memory of some other deceased citizen whose daughter was deflowered by the victim. Any one of hundreds of people could have done in Janio.”
“Now that you’ve heard the story, will you be able to sleep?”
“Will I?”
They finished their pastries in silence.
Fletch said, “Marilia, tell me about that bracelet you’re wearing.”
Self-consciously she touched it with the fingers of her other hand. “Oh, that.”
“I see many people, men and women, wearing these cloth, braided bracelets.”
“Just a superstition, I guess.” Her face flushed. “You make a wish, you know, for something you hope will come true. As you make the wish, you put on this braided bracelet. You wear it until what you wished for comes true.”
“Supposing what you wish for doesn’t come true?”
Slightly red-faced, she laughed. “Then you wear in until it falls off.”
“You believe in such a thing?”
“No,” she said quickly.
“But you’re wearing such a bracelet.”
“Why not?” she asked, resettling it on her wrist. “It does no harm to act as if you believe in such a thing, just in case it is true.”
Outside the restaurant they stopped at a kiosk. Marilia bought
A healthy-seeming curly-haired man of about thirty was leaning against Fletch’s MP. It appeared he was waiting for them.
He spoke rapidly, happily to Fletch.
Then, seeing he wasn’t being understood, he spoke to Marilia.
She answered him, happily enough. While talking with him, she opened the small purse tied to her wrist, took out some money, and gave it to him.
The man stuffed the money into his shoe.
Then he leaned against the next car, a Volkswagen bug.
In the car, Fletch asked, “What did he want?”
“Ohhhh. He said he had been taking care of the car for us while we were away. It is for him to take care of the cars along this section of curb, he said.”
“Is it?”
“He says so.”
“Who gave him charge of this section of curb?”
“No one. It is just something he says.”
Fletch started the car. “If it is just something he says, then why did you give him money? Why didn’t you just tell him to get lost?”
Flustered, Marilia was looking into her handbag, perhaps rearranging the interior. “I suppose I owe it to him because I just had such a nice lunch.”
“Fletch?”
“Yes?”
“Toninho Braga, Fletch. Look what time it is.”
“Shortly after noon.”
“That’s right. And so far no one has reported finding Norival’s body.”
Over the phone, Toninho’s voice sounded more hushed than alarmed.
Fletch had driven Marilia Diniz to her home in Leblon, thanked her for accompanying him to the
His room at The Hotel Yellow Parrot had been cleaned. The unslept-in bed had been freshly made up.
He telephoned The Hotel Jangada and asked for Joan Collins Stanwyk in Room 912.
No answer.
Across the utility area, the man was still painting the room.
He was about to strip, to shower, to darken the room, to get into bed again, to try to sleep, when the phone rang.
“Toninho,” he said. “It’s Sunday. A big day of Carnival. Communication is slow.”
“That’s exactly it, Fletch. There would have been hundreds, thousands of people on that beach, shortly after dawn.”
“Finding a body—”
“Norival is not just a body. He is a Passarinho. That would be news.”
“First the police have to be summoned—”
“Yes, the police would be summoned. But we left plenty of identification on Norival’s body. The people who found the body would be quick to tell the Passarinho family, the radio stations. The police would be even quicker. They would compete for the attention of the Passarinho family.”
“I don’t see what you’re saying. You put Norival’s body in the water. He was dead. He has to come ashore somewhere, sometime, if you were right about the tides.”
“I was right about the tides. Where’s Norival?”
“How would I know?”
Fletch looked down at the soft, smooth countenance of the bed.
“Fletch, we must go make sure someone finds the body of Norival.”
“Toninho, I’m not sure I can take many more disappearances today, of persons dead and alive.”
“You must come help us look, Fletch. That will make four of us. We can comb the beach.”
“You want to go beachcombing for a corpse?”
“What else can we do? We put Norival’s body there to be found, not to be lost. What if he were lost forever? There would be no Funeral Mass. He would not be properly buried. His family might think he ran away?.”
“His boat would be missing.”
“Sailed away. To Argentina! Think of his poor mother!”
“His poor mother.”
“Such a thing would kill her. Not to know what happened to her son.”
“Toninho … I still have not slept.”
“That’s all right.”
“‘All right’?”
“You must help us. Four searching is better than three searching. It is a long beach.”
“Toninho…”
“We’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
The phone line died.
“Perhaps we should check with Eva,” Tito said. “Norival might have gone back to her.”
“Norival was happy with Eva,” Orlando said.
Of the four young men walking along the beach, only Fletch wore sandals. He knew himself not sufficiently
Toninho, Tito, and Orlando had picked Fletch up in the black four-door Galaxie.
On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, the youngest Janio Barreto on a wooden leg silently watched Fletch get into the car and be driven away.
