“That’s precisely what I don’t mean. I mean—”
Da Silva shook his head at his friend. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “you folks from the northern parts of the world should actually avoid cold weather like the plague. At this time of the year it seems to do something to your judgment. And that goes for Europeans, as well as Americans. Anyone from cold climates.” He shook his head again. “I suppose I’ve heard that same statement a hundred times or more from both American and European friends—usually in the same tragic tone of voice. It just doesn’t seem like Christmas in Brazil because there isn’t any snow.” His tone was light, but there was a touch of seriousness beneath it. “No snow, eh? You know, you people always relate everything exclusively to your own limited experience, and if something doesn’t fall into the proper slot, you automatically reject it. Like an idiot I.B.M. machine.”
Wilson stared at him. “I gather that’s supposed to mean something?”
“It means this.” Da Silva smiled faintly and twisted his cognac glass, watching the damp trails it left on the table. His eyes came up. “As I recall, the weather at Bethlehem on that fateful day when our Lord was born was remarkably free from snow. That part of the world usually was and is. And the pictures I’ve seen of the shepherds watching the great star in the distance usually had groves of palm trees in them for background. Actually, the weather at the time and place of Jesus’ birth was probably a lot more like ours than it ever was like yours.” His smile broadened as a thought struck him. “I can picture Three Wise Americans approaching the manger on that fantastic day, and then one of them rears back suspiciously, shaking his head. ‘There’s something very wrong here,’ he says to the other two. ‘It’s quite doubtful if this is the true Messiah at all. No snow.’”
Wilson laughed in delight. “I should have learned long ago never to argue with you,” he said, and raised his glass in a gesture of a toast. “Well, here’s to no snow.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Da Silva agreed pleasantly, and completed his drink. He set his glass on the table, glanced at his watch, and frowned. “I know she’s a woman and all that, and I don’t want to be curious, but just where is that hotel of your girlfriend’s? In São Paulo?”
Wilson’s smile faded; his eyes went to his own watch and then raised, worried. “You’re right. She’s staying at the Miracopa, and that certainly isn’t very far. She should have been here long ago. I’ll call her hotel again; maybe she went back for something.”
He came to his feet and purposefully strode into the bar. Da Silva leaned back, relaxing, enjoying the night. He lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply, and then reached over, drawing the bottle to him, pouring himself another drink. If Wilson had been stood up—and such things had been known to have happened to people—then he would have done much better to have stayed home and got some sleep. Not that it hadn’t been good to see his old friend and straighten him out on Christmas without snow and not that the cognac at Mario’s wasn’t always worth a visit, but the thought of listening to love betrayed for an hour or more over a steak—even one of Mario’s steaks—was not his notion of how to enjoy a meal. He set his glass down and was in the midst of a prodigious yawn when Wilson came out of the bar, his jaw set dangerously.
“Zé! Let’s go! I’ve already signed the tab inside!”
Da Silva’s yawn ended abruptly and resentfully. “Go! We haven’t eaten yet. You’re the one who talked me into coming here for dinner in the first place, and now—”
“Now I’m talking you out of it! I want to get over to the hotel in a hurry!” Wilson’s tone was curt. He walked out to the curb, peering impatiently in both directions. “Damn! Where the devil are all the cabs?”
Da Silva shrugged, crushed his cigarette to extinction, and leisurely followed Wilson to the street. “It’s Christmas,” he reminded the other gently. “They’re probably all at home, watching the snow on television. What’s all the excitement?”
Wilson gave up his fruitless search for a cab and swung around. “Damn! Well, let’s start walking!”
“Good enough,” Da Silva said agreeably and fell in step beside Wilson, easily matching the shorter man’s stride. “I wasn’t too hungry, anyway. And this way we go right past my building, and I can go in and get some sleep.”
“You can come right along with me and save the worthless life of that stupid desk man at the Miracopa!” Wilson said savagely. “Because if I’m alone I’ll kill him! That idiot! That miserable garbage-brained meathead! He tells me now that she wrote me a letter and left it at the desk for mailing before she left the hotel! The last time I talked to him, all he said was that she’d already left. Not a blessed word about a letter! That stupid, filho de—”
Da Silva smiled at him. Wilson was the last person he would have thought to become so upset simply because a date had stood him up; that girl must really be something! “And for that you’re going to kill him? For not mentioning a letter?”
“Not for that!” Wilson tramped angrily across a side street without looking for traffic; fortunately there was none. Da Silva hurried to catch up, falling into step again at once. “He has this letter at his desk, but he tells me that since it’s already stamped, he has to mail it. He can’t hand it over to me. Can you imagine such an idiot? If he ever mailed it, I’d be lucky to get it by a year from next November! If at all!”
“Well,” Da Silva said in a reasonable tone of voice, “after all, legally he’s right.”
“That and twenty cruzeiros will get him a cup of coffee!” Wilson said viciously. “That incredible cretin! If he puts that letter in a postbox before I get there, he goes in on top of it! If I have to take him apart to get him through the slot!”
Da Silva’s smile faded. Wilson certainly looked and sounded as if he had something more on his mind than fear of losing a date, and Wilson was far from a fool. Still, any man head over heels in love was never in full control of his faculties. He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at the man marching beside him.
“What’s the story?”
The smaller man took a deep breath without in any way reducing his stride. “Damned if I know. All I’ve got is half a story, plus a hunch.” He paused to put his thoughts in order and then went on. “About four days ago, Jill—her name’s Jill Howard—came to the embassy with the story that her brother is missing in Brazil, she thinks, and—”
“She thinks? She doesn’t know?”
“She knows he’s missing, and she thinks he was heading for Brazil. She says he told her, but she says she wasn’t paying much attention at the time—”
Da Silva raised his eyes to the evening sky. “Oh, brother!”
“I know,” Wilson said, and shrugged. “Anyway, they sent her to me. The story she gave me was that her brother Don is a geology professor at Berkeley, and he was approached by some man to fly down to South America to look at some ore samples. Apparently the price was good, and the trip fell at a time the university was closed for both Christmas holidays and between terms, so he had the time, and all in all it looked like a great adventure. She says she can’t remember the name of the man who hired Don; she can’t even remember if she ever knew it. Anyway, she drove Don to the airport where he met this private plane, and that was the last she’s heard from him. And now she’s worried. He’s been on similar assignments before—he seems to be pretty good in his field—but he always kept in touch before.”
“I see.” Da Silva glanced at his friend. “And of course, she didn’t have any data on the plane itself? The registration or anything useful like that?”
“She’s a doll, but my guess is she wouldn’t know a jet from a glider,” Wilson said morosely.
“But they must have filed a flight plan of some sort.”
“There wasn’t any flight plan filed from Berkeley Airport for any foreign destination—not the day she says she left. I checked that out through the C.A.B. the first day.” He looked up, frowning. “Which is suspicious in itself.”
“Susp
icious?” Da Silva smiled faintly. “Why? It sounds as if it was only a local flight. What makes her think they were heading for Brazil?”
“She says she’s sure he said something about Brazil; she just can’t remember what it was.”
Da Silva shook his head. “You really picked yourself a girlfriend. She thinks! But she doesn’t remember. Her brother could be anywhere between San Francisco and PagoPago. Not to mention Brazil, Indiana.” He looked at Wilson. “And just what did she expect you to do about it?”
“She wants me to find him,” Wilson said simply.
“Just like that, eh? How?”
“That’s why I wanted to get in touch with you. There’s just so much I can do, even attached to the embassy, but with your connections you can check out most of the airstrips in the interior and find out if any plane with two men landed, coming from the States, or where they are.”
“I don’t suppose,” Da Silva said quietly, “that her brother might just have wanted to disappear? You know as well as I do that nine out of ten disappearances are done on purpose.”
“I thought of that, of course,” Wilson said evenly. “I started a check on him, but so far nothing has turned up. He doesn’t have a police record, and his credit is good—which accounts for fifty percent of the reasons for disappearing—and according to Jill, he doesn’t have a wife, which takes care of the other fifty percent.”
Da Silva smiled. “Well, even supposing he did come to Brazil, I still wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you. There are some pretty remote airstrips in Brazil. And four days isn’t a very long time.”
“It isn’t four days,” Wilson said stubbornly. “It’s four days since she came down to Rio to try and find him. It’s ten days since he left Berkeley, and—”
“You mean she’s worried enough to make a trip like this after only a little more than a week? That he’s gone, I mean?”
“She does remember that the job was only supposed to take two days,” Wilson said. “And ten days isn’t two days. He’s been on these jobs before and never delayed like this.” He looked at his friend. “If he was heading for Brazil, he hasn’t landed at any of the major airports, because I checked with customs. And if he landed at one of the interior airports with communication facilities, you’d think he’d try and get a message to her. But he hasn’t. So she’s worried. And so am I.”
The short blocks that traverse Copacabana between the mountains behind Rua Toneleros and the beach had been crossed quickly during their conversation; traffic had been light, and few people were on the street. The hotel appeared a few blocks ahead, its rounded, illuminated marquee a familiar landmark jutting over the mosaic sidewalk. Wilson thought of something else.
“And another thing: when I finally arrange to have her meet you and tell you the full story herself, she doesn’t show up. Instead, she leaves me a letter and disappears herself!”
“Hold it!” Da Silva said, and smiled. “I don’t mind your building a mountain out of a molehill, but let’s not try to compete with Everest. She didn’t disappear; she left you a note and stood you up.” He grinned. “I can think of several reasons a girl might want to do that.” He thought a moment, and his grin disappeared abruptly. “As a matter of fact, I can think of one very good reason why she might not have wanted to meet a Brazilian cop.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Wilson said half angrily. “You think the whole thing could be some sort of a con game—the missing brother routine instead of the Spanish count, or something like that. Well, outside of the fact that I’m not exactly a child in these things, you just don’t know Jill. I’ll admit she’s a little kookie, but she’s also the most wonderful—”
Da Silva cast his eyes heavenward and then retired gracefully. “Or maybe she finally heard from her brother.”
“And therefore decided there wasn’t any need to suffer my company at dinner tonight?” Wilson shook his head; there was no humor in his voice. “No. I know you’re taking this whole thing very lightly, but I tell you there’s something going on I don’t like. She didn’t stand me up; at least not in the way you mean.”
Da Silva opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again. Wilson obviously was not in the mood for ribbing. They completed their journey in silence, coming at last to the hotel and walking up the curved driveway together, mounting the deserted marble steps side by side, swinging through the double glass doors. The bright and patently false smile on the face of the porteiro faded at the glower that Wilson’s face was directing at him. Whoever the gentleman was, he seemed to be displeased about something, and that displeasure seemed to somehow involve him. Da Silva reached out, laying a restraining hand on Wilson’s arm.
“Let me handle this,” he said in English, and then smoothly switched to Portuguese as he suavely turned to face the porter. He reached into a pocket, bringing out a leather billfold and opening it to present his credentials. The porter leaned over to study them and then straightened up, suddenly realizing he had been wary of the wrong man. Da Silva smiled at him gently.
“I understand you are holding a message from a guest here—a Miss Howard—addressed to a Mr. Wilson.” He moved one hand in a casual sweep. “This gentleman is Mr. Wilson—”
The porter’s brow cleared. So that was the trouble! The man who had been so angry with him on the telephone had gone to the police! Well, police or no police, he knew the law. His voice became righteous. “Yes, Captain. But he can’t receive it from me.”
“Do you mind telling me why?”
“Because it’s stamped.” The porter’s tone chided Da Silva for not being more familiar with the law. “It’s the property of the government, and only they—”
“Ah!” Da Silva said, and nodded in agreement. “But, you see, I also represent the government. So if you have any objection to delivering it to the gentleman, give it to me and I’ll deliver it.”
“But you don’t represent the postal department, Captain,” the porter said firmly, almost triumphantly. He pictured himself describing the conversation later to his friends, few of whom had any particular love for the police. It would make quite a story! He stared into the captain’s eyes and suddenly wondered if it would make that good a story; the captain was nodding, but there was something almost too agreeable about his expression.
“True,” Da Silva conceded, and sighed. “You’re probably right; the best thing would be to do it all legally—to take you and the letter down to the delegacia and hold you there until we can locate and fill out the proper forms.”
The porter blanched; on second thought there was no good reason ever to repeat the conversation to his friends. The look in the steady eyes across from him promised that the stay in the delegacia would not be pleasant. But then, as the porter well knew, few stays at police headquarters were. He hastened to correct any misunderstanding.
“I didn’t exactly mean—”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Da Silva said sympathetically. “And I’m also sure that at one time or another the red tape of bureaucracy has irritated you. So I know you’ll welcome an opportunity to cut through some of it. Won’t you?”
“Yes, Captain,” the desk clerk said hopelessly, and handed over the letter.
“Thank you,” Da Silva said politely, and took the envelope from the outstretched fingers. He turned back to Wilson, walking him out of earshot and handed the letter over, winking.
“I love these legal types,” he said. “For a slight tip that character would probably arrange you anything from a kilo of marijuana to the chorus line of the Golden Room. But hand over a letter addressed to you? Heavens, no! That wouldn’t be legal!” He eyed Wilson curiously. “Why didn’t you simply offer him a tip? He’d have probably given you every letter in the rack.”
“Because I didn’t like his tone of voice,” Wilson said shortly, and ripped open the letter. He scanned it quickly and then looked up, a startled expression on his face. “Zé! Listen to this! ‘Dear Mr. Wilson—’”
“‘Dear Mr. Wilson’?” Da Silva’s bushy eyebrows rose. “This is a love affair? How does she address simple acquaintances?”
“Damn it, Zé! Will you stop that and listen?” His eyes went back to the letter, reading it aloud:
DEAR MISTER WILSON—
The man who hired Don up in Berkeley walked into the bar with some friends just as I was leaving to meet you, and they’re all in the bar right now. I asked him where Don was and he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about, and he acted as if I were crazy, and I’m so DAMNED MAD I could SPIT! Now I’m really worried about Don and that makes me even madder! When he comes out of that bar, I’m going to follow him, and he’ll know I’m following him, too! If he thinks he can tell me I’m crazy, then he’s crazy! I KNOW he’s the one. Anyway, I’m almost positive!
I’ve already had the porter arrange me a cab, and it’s waiting outside right now, and I’ve already stamped and addressed the envelope for this letter, so you should get it at the embassy tomorrow—
Wilson looked up, frowning. “Tomorrow?”
Da Silva shrugged; there was a look of mild humor in his eyes. “So it would take two weeks to a month instead of one day for the letter to be delivered. How would she know about our marvelous mail service? Go ahead with the letter.”
Wilson nodded and went back to the scrawled note.
—so you should get it at the embassy tomorrow. I don’t know where to call you except at your office, but if I can find out where he goes, I’ll try to call you at that restaurant—I forgot the name, but I’m sure I’ll think of it—if you and that Captain What’s-his-name are still there. I’m sorry about not meeting you.
I just remembered—there’s another entrance to the bar from the street, so I’d better go out and wait in the cab. I’m going to make my driver keep blowing his horn at his car all the way. That’ll show him who’s crazy!
JILL HOWARD
Wilson lowered the folded paper and stared at Da Silva in almost bitter triumph; it was as if the verification of his fears somehow cleared the air. “All right—are you convinced?”
Always Kill a Stranger Page 19
