Quests of Simon Ark

by Edward D. Hoch

  “Does the Devil wait for you in Rio, Simon?” I asked. After knowing him for twenty-five years I was too well aware of his interest in the diabolic and mystical.

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “A lawyer I know there telephoned me this morning to report on an extraordinary crime. A mummy has been found washed up on Copacabana Beach.”

  “A mummy! Wrapped up and everything? Like in Egypt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it fell overboard from a ship. Is it very old?”

  “It is surprisingly new. It is the mummy of the lawyer’s client, who disappeared from his home the day before Christmas.”

  I knew then that I’d be going to Rio with Simon Ark.

  My wife Shelly was upset at my missing New Year’s Eve at home, but she understood as well as anyone my strange relationship with Simon Ark. It is a relationship that has brought us together sometimes after years apart, and carried us to distant places while Simon pursued his investigations of the strange and Satanic. I once edited a book of Simon’s on witchcraft, and my firm published it. Although I didn’t really believe his claim that he’d been searching out evil for nearly two thousand years, I had to admit he knew a great deal about it. And there were times, looking at his weathered face and tired eyes, when I’d have believed him to be just about any age he said.

  So we were in Rio.

  The lawyer who’d summoned us was an American named Felix Brighter, a portly man in his forties whom Simon had known in New York. When I asked what he was doing in Brazil, Simon only smiled wisely and said, “I believe there was some trouble with money. And of course Brazil has no extradition treaty with the United States.”

  Whatever brought him there, Felix Brighter had made the best of it. His office in one of the big new buildings facing the ocean commanded a sweeping view of the Avenida Atlantica and the hundred-yard-wide expanse of Copacabana Beach beyond.

  I stared out the window at the wavy mosaic pattern of Copacabana’s promenade far below. “It was almost opposite my building that the body was found,” Felix Brighter said, directing our gaze a bit to the south. “In fact, I saw the police cars and the crowd around the spot when I came to work that morning.”

  “It’s a very wide beach,” Simon observed, “yet the body was by the water rather than here near the street?”

  “Exactly. As if it had been cast up by the ocean.”

  Simon and I resumed our seats opposite the lawyer’s desk. “Tell me everything you know about the victim,” Simon said.

  “I’m afraid that’s very little. His name was Sergio Costa, and he operated a tourist shop just down the street with his brother Luiz. They sold native pottery and artifacts, and I did some legal work for them when it was needed. Sergio was divorced from his wife and living with his unmarried brother in a small house in the Canoa section. He disappeared on Christmas Eve, but Luiz didn’t think much of it at first. His brother had been depressed about the breakup of his marriage, and Luiz thought he was off getting drunk somewhere.”

  “And the body?”

  “Washed up on the beach two days ago. It was completely embalmed and wrapped in burial windings like an Egyptian mummy, as if it had been plucked from a tomb.”

  Simon Ark nodded. “It seems like a terrorist act—something to throw fear into people. Have you been troubled with urban guerrillas here in Brazil?”

  “Of course, and that is what the police think. But Sergio and Luiz were not wealthy men, and no ransom was demanded.”

  “That may come later.” Simon pondered. “Perhaps this death was meant as an example, so that other merchants will pay up out of fear.”

  The lawyer scowled. “Perhaps. But there is another possibility, and that’s the reason I contacted you, Simon. I remembered your interest in the bizarre, especially regarding religion and the worship of strange gods.”

  “Some gods are so strange it is difficult to distinguish them from devils,” Simon remarked. “The spirit cults of Rio have both gods and devils to worship.”

  “You know of their devil Exu?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the she-demon Pomba Gira?”

  Simon nodded.

  “Then you must know of the sea goddess Yemanja. She is portrayed as a beautiful black-haired woman in a long blue gown coming out of the ocean. Soon, on New Year’s Eve to be exact, that beach down there will be alive with her worshipers. They will cast offerings of flowers and jewelry and even sacrificial animals into the surf for their goddess. If the offering is carried out to sea, Yemanja’s aid and protection are assured. If it is washed back to the beach, it is a sign of her rebuff.”

  “And you believe—”

  “That Sergio Costa was killed and his mummy cast into the ocean as an offering to Yemanja, who rejected it.”

  I was beginning to think that Felix Brighter had been living in Rio too long, but surprisingly enough Simon seemed to accept the theory in dead earnest. “That’s a possibility worth looking into,” he agreed. “But tell me, exactly what is your interest in this affair?”

  “He was my client. I drew up his will and I’ll be probating his estate. I feel someone should try to find his killer. For the police it’ll be a routine investigation, quickly forgotten.”

  “What about Sergio’s estate? Does his brother inherit?”

  “Only Sergio’s half interest in the shop, which isn’t worth much. His house went to his ex-wife in the divorce settlement, along with much of his cash. He was still supporting her and their two children.”

  “I should speak with the police,” Simon decided.

  “The local police are working with a government detective named Marcos Orleans. I will arrange an appointment.”

  Brighter dialed a number and spoke briefly in Portuguese, listened, and then spoke again. When he hung up he said, “Orleans can see you in an hour. He suggests you meet at the city morgue. If you learn anything, I’d appreciate your letting me know at once. Orleans says he will help in any way possible.”

  “That needn’t include showing us the remains,” I grumbled.

  But of course I went along with Simon to the morgue.

  Marcos Orleans had curly black hair and a pencil-thin mustache. He was younger than I’d expected and there was a gleam in his eyes that hinted at a zest for more pleasant pursuits than the grim business at hand. He introduced himself as a member of the federal police and led us to one of the sheet-covered morgue tables.

  “A terrible crime. Terrible!”

  “How was he killed?” Simon asked.

  “We suspect poison, and we’ll remove certain tissues for examination. Of course with the body already embalmed it’s impossible to state just when he died.”

  Simon bent to examine the corpse’s skin, perhaps searching for needle marks. “Do you have any leads on who embalmed him?”

  “None,” the detective admitted. “Our federal industry is not as well regulated as it might be. We have the poor living in those shacks on the hillsides, and often they are dead and buried without anyone even knowing. Naturally we are checking all undertakers for any embalming they did on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but if the killer passed off Sergio as a poor slum-dweller there might be no record of it.”

  Simon straightened up. “Do you believe the embalming was done as part of an offering to the sea goddess Yemanja?”

  “I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Ark. There is no place for superstition in police work.”

  “I think the lawyer, Felix Brighter, summoned me because he is a superstitious man.”

  Marcos Orleans smiled for the first time. “He has an office high above Copacabana Beach. I have been there. From his window, looking down at the tiny specks of humanity moving on the sand below, one might easily imagine himself to be something of a god. And, after all, gods are superstitious, are they not?”

  Simon merely smiled. I could see he admired the detective without necessarily agreeing with him. Perhaps they had both seen something of Felix Brighter’s character that
I’d missed.

  “Then you have no leads?” Simon asked as we were departing.

  The detective shrugged. “Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and the great night of Yemanja’s festival. The candles will burn on the beach, and the sea itself might give us an answer. I will be there.”

  “I thought you weren’t superstitious.”

  “I’m not, Mr. Ark, but maybe the killer is.”

  Simon paused at the door. “One more thing. Is there anyone in Rio who could tell me more about Yemanja and the spirit cults?”

  The detective considered his question. “Go see Father Rudolph at the Church of Santa Catarina. He is an American who has labored long among our people.” He glanced at the wall clock. “Now he will be among the poor on the hillsides, but go in the morning when he says Mass.”

  “Thank you,” Simon said.

  We went out into the sunlit street and I was thankful for the fresh air after the closeness of the morgue. Feeling the warmth on my face it was hard to believe it was winter back home. “Now what?” I asked Simon.

  “Now we visit the surviving brother, Luiz Costa.”

  The Costa brothers had known how to choose a good location. Their shop fronted on the six-lane Avenida Atlantica, next to a sidewalk cafe where tables with blue-and-white umbrellas offered a respite from the tropic sun. I followed Simon Ark through the front door, past display counters loaded with carved animals and woven baskets.

  “We’ll be closing soon,” the man behind the counter informed us. “A death in the family.”

  He was short and clean-shaven, with black hair that half covered his ears. With the addition of a mustache he might have passed for the man I’d just seen in the morgue. “You are Luiz Costa?” Simon asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I have come from New York to investigate the strange death of your brother.”

  “Who would care about my brother as far away as New York?”

  “Your lawyer, Felix Brighter, asked me to come. I have had some experience in this sort of thing.”

  “You, an old man? How will you find Sergio’s killers?”

  “First by discovering the motive,” Simon told him. “Who wanted your brother dead?”

  “No one.” But immediately he corrected himself. “Except maybe that ex-wife of his, Rosetta. That woman would stop at nothing.”

  “This hardly seems a crime of passion,” Simon pointed out.

  “She bled him of every penny. In the end he was living with me, having only his interest in this shop to keep him going.”

  “Could you tell us something of his disappearance?”

  “He left the shop early on Christmas Eve. Generally only one of us worked here at a time, but during the Christmas season we had a part-time clerk as well. He had planned to do some last-minute shopping for his children. Naturally, I expected he would be home when I arrived there a bit past six o’clock. But his absence did not worry me at first. I assumed he had gone early to visit his children. In fact, it was not until Christmas morning when Rosetta telephoned me that I realized something was wrong.”

  “He didn’t go there?”

  “No, she never saw him—or so she claimed. I telephoned some of his friends but no one had seen him. When he did not return home that evening I reported him missing to the police.”

  “And they found him two days ago?”

  “Yes. On the twenty-eighth, early in the morning. The waves had rolled his wrapped body onto the beach.”

  “The body is still at the morgue.”

  Luiz nodded. “They are trying to determine the cause of death. It will be released later today, which is why I am closing early. The funeral must be tomorrow because of the New Year’s holiday.”

  “Brighter said you thought he might have been off drinking because he was depressed at the breakup of his marriage.”

  “The thought occurred to me. I despised that woman, but we are a Catholic country, after all, and divorce is a very serious matter. It was a terrible blow to my brother.”

  “So he drank.”

  “Yes.”

  I paused at a counter to pick up a small stone carving of a llama. “This looks very old. Is it valuable?”

  “Ones like it from pre-Columbian days are national treasures in Peru. But that is only a copy.”

  I set it gently on the counter. Simon seemed to have finished with his questioning. He paused only to study a framed photograph of the two brothers that hung on the wall behind the shop’s cash register. Then he said goodbye and followed me outside.

  “What do you think about him, Simon?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I was struck mainly by the resemblance between him and his dead brother. With the addition of a mustache he could be the twin of the man in the morgue.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Embalming a body removes one very specific means of identification—a person’s blood type. The blood is drained and replaced by embalming fluid.”

  “So it could be Luiz in the morgue instead of Sergio?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Back at our hotel Simon telephoned the detective, Marcos Orleans, and asked him how the body was identified. He listened and finally hung up, somewhat disappointed. “Sergio’s ex-wife identified him. And his fingerprints checked out too. There’s no doubt about the identification.”

  “It was a good idea, Simon.”

  We spent the evening strolling the streets of Rio near our hotel. Once we came upon a newsstand where large prints of religious scenes were sold along with the magazines. There was an agonized Christ, and the Last Supper, and St. Stephen pierced by arrows, and in the midst of them a portrait of a beautiful lady in a blue gown rising from the flower-strewn ocean waves.

  “That would be Yemanja,” Simon pointed out.

  “They certainly mix their religious icons.”

  “The pagan and the Christian have always been very close in Latin countries. In the morning we will visit Father Rudolph, and perhaps he can help us.”

  I had been to Catholic Mass before with Simon, but nothing prepared me for the Mass we attended at the little Church of Santa Catarina. The entire front row of the church was filled with a row of native women, their heads shaved and their bodies and faces dabbed with spots of white paint. Colorful scarves were wound around their bodies and their necklaces and bracelets jingled when they moved. They seemed under the direction of a robed woman who wore a dozen or more crosses and strands of beads around her neck. As the Mass came to an end, she unbelievably lit a cigar and smoked it as she shepherded her charges out.

  Father Rudolph, a tall smiling priest with a Midwestern accent, had been told to expect us. He shook hands and led us into the sacristy while he removed his vestments.

  “Who were those people, Father?” I asked. “It seemed almost part of some initiation rite.”

  “That’s exactly what it was. They are initiates into the Candomble spirit cult. The initiation ceremony lasts for several weeks and this is the final ritual. They are brought to attend Catholic Mass.”

  “I can’t believe it!” I said. “That woman with the cigar—”

  The priest merely shrugged. “The cigar is part of the ritual, and she is the Mother of Saint, the head priestess of their closed community. They are mediums, you see, or think they are.”

  “But you allow them here?”

  “Candomble is the oldest of the spirit cults, with roots in West Africa. Those white dots and lines painted on the initiates’ bodies are meant to represent the scars cut into the flesh by African tribes. Theirs is a mixture of Christian and pagan ceremony, and in many ways they are an approximation of the Church. Though we deplore spiritism, we will not drive them away from our churches.”

  “Do these people worship Yemanja?” Simon asked.

  Father Rudolph carefully folded his vestments. “No. She is a deity of the Umbanda cult, which is Rio’s largest. And its most dangerous, I might add, since it fosters a subsidiary cult that pract
ices black magic.”

  “The Devil.”

  The priest studied Simon. “You say it like the name of an old friend.”

  “Hardly a friend, but surely an acquaintance. He is never far away, is he?”

  “Not here. Not where poverty drives the people down and superstition lifts them up. If the Church and the spirit cults cannot help them, they will turn to an older religion.”

  “I am interested in the death of Sergio Costa.”

  “Yes.” The priest nodded. “The one wrapped like a mummy.”

  “A sacrifice to the sea goddess?”

  “Perhaps. Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and sacrifices will be made on Rio’s beaches.”

  “Who would I talk to about the sacrifices?” Simon asked.

  “Bamba Yin, perhaps. She’s a fat ugly old woman who knows more about such matters than any human being should.”

  “Where will I find her?”

  “You won’t, today. She’ll be meditating for tonight’s celebration. Look for her before midnight on Copacabana Beach.”

  “Will you be there, Father?” Simon asked.

  “I do not worship Yemanja. They may bring their gods to me, but I do not take my God to them.”

  When we left the little church, Simon suggested we call on the dead man’s former wife. “A wife, present or former, is always a suspect in a murder case,” he pointed out.

  “We’re not even certain it is murder, Simon. Unless Orleans has been able to establish the cause of death was poison,”

  “I think we can assume, my friend, that Sergio Costa had some unwanted help in departing this life. Let us visit the widow.”

  We arrived at the Costa home just as the family was returning from the cemetery. I’d forgotten this was the morning of the funeral. The children were taken inside by an older woman dressed in black while Rosetta Costa, also in black, greeted us on an enclosed patio. She was a lovely woman with long black hair, not at all what I’d expected, and it took me a moment to realize why her face seemed so familiar. It was because she bore an uncanny resemblance to the painting of the goddess Yemanja that we’d seen for sale.