The Diamond Bubble

by Fish, Robert L. ;

  “What’s done is done,” he said tonelessly, quietly, although he knew that what had been done was far from finished, that the disastrous consequences of Paulo’s mad deed would plague them all for far longer than he cared to imagine. “The thing to do now is to try and salvage as much as possible from the damage.”

  “Damage?” Paulo stared at him. Apparently Archimedes still didn’t realize that only his swift action had saved them all. “If Nestor had lived to speak to that policeman …”

  “Keep quiet.” Archimedes took a deep shuddering breath. This was going to require a lot of concentrated thought, and this was no place to do it, nor was Paulo the one with whom to do it. He made up his mind at last. “All right. You pick up Anna-Maria and drive her—drive her to Petropolis. Have her put up in one of the smaller hotels, and you stay at another. And then let me know where she is and where you are. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back to Rio.”

  Paulo frowned, considering argument, but then the thought of the long drive with Anna-Maria to Petropolis, alone and unchaperoned—plus the time with her there—wiped all other consideration from his mind. He changed his frown to a nod.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll call her,” Archimedes said, “I’ll get hold of her at home before she leaves for the club.”

  “Of course,” Paulo said dreamily, staring into the glowing depths of a drunken, salacious dream. God, what a lovely body that Anna-Maria had! What treasures lay under that full silken blouse, what sweetness was hidden in the soft sweep of those rich thighs!

  Archimedes stared at him with narrowed eyes. “And no monkey business,” he said softly.

  “Of course,” Paulo said, not hearing a word.

  Archimedes sighed helplessly. The amount of work and thought necessary to solve this problem were more than he cared to contemplate at the moment. He pushed down on the door handle of the car, swinging it slightly open.

  “I have to get back to the hotel—I’ve been gone long enough as it is. I’ll walk back.”

  “Of course,” Paulo said, and smiled knowingly at the windshield. The glass, greasy from not having been washed in months, acted as a streaked mirror and smiled back with equal evilness. Archimedes stared at the fat, leering face and stepped to the street, slamming the door behind him. Suddenly another thought came to him. God! The things that had to be remembered in order to attempt to salvage this thing, if it could be salvaged at all!

  “Paulo, the boss! We have to cable him.”

  Paulo brought his mind back from his dream of Anna-Maria and the thought of slowly undressing that lovely body. “What?”

  But Archimedes had already withdrawn a gold pen from his inner pocket and was scribbling on a small card. He thrust the message in the direction of the fat man behind the wheel.

  “This. Stop and send it from the first cable office, do you hear?”

  Paulo stared at the card. “Send it? How? What does it say?”

  Archimedes merely stared at him. Paulo’s eyes fell. “Just give it to the man,” Archimedes said, and stepped back. “Give it to him and pay him and don’t worry about it.”

  Paulo shrugged, dropped the card into his pocket, and turned on the ignition key. The motor, startled by this sudden attention, choked in its attempt to become up-to-date in the affair. Paulo nursed it into awareness. Archimedes stepped back from the throbbing monster.

  “Don’t forget that cable!”

  “Don’t worry,” Paulo said. “I won’t.”

  “And before you pick up the girl, understand?”

  Paulo nodded. Obviously before he picked up the girl: afterward he had no desire for delays. He glanced back to make sure that the street was clear of traffic and let out the clutch, leaving Archimedes standing there.

  The small man clad in the ornate uniform of a hotel employee stood abandoned, shaking his head slowly, still trying to grasp the enormity of Nestor’s death. How had it all happened so disastrously, so suddenly? How in the name of God had it all occurred?

  His eyes came up, staring at the disappearing taillight of Paulo’s car. That’s how it all happened! That’s who made it happen! A drunken maniac idiot! More dangerous to his friends than to his enemies. The little man stared at the corner beyond which the car had disappeared. More dangerous to his friends than to his enemies.…

  VII.

  The Caravelle Club exhibited all of the scientific planning necessary in these days of fierce competition to function successfully as a night club. The tiny tables were located within inches of each other but still managed to permit passage for waiters; the two-ounce shot glasses appeared to hold three ounces but actually held one; the lighting was economically reduced, the ornaments artificial, and the leftovers used judiciously. These elements undoubtedly helped to make the club a success, but even more effective was the floor show. The Caravelle Club was famous in Rio for the talent and beauty of its dancers, as well as for the clever settings in which they performed, and the management was well aware of this. Pictures of the lovely young ladies, daringly clad, were blazoned on cardboard in nearly lifelike photographs surrounding the small entrance. Da Silva and Wilson, descending from their cab, walked over and studied them admiringly.

  “Well, well,” Wilson observed. “Well! Your cousin Nestor had very good taste!”

  Da Silva’s bushy eyebrows went up in surprise. He glanced at his friend curiously. “You know which one she is?”

  “I do not,” Wilson said with firmness. “But you have to admit that it doesn’t make much difference.”

  Da Silva looked back at the photographs and smiled. “You’re right,” he said, and moved toward the entrance.

  They pushed through the doors to be met in the dimly lit foyer by a tuxedoed gentleman carrying dinner menus almost as large as the posters outside. He counted Da Silva and Wilson carefully, arrived at the sum of two, and started to lead them inside with a flourish. Da Silva put out a restraining hand.

  “We’re not staying. We’d just like to see one of your dancers, the one named Anna-Maria …”

  The headwaiter frowned, but it was a practiced frown, perfected over time. The request was quite standard and therefore rated the standard answer. He allowed his frown to become tempered with a smile as false as the pearl studs on his dicky.

  “I’m afraid that that is against the house rules. We do not allow—”

  His eyes came up in feigned sympathy and then changed in expression as he considered the two men again. No mashers, these—this was the law and he knew it as he knew the size of a tip he was going to receive by the embarrassment of the donor. His eyes dropped to his watch and he knew he had been, miraculously, saved once again.

  “Besides, they’re about to go on now.”

  “We’ll wait in the bar.” Da Silva’s cool eyes slid over the man; he led the way into the main body of the club. The two men circled the outside ring of tables and seated themselves comfortably at the jacaranda bar set against one wall. The bartender paused in his chase of an elusive cockroach and looked at them expectantly.

  “Cognac,” Da Silva said, and Wilson nodded in agreement. The bartender lifted a bottle carefully. His quarry was not there. He shrugged philosophically and poured the two glasses full. The two men looked around, accustoming their eyes to the gloom.

  By the standards of Rio night life it was still quite early, yet the club was comfortably filled. At the far side of the room, across from them, a guitarist was seated with his head bent intimately over his instrument, playing easily and well, his soft music forming a light background to the quiet murmur of voices. Wilson sipped his drink and nodded to himself in satisfaction; he had been served good liquor and was faintly surprised. He put the thought aside and turned to the one which had been on his mind for some time.

  “All right, Zé,” he said. “Who’s Anna-Maria? Exactly what did Nestor say before he died?”

  Da Silva frowned. “He didn’t say much. Not nearly enough, in fact.”

  He
set his glass down and traced a scrawled design on the smooth surface of the bar. “His exact words were: ‘Zé, they shot me. Why?’ And then he repeated part of it. He said ‘Zé—why?’ And then he tried to sit up and he said: ‘Zé! My cousin! Anna-Maria! You have to—’” Da Silva shrugged and shook his head. “And that’s all he said.”

  Wilson stared at him. “Not the most detailed dying message on record. Do you suppose …?”

  “What?”

  “Well, he mentioned this Anna-Maria. Do you suppose she could have done it? Lovers’ quarrels aren’t new.”

  Da Silva shook his head. “I doubt it. He didn’t say her name that way. And it would be quite a coincidence that she picked the moment we were questioning him. And it isn’t the way a jealous or angry woman kills—at a distance, and from a car.”

  “True,” Wilson conceded.

  “Still,” Da Silva added, “her name is all we have to go on at the moment. She probably knows something about his business. Apparently they were living together.”

  “If that waiter, Mario, was telling the truth.”

  “If he wasn’t,” Da Silva said shortly, “then the Waiters’ Syndicate is going to lose a dues-paying member. By battered resignation.”

  He reached for his glass and raised it. Almost as if in response to the gesture the guitarist strummed his instrument louder; the voices in the room faded in expectation. The two men looked up to see that a piano player and a drummer were also seated in the small alcove which was now dimly lit to show a beach background. Lights rippled realistically across water; palms swayed. The house lights darkened further. The rhythm of the small band changed to a samba. Four girls, dressed as Bahianas, came through a curtain, dancing. The beat was insistent, catching. Da Silva leaned over the bar, reaching out with one hand to tap the bartender on the arm.

  He looked up from his hunt, eyebrows raised. “Senhor?”

  “The dancers,” Da Silva said, tilting his head toward the small floor and raising his voice slightly to be heard over the music. “Which one of them is Anna-Maria?”

  “Anna-Maria?” The bartender stared at the dancers. “She’s the one—” He paused, frowning, and then shook his head. “She isn’t there. I guess she didn’t come in tonight.”

  He shrugged and started to move down the bar, returning to the chase. Da Silva caught at his arm.

  “The check!”

  The bartender sighed. At this rate the place would be overrun with cockroaches before he could get even one. “Senhor, the floor show has just begun …”

  He raised his eyes. One look at the rigid face before him, even in the gloom, and he reached hastily for his pad. Some people liked dancing, and some didn’t; there was no arguing with tastes. Or customers, especially customers who frowned like this one. He scribbled an amount on the slip of paper. Da Silva slid money across the bar and went after Wilson, who was already pushing through the door. They hurried to the street. A taxi was standing idle at the curb, and Wilson had the door open in one move. The two jumped in. Wilson slammed the door in the same motion.

  “Stupid!” Da Silva muttered bitterly.

  The taxi driver stared at them, puzzled. “Senhor?”

  “Rua Igarapava …” Da Silva fished his wallet out, shoving it forward to expose a badge. “And hurry!”

  They shot into traffic, narrowly missing a parked car and three pedestrians. The driver, able to break the traffic laws legally for the first time in his life, had no intention of letting the opportunity go to waste. He pressed on the accelerator and looked over his shoulder.

  “What number?”

  Da Silva told him. The driver nodded casually and brought his attention back to the road. Miraculously they hit nothing during the maneuver. Wilson shuddered and looked at his companion.

  “It’s really not too surprising,” he said quietly. “Somebody calling her to let her know about Nestor.”

  “Who?” Da Silva demanded.

  “Mario, for one. If they gave him his legal phone call down at the Delegacía …”

  Da Silva stared at him. “Are you serious?” He stared out of the window of the swaying cab. “There’s only one person who could have called her.”

  “The man who shot him,” Wilson said evenly. “Of course. But why?”

  “How should I know why?” Da Silva’s tone was bitter. “How should I know anything? I’ve been acting as if Nestor died in an accident and we had all day to find out about it. Or as if he didn’t really die at all but just stumbled and hurt himself!”

  Wilson, recognizing his friend in one of his rare moments of self-condemnation, wisely kept quiet. The cab shot down the beach road along Ipanema, whirling past more sane drivers, cutting in and out with a recklessness that even surprised the driver. They came to the canal at the end of the beach and turned the corner with screaming tires. The first block was Rua Igarapava, and the driver skillfully crashed the light to enter, honking back at the insulting screams that came to him from a driver he had almost forced into the canal. The black rock of the mountains loomed over him darkly as he increased his speed up the narrow inclined street and then just as swiftly braked before the apartment. He swung into the curb with a practiced flourish, flinging his passengers forward. Da Silva paid him with a momentary hesitation and a scowl that was received with complete calm. The two men stepped to the sidewalk.

  The building was a four-story modern apartment with an open entrance that spilled light across the darkened curb, faintly washing the unlighted street with dappled shadows. A small fountain dribbled in the center of the lobby, apologetically testifying to the water shortage in Rio. Da Silva looked up and down the street; it was completely deserted, other than for a few cars angled in sharply to the curb. He turned to the slighter man at his side.

  “You stay down here,” he said slowly. “She may try to come down the service elevator before I get into the apartment.”

  “You don’t imagine she was in on it, do you? You just got through convincing me she couldn’t have been.”

  “I don’t imagine anything,” Da Silva said shortly. “I’m just tired of being second-guessed, that’s all.” He looked at the other. “Would you know her if you saw her?”

  Wilson nodded positively. “That I would. She’s the lovely creature who was on the sexy poster outside the club but unfortunately wasn’t on the dance floor.”

  Da Silva’s rigid face relaxed into a faint smile. “I was afraid you wouldn’t have noticed that, but I should have known better.”

  “Of course you should have known better,” Wilson said reprovingly, and smiled back.

  Da Silva winked at him and stepped into the small self-service elevator and punched a button. The door eased itself shut; the little box lurched uncertainly upward. Someday, he thought to himself, some genius is going to invent a better means of getting from one floor to another. And probably call them stairs, he added, and grinned.

  At the fourth floor the swarthy detective emerged, walked quietly down the hallway, and stood before a door. From behind the closed panel he could hear the murmur of muffled voices. His grin faded and he felt his nerves tighten and his senses alert themselves in recognized fashion. His hand went to his shoulder and he loosened his revolver, preparatory to withdrawing it. And then the voice changed to music and he realized he had been listening to a radio. And who’s nervous? he asked himself sarcastically and rapped sharply on the door.

  The radio was cut off in mid-note. There was a moment’s silence and then a woman’s voice came, tremulous, from lips that were obviously pressed close to the join of the door.

  “Who—who is it?”

  For a moment Da Silva considered subterfuge and then changed his mind. His voice assumed the cold authority of officialdom everywhere. “Open the door. This is the police.”

  “I don’t believe you. Go away …”

  His big hand thundered imperatively against the panel. The noise brought her voice again, but even more hopeless against the inevitability of ult
imate defeat. “Go away …”

  He stood back and reached for his bunch of master keys, fitting the first to hand to the lock, but before he could even test its accuracy the door swung open suddenly in his face. The girl before him was pallid, desperate, with huge reddened eyes and trembling hands, none of which detracted at all from her beauty. She was holding her wrapper tightly against her as if the thin silken material might protect her from physical assault; it only served to accentuate her full bust and superb figure. Behind her on the divan a small suitcase was spread open; she had obviously been packing.

  She stared at him dully, biting her lip.

  “What do you want? What …?” Her voice was edging on hysteria.

  “To talk to you,” Da Silva said calmly, and closed the door slowly, purposely avoiding staring at the woman and the breasts thrust aggressively toward him. His voice was held low and even, calculated to reduce the tension evident in her. “And to look around …”

  He scanned the room slowly, noted the entrance hallway to the kitchen and bedrooms, and moved to face them, keeping the woman in view all the while. His eyes flickered to the suitcase and then rose again. “Where are you planning on going?”

  She disregarded his question, her face working with emotion, and then, as if too tired to continue the uneven struggle, she collapsed on the divan beside the suitcase and buried her face in her hands. Da Silva waited quietly. When she finally looked up the anger seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a misery the tall detective would have sworn was sincere. Her voice was dull, almost curious, as if the answer she was seeking couldn’t be of too great importance no matter what it was.

  “Why did you kill him?”

  Da Silva raised his eyebrows in honest surprise. “We?”

  “You. The police. Why did you kill him?”

  He shook his head decisively. “We didn’t kill him.” Her words suddenly came back to him, making sense. His voice hardened. “Who said we did?”

  The lovely mouth clamped shut, as if to deny having said anything at all. Da Silva’s voice hardened; he bent toward her, eyes no longer sympathetic. “That’s one question you’re going to answer! Who told you the police killed Nestor?”