“José Maria Carvalho?”
“Right.” Da Silva’s face was expressionless as he stared at the other. “João Fulano?”
The young man smiled, but it was a tense smile. “That’s me.”
He reached for the rear door handle, but Da Silva quickly slid across the seat, reaching back, clamping the handle from the inside. He made his voice sound properly disgusted.
“Good God! Not in back! Favelados don’t ride in taxis as passengers. When they’re lucky enough to have a friend who drives a cab, they ride in front with him!”
The young man dropped the handle as if it were hot.
“Sorry!”
He climbed into the front and slammed the door shut behind him. Da Silva shrugged at the other’s stupidity and dug into his shirt pocket, bringing out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, offering them to his passenger almost as a peace gesture. The young man fished one out, accepted the cheap offered Zippo gratefully, and lit the cigarette, handing the lighter back. Da Silva laid it negligently on the deck of the dash panel as he continued his inspection of the young man.
The beard was about what one would expect from someone his age, although—Da Silva recalled—when he was in his twenties his beard was already fairly heavy. At least, much heavier. His eyes dropped. The shoes were very good: dirty, cracked across the instep, and with heels that were worn almost to nonexistence. The trousers were sufficiently worn and wrinkled but could have stood a bit more dirt; still, they would do. The cap was fine, the sort of cap one picked from a rubbish barrel. The shirt was an obvious hand-me-down from someone who liked a riotous Hollywood color like deep plum. Da Silva summed up the result and nodded in satisfaction.
“You’ll do.”
“Sorry about trying to climb into the back. Habit, you know.” The young man inhaled his cigarette deeply and flicked ash out of the window. His eyes came around to Da Silva’s face with an attempt at innocence that would have been comical if he had not been so obviously under great strain. “How much did Romana”—he bit his lip and hurried on to conceal the mistake—“the girl tell you?”
So her name was Romana, eh? A lovely name for a lovely girl, and one he faintly remembered as being on the Coronado Apartment list. And sufficiently uncommon to be strongly identifying. Well, that could be checked out later; the young man was waiting for an answer.
“She said you wanted to keep out of sight for a few days. That’s all.” He reached for the ignition switch and then stopped abruptly. His eyes turned to the other; hard, bloodshot, and—unfortunately—painful. “She also said you were to hand over the rest of the money. Nine hundred and fifty conto.”
“I know. She said.” The young man flipped away his cigarette and reached into his pocket. Da Silva frowned at the size envelope that was extracted.
“I said old cruzeiros.”
“I’m sorry”—he truly sounded sorry—“but nine hundred and fifty conto in old cruzeiros makes a bundle pretty hard to handle. But you don’t have to worry. These have been initialed and certified at the Banco Mundial de Nova Iguaçu—their branch in Avenida Vargas.” He glanced at Da Silva’s face. “Certified. That means they’re guaranteed by the bank.”
“I know what certified means,” Da Silva said shortly. “And I wasn’t worried. I’m sure”—he smiled grimly—“you wouldn’t try to hand me papel de parede.…”
He released his foot from the clutch and backed up, preparing to swing around and head back to the favela. He glanced at his companion.
“Relax,” he said evenly. “It’s only a favela, not jail.…”
“Boracic acid,” he said to Wilson in a tight voice, glaring. The other’s silence seemed to irritate him even more. “Don’t look so puzzled! Don’t stare as if I were speaking a foreign language! It’s English, you clod!”
“Boracic acid?” Wilson suddenly remembered; he snapped his fingers. “My grandmother used to call it that. Today it’s called boric acid. And who threw what in your face?”
Da Silva stared at him through aching eyes. “Nobody. I must have picked up the wrong bottle. And let’s skip the history of your family. Do you have any? By any name?”
“No, but—”
“Damn! I should have stopped at a—”
“I started to say I’ve something as good, if not better.” Wilson disappeared into the bathroom, returning a few moments later with a small bottle. “Sit down and tip your head back. Stare up at the ceiling. And keep your eyes open.…” Da Silva complied. Wilson nodded. “That’s the way.…” He watched the tiny drops fall into the corner of each eye after which he returned the dropper to the bottle. “How’s that?”
Da Silva blinked experimentally once or twice, considered carefully, and finally nodded. “It’s better. Much better.”
“Good.” Wilson set the small vial aside. “Now, what did you get—or put—in your eyes? You look like you tried to swim underwater in Bloody Marys.”
“It would have been smarter.” Da Silva grinned. “It was supposed to be part of a general disguise, and it worked, which is the main thing. The boy didn’t recognize me. Although,” he added in all fairness, “he probably wouldn’t have, anyway.”
Wilson frowned. “Who didn’t recognize you? That tall, skinny youngster in that awful plum-colored shirt? Did you know him?”
“By sight, yes. We were never actually introduced. He’s—” He stopped short, frowning. “How did you know he was a tall, skinny youngster? Or the color of his shirt?”
“Binoculars. I picked you both up when you got out of the cab, and followed you very nicely all the way up to the shack.” Wilson brushed aside the matter of the binoculars. “Let’s get back to you. Who—”
“Binoculars, eh? Not a bad idea.…” Da Silva walked to the window; the binoculars were lying on a chair there. He picked them up and brought them to his eyes, swinging them to encompass the Catatumbá, slowly twisting the knobs to focus them. “You couldn’t plant anyone up there in the slum to keep an eye on him, but someone down here—” He shook his head disheartenedly and dropped the binoculars back on the chair. “Not such a good idea, either. It might be great during the day if your watcher didn’t go blind, but it would be useless at night.” He shrugged. “Anyway, he’ll stay put until tomorrow, and by then we ought to start getting some answers.”
“What makes you so sure he’ll stay put?”
“Because he wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble or expense just to stay out of sight for less than a day.” Da Silva tried to explain. “If you just want to keep off the streets for a day, you can spend it in the movies. I’ll check him out tomorrow, assuming I can find the right stuff to put in my eyes. Or maybe I’ll even go up there without wrecking my eyes.…”
“When you get through worrying about your health,” Wilson said sarcastically, “who is he?”
Da Silva looked at him, walked over, and sat down again.
“His name is Chico Xavier, and his father has all the money in the world.”
“That Xavier? Francisco Xavier?”
“That’s right. I’ve seen Chico often enough; he’s the tennis champ at my club, Fluminence, and I’ve watched him play quite often. But at a club the size of Fluminence nobody knows everybody, or even a portion of everybody. The only time I actually met Chico face to face to talk to him was about twelve years ago, and he was just a youngster. I’m sure he wouldn’t remember me.” He put the memory aside, reaching for a cigarette. “There was something in the Jornal de Esporte the other day about Chico, and among other things it mentioned he was in his last year at law school. At the University of Brazil here in Rio.”
Wilson’s expression neatly combined irritation and disappointment.
“Do you mean we stayed in town and this whole business is really just some sort of a college prank? Do you mean his girlfriend was telling the truth about a fraternity initiation?”
Da Silva patted his pockets for a match, eventually located one on the bar, and lit his cigarette. “My innocent fri
end; wealthy people don’t stay wealthy if they hand out a million cruzeiros every day as part of a college prank. If the lovely lady had offered me ten conto instead of a thousand, we’d undoubtedly be on our way to Goiás right now—”
“Bad radio and all.”
“Good radio, now. I went out and bought tubes while they were making our sandwiches.” He came back to his subject. “Not only that, but your binoculars apparently failed to show how nervous Chico was. And that wasn’t acting, and it wasn’t just fear he wouldn’t make a fraternity. Just what those two are up to is beyond me, but I’m positive it’s something an energetic and ambitious police officer ought to know.”
“How do you propose getting it? What if your friend Chico Xavier denies ever having seen you; or Catatumbá, for that matter? What then, brown hen?”
Da Silva grinned. “Then he’s going to have to explain his fingerprints on my lighter. His prints are registered on his automobile driver’s license, remember. He also had some new cruzeiros certified at a bank, which was foolish for anyone trying to hide his identity. No; we’ve pinned him into the act.”
“Which still doesn’t explain how you’re going to find out what he’s pinned into.”
Da Silva snapped his fingers, struck with an idea. “I know—I’ll go to the girl’s apartment and ask her.”
Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “And when did you find out who she was?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Da Silva looked contrite. “Chico mentioned it this morning. She’s called Romana Vilares, and she lives in Apartment 1612 of the Coronado Apartments. And I’ll bet she has a white rug, and a piano, and lots of colorful Koenigs on the wall.”
“And from this you think you can deduce what they’re up to?”
“Exactly. That and my native charm. And, possibly, my police ID card.” Da Silva crushed out his cigarette and came to his feet. “Home to get cleaned up, stop for a shave, and off we go.”
Wilson studied the tall Brazilian. “As I recall—to be serious for a moment—you were selected for this quest, Sir Zé, because you had a face that would frighten a dragon. Your police card won’t change that. All it will do is make the fair damsel clam up more. If you’re serious in wanting to get answers, why not take the whole bit to Senhor Xavier the Elder? As Chico’s father, he ought to be told, anyway. And he’s probably got some idea of what his son is up to. I think that’s a better idea than going to the girl.”
“But the girl’s prettier,” Da Silva objected, and then stopped smiling. “No. To be honest, Senhor Xavier doesn’t like me and I don’t much like him. At one time he tried to have me booted off the force when I was a simple second-grade, but he wasn’t big enough to do it in those days. Now that he’s big enough, I guess I’m not important enough, or he’s forgotten the matter.” His smile returned. “You see? The height of indignity. Not even important enough to be the enemy of a very big personage.”
“That sounds like a story,” Wilson said. He reached for the bottle of cognac, poured two drinks and moved one along the bar. “Sit down and tell me about it. Your girl won’t be awake at this hour anyhow; it’s only ten. You’ve got plenty of time.”
“I probably do at that.” Da Silva seated himself again and drew the glass toward him. He leaned back, his lean face somber, his large hand twisting the glass idly.
“All right,” he said at last, slowly. “You remember a few minutes ago I told you about meeting young Chico about twelve years ago? Well, that was the time. There had been a very bad automobile accident out on the Dutra Highway. I had been in Nova Iguaçu checking out one of the local bad boys, and I was on my way home. I got there a few minutes after it happened. I called it in and waited for the ambulance to get there. It was night, a little after midnight, and drizzling slightly. And it was black! Not a light anywhere except my headlights, and later, of course, the ambulance.
“What had happened was that a trailer truck without lights—at least without lights in back—had stopped around a curve in the middle of the road. Don’t ask me why he stopped because we don’t know and we never got a chance to ask him. After the accident he just put the truck into gear and got out of there and we never found him, and believe me, we looked. Anyway—” He paused to sip his drink and returned to the memories of that night. “As I said, it was drizzling slightly and the road was wet. Xavier’s car—it was an oversized Cadillac, I remember—came around the curve not going too fast—to judge by the skid marks—but he didn’t have a chance. He tried to jam on the brakes, but on that slippery road he didn’t have a hope. He just slid into the trailer.
“When I got there the woman was still alive, but she died in the ambulance taking her to the hospital. She’d been in the back seat with the boy and apparently grabbed him to protect him when she saw they were going to hit. Her back was broken; she was thrown forward against the front seat. She may have hit the projection of the ashtray in the back of the front seat; on that model it stuck out about an inch, inviting disaster. The doctors didn’t really attempt to determine what it was she hit. It wasn’t important, and they knew she hadn’t died of pneumonia or been eaten by piranhas. The thing I remember was that she didn’t scream, or cry, or make any noise at all. All she did was look. And I also remember we had to pry her hands loose from the boy in order to get her free of the wreckage and into the ambulance. We were lucky in one thing—that the car didn’t catch fire.”
He finished his drink and put the glass from him, and then smiled. It was not a particularly humorous smile.
“Do you want the rest? All right.… The boy was unharmed; his mother’s body had protected him. The father was wandering around outside of the car in a daze when I got there; he’d been riding in front with the chauffeur, but he hadn’t been hurt. Just shock. The only casualty except for Senhora Xavier was very minor. The chauffeur had a gash on his forehead from hitting the windshield.” Da Silva’s tone changed subtly. “The thing that was odd about his injury was that the windshield was cracked on the passenger side of the front seat. And our statistics in accidents of this sort showed that the driver was usually protected by the steering wheel more than he was threatened by it.…”
Wilson shrugged. “So the chauffeur hadn’t been driving.”
“Right. Somewhere back on the highway—they were driving in from São Paulo—Xavier probably got tired of just sitting and took over the wheel. But when his wife was dead”—he shrugged—“then everyone swore the chauffeur had been driving. It was a stupid statement; there was no blame connected with the accident—except for the miserável who was driving the truck.” Da Silva grimaced and shook his head as if to rid it of a bad memory.
“When I said everyone swore the chauffeur was driving, I wasn’t being quite accurate. The boy said nothing, and nobody could get a word out of him, then or later. The chauffeur agreed that he had been driving—politely, as if we were asking his opinion of an automobile’s merits. He wasn’t very enthusiastic about it, and while I know that ‘enthusiastic’ isn’t the word I want, you know what I mean. He also couldn’t offer any explanation for hitting his head on the other side of the windshield; he seemed more frightened than injured. The woman didn’t speak at all after the accident, and they loaded her with morphine as soon as the ambulance arrived. And she didn’t live to the hospital. It was Senhor Xavier who swore the driver had been at the wheel and fired him on the spot, and the next day after the funeral he came down to headquarters and repeated it under oath. When I dared to suggest that possibly the shock of the accident might have disrupted his memory—I don’t believe you can call a man a liar any more diplomatically than that—he flared up and tried to get me kicked off the force. At that time, without success. Today, of course, he’s a much bigger man.…”
He reached across the bar, picking up a cigarette, lighting it, blowing smoke toward the ceiling. His lips curled.
“Oh, yes; one last point. The chauffeur, as I said, was fired on the spot, and the following day he retired to a very nice little cottage in
Merití, all paid for, where I understand he raises chickens and keeps his mouth shut. Not bad for a man who never had enough money to even pay rent, eh?”
“The advantages of careful investments,” Wilson suggested. He dropped his light tone, frowning. “But why all the subterfuge on Xavier’s part? If it was truly an accident and not his fault?”
Da Silva shrugged. “I’m merely reporting, not analyzing. And also explaining why I don’t think I’ll visit Senhor Francisco Xavier until I have something more definite to go on.”
“You think he’d remember you after all these years?”
“I think he only forgets what he wants to forget when he wants to forget it,” Da Silva said cryptically. He crushed out the cigarette and came to his feet, rubbing a hand across the wiry stubble of his beard. “Well, enough of memory lane. I’m off to get cleaned up and then visit our beauteous Miss Vilares.”
“And if she isn’t home?”
“Then, naturally, I take the elevator to the roof and jump off.”
“Or suppose she’s home, but—well, occupied with the guy who pays the rent?”
Da Silva smiled faintly. “I could be wrong, but I think the guy who pays the rent is wishing right this minute that he was on a tennis court instead of in a shack on the Catatumbá. And also wondering if whatever he’s involved in is worth the discomfort and the stench. Undoubtedly, he’s also wishing somebody had advised him to bring along a large economy-sized package of flea powder.”
The Xavier Affair Page 8
