The Fifth Vial

by Michael Palmer

  During the drive, she had concocted a reasonably satisfying story of a naturalist from America hiking the rain forest and, at the moment, searching for a relative who, last she knew, worked as a nurse in Dom Angelo. Part of her story would also be a nasty downhill tumble when the edge of the drop-off gave way.

  Her backpack, with the tent strapped on, was heavier than she would have liked, but anything less might have drawn suspicion. The pain in her hip was an annoyance, but not unbearable, and served as a constant reminder that her continued existence was a threat to some person or group. She just had to find a way to keep the pressure on.

  The early evening forest was awesome—rich with oxygen and the blend of a thousand scents. As she walked, she tried to conceive of how she might be connected to this place, many thousands of miles from her home. The road followed a prolonged, gentle slope before curving to the right. Then, with little warning, the forest fell away, and the road dropped sharply. Ahead and below her, nestled in a broad valley, was what she assumed was the village of Dom Angelo.

  For a time, Natalie sat at the base of a thick palm and studied the scene below, which from this distance looked like a diorama. There were a number of structures—mostly residences, it seemed—aligned along a grid of dirt streets. The buildings were crudely built with clay and corrugated metal. Smoke curled from several of them. To her left—north, she reckoned—was what appeared to be the entrance to a mine, hewn into the base of a mountain that towered over the valley. To her surprise, there were electric lights on poles, scattered throughout the village. Beneath them, children were playing. Natalie guessed two hundred inhabitants, maybe two fifty.

  A hundred yards beyond the mine entrance, a narrow waterfall, twenty feet high, filled a small pool, which then emptied into a fast-moving stream, coursing alongside the village. Natalie wondered if somewhere downstream, this was the water that was sweeping over the dancing corpse of Rodrigo Vargas. There were children in the pool, and at least two women washing clothes in the stream. Farther down, two men were working primitive sluices, panning for gems or gold.

  Idyllic, Natalie thought, quaint and absolutely peaceful, and yet, she had been maimed because of the place, and another woman murdered.

  With a soft groan, she pulled herself upright and headed down into the basin. Chickens were the first to greet her, followed by two generic brown dogs. Next were three women—all Brazilian Indians. The tallest of them was still well less than five feet. The trio smiled at her openly and without the slightest hint of suspiciousness.

  “Boa noite,” she said. Good evening.

  “Boa noite,” they replied, smiling broadly.

  Natalie wandered casually along the hard-packed streets and stopped at a tiny store for some packaged meat, ginger ale, and some sort of small melon. The proprietress, another Indian, shook her head when asked about a woman named Dora Cabral. Several more citizens of the village gave her similar responses, including two miners just finishing a day’s work in the hole in the mountain.

  The altitude and long day were beginning to take their toll on Natalie’s stamina. She was thinking about locating a place in the forest to pitch her tent when she spotted a chapel—whitewashed clay with a red tile roof and a stubby, square-topped steeple with a crude, six-foot cross on top. The canvases forming the top half of the walls and the door were rolled up and tied, exposing two rows of ten rough-hewn pews. The altar was unadorned save for an elaborate ceramic crucifix fixed to the solid wall behind it.

  Although she considered herself spiritual in the sense of living in constant awe of the vastness of the universe, the wonders of nature, and the need to treat others with respect and some form of love, Natalie had never been religious in any organized sense. Still, she felt a deep serenity in this simple structure and responded to it by sitting down on one of the benches.

  Despite her attempts to relax and clear her mind, the horror of Vargas’s attack on her and his violent death, along with the puzzle of Dora Cabral, simply would not let go. She had been in the chapel for, perhaps, fifteen minutes when a man spoke to her from behind in accented, though fluent, Portuguese.

  “Welcome to our church.”

  His voice was gravelly and low, but somehow soothing. Before she even turned, Natalie breathed in the all-too-familiar scent of cigarettes.

  Standing behind her was a priest in a plain, black, mud-spattered robe, white collar, and sandals. He was fifty or so, somewhat gaunt, with dark hair cut short, a day or two of gray-black stubble, and striking, electric blue eyes. A heavy silver cross dangled halfway down his chest, suspended on a thick silver chain.

  “This is a very lovely place,” she replied.

  “You are American?” the priest said, in perfect English—or at least as perfect as someone probably raised in Brooklyn or the Bronx could have.

  “Boston,” Natalie said, switching to English and extending her hand. “Natalie Reyes.”

  “Reyes. So you are Brazilian?”

  “My mother is Cape Verdean.”

  “I am Father Francisco Nunes—Frank Nunes of the Brooklyn Nuneses.”

  Natalie smiled as the man took a seat on the pew opposite hers. He had a magnetic presence that immediately drew her to him, but there was also an unmistakable aura of melancholy that she suspected might have something to do with the reason he had migrated so far from New York.

  “This is quite a parish,” she said.

  “Actually, I minister to several villages in the rain forest, but primarily I am here. Call it penance if you wish.”

  Natalie declined the silent offer to pursue the matter. Father Francisco seemed anxious to talk.

  “And ‘here’ is…?”

  “Dom Angelo, a mining community—primarily emeralds, but also green tourmaline, topaz, opal, amber, and some sapphire. I have become something of an expert on the purity of these gems. And you?”

  “I am a student, taking some time away from my studies to reorder my priorities in life, and to hike the rain forest before it is all gone.”

  “It still has a ways to go, but I understand.”

  “I notice that most of the people here are Indians.”

  The priest laughed.

  “Many of our residents are indigenous to these vast forests,” he said, “but there are a number of others here who crave the anonymity of a place like this, where all transactions are done in cash, and people only have last names if they wish to.”

  “Do the Indians own the mine?”

  Again an ironic laugh.

  “These poor, pure people own next to nothing,” he said, “and are probably the better for it. The gems they mine are quite profitable, and in Brazil profit often means involvement of the Military Police. It is they who own this place—at least a small group of them do. Think of them as the sheriffs and Dom Angelo as Tombstone in the once Wild West.”

  Natalie flashed on Rodrigo Vargas’s hideous visage as he lifted his bloodied face up from the mud to attack her. Involuntarily, she shuddered.

  “I…I have another reason for seeking out this village,” she said after a time. “A relative of my family, a woman named Dora Cabral, originally from Rio, wrote my mother that she was working out here as a nurse. Is that possible?”

  “Quite possible, yes,” Father Francisco replied. “We have a hospital nearby, and that hospital employs nurses brought in from Rio, but although I know some of them, I know no person named Dora Cabral. I will ask around the village, though.”

  “I have already asked a few people, but no luck. It’s hard to believe you have a hospital out here.”

  “Quite a modern hospital, in fact. They perform highly specialized forms of surgery, although I have never been privileged to know precisely what.”

  “Fascinating. So your parishioners go there for care?”

  “Not for surgery. Operations are only performed by the nurses and doctors who are flown in or sometimes driven in from Rio, and then only on their patients. If one of our residents needs hospitalizat
ion, there is an ambulance we are allowed to use.”

  “Who runs this hospital?”

  “The same people who run Dom Angelo.”

  “The Military Police?”

  “Essentially. When they need help, they bring villagers down as cooks or for housekeeping or sometimes even to assist in the operating room. Once every week or two, a clinic is opened at the hospital so that a nurse or doctor can minister to the people from the villages.”

  “That’s very good of them.”

  “It is all about control. The care the villagers get they would not be able to get anywhere else. Their gratitude may cause them to think twice should they consider trying to keep a stone for themselves. Not doing so is generally a wise choice. The police have a network of spies and informants, and mete out justice with a very quick and heavy hand. If you have spoken to any of the townspeople, there is a chance the policeman currently residing at the hospital already knows you are here.”

  “Well, if so, they will soon know that I am only passing through.”

  Father Francisco tapped a half-smoked cigarette from a crumpled pack and lit it, inhaling gratefully.

  “I have decided that I have enough vices I am doing penance for,” he said. “The right to enjoy these, I retain.”

  “It is your right.”

  The priest hoisted Natalie’s backpack on his shoulder.

  “Come, I will show you a flat, protected plot overlooking the village where you can pitch your tent.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Father. I wonder if there is any way I could visit the hospital. I fell down an embankment not long ago and injured my hip.”

  “I can clean and bandage your scrapes and cuts, and tomorrow I can inquire about the status of affairs at the hospital, but I can make no guarantee of treatment.”

  “That would be very kind of you. Tell me, where is this hospital?”

  “A kilometer to the south. No more. I am sure if there is no special surgery scheduled, Dr. Santoro would be happy to care for you.”

  Natalie felt her blood freeze.

  “Who did you say?” she asked, trying desperately to maintain a façade of nonchalance.

  “Dr. Santoro,” Father Francisco said. “Dr. Xavier Santoro.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Then you will soon observe whether a man is just and gentle, or rude and unsociable; these are the signs which distinguish even in youth the philosophical nature from the unphilosophical.

  —PLATO, The Republic, Book VI

  With the steepness of the hills and the height of the trees, night settled in quite quickly. The small plot of grass to which Father Francisco had led Natalie was beyond and above the stream, not that far from the waterfall. She politely declined his offer to help her set up her tent for fear that he would wonder why it was absolutely unused. Tomorrow, if she continued to be comfortable with him, she would share the real story behind her journey to Dom Angelo.

  Meanwhile, she pumped the priest as hard as she could for information regarding Dr. Xavier Santoro. What she learned was little. Francisco suspected that, like so many in this part of the forest, Santoro had a past he would just as soon forget. Eight years ago, when Francisco took up residence in Dom Angelo, the hospital and airstrip were already there, as was Santoro.

  “A kind man,” he said, “who genuinely seems to care for the forest people.”

  If that’s so, Natalie wanted to scream, how did he end up operating on my lung?

  In the gathering gloom, pitching the high-tech tent was a chore that would have been comical had the situation not been so intense. Finally, bathed in perspiration and swathed in insect repellent, but victorious, she sat outside her new home, reflecting on her surprising lack of emotion at having so violently killed a man just a few hours ago. According to Francisco, the group of policemen controlling the mine and the medical center numbered four, with at least one always present at the hospital. It was they who maintained the church and meagerly subsidized him, as much, he suspected, for his skill as a lapidary as his ability to preach and minister.

  Tomorrow, Natalie decided, she would probably share with him the news that the number of Military Police managers had been reduced by twenty-five percent. For the moment, though, all she wanted to do was sit still and wonder how she could have found her way from an alley in a favela just outside of Rio to a hospital in the middle of nowhere.

  The vantage point from her campsite included a disarming view of the waterfall and pool, and of the town below, but of something else as well. To the south, in a valley visible over the tops of trees, the priest had pointed to a faint cluster of lights.

  The hospital.

  “That is where tomorrow we shall try and get medical help for your hip,” Francisco had said. “I think you will find that Dr. Santoro has the answer to your problem.”

  Let us hope so, Natalie thought savagely.

  It was nearly eleven before the nip of cachaça, sugarcane liquor, kicked in and Natalie retreated to the womblike interior of her tent. She slipped Vargas’s gun inside her thin sleeping sack, and allowed herself to drift off, fully expecting the proximity to Dr. Xavier Santoro to trigger yet another flashback. What she heard instead, after just a few minutes, was a soft scuffling from somewhere just outside the tent. Natalie silently slid the gun out, held her breath, and listened.

  Nothing.

  Astonished at how calm she was feeling, she aimed the barrel at the spot where she placed the sound.

  “I hear you, and I have a gun,” she said in Portuguese. “Go away before I shoot.”

  “You do not need to do that,” a man’s harsh whisper responded. “If I wanted you dead, you would already be dead. It is what I do.”

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “My name is Luis Fernandes. Dora Cabral is my sister.”

  With Vargas’s gun still at the ready, and a high-intensity flashlight in her other hand, Natalie turned and crawled headfirst from the tent. Luis Fernandes was seated cross-legged, holding his hands palms up to show he was unarmed. He was slightly built, with an Indian’s features, but definitely taller—much taller—than those men she had seen in town. A black patch, held in place by elastic, covered his left eye. Overall, he was quite menacing.

  “You must speak a little slower,” Natalie said, lowering both the gun and the flashlight. “My Portuguese is weak.”

  “Actually, you are speaking very well. Are you from Lisbon?”

  “Massachusetts in the States, but my family is Cape Verdean. Are you really a professional killer?”

  “I do what I have to, and some of the time I am paid for doing it. My sister works as a nurse in Rio at Santa Teresa Hospital. Is that the Dora Cabral you seek?”

  For a time, Natalie studied the man’s narrow, deeply etched face. He might have been anywhere from thirty to fifty, though she suspected early thirties. He was clean-shaven, with sideburns that came down below his ears, and had probably been handsome before the hardness of his life took over. Now, he simply looked rough. Natalie sensed there was no reason to be anything other than direct with the man.

  “I am afraid I have some bad news for you,” she said finally.

  It was time, she decided, to share her story. Tomorrow, it would likely be with Father Francisco, possibly in the form of a confession. Tonight, it would be with this man, who, she strongly felt, was no threat to her. Luis listened intently as she recounted her two trips to his country, and the frantic events since she was approached by his sister at the crosswalk in downtown Rio. Outwardly, he seemed calm, almost detached, but even through the gloom, Natalie could see that his jaw was set, and his lips pressed tightly together.

  “Believe it or not, there was a time when I was a teacher,” he said when she had finished. “I taught music to schoolchildren. Then, one night, ten, maybe eleven years ago, I rose to the defense of the father of one of my students, who was being beaten by the police. During the struggle, one of the policemen fell and hit his head, and died. Aft
er a few years of running, and yes, killing, I ended up in this place. Even though the police run this village and the hospital, there are never any questions asked here.”

  “I understand,” Natalie said.

  “So now, after being a wanted man for so long, I am the head of security for the hospital. It is my job to bring people down from the village when there is an operation being done. I learned from some of the nurses how much they were being paid, and I talked my sister into signing up with Dr. Santoro. She only came here twice, and then suddenly decided not to come anymore. She never told me why.”

  “Perhaps something was going on at the hospital that bothered her. When was the last time she was here?”

  “Two months ago, maybe a little less. You are sure it was Vargas who killed her, and Vargas whom you killed?”

  “I am sure. This is his gun.”

  Luis took the weapon, inspected it, then hefted it expertly in his hand.

  “It is Vargas’s,” he said. “He was a very hard man, with little respect for me or anyone else of stature below his own.”

  “Your sister was extremely frightened of him.”

  “It is not easy to resign from working at this hospital—maybe impossible. I owe you a great debt for avenging her.”

  “I believe your sister was killed because she tried to help me. She knew what was done to me at this hospital. Now, I need to know if I was really here, and if so, what happened to me.”

  Luis thought for a time.

  “We are sworn to secrecy regarding the hospital and what is done there. The town depends on the hospital.”

  “Father Francisco tells me the mine is quite productive and could support the village.”

  “Perhaps,” Luis said. “He would know better than I.”

  “Tell me, Luis. You know what they do there, don’t you?”

  The killer stared down at the ground. Natalie knew what he was contemplating. These people demanded loyalty, and were not the sort who allowed second chances. If he turned against them now, if they learned he had shared any of their secrets, there would be no going back for him.