Carioca Fletch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Cancel the order,” Fletch said. “We have a corpse.”

  Toninho sniffed. “Norival is not that sort of corpse.”

  As they swerved down the mountainside, Norival sat propped up in the backseat between Tito and Orlando. The broomsticks were not visible beneath his shirt.

  When they came to the first flat, wide road on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Tito reminded Toninho again to drive slowly, to stay to the right. Toninho drove very slowly. Even two children on roller skates passed them.

  Toninho looked through the rearview mirror. “Norival never looked better. He holds his head up nicely.”

  The car swerved a little.

  “Careful, Toninho,” Tito clucked.

  “The way he died, he should,” Orlando said. “Not everybody—”

  From behind them came the sound of a police siren.

  “Oh, oh,” Toninho said.

  “Go fast, Toninho!” Tito said. “We have a corpse in the car!”

  “No, no,” Orlando said. “Stop.”

  The result of following these conflicting orders was that the car shot forward a few meters and then bucked to a stop.

  On the backseat, Norival rolled forward. His head struck against the back of the front seat.

  “Oh, Norival!” Tito said in exasperation.

  “It’s all right,” Orlando said, pulling Norival back into a sitting position. “He won’t bleed.”

  “Quick!” Toninho said. “Open his eyes! He looks more real that way!”

  Orlando reached over with his fingers and opened Norival’s eyes.

  The police car drew alongside.

  Apparently staring straight ahead through the windshield, Norival’s eyes gleamed with a wicked joy.

  “What did I do wrong?” Toninho asked. “These people have no respect for the dead!”

  The conversation with the policeman of course was in Portuguese.

  While it was going on, Fletch sat perfectly still in the front seat, trying not to look interested or concerned.

  After they drove away from the policeman, Toninho, Orlando and Tito, choking with laughter, repeated the conversation in English for Fletch.

  Policeman: Why are you driving so slowly?

  Toninho: It’s Carnival, sir. I don’t want to hit any revelers.

  Policeman: No one else is driving so slowly.

  Toninho: Perhaps no one else is as good a citizen as I, sir.

  Policeman: Back there, you swerved. You almost hit a parked car.

  Toninho: I sneezed.

  Policeman: God bless you, my son.

  Toninho: Thank you, sir.

  Policeman, shining his flashlight around the inside of the car, finally leaving it for a moment on Norival’s joyfully beaming, unblinking face: Why does that guy look so happy?

  Toninho: He always looks that way during Carnival, sir.

  Policeman: Is he stoned?

  Toninho, whispering: He’s not all there, sir.

  Policeman: Oh. Well, drive faster.

  Toninho: Yes, sir.

  “Tito, you stay with the car. Drive to where I showed you on the map. The beach. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

  Correct. They had driven by the gates to the dock where Norival’s boat was. The gates were closed and locked. Not one but three guards stood at the gate chatting, two outside and one inside.

  They drove up the street and parked the car against the curb.

  It had stopped raining. The moon was threatening to come out.

  They lifted Norival out of the backseat and stood him in the road between Toninho and Orlando.

  “Here, Fletch.” Toninho handed Fletch a ball of heavy thread he had taken from Dona Jurema. “Tie Norival’s left ankle to Orlando’s right, his right ankle to my left. See? It will work out. That way, Norival will appear to walk.”

  Fletch tied Norival’s left ankle to Orlando’s right.

  They lifted Norival a little off the ground on his broomsticks and Orlando walked in a circle around Toninho. Norival’s movement was too slow.

  “No, Fletch,” Toninho said, “the line must be tighter. Norival must appear to be taking the same size steps as Orlando.”

  Kneeling on the wet road, Fletch retied the thread tighter, and then tied Norival’s right ankle to Toninho’s left.

  Somewhere in the harbor, a ship’s whistle blew.

  Toninho and Orlando walked Norival up the road a little way. “How do we look, Tito?”

  “Lift your side higher, Toninho,” Tito said. “His foot is dragging a little, your side.”

  Toninho hitched Norival higher. “That better?”

  “Perfect,” Tito said. “You’d never know he’s dead.”

  “Fine. Then we should go. See you at the beach in a few hours, Tito. Here, Fletch, you walk a little in front of us, in case things do not look exactly right.”

  Slowly, in bare feet, Fletch walked down the rain-slicked road and up onto the sidewalk toward the gate to the boat dock. Each pocket of his shorts was bulging with a wad of cruzeiros he had won at poker.

  He could not help looking around.

  Eyes beaming in complete joy, arms stiff at his sides, although his shoulders propped up by broomsticks did look a little high, Norival walked almost in step between Toninho and Orlando. Three close friends going down the street together. The harness kept Norival’s head high.

  Norival did trip going up the curb.

  Down the road, Tito was driving the car away.

  The three guards watched the four young men approach.

  “Boa noite,” Fletch said to them.

  “Boa noite,” they answered lowly, suspiciously.

  Fletch stood aside.

  “Ah, Doctor Passarinho!” One guard threw away his cigarette.

  Again the conversation was in Portuguese.

  Fletch kept looking up at the heavy, scudding clouds, hoping the moon would not take that moment to appear.

  Guard: “You are not going out on your boat tonight, are you?”

  Toninho answered in his normal voice, not even trying to conceal the movement of his lips. “Yes. Rio is so crowded. From Carnival. I need some peace and quiet.”

  Orlando took a few steps in his circle so that the faces of Norival and Toninho were turned a bit away from the guards.

  Guard: “But there has been a heavy rain! It might rain again!”

  Toninho/Norival: “That will help keep the sea calm.”

  Guard: “They say the wind will come up.”

  Toninho/Norival: “Yes, well, I feel like a vigorous sail.”

  Second guard: “You look uncommonly happy, Doctor Passarinho.”

  Toninho/Norival: “I think I have met the love of my life.”

  Guard: “That will do it.”

  Toninho/Norival: “Yes. I doubt I will ever love anyone else.”

  Third guard (inside gate): “Ah, to be in love! To be young and in love! You look so happy, Doctor Passarinho!”

  Guard: “But if you go sailing now, you will be missing the parties! The grand balls! How can there be Carnival parties without the Tap Dancers?”

  Orlando: “No. Only Norival is going sailing. Because he is so stuck in love, you see. We came just to see him off. We will swim ashore. Off Copacabana.”

  Second guard: “I understand everything perfectly. He is in love…. From the stiff way he walks, I should say he should not be with the young lady just now….”

  Guard: “Is that it? Ah! I see! So Doctor Passarinho, even though it is the middle of the night during Carnival, goes sailing!”

  Third guard: “What a man!”

  Guard: “What a gentleman!”

  Toninho/Norival: “Something like that.”

  Guard: “Norival Passarinho must do what is best, for himself and his young lady!” He signaled the guard inside to open the gate. “What consideration!”

  Orlando and Toninho marched Norival through the gate. True, Norival did walk as if he suffered one of the more virulent social diseases.


  Fletch fell in behind them.

  Toninho/Norival: “Obrigado! Boa noite!”

  Aboard, Orlando removed the sail covers and had the mainsail up in almost no time at all.

  Toninho released the bow line and gathered it in.

  As soon as the mainsail caught wind, Fletch, at the tiller, released the stern line and, letting it trail in the water, took in the main sheet.

  Facing aft in the cockpit, Norival beamed delightedly at his friends taking him sailing.

  While Orlando was running up the jib, Toninho came aft and took the tiller. “I know the harbor,” he said. “We do not want to run into someone’s boat in the dark while one of us is dead.”

  Fletch gathered in the stern line. “Not in the S.S. Coitus Interruptus.”

  The moon came out.

  In the moonlight, Norival’s whole face beamed. But when the boat heeled, he fell over sideways.

  “Can’t have him rolling around,” Toninho said. “He might go overboard before we mean him to.”

  Fletch relieved Norival of his rope harness and the broomsticks and sat him up in the leeward corner of the cockpit. He tied a light line around his shoulders to a stanchion behind him.

  “The things we do for our friends,” Toninho muttered, coming about.

  Now Norival was sitting to windward, leaning unnaturally forward as if being seasick. But he was still beaming.

  Orlando joined them in the cockpit.

  Laughing, then, they translated the conversation with the guards for Fletch. “What a gentleman!” Orlando kept repeating.

  Then Orlando said, “Norival loved this little boat.”

  At the tiller, Toninho said, “Who’d think Norival would be one to go down with his ship?”

  Orlando laughed. “What a gentleman!”

  “We’re just about there,” Toninho said.

  Ashore, as they came around a point, a car’s headlights went on and off three times.

  “Yes!” Toninho said. “There’s Tito. He must see us.”

  At first, sailing south in Baia de Guanabara, Fletch had tried to sleep. He lay on the deck, a cushion under his head. He regretted leaving the rest of his mineral water in the car. Despite the drinks he had had, sleep was impossible.

  The sky was clear now. The breeze was from the northeast and steady. The little sloop moved nicely through the water.

  To starboard, Cidade Maravilhosa, Rio de Janeiro, passed slowly, laid out under the moonlight. There were a few fires on the beach. The street lights, the lights in the tall apartment buildings and hotels along the shore dimmed the stars above. From offshore, the samba drums were heard from all parts of the city in a soft jumble. Like no other city Fletch had seen from such a perspective, Rio has peculiar black holes in its middle, the sides of its cliffs, Morros da Babilonia, de São João, des Cabritos, Pedra dos dois Irmãos, its surprising, irrepressible jungle growth within the city. Above all in the moonlight, arms out in forgiveness, stood the statue of Christ the Redeemer.

  At some point, sitting in the cockpit opposite Norival, Orlando had said, “We will have to go to Canecão Ball.”

  “Yes,” Toninho said. “However late.”

  “We will have to find the Passarinhos,” Orlando said, “and say that Norival went sailing.”

  “Janio, you must stay with us so we will be believed.”

  “I should return to The Yellow Parrot.”

  “No, no. There will not be time. You come to my apartment. You can wear my costume from last year. We are the same size.”

  “I seem to be the same size as everybody,” Fletch said. “Alan Stanwyk, Janio Barreto, Toninho Braga…”

  “Tito will drive fast and we will dress and go in a hurry.”

  “The tickets Teo gave me for the ball are at The Yellow Parrot.”

  “You can use Norival’s. He won’t be needing it.”

  They sailed another few kilometers. Ashore, again Tito flashed his headlights three times.

  “All right.” Toninho punched Fletch’s leg. “Take the tiller, Senhor Barreto. It is no surprise to us you know how to run a boat. Orlando, assist Norival. Make sure he has his wallet in his pocket.”

  “He has his wallet.”

  “His death would never be reported, unless they know who he is. Whoever finds a Passarinho body will expect money for reporting it.”

  Fletch sat, tiller in hand, keeping the course along the shore.

  Toninho went below.

  Soon from the small cabin came a heavy pounding. Then a splintering sound. Then gurgling.

  The boat veered to port. Instantly, it became unmanageable. The sails luffed.

  Fletch released the tiller.

  Toninho came up the companionway and tossed a hammer overboard.

  “We are near enough the rock for people to believe he hit it,” Toninho said. “And now for Norival.”

  Together, Toninho and Orlando lifted Norival, his eyes still beaming happily in the moonlight, brought him to the gunwale. Gently, they dropped him overboard.

  For a moment, the two young men stood on the deck, staring down into the water. Toninho’s lips moved. Orlando crossed himself.

  “He’ll be on the beach by dawn,” Toninho said.

  The little boat first had come about, put its nose up into the wind, both sails luffing. Then the bow began to sink. As it did so, it fell off the wind, the sails filled again, and, twisting, it began to capsize.

  “Come, Janio!” Toninho shouted. “You don’t want to keep dying at your age!”

  Orlando dove overboard.

  Only after Fletch dove did Toninho scramble off the sinking boat.

  The water was exactly body temperature, as was the air. In irrepressible, sensuous delight, Fletch stroked through the buoyant water toward Cidade Maravilhosa.

  The wads of money in the pockets of his shorts came to feel like stones in the water.

  After a hundred meters, he stopped swimming. He looked around to see if anything of the boat was still visible. He could not be sure. There was something white on the water, possibly the side of the hull, possibly the sails.

  Then, from near the boat came a loud yell. “Aaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!” Water was thrashed.

  Toninho!” Fletch called. “What’s the matter?”

  Silence.

  “Toninho! What happened?”

  Fletch was just starting to swim back when Toninho’s steady voice came calmly across the water surface: “I swam into Norival….”

  Seventeen

  “We must be very casual,” said Tito, now a movie Indian.

  They were entering the Canecão Night Club.

  “What is the number of the Passarinho box?” Orlando asked.

  “They’re always in box three,” Toninho answered.

  “Da Costa is in box nine,” Fletch answered.

  Relieved of the corpse, Tito drove the black four-door Galaxie back to Copacabana fast enough to satisfy any police.

  In the car, Fletch gulped down the rest of his liter of water.

  At Toninho’s apartment on rua Figueiredo Magalhaes, Toninho, Tito, Orlando, and Fletch shaved and showered in assembly-line fashion.

  The Tap Dancers were to dress as movie Indians in breech-clouts, soft thigh-high boots, and war paint. Norival’s breech-clout did not fit Fletch, unless he wanted to spend the rest of the night holding it up with his hand.

  Toninho dug his last year’s costume out of a closet and tossed it to Fletch: a one-piece shiny satin movie cowboy suit, complete with mask, frayed leggings, and spangles. Fletch wriggled into it.

  “Toninho. This is a scuba suit?”

  “It fits you perfectly. Here are the boots, the hat, the mask.”

  “It fits like a scuba suit.”

  Toninho, Tito, and Orlando then sat in a circle decorating each other’s faces, chests, backs with movie war paint, with great speed. Finished, they looked as if they had already sweated through a war.

  While they were doing that, Fletch decorated Tonin
ho’s apartment by draping wet cruzeiros every conceivable place, to dry.

  “Remember,” Tito said. “Very casual.”

  At Canecão Night Club, Orlando opened the door to the Passarinho box.

  “Orlando!” people exclaimed. “Tito! Toninho!”

  The people in the box just stared at the masked movie cowboy.

  Below them, the huge floor of the Canecão Night Club was jammed with people in bright costumes at little tables, on the dance floor, wandering around. Across the hall on the large stage was an enormous band, mostly of samba drums, but of horns and electric guitars as well.

  Everyone in the Passarinho box made much of the Tap Dancers’ costumes. As there wasn’t much to the costumes, in fact they were making much of the Tap Dancers.

  In turn, Toninho, Orlando, Tito exercised the courtesy of not knowing who people were and expressing great surprise when, for example, Harlequin revealed himself to be Admiral Passarinho.

  “You’re very late!”

  “Oh,” Toninho equivocated. “We just found the box.”

  “Who’s this?” a woman asked.

  “Janio Barreto,” Toninho muttered.

  “I. M. Fletcher.”

  Senhor Passarinho was dressed as Papai Noel. “Where’s Norival?”

  “He went sailing,” Tito said.

  “Sailing? It is storming out!”

  “The storm is over,” Orlando said.

  “Sailing? On the night of the Canecão Ball?”

  “We saw him off,” Toninho said. “Fletch did too.”

  “Sailing? Why would he go sailing the night of the Canecão Ball?”

  With apparent concern, Toninho said, “Norival has been acting very serious lately.”

  “He has been talking of taking up a career,” Orlando said.

  “That would be nice,” said Papai Noel.

  “It is a question of what he does best,” Tito said.

  “Norival has his talents,” Orlando said.

  Toninho said, “Perhaps he wanted to think.”

  “Norival becoming serious?” asked Harlequin. “Then it is time for me to retire!”

  “No, no,” Toninho said. “You don’t know Norival as we do. When Norival sets his mind to something, he is apt to die trying.”

  “Norival can be very sincere,” Orlando said. “About some things.”