Jetta ran her hands up the smooth sleeves of Fletch’s shirt to his shoulders and said, “You were so late in coming.”
Even though dancing, sleep passed through Fletch’s brain like a curtain dragging across a stage. “I had to sit up a sick friend.”
Eighteen
Alone in his room at The Hotel Yellow Parrot, Fletch first dialed The Hotel Jangada and asked for Room 912.
There was no answer in Room 912.
Not even taking off his movie cowboy suit, he fell on his bed. He thought he would sleep immediately. It was nearly seven o’clock in the morning. He was not used to going to sleep at seven o’clock in the morning.
Getting up, he dropped his clothes on the floor. Then he crawled beneath the sheet.
Even at that hour of the bright morning, the sound of a samba combo could be heard from somewhere in the street. He rolled onto his side and pulled the pillow over his ear. Eyes closed, flesh wavered everywhere in his mind: big, soft, pliant breasts with huge nipples swinging to the beat; long, smooth backs danced away from him; brown buttocks dimpled as they moved; gorgeous long legs bent and straightened as feet pressed gently against the earth, the dance floor in the rhythm of the melodic samba drums.
Fletch got out of bed and called Room Service for breakfast.
While he waited, he took a long, hot shower.
Alone, a towel around his waist, he ate breakfast sitting in a corner of his room. Sunday morning. For once, the man across the utility area was not painting the room.
He called The Hotel Jangada again, again asked for Mrs Joan Stanwyk in Room 912.
Again there was no answer.
He closed the drapes against the bright morning and got into bed.
He tried lying like a statue on a crypt, like Norival dead on the bed at the old plantation house, flat on his back, his hands crossed on his stomach. He tried counting the members of a woman’s pole-vaulting team leaping over the barrier. At the nineteenth redhead taking her turn with the brunettes and blondes going over the barrier, he knew sleep was unattainable.
He called The Hotel Jangada again.
Heavily slogging around the room, he opened the window drapes.
He pulled on clean shorts, a clean tennis shirt, socks, and sneakers.
Outside the hotel, in the brilliant sunlight, the small boy, Idalina’s great-grandson Janio Barreto, was waiting for him.
The boy grabbed Fletch’s arm. He hobbled along with Fletch, speaking rapidly, softly, insistently.
Fletch shook the boy off and got into his MP.
On his wooden leg, the ten-year-old Janio Barreto ran after Fletch’s car, calling to him.
Nineteen
“Bom dia,” Fletch said to the formally dressed desk clerk at The Hotel Jangada. “There is a problem.”
Instantly, the man was solicitous. He put his forearms on the reception counter and folded his hands. “Are you a guest of this hotel?”
“I am staying at The Hotel Yellow Parrot.”
The desk clerk was only a little less solicitous. The Hotel Yellow Parrot was a good hotel, too, more traditional, not so flashy. All the good hotels in Rio de Janeiro exactly doubled their rates during Carnival.
Fletch had already telephoned Room 912 on the house phone, gone to the door, checked out the breakfast and pool areas. No sign of Joan Collins Stanwyk. The note he had left for her was still in the Room 912 box behind the reception desk.
He spoke slowly and distinctly: “Someone who is staying at your hotel, a North American woman named Mrs Joan Stanwyk, talked to me yesterday morning at about this time, at my hotel. We arranged to meet almost immediately here, for breakfast. She was to walk from there to here. All I had to do was to get something from the safe of The Hotel Yellow Parrot, shower, change clothes (I had been jogging), and follow her in my car. I left The Hotel Yellow Parrot about a half hour after her, and drove straight here. She did not answer the house phone. She did not answer when I knocked on her door. She was not in the breakfast room, the terraces, the swimming pool areas, the bar. She still doesn’t answer. I’m afraid something must have happened to her.”
The desk clerk smiled faintly at this story of a jilted lover. “There is nothing we can do, Senhor. We must respect the privacy of our guests. If the lady does not wish to see you, or hear from you …” Raising his hands from the counter, he shrugged.
“But, you see, she needs something from me. Money. She had been robbed of everything.”
Again the man shrugged.
“I left her a note.” Fletch pointed to the note still in its slot behind the man. ‘The note is still there.”
“People change their plans rapidly in Rio during Carnival.” The man smiled. “Sometimes they change their whole characters.”
“Will you let me into her room, please?” Fletch had already tried to jimmy the lock to Room 912. It was an advanced lock, designed for only the most advanced burglars. “I worry that something must have happened to her. She may need help.”
“No, sir. We cannot do that.”
“Will you go yourself?”
“No, sir. I cannot do that.”
“Will you send a maid in?”
“It’s Carnival.” The desk clerk looked at the lobby clock. “It is early. People sleep odd hours. They do not want disturbance.”
“She’s been missing twenty-four hours,” Fletch said. “It is now a police matter.”
The man shrugged.
Fletch said, “Onde é a delegacia?”
“Is there a police officer who speaks English?”
“Spik Onglish,” the police officer behind the tall desk said. “Quack, quack.”
Fletch turned his head so a younger police officer down the counter could hear him. “Anyone here who can speak English?”
Down the counter, the younger officer picked up a phone, dialed a short number, and spoke into it.
After he hung up, he held the palm of his hand up to Fletch, either ordering him to stop or suggesting he wait.
Fletch waited.
The lobby of the police station was filled with regretful revelers. On the floor and along the bench sat and lay men and women of all shapes, sizes, colors, in nearly every state of dress and undress, sleeping, trying to sleep, blinking slowly, holding their heads. Some of the revelers were in Carnival costumes, now in tatters: a queen; a mouse; ironically, a magistrate. One hairy man, asleep with his mouth open, was dressed only in bra, panties, and garter belts. A fat woman, eating cookies from a bag, was dressed as the Queen of Sheba. Five or six of the men had cuts and bruises on their heads; one had a nasty long cut down the calf of his leg. Even with no glass in the windows, the room smelled putrid.
While Fletch waited, a man dressed only in tank trunks entered. A long-handled knife stuck into the area between his chest and his shoulder. He walked perfectly well. With dignity, he said to the police officer at the high counter, “Perdi minha máquina fotográfica.”
From the bottom of a flight of stone stairs, a heavy police officer beckoned Fletch to come to him.
“My name is Fletcher.”
The man shook hands with him. “Barbosa,” the man said, “Sergeant Paulo Barbosa. Are you North American?”
“Yes, sir.”
The sergeant heavily led Fletch up the stairs. “I have been to the United States. To New Bedford, Massachusetts.” He led Fletch into a little room with a desk and two chairs. The sergeant sat in the chair behind the desk. “I have cousins there, in New Bedford, Massachusetts.” He lit a cigarette. “Have you been to New Bedford, Massachusetts?”