Moreno claimed a striped folding chair near the beach wall, signaled a man behind a cooler who brought him a tall Antarctica beer served in a Styrofoam thermos. He finished that one and had two more, drinking very slowly to pass away the afternoon. He was not watching for Guzman. Instead he watched the crowd, and the few men who sat alone and unmoving on its periphery. By the end of the day he had chosen two of those men: a brown Rasta with sun-bleached dreadlocks who sat by the vendors but did not appear to have goods to sell, and an old man with the leathery, angular face of an Indian who had not moved from his seat at the edge of the market across the street.
As the sun dropped behind the condominiums and the beach draped in shadow, Moreno walked over to the Rasta on the wall and handed him a photograph of Guzman. The Rasta smiled a mouthful of stained teeth and rubbed two fingers together. Moreno gave him ten American dollars, holding out another ten immediately and quickly replacing it in his own pocket. He touched the photograph, then pointed to the striped folding chair near the wall to let the Rasta know where he could find him. The Rasta nodded, then smiled again, making a “V” with his fingers and touching his lips, blowing out with an exaggerated exhale.
“Fumo?” the Rasta said.
“Não fumo,” Moreno said, jabbing his finger at the photograph once more before he left.
Moreno crossed the road and found the old man at the edge of the market. He replayed the same proposition with the man. The man never looked at Moreno, though he accepted the ten and slid it and the photograph into the breast pocket of his eggplant-colored shirt. Moreno could not read a thing in the man’s black pupils in the dying afternoon light.
As Moreno turned to cross the street, the old man said in Portuguese, “You will return?”
Moreno said, “Amanha,” and walked away.
On the way back to his place Moreno slopped at a food stand — little more than a screened-in shack on the beach road — and drank a cold Brahma beer. Afterward he walked back along the beach, now lit by streetlamps in the dusk. A girl of less than twenty with a lovely mouth smiled as she passed his way, her hair fanning out in the wind. Moreno felt a brief pulse in his breastbone, remembering just then that he had not been with a woman for a very long time.
It was this forgotten need for a woman, Moreno decided, as he watched his maid Sonya prepare breakfast the next morning in her surf shorts and T-shirt, that had thrown off his rhythms in Brazil. He would have to remedy that, while of course expending as little energy as possible in the hunt. First things first, which was to check on his informants in the center of Boa Viagem.
He was there within the hour, seated on his striped folding chair, on a day when the sun came through high, rapidly moving clouds. His men were there too, the Rasta on the wall and the old man at the edge of the market. Moreno had an active swim in the warm Atlantic early in the afternoon, going out beyond the reef, then returned to his seat and ordered a beer. By the time the vendor served it the old man with the Indian features was moving across the sand toward Moreno’s chair.
“Boa tarde,” Moreno said, squinting up in the sun.
The old man pointed across the road, toward an outdoor café that led to an enclosed bar and restaurant. A middle-aged man and a young woman were walking across the patio toward the open glass doors of the bar.
“Bom,” Moreno said, handing the old man the promised ten from his knapsack. He left one hundred and twenty thousand cruzeiros beneath the full bottle of beer, gestured to the old man to sit and drink it, put his knapsack over his shoulder, and took the stone steps from the beach up to the street. The old man sat in the striped folding chair without a word.
Moreno crossed the street with caution, looking back to catch a glimpse of the brown Rasta sitting on the wall. The Rasta stared unsmiling at Moreno, knowing he had lost. Moreno was secretly glad it had been the old man, who had reminded him of his own father. Moreno had not thought of his long-dead lather or even seen him in his dreams for some time.
Moreno entered the restaurant. There were few patrons, and all of them, including the middle-aged man and his woman, sat at a long mahogany bar. Moreno took a chair near an open window. He leaned his elbow on the ledge of the window and drummed his fingers against wood to the florid music coming from the restaurant. The bartender, a stocky man with a great belly that plunged over the belt of his trousers, came from behind the bar and walked towards Moreno’s table.
“Cervejas,” Moreno said, holding up three fingers pressed together to signify a tall one. The bartender stopped in his tracks, turned, and headed back behind the bar.
Moreno drank his beer slowly, studying the couple seated at the bar. He considered taking some photographs, seeing that this could be done easily, but he decided that it was not necessary, as he was certain now that he had found Guzman. The man had ordered his second drink, a Teacher’s rocks, in English, drinking his first hurriedly and without apparent pleasure. He was tanned and seemed fit, with a full head of silvery hair and the natural girth of age. The woman was in her twenties, quite beautiful in a lush way, with the stone perfect but bloodless look of a photograph in a magazine. She wore a bathing suit top, two triangles of red cloth really, with a brightly dyed sarong wrapped around the bottoms. Occasionally the man would nod in response to something she had said; on those occasions, the two of them did not look in each other’s eyes.
Eventually the other patrons finished their drinks and left, and for a while it was just the stocky bartender, the man and his woman, and Moreno. A very tall, lanky young man with long curly hair walked into the bar and with wide strides went directly to the man and whispered in his ear. The man finished his drink in one gulp, tossed bills on the bar, and got off his stool. He, the woman, and the young man walked from the establishment without even a glance in Moreno’s direction. Moreno knew he had been made but in a practical sense did not care. He opened his knapsack, rose from his seat, and headed for the bar.
Moreno stopped in the area where the party had been seated and ordered another beer. As the bartender turned his back to reach into a cooler, Moreno grabbed some bar napkins, wrapped them around the base of Guzman’s empty glass, and began to place the glass in his knapsack.
A hand grabbed Moreno’s wrist.
The hand gripped him firmly. Moreno smelled perspiration, partly masked by a rather obvious men’s cologne. He turned his head. It was the lanky young man, who had reentered the bar.
“You shouldn’t do that,” the young man said in accented English. “My friend João here might think you are trying to steal his glass.”
Moreno placed the glass back on the bar. The young man spoke rapidly in Portuguese, and João the bartender look the glass and ran it over the brush in the soap sink. Then João served Moreno the beer that he had ordered, along with a clean glass. Moreno took a sip. The young man did not look more than twenty. His skin had the color of coffee beans, with hard bright eyes the color of the skin. Moreno put down his glass.
“You’ve been following my boss,” the young man said.
“Really,” Moreno said.
“Yes, really.” The young man grinned. “Your Rastaman friend, the one you showed the pictures to. He don’t like you so good no more.”