The Diamond Bubble

by Fish, Robert L. ;

  “Good,” Da Silva said. “Give the whole thing to Senhora Dolores—” His head indicated his secretary. “—for typing. If she isn’t too busy with injury forms …”

  There was a sniff behind him. Ruy stared. “Sir?”

  “Just give it to Senhora Dolores. I’m going out to lunch now. I’ll be back by three if you need to call me for anything from Immigration.”

  “Right, Captain. And good appetite.”

  “Thank you,” Da Silva said, and pulled his necktie into place. He got to his feet and reached for his jacket. Good appetite … Well, he certainly had plenty to chew on; the question was, how much of it could be digested? He winked at his secretary, who stared at him coldly in return. And two to one I know what form will be interleafed in those papers when I get back from lunch, he thought with a grin. Government Form 64789J-X43B …

  IX.

  Santos Dumont airport, occupying a small man-made peninsula wedged between the sharp striated mountains rising starkly above Rio de Janeiro and the calm blue waters of Guanabara Bay, lies but a scant five minutes by car from the center of the sprawling metropolis, an advantage for the traveling Carioca enjoyed by few other cosmopolitans in the world. It lay an even shorter distance from Captain Da Silva’s office, but to Da Silva the proximity was enjoyable only because the airport housed a restaurant in which guests were permitted to remove their jackets and eat in comfort. The airport as an airport meant little to Captain Da Silva. He was convinced that if God had meant man to fly, He would have given him a carburetor instead of an appendix. In addition, he was prone to airsickness.

  The proximity of his office to the airport, however, did not lead him to walk the short distance. While he did not place walking in quite the same category as flying, he still classed it as one of the less pleasurable modes of transportation. God, he calculated, had obviously invented the automobile more recently than He had invented legs, and He must have had something in mind.

  For these reasons, plus his laziness, he climbed into his red Jaguar when he left the office, wheeled the two blocks around the wide Airport Praça, and reparked near the door leading to the restaurant-bar area. Wilson, emerging from a taxi as Da Silva pulled carefully into a slot restricted to airport personnel, grinned and waited for him. The two men mounted the steps to the second-floor restaurant together.

  Their usual waiter seated them at a table near the railing overlooking the busy activity of ticket counters and travelers on the ground floor below. Da Silva immediately removed his jacket, hung it on his chair, loosened his collar, and reseated himself. He grinned a bit maliciously at his companion; Wilson, innocent of Da Silva’s thoughts, smiled back in quite a friendly fashion.

  “How’s the head this morning?”

  “Fine. Working like a charm.” The swarthy detective flashed white teeth in a smile, automatically raised his hand to stroke his bandage, and passed the gesture off by continuing it to attract the attention of their waiter. He ordered cognac for the two of them and leaned back, grinning. Wilson, coming at last to recognize his friend in one of his cute moods, frowned a bit dubiously.

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Don’t give me that,” Wilson said. “When you look like that, you’ve got something on your mind.”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” Da Silva admitted. He looked up innocently. “Tell me, what’s the position of American Embassy security officers as far as arrest is concerned? Brazilian arrest, I mean.” He looked puzzled. “Is it necessary for me to take out extradition papers, even though you’re on Brazilian soil? Or do you have diplomatic immunity?” He shrugged apologetically, spreading his hands. “I know I ought to know these things, but in all honesty I don’t.”

  Wilson looked at him evenly. “Are you trying to say something?”

  “‘Ask’ is a better word,” Da Silva said.

  “I assume you’re referring to the death of our fat friend last night.” Wilson looked at him. “Are you?”

  “I am, indeed,” Da Silva said, “although I could cavil at your loose use of the word ‘friend.’ Nobody who slugs me behind the ear earns the right to call himself my friend. However, don’t count on that too much—my dislike of the fat man, I mean. If you try to escape, I’m afraid I shall have to stop you.”

  Wilson stared at him. Da Silva sighed. “You haven’t answered me. Do you have diplomatic immunity?”

  “Well,” Wilson said with an attempt at lightness, wondering what on earth Da Silva was driving at, but going along with the gag albeit dubiously, “I suppose I could pull strings to avoid trial if it came to that. The ambassador owes me a favor or two.” His eyes studied the other closely; his voice became serious. “Believe me, Zé, I had no idea I had hit him that hard. If it means trouble—”

  “Had he only been hit, I might have gone along with you,” Da Silva said equably. “In fact, I was all ready to cover for you, until they started to take him apart at the Medico-Legal. After that, of course …” He shrugged impressively.

  Wilson stared at him. “Every time you get cute, Zé, you bother me. You confuse me. What are you trying to say?”

  “It was probably a carry-over from your war days,” Da Silva said thoughtfully. “From your days in the Commandos. Once a man gets accustomed to a certain weapon it comes hard for him to change. Of course you might plead that you were merely cleaning your fingernails at the time and he happened to bump into you—”

  Wilson leaned forward, his voice hardening. “Zé! What are you trying to say?”

  “Or,” Da Silva said, considering, “you could say you were removing a stone from your horse’s hoof and—no, they might ask what horse?”

  “Zé!” Wilson’s voice was now ominous. “What are you trying to say?”

  “You don’t know? All right, I’ll give you rope.” Da Silva’s voice lost all banter. “I’m trying to say that our fat friend—whose name was Paulo, for your information—was stabbed to death.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly what I said when I was told,” Da Silva said. “That’s right. He was stabbed to death.”

  “When? And where?”

  “We don’t know. It must have happened after you left him in the lobby and came upstairs. Unless—” Da Silva paused as their waiter came up with their drinks. He waited until they had been placed on their table and then picked up his glass. He raised it in Wilson’s direction in a slight toast, drank, and set the glass down again. “Unless,” he went on as if there had been no interruption, “you actually stabbed him yourself.”

  “Which you don’t believe.” Wilson’s drink was untouched; his eyes were fixed on Da Silva.

  “No,” Da Silva said regretfully. “Which unfortunately I don’t believe. I wish I did, because it would make it a lot easier to know all I had to do was reach across the table to nab my man. This way I haven’t the faintest idea of where to start.”

  Wilson stared at the tablecloth in puzzlement. “Stabbed … Do you suppose the girl came back afterward? Although,” he added, “I doubt it. I have a feeling she’s far away and trying to get farther as fast as she can.”

  “Which is my feeling.” Da Silva twisted his glass and frowned. “Of course, there’s the possibility we were followed to the apartment …”

  “I also doubt that,” Wilson said. “If you remember our taxi ride, it would have taken someone in a jet to have followed us.” He shook his head. “No, the only thing that makes sense is that somebody knew he was going to be there.”

  “Possibly because that somebody sent him there.”

  “But in that case,” Wilson asked, “why kill him?”

  “I have no idea,” Da Silva said honestly. “On the other hand, why not kill him? He certainly looked to me like a good type to kill, although I’m undoubtedly prejudiced.” He thought a moment. “It’s also possible, you know, that the man who sent him was not too happy about Paulo having shot Nestor.”

  Wilson looked at him. “I know that was
our theory …”

  “No longer theory. Fact. Confirmed by Ballistics on the gun you took away from him. No, Paulo killed Nestor. The question now is, who killed him? And why? And why did Paulo kill Nestor?”

  “On orders, do you suppose? By this somebody?”

  Da Silva shook his head. “I doubt it. Not in front of us; not on a moment’s notice.” He sighed. “The whole thing doesn’t make sense. Let’s have another cognac. I never could think clearly on one.”

  He placed the order and then reached around behind him, fumbling in his inside jacket pocket. “And while we’re bandying idle thoughts, what do you think of these?” He pulled out the package of photographs and slid them across to Wilson.

  The smaller man accepted them, started to leaf through them, and then stopped, staring. “I know this one. His name is Thomas Jerico, or Jellico, or something like that. He was in the Embassy about four or five days ago for some pointless reason, and I happened to meet him. As I recall, he raises hogs out in the Midwest someplace and has more money than he knows what to do with.” He slipped the photograph behind the others and then stopped again, this time in surprise. “This is Mrs. Hastings. The Senator’s wife.”

  “I know,” Da Silva said. “What do you make of them?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t put them on my mantelpiece for decoration,” Wilson said, and continued to leaf through the pack. When he finished he looked up at the swarthy face across from him. “Where did you get them?”

  “They were found in Nestor’s desk.” Da Silva took them back and tucked them back in his jacket pocket. “Together with his bankbook, which was also interesting in a way, and a million bills for that yacht of his. At any rate, I had these pictures checked out at Immigration from the entrance-visa cards. We identified all of them.”

  “Any of them wanted for anything?”

  “Not that I know of,” Da Silva said. “I don’t think so.”

  “And all of them Americans?”

  “No. Five or six nationalities, as a matter of fact. Some came in on U.S. ships, one from France, one I know of on the Vera Cruz, and one on the Rio de la Plata …”

  He paused, staring at nothing at all; a very odd look crossed his face. Their waiter, coming up at that moment with their second round of drinks, was amazed at the expression on his customer’s face but even more amazed at the word that sprang from Da Silva’s lips.

  “Water!”

  “Water?” The waiter could hardly believe his ears. Who drank water? Especially here in Rio de Janeiro, with the typhoid and the bugs and the silt and all? And particularly this Captain Da Silva who had been ordering cognac for years and years?

  Wilson was equally astounded. Possibly the blow on Da Silva’s head the night before had been more severe than it had appeared. “Water? You want water?”

  “I don’t want water,” Da Silva said in disgust, and motioned the waiter to complete serving the drinks. He waited until he had a glass in his hand and then waved the still-puzzled waiter away, turning to Wilson with excitement growing in his dark eyes.

  “Haven’t you noticed,” he said slowly, “how everything in this case seems to deal with water?”

  “Frankly, I haven’t,” Wilson said. “Unless you mean diamonds of the first water, or Anna-Maria being a watered-down version of Cleopatra. Which she isn’t, by the way.”

  “Maybe water isn’t the best word,” Da Silva conceded, and drank of his drink. He considered the semantics and then nodded. “Maybe ships would be a better word.”

  “A better word than water? Anything would be a better word than water,” Wilson said, and also reached for his drink. “How about the word brandy? That’s a much better word than water.”

  “I’m serious,” Da Silva said, and leaned forward, enumerating his points on his fingers. “One, this Paulo who killed Nestor and ended up being stabbed himself worked as a porter on the docks. Loading and unloading ships. Two, everywhere I go I keep running into Nestor’s yacht. Three, those people whose pictures you just looked at all arrived in Brazil by ship!”

  Wilson stared at him. “And this makes you think of water?”

  Da Silva waved the question away as being of no importance. “Ships, then, if you prefer.”

  Wilson shook his head sadly. “That slugging you took last night must have really addled you. The yacht and the dock porter, I grant, have some nautical connection, but the fact that tourists arrived here by ship? You’re really reaching!”

  “You’re really missing,” Da Silva said. “You should know your percentages better. Those people are all tourists, and while I hate the airplane like the plague, the fact remains that the majority of tourists who favor our fair country with their hard currency come by air to do so. That, my friend, is a fact.”

  Wilson stared at him, his forehead puckering in a thoughtful frown. “That’s true. It does seem rather odd.”

  “It’s more than odd. It can’t be a coincidence that a group of tourists photographed at random strolling along Copacabana Beach all happen to be people who arrived by ship. The chances against it are astronomical. Ergo, the fact that they arrived by ship enters into it.”

  Wilson suddenly thought of something. “I hate to submarine a beautiful theory,” he said, “but I just remembered that Mrs. Hastings, for one, arrived by air.”

  Da Silva’s face fell. “She did?”

  “She did. Still,” Wilson said with a frown, “oddly enough, I still like your theory. She left by ship on the S.S. Bolivar, and maybe the others left by ship as well. Or plan to.” He sighed. “It’s a slim enough connection, God knows, but it’s the closest thing to a connection we’ve found so far.” He put out his hand. “Let me have that bunch of pictures and I’ll check them out this afternoon. Or at least the Americans.”

  “I’m having them all checked out right now,” Da Silva said. “I’ll have the information sometime today.”

  “Good.”

  There was a moment’s pause in the conversation. Wilson leaned back, thinking, his outstretched hand fingering his glass. On the ramp beyond the wide windows of the restaurant an airplane wheeled, blasting hot air toward the diners. Wilson waited until the roar of the engines had abated in order to speak.

  “I have a feeling we’re missing something.”

  “Something?” Da Silva’s thick eyebrows shot up at the gross understatement. “We’re missing everything. And it’s not a feeling; it’s a certainty.”

  “That’s right,” Wilson agreed, and leaned forward. “What happened to our original ideas about diamonds? Cheap diamonds, sold at half price? Or what about Nestor’s dying words about Anna-Maria? I’m sure it was more than just a desire to see his loved one before passing on. Yet we’ve given all that up to chase ships …”

  “We haven’t given it up,” Da Silva said defensively. “It’s just that we’ve—well, we’ve postponed it a bit. Of course I remember his dying words. I also unearthed a lot of things this morning that add even more to the general confusion.” He paused to light a cigarette and then recounted the events of his busy morning. Several things in his statement struck Wilson as being particularly odd.

  “Nestor kept his yacht in Camamú? That’s up near Salvador, isn’t it?”

  “A few miles south.”

  “It seems odd he’d keep it that far away, doesn’t it?”

  “Very odd,” Da Silva agreed. “And you’re not the first to say so. What else?”

  “Well,” Wilson said thoughtfully, “that note that was found in the fat boy’s pocket. I’m rather surprised. I shouldn’t have thought he could read.”

  Da Silva sat up a bit, his forehead puckering. “You know,” he said slowly, “you might have an idea there. I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re probably right. The chances were he couldn’t read.” He thought about Paulo’s illiteracy a moment. “In which case the note wouldn’t have been for him but for someone else. A message to be passed on.”

  “But in that case, why in writing? If he was going to pa
ss on a message, why not do it verbally? Especially a message that short?”

  “Possibly to be mailed to someone?” Da Silva shook his head in answer to his own question. “No—that doesn’t make sense. He couldn’t have addressed the envelope. And besides, nobody mails anything in Brazil—not if they want it to arrive.” He stared at his glass with a thoughtful frown. “It could have been a cable, of course.”

  “Or even a local telegram,” Wilson said. “After all, Senator Hastings is still here in Rio.”

  “But Mrs. Hastings isn’t. It could refer to her. And she’s aboard ship …” They stared at each other, then Wilson smiled.

  “We’re really building up a fair mountain from a rather insignificant molehill,” he said. “For all we know Paulo may have had a master’s degree in literature and only worked on the docks for exercise. Maybe we’ll end up proving Nestor suffered from fear of water—which is why he kept his yacht so far away—and needed the proceeds of the diamond sale to see a good doctor.”

  Da Silva was not amused. “One thing we won’t prove is that he died of drowning. I’ll have every cable office in the city checked out this afternoon, whether it’s a waste of time or not.” He crushed out his cigarette and reached for the menu. “Well, we’d better eat. It looks like a busy afternoon. What are you going to have?”

  “After all that conversation?” Wilson looked at the other with pretended amazement. “Sea food, of course! What else?”

  On the upper deck of the S.S. Bolivar, Senhor Ivan Bernardes leaned on the polished mahogany rail at the side of the first officer, watching the pulsing froth boil along the sides of the giant liner, curling in tangled green and white patterns to fall behind and form a wide, even wake. Overhead the sun beat on them genially from skies barely scuffed with clouds; the slight roll of the huge ship merely emphasized their complete detachment from the solid brown earth just visible in the haze over the port side of the ship.