Carioca Fletch

Vaguely, he remembered having bad dreams. The boy, Janio Barreto, was following them down that crowded, dark slum street to Carnival Parade. In bright floodlights, Fletch was hunkered down in a swirling mass of bodies, brown eyes popping in surprise at seeing him there, being kicked from every direction. Again he was under the stands at Carnival, where he did not belong, looking through his own blood at a man walking by slowly, his head on backward, turning to smile at him….

In the bathroom, he tore the bandages off himself. Scabs had formed nicely. Red marks had turned purple, and purple marks had turned black.

Hadn’t Laura seen the big white riverboat floating sedately down the stream of swirling costumes? Hadn’t that been real?

Gingerly, adding no more cuts to his face, Fletch shaved.

Janio Barreto following them through the subway to Carnival Parade had meant something to Laura it had not meant to him. What had her letter said? Saci-perere. What’s a saci- perere

The warm water of the shower felt good on his body. The soap did not feel so good on some of his wounds.

In fact, Laura had not really asked him what happened to him under the stands at Carnival Parade. She thought anyone can tell a story and say it is the past. Even after his pointing out Gabriel Campos at Santos Lima, she did not really ask. She only asked how, why he pointed out Gabriel Campos.

He did not dry himself after the shower. Instead, he just wrapped the towel around his waist. The air felt too good on his wet body.

His mind a jumble, he went out onto the balcony. A small samba combo was playing, probably outside a nearby cafe. Across the utility area, the man was still painting the room.

Laura thought it was funny the Tap Dancers had left him in a closed coffin with his bag of money. He had seen Norival Passarinho walk after he was dead. On broomsticks, his ankles tied to the ankles of Toninho and Orlando. Then Fletch had seen Norival Passarinho really walk after he was dead, really talk. Adroaldo Passarinho. Well it was funny.

Fletch was dead. He had died forty-seven years ago. At Dona Jurema’s mountain resort the Tap Dancers had tried, maybe as a joke, to arrange a corpse for him. People believed he could answer a question older than himself. Who had murdered Janio Barreto? And he had answered it. Apparently, Fletch had seen mythological figures which were not a part of his own culture. Of course, they must have been just costumed revelers under the stands. Were they? He had helped the dead Norival Passarinho walk, in a crazy, drunken scheme. Then he had believed he saw Norival Passarinho walk, heard him talk. Fletch had come back to life. He was in a closed coffin.

For Fletch, the line between life and death had become narrower. It was so narrow, it really could be funny.

Across the utility area, the man painting the room looked at Fletch.

Fletch had not realized he was staring at the man.

Fletch waved.

Grinning, the man waved back at him. He waved his paintbrush.

Fletch blinked. He has damned little paint on that paintbrush, if he does not hesitate to wave it at someone, in a room he has been painting for days!

Fletch laughed.

The man waved his paintbrush again.

Across the utility area the two men laughed together.

Fletch gave the man the thumbs-up sign, then went back into his room.

He telephoned The Hotel Jangada.

Room 912 did not answer.

Mrs Joan Collins Stanwyk had not checked out.

Yes, there was a message awaiting her in her mail slot.

Drinking mineral water from a plastic liter bottle, Fletch read Laura’s note a third time.

Then he called Teodomiro da Costa and arranged to meet with him that night. He would be late, Fletch said, as he intended to drive to the village of Botelho and back.

Teo recommended the seafood restaurant there.

Reluctantly, Fletch knelt. His cuts and bruises protesting, he leaned over until his head was only a few centimeters from the floor.

He peered under the bed.

The small, carved stone frog was gone.

Thirty-six

“What are you doing here?”

Joan Collins Stanwyk, dressed in shorts which were too big and a T-shirt which had some slogan on it in Portuguese, stood across the rough restaurant table from Fletch.

“Eating.”

“But how do you come to be here?”

“I was hungry.” He continued eating.

“Really,” she said. “How did you find me?”

Her eyes were round in amazement.

“Brazilian police apparently are not always as casual as they like to appear.”

The restaurant was a patio with a roof over it on the beach.

“Can you join me?” Fletch asked. “Or aren’t the help allowed to sit with the customers.”

“I can buy you a cup of coffee,” she said.

In sandals, she went across the restaurant to the serving tables.

He had enjoyed the drive through Rio’s suburbs, through the Brazilian countryside down the coast. He enjoyed sucking in good air and seeing the real things of the countryside, real rocks and trees, real cows and goats. Good roads had been laid out against the day Brazil’s past would catch up with her future. As he drove farther, most of the traffic he passed was on foot.

It had not taken him long to tour the village of Botelho. A short dock poked into a long ocean. The fish warehouse was no more than a shed. In the tiny church was a powerful, crude crucifixion. Less than a dozen fisherfolk bungalows facing the sea dozed in the shade of their own groves.

At the entrance to the open-air seafood restaurant he spotted Joan. Standing with her back to him in the kitchen area, Joan Collins Stanwyk, Mrs Alan Stanwyk, was placing plates and glasses in a vat of steaming water. He watched her dry her hands and begin shelving clean plates.

It was early for dinner. The only other customers in the restaurant were five fishermen at one table chatting over chopinhos. A young waiter gave Fletch a menu and understood as Fletch pointed to a soup and a fish entree.

Brown paper sack on the bench beside him, Fletch gazed out over the beach to the ocean. Sooner or later, Joan Collins Stanwyk would turn, look through the serving apparatus, see him. He left her the option of ignoring his presence. He would go away again without speaking, if that was what she wanted.

The fish chowder was the best he’d ever had.

He was halfway through his fish entree when Joan crossed the restaurant and spoke to him.

Now she sat across from him at the long, rough table. She had placed a cup of coffee before each of them.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, still eating.

“Have an accident?”

“No, thanks. Just had one.”

They both laughed nervously.

“You look like someone really beat on you.” Especially did her eyes fasten on the small scar on his throat.

“I ran into an enraged nanny goat.” Her face put on patience. “That is the story I have decided to tell, to say