Carioca Fletch

by Gregory Mcdonald

“Yes, the police would be summoned. But we left plenty of identification on Norival’s body. The people who found the body would be quick to tell the Passarinho family, the radio stations. The police would be even quicker. They would compete for the attention of the Passarinho family.”

  “I don’t see what you’re saying. You put Norival’s body in the water. He was dead. He has to come ashore somewhere, sometime, if you were right about the tides.”

  “I was right about the tides. Where’s Norival?”

  “How would I know?”

  Fletch looked down at the soft, smooth countenance of the bed.

  “Fletch, we must go make sure someone finds the body of Norival.”

  “Toninho, I’m not sure I can take many more disappearances today, of persons dead and alive.”

  “You must come help us look, Fletch. That will make four of us. We can comb the beach.”

  “You want to go beachcombing for a corpse?”

  “What else can we do? We put Norival’s body there to be found, not to be lost. What if he were lost forever? There would be no Funeral Mass. He would not be properly buried. His family might think he ran away?.”

  “His boat would be missing.”

  “Sailed away. To Argentina! Think of his poor mother!”

  “His poor mother.”

  “Such a thing would kill her. Not to know what happened to her son.”

  “Toninho … I still have not slept.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “‘All right’?”

  “You must help us. Four searching is better than three searching. It is a long beach.”

  “Toninho…”

  “We’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

  The phone line died.

  Twenty-six

  “Perhaps we should check with Eva,” Tito said. “Norival might have gone back to her.”

  “Norival was happy with Eva,” Orlando said.

  Of the four young men walking along the beach, only Fletch wore sandals. He knew himself not sufficiently carioca to walk along a beach in the midday sun in bare feet.

  Toninho, Tito, and Orlando had picked Fletch up in the black four-door Galaxie.

  On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, the youngest Janio Barreto on a wooden leg silently watched Fletch get into the car and be driven away.

  The drive to the beach where Orlando was scheduled to appear had been as fast as possible through the Carnival crowds.

  At one place on Avenida Atlantica perhaps as many as a thousand people in tattery costumes jumped up and down around a big samba band moving forward only a few meters an hour on the back of a flatbed truck. Never had he seen so much human energy spent in so little forward motion.

  On the way to the beach they listened silently to the loud car radio.

  The discovery of Norival Passarinho’s body was not yet news.

  The beach was filled with bright umbrellas, mats. Families and other groups picnicked and played.

  Orlando said to Fletch: “It is said if a person dies copulating, he is guaranteed to return to life soon.”

  “For Norival, the process might have been very quick,” said Tito.

  Spread apart only somewhat, they walked along the water’s edge, looking for Norival perhaps washed up dead but thought asleep, some crowd of gossips with news of something unusual having happened, the corpse of the Passarinho boy being found, police barriers, markers, something, anything.

  “Do people say the same thing in the United States of North America?” Orlando asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Fletch said. “I never heard it.”

  “People in the United States of North America don’t die while copulating,” Toninho said. “They die while talking about it.”

  “They die while talking to their psychiatrists about it,” Orlando laughed.

  “Yes, yes,” said Toninho. “They die worrying about copulating.”

  “People of the United States of North America,” Tito scoffed. “This is how they walk.”

  Tito began to move hurriedly over the sand, his head and shoulders forward of his body, legs straight, not pivoting his hips at all, his hands dangling loosely beside him like a couple of cow udders, his eyes staring straight ahead, an expectant grin on his face, each foot landing flat on the sand. The impression was of a body being pushed at the shoulders, falling forward, each foot coming out and landing at the last second to keep the body from falling flat on its face.

  Fletch stopped walking and laughed.

  For a while, then, he walked slightly behind his friends.

  “Yes,” Tito said. “Norival may have revived.”

  Fletch asked, “Is it true everyone goes slightly crazy during Carnival?”

  Toninho said, “Slightly.”

  “If the way to life eternal,” Fletch asked, “is to die copulating, then why don’t people just copulate constantly?”

  Orlando sniffed. “I do my best.”

  A man carrying two metal cylinders containing iced maté passed them. Each container easily weighed one hundred pounds. He would sell the maté in little cups to people on the beach. The man was in his sixties and he was walking rapidly enough to pass the four young men. His legs looked like the roots of trees hardened by time.

  “This is crazy,” Fletch said. Perhaps lying in the sun on the beach would make him drowsy enough to sleep.

  Dead wallets, stolen and emptied, were on the beach like birds shot from the sky.

  Toninho scanned the surface of the ocean. “There is not even a sign of his boat. That, too, should have come ashore.”

  “The boat sank,” Tito said.

  “Maybe Norival sank,” Orlando said.

  “Maybe Norival is alive and we are dead,” Fletch said.

  Orlando looked at him as if he had just offered a possibility worth consideration.

  They were coming to the end of the beach.

  Nearby was a group of very young teenage girls in bikinis. Five of the eight were pregnant.

  Toninho said, “Absolutely, Norival was to come ashore somewhere along here.”

  “Let’s ask,” Fletch said. “Let’s ask the people on the beach if they’ve noticed a Passarinho floating by without a boat.”

  “It leaves only one thing to do,” Toninho said.

  “Go home to bed,” Fletch said.

  “Swim along the beach,” Toninho said.

  “Oh, no,” Fletch said.

  Toninho was looking into the water. “It is possible Norival is lurking somewhere just below the surface.”

  “That would be just like Norival,” Orlando said. “Playing some trick.”

  “Arigó,” Toninho said.

  “I need sleep,” Fletch said. “Not a swim.”

  “Yes,” Tito said, “Norival was apt to be a bit slow, sometimes, to show up.”

  “Last night, when I swam into Norival,” Toninho said, “he was more under the surface than I would have expected.”

  “Right,” said Tito. “We shall swim along the shore and see if we bump into Norival.”

  “Oh, no,” said Fletch.

  “Leave your sandals here,” said Orlando. “Not even a North American can swim well wearing sandals.”

  On the way back in the car they listened to a long news broadcast. Mostly, it was about Carnival Parade that night, and certain controversies which had arisen concerning it. One samba school was insisting the theme they had chosen to present had been usurped a little bit by another samba school. At least, the themes of the two schools were believed by one school to be dangerously similar.

  In all that long broadcast, the discovery of the corpse of Norival Passarinho was not reported.

  Twenty-seven

  “You’re not becoming a Brazilian,” Laura Soares said over the dinner table. “You’re becoming a Carnival Brazilian.”

  When Fletch dragged himself back to his room at The Hotel Yellow Parrot, sunburned, caked with salt, the bottoms of his feet fried from just the walk up the beach
from the ocean to the car, Laura was waiting for him, curled up in a chair studying sheet music, full of questions about where they would dine, full of enthusiasm for spending the night watching the Carnival Parade from Teodomiro da Costa’s box.

  Tiredly, he greeted her. She helped him shower. On the bed he wanted to sleep. She teased him into giving her a warmer greeting than he thought possible in his sleepless condition. They showered again.

  She was dressing when he came out of the bathroom.

  On the white trousers and white shirt he had laid out to wear that night, she had placed a wide, bright red sash.

  “Is this for me?” he asked.

  “From Bahia.”

  “Am I to wear it?”

  “To the Carnival Parade. You will look very Brazilian.”

  “I am to wear a red sash without a coat?”

  “Why would anyone wear a coat over such a beautiful red sash?”

  “Wow.” After he dressed, she helped him adjust it. “I feel like a Christmas present.”

  “You are a Christmas present. A jolly Christmas present wrapped in a red ribbon for Laura.”

  They decided to dine in the dining room which was on the second floor of The Hotel Yellow Parrot.

  Through the floor-to-ceiling open windows they could see the macumba fires on Praia de Copacabana. Believers spend the night on the beach tending a fire, having written a wish, or the name of their illness, on a piece of paper which they launch in the first moments of the outgoing tide. On the first night of the year especially there are thousands of fires on the beach.

  The hotel restaurant was said to be one of the best in the world. It was rare in that the restaurant’s kitchen was exactly twice as big as the seating area.

  They ordered moqueca, another Bahian speciality.

  “You did not even read Amado’s Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands while I was gone.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You said you could not sleep, of course, but you did not even read.”

  “Somehow I kept busy.”

  “Gambling with the Tap Dancers?”

  “I relieved them of some of their inheritances.”

  “I dare not even ask you about this country inn they took you to.”

  “It had a swimming pool.”

  “Riding around all day. So late to the Canecão Ball. Cristina said you were dressed as a movie cowboy.”

  “An outfit I borrowed from Toninho.”

  “I saw it in the closet.”

  “I looked real sleek.”

  “That you danced hours with that French film star, Jetta.”

  “There was no one else to dance with her.”

  “I’m sure.” Laura mixed her pirao with her farofa com dendê. “Brazilians are not like this all the time. Only during Carnival. Brazilians are a very serious people.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Look at our big buildings. Our factories. Our biggest-in-the-world hydroelectric plant. Everything here runs by computer now. At the airport, all the public announcements, in each language, are done by computer voices. And you can understand what they are saying perfectly.”

  Through the window Fletch started to count the macumba fires on the beach.

  “Marilia Diniz and I went this morning to the favela Santos Lima to see the Barreto family, to hear the story of Janio Barreto’s life and death.”

  Laura did not seem interested in that. “You should read the novels of Nelida Piñon. Then you would know something of Brazilian life. Not just Carnival foolishness. Things are very different here in Brazil.”

  “I know,” he said. “The water goes down the drain counterclockwise.”

  “Anyway …” She removed a bone from her fish. “Last night, in Bahia, I agreed finally to do this concert tour.”

  “Concert tour? You’re going on a concert tour?”

  “Pianists who stop playing the piano stop being pianists,” she said.

  “Where are you going? When?”

  “In about a month. Bahia first, then Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Recife. Friends of my father have been urging me to do this, setting it up for some time.”

  “I guess they want you to get serious.”

  “I am an educated pianist. I’ve had good reviews. I like the idea of bringing so much Brazilian music to the piano.”

  “You will have to work very hard to go on such a tour.”

  “Very hard.”

  “Practice a lot.”

  “A very lot.”

  “Do you want dessert?”

  “Of course.”

  They ordered cherry tarts.

  “Fletcher,” she asked, “what are you serious about?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Serious.”

  “I’m serious about sleeping.”

  “Sleeping is necessary, I guess.”

  “I am seriously worried. You remember that woman I was to have breakfast with yesterday morning at The Hotel Jangada?”

  “Who is she?”

  “The woman in the green dress we saw on the avenida.”

  “You didn’t want to see her.”

  “I do now. Her name is Joan Collins Stanwyk. She’s from California.”

  “That was clear, from looking at her. Her eyes looked as if she were watching a movie.”

  “She’s disappeared.”

  “People disappear in Brazil, Fletch.” Laura didn’t seem to want to hear about that, either. “What time are we to arrive at Carnival Parade?”

  “Teo suggested about ten o’clock. I doubt he’ll be there much earlier than that.”

  “I’ve never watched Carnival Parade from a box before.”

  “I think he suspects this is the only year I’ll be here for it.”

  Laura said nothing.

  For a moment, Fletch watched her finish her cherry tart.

  Then Fletch gazed through the window at the macumba fires on the moonless beach. A cheer was sent up from a samba crowd on the avenida.

  He said, “Carnival…”

  “The point of it is to remember that things are not always as they appear.”

  Twenty-eight

  “Welcome to the Samba School Parade!” Teodomiro da Costa said in the tone of a ring-master. He stood just inside the door of his box overlooking the parade route. He wore jeans and a T-shirt. On front of the T-shirt were printed a black bow tie and ruffles. In a more personal tone, he asked, “Have you eaten?”

  “At the hotel.”

  He looked into Fletch’s eyes and spoke just loudly enough for Fletch to hear him over the fantastic noise. “You have not slept.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Have a drink.”

  “Guaraná, please.”

  Teo repeated the order to the barman.

  “Laura!” Teo hugged her to his chest. “Did Otavio get home all right?”

  “Of course. He just pretended to need help.”

  “I think that’s what you do with daughters. You pretend to need their help when, actually, you do.”

  The box was bigger than Fletch had expected, big enough for twenty people to move around in comfortably, to see, even dance, plus room for the sandwiches and drinks table, the barman.

  Adrian Fawcett, the writer for The Times, was there, the Vianas, the da Silvas, the London broker and his wife, the Italian racing car driver and his girl friend. Jetta looked at Fletch with the resentment of someone who had been danced with but not loved. She did not look at Laura at all.

  Everyone marveled at everyone else’s costumes, of course. Laura was dressed as an eighteenth-century musician, in breeches and knee socks, ruffled shirt front, gray wig. The Viana woman asked Laura if she had brought her piano to accompany her costume.

  As Fletch moved forward in the box, glass of guaraná in hand, he had the sensation that Rio’s volume knob was being turned up. Thousands of drums were being played in the area. Hundreds of thousands of people were singing and chattering and cheering.

  Across the parade r
oute, the stands were a sea of faces inclined toward the sky. Above the bright lights aimed on the route, thick, hot, smoky air visibly rolled up the stands and formed a thin gray cloud overhead.

  “Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival Parade Class One-A is the biggest, most amazing human spectacle in the world,” Teodomiro da Costa had said, inviting Fletch. “Except war.”

  The parade starts at six o’clock Sunday afternoon and continues until past noon Monday. About twelve samba schools, of more than three thousand costumed people each, compete in the parade.

  I’m not sure I can stand three more days of Carnival.” Even speaking over the noise, Adrian Fawcett’s voice was a deep rumbling chuckle. “Days of elation or depression have the same effect on people, you know. I’m drained already.”

  “It’s a mark of character to be able to survive Carnival intact,” Laura answered. “It’s a matter of having the right attitudes.”

  She beamed at Fletch.

  Fletch said: “It’s all beyond belief.”

  “Next is Escola Guarnieri.” Teo peered over the rail at the bateria in the bull pen. “Yes, that’s Guarnieri.” Then he said to Fletch, “After that comes Escola Santos Lima.”

  The parade route, on Avenida Marques de Sapucai, is only a mile long.

  To the left along the parade route are the stands, built as high as most buildings, crammed with tens of thousands of people. They arrive in the stands, take and protect their seats, bake in the sun, eat their sandwiches, hold their bladders, chatter and sing beginning at noon, a full six hours before the parade starts. Almost all stay in their seats for the full twenty-four hours.

  To the right along the parade route are the boxes, vastly expensive vantage points, some done up in bunting. In the boxes are government dignitaries, Brazilian and foreign celebrities, and people who are simply rich.

  The parade route between its two sides is as wide as a three-lane road.

  It is as wide as the line between shade and sun, sickness and health, tin and gold.

  Also along the right-hand side of the route, ten meters high in the air, are the watchtowers where sit the various parade judges, one for costumes, one for floats, one for music, one for dancing, etc. They sit immobile, expressionless, alone, many behind dark sunglasses so that not even a flicker of an eye may be a subject of comment and controversy. Their names are not released to the public until the day of the parade. And so complicated and controversial is their task that the results of their judging are not announced until four days later, on Thursday.