,” Tito said. “Full of booze…”

  “And pills, I think,” Fletch said.

  “His mother would be disappointed,” Tito concluded.

  “But what a way to go!” Orlando muttered without opening his eyes or raising his chin from his chest.

  “We must do something,” Tito said.

  “We must move him.” Toninho drank from the bottle, saw that it was nearly the last of the whiskey, and handed the bottle to Tito.

  “We must arrange some other death for Norival,” Tito said.

  “Burn the record,” Fletch agreed. “I see the point.”

  “For the sake of his mother,” Tito said.

  “He must not have died here,” Toninho said carefully. “Not in the arms of Eva.”

  “No,” said Tito. “It would make her too famous.”

  “Still.” Toninho winked. “People will know.”

  “Yes,” Tito said. He passed the bottle over Norival to Fletch. “People will know how Norival died.”

  “What a way to go!” Orlando muttered.

  “But not his mother,” said Toninho.

  “Not his mother,” agreed Tito. “Not his sisters.”

  For a moment, while Fletch held the bottle, they were silent.

  The candles flickered and Norival did not breathe.

  Through the open window came the sound of the rain on the tin roof.

  “We must do something,” Tito said.

  “The important thing is,” Toninho said, trying very hard to keep his tongue straight and to see things clearly, “is to prevent an autopsy.”

  “Yes!” Tito said forcefully at this great wisdom.

  “Because Norival was full of booze and pills.”

  “Despite our having emptied him out once,” Tito put in.

  “And that would disappoint his mother,” said Toninho, losing his tongue in his mouth.

  “Worth it,” Orlando muttered from his chest. “A death in ten million. Good old Norival.”

  “Wake up, Orlando,” Tito said. “We must think.”

  “No.”

  Toninho kicked Orlando’s legs and Orlando nearly fell off his chair.

  Blinking, he looked at Norival laid out on the bed, holding the wilted flowers.

  It was not yet dark, but the rain made the candles bright in the small room.

  “Orlando, we must think of something.”

  “Queima de arquivo,” Fletch said. “I am learning Portuguese.”

  “Truly,” Orlando said. “We must do something. We must move him.”

  “His boat,” Toninho said.

  “Yes.” Orlando shook his head solemnly. “His boat. Who now will want his boat?”

  “Exactly,” Toninho said.

  “Exactly what?” Tito asked.

  Fletch took his drink from the bottle and handed it back across Norival to Orlando.

  “Clearly.” Toninho spoke slowly, carefully. “Norival died on his boat.”

  “Clearly.” Tito looked at Norival as if for agreement. “Norival would have liked that.”

  Orlando said, “I think Norival was satisfied enough with the way he died.”

  “But we can say he died on his boat, Orlando,” Tito said.

  “Off his boat,” Toninho corrected him. “He died off his boat. He drowned. That should prevent an autopsy.”

  “Yes,” Tito said. “Poor Norival drowned. That should make his mother happy.”

  “You’re all crazy,” Fletch said.

  “But Toninho,” Tito asked, “how do we get Norival to his boat? It is way down in the harbor. There is a gate to the docks. Guards. There are always guards at the gate.”

  Again there was silence, as they considered the gate and guards leading to the dock where Norival’s boat was.

  Toninho took the bottle of whiskey from Orlando and finished it. “We walk him.”

  He placed the empty whiskey bottle on the bed, within Norival’s reach.

  Tito said something in Portuguese.

  “We walk him right by the guards.”

  Orlando said, “This is a night the dead walk.”

  “Broomsticks.” Toninho’s eyes were now fully open. He was

  speaking perfectly clearly. “Jurema must have brooms.”

  Tito looked at the floor. “I sincerely doubt that, Toninho.”

  “Everyone has brooms. Tito, you get rope and ri
g a harness around Norival’s chest. Under his arms. Orlando, you get brooms from Dona Jurema and saw them down to size. You know? So they will fit from the harness under his arms to his waist, so we can hold him up. We need some thick thread for his legs.” Orlando and Tito were studying Toninho carefully with their eyes, putting all this together. Toninho jumped up. “There is a book of tide tables in the glove compartment of the car. I shall figure out exactly where Norival must drown to come ashore and be found in the morning.”

  “His wallet is in the car, too, Toninho,” Tito said. “In the glove compartment. Norival must wear his wallet when he drowns, so when they find him in the morning, they will know who he is.”

  “Otherwise they will not report the body,” Orlando said.

  “They will report the body fast enough, if it’s a Passarinho,” Tito said. “Norival Passarinho.”

  “You help too, Fletch. You get Norival’s clothes, including his shirt.”

  “You’re all crazy,” Fletch said. “What if we get caught with a corpse?”

  Standing over Norival, Tito rubbed his own hands together. “Not a worry, Norival,” he said. “We’ll see that you died decently.”

  Sixteen

  “Drive carefully, Toninho,” Tito said. “We don’t want an accident.”

  Although he was not going fast, Toninho was not being all that successful at keeping the black four-door Galaxie to the right. They were swerving down the wet, twisting mountainside road. It was now fully dark. A Volkswagen, climbing the road, had just blared its horn at them.

  “We don’t want to be stopped by the police,” Orlando said.

  “Drive as if you are driving a hearse,” Tito advised.

  “I am driving a hearse,” Toninho said, swinging the wheel too much.

  At Dona Jurema’s, Orlando had sawed two broomsticks down to size. Tito bound Norival’s chest with a rope harness. Toninho studied the tide tables and decided exactly where Norival was to drown in the South Atlantic Ocean. Together they fit the broomsticks into the harness and then dressed Norival.

  While watching them carry Norival out of the old plantation house, Dona Jurema said to Fletch, “Come Tuesday. I’ll have a corpse for you.”