The Street Angel

by Robert Gollagher

  Susan leaned against him for a moment, overwhelmed by the relief.

  “You wanna come back to the house now? Ricardo’s making drinks.”

  Susan wondered what to say. “Not yet, Bob. I ... we ... need to talk.”

  As soon as Richards heard her say it, he knew. He tried not to show it in his face, but he knew what she was about to say, what he knew all along she would say sooner or later. He had been trying to kid himself that he was wrong, that everything would work out. But now he knew it would not. You’re a goddamned idiot, Bob Richards, he told himself silently.

  “Bob ... I’m leaving so soon, there’s hardly been time to think. I don’t want to go back to Adrian. But my whole life is in London.”

  “You have to leave the country. It’s not safe for you here, not now. We’ll get you out of Brazil. Then you can think about it later.”

  “I know. But it’s all been going around in my head. Everything that’s happened. Everything that ... that I did.”

  Richards noticed the guilty tone of her voice. “What did you do, Sue? You came to Brazil. You saved the lives of dozens of children. And you spent a little time with me. What’s so bad about that?”

  Susan looked at him with genuine concern. “I didn’t just spend a little time with you. I fell in love with you. You know that ... don’t you?”

  Richards walked beside her in silence, looking at the countryside. Eventually he said, “Yeah. I know it. You know it too, don’t you?”

  Susan nodded.

  Richards felt like an even greater fool, but something compelled him not to give up. “Why don’t you just come out and say it, Sue? Huh?”

  Susan tried not to cry. “Because I can’t.”

  “Then listen to me. I’ll get you out of the country. But I’ll do better than that – I’ll come with you. I’ve got contacts in Argentina, people that owe me a few favours. The market’s okay in Buenos Aires, and my Spanish is pretty good. I know people who are looking for English tutors, too. We’d get by all right, until we could get back to the States. I’ll go with you.”

  Susan felt tears roll down her face. “Damn. I told myself I wouldn’t cry,” she whispered. Then she looked at Bob, wordless.

  “Come on, Sue,” Richards said in exasperation. “Don’t do this.”

  “What I did was wrong. Adrian’s never cheated on me. But I ... lied to him, told him there was nothing going on. And I was with you. Don’t you see? It’s not right.”

  Richards was angry now. “Goddamn it, Sue. What are you saying? For Chrissake, you don’t love the guy. You’re miserable with him!”

  “But I’m married to him. I’m married to him.”

  At this, Richards laughed. He shook his head. “The rest of us are living in the twentieth century. But not you. What do you want to do to yourself? You hate yourself so much? You want to throw us away? Because you’re married to the guy? Come on, Sue. Don’t. Don’t do it.”

  Susan was so upset she forgot herself. She just let the words come out. “And what am I supposed to do, Bob? Follow you to Buenos Aires, to Bogotá, to Havana? Live in a flat somewhere? Wait until you get the guts to go back to New York? And then what? If the IRS doesn’t find you, somebody else will. How much money did you say you owed? A million dollars?” As soon as she said it she was sorry. But it was too late.

  “What?” Richards said incredulously. “What did you say?”

  Susan looked at him levelly. “I’m sorry, Bob.”

  “You, Sue? You too? I don’t believe it.”

  Susan shook her head. She had come face to face with the ugliest part of herself. It wasn’t just that she knew it was wrong to leave her husband. It was also that she was a coward. The money mattered to her.

  “You love me, don’t you?” Richards asked, already knowing the answer.

  Susan nodded, but she was too ashamed to speak.

  “And you don’t love him any more, do you?”

  Susan shook her head.

  Richards laughed sarcastically. “For God’s sake, Sue. You risked your life to save those children. I thought for sure you were going to get yourself killed. But you did it. And now you’re telling me you won’t take a chance?”

  “What kind of life would it be, Bob? What kind of life?”

  Richards glared at her as he spoke. “It’d be a life where you were goddamned happy. Remember all those things you said about love? About how you felt alive again? About how we both did? You’d have that!”

  “I’m forty-five. My whole life’s in England. My friends ...”

  “Then we’ll go to England. Just give me some time.”

  Susan said nothing. She seemed frightened by the suggestion.

  Richards saw it in her eyes. “You really mean it, don’t you? You’ve made your choice. You’re going back to him for good.”

  “If I were twenty years younger ... If I didn’t feel so guilty ...”

  “And if I wasn’t broke?”

  “Maybe,” Sue whispered. “Maybe that too.”

  Richards threw his hands up in disgust. “At least you’re honest. Honesty, Sue. That’s a virtue. I’ll give you that. But I never would have thought the money would matter that much to you. Not the Street Angel.”

  “I didn’t choose that name. You did.”

  “No. No, I didn’t. It’s what Fabriola calls you behind your back. Because you can walk through the slum with a camera and never get mugged. I promised I wouldn’t tell you. Looks like I’ve broken a promise.”

  Susan barely whispered her reply. “I never promised, Bob.”

  “No. You didn’t, did you?”

  Susan put a hand on his arm. “I love you, Bob. You make me happy. But ... I just can’t throw away my whole life. I have to go back to Adrian.”

  Richards looked at her. He wanted one last honest answer. “If you’d have met me in New York, when I still had the company, when I still had money, would it have been different? If we weren’t down here in Brazil?”

  “Probably. I don’t know. I ... just don’t know.”

  Richards said nothing for a moment, letting the truth of this sink in, coming to grips with it. Then he said quietly, “Ricardo will see you get out safely. He’s booked a flight. It’s for tomorrow. Everything’s taken care of.”

  Now that the moment had finally arrived and Susan knew she was going to have to say goodbye, she found herself crying again. She wished she wasn’t such a coward, wished that she could just leave everything and run away with Bob Richards. But she knew she could not.

  “So,” said Richards, with little emotion. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  Susan grabbed his arm tightly, to stop him from walking away. “I’m sorry, Bob. I never should have done this to you. I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I,” said Richards. Then he walked away.

  On the plane to Miami that Friday morning, Susan told herself she had done the sensible thing. On the long flight to London, Brazil seemed so far away it was almost just a dream. And when the plane touched down at Heathrow, Susan put Bob Richards out of her mind as best she could. Adrian would be waiting for her in the arrivals lounge and she would have to smile at him and kiss him hello as if nothing had happened. It would not be easy, but Susan had made her choice. One cannot live in a dream, she thought.

  Chapter 25

  Maria Anna del Campo was watching a soap opera. It was nearly time for lunch but she could not drag herself away from the television. She was sitting in the home cinema her husband had bought for her. There were four rows of six seats. She sat in the middle of the front row, blasted by the booming voices of the actors. Brazilian soap operas were never quiet. They were larger than life, loud and exciting. The maid, Helena, was standing secretly at the back of the room, hardly daring to breathe, just as enthralled by the show as Maria herself.

  The scene was of two lovers in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms and declaring – loudly and with very bad acting – their undying love. Maria and Helena could not tear their e
yes away from the drama because they knew the husband of the woman was coming home, the idyllic scene of love was about to be disturbed. So when in the soap opera the bedroom door suddenly burst open and the angry husband crashed into the room and screamed in rage at the top of his lungs that he would kill them, both Maria and Helena could not help crying out in horror. He had a knife.

  “Ai,” Maria declared. “I can’t watch this ...”

  Helena screamed. Then she crossed herself. “Our Lady in heaven ...”

  And then the episode finished, the credits rolled, and Maria and Helena were left in suspense. When the music was over and the advertisements had begun, Maria switched off the picture. It was quiet again. Then she raised the lights and got up to have lunch.

  Helena was about to run out of the room, embarrassed at being caught watching television when she was supposed to be cleaning, but Maria was in an exceptionally good mood that day. After all, she was going to a charity dance with her husband that night, she was going to wear her new dress, and the media would be there in force.

  “I’m sorry, Donna Maria,” Helena muttered. “I should be working.”

  Maria ignored this. Instead she said, “I think he will kill them. He finds his young wife in bed with another man. I think he will kill them.”

  “You think he will?” Helena said eagerly.

  “I think so. He is like me. If I found Fernando with another woman there would be blood, I tell you. Perhaps not his blood. But the woman ...” Maria drew a finger slowly across her throat. “She would learn a lesson.”

  Helena listened in delighted horror. But she dared not reply.

  “Now, Helena,” Maria said briskly, “it is time for lunch.”

  “Yes, Donna Maria. I will prepare it immediately.”

  After lunch, while Maria was in the master bedroom deciding which of her innumerable pairs of shoes to wear to the dance, there was a knock on the door. Helena entered carrying a gift-wrapped parcel.

  “Forgive me, Senhora, but this just came for you.”

  “Put it on the bed,” Maria said absent-mindedly, deciding she would wear the high heels. They were so much more elegant, and in any case she knew that Fernando liked tall women. Maria was rather short.

  Once Helena had gone, Maria turned her attention to the package. It was about the size of a large book, wrapped in cherry red paper, but quite light. There was a card attached. She opened it and read.

  When she read the words, she was surprised but pleased. It was not like Fernando. He was not usually such a romantic. She ripped the package open and found it contained a jewellery case, exquisitely fashioned, with gold corners and covered in black velvet.

  Maria Anna del Campo held her breath and then opened the case. What she saw was a magnificent diamond necklace, with three delicate strings of diamonds and two huge rubies near the centre. There was an engraved plaque inside the case. It read, ‘The Tears of the Angels.’

  Maria tried it on. It was beautiful. Then she picked up the card and read it a second time. It was written in Fernando’s own hand:

  To my darling Maria,

  Wear it tonight, as a token of our love.

  – Fernando

  Chapter 26

  Antonio Marcus had spared no expense. He knew there were two kinds of forgeries, those which were cheap and those which were good. And Marcus had been prepared to pay for the best. He wanted total satisfaction.

  By the time Juliet Formosa had answered her door, taken the envelope from the courier and gone to the kitchen to read it, the satisfaction of Judge Marcus was virtually assured. When she read the invitation, Juliet actually cried with happiness. It was everything she had always hoped for.

  My darling Juliet,

  The time has come for us to declare our love. We need not hide any longer. It is time for our first public appearance. Let the people watch and say what they will. Come to the dance tonight, my love. I love you.

  – Fernando

  Eight hours after Juliet Formosa read the invitation, Bob Richards tugged uncomfortably at his bow tie. He was sweating in a dark suit, wondering why the hell he had agreed to come to the dance at all. He didn’t own a tuxedo and he wasn’t going to waste his money hiring one for a night like this. He knew the whole thing was some kind of sick publicity stunt for del Campo’s benefit, and being at the orphanage only reminded him of the day he had first met Susan. He was trying to forget.

  “You do not look happy, my friend,” Pierre Fontaine said in English.

  “I don’t know why I’m here, Pierre. I really don’t.”

  “Ah, it is not so bad. Champagne. Music. Beautiful women ...”

  “Don’t talk to me about women.”

  “What is this? I have not heard you speak this way before. You have not even looked at the women here tonight.”

  “You know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You are not still thinking of this Susan?”

  Richards looked at Fontaine without a word, to say yes.

  “Uh. You are. She was something special to you?”

  “You could say that.”

  Fontaine thought for a moment. “You loved her?”

  “For what it’s worth.”

  “And she you?”

  “So she said. Only she ran back to her husband.”

  Fontaine shrugged. “Well, if you sleep with a married woman ...”

  “Married to a millionaire big shot. What do you expect?”

  “Precisely. But you have taken it hard, no?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Richards sighed. “Does that make me an idiot, Pierre?”

  “No, my friend. It just makes you human.”

  Richards lifted his champagne glass. “Here’s to humanity,” he said sarcastically. “May it show up real soon.”

  “Humanity,” Fontaine repeated.

  Richards looked across the dance floor from the corner of the orphanage hall in which he and Fontaine were standing. There were almost four hundred people present, if you counted the fifty or so kids running around in orphanage T-shirts and collecting food eagerly from the large buffet. The rest were workers from the orphanage, dressed in the best clothes they could afford, and the immaculate socialites who had each paid a couple of hundred dollars for the privilege of dancing in an old hall and having their photo taken by any one of a half-dozen press photographers. After all, the party was being hosted and funded by General Fernando del Campo and his wife, as a personal gesture of goodwill to the children of Recife. It was an in-crowd.

  Like all Brazilian parties, the dancing was furious and sensual, the music loud and heavy in the rhythms of samba and lambada – coming this time from an expensive jazz orchestra – and everyone was having a wonderful time. Richards reflected that it really didn’t matter what the state of the world was when it was party time in Brazil. You were just glad to be alive. It almost, but not quite, swept him up in the mood.

  In the opposite corner there was a small podium where the general, in full dress uniform, was getting ready to make his speech. The reporters were starting to clamour for space. The podium was nowhere near high enough. Del Campo’s head was just visible above the thronging crowd on the dance floor but Richards could not see his short wife at all. All he could see was a ridiculous banner strung up behind the podium, which read, in Portuguese, ‘Del Campo Childrens Foundation. First Annual Gala Ball.’ Anybody who believed that one cent of this money would be going to street kids was out of their tiny mind, Richards thought. It was almost more than he could stomach, seeing del Campo up there about to take the credit as a humanitarian hero when Richards knew full well he would gladly have every street kid in the city shot if he thought he could get away with it. Judge Marcus must have made quite a threat, Richards concluded.

  Chester Louis appeared out of the crowd, smiling and drinking beer. He was dressed in a safari suit, as was his old-fashioned habit when travelling in the tropics, and he carried a camera.

  “Hey, good buddy,” Louis said. “Tudo bem?�
��

  “For Chrissake, Chester. Speak English, will ya? Yeah, everything’s just dandy. If you don’t count the fact that Susan left me, I haven’t made any money in six goddamn months, and that murdering bastard’s up there about to take a bow like a goddamn hero.”

  Chester took a long pull at his beer. “Look, Bob, I’m sorry about the woman. I could see you had it bad. Wish it hadda turned out for you. But you got me a helluva story with that videotape of yours. Now with the case files opened up by the MPs, I’ve got a great follow-up coming out – the death of the captain in custody, that kinda thing.”

  “Yeah? What about that son of a bitch up there? You know he did it.”

  Chester stopped smiling. “We gotta catch the fish we can catch.”

  “Are you saying he’s going to get away with it?”

  “Looks like it. Yeah, I’d say so. He’ll be a genuine hero after all this gets into the papers. You know, ‘Lone South American General Stands Up Against Corruption and Saves Children.’ The international papers love that kind of shit. He might even get TV time. Especially in Europe. They’ll lap it right up. Everybody wants to hear good news.”

  “He’s right, my friend,” Fontaine added philosophically.

  Richards still remembered staring down the barrel of del Campo’s gun. “Do me a favour, Chester.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise me if you ever get the chance to nail that son of a bitch, you’ll do it. There has to be some kind of ... I don’t know ... justice.”

  Louis shrugged. “I’d love to. But don’t hold your breath.”

  Fontaine was surprised. “You have become an idealist, my friend. When did this happen?”

  Richards looked with loathing at the podium. Del Campo was just about ready to call for silence. “Maybe it was after that son of a bitch put a gun to my head. Or maybe it just rubbed off on me from someone I know.”

  Fontaine gave this little remark considerable respect. “Perhaps.”

  Chester Louis felt a little ashamed. “Ah, I’m just happy as a hog in shit coz I got my story, that’s all. But you’re right. Okay, you got my word. If I get the chance to bring that s.o.b. down, I’ll do it. But I wouldn’t hope for justice any time soon. It’s gonna take time. Might never happen.”