Carioca Fletch (4 page)

Orlando wore blue stripes down the sides of his white slacks, blue epaulettes on his shoulders.

And Norival was dressed as expensively, but somehow the earth-brown pockets in his light green slacks and shirt did not seem so amusing.

The people had surrounded the four young men, three of whom were uncommonly handsome, and were talking in Portuguese and laughing. Laura had gone to give each of them a hug and kisses.

Fletch ordered a
guaraná
from the barman.

Not only had the dinner been cleared from the long table in the reception room during Laura’s recital, the long table itself had disappeared.

Their backs to the room, some paintings had been placed on the floor along one wall.

One easel had been set up in the best light of that room.

Now Toninho stood in that light, in front of the easel, making
gestures with his arms which made his green cape ripple in that light. Whatever he was saying was making the people around him laugh. He seemed to be charming even his companions, Tito, Orlando, and Norival.

Laura’s eyes were shining happily when she came back to Fletch.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“The Tap Dancers. They are called the Tap Dancers. Just friends of each other. It’s just a name.”

“Do they dance?”

“You mean, professionally?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Sing?”

“No.”

“Do tricks?”

“They are just friends.”

“Fashionable, I think.”

“Aren’t they sleek?”

Hand emerging from his cape, Toninho came forward to shake hands with Fletch.

“Toninho,” Laura said happily. “This is I. M. Fletcher.”

“Ah, yes.” Toninho’s eyes were as brilliant as gems and as active as boiling water. “Janio Barreto. I am Toninho Braga.”

“You know about that?” Fletch shook hands.

Toninho flung his arms up, sending his cape back over his shoulders. Clearly, in his eyes, he was enjoying his own act; possibly, confident in his virility, he was satirizing fashion, fashionable behavior. “The whole world knows about that!”

Teo da Costa came into the group.

Laura said something to Toninho in Portuguese. Toninho answered, briefly, and she laughed.

“Fletcher,” Teo da Costa said quietly, “within the next day or so, I would like to talk with you. Privately.”

“Of course.”

“Your father is not here. Not looking into your life…”

With great dignity, Teo’s face was averted.

“Of course, Teo. I’d appreciate it.”

“Come, Teo!” Toninho exclaimed. “The paintings! We came to see your new paintings!”

One by one, Teo placed the paintings on the easel and let his guests study, enjoy them. They were by Marcier, Bianco, Portinari, Teruz, di Cavalcanti, Virgulino. For the most part they were clear, even bold, in the bright, solid earth colors. Especially did Fletch like one of a mother and child, another of a child with a cage. All the rhythms and colors and feelings and mysteries of Brazil were in the paintings, to Fletch.

Later, Fletch sat on the divan next to the sleepy Otavio Cavalcanti.

“You like the paintings?” Otavio asked.

“Very much.”

“Better than the museum building?” Otavio smiled. “You are a North American. Everyone expects your passion to be for buildings and computers and other machines.”

“Yes.”

“Teo perhaps has the best collection, now that the museum is just a wonderful building again.”

“He must be careful of fire.”

To that, Otavio did not respond.

“Perhaps you can tell me this,” Fletch said to Otavio. “Getting dressed tonight, looking for a shoe, I discovered a small carved stone under my bed.”

Otavio raised one eyebrow.

“A small stone. It was carved into a toad. A frog.”

Otavia sighed.

“Why would the maid put a stone toad under my bed?”

Slowly, heavily, Otavio Cavalcanti lifted himself off the divan. He went to the bar and got himself a Scotch and water.

“Come on.” Laura samba-walked across the room, holding her hands out to Fletch. He sat alone on the divan, thinking of
Ilha dos Caicaras
. He was thinking of himself as
Ilha dos Caicaras
, a
small island in the lagoon. “I worked enough. I played a little concert. Let’s go with the Tap Dancers.”

“Where are they going?”

Otavio was drinking alone at the bar.

“Seven-oh-six. Toninho wants us to go with them. To hear the music. To dance.”

“Everyone?”

“Just you and me. And the Tap Dancers.”

Fletch got up from the divan. “Why do I keep asking your father questions? Great scholar. I have never gotten an answer yet.”

Laura glanced at her father at the bar. “Come on. If you have foolish questions, the Tap Dancers will have foolish answers for you. You’ll get along fine together.”

“Toninho must always make an entrance,” Laura said in the dark nightclub. “I think he does so on purpose.”

“Do you really think so?” Fletch mocked.

Fletch and Laura had driven in his yellow two-seater MP convertible directly from the sidewalk in front of da Costa’s house to the sidewalk in front of 706.

The Tap Dancers had disappeared in their own black four-door Galaxie.

At the door, Laura spoke to a young waiter, and instantly three tables for two were pushed together for them. Of course the band in the club was playing. The music would be nonstop. As soon as Laura and Fletch sat at the table, a waiter brought a bottle of whiskey with a marked strip of tape down its side, a pitcher of water, a bucket of ice and many glasses.

“What did you tell the waiter?” Fletch asked through the sound of the drums.

“That the Tap Dancers are coming.”

“They are that famous?”

“Everyone loves the Tap Dancers.”

“They’re sleek.”

“Yes. They’re sleek.”

In a moment, they appeared in the door. Each wore the mask of a cat over his face. There were four girls with them.

Even without making noise, they soon had everyone’s attention. They began to sniff up and down the walls, along the tables, through a foreign lady’s bouffant, curious about everything, until they found their own table.

Even the man who was singing at the moment laughed. The sound of his laughter through the amplifier in the middle of a song was delightful.

As the catlike Tap Dancers found their table and sat down, even those who were dancing applauded them.

One squeezed in beside Fletch and took off his mask. Toninho. Fletch expressed the appreciation of having been tricked that he had learned was appropriate in Brazil.

Fletch said, “Laura suspects you make big entrances on purpose.”

Smiling, face flashing even in the near-dark, Toninho took off his buccaneer’s hat. “What’s fun?”

Fletch said, “What’s fun?”

“Moving.” Toninho looked at his hand on the table, directing Fletch’s attention to it. He raised and lowered his ring finger. “That’s fun,” he said. He raised his ring finger, little finger and thumb, and lowered them. “That’s more fun.” Then his hand on the table became terrifically animated, the fingers fluttering, doing their own crazy dance, the hand itself becoming some sort of a crazed rabbit trying to keep up its own wild beat. Watching it, Toninho laughed. “That’s most fun.”

“Have you ever had experience with paralysis?” Fletch asked. “Have you ever been paralysed?”

Toninho’s big brown eyes swelled. “I have the wisdom to know that one day I will be.”

Introductions to the girls were made. Fletch got none of their names right, over the sound of the music. They clearly were
glad and impressed to be there, to hear such good music, have access to the Scotch. Fletch calculated it had taken the Tap Dancers less than ten minutes to find these girls.

“Toninho,” Fletch said. “Why would the hotel maid place a small carved stone toad under my bed?”

“A toad?”

“A frog.”

“Was there a frog under your bed?”

“Yes. There still is.”

“How do you know?”

“I found it while I was looking for my shoe.”

Toninho’s eyes twinkled. “What did you do with it?”

“I put it back.”

“That’s good.” Toninho shed his cape then, and took a girl dancing to the dance floor.

For a while they all danced. The music was marvelous. Rather, Fletch danced. The Brazilians, including Laura, simply continued their being Brazilian, keeping the rhythm of the constant music anyway, their constant rhythmical movements anyway, onto the dance floor where they simply glided into full reaction to the music.

A young girl in leather jeans and a jersey which did not make it to the top of her jeans began to sing. She was extraordinarily good. They all sat at the table to listen to her.

The tape which ran down the side of the whiskey bottle was marked off in ounces. To calculate the bill, the waiter counted the ounces of whiskey missing from the bottle and charged them for that. The Tap Dancers’ girls moved the whiskey level down the tape with happy alacrity.

The band did not stop when the girl put the microphone back on its stand. Everyone stood to cheer her and she danced into the dark at the back of the nightclub.

One of the Tap Dancers’ girls, who had been staring at Laura, finally asked, in Portuguese, “Are you Laura Soares, the pianist?”

“I play piano.”

Tito was sitting across from Fletch.

“How did you people know about Janio Barreto?” Fletch asked him.

“About your being Janio Barreto?” Tito seemed to be correcting him.

“About that incident this afternoon.”

“Is it not something to know?” Tito’s face was handsome and happy, too, but his eyes could not have Toninho’s sparkle.

“How did you hear of it?”

Tito leaned forward across the table. “We’re all very eager to hear what you will have to say.”

“About what?”

“About how you came to die. Who murdered you.”

“Tito, Tito. Am I never to get sensible answers?”

“Tell me one thing, Janio.”

“Don’t call me Janio.”

“Fletch. How do you think you came to be in Brazil?”

“I am a newspaperman from California. I had an airplane ticket.”

“How did you come to have the airplane ticket?”

“Sort of by accident.”

“You see?”

“No. I don’t see.”

“Look around this room.” Without moving his head, Tito shot his eyes all the way to the left and moved slowly in a straight line all the way to the right. There was something spooky in this controlled use of his eye muscles. “Do you see others here like you?”

“What do you mean?” Mostly the room was full of young Brazilians, a few older Argentinians, the foreign lady with her large bouffant and small escort.

“Other newspapermen from California who ‘had an airplane ticket’ and came here ‘sort of by accident’?”

“Tito…”

“No. You are here.”

“Why was I born?”

“Maybe that too.” Tito sat back. “Now that you know what you must do, you will never rest until you do it.”

“What must I do?”

“Tell us who murdered you. Murder is the most serious crime.”

“Tito…”

A conspiracy of girls yanked Tito dancing.

Fletch finally poured himself a Scotch and water and sat back.

Then he and Laura danced awhile.

When it was very late in the night he found himself sitting at the end of the table with Norival, who was having difficulty keeping his eyes open and his tongue straight, being told, even being asked, about various kinds of fish available in the South Atlantic.

Slowly it occurred to Fletch that Norival was talking to him as Janio Barreto, who had fished these waters fifty years ago.

Fletch decided it was time to leave.

As he stood up, he said to Norival, “Much has changed in these waters in fifty years.”

He went to the dance floor and cut in on Orlando and asked Laura if they could leave.

Outside the nightclub, on the sidewalk, Toninho called after him.

Fletch turned around.

Again, Toninho said, “Fletch,” but he did not approach. He stayed near the door of 706.

Laura sat in the MP.

Fletch went back to Toninho.

It would be dawn soon.

“Fletch.” Toninho cupped his hands around Fletch’s left ear and put his lips in his cupped hands. “A woman puts a frog under their bed to keep her lover from leaving her.”

Fletch stood back. “It wasn’t the maid?”

“Are you the maid’s lover?’ Toninho laughed. He slapped his thigh with his hand. “Oh, Fletch!” He put his hand on Fletch’s shoulder and shook him. “Be glad.” Then he laughed again. “Also because traditionally it is a live frog!”

“Restless.”

“Of course,” she said.

This was the third time he had gotten out of bed in a half hour.

The first time, he went to the bathroom and drank from the bottle of mineral water. Then he tried snuggling up next to Laura so that all of his front touched all of her back. She breathed deeply, asleep. The second time he put his head through the drapes and saw the daylight of another morning. No electric lights were on. In bed again, he tried lying straight on his back, his hands folded across his chest as if he were in a coffin, and breathing deeply. Even at that hour, from somewhere in the city he could hear the samba drums.

Now he put on his light running shorts.

Laura raised her head from the pillows and looked at him.

“I’m going for a run on the beach,” he said. “Before the sand gets too hot.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t get to sleep.”

“I know,” she said. “Poor Fletch.”

She put her head back down on the pillows.

“Can you buy me a cup of coffee?”

Joan Collins Stanwyk.

She was waiting for him, smoking a cigarette, at a little table in the forecourt of The Hotel Yellow Parrot when he came back from his run. There were three crushed cigarette butts in the ashtray on the table.

Her eyes ran over the sweat gleaming on his shoulders, chest, stomach, even on his legs.

Having finished his run with a sprint, he was breathing heavily.

“That’s the least I can do for you,” he said.