'The point…Let me see…I am sure that being as a medical student, you know that in countries such as this, 'Third World countries I have heard you Americans call us, some people in desperate need for money sell on the black market a kidney or part of a liver or even a lung. The payments to them, I have heard, often are quite high.'
'So even if I sold my lung on the black market, which I most certainly did not, why would I be here?'
Perreira's mirthless smile was triumphant.
'Guilt,' he replied. 'Guilt over what have you done, joined with denial that you did actually do it. Pardon me for saying this fact, senhorita, but in a lifetime of working on this job, I have seen stranger things — much stranger.'
Natalie had heard enough. She knew there was nothing to be gained by losing her temper at the policeman, and potentially much to lose. The police in Brazil were answerable to few besides themselves, and the Military Police were, from what she could tell, the most dangerously autonomous of all.
'Believe me, Detective Perreira,' she said, standing and gathering her things, 'I would look a dozen times for a deficiency in your computer system before looking for one in me. If something comes up, I am staying at the Hotel Rui Mirador.'
She whirled and marched through the crowd and out of the little station. It wasn't until she was on the street that she realized her brief outburst had left her considerably short of breath.
The next four hours were an exhausting blur. On paper — specifically her map — Santa Teresa's looked to be no more than six or seven blocks from the Military Police station. Had the map been topographical, Natalie might have hailed a cab. The hills were steep and unavoidable, and the walk across Botafogo, however picturesque, was slow going in the mounting afternoon heat. By the time she passed through the main entrance to the hospital, she could feel the perspiration beneath her clothes.
The main structure of the sprawling hospital, four monolithic stories of stone, a block in every direction, looked like it might have been built by Brazilian discoverer Pedro Cabral in the early sixteenth century. To that central core, now modernized inside, wings and towers had been added in a dozen different architectural styles. Natalie chose to visit the administrative offices first, and hit pay dirt immediately — at least in a manner of speaking.
A vice president by the name of Gloria Duarte seemed quite interested in her as an accomplished, intelligent woman, and was sincerely sympathetic with her plight. They conversed in Portuguese, although from a glance at the woman's extensive library, Natalie sensed Duarte, warm, urbane, quick-witted, and insightful, could have communicated in any number of languages, including English.
'What disturbs me most of your story,' Duarte said, 'is how sure you are, backed by your mentor, Doctor — '
'Berenger. Douglas Berenger.'
'Dr. Berenger, that the physician who did the surgery on you was someone named Xavier Santoro. We have no such physician on this staff, and I know of none in the city, although perhaps you should contact the state medical association.'
'I did. You are right. There is no physician by that name.'
'I see…Well, one step at a time, I suppose.'
'One step at a time,' Natalie repeated, chagrined that Duarte's enthusiasm might have cooled.
'I would like to say that patients never fall through the cracks of our hospital,' the woman went on, 'but that is simply not the case. We have all together more than two thousand beds, and they are full much of the time. A simple clerical error and all of your records might exist under a name one letter different from your own. So take heart. I suspect this part of your mystery will be solved quickly, and that the solution will prove to be trivial and mundane.'
With that, she sent Natalie to the security office for a visitor's identification badge that would allow her access to any area of the hospital, including the record room and all of the medical and surgical wards. She also had copies of Natalie's flyer made and instructed her secretary to distribute them to all hospital departments with an addendum to notify Duarte herself of any information, however remote the connection might seem.
A quick espresso in a courtyard cafe outside the administrative wing, and Natalie headed for the record room. Reyes, Reyez, Rayes. Seated at a terminal in a carrel with one of the record-room clerks, she tried every per- mutation she could think of without success, and went through records on unknown females as well. Next she headed to the medical, then the surgical intensive care units. She had some recollection of two of her nurses faces, and also of Santoro's, and wistfully hoped she might simply run into one of them.
Even in a city like New York or Rio, an unknown woman found shot and almost naked in an alley, and subsequently losing her lung, would have been a top cluster on the hospital grapevine. Sooner, rather than later, everyone would have heard about it. In fact, none of the nurses in either of the units had.
At five, bewildered and at an absolute loss for explanations, but physically unable to go on this day, Natalie shuffled from the hospital. Six weeks ago she had flown to Brazil, she had been attacked and shot in an alley, and she had lost her lung. Those were the givens. Somehow, some-place, there was an explanation that would tie these truths together. She checked her map, and chose a route back to her hotel that involved the largest and, she assumed, the flattest streets. The late-afternoon sun was somewhat subdued by haze, and the temperature was bearable.
She had flown to Brazil. She had been attacked. She had lost her lung.
The thought, roiling through her brain, kept her from appreciating the incredible beauty of the city, or any of the burgeoning, vibrant, rush hour pedestrians, most probably making their way home. Despite all the guide books descriptions of laid-back Cariocas, the street corners were much like New York — masses of people, shoulder to shoulder, often eight or ten deep, jockeying for position to cross while cars and taxis tried to wring every single moment out of each green light.
Natalie was at a particularly busy intersection, sardined in, perhaps the third or fourth row of bodies, when she heard a woman's voice speaking in Portuguese not far from her ear.
'Please do not turn around, Dr. Reyes. Please do not look at me. Just listen. Dom Angelo has the answers that you seek. Dom Angelo.'
At that instant, the light changed and the phalanx moved forward across the street, sweeping Natalie helplessly along. She was on the curb at the far side before she turned, scanning the faces around her, and peering through the crowd toward the corner they had just left. No one seemed the least bit interested in her. She was about to give up and focus on the strange message when she caught sight of a heavyset woman wearing a brightly flowered housedress, walking urgently away from her, moving with a fairly pronounced lurch as if one of her hips were bad. A man's voice, demanding that she move out of the way, diverted Natalie's attention for just a moment. When she turned back, the woman was gone.
Natalie was stuck again toward the center of the pedestrian centipede, and with autos speeding past to clear the intersection, there was no way she could head back until the light changed. When she finally reached the previous block, the woman in the brightly colored dress was nowhere on the street. She hurried up to the next intersection and scanned both ways. Nothing.
Slightly winded by her efforts, Natalie leaned against the facade of a clothing boutique. There was no doubt in her mind that the voice that had spoken to her belonged to the woman with the limp — no doubt because she felt certain the two of them had met earlier in the afternoon, albeit only in passing, in the surgical ICU at Santa Teresa Hospital.
CHAPTER 24
Necessity…is the mother of invention.
It's Stepanski. Seth Stepanski, the flight attendant.'
