Fiduciary Duty (5 page)

Chapter 6. Shopping

For the rest of the day, I visited store after store, asking questions with my Caipira accent. The way most Brazilians pronounce their “r” is very distinctive, and hard for me to imitate, but Caipiras do it almost the same way as Americans do. It was easier to maintain the personality in my mind if I gave the Caipira a name. I settled on Lincoln (pronounced the Brazilian way, Leen-cone) do Nascimento. I’ve always been fascinated by the sheer number of Brazilian males whose first names are the last names of famous American presidents. Even in Argentina one would run into the occasional Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Johnson, Lincoln, or Kennedy. I remember once talking to a Brazilian couple during a layover at Miami International Airport. The father’s first name was Roosevelt (pronounced Hoos-vahl-chee) and the toddler in the family was Clinton (Clean-tone).

Because Caipiras are rural folks, they carry with them a country-bumpkin connation in the big city. Store clerks weren’t particularly surprised to find themselves answering stupid questions, and if the hillbilly asking those stupid questions seemed to occasionally make grammatical mistakes, well, that’s a Caipira for you, right? Lincoln played to almost every stereotype – he wore a straw hat and he was tightfisted, never buying anything in any of the stores he visited. But he got the information I needed.

In the evening, I went to the Italian restaurant I had gone to the night before. This time I had lasagna which, if anything, was even better than the tortelloni from the previous evening. As I was finishing my meal, the patriarch came over and introduced to his wife who did all the cooking. I complimented her on the food.

“Does your wife cook? I can give you the recipe,” she said.

Clearly this Italian couple was old school – the woman’s place is in the kitchen. I myself was a lousy cook, so for the purpose of this conversation, I was old school too.

“My wife cooks,” I said, “But she usually doesn’t have the patience to make something like lasagna from scratch. Most of the time she likes to use the slow cooker.”

“Ah, the slow cooker,” she said, “I’ll give you my recipe for osso bucco.”

The recipe was definitely up H’s alley. The crock pot and the pressure cooker were her two favorite tools in the kitchen. I could almost taste the osso bucco from reading the recipe. I just wondered whether Jeremy would eat it. He was picky with red meat.

The next day, in my hotel room, I put on the straw hat again. Lincoln do Nascimento, the Caipira started making phone calls and ordering items on his list. The calls were always to stores he hadn’t visited the day before. He charged everything on the pre-paid credit cards. Most of the electronic items were available off the shelf, and thus would be available for pickup later the same day or the next day. However, there were two made-to-order exceptions: a relatively powerful capacitor and a replica of the scepter. Additionally, a small mercury switch had to be special ordered from the manufacturer. However it did not have to be specially made.

The scepter I had in mind was little more than two hollow, gold-plated stainless steel tubes joined seamlessly by a slim black granite band. The interior of the scepter was grooved.

Lincoln called a specialty metal manufacturer. They were used to much bigger orders, but most of those orders weren’t literally gold-plated and Lincoln didn’t balk at the price. Still, the stores had to work for the sale – Lincoln explained his order by telling a confusing and interminable story about the tube being the casing for a custom-built car alarm for a wealthy Argentine businessman. The clerk at the other end couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.

The capacitor was ordered from a specialty electronics store. Once again, the Caipira droned on and on, this time about security systems intended to keep one’s own oxen penned in and the neighbors’ oxen out. While the clerk at the other end was no doubt relieved when Lincoln got off the phone, the relief was short-lived as the Caipira soon called back and asked that a second capacitor, physically identical but far less powerful, be added to the order. He also asked for some heavy-duty batteries. Unfortunately for the store clerk, the Caipira insisted on telling the oxen story on the second phone call as well.

The supposed car-alarm casing and the two capacitors would be ready within a week. Knowing the South American tendency to guarantee much and deliver late, the Caipira promised a 25% bonus if the items were ready on-time.

After Lincoln made his calls, he took the hat off and I placed it on the dresser in the hotel room. Then I took a cab to Ibirapuera Park and spent a few hours walking around. It was a nice day despite the smog and I felt good. I was getting things done, moving the ball forward. I sat next to a lake and watched some kids playing with a kite. It would be a few years before Jeremy was old enough for me to take him out kite flying, but if he had been there, I knew he would have been delighted just to watch.

Later in the afternoon, I got back to the hotel and went to the business center. It was empty. After checking my e-mail, I called my parents and my sister online. It was nice to speak to family after two weeks on the road. I also called my real-estate agent. Nothing to report on the house. Not surprisingly, she hadn’t even scheduled an open house yet.

The next morning, after a jog (on the treadmill, alas), a shower and breakfast, I changed into the one suit I had brought with me on the trip. I made a note to buy a few more before the end of the day. Then I carefully examined one of the stylized tourist maps and found the location of two highly regarded hotels in the city. My little Fiat and I drove over to one of them, the Hilton. I left the small car in a nearby parking garage and walked into the hotel. I loitered around for five minutes and took off my wedding band. With my ring in his pocket, Francisco Fernandez, the Argentine businessman, came outside and hailed a cab.

“Do you understand Spanish?” Fernandez asked the cabbie, in heavily accented Portuguese.

“Yes, sir, a little,” the cab driver responded in Portuguese. There wasn’t a Brazilian alive who wasn’t convinced they could understand at least a bit of Spanish, even when they couldn’t.

“Excellent,” Fernandez said in Spanish, “Take me to the Maksoud Plaza just off Avenida Paulista.”

“Of course, sir” the cabbie said.

Fernandez did most of the talking as the cabbie drove. The cabbie learned Fernandez was an Argentine businessman originally from the province of Cordoba but now working out of Rio. Fernandez had been fleshed out since he had asked another cabbie to bring him to a whorehouse over a week ago. His employer was a Swedish medical device company for whom he ran the company’s operations in Rio de Janeiro. Rio was one of three locations around the world where surgeons came for training on the latest generation of the company’s equipment. Since the new models were usually virtually identical to the old models, training was essentially a joke, or rather, an excuse to be in a world-class vacation destination with the tab going on someone else’s dime. The other two locations where Fernandez’ employer provided training were Agadir in Morocco and Phuket in Thailand.

The whole thing made perfect sense since the devices cost tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, and the surgeons, though they were the ones deciding which equipment would be used, were not the people paying for the bill. As a result, Fernandez made sure to cater to their wishes. Some of the surgeons wanted to try scuba diving, some of them hang-gliding, and so forth. The Argentine arranged for all of the above, and occasionally hookers and blow, too.

“Sure, it’s a scam, but what can you do?” he asked, shrugging.

Fernandez was, in his way, as talkative as the Caipira, but even so, he did ask a few questions. He learned that the cabbie had four children and was always up for more work. The cabbie also seemed reasonably honest and willing to go the extra mile. Fernandez would put those traits to the test later in the day.

At the Maksoud Plaza, the cabbie asked if Mr. Fernandez would be needing him again. Fernandez appeared to think about it for a second and then requested that the cabbie pick him up at the Maksoud Plaza at two. The two men exchanged cell phone numbers in case either had a change of plans.

As Fernandez stepped out the cab, he asked, “Would you mind picking something up for me?”

“Of course, Senhor Fernandez” the cabbie responded.

“Thank you,” Fernandez said, “We have a guy in São Paulo who used to do our pick-up and delivery but he just quit.”

The Argentine wrote out the name and address of the electronic store that had the Caipira’s order, as well as the Caipira’s name – Lincoln do Nascimento – under which the order was placed.

Then Fernandez stepped away from the cab and I walked into the Maksoud Plaza. I had a brief moment of panic as I fiddled around for my wedding ring, but then found it at the bottom of pants’ pocket. I waited in the lobby until I saw the cabbie pick up another fare and pull away from the curb. Once he drove out of sight, I walked over to Avenida Paulista, which is São Paulo’s Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and Madison Avenue rolled into one. Eventually, I walked into MASP, São Paulo’s Fine Art Museum. I’ve never been much of an art aficionado but I like architecture and the MASP building is a real curiosity – most of the building is suspended in the air by two lateral beams and as a result much of the structure has no ground floor. Besides, the museum seemed like the sort of place Francisco Fernandez would go to kill a bit of time and I wanted to keep his character close to the surface.

The most interesting thing about the museum to me was that it was the scene of a robbery in 2007. During the robbery, thieves made off with a hideous blue-era piece by Picasso and a somewhat less offensive painting by Cândido Portinari, considered by many critics to be Brazil’s most important painter. Clearly my own tastes more closely paralleled the plebian, not to say philistine, views of Lincoln do Nascimento than the more refined opinions of Francisco Fernandez.

In the gift shop I picked up the least unattractive postcard I could find for H and a small wooden train-and-track set for Jeremy. When I left MASP, it was around one. I grabbed lunch at a nearby café, and walked back to the Maksoud Plaza. It was a quarter of two. I took off my wedding ring. A moment later, Fernandez called the cabbie who said he had just picked up the package and was on his way.

The cabbie drove Mr. Fernandez back to the Hilton and Fernandez gave him a fifty-dollar tip in American currency. Fernandez told him he was flying to Rio that evening but he’d be back for business in the following week and would need the cabbie again. From the Hilton, I walked to my car and drove back to my hotel.

A few blocks from my hotel, I stopped at a tailor and ordered a second suit, two dress shirts and a few ties. Mr. Fernandez was going to make more appearances, and he was not the sort of man to wear the same outfit on consecutive days. It had been years since I had bought a suit without H being there. She had a much better eye for suits. Or at least she thought she did. I was never quite sure. In any case, I was happy with the suits I ordered for Mr. Fernandez.

I spent the next couple of days working on equipment the Caipira had bought. First I set up the camera. I also picked up some soldering equipment and a toolbox and stripped the serial numbers off each item Lincoln had bought. I doubted they could be traced back to me in any case, but it paid to be cautious.

Once I was comfortable with how the security cameras worked, I was ready to have one placed in the throne room at Torrimpietra Castle. The problem, of course, was that I couldn’t just show up and put it in myself. But I figured Dr. Rogerio Silva, the director of the Castle would be happy to have it installed if he was told to do it by someone at GDH Fortress, the Prince’s investment company. And who better than Heinrich Muller, a member of GDH Fortress’s security team? As far as I could tell, no such person existed, but Silva would have no reason to check.

I wrote a letter that was short and to the point. The Security Team requested that a specialized security camera, sent in the same communication, be installed in the throne room. It should be on the wall directly across from and facing the throne. The view of the throne should be unobstructed. The camera should be left on at all times, and should be set to channel 37. The director should check that it was working using the mini television which was also enclosed. The camera should remain independent of the rest of the castle’s security system. Heinrich Muller, author of the letter, would be calling in one week’s time to provide further instructions.

Official looking letterhead and mailing labels were created simply by downloading the GDH Fortress logo and printing them out on the best quality paper I could buy. I was careful to wipe down the camera and not to get my prints on the letter, the package, or anything in it. A taxi driver taking Muller downtown from the Marriott was happy to run into the parcel delivery store and drop off the package. It turned out the no-nonsense stone-faced German didn’t tip anywhere near as well as the gregarious Argentine, Mr. Fernandez.

Later in the afternoon, the Caipira was back, straw hat and all. Over the phone he rented an isolated farmhouse ten miles outside a town of 129 people called Pedra de Atiradeira for a year. Google Earth indicated that the farmhouse was truly in the middle of nowhere and was barely visible from a dirt path that passed a few hundred yards away. The farmhouse also had a detached barn that could pass for a garage. On the map the place looked to be about a forty minute drive from Ternos.

Having secured the farmhouse, Lincoln then made a second call to arrange a wire transfer covering the rent for all twelve months. The owner was a very absentee landlord, a political appointee living in Brasilia, the country’s capital, and he guaranteed that Lincoln would have the privacy for which the Caipira was so clearly willing to pay. The key to the farmhouse would be, predictably, under a flowerpot next to the front door.

I had to admit to myself, I was enjoying the role playing. Lincoln do Nascimento was especially fun, and I was always in a good mood after spending time in his personality. That was a pity, because for the next few days I needed a new character. I was going to be traveling through small towns in the interior of the state of São Paulo, and I probably wouldn’t be able to pass for a caipira among the real thing. Instead, I would go as Pedro, Lincoln’s very distant and relatively taciturn Argentine cousin. Like his cousin, Pedro also happened to be a country bumpkin. To help keep Pedro apart from Lincoln, I bought Pedro a red bandana.