Robert L. Fish
Trouble in Paradise
This Book Is Dedicated
with Much Love
to
Grandchild Number Four
BRIAN LEWIS BURNS
Chapter 1
The furnishings of the small waiting room were shiny with age, mementos of another generation; stiff hand-tooled leather over heavy jacarandá, thick hand-carved legs on solid tables. The embossed metal ceiling was of a type Chaney had not seen since his Chicago boyhood, and then only in barbershops. The only decoration on the plastered walls were large land plats, with scribbled markings in red crayon covering the various sections; Chaney had tried to entertain himself by looking at them, but the contoured maps were unintelligible. Despite the lateness of the hour and the assurance, or at least hope, of a cooling breeze outside, the small room was sweltering — the windows having been painted shut many years before — and the small fan that struggled listlessly but noisily in one corner did little to bring relief. A single bulb tried but failed to hide the inadequacies of the room in shadow. A fly droned angrily, trying to beat itself past the streaked glass of the sealed window to the night outside, although any but the most myopic of insects should have known better than to hope for escape through that great unwashed barrier.
In a sturdy chair that could have graced a fazendeiro’s ranch or an auctioneer’s showroom, beside an even sturdier table covered with old newspapers and volumes filled with land titles in Portuguese — and therefore as unintelligible to him as the land subdivisions on the walls — George Chaney yawned and wondered what the devil was taking the old man so long. It had to be a pretty screwed-up country where a man had to go damn near a thousand miles just to get a simple paper signed. Well, in all honesty, he had to admit it wasn’t all that simple a paper, but you’d surely think that in a city the size of Rio de Janeiro he could have gotten the same service without having to make a trip halfway across the blasted country! Still, he paid good money to Dorn for advice, so it would be stupid not to follow it. In Vegas he knew his way around, but he was smart enough to know that here in Brazil he still had a lot to learn.
He yawned again and looked around. How anyone who couldn’t afford a better office than this could possibly have the drag Dorn said this old man had, was hard to see. Although he had to admit he hadn’t seen anything in the whole crummy town that was much better. Brand-new factories, the size of Stateside plants, and one hell of a large hospital, all noted on his way from the Airport Hotel, plus what had to be a modern school — all set in the middle of what looked like a Hollywood back-lot imitation of Virginia City around 1888. Crazy!
He glanced at his watch for the tenth time. On top of everything else, if the old man dragged his feet much longer, he wouldn’t have time to stop at the hotel for his bags and still get over to the airport terminal in time for the last flight back to Rio, and he certainly didn’t feel like sleeping in that lumpy bed another night. He scowled and started to drum his thick fingers on the table, wondering if he should disregard instructions and bust into the old man’s inner office; he was saved the decision, for the door he had been silently willing to open finally did, and a middle-aged woman emerged. She closed the door behind her and came toward him. Chaney came to his feet, a wide-shouldered, middle-aged man in a three-hundred-dollar suit. He looked at the woman half-angrily.
“Well! About damn time!”
The woman was not at all bothered either by the look on his face or by his language. “The judge has other affairs besides yours,” she said calmly. Her English was quite good.
“And why at night?”
“Because the judge is a busy man. In the mornings he conducts his business, and he holds court most afternoons. Evenings are the only time he’s free for clients such as yourself.”
“All right, all right!” Chaney realized he was the one who was now wasting time. “You got the papers?”
“Here.” The woman handed him several sheets of legal-looking documents. “You’re to sign where the X is marked.” She saw the instant suspicion that flashed across Chaney’s hard face and smiled faintly, a bit derisively. “They’re in English.”
Chaney was far from intimidated. “Better safe than sorry,” he said harshly, and took the papers, studying them carefully, his big hands half-crumpling each page as he read it, word for word. At last he nodded, satisfied, and reached into his pocket for a pen. He signed the papers, leaning over the table, and then straightened up, handing the papers back. “You sure this will stick?”
“I beg your pardon? I’m afraid I didn’t—”
“I said, are you sure this will do the trick?”
“These papers are quite legal,” the woman said stiffly, “if that is what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean,” Chaney said. Now that the papers were all properly prepared he was feeling a lot better. “You got to admit the character has himself a good cover, though,” he went on, looking about the room. “Normally I don’t come into a joint looks like this to go to the john.” He looked at his watch. “Okay. What’s next?”
“The judge will notarize them and send them to the capitol for filing. A copy will be sent to you. You can leave now.”
“And what’s the tab?”
“The tab?”
“The slug. The payola. The charge. What do I owe?”
“Oh. That will also be mailed to you after filing.” She turned toward the inner office and then paused, her hand on the knob, looking at him in a cool superior manner. “And this office is no cover, as you put it. This has been the judge’s office for almost fifty years. When he was the only lawyer in this part of the interior.”
“Well, hooray for him,” Chaney said sardonically, but the woman had already disappeared into the other office, closing the door decisively behind her. Chaney looked at the closed panel a moment, frowning. And you could bet your shirt the bill the old man would send him would probably curl his hair, but what the hell. Paying off was a part of life, like breathing, he thought, and headed for the outer door.
The noise of the busy downtown street flowed about him as he pushed his way to the crowded sidewalk. The rough-looking men about him elbowed their way past, many wearing guns in holsters or tucked into the waistbands of their loose trousers. Chaney’s lip curled. These characters had to be seeing too many TV Westerns. Shades of Tombstone and the O.K. Corral, a hundred years later! Chances are anyone shot off one of those guns, everyone would be under the nearest table. A bunch of clowns! Well, he thought, at least the town had come up with the answer to his problem, and that was all that mattered.
Now, to see if there was any chance of grabbing off a cab; there had to be at least one taxi in the dump, he thought, with an inward grin, because he had caught one from the Airport Hotel to the judge’s office. He looked around and then hurriedly started to cross the cobbled street. It seemed this was turning out to be his lucky day all around, because a taxi was there, just opposite, discharging a passenger. He jostled his way past a group of men standing by the curb, chancing a reprimand and not worrying about it very much, and then had to step back quickly, out of the way of a jeep careening along without lights. He wished now he had taken more trouble to learn the language of the country, or at least enough to call out and restrain the cab, but then he saw it was not necessary. The exiting passenger had apparently noticed his approach and was politely holding the cab door open for him, as if to prevent the driver from escaping.
At his arrival the passenger stepped back, gesturing toward the open door, smiling pleasantly, inviting Chaney to enter. One gentleman in the crowd anyway, Chaney thought, and nodded his head. And decently dressed for a change, which seemed to be rare in this dump. He muttered his usual approximation of “Thank you” in Portuguese and climbed in, at the same time saying, “Airport Hotel” in that raised voice usually reserved for the hard of hearing or those too stupid to speak English. He turned to close the door and found that his well-dressed Samaritan had climbed in after him and was closing the door with one hand while the other hand was pressing something durable and quite familiar into Chaney’s ribs through the cloth of his neatly tailored jacket pocket. The cab took off at once.