Lima sputtered, “I’m not burying an epidemic.”
Castro poked the bureaucrat in the chest with his finger, said, “When a variation of this virus hit a village up in the Amazon a few years back, we had a sixteen percent mortality rate. But this is a mutation of Hydra. The cells have six heads instead of five. It killed both those children. One hundred percent mortality.”
“Again, without tests and without autopsies, you can’t know that,” Lima said. “So for the time being, the quarantine begins and ends with those bodies and that ICU.”
Castro started to argue again, but the mayoral aide stepped back, said, “Doctor, I hate to do this, but given your history, I don’t think you can be considered rational enough to handle this situation. I think you should be quarantined too.”
“What?”
“You’re off the case, Dr. Castro,” Lima said, and then he turned to the hospital administrator. “Senhor Pinto, you are in charge of making sure that everything in that ICU is sanitized and those bodies autopsied tonight so they can be cremated as soon as possible. And test the doctors.”
The administrator shook his head. “Tonight? I... I can’t.”
“And why not?” Lima demanded.
“I have a ticket to the FIFA party at the Copacabana Palace,” Pinto said.
“That’s your problem, not mine,” Lima said.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly serious,” the mayor’s aide replied, and he turned to depart.
Castro’s hands balled into fists. He wanted to belt the little man but restrained himself, said, “Anyone else dies, it’s on your head, not ours!”
“Go into quarantine, Dr. Castro, and you as well, Dr. Desales,” Lima said over his shoulder.
Chapter 6
The bartender put two more shot glasses in front of the doctors.
They’d been drinking since their tests, and the children’s parents’, had come back negative. Dr. Castro drank his down and ordered another. Dr. Desales finished his and said he was done. He and his wife had dinner plans and he didn’t want to be wasted when he got home.
Dr. Castro wasn’t done and he had no one to go home to anyway. He suddenly wanted to get good and drunk and do something brazen, or vengeful, or both. He didn’t know what yet, but Lima’s actions could well have doomed many people. Even though he and Desales were clean, there were bound to be others. There needed to be a response. Right?
He couldn’t just turn the other cheek again. Right?
That was right. There had to be a response, a just response, a goddamned wake-up call.
Desales set an envelope on the bar in front of Castro.
“Ticket to the big FIFA bash at the Copacabana Palace,” Desales said. “Pinto gave it to me because he couldn’t use it, but we have plans with the in-laws and my wife won’t break them. You should go.”
“Screw that,” Castro said, and he picked the envelope up, pivoted, and flicked it into a trash can behind him.
Desales sighed, clapped Castro on the shoulder, and left.
The bartender set another shot down in front of the doctor just as the television screen changed from news back to World Cup coverage. More analysts. More dissection. More ruminating on Brazil’s brutal loss.
Seven to one? After everything, seven to one? For Brazil to go out before the finals was bad enough, but to get demolished? Annihilated?
Castro’s thoughts turned circular again, brought up old bitterness and grief he’d told himself a thousand times to leave behind. But the doctor couldn’t leave bitterness and grief behind. They were such constant companions, they might as well have been friends.
The doctor drank the shot down and ordered one more.
The screen cut to Henri Dijon, a FIFA spokesman, a French guy with a superior attitude and a five-thousand-dollar suit. Dijon was standing at a bank of microphones in front of the Copacabana Palace.
A reporter asked whether FIFA considered Brazil’s World Cup a success despite the protests in the months leading up to the tournament. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians had gone into the streets in cities across the country to decry government corruption and the spending of billions on sports stadiums that might never be used again while the poor of Brazil got nothing.
“FIFA considers the tournament a smashing success for Brazil, for Rio, and for everyone involved,” Dijon said, and he kept blathering on in that vein.
For everyone involved? Castro thought, tasting acid at the back of his throat. For everyone involved?
Maybe the greedy bastard politicians who’d skimmed millions could consider it a success. And the construction companies. And FIFA, the most corrupt sports organization in the world. For those three groups and some others, the World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games would be smashing successes.
But not for the poor, Castro thought angrily. The poor, as usual, had gotten shafted. Thrown out of their homes to make way for the stadiums, doomed to substandard health care, poor sanitation, and inferior educations.
Or destroyed, like that favela family today. Or like Castro two years ago.
He shook his head. He wouldn’t go there. He wouldn’t allow those memories to cripple him. Not tonight.
Instead, he watched the FIFA spokesman prattle on, ignoring the misery created by the sporting event and speaking only of the joy. Castro couldn’t ignore the pain or the misery. He couldn’t have if he’d tried because he had suffered as much as anyone and more than most.
As a result, Dr. Castro hated all of them, everyone who had anything to do with the World Cup. In his mind, the suffering was entirely their fault. And now, probably starting in that favela where Maria and little Jorge had lived, there would be even more pain because of a stupid soccer game.
There has to be some kind of response, Castro decided as the bartender put down the new shot glass full of rum. There has to be some kind of balance restored, some kind of penalty, something to...
A thought came winging out of the blind rage he’d worked himself into. The doctor dismissed it out of hand at first and picked up the shot glass.
Then he thought about it some more, and again.
Dr. Castro put the glass down, understanding that restoring balance would mean crossing a line, after which there was no coming back. Ever.
I don’t care, he thought. This isn’t vengeance. It’s the right thing to do.
Castro sat there a moment, swelling with justness, purpose, and resolve. Then he pushed the shot glass aside, paid his tab, and went over to the trash can, feeling stone-cold sober.
Chapter 7
By six thirty that evening, Avenida Atlântica was jammed with partying Argentines. The police had shut down the lane closest to the beach to take care of what had become a dangerous situation: the drunken revelers wandering off the famous black-and-white-mosaic sidewalks directly into traffic.
With traffic moving in only one direction, taxis and cars were slow bringing guests to the Copacabana Palace. Though more celebrities stayed at the Hotel Fasano in Ipanema these days, the Palace remained the place to throw a high-society bash.
As he walked along the sidewalk toward the main entrance, Dr. Castro was thinking that the Palace was also FIFA’s hotel. It only made sense that the final big party of the tournament would be held here.
Castro was wearing his best suit, navy blue, tropical wool, with a lightly starched white dress shirt and a red tie with soccer balls on it. He saw security men eyeing him as he approached. He lifted his hand to scratch his beard then remembered he’d shaved it off and put his hand in his coat pocket instead.