The Fall Guy

by Ritchie Perry

  Once this was satisfactorily arranged, a more complicated affair than it would appear thanks to the effusive ineptitude of the staff, I had a couple of phone calls to make. The first was to say cheerio to Gordinho and to mention I’d be passing through Porto Alegre sometime in the next few days. The second was to the number Reece had given me, a report on my progress to date. I now knew for certain that the story he’d told me was a pack of lies, ten minutes with a banking acquaintance had told me this, but, whatever the reason, Reece desperately wanted to locate Otto. With a return fare from England, his other travelling and living expenses and the £500 I was being paid he’d made a considerable investment in the search. Moreover the dossier about my past activities could only have been compiled by Otto, a fact which placed him and Reece somewhere on the same side. Until something more definite turned up I accepted Otto’s connection with British intelligence, entertained grave doubts about the Nazi fantasy, completely discounted the forging angle, and had an unpleasant premonition about my intended role. It was all too easy to visualize myself as the classic fall guy, the man who stuck his neck out for the axe, while Reece watched complacently from the sidelines, ready to step in when my usefulness was over.

  The notion made me feel rather like a sacrificial goat but, seeing Reece on the plane to Rio Grande, another possibility occurred to me. It could be he was sticking so close in order to offer me some protection when things became really sticky, not that the thought provided me with much comfort. Staked-out goats had a notoriously high mortality rate, even with an intrepid white hunter standing by.

  On the plane Reece again refused to acknowledge me, although Lydia and I had taken a seat directly across the aisle from him, and I played the game by ignoring him in return. He wasn’t my idea of good company anyway.

  *

  If the flight through an incipient thunderstorm was rough Rio Grande wasn’t a great deal better. It was the place where the word moribund had been invented and, by rights, it should have been established as a penal colony for people who complained about the smog in Los Angeles. Not that there was any smoke, just a miasmic atmosphere of green hides and drying fish. Once upon a time it had been an important port, now it was on the way down and would die completely as soon as someone had the bright idea of constructing a deepwater canal to Porto Alegre. Then ships would no longer have to sail the length of the lagoon before exiting to the open sea at Rio Grande.

  Barring some recent additions the town’s buildings dated from the opulent period and were now quietly decaying. The hotel Lydia and I booked into was an elaborate late-Victorian affair, sinking fast by the looks of it, and, to judge by our reception, we might have been the first paying guests for a month. We were shown to an enormous room with an exotic view of the port installations, prompting me to pull the curtains, but at least the bed was comfortable. I forgot about Biddencourt for the day and, with Lydia’s willing assistance, I gave the bed a more thorough testing.

  *

  Next morning I woke up early, regretting this immediately I discovered Rio Grande’s unique stench hadn’t diminished overnight. It definitely wasn’t the kind of town where people flung wide the windows and did deep breathing exercises, not unless they were suicidally inclined, so I rang down for breakfast. When this arrived I wished I’d taken my chances at the window. The coffee tasted as though it had been prepared at a sewage farm, the fruit was over ripe and the bread was stale enough to have been salvaged from the Ark. After we’d showered and dressed it seemed a wise precaution to drink a Fogo de Sao Paulo apiece in the bar downstairs, just to sterilize our stomachs.

  Lydia didn’t keep me company for long. She wanted to visit a friend doing cabaret at one of the local clubs and left me fooling around in the bar, filling in time until I could decently call on Biddencourt. Although there was nothing to suggest he’d had anything to do with Otto’s disappearance I had a totally illogical foreboding about the man. Over the second glass of the green firewater the feeling became so strong I debated whether to take my gun visiting with me and even went so far as to return to my room before common sense took over. The threatened thunderstorm still hadn’t broken and the lowering humidity made wearing a jacket and carrying several pounds of hardware about as tempting as a hair shirt. Laughing at my faintheartedness I threw my jacket back on to the bed, the gun in a side pocket. Assuming the very worst Biddencourt was hardly likely to become violent merely because I asked a few questions about Otto.

  At first glance Biddencourt’s establishment didn’t strike me as a thriving concern. The wooden fence surrounding it badly needed a new coat of paint, the big, double gates sagged dispiritedly on their hinges and the yard inside was littered with piles of empty fish boxes, many of them in a bad state of repair. To add to the general effect the odour of rotting fish was exceptional, even by Rio Grande standards.

  It didn’t take long to appreciate the place wasn’t exactly a hive of industry. A rapid census detailed myself, several evil-looking cats and an emaciated Negro, wearing a tattered pair of swimming shorts which might once have been blue beneath the accumulated filth. The Negro was meandering between the piles of boxes, pushing a broom ahead of him in a manner which suggested he was too weak to bear the full weight rather than any serious intention of cleaning up. He looked up as I came in, then continued with whatever he was doing. I moved in amongst the boxes to head him off, kicking hissing alley cats out of the way and trying not to plaster pieces of fish heads all over my shoes.

  ‘I’m looking for Senhor Biddencourt,’ I said as he bore down on me.

  The Negro dug in his heels, stopped, leaned on his broom and breathed out heavily. I took an involuntary step backwards as the cachaça blast withered the hairs in my nostrils, doing my best not to gag too noticeably. To judge by the liquor haze surrounding him he would have blown a large chunk of southern Brazil into mid-Atlantic if he’d tried to light a cigarette.

  ‘Can you tell me where to find him?’

  He seemed to be having difficulty sorting out the implications of my original tentative approach. My question apparently merited serious consideration. The sweeper knitted his greying brows, slipped a hand into the top of his shorts for an intimate scratch, hawked deep in his throat and effortlessly shot a gob of yellowish phlegm twenty feet over his left shoulder. I had to jam my hands in my pockets to stop myself from clapping.

  ‘He’s in the office,’ he articulated slowly once the performance was over. Either he had a speech impediment or the cane spirit had paralysed his tongue.

  Considering his duty done he pushed past me and continued his erratic course. Left to my own devices I looked around me, unable to see anything remotely resembling an office.

  ‘Where is the office?’ I shouted after the retreating figure.

  Reluctant to stop again once he’d built up momentum the Negro made a vague gesture with his thumb as he went on his way, stalked by a pack of cats. Interpreting his directions I made for the enormous warehouse which was nothing more than a corrugated iron roof held up by haphazardly placed wooden pillars. After five minutes spent working my way through the boxes I struck lucky, spotting a small, brick building in one corner of the warehouse.

  The interior came as a pleasant surprise, a striking contrast to the squalid chaos outside. Biddencourt might not be interested in providing an elegant front for his business but he certainly believed in looking after his creature comforts. The air-conditioning hummed placidly, the fitted carpet was so thick I was in danger of bogging down and all the furniture was that year’s model. The secretary manicuring her nails behind the desk was any year’s model, a dark mulatto housed in the kind of body which should have been put on permanent display. To give her a treat I flashed her my sexiest leer.

  ‘Go straight in, he’s not busy.’ she said briefly before returning her attention to her nails.

  Slightly piqued by the casual way she’d dismissed me I went through the door into the main office. The furnishings were u
p to the standards established by the secretary’s cubby hole, the crowning glory a huge, leather-topped desk, far too large for the room which contained it. Biddencourt was sitting behind the desk, busily doing nothing. He was another Negro, a surprising thing for a successful businessman to be south of Rio de Janeiro, and his immaculate suit would have put many a Wall Street executive to shame.

  In keeping with his appearance he was far too refined to ask who I was and what I wanted, lifting his eyebrows in polite enquiry instead. People had done this to me before, mainly at school, and I’d never liked the habit so I let him hold the expression until he started to go bug-eyed, giving the impression of having just realised there was a tarantula in his underpants.

  ‘My name is Philis,’ I told him before his eyes popped out and spoilt the desk. ‘It won’t mean anything to you but I’m hoping you can help me. I’m trying to trace a friend of mine.’

  Biddencourt shunted all movable facial features around, endeavouring to express concern, surprise and willingness to help at the same time. It was a great performance and, uninvited, I plumped down in a chair opposite him.

  ‘Who is it you’re looking for?’ he asked.

  His voice was beautifully modulated, the Portuguese as perfect as any you’d hear in the Copacabana Palace.

  In fact his exterior was so smooth I suspected he spent hours each day practising in front of a mirror.

  ‘Otto Schmidt,’ I said bluntly. ‘He left Porto Alegre just over a fortnight ago and no one has seen or heard of him since.’ I paused for a minute to allow Biddencourt to manipulate his face into the extreme surprise position. ‘I know he was coming to Rio Grande to see you and I was wondering whether you had any idea where he went from here.’

  ‘You mean Otto has disappeared?’ Biddencourt breathed in disbelief.

  As everything else about him was so phoney it was impossible to tell whether his amazement was genuine or not. Not seeing why I should waste my voice acting as a foil to his histrionics I nodded my confirmation. Biddencourt leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin to convey thought, widened his eyes as he reached a decision and bent briskly forward to flick through his desk diary. When he came to the entry he wanted he lifted his head to give me a man to man look.

  ‘Naturally I’d like to do everything in my power to help clear up the mystery,’ he announced. ‘Apart from being a valued customer Otto is a dear friend of mine. Unfortunately I’m as much in the dark as you appear to be. He came to see me on the twenty-third but what he did or intended to do after he left me I just don’t know. He comes to Rio Grande six or seven times a year so the visit didn’t strike me as anything out of the ordinary. I assumed he would be going back to Porto Alegre once his business here was finished. From what you say I gather he didn’t.’ Biddencourt shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry but I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual about his behaviour?’ I asked for the sake of form.

  ‘Nothing I’m afraid.’

  Biddencourt’s tone was final and it seemed I’d reached another vital point of decision — I could either accept the brick wall blocking my search or try to probe a bit further. The latter alternative appealed to me most. Having gone this far I was stubbornly determined not to give up until I had exhausted every possibility and I had a sneaking suspicion Biddencourt knew more than he cared to admit. I didn’t like his punctilious use of the present tense when talking about Otto, I didn’t like his lack of curiosity and, come to that, I just didn’t like Biddencourt. It was time for a calculated risk.

  ‘How well do you know Otto?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ve been doing business together for several years,’ Biddencourt answered, wondering what I was leading up to.

  ‘That means you must know him fairly well,’ I mused. ‘Have you heard any rumours that Otto wasn’t primarily interested in the Scheherazade? That it’s really a front.’

  This time there was no mistaking Biddencourt’s surprise, or his new sense of caution.

  ‘Rio Grande is a long way from Porto Alegre,’ he said. ‘It’s quite possible Otto has business interests I’m not aware of.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking in terms of business,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been out of touch with Otto for three years and over the last day or two I’ve asked a lot of people if they had any idea what might have happened to him. One man I saw told me something which sounded pretty far-fetched at the time. Now it’s beginning to make as much sense as anything else does. He said Otto has been attached to British intelligence since he came to Brazil and that he came to Rio Grande in this capacity. I realize this sounds ridiculous but at least it’s a possibility.’

  The barb went home and Biddencourt was rocking for a second before he managed to force a laugh. It gathered conviction the more he practised it but it was still distinctly hollow. I laughed with him for a while and then I left. Mighty oaks were supposed to grow from some seeds. What, if anything, was going to grow out of mine God only knew.

  Chapter 5

  One thing was clear after my interview with Biddencourt — Lydia and I definitely had to part company. It had been madness allowing her to accompany me in the first place, now she was leaving even if I had to carry her on board the plane. Back in Porto Alegre Jair should have passed on the message I’d left with him and in Rio Grande I’d gone a step further, as good as telling Biddencourt I knew far more about Otto than was healthy for anyone connected with his disappearance.

  There had never been any doubt in my mind about the trouble Otto had to be in, the probability being that he was already dead, and I was deliberately asking for trouble from the same source, the one sure way of following his trail. Admittedly Reece was lurking in the background, a potential guardian angel, but I had nowhere near enough faith in him to want Lydia in the firing line if my suspicions about Biddencourt proved to be correct. She had to leave Rio Grande and I had to stay, prepared for disaster just as I had been since Reece had entered my life.

  When I reached the hotel the room key was still on its hook and Lydia hadn’t returned by the time I’d knocked back a much-needed whisky in the bar. Getting drunk didn’t seem to be a good idea so I wrenched myself away and took the lift up to my room. The man seated in one of the chairs, a chubby, little mulatto, was a stranger, not to mention being a hell of a surprise. The smile he bestowed on me as he rose did ring a bell, though. There were millions of smiling Brazilians apart from the one Jair had told me about, they filled all the travel posters, but none of the others had any reason to be in my room.

  Purposefully I advanced into the room, switching on my nastiest grin to show how pleased I was to make his acquaintance, so intent on my appointed victim that I forgot about the big, broken-nosed German who travelled around with him. Until he kicked the door shut behind me, that is. I swung round fast, hands cocked for immediate action, leaving my stomach beautifully exposed to the rock hard fist approaching it at mach-2. If I’d had a chance to tense my stomach muscles the German might have broken every bone in his hand, though I doubt it. As it was my navel was transformed into a small crater, pieces of intestine wrapped themselves round my backbone and I rolled on the floor, groaning ecstatically.

  ‘You can call me Lutz,’ the German said generously. ‘My friend’s name is Joao. We’d both prefer it if you didn’t make a fuss.’

  ‘I’ll be silent as the grave,’ I said, forcing the wit out through clenched teeth.

  I was still in my foetus position on the floor, waiting for the pain to sink to agony level and wondering how I could reach my jacket which was still lying on the bed, apparently undisturbed.

  ‘You can get up now.’

  To go with the instructions Joao kicked me in the kidneys. I made a big production out of rising from the carpet, doubled over and groaning until I was half-way up, then I straightened suddenly and swung wildly at the German’s jaw. I didn’t get anywhere near him, of course, and I was already rolli
ng in anticipation of the counter. Even so it was a hell of a good punch and the side somersault I performed on my way across the room definitely wasn’t intended. Largely because of this I didn’t manage to land on top of the bed, crashing into the side instead, but I did succeed in grabbing the tail of my jacket as I fell, dragging it down beneath me. Although my brain might be in working order the two punches had done me a power of no good, making my fingers as nimble as untrained bananas when I endeavoured to free the gun from the folds of cloth, my body a shield to conceal what I was doing.

  ‘That wasn’t very sensible,’ Lutz said in gentle reproof.

  The nasty ache on the right hand side of my jaw told me he wasn’t far wrong, especially as the Colt seemed to be hopelessly snagged. On the spot I vowed to file off the useless front sight if I ever had the chance.

  ‘What do you want?’ I mumbled, looking at the intruders over my shoulder and stalling for time.

  They were standing by the door, both of them supremely confident. Lutz was massaging his bruised knuckles and Joao was playing with a knife. It was Joao who answered me.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he said. ‘First of all you’re going to tidy yourself up, then we’re going for a drive.’

  He was halfway through when the gun came loose, by the time he’d finished I had thumbed back the hammer and was rolling on to my back.

  ‘Sorry boys,’ I said, my good humour restored. ‘Mother told me never to accept lifts from strangers.’

  Joao was frozen into compliant rigidity, impressed either by my simple, homespun philosophy or by the gun, but Lutz didn’t display the respect I’d anticipated. He should have done because his hand was still snaking towards his left shoulder when the bullet struck him, hurling him back against the wall. There was plenty of time to swing back the Colt and take aim at Joao before he had a hope of escaping through the door. His back made a lovely target and it would have been all too easy to shoot him if there’d been any sense in such an action. There wasn’t so I didn’t pull the trigger. I hadn’t wanted to kill either of them, just ask a few pertinent questions, and one body in the room was problem enough without becoming a mass murderer.