Buried Strangers

“What’s in it?”

“Augusta worked for Dona Inez Menezes,” Clarice said. “Dona Inez owed Augusta some money. Augusta asked me to send it to her. I bought a postal money order and wrapped some paper around it so it wouldn’t attract attention.”

Tanaka scrutinized the front of the envelope. There was a stamp in red ink: RETURN TO SENDER.

“How did you get it?” he asked.

“Get what, Senhor?”

This is like pulling teeth, Tanaka thought.

“This address,” he said.

He showed her the front of the envelope.

“Oh. That. The man wrote it for me.”

“What man?”

“The same man who got Edmar the job.”

“And the same man who took the family away?”

“Yes. He drove the van. He brought another man with him to drive the truck.”

“Can you remember his name?”

She closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Tanaka waited, tapping his fingers on the desk. “Roberto. . Something,” she said at last. “He’s a carioca.”

It didn’t surprise Tanaka that she could identify the man as a carioca, a native of Rio de Janeiro. He wouldn’t have had to tell her where he was from. She would have heard it, heard all those sibilant s’s that littered the speech of everyone who came from there. As to the name, Roberto, it wasn’t going to help. There were only a few names more common.

“You’d recognize him? If you saw him again, I mean?”

Clarice nodded.

“Me, too,” Ernesto said. “I helped load all of their stuff onto the truck, and some of it was heavy. The lazy bastard just stood there, giving orders. He didn’t lift a finger. Typical fucking carioca.”

Cariocas, most of Brazil agreed, were indolent. This time, Clarice didn’t tell her husband to shut up. Apparently, she agreed with his evaluation.

“Describe this carioca,” Tanaka said.

“He has black hair. I think he puts oil in it.”

“Taller than me?” Tanaka asked.

“Yes.”

That was no surprise. Almost everybody was taller than Yoshiro Tanaka.

“Show me,” he said. “Show me how big he was.”

She stood up and hesitantly held up a hand, palm down-ward, about thirty centimeters above her head.

“Beard? Mustache?”

She sat down again.

“Mustache.”

“Eyes. What color?”

“Brown. . I think.”

“He wears a chain,” Ernesto said, “with a big fucking medallion from Flamengo hanging on the end of it. Can you beat it? Flamengo. Here in Sao Paulo. Cheeky bastard.”

Tanaka grimaced. The medallion was an affront. The team was anathema to fans who hailed from Sao Paulo, and those fans included Yoshiro Tanaka. The medallion was also new information, something Lucas hadn’t put in his report. Tanaka made a note of it.

“The address?” he asked. “He wrote it himself?”

She nodded.

“Do you still have the paper?”

“No. I threw it away after I copied it into my address book. Did I do wrong?”

“Can’t be helped,” Tanaka said. “You’re sure you got it right?”

“Augusta’s oldest daughter, Mari, has a friend,” Clarice said, “a girl named Teresa. She came to see me. Her letter was returned, too. What Teresa had, and what I had, was the same.”

“And the Lisboa girl hasn’t written to this. .”

“Teresa. No. And she promised she would. There has to be something wrong.”

“Just because your letter was returned? Just because nei-ther of them have written?”

Clarice opened her mouth in surprise.

“You mean Sergeant Lucas didn’t write up the part about the shop?”

Tanaka was puzzled. “Shop? What shop?”

Clarice lifted her eyes in exasperation.

“But that was the whole point,” she said. “That’s why we came here in the first place.”

Chapter Seven

They’d been shopping for a cupboard. Actually, Clarice was doing the shopping, and Ernesto was tagging along to make sure she didn’t go overboard on the price. It was late Saturday afternoon, just before six o’clock, three weeks to the day after the Lisboa family’s departure.

Ernesto was weary and footsore. He wanted to go home, take off his shoes, loosen his belt, and pour himself a tall glass of beer, all of which was exactly as Clarice had planned it. Armarios, priced like the one he’d found “far too expen-sive” that morning at ten, he’d deemed “reasonable” by two and a “pretty good deal” by five thirty. All she had to do was to keep him on his feet for another half hour or so, and he’d be ripe for the picking.

“How about this one?” he said, giving the price tag on a squat, triangular cupboard only a cursory glance.

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I want a taller one, like-”

“Like the one Augusta has,” he sighed. “Yeah, you told me.”

Ernesto sat down on a cane chair with a torn seat, took off his shoes, and started to massage his feet. Clarice, as if hers weren’t hurting at all, moved forward into the gloom.

The secondhand furniture shop had, at one time, been three adjoining houses. An enterprising merchant had pur-chased them, knocked holes in the intervening walls, and created one huge space piled high with tables, chairs, bed frames, cupboards, and cabinets. There were only a few sales people. The entire area was dimly lit.

Clarice stopped in front of a dining table.

It couldn’t be.

She bent over to examine the surface. In the near dark-ness, she could just make out the cigarette burn; the one Augusta tried to remove with steel wool and shoe polish. She looked for the ring-shaped stain that Mari had made with a can of Guarana. And found it. The chairs were there, too, even the one with the broken back. She was about to call Ernesto when she spotted the cupboard. She walked around a sofa with stained upholstery, moved a small table out of the way, and examined it more closely.

Ernesto got up and came over to join her. “There you go,” he said, tapping the front door, “An armario just like Augusta’s.”

The relief on his face would normally have pleased her, but not this time. A worried frown crinkled her forehead.

Ernesto fingered the price tag tied to one of the knobs. “Not a bad price, either. Let me see if I can talk the guy down a little.”

Footsore or not, Ernesto Portella was a tough man to sep-arate from his money. He was about to go in search of the shop owner when she put a hand on his arm.