Carioca Fletch

She collected herself while the waiter set coffee in front of her, the can of guarana and a glass in front of Fletch.

“I knew you were here,” Fletch said. “I saw you yesterday on the avenida. You were wearing a green silk dress. And carrying a handbag.”

“Oh, yes,” she said bitterly.

“I hid from you.” He poured his guarana. “I was just so surprised to see you. How did you find out where I was staying?”

“I just called all the best hotels, and asked for Mister Irwin Maurice Fletcher. I knew, of course, you could afford the very best accommodations.” Again, naturally, there was no humor in her irony. “Just went down the list of first-class hotels. When I asked for you here, at The Yellow Parrot, they rang your room. No answer. So I knew where you were staying.”

“Why are you sitting in the forecourt waiting for me at six-thirty in the morning?”

“I had no choice. It was the next thing to do, the only thing do to. After the most horrible night… I walked down from the hotel. While I was still up the block I saw you starting out for your run, going across the street. I wasn’t about to run after you up the beach.”

“No.”

“I was robbed,” she said.

“Oh.”

“You say that with such aplomb. As if you knew it.”

“I guessed it.”

“How?”

“You don’t know about Rio?”

“I guess not enough.”

“It’s a marvelous place.”

“Terrific,” she said.

“You going to give me all the details?”

“You sound like you’ve already heard them.”

“I think I have.”

“Robbed twice.”

“Not a record.”

“Robbed of everything.” A tear appeared in the corner of her eye.

“Baptized,” he said.

“Last night, after I found out which hotel you were in, I considered coming and camping out in the lobby until you showed up, but from what I’ve heard of Rio nightlife, that didn’t make much sense.”

“No.”

“At least not for such a healthy, wealthy, attractive young man.”

At first Fletch thought he would let this irony pass over him. Then he said, “I wasn’t in.”

“So I went out myself. I went for a walk. Right along here.” She indicated the avenida beyond the hedge. “Sat in a cafe, had a drink, watched the people, listened to the drums. Walked further, to another cafe, had a drink. Couldn’t pay the bill. My purse was gone.”

“Yes.” In his saying just “yes,” Fletch heard an echo of Otavio Cavalcanti. Yes. Of course. What is there to understand?

“My wallet was gone. All my cash. My credit cards.” Tears now were in both her eyes. “My passport.”

“It happens to everyone I have heard of,” he said.

“My necklace was gone!” She seemed astounded. “A diamond pin I was wearing on my dress!”

“Yes.”

“What bothers me most is that pictures of Alan in my wallet are gone. Of Alan and Julia.” Julia was her young daughter. “No matter what you may think, I wanted those pictures of Alan. They’re irreplaceable.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks.

Fletch said: “Yes.”

She reached for a purse that wasn’t there. “Damn! I don’t even have a handkerchief.”

Fletch shrugged his bare shoulders. “I don’t even have a sleeve.”

She sniffed.

“I explained to the waiter as best I could that I couldn’t pay him. I’d been robbed. That I would come back and pay him today.” Joan Collins Stanwyk sniffed again. “I swear, Fletch, all during my walk, nobody even touched me. No one bumped into me. How did they get my necklace? The pin off my dress? There wasn’t even a tear in my dress. I felt nothing!”

“The future of Brazil,” said Fletch, “is in surgery.”

“I went back to my hotel.”

“And your room had been burglarized.”

“How did you know?”

“You said you’d been robbed twice.”

“Everything!” she said. “Everything except my clothes. My jewel case, my traveler’s checks.”

“Everything.”

“Everything. I haven’t a thing. This morning I don’t have a dollar, a cruzeiro, a credit card, a piece of jewelry.”

Fletch said: “Yes.”

“I went downstairs to the hotel manager immediately. The assistant manager, that time of night. He came to the room with me, clucked and hissed and t’ched like a barnyard, figured the thieves must have come in over the balcony, scolded me for leaving the balcony door unlocked—Good heavens, I’m on the ninth floor. It was a warm night.”

“Took no responsibility.”

“I spent hours with him in his office. He said I should have left all my valuables in the hotel safe. Apparently they handed me a slip of paper when I checked in with that written on it. He took me back to my room and showed me the sign on the inside of the door advising me to lock the balcony doors, to put my valuables in the hotel safe. We went back to his office. I filled out lists of things that are missing. I kept asking him to call the police. For some reason, he never called the police.”

“No reason for disturbing them.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve heard the story, too.”

“Fletch, I was robbed. Of thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of things. Money, jewelry, my credit cards.”

Again Joan Collins Stanwyk sniffed.

“The police would know all that.”

“Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

She clutched her hands in her lap. “I feel so violated.”

“Disoriented?”

“Yes.”

“Stripped naked?”

“Yes!”

“Totally lost without all your possessions?”

“Yes, yes!”

Fletch sat back in his chair. His sweat had dried in the air. “I think that’s part of the idea.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Who are you?”

“I am Joan Collins Stanwyk.”

“Can you prove it?”

Her eyes searched the stone floor of the forecourt. “As a matter of fact, I can’t. No credit cards. No