Carioca Fletch

Fletch looked at the freshly made bed. “E preciso terno?”

Such was a tourist joke. In Brazil a suit was never necessary.

“You will need no clothes. Do you have money?”

Fletch felt the wad of cruzeiros in his pocket he had taken out of the hotel safe for Joan Collins Stanwyk. “Yes.”

“Good. Bring your money. We will gamble. We will gamble and take your money away from you.”

“Okay.”

“You coming right down?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t say that.”

“I’ll be right down.”

Before leaving the telephone, Fletch called The Hotel Jangada and asked for Room 912.

There was no answer.

He took a full liter of mineral water from the bathroom.

Before leaving the hotel room, Fletch checked under the bed.

The frog was still there.

Eleven

“Bum, Bum,” Toninho said.

The black four-door Galaxie was on the sidewalk close to the hedge in front of The Hotel Yellow Parrot. Around it, dressed only in shorts and sunglasses, were the Tap Dancers. Norival, the only one with his belly hanging over his belt, held a can of beer in his hand.

“Bom dia, Fletch,” Tito said.

“Tem dinheiro?”

Tito grinned. “E para uso pessoal.”

In front of the hotel, half in the road, half on the sidewalk, a samba band was beating its drums at full strength in the strong Saturday morning sunlight. At their center was an old pickup truck casually decorated with palm fronds, some of which had been dyed purple and red. Seated in the back of the pickup truck, facing backward, was a huge black papier-mache monster. Its arms were out, to embrace; its eyes were big and shiny; its smile was friendly. A girl dressed only in a G-string and pasties sat on the monster’s head, her legs dropping over its face. Of course she had gorgeous legs and a flat belly and full breasts. Her long black hair fell over her face. On the ground near the truck, a tall man in a long black evening gown and cherry-red face rouge danced wildly to the drums. A nine-year-old girl also danced in a black evening gown, while puffing a cigarette. A bare-legged middle-aged man danced while holding his briefcase. Perhaps there were fifty or sixty people dancing around the band.

“Bum, bum, paticum bum,” Toninho said.

Fletch tossed his plastic liter bottle of water onto the backseat of the Galaxie.

“Senhor Barreto,” the doorman said quietly.

In one swift motion, Tito pulled Fletch’s tennis shirt over his head and off him.

Orlando put his forefinger against Fletch’s chest. “Look! Skin!”

“He has skin?” Norival asked, looking.

Tito ground a couple of knuckles into Fletch’s back. “Muscle!”

“He is there?” Norival asked. “Really there?”

“Senhor Barreto.” the doorman said, “Mister Fletcher.”

“Bum, bum,” Toninho said.

Behind the doorman, tall, stately in her white gown, big-eyed Idalina Barreto came through the crowd. On each side of her she had a child by the hand. Three older children were in her wake. The children were clean enough, but the jerseys on the girls were too big or too small. Below his shorts, from above his knee, the ten-year- old boy had a wooden leg.

“Janio Barreto!” the hag shrieked over the sound of the samba band.

“Ah,” Toninho said solemnly. “Your wife.”

The doorman stood back.

Tito handed Fletch his shirt rolled up into a ball. Fletch threw it into the car.

The old woman cackled rapidly. She was presenting the children to him.

“She says they are your great-grandchildren, Janio,” Tito said. “Are you catching their names? The boy is called Janio.”

Fletch put his hand on the head of one of the small girls.

At first, Idalina Barreto smiled.

As Fletch ducked into the backseat of the black Galaxie, her voice became shrill. She pressed forward.

Toninho got into the driver’s seat. “Aren’t you going to ask your wife if you may go gambling?”

Orlando got into the front passenger seat. Entering from the other side, Tito sat in the middle, beside Fletch. Norival sat near the left window of the backseat.

Fletch handed two of the children money through his back window.

Toninho started the car. “Bum bum” he said.

As the car rolled forward, the hag’s face continued to fill Fletch’s window. Her shrieking voice filled the car.

“Ah, wives,” Tito said.

Soon the car bumped off the sidewalk and got into traffic on the avenida.

Through the rearview mirror, Toninho was staring at Fletch.

There were many cans of beer on the floor of the backseat of the car.

“Bum, bum, paticula bum” Toninho said, driving through traffic.

“Carnival.” In the front seat, Orlando stretched. “How nice.”

Toninho shook his head sadly. “Think of driving off and leaving your wife and great-grandchildren that way! To go gambling! What is the younger generation coming to!”

“Um chopinho?” Norival held out a can of beer to Fletch.

“Not yet.”

Stuck in traffic, Norival handed the beer through the window to a child no more than twelve. Then he opened one for himself.

In the traffic near them was a big, modern bus. All that could be seen through the windows of the bus were bare, brown upper torsos, moving like fish in a net, the arms flailing the insides of the bus, the feet apparently stomping the floor with the rhythm, the faces raised in some song. The bus was being used as a drum, being played from the inside by more than one hundred fists, more than one hundred feet. The bus being used as a drum from the inside did not seem to impair its modern beauty or impede its rollicking progress through the traffic.

Finally the Galaxie turned into a side street and picked up speed for a short way until they came to another samba band almost clogging the street. A small seventy-year-old lady, all by herself, dressed in a red dress and red shoes, a red plastic handbag hanging from one forearm, danced to that band, taking perfect small steps with perfect dignity.

Creeping the car past the samba band, Toninho shouted through the window at them, “Bum, bum, paticum bum, prugurundum!”

Some of the people who heard him waved.

“Bum, bum, paticum, prugurundum,” Fletch tried to say. “What’s that?”

“An old carnival song,” Tito said, picking a beer off the floor.

Norival was swallowing his third beer since getting into the car.

“What does it mean?”

“Nothing.”

After a while they were free of the city, and the car began climbing the narrow, twisting mountain roads. Behind walls and hedges were suburban homes. The higher they climbed, the more expensive were the houses.