by Jerold Last
"Suzanne, do you think it's possible that The Ambivalent Corpse was put there by some crazies from Argentina as a warning to Uruguay not to continue to pollute the river with the paper mill effluent?"
"Anything's possible, especially when Argentina is involved, but that seems like a bit of a stretch to me."
"I agree that it's not obvious how a dismembered corpse and two paper mills on the other side of the country could be related, but I'm not ready to rule out any theory at this stage of the investigation."
Our papers, the car's papers, and our passports and visas for Brazil were examined by border police about 13 miles from Rivera at a highway checkpoint. Our car entered Rivera 15 minutes later at about the same time that I decided I needed a break from driving. We found a hotel near the border. Juan Strossner-Ramirez's highly recommended friend in Rivera was expecting our call. The friend answered the phone on its second ring. He suggested meeting at a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel at 9 PM. It made a lot of sense to eat dinner here and stay at an Uruguayan hotel, which would be a lot cheaper than Brazil because of the weaker value of the peso against the dollar. As a bonus, we wouldn’t have to wrestle with speaking and understanding Portuguese for another day. The hotel featured a large room with a double bed, a nice bathroom with plenty of hot water and pressure, and TV with cable channels in English at a cost of about $25 for the night.
Since it was early in the evening, we had ample time to freshen up before dinner. Suzanne said with a shudder, "The extra hot water for the shower is suddenly really, really important to me. Every time I think about these Nazis it makes me feel dirty. I feel like I need a hot shower to get rid of the stench just from listening to them and pretending I agree with their rotten view of the world. Can you imagine how horrible it must have been for that poor woman who was killed?"
After we got dressed for dinner, almost an hour remained to walk around Rivera to see what the city's downtown looked like in the evening before we were due to be at the restaurant.
The main economy of Rivera consisted of duty-free shops. On the Uruguayan side of the border, for about 3 blocks, was a continuous line of shops selling electrical appliances of all kinds, sporting goods, imported perfumes, and, of course, name-brand wines (mainly from Argentina and Chile) and booze (mainly Scotch). In order to buy duty-free products one needs a foreign passport, which we both had. It seemed an excellent opportunity to stock up on wine and Scotch, which we thought might lubricate our future meetings with strangers as we continued our multi-country investigation, so we bought several bottles of each.
We got to the restaurant at 9:15, a bit early for a 9 o'clock appointment in South America. That turned out to be right. We got there simultaneously with the middle-aged couple that tentatively approached us and asked if we were there to meet another couple. We said yes, and they introduced themselves as the Rosellis, Jose and Carmelina. They had reserved a table, which we walked towards as we introduced ourselves. We made small talk for a bit.
"How was the drive?" "Did we like the Uruguayan beef which is the best in the world?" Enjoy the weather we are having because it usually rains during the summer."
Jose suggested that we share appetizers and wine, which he would select, and we should order our own main courses.
"That sounds like a great idea," Suzanne said, playing to Jose's ego. "You must know what's good here. Do you have any suggestions for the main course?"
Jose, now well established as the alpha male at the table and quite mellow, replied, "The meat of course, especially the lomo. I would avoid the fish, which is probably not fresh. The pork and lamb are both good."
The waiter came to take our orders. Jose ordered several appetizers and an Argentine malbec wine. Suzanne selected the rack of lamb, while I asked for matumbre (a flavorful rolled flank steak stuffed with spinach and chopped olives, eggs, and herbs) and mollejas. Jose and Carmelina both ordered the lomo. The waiter was back a few moments later with our wine and appetizers. The latter included jamon crudo, fried calamari, and a couple of tapa-sized dishes of green and black olives. We shared all of these selections. Jose watched us eat and commented that he was glad to see that we liked ham and seafood. We apparently passed his first test that we were not keeping to kosher dietary rules.
I took a good look at our hosts. Jose reminded me in some ways of Juan. He was fat and way out of shape, in his 50s, and looked a little bit like a short Rush Limbaugh clone. Carmelina had obviously been a nice-looking woman when she was younger, but had not aged well. Her body, neck, and jowls sagged and she looked like she ate and drank too much on a regular basis. She had little to say, and left socializing to Jose. All in all, they seemed to be a well-matched and thoroughly unattractive couple.
Jose asked if we had been following the news story of the ambivalent corpse that was found in Montevideo. Uh-oh, I thought. Is this another test like do we eat pork? I thought as fast as I could process the ideas. Columbo told me that he hadn't released our names as the couple that found the body so that we wouldn't be pestered continuously by the media. He also told us at the same time that he had other plans for us, as we now understood. I decided to go with the odds on this one, but to be as careful as I could.
"Neither of us has looked at TV or a newspaper since we got to Uruguay. But the murder is the hot topic of conversation these days in Montevideo, and all of Suzanne's friends we met while we were there discussed it at length."
"Then you might be amused to know that somebody took a video of the body at the scene that has gone viral on YouTube. Millions of people have watched it. There isn't much to see because it's so dark, but you can clearly make out the body parts. We couldn't have gotten better publicity if we had planned it."
"Huh?" I thought. "What did he just say?" I didn't think that Jose was overburdened with smarts, but it could be a deadly mistake to underestimate him. I looked at Jose and carefully asked him what I thought would be a safe question, "Is that the kind of publicity that Uruguay wants to get?"
"I didn't mean Uruguay," replied Jose, "I meant us. The more the warning gets seen all over the world, the stronger the message to people who have no business here that they should mind their own business!"
Fortunately, the waiter came just then to clear the table and serve our main courses and a second bottle of the wine. The pause in the conversation was most welcome. We settled in for some serious eating.
Suzanne strategically steered the conversation to a new topic. "Tell us what life here in rural Uruguay is like for you. We have no idea of what real Uruguayans who don't live in Montevideo are like."
Carmelina jumped in with, "It's terribly boring and I hate living with mongrel bastards." She was gulping down her third glass of wine while she was saying this.
Jose picked it up quickly from there. "It can be boring here, as in any small town. But I work full time as an accountant and am politically active in the community so my days are full. Because we live on the border here, things are duty free and not as expensive as in Montevideo. So one can live quite well on a lower income than you would need in the City. Carmelina and I both have extended family that live locally on both sides of the border, so we are two large and close families."
"Enough about us," continued Jose. "What about you? How did you meet my friend Juan?"
"We actually met at an art show where we talked for several hours and realized that we had a lot in common. Our political views are similar. He was kind enough to see that we would meet the right kind of people as we drove to Iguazu Falls and Paraguay. I have the impression that he has something more in mind for us, but I guess we won't know about that until after we return to Montevideo."
"Very good," said Jose, as we finished our main courses. "Shall I select the desserts for us?" This was clearly a rhetorical question, so I sat back and didn't say anything else. Twenty minutes later we were saying our good-byes. Jose was gracious about letting me pick up the check for our group's dinner when I offered to do so. If nothing else, he got
a free dinner at the best restaurant in town.
We walked back toward the hotel.
"What did you make of all that, Suzanne?" I asked.
"I'm looking forward to that hot shower as soon as we get back to the hotel. Maybe we should save the analysis till after that."
We picked up the key to our room from the desk and went on in after I checked a few tell-tales I had left. The door hadn't been opened while we were out. After sharing a long hot shower and scrubbing each other's backs we lay naked in bed propped up on the pillows and continued our recap of dinner.
"Columbo is going to be glad to hear a couple of very special sentences from dinner tonight, I think. Don't you?" Suzanne asked.
"Yes. The idea of leaving a message for the world to stay out of Nazi business in the Mercosur may be important. And the other is the suggestion about the corpse being staged to get publicity that would spread outside of South America. I'd infer that the target audience is the Israeli intelligence agencies."
"So would I."
Suzanne leaned over and kissed me, long, lingering, and sweet. One thing led to another and we didn't get to sleep for another hour.
I asked Suzanne "why are we like dulce de leche?"
She grunted something I interpreted as, "Why?"
"Because you're sweet and I'm lecherous."
We fell asleep almost immediately after that awful bilingual pun.
Chapter6.Brazil
Our hotel room price included a continental breakfast, as is typical for South America. The coffee was good, courtesy of proximity to Brazil and the duty-free status of the border towns.
The border between Brazil and Uruguay in this region follows the ridgeline of a range of hills. Rivera, the Uruguayan city, is built on a slight slope going up to the border. On the other side sloping slightly downwards is the Brazilian city of Livorno. Functionally, it is all one city. Formal border checks occur about 15-20 Km from the border in either direction. Right at the border on the main street for both cities is a large plaza with two flagpoles, one flying the Uruguayan and the other the Brazilian flag. Tall cement markers decorated the road every kilometer with “Uruguay” imprinted on one side and “Brazil” on the other. We filled the car with Brazilian gas, which was about 30% cheaper than gas in Uruguay, and we were ready to go. The beautiful weather was gone. It was gray and drizzly, with the promise of real rain to come, cooler than it had been the last few days but still clearly summer. Temperatures were in the 70s and very pleasant.
Our trusty navigator Suzanne calculated that it would be a 545-mile (11 hour) drive from Rivera to Iguazu Falls through the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Caterina, and Parana. The first day we would stop in Sao Miguel do Oeste in Santa Caterina. Sao Miguel featured a name on the list of Nazis we had received from Juan Ramirez and the name of a cop if we needed one from Lieutenant Gonzalez. Santa Caterina was especially interesting for us because it is bilingual, speaking Portuguese and German. German farmers settled here in the late 19th Century and their ethnic heritage lives on. In the 1940s it was a preferred destination for German-speaking refugees from the war crimes tribunals who did not speak fluent Spanish or Portuguese.
São Miguel do Oeste (or just São Miguel), the largest city in Southwestern Brazil, is a small town with a population of about 35,000, similar in size to Durazno or Rivera in Uruguay. It was founded in 1954 by settlers from Rio Grande do Sul, and named after their patron saint, San Miguel Archangel.
Our car made good time on paved and well-maintained roads. The scenery was interesting; most of the time we were in the middle of nowhere filled with forests, lots of green stuff, and lakes. This wasn't tropical Amazonian rainforest, but more like the African Savannah in the wet rainy season containing vast tracts of nothing. Further north we entered a subtropical region that was a mix of savannah and patches of rainforest.
We arrived in São Miguel hungry, just in time for a late lunch at a small restaurant directly alongside the road we drove into town on. Our waitress and many of the customers looked more German than Brazilian, with blond hair and blue eyes prominent. The menu featured both Brazilian and German food. Today's Special (at least I think that's what it said; the menu was written in a mixture of German and Portuguese) seemed a safe choice, sauerbraten mit rotkraut und haus bier. Ordering it was an adventure as the waitress spoke no English and had trouble understanding Suzanne's Spanish. So we communicated by sign language and the occasional pointed finger at the menu.
Lunch arrived and it looked like what we were expecting to get. The beer was OK. The sauerbraten and red cabbage were nowhere near as good as they would have been in Los Angeles, but we were hungry so they got a grade of OK. I made a mental note to stay with the Brazilian menu from here on.
The ultra-modern Hotel Solaris near the center of town on Getulio Vargas Avenue had a room available for one night. The double room cost about $75 for the night, breakfast buffet and WiFi included, and was clean, large, and attractive. It was still raining, harder than it had rained in Uruguay, so walking around the city was low on the priority list. We spent an hour in the room catching up on e-mail. I called the Sao Miguel Nazi on Juan's list and arranged for us to meet for dinner at 9 at a restaurant on the same street as our hotel. An hour later we decided to visit the local university in town, a branch campus of the National University of Brazil.
"Let's walk," suggested Suzanne. "I've spent much too long sitting in the car and need the exercise."
We put light jackets on, checked a map, and started out. The large urban university campus was theoretically only 20 minutes away. The day had warmed up nicely so walking in the gentle rain was pleasant. Unfortunately we followed my sense of direction instead of Suzanne's, so what should have been a short walk in a gentle drizzle turned into something of a hike in a brief cloudburst. We arrived on campus quite a bit wetter than we had expected to be, but decided to continue with our visit since our time in Sao Miguel was going to be so limited. Suzanne and I explored the various buildings until we found the Botany Department. The Botany Department office was open. Suzanne asked in Spanish which professors studied the local plants and might currently be available, and specifically asked about Professor de Silva’s availability. After a quick phone call, we were directed to Professor de Silva, a few doors down the hall.
We knocked, were told to enter in Spanish, and were greeted by a large man in his 40s who looked a lot like a blue-eyed and blond version of Santa Claus, including the twinkle in his eyes and the bushy light beard. He took one look at us and switched to excellent English. After introductions and exchanges of credentials, Suzanne got down to business. She explained about her research needs for exotic plants and what she did with their DNA before asking about his research.
"Too much teaching is required here to find time to do much research except in the summer months. Even then it has to be pretty simple stuff that can be done by undergraduates who did not choose to go to the larger campuses of the University in the eastern part of this state in Florianopolis or Porto Allegre."
Suzanne explained that what she was looking for was someone who knew something about the local plants, especially exotics, who could collect specimens and extract their DNA to send her. Dried DNA samples could be airmailed safely from Brazil to California.
Professor de Silva nodded and said, "We could do that very easily, but how will we know which plants to select?"
"That's my job initially," replied Suzanne. "I'll suggest several species native to this area that I can't find by myself for your students to collect for me. As you get an idea of what we're looking for, you should be able to suggest a lot of closely related plants I've never heard of for us to analyze. We can figure out by e-mail whether they're worth the effort to collect and analyze. With our current high-speed sequencing capability we can go through a lot of DNA very quickly, so analyzing closely related plants that may differ only slightly in what proteins they make is good."
They continued to discuss science a
nd logistics while I tuned out. In another 15 minutes I heard Suzanne saying that we should let Professor de Silva get back to his work. Business cards with e-mail addresses were exchanged, and we said our good-byes.
We walked around the campus for a while getting a feel for what it, and the students, looked like. Most of the students looked like their counterparts in Salta, with thin, dark haired young women in the majority. A significant minority were blue-eyed blonds like the professor. After 20 minutes or so of people watching we walked back to the hotel. Dinner was still a few hours off, so we stopped off at a bar a block from the hotel.
