Carioca Fletch Read Online Free PDF

learned was appropriate in Brazil.
    Fletch said, “Laura suspects you make big entrances on purpose.”
    Smiling, face flashing even in the near-dark, Toninho took off his buccaneer’s hat. “What’s fun?”
    Fletch said, “What’s fun?”
    “Moving.” Toninho looked at his hand on the table, directing Fletch’s attention to it. He raised and lowered his ring finger. “That’s fun,” he said. He raised his ring finger, little finger and thumb, and lowered them. “That’s more fun.” Then his hand on the table became terrifically animated, the fingers fluttering, doing their own crazy dance, the hand itself becoming some sort of a crazed rabbit trying to keep up its own wild beat. Watching it, Toninho laughed. “That’s most fun.”
    “Have you ever had experience with paralysis?” Fletch asked. “Have you ever been paralysed?”
    Toninho’s big brown eyes swelled. “I have the wisdom to know that one day I will be.”
    Introductions to the girls were made. Fletch got none of their names right, over the sound of the music. They clearly wereglad and impressed to be there, to hear such good music, have access to the Scotch. Fletch calculated it had taken the Tap Dancers less than ten minutes to find these girls.
    “Toninho,” Fletch said. “Why would the hotel maid place a small carved stone toad under my bed?”
    “A toad?”
    “A frog.”
    “Was there a frog under your bed?”
    “Yes. There still is.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I found it while I was looking for my shoe.”
    Toninho’s eyes twinkled. “What did you do with it?”
    “I put it back.”
    “That’s good.” Toninho shed his cape then, and took a girl dancing to the dance floor.
    For a while they all danced. The music was marvelous. Rather, Fletch danced. The Brazilians, including Laura, simply continued their being Brazilian, keeping the rhythm of the constant music anyway, their constant rhythmical movements anyway, onto the dance floor where they simply glided into full reaction to the music.
    A young girl in leather jeans and a jersey which did not make it to the top of her jeans began to sing. She was extraordinarily good. They all sat at the table to listen to her.
    The tape which ran down the side of the whiskey bottle was marked off in ounces. To calculate the bill, the waiter counted the ounces of whiskey missing from the bottle and charged them for that. The Tap Dancers’ girls moved the whiskey level down the tape with happy alacrity.
    The band did not stop when the girl put the microphone back on its stand. Everyone stood to cheer her and she danced into the dark at the back of the nightclub.
    One of the Tap Dancers’ girls, who had been staring at Laura, finally asked, in Portuguese, “Are you Laura Soares, the pianist?”
    “I play piano.”
    Tito was sitting across from Fletch.
    “How did you people know about Janio Barreto?” Fletch asked him.
    “About your being Janio Barreto?” Tito seemed to be correcting him.
    “About that incident this afternoon.”
    “Is it not something to know?” Tito’s face was handsome and happy, too, but his eyes could not have Toninho’s sparkle.
    “How did you hear of it?”
    Tito leaned forward across the table. “We’re all very eager to hear what you will have to say.”
    “About what?”
    “About how you came to die. Who murdered you.”
    “Tito, Tito. Am I never to get sensible answers?”
    “Tell me one thing, Janio.”
    “Don’t call me Janio.”
    “Fletch. How do you think you came to be in Brazil?”
    “I am a newspaperman from California. I had an airplane ticket.”
    “How did you come to have the airplane ticket?”
    “Sort of by accident.”
    “You see?”
    “No. I don’t see.”
    “Look around this room.” Without moving his head, Tito shot his eyes all the way to the left and moved slowly in a straight line all the way to the right. There was something spooky in this controlled use of his eye muscles. “Do you see others here like