Da Silva’s yawn ended abruptly and resentfully. “Go! We haven’t eaten yet. You’re the one who talked me into coming here for dinner in the first place, and now—”
“Now I’m talking you out of it! I want to get over to the hotel in a hurry!” Wilson’s tone was curt. He walked out to the curb, peering impatiently in both directions. “Damn! Where the devil are all the cabs?”
Da Silva shrugged, crushed his cigarette to extinction, and leisurely followed Wilson to the street. “It’s Christmas,” he reminded the other gently. “They’re probably all at home, watching the snow on television. What’s all the excitement?”
Wilson gave up his fruitless search for a cab and swung around. “Damn! Well, let’s start walking!”
“Good enough,” Da Silva said agreeably and fell in step beside Wilson, easily matching the shorter man’s stride. “I wasn’t too hungry, anyway. And this way we go right past my building, and I can go in and get some sleep.”
“You can come right along with me and save the worthless life of that stupid desk man at the Miracopa!” Wilson said savagely. “Because if I’m alone I’ll kill him! That idiot! That miserable garbage-brained meathead! He tells me now that she wrote me a letter and left it at the desk for mailing before she left the hotel! The last time I talked to him, all he said was that she’d already left. Not a blessed word about a letter! That stupid, filho de—”
Da Silva smiled at him. Wilson was the last person he would have thought to become so upset simply because a date had stood him up; that girl must really be something! “And for that you’re going to kill him? For not mentioning a letter?”
“Not for that!” Wilson tramped angrily across a side street without looking for traffic; fortunately there was none. Da Silva hurried to catch up, falling into step again at once. “He has this letter at his desk, but he tells me that since it’s already stamped, he has to mail it. He can’t hand it over to me. Can you imagine such an idiot? If he ever mailed it, I’d be lucky to get it by a year from next November! If at all!”
“Well,” Da Silva said in a reasonable tone of voice, “after all, legally he’s right.”
“That and twenty cruzeiros will get him a cup of coffee!” Wilson said viciously. “That incredible cretin! If he puts that letter in a postbox before I get there, he goes in on top of it! If I have to take him apart to get him through the slot!”
Da Silva’s smile faded. Wilson certainly looked and sounded as if he had something more on his mind than fear of losing a date, and Wilson was far from a fool. Still, any man head over heels in love was never in full control of his faculties. He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at the man marching beside him.
“What’s the story?”
The smaller man took a deep breath without in any way reducing his stride. “Damned if I know. All I’ve got is half a story, plus a hunch.” He paused to put his thoughts in order and then went on. “About four days ago, Jill — her name’s Jill Howard — came to the embassy with the story that her brother is missing in Brazil, she thinks, and—”
“She thinks? She doesn’t know?”
“She knows he’s missing, and she thinks he was heading for Brazil. She says he told her, but she says she wasn’t paying much attention at the time—”
Da Silva raised his eyes to the evening sky. “Oh, brother!”
“I know,” Wilson said, and shrugged. “Anyway, they sent her to me. The story she gave me was that her brother Don is a geology professor at Berkeley, and he was approached by some man to fly down to South America to look at some ore samples. Apparently the price was good, and the trip fell at a time the university was closed for both Christmas holidays and between terms, so he had the time, and all in all it looked like a great adventure. She says she can’t remember the name of the man who hired Don; she can’t even remember if she ever knew it. Anyway, she drove Don to the airport where he met this private plane, and that was the last she’s heard from him. And now she’s worried. He’s been on similar assignments before — he seems to be pretty good in his field — but he always kept in touch before.”
“I see.” Da Silva glanced at his friend. “And of course, she didn’t have any data on the plane itself? The registration or anything useful like that?”
“She’s a doll, but my guess is she wouldn’t know a jet from a glider,” Wilson said morosely.
“But they must have filed a flight plan of some sort.”
“There wasn’t any flight plan filed from Berkeley Airport for any foreign destination — not the day she says she left. I checked that out through the C.A.B. the first day.” He looked up, frowning. “Which is suspicious in itself.”
“Suspicious?” Da Silva smiled faintly. “Why? It sounds as if it was only a local flight. What makes her think they were heading for Brazil?”
“She says she’s sure he said something about Brazil; she just can’t remember what it was.”
Da Silva shook his head. “You really picked yourself a girlfriend. She thinks! But she doesn’t remember. Her brother could be anywhere between San Francisco and PagoPago. Not to mention Brazil, Indiana.” He looked at Wilson. “And just what did she expect you to do about it?”
“She wants me to find him,” Wilson said simply.
“Just like that, eh? How?”
“That’s why I wanted to get in touch with you. There’s just so much I can do, even attached to the embassy, but with your connections you can check out most of the airstrips in the interior and find out if any plane with two men landed, coming from the States, or where they are.”
“I don’t suppose,” Da Silva said quietly, “that her brother might just have wanted to disappear? You know as well as I do that nine out of ten disappearances are done on purpose.”
“I thought of that, of course,” Wilson said evenly. “I started a check on him, but so far nothing has turned up. He doesn’t have a police record, and his credit is good — which accounts for fifty percent of the reasons for disappearing — and according to Jill, he doesn’t have a wife, which takes care of the other fifty percent.”
Da Silva smiled. “Well, even supposing he did come to Brazil, I still wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you. There are some pretty remote airstrips in Brazil. And four days isn’t a very long time.”
“It isn’t four days,” Wilson said stubbornly. “It’s four days since she came down to Rio to try and find him. It’s ten days since he left Berkeley, and—”
“You mean she’s worried enough to make a trip like this after only a little more than a week? That he’s gone, I mean?”
“She does remember that the job was only supposed to take two days,” Wilson said. “And ten days isn’t two days. He’s been on these jobs before and never delayed like this.” He looked at his friend. “If he was heading for Brazil, he hasn’t landed at any of the major airports, because I checked with customs. And if he landed at one of the interior airports with communication facilities, you’d think he’d try and get a message to her. But he hasn’t. So she’s worried. And so am I.”
The short blocks that traverse Copacabana between the mountains behind Rua Toneleros and the beach had been crossed quickly during their conversation; traffic had been light, and few people were on the street. The hotel appeared a few blocks ahead, its rounded, illuminated marquee a familiar landmark jutting over the mosaic sidewalk. Wilson thought of something else.
“And another thing: when I finally arrange to have her meet you and tell you the full story herself, she doesn’t show up. Instead, she leaves me a letter and disappears herself!”
“Hold it!” Da Silva said, and smiled. “I don’t mind your building a mountain out of a molehill, but let’s not try to compete with Everest. She didn’t disappear; she left you a note and stood you up.” He grinned. “I can think of several reasons a girl might want to do that.” He thought a moment, and his grin disappeared abruptly. “As a matter of fact, I can think of one very good reason why she might not have wanted to meet a Brazilian cop.”