I heard a sob and click, which would be Renee hanging up, hating arguments. India had been right, though. Eddie came because of me. Johanna tried to make it better, said she knew I was doing all I could, said that she knew I loved her husband as much as they did. She was going crazy, but still tried to make me feel better. She’s that way.
“I have a feeling, Joe. He’s alive.”
I hung up feeling exhausted. It was time to go meet Rooster, but without a weapon, and in a place where my foreign language skills would be useless.
I was armed with a crumpled slip of paper with Rooster’s purplish scribble on it, already half faded. Everything in the Amazon is wet. Moisture eats shoes. Paper. People. Ink. Even water seems wetter.
I rushed downstairs to find a cab — they usually idle outside the hotel — but the desk clerk again waved me over, more forcefully. Muito importante! This time I came. There was something urgent in his face.
“Did the woman find you, Dr. Rush?”
“What woman?”
“The beautiful one. The photographer,” he said with admiration. His hands moved in an hourglass shape. “She said she thought she knew you. She was the one who sat at your breakfast table this morning.”
I frowned. “No one sat with me.”
“No? But I pointed you out. She said she was going over. Next time I looked, you were gone and she was there and your dishes were not even cleared away yet. Other tables were empty. So I thought you’d talked.”
“She said she knew me from where?”
A shrug. “Last night she said she was going to knock at your door. Didn’t she do that?”
I felt a tug in my chest, a faint ticking of alarm, but I kept my voice casual, as if I’d missed a friendly opportunity. “I was out. Can you describe her?”
He put both hands to his heart, meaning, Beautiful! “Small and dark, like the Lebanese man who sells newspapers on the plaza, but not that dark. And copper hair, worn up. Very nice lips. And green eyes, like the dark green under the water at the reef in Rio Grande. She asked to see your passport photo, to make sure you are the man she knows. I did not let her, of course.”
I grinned, but did not feel like grinning. “You sound in love, Tarsisio.”
He smiled. With her, that would be easy!
“She’s a photographer, you said?”
“She is with her brother, a very tough-looking man! They are taking photos of the garimpeiros, the seringeiros, the índios. For a book, they said. A big one for the table on which you place coffee.”
Photographers go everywhere, talk to everyone.
“Are you sure I can’t see her passport photo, Tarsisio? Maybe it will help me remember her.”
He looked sad to turn me down. “We respect privacy.”
She sat at my table immediately after I left? She chose my table when others were open? Why?
I opened my wallet to offer cash, but Tarsisio looked pained. Apparently bribery was not allowed in the hotel of lost causes, honesty being a virtue that came with access to this normally pleasant, throwback place.
“Joe. Please,” he said, reddening. “Izabel Santo is in room 215, and her brother is in 311. They are not there now. Maybe you will see her later.”
“Tarsisio, one last question.”
“Anything.” Clearly, he felt guilty at disappointing me by not taking the bribe.
“Would you know if any cutlery or glasses were missing from my table this morning, after breakfast?”
He drew himself up and frowned. “Did you see someone take things?”
No, but I think someone did, for my DNA or prints.
“Just curious.”
He looked relieved. “Everyone who works here has been with us for years. They are honest.”
I hurried from the lobby, into the night heat, where three ethanol-powered, battered taxis waited. I climbed into the first and handed the driver the slip of paper with the address that Rooster had given me. The driver was a heavy, bespectacled Sikh, wearing a cobalt-blue turban. His Fiat smelled of curry. He frowned at the note, and said, in Portuguese-accented English, “This place, sir… do you know it?”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Maybe you should go to a different place. It is not just a bowling alley for games.”
I leaned forward. “It’s what? A bowling alley? I thought it was a restaurant or bar.”
“Oh, in one place, yes, but in the other rooms… bad things! People get hurt. If you are hungry, my cousin owns a nice pizzeria. He puts real tomato sauce on the pies, not ketchup, like the other places, and there are no rats and…”
“Just go.”
The driver worked gears and pulled his smoke-belching Fiat into the busy cobblestone square as church bells pealed 11 P.M.
Who is she? I thought. Is this connected to Eddie? Is she connected to what we were asked to find? I never met any Izabel Santo. What does she want?
I also wanted to make sure that Anasasio was really gone, so I turned to check if any headlights were following. I saw two, yellowish, a block behind, spaced widely apart, and high, the left one shining weaker than the right. Anasasio’s Land Cruiser was equipped with bluer headlights. So this was not him.
The yellow headlights made the first turn after we did.
The yellow headlights made the fourth turn as well.
SIX
There were no streetlights by the river. The driver pulled to a halt before an eight-foot-tall iron gate and whitewashed wall topped by razor wire. We idled behind a Dodge Ram truck. Its driver stuck a hand out the window to wave at a camera angling down from above. The gate swung open. The Ram surged forward. The gate slammed behind it as a pair of headlights turned a corner behind us, left one weaker than right. The headlights pulled over, and shut off.
To reach Rondon Street we’d passed through descending layers of civilization: private home area to shantytown to warehouses to mud road, the red surface turned slick by a tropical downpour that lasted five minutes and stopped as quickly as it had begun.
The Sikh said, “I’m not going in there. I will drop you here.” He let me out and drove off.
I smiled up at the camera and waved like the previous driver. The gate did not open, but dogs began barking behind it. I banged on the steel. Up the street, no one had exited the silhouetted vehicle. The steel gate creaked open, and a lean, shirtless man blocked the way, holding a pistol at his side. His eyes bulged as if he were drugged, and glitter — multicolored sequins — stuck to his muscled chest. The guard couldn’t decide if he wanted to party or shoot. His white capoeira pants — Brazilian jiujitsu clothes — were worn loose, above Reeboks. He had the sinewy frame of a habitual drug user. The dogs sounded closer. The man’s pupils seemed to vibrate. I didn’t understand the words he spat at me, but the challenge was clear.
“I want to go bowling,” I said, thinking how stupid it sounded, hoping it was code, like “tea” during prohibition.
“Boliche?” he said suspiciously, stepping forward.
That was close enough, so I nodded.
“United States?”
“Yes. USA.”
He snapped out an order and raised both hands in pantomime. I need to frisk you. I glimpsed another guard, shotgun over his shoulder, in the shadows, holding two Doberman pinschers on leashes. The compound was larger than it had looked from the street, lit by portable floodlights powered by a roaring generator. It was nice inside and big. There was a horseshoe-shaped parking area packed with four-wheel-drive vehicles: Toyotas, Jeeps, pickups. I saw three buildings set at least fifty yards apart, including a central main house, generously two stories high, antebellum style, with colonnades, as if in Mississippi. I saw candles flickering on a veranda, tables, a waiter with a tray, couples dining, as if it was a country club. A club with guards.