Carioca Fletch f-7

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “Ah, yes. Trick.”

  “This afternoon Laura and I were accosted by an old woman, a macumbeira of some sort, maybe, dressed in a long white gown, an old woman. She said her name is Idalina Barreto.”

  From the terrace the samba drums could be heard only faintly.

  “Yes?”

  “She said I was her husband.”

  Otavio turned his head to look at Fletch.

  “Her dead husband. Janio Barreto. A sailor. Father of her children.”

  “Yes…”

  “That Janio was murdered when he was young, at my age, forty-seven years ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you hearing me?”

  “Naturally.”

  “She demands that I tell her who murdered me.”

  Otavio was looking at Fletch as had Laura, as had the doorman at The Hotel Yellow Parrot. Then his eyes shifted in a circle around Fletch’s head.

  “Will you help me to understand this?”

  Then Otavio took a drink. “What’s there to understand?”

  At the long table at dinner they talked of the magic in much Brazilian food which provides so much energy, the masses of sugar usually placed in the coffee, in the cachaça, the sweetness of cachaça anyway, the dende oil in the vatapa they were having for dinner. The drink, guaraná, is without alcohol and also gives energy. It was said by the Indians that it cleared the blood channels going to and coming from the heart. Fletch had discovered that it relieved tiredness.

  Down the table, Laura said, “Bananas are good for you, too. There is potassium in bananas.”

  Then Marilia asked about the paintings Teo had bought.

  “I’ll show them to you after dinner. Perhaps, first, Laura will play for us.”

  “Please,” said the Viana woman.

  “Certainly.”

  “Then I will show them to you,” Teo said.

  Aloisio da Silva asked Fletch, “Have you visited the Museu de Arte Moderna?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should think you’d be very interested in that building.”

  “I am very interested in the building. It is a wonderful building. And I had a splendid lunch there.” The people at table became silent. “There were few paintings in the museum when I was there.”

  “Ah, yes,” Marilia said.

  “I was thinking of the building,” Aloisio said.

  “There was a fire …” Teo said.

  “All the paintings were burned up,” the Viana woman said. “Very sad.”

  “Not all. A few were left,” Viana said.

  Aloisio blinked at his plate. “I was thinking the building would interest you.”

  Fletch said, “The paintings in the museum got burned. Is this another case of queima de arquivo?”

  The silence at the table was complete.

  From the head of the table, Teodomiro da Costa looked down at Fletch. A virus a few years before had given da Costa’s left eye a permanent hooded effect, which became worse when he was tired, or wished to use it on someone. He was now using it on Fletch.

  “It is a good thing, I think,” Fletch said into the silence, “for the artists of each generation to destroy the past, to begin again. I think perhaps it is necessary for them.”

  It was many moments, then, before conversation flowed smoothly again.

  “You have Laura, I see. I am glad.” Viana sat next to Fletch on the divan in the living room. They were waiting for Laura Soares to play the piano. “You must be very careful of women in Rio.”

  “You must be very careful of women everywhere.”

  “That is true. But women in Rio.” He sipped his coffee. “Even I. Late at night. Have found myself dancing with one of them. A man, you know. An operated-on man. It is more easy than you think to be tricked.”

  “Not anything is as it seems in Brazil,” Fletch said.

  “It is easy to be tricked.”

  Laura played first some Villa Lobos, of course, then some of her own arrangements of the compositions of Milton Nascimento, somehow keeping in balance his romantic sweetness, his folkloric virility, his always progressing, complicated, mysterious melodic lines. At the side of the room, in a deep armchair, Otavio Cavalcanti dozed over his coffee cup. Then she played arrangements of other deeply folkloric Brazilian music Fletch did not recognize.

  Laura Soares must have used piano technique she learned at the London Conservatory, but she played none of the music she had learned there.

  After everyone except Otavio, her father, had applauded, Laura said, “Not so good.” She smiled at Fletch. “I have practiced little the last two weeks.”

  “We have come to see your new paintings, Teo!” So the young man first into the reception room announced. With his white open shirt and slacks he wore a forest green cape, a green buccaneer hat, green shoes. Immediately, his eyes found Fletch across the room.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” Teo said from the bar.

  Just suddenly they were there, four young men dressed expensively, tailored perfectly, each in his own style, moving slowly, expectantly into the big reception room at the top of the house like a theatrical troupe taking over a stage. All but one had lithe bodies, the graceful ways of moving one would expect from fencers, acrobats, or gymnasts. The fourth was heavier, duller in the eye, maybe a little drunk, and moved unevenly.

  “Toninho!” the women cried.

  The Viana woman smothered him with kisses.

  “Tito! Orlando!” No one seemed to greet the fourth young man immediately. Someone finally said, “Norival! How do you find yourself?”

  Tito was dressed entirely in black. His shirt and slacks had to have been fitted to him while they were wet. No seams showed in his clothes.

  Orlando wore blue stripes down the sides of his white slacks, blue epaulettes on his shoulders.

  And Norival was dressed as expensively, but somehow the earth-brown pockets in his light green slacks and shirt did not seem so amusing.

  The people had surrounded the four young men, three of whom were uncommonly handsome, and were talking in Portuguese and laughing. Laura had gone to give each of them a hug and kisses.

  Fletch ordered a guaraná from the barman.

  Not only had the dinner been cleared from the long table in the reception room during Laura’s recital, the long table itself had disappeared.

  Their backs to the room, some paintings had been placed on the floor along one wall.

  One easel had been set up in the best light of that room.

  Now Toninho stood in that light, in front of the easel, making gestures with his arms which made his green cape ripple in that light. Whatever he was saying was making the people around him laugh. He seemed to be charming even his companions, Tito, Orlando, and Norival.

  Laura’s eyes were shining happily when she came back to Fletch.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “The Tap Dancers. They are called the Tap Dancers. Just friends of each other. It’s just a name.”

  “Do they dance?”

  “You mean, professionally?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Sing?”

  “No.”

  “Do tricks?”

  “They are just friends.”

  “Fashionable, I think.”

  “Aren’t they sleek?”

  Hand emerging from his cape, Toninho came forward to shake hands with Fletch.

  “Toninho,” Laura said happily. “This is I. M. Fletcher.”

  “Ah, yes.” Toninho’s eyes were as brilliant as gems and as active as boiling water. “Janio Barreto. I am Toninho Braga.”

  “You know about that?” Fletch shook hands.

  Toninho flung his arms up, sending his cape back over his shoulders. Clearly, in his eyes, he was enjoying his own act; possibly, confident in his virility, he was satirizing fashion, fashionable behavior. “The whole world knows about that!”

  Teo da Costa came into the group.

 
Laura said something to Toninho in Portuguese. Toninho answered, briefly, and she laughed.

  “Fletcher,” Teo da Costa said quietly, “within the next day or so, I would like to talk with you. Privately.”

  “Of course.”

  “Your father is not here. Not looking into your life…”

  With great dignity, Teo’s face was averted.

  “Of course, Teo. I’d appreciate it.”

  “Come, Teo!” Toninho exclaimed. “The paintings! We came to see your new paintings!”

  One by one, Teo placed the paintings on the easel and let his guests study, enjoy them. They were by Marcier, Bianco, Portinari, Teruz, di Cavalcanti, Virgulino. For the most part they were clear, even bold, in the bright, solid earth colors. Especially did Fletch like one of a mother and child, another of a child with a cage. All the rhythms and colors and feelings and mysteries of Brazil were in the paintings, to Fletch.

  Later, Fletch sat on the divan next to the sleepy Otavio Cavalcanti.

  “You like the paintings?” Otavio asked.

  “Very much.”

  “Better than the museum building?” Otavio smiled. “You are a North American. Everyone expects your passion to be for buildings and computers and other machines.”

  “Yes.”

  “Teo perhaps has the best collection, now that the museum is just a wonderful building again.”

  “He must be careful of fire.”

  To that, Otavio did not respond.

  “Perhaps you can tell me this,” Fletch said to Otavio. “Getting dressed tonight, looking for a shoe, I discovered a small carved stone under my bed.”

  Otavio raised one eyebrow.

  “A small stone. It was carved into a toad. A frog.”

  Otavia sighed.

  “Why would the maid put a stone toad under my bed?”

  Slowly, heavily, Otavio Cavalcanti lifted himself off the divan. He went to the bar and got himself a Scotch and water.

  “Come on.” Laura samba-walked across the room, holding her hands out to Fletch. He sat alone on the divan, thinking of Ilha dos Caicaras. He was thinking of himself as Ilha dos Caicaras, a small island in the lagoon. “I worked enough. I played a little concert. Let’s go with the Tap Dancers.”

  “Where are they going?”

  Otavio was drinking alone at the bar.

  “Seven-oh-six. Toninho wants us to go with them. To hear the music. To dance.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Just you and me. And the Tap Dancers.”

  Fletch got up from the divan. “Why do I keep asking your father questions? Great scholar. I have never gotten an answer yet.”

  Laura glanced at her father at the bar. “Come on. If you have foolish questions, the Tap Dancers will have foolish answers for you. You’ll get along fine together.”

  Five

  “Toninho must always make an entrance,” Laura said in the dark nightclub. “I think he does so on purpose.”

  “Do you really think so?” Fletch mocked.

  Fletch and Laura had driven in his yellow two-seater MP convertible directly from the sidewalk in front of da Costa’s house to the sidewalk in front of 706.

  The Tap Dancers had disappeared in their own black four-door Galaxie.

  At the door, Laura spoke to a young waiter, and instantly three tables for two were pushed together for them. Of course the band in the club was playing. The music would be nonstop. As soon as Laura and Fletch sat at the table, a waiter brought a bottle of whiskey with a marked strip of tape down its side, a pitcher of water, a bucket of ice and many glasses.

  “What did you tell the waiter?” Fletch asked through the sound of the drums.

  “That the Tap Dancers are coming.”

  “They are that famous?”

  “Everyone loves the Tap Dancers.”

  “They’re sleek.”

  “Yes. They’re sleek.”

  In a moment, they appeared in the door. Each wore the mask of a cat over his face. There were four girls with them.

  Even without making noise, they soon had everyone’s attention. They began to sniff up and down the walls, along the tables, through a foreign lady’s bouffant, curious about everything, until they found their own table.

  Even the man who was singing at the moment laughed. The sound of his laughter through the amplifier in the middle of a song was delightful.

  As the catlike Tap Dancers found their table and sat down, even those who were dancing applauded them.

  One squeezed in beside Fletch and took off his mask. Toninho. Fletch expressed the appreciation of having been tricked that he had learned was appropriate in Brazil.

  Fletch said, “Laura suspects you make big entrances on purpose.”

  Smiling, face flashing even in the near-dark, Toninho took off his buccaneer’s hat. “What’s fun?”

  Fletch said, “What’s fun?”

  “Moving.” Toninho looked at his hand on the table, directing Fletch’s attention to it. He raised and lowered his ring finger. “That’s fun,” he said. He raised his ring finger, little finger and thumb, and lowered them. “That’s more fun.” Then his hand on the table became terrifically animated, the fingers fluttering, doing their own crazy dance, the hand itself becoming some sort of a crazed rabbit trying to keep up its own wild beat. Watching it, Toninho laughed. “That’s most fun.”

  “Have you ever had experience with paralysis?” Fletch asked. “Have you ever been paralysed?”

  Toninho’s big brown eyes swelled. “I have the wisdom to know that one day I will be.”

  Introductions to the girls were made. Fletch got none of their names right, over the sound of the music. They clearly were glad and impressed to be there, to hear such good music, have access to the Scotch. Fletch calculated it had taken the Tap Dancers less than ten minutes to find these girls.

  “Toninho,” Fletch said. “Why would the hotel maid place a small carved stone toad under my bed?”

  “A toad?”

  “A frog.”

  “Was there a frog under your bed?”

  “Yes. There still is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I found it while I was looking for my shoe.”

  Toninho’s eyes twinkled. “What did you do with it?”

  “I put it back.”

  “That’s good.” Toninho shed his cape then, and took a girl dancing to the dance floor.

  For a while they all danced. The music was marvelous. Rather, Fletch danced. The Brazilians, including Laura, simply continued their being Brazilian, keeping the rhythm of the constant music anyway, their constant rhythmical movements anyway, onto the dance floor where they simply glided into full reaction to the music.

  A young girl in leather jeans and a jersey which did not make it to the top of her jeans began to sing. She was extraordinarily good. They all sat at the table to listen to her.

  The tape which ran down the side of the whiskey bottle was marked off in ounces. To calculate the bill, the waiter counted the ounces of whiskey missing from the bottle and charged them for that. The Tap Dancers’ girls moved the whiskey level down the tape with happy alacrity.

  The band did not stop when the girl put the microphone back on its stand. Everyone stood to cheer her and she danced into the dark at the back of the nightclub.

  One of the Tap Dancers’ girls, who had been staring at Laura, finally asked, in Portuguese, “Are you Laura Soares, the pianist?”

  “I play piano.”

  Tito was sitting across from Fletch.

  “How did you people know about Janio Barreto?” Fletch asked him.

  “About your being Janio Barreto?” Tito seemed to be correcting him.

  “About that incident this afternoon.”

  “Is it not something to know?” Tito’s face was handsome and happy, too, but his eyes could not have Toninho’s sparkle.

  “How did you hear of it?”

  Tito leaned forward across the table. “We’re all very eager to he
ar what you will have to say.”

  “About what?”

  “About how you came to die. Who murdered you.”

  “Tito, Tito. Am I never to get sensible answers?”

  “Tell me one thing, Janio.”

  “Don’t call me Janio.”

  “Fletch. How do you think you came to be in Brazil?”

  “I am a newspaperman from California. I had an airplane ticket.”

  “How did you come to have the airplane ticket?”

  “Sort of by accident.”

  “You see?”

  “No. I don’t see.”

  “Look around this room.” Without moving his head, Tito shot his eyes all the way to the left and moved slowly in a straight line all the way to the right. There was something spooky in this controlled use of his eye muscles. “Do you see others here like you?”

  “What do you mean?” Mostly the room was full of young Brazilians, a few older Argentinians, the foreign lady with her large bouffant and small escort.

  “Other newspapermen from California who ‘had an airplane ticket’ and came here ‘sort of by accident’?”

  “Tito…”

  “No. You are here.”

  “Why was I born?”

  “Maybe that too.” Tito sat back. “Now that you know what you must do, you will never rest until you do it.”

  “What must I do?”

  “Tell us who murdered you. Murder is the most serious crime.”

  “Tito…”

  A conspiracy of girls yanked Tito dancing.

  Fletch finally poured himself a Scotch and water and sat back.

  Then he and Laura danced awhile.

  When it was very late in the night he found himself sitting at the end of the table with Norival, who was having difficulty keeping his eyes open and his tongue straight, being told, even being asked, about various kinds of fish available in the South Atlantic.

  Slowly it occurred to Fletch that Norival was talking to him as Janio Barreto, who had fished these waters fifty years ago.

  Fletch decided it was time to leave.

  As he stood up, he said to Norival, “Much has changed in these waters in fifty years.”

  He went to the dance floor and cut in on Orlando and asked Laura if they could leave.

  Outside the nightclub, on the sidewalk, Toninho called after him.

  Fletch turned around.