Twenty-five

“Fletch?”

“Yes?”

“Toninho Braga, Fletch. Look what time it is.”

“Shortly after noon.”

“That’s right. And so far no one has reported finding Norival’s body.”

Over the phone, Toninho’s voice sounded more hushed than alarmed.

Fletch had driven Marilia Diniz to her home in Leblon, thanked her for accompanying him to the favela, repeated he still had no way of solving a forty-seven-year-old murder mystery, but he would return to the hotel to try to sleep.

His room at The Hotel Yellow Parrot had been cleaned. The unslept-in bed had been freshly made up.

He telephoned The Hotel Jangada and asked for Joan Collins Stanwyk in Room 912.

No answer.

Across the utility area, the man was still painting the room.

He was about to strip, to shower, to darken the room, to get into bed again, to try to sleep, when the phone rang.

“Toninho,” he said. “It’s Sunday. A big day of Carnival. Communication is slow.”

“That’s exactly it, Fletch. There would have been hundreds, thousands of people on that beach, shortly after dawn.”

“Finding a body—”

“Norival is not just a body. He is a Passarinho. That would be news.”

“First the police have to be summoned—”

“Yes, the police would be summoned. But we left plenty of identification on Norival’s body. The people who found the body would be quick to tell the Passarinho family, the radio stations. The police would be even quicker. They would compete for the attention of the Passarinho family.”

“I don’t see what you’re saying. You put Norival’s body in the water. He was dead. He has to come ashore somewhere, sometime, if you were right about the tides.”

“I was right about the tides. Where’s Norival?”

“How would I know?”

Fletch looked down at the soft, smooth countenance of the bed.

“Fletch, we must go make sure someone finds the body of Norival.”

“Toninho, I’m not sure I can take many more disappearances today, of persons dead and alive.”

“You must come help us look, Fletch. That will make four of us. We can comb the beach.”

“You want to go beachcombing for a corpse?”

“What else can we do? We put Norival’s body there to be found, not to be lost. What if he were lost forever? There would be no Funeral Mass. He would not be properly buried. His family might think he ran away?.”

“His boat would be missing.”

“Sailed away. To Argentina! Think of his poor mother!”

“His poor mother.”

“Such a thing would kill her. Not to know what happened to her son.”

“Toninho … I still have not slept.”

“That’s all right.”

“‘All right’?”

“You must help us. Four searching is better than three searching. It is a long beach.”

“Toninho…”

“We’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

The phone line died.