The Diamond Bubble

by Fish, Robert L. ;

  Behind the two men as they watched the ferment of the sea came cries of pleasure from the small pool sunk in the deck before a scattering of deck chairs and sun bathers draped across the hot planks. The ship’s officer smiled at his companion in a friendly manner; Senhor Bernardes was a personable individual, and besides, it was practice to accord the friendliest of manners to any official of the Brazilian Customs Service.

  Bernardes smiled back. “Salvador tomorrow?” It was a rhetorical question, offered and received as such. The fact that the S.S. Bolivar landed in Salvador de Bahia on May 18 had been scheduled and printed in the line’s brochure for at least seven months. In addition, the landing had been the main topic of conversation aboard since sailing from Rio the day before, as Recife would be the following topic of conversation, and Port of Spain the following one.

  “Somewhere about two in the afternoon.” The first officer glanced at his wrist watch as he spoke; it was an automatic gesture indulged in whenever arrivals or departures were mentioned. His timepiece marked the hour as four o’clock which, like the conversation, meant nothing.

  “And you leave …?”

  “With luck by ten at night. We have quite a bit of cargo loading on.” He looked at his companion sideways. “You disembark here?” Again it was a rhetorical question. Senhor Bernardes always disembarked at Salvador de Bahia.

  Bernardes used the rail as a pivot to turn about. The sun followed him, now warming his back instead of his face. His eyes sought the group lounging about the pool. Mrs. Hastings sat there in a deck chair, calmly knitting. Mr. Bradley was squatting on the deck, his head bent in conversation with a young girl in a bikini, the towel about his scraggly sunburned neck giving him a somewhat Gandhi-ish appearance; his bony hand trailed intimately against her arm. Mr. Bradley laughed at something his companion said and looked up idly. For a second his eyes caught those of Bernardes and his laugh trailed away into silence. He turned back to the girl, forcing himself to pick up their light conversation once again. Bernardes’ eyes were icy as they stared at the skinny man. A bribe! This one had tried to bribe him! And had looked quite embarrassed when it was refused. He was suddenly aware that the first officer had addressed him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, you disembark here?”

  “Yes,” he answered with a humorous grimace. “Unfortunately I do. Someday I hope to make the entire trip up to the States …”

  “On the Bolivar, we hope,” the first officer said pleasantly.

  “Of course on the Bolivar.”

  The first officer nodded, recognizing the fact that his question had allowed no other answer, but also satisfied that he had fulfilled his duty to a Brazilian official in a manner prescribed by his instructions. The two men continued to lean on the rail in silent enjoyment of the beauty of the day. About them most of the passengers relaxed in the wondrous heat of the sun.

  Most of the passengers, but not all of them.…

  Archimedes stood as straight and trim as his small figure would permit, resplendent in his gaudy uniform, and looked into the cold eyes of the hotel manager with what he felt sure was convincing honesty. The manager, leaning back in the large arm chair before the enormous mahogany desk, stared back through a cloud of smoke from his cigar.

  “Your grandmother, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.” Archimedes tried to combine a touch of sadness with his expression of evident probity and then suddenly looked up, startled. “No, sir. My grandfather.”

  “Ah, yes.” The manager nodded evenly, recognizing his mistake. “The last time it was your grandmother, wasn’t it?”

  Archimedes let his eyes fall again in tragic recognition of the truth of his superior’s statement. “Yes, sir.”

  “And where’s the funeral this time?”

  “In Salvador de—” Archimedes swallowed and bit his lip at having inadvertently named the actual place he intended visiting. Then, convinced that one place meant as little to the manager as another, completed his sentence. “—de Bahia, sir.”

  “I see.” The hotel manager leaned forward to wipe ash from his cigar and then leaned back again, puffing contentedly. His eyes continued to survey Archimedes calmly. “I assume the funeral is tomorrow?”

  Archimedes nodded sadly. This was obviously a rhetorical question and required no answer, since Brazilian law demands interment within twenty-four hours. His mind, however, correctly interpreted the query and he was quite prepared to offer the necessary excuses for any delay in his return.

  “I’ll have to stay an extra day or two, after the funeral, to straighten out her—I mean, his affairs, sir,” he said with quiet dignity. “I’m the last son—grandson, I mean. And also the eldest,” he added, to put the matter completely in its proper perspective.

  “I see.” The manager puffed awhile and then removed the cigar from his mouth, studying the ash carefully. “You come from an unfortunate family. Three deaths so far this year, were there not?”

  “Yes, sir.” Archimedes tried to remember. “My aunt, my uncle—”

  “Your cousin, your aunt, and your grandmother,” the manager corrected, and forced down his bitter smile of triumph. “Well, all together, how long will you be away this time?”

  “In all, four days at the very most, sir.”

  “And your work will be handled?”

  “Oh yes, sir! It’s all arranged.”

  The manager nodded, deciding he had played cat-and-mouse long enough. In all probability—or rather, in all assuredness—this Archimedes was planning a three-day drunk with his inamorata, and in a way the manager envied him. He personally thought Archimedes a repulsive little monster, but it appeared that apparently some girl actually liked him. Or at least tolerated him. And, the manager was forced to admit, oddly enough the tourists who stayed at the hotel seemed to like him, or at least they found him sufficiently illuminating to listen to him and even to ask his advice about various problems. And what the tourists liked obviously paid his salary as well as Archimedes’.

  “Three days then,” the manager said, automatically cutting one day from the other’s vacation. “And no more.” He crushed his cigar out in the ash tray as if disposing of two problems at once. Why was it so hard to find a recepcãoista who spoke English? Give me just one, he vowed silently, and this clown finds himself out on the street in two seconds! With his idiotic excuses—and my footprint on the seat of his trousers!

  “Thank you, sir,” Archimedes said gratefully, and he meant it. This job was essential to the group, and he certainly didn’t want to lose it.

  “And my regards to your grandfather,” the manager said sourly, and picked another cigar from the humidor, a sure indication that the interview, as far as he was concerned, was terminated.

  Captain Da Silva, returned from lunch and once more back at his untidy desk, suddenly remembered something. His finger found a button; Ruy responded.

  “Ruy, I’ve got a job for you. I want you to check all the cable offices in town and find a cable that was sent last night. It read, ‘Lay Off Hastings.’”

  “Hastings?” The name was familiar to Ruy, but at the moment he could not remember where he had heard it.

  “That’s right. It’s the same name as one of the people you located in those photographs.” He leaned forward. “I don’t know when it was sent, or to whom it was sent, or by whom it was sent, or where it was sent.” He smiled. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if it was sent. All right?”

  Ruy looked at his superior a moment and then shrugged. “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Ruy, I want it fast. Check the location of the cable offices and call the nearest precincts. Have them send men around to each one. I want an answer—” He looked at his watch. “—within two hours.”

  Ruy cast his eyes to the ceiling imploringly and then down to his superior. “Yes, Captain,” he said hopelessly, and walked out. Da Silva bent his head once again over his papers.

  ITEM: A snapshot of a long sleek powerbo
at, with a grinning man standing at the prow with his arm upraised in a frozen wave at the camera. Nestor, without a doubt. Da Silva withdrew a magnifying glass from a drawer and bent over to verify it. Yes, Nestor. He laid the glass aside and read the note attached; Lieutenant Perreira thought that Captain Da Silva might be interested in seeing a photo of the much-discussed boat …

  Da Silva put the note to one side and picked up the glass again, studying the happy, smiling face of the man waving from the deck of the powerful launch. Poor Nestor! What cruel chain of circumstances brought you from that happy smile to the tortured grimace of death on a Rio sidewalk? He brought the glass closer to the picture and then suddenly froze as another object caught his attention. He looked up, staring at the wall but not seeing it, his eyes narrowing in thought. Of course! He dropped the photograph and glass on his desk, reaching for the telephone.

  His connection was put through swiftly; his party came on the line. “Hello?”

  “Wilson? This is Zé. I’m going up to Camamú. How would you like to come along?”

  “Fine!” Wilson’s voice was bright. “I love long trips in that lovely Jaguar.”

  “Not the Jaguar; in the taxi. You don’t know the roads along the Espirito-Santos coast. The Jaguar, much as I love it, wasn’t built for those ruts. It expects—and deserves—pavements.”

  “So we go in the taxi,” Wilson said. “What time?”

  Da Silva looked at his watch. “I’ll pick you up at five. In the Praça Quinze de Novembro. And don’t dress for one of your cocktail parties; there may be work to be done.”

  “Ah, well,” Wilson said philosophically, “everything has its price, I suppose, even a trip with you. I’ll see you at five.” He hung up.

  Da Silva dropped the receiver back on its hook and picked up the photograph again. Of course! For the first time things were beginning to make sense.

  X.

  Wilson squatted, caboclo fashion, hunkered down with his back against one of the grotesquely carved wooden pillars that halfheartedly upheld one of the corners of the ferry-slip entrance in the Praça Quinze de Novembro. With the warm sun of late afternoon in his face, and the soft noise of the square about him, he waited quietly, comfortably, happy that they were once more embarked on an adventure that took them from the crowded and predictable city.

  The majority of the people about him were standing in queues of one nature or another. Some marked time for the erratic arrival and departure of the madly driven lotacões that used the square as a starting gate in their suicidal race to return as soon as possible; others stood with the endless patience of their kind, waiting for the plodding ferries that would take them across the bay to their homes in Niterói. On all sides peddlers attempted to whip up enthusiasm for their wares, trudging along the queues and offering every useless article imaginable, from vegetables long since wilted from the day’s heat to live baby squid, plastic raincoats, and statuettes cast from purest chalk. Over the entire busy scene the huge outspread arms of the Perimetral Highway loomed, curving massively through the Praça, and angling wide shadows across the grassless packed earth to the water front beyond, impervious to the chatter of the crowds below.

  Wilson had had time for several errands since Da Silva’s telephone call, and these had included his following instructions to dress properly for the trip. With the wilted collar of his tan work shirt open at the throat and his small battered overnight bag tucked for safety between his accordion-booted feet, he appeared to be a reasonable facsimile of most of those about him in the square. He was still as nondescript as always, but now in a Brazilian rather than an American style. One of his fingers, dangling to the sidewalk beneath him, traced an idle design in the dust and then brushed it away. Da Silva had said five o’clock, and it was past that hour already. And they had a long and bumpy trip ahead of them. Well, at least one thing was sure—the taxi would get them there. It always had.

  His mind dwelt a moment on Da Silva’s unusual taxi and on some of the adventures they had enjoyed in it. He considered the word and rejected it; suffered, he decided, would be more accurate. Although to all outward appearances the battered vehicle was a duplicate of all the other ancient taxicabs that limped, shuddered, and coughed their asthmatic way through the streets and over the rutted highways of Brazil, held together by string, rust, and prayer, and peering myopically at the world through cracked and rheumy glass, beneath the crumpled hood of Da Silva’s taxi beat as finely tuned a twelve-cylinder engine as money or mechanics could arrange. And in its scarred horn ring dwelt a two-way radio set, and beneath the scratches and dents of its body lay bulletproof steel. And in its trunk—that part that was not occupied by auxiliary gasoline tanks—was a complete set of license plates for every state and territory in the country. Wilson was well aware of the advantages of Da Silva’s taxi over any other around; he simply hoped they wouldn’t need any of the special features of the car on this particular trip. Except, of course, to get them there.

  There was a sharp beep of a horn. Wilson looked up from his musing to see Da Silva cutting expertly into the automobile queue, beckoning to him with his free hand. He came to his feet easily, lithely, and moved across to the waiting line of cars. Da Silva leaned over and opened the door; Wilson slid in, tossed his bag carelessly into the rear seat, and leaned back. He glanced across at his friend.

  “So here we go again,” he said, and grinned cheerfully. The thought of action was always pleasant to him, particularly action at the side of Da Silva, who struck him at times as being more American than Brazilian. Or possibly, he thought to himself, I’m getting to be more Brazilian than American. Or maybe there really isn’t too much difference.…

  Da Silva nodded equably and fumbled in his pocket for his fare. The wide gates had finally been swung back and the waiting crowd surged forward, blocking the inching cars, hurrying between the closing gaps of bumpers to get aboard and find a place to sit on the long hard benches that lined the ferry’s interior. A truck in the front of the line edged onto the ferry; the squat boat dipped alarmingly in response to the sudden weight and then bobbed manfully back into place, scraping against the ferry slip with a reproachful rasp. The line moved forward slowly.

  Da Silva pulled down the ramp, bumped aboard, and eased himself into position behind a pau de arara filled with solemn-eyed people who stared back at him with no expression whatsoever. He slid payment to the attendant who had immediately appeared, set the hand brake, and switched off the ignition. And then he leaned back comfortably, returning Wilson’s smile.

  “Yes. Here we go again. But unlike some other times I remember, this time I think we’re going with some ammunition.”

  Wilson’s expression changed to one of anticipation. “Did something come up this afternoon?”

  “Many things came up this afternoon.” The tall swarthy man reached into his shirt pocket, extracted a battered packet of cigarettes, and flipped them up, offering one to Wilson. He scratched a match, lit the two cigarettes, and then dropped the match negligently outside the car to the deck of the ferry. Like Wilson, he was dressed for the occasion, including the small leather cap prescribed by law for all taxi drivers; he shoved it back a bit to reveal black curly hair and stared out of the window toward the pulsing bay. The ferry had cast loose and was squirming from the slip, churning violent froth. The captain leaned from the small wheelhouse above, screaming unintelligible orders at a crew that paid not the slightest attention. After all, they went through the ritual of docking and departing every forty-five minutes all day long, and besides, the orders too often came long after the performance.

  “Such as?”

  Da Silva turned back from his contemplation of the blue water. “What?”

  “What things came up?” Wilson’s voice was becoming a trifle impatient.

  Da Silva grinned and wrinkled his forehead as if in consideration of his own words. “Or rather, things didn’t come up—not in the sense that they were the result of accident. We brought them up. Bu
t,” he added, “in any event, up they came …”

  “I think I hate you most when you’re in one of your triumphant moods,” Wilson decided. He sounded as if he had given the matter considerable thought. He flicked ash from his cigarette and continued to stare grimly at his companion. “These things that came up—or were brought up by your genius, if you prefer—what were they?”

  “Lots of things,” Da Silva said, not to be denied his moment. He brought his head around to face Wilson, his dark eyes twinkling. “Like a bill in Nestor’s safe for diamonds …”

  Wilson instantly became serious. “A bill?”

  Da Silva nodded firmly. “A bill, meaning bought. And a receipt, meaning paid for. For six diamonds totaling over twenty carats, from the most reliable house in Rio. Six diamonds, the cheapest of which was a lot more than the Senator paid for his.”

  Wilson considered this information a moment. “When were they bought?”

  “About four months ago. Which is sufficiently recent to indicate clearly Nestor didn’t resell them because he urgently needed cash. Which,” Da Silva added as he thought about it, “his bankbook indicated he didn’t need in any event.”

  “I see.” Wilson didn’t see at all, and he was equally sure that Da Silva didn’t see at all either. He took a last puff of his cigarette and flipped it bravely in the general direction of the boat rail. It barely missed a passenger there as it arched itself into the bay; Wilson turned back hastily to avoid the threatening, accusing glare sent by the near-victim on the car queue in general. “What else?”

  “Well …” Da Silva’s faint smile faded; his dark eyes became serious. “We finally located that cable. The one that said: ‘Lay off Hastings.’ Remember?”

  “Of course I remember. And it was a cable?”

  “It was a cable. It was sent last night from the International Telegraph office in Arpoador.” His face darkened; a frown twisted his brow. “To a certain Senhor Ivan Bernardes aboard the S.S. Bolivar …”