Carioca Fletch

blow from his feet opened Fletch’s body for another blow.

Fletch received a hard kick in his throat, perhaps a killing kick.

Then one more kick in the back of his head.

He was face down in the dirt.

Consciousness was coming and going like an old song on a high wind. Blood was pouring from his face, particularly his nose again, but he could not get a hand to it.

His legs would not get him up. They would not obey orders, they were well beyond the necessary impulse to get up and run.

The man in the goat’s mask grabbed Fletch’s hair and twisted his head sideways and up. Fletch’s whole body rolled sideways. He was lying on one hip.

A knee either side of him, the man knelt over Fletch.

For a second the man’s hand was flattened on the ground in front of Fletch’s nose. In one of the odd flashes of light, Fletch glimpsed a ring on the man’s finger. A ring with a black center. Intertwined snakes rose from that center.

Farther along the ground, Fletch saw a piece of wood sticking into the ground again and again as it came closer. Paired with the stick of wood was a boy’s leg.

Pulling Fletch’s hair, the man in the goat mask twisted Fletch’s head forward and back.

With his other hand, the man was doing something under Fletch’s chin.

Fletch felt a nice warmth on the side of his neck.

The nice warmth of blood.

The man was slitting Fletch’s throat.

Then, as if hit by a great wind, the man was blown sideways. He sprawled into the dirt beside Fletch.

Above them were many legs, strong men’s legs.

In one incredibly smooth, lithe movement the man was up, on his feet, on one foot. The other foot on a straight leg was whirling through the air. From the ground, Fletch saw all the other legs, the legs of his rescuers, back away.

The toes of the man in the goat mask then dug into the ground with the grip of a sprinter. They were gone in a blur.

Heavily, the other feet went after him.

The wooden leg still stuck in the ground nearby, next to the boy’s bare leg.

“Janio, I need help.” On the ground, Fletch managed to get a hand to his throat. He stuck his finger in the knife hole. “Janio! Socorro!”

Fletch knew he was not being heard. He could not even hear himself.

It was not sleep then, into which Fletch fell.

Thirty

He was conscious when the phone began ringing, but it rang five or six times before he could get rolled over, stretch his arm out to it, and pick up the receiver from the bedside table.

“Bom dia,” Fletch said into the phone, not believing a word of it.

“Fletch! Are you better?”

By now, Fletch knew Toninho’s voice over the telephone.

“Better than what?”

“Better than you were when we found you.”

Fletch’s memory was far from perfect. His brain had begun to clear only shortly before noon. He still tasted blood.

Lying on the ground under the stands at Carnival Parade, he remembered seeing from close-up the creases of Toninho’s or Tito’s belly.

He remembered being carried, it seemed for kilometers, under the stands. The sky was full of human feet and legs pounding in rhythm. The noise was no longer of singing, pounding samba drums. It was all just roar.

Then they were out from under the stands, and still he was carried a long, long way. The sounds abated. The air became clearer. The sky was high and dark.

“We’re getting good at lifting bodies around.” Tito said. Why was he speaking English?

“Bury me at sea,” Fletch instructed them. “The fish will appreciate dessert.”

As they carefully fitted him into the back seat of the four-door black Galaxie, Fletch saw the ten-year-old boy standing next to the car. His eyes were round.

“Hey, Janio,” Fletch said. “Obrigado.”

During the ride in the car, he lost consciousness again. He remembered none of it.

He remembered being walked into the lobby of The Hotel Yellow Parrot. Orlando was holding him up.

The doorman and the desk clerk hurried around, each questioning Toninho and Tito in Portuguese. Toninho and Tito were placating.

The ride in the elevator took forever.

Finally, Fletch was on his own bed. Being on his bed was so unexpected, so wonderful, he sucked in great gobs of breath. And passed out again.

He remembered Toninho working up and down his naked body, squeezing, testing, looking for breaks in Fletch’s bones.

“My neck,” Fletch said. “Is my head on straight?”

Orlando came in from the bathroom with wet towels. He and Toninho washed Fletch down, even turning him over, gently, to do so.

As the towels passed in and out of Fletch’s sight, they became pink, and then red.

The formally dressed desk clerk arrived with bandages and bottles of antiseptic.

He took away the wet, bloody towels and Fletch’s blood-soaked clothes.

“Not my sash,” Fletch complained. “Not my beautiful red sash.”

“Your bloody red sash,” Toninho said.

“Laura gave me that bloody red sash,” Fletch said. “She brought it from Bahia.”

“He says he’ll burn your clothes,” Tito said. “A sacrifice to the gods. They get only a little of your blood. You live.”

“Ow.”

Toninho was applying antiseptic to a hundred places over Fletch’s body. He stuck the antiseptic-soaked face cloth into the small slit in Fletch’s throat.

Consciousness was lost again.

They rolled Fletch this way and that, to put a fresh, dry sheet under him. The desk clerk was back in the room. He was trying to fold a wet, bloody sheet while not letting it touch his clothes.

With his fingers, Fletch discovered plaster stuck to various parts of his body: his shins, ribs, face, neck. He did not remember their being put on.

“Should I stay with him?” Tito asked.

“He’ll be all right,” Toninho said. “He needs a few hours of meditation. There’s nothing really wrong with him.”

“Except that someone tried to kill him,” Orlando said.

“Yes,” Toninho said. “It looks that way.”

“He did not succeed,” Fletch announced from the bed.

“No,” Toninho said. “He did not succeed.”

Softly, Tito said, “He almost succeeded.”

The room was black. Fletch did not remember their leaving.

Through the dark night he listened to the samba drums. The sound was not coming from the street. It was coming from various televisions throughout the hotel, around the neighborhood. An announcer’s voice came and went over the sound of the drumming and singing. Rio de Janeiro’s Samba School Parade was continuing.

He did not sleep. Some unconsciousness other than sleep came and went like a presence in the dark room. It came closer and went away.