“This lady I know …” Fletch too sat down at the table. “She writes novels. I doubt I’ve got it straight, but she told me there is some ancient ritual here, a religious ritual, for which the food, in order to be acceptable by the ritual-masters, must be stolen.”
Joan Collins Stanwyk sighed. “Enough of this. I’ve been robbed. I need help. If I weren’t desperate, I wouldn’t have come to you.”
“I guess so.”
“Will you please come to the police station with me?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I must report this.”
“It won’t do any good.”
“Fletcher, I’ve been robbed, of thousands of dollars—”
“You have to pay a fee.”
“What?”
“To report a robbery to the police, you have to pay a fee.”
“You have to pay the police money to tell them you were robbed?”
“It’s a lot of paperwork for them.”
She swallowed. “Is that all it is? Paperwork?”
“Yes. I think so. In most cases.” He scraped his chairlegs on the stone pavement. “You are warned, you see. Robbery here is not uncommon. No one can deny that. It is also common in New York, Mexico City, and Paris.”
She was beginning to have to squint into the sunlight to see him. A beam of sunlight was coming through a break in the hedge. “But here, you say, they’re doing you a favour to rob you.”
“You might as well think that.”
“They rob you with philosophy.”
“It’s not considered such a bad thing to relieve you of your possessions, your identity, your past. What is yours is theirs is mine is ours…”
Her white face was stonelike. Her jaw was tight.
He said, “I’m just trying to make you feel better.”
“Fletcher, are you going to let me have some money? Right away?” Her fingers gripped her temples. Her whole head shivered. “At the moment, we won’t go into the source of that money.”
“Of course. I’ll bring some to your hotel. I have to get out of these wet shorts and shower and get them to open the hotel safe.”
“Very well.”
When she stood, she looked very pale and she seemed to sway on her feet. She closed her eyes a moment.
“You all right?”
“I’ll be all right.”
“What hotel are you in?”
“The Jangada.”
“Very posh.”
“Bring lots of money.”
“We’ll have breakfast together. At your hotel.”
“Yes,” she said. “Come straight to my room with the money. Room nine-twelve.”
“Right.” He had been in a bedroom of hers before.
He walked with her to the break in the hedge.
“I’d send you back in a taxi,” he chuckled, “but I’m not wearing shoes.”
Distantly, she said, “I’d rather walk.”
Eight
There was no answer when he tapped at the door of Room 912.
He knocked louder.
Still the door did not open.
He knocked again and then placed his ear against the door. He could hear nothing.
As quietly as possible, in his own room at The Hotel Yellow Parrot, Fletch had showered and changed into fresh shorts, a shirt, sweat socks and sneakers. Laura was still sleeping. He left a note for her, I have gone to the Hotel Jangada to have breakfast with someone I know.
He had driven the short distance between the hotels in his MP.
After knocking on Joan Collins Stanwyk’s door at The Hotel Jangada, he went back down to the lobby and called the room on the house phone.
No answer.
At the hotel desk, he asked the clerk, “Please, what is the number of Joan Collins Stanwyk’s room? Mrs Alan Stanwyk?”
The clerk consulted his plastic-tabbed file. “Nine-twelve.”
“She hasn’t checked out, has she?”
The clerk squinted at his file. “No, sir.”
“Obrigado. Where is your breakfast room, please?”
Joan Collins Stanwyk was not in the breakfast room. She was not in the bar, which was open.
On the terrace of The Hotel Jangada were two swimming pools, one which was in the morning sun, the other which would be in the sun in the afternoon. Already a few were sunning themselves around one pool. Around the pool in the shade a few were having breakfast. Two fat white men had their heads together over Bloody Marys.
Joan Collins Stanwyk was not in the pools area.
On the ninth floor, Fletch knocked at her door again.
From the lobby he called her room again.
At the desk, he left her a note: Came to have breakfast with you as arranged. Can’t find you anywhere. You fell asleep? Please call me at Yellow Parrot. If I’m not there, leave message. Enclosed is taxi money.—Fletch.
“Will you please leave this for Mrs Stanwyk? Room nine-twelve.”
“Certainly, sir.”
Fletch watched the desk clerk put the sealed envelope in the slot for Room 912.
“Teo? Bom dia.” Fletch phoned from The Jangada.
“Bom dia, Fletch. How are you?”
“Very pleased by your new paintings. Thinking of them has made me happy.”
“Me, too.”
“When do you want to see me?” Three North American oil-rig workers in heavy blue jeans got off the elevator, staggered across the lobby of The Hotel Jangada, and went straight into the bar.
“Any time. Now is fine.”
“Shall I come now?”
“Well have coffee.”
Nine
“You do want coffee, don’t you?”
“I guess I need it.”
A houseman had led Fletch downstairs in Teo da Costa’s house to the small family sitting room. Dressed in pajamas, a light robe and slippers, Teo sat behind his glasses in a comfortable chair reading O Globo.
“Have a busy night?” Teo folded the newspaper.
“We went to Seven-oh-six. With the Tap Dancers.”
“It’s a wonder you’ve had any sleep.”
“I’ve had no sleep.”
Standing, Teo nodded to the houseman, who withdrew.
“You look fresh enough. You look like you’ve been out jogging.”
“I have been.”
A look of concern flickered across Teo’s haughty face.
Fletch said, “I don’t feel like sleeping.”
“Sit down,” Teo said. “Is there anything bothering you?”
Sitting, Fletch said, “Well, I arranged to have breakfast with this person I know, from California. When I went to the hotel, she wasn’t there.”
“She went out on the beach, perhaps.”
“I had arranged to meet her less than an hour before I went to the hotel. She could have fallen asleep.”
“Yes, of course. In Rio, night and day get mixed up. Especially as Carnival approaches.”
The houseman brought two cups of coffee.
Teo sipped his standing up. “People don’t realize it, but Brazil’s second-largest export is tea.”
After the houseman left, Fletch asked, “You wanted to talk to me, Teo. Privately, you said.”
“About what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Brazil is not your home.”
“I feel very comfortable here.”
“What would you most like to do in this world?”
“Sit on Avenida Atlantica in Copacabana, eat churrasco, drink guaraná, and watch Brazilian women of all ages walk. Listen to Laura play the piano. Go to Bahia, occasionally. Run, swim. Jump up and down to the drums. Love the people. I am learning a little Portuguese, a few words.”
“Do you mean to stay in Brazil?”