Quests of Simon Ark (23 page)

But Orleans seemed unconcerned. “Mira will talk, and when he does we will have the answers.”

Simon Ark nodded, but I could see he was unconvinced.

As we walked along the streets of Rio, Simon asked, “What do you think about it, my friend?”

“About as you do, I guess. A simple falling out between criminals, complicated only by the circumstances under which the body was found. Has Orleans determined the cause of death yet?”

“He told me it was poison, but they’re running further tests on some tissues they removed from the body.”

Ahead of us we could see office workers dumping old files and computer printout sheets from the windows of buildings, joining them with an occasional roll of toilet paper. It was what one might have expected on Wall Street during the era of the ticker-tape parades, only here there was no parade. It was merely New Year’s Eve, and the workers were following some old Rio tradition.

Simon watched the papers floating down around us and seemed to remember that other New Year’s Eve tradition about which we’d heard. “We will go to the beach tonight,” he decided, “and search for Bamba Yin.”

“You think Sergio’s death may have been a sacrificial killing after all?”

“We will see.”

When night came the wide beach at Copacabana was already crowded with spiritists come to worship. They’d erected colorful cabalistic banners and strung lines of fluttering pennants back and forth above the sands. “It looks a bit like a gas station back home,” I remarked to Simon as we lingered at the edge of the crowd.

“It is a religion to them,” he said. “Their homage to Yemanja, the sea goddess.”

As darkness fell, thousands of candles were lit all along the beach. Each little grouping was in a particular shape—a cross, or a circle surrounding some gifts to Yemanja, or a magical sign of African origins. As we moved carefully past the groups it seemed as if all the religions of the world might be mingling and merging here on the sands of a Rio beach.

“Be careful not to disturb them,” Simon warned as we moved past a particularly colorful display with candlelight reflecting off an array of champagne and beer bottles.

“Do they come here to drink this?” I wondered.

“Those are gifts too. Yemanja must be lured, from the sea.”

We came upon a large group of worshipers circling a statue of Yemanja, once again in her flowing blue gown. And I remembered Rosetta Costa’s remarkable resemblance to the portraits.

“Here!” Simon said, gripping my arm. Ahead, in the darkness lit only by the glow of a thousand candles stuck into the sand, I saw a familiar figure. It was the lawyer who had summoned us, Felix Brighter, deep in conversation with an elderly cigar-smoking woman. As soon as he saw us, Brighter broke off and came over to greet us.

“Quite a spectacle, isn’t it?” he said. “There must be a thousand people in this section of the beach.”

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” Simon told him.

“Why not? My client’s body was found nearby. Like yourself, I feel these cult members may know something.”

“And the one to whom you were speaking?”

“Bamba Yin, a legend among these people.”

Simon nodded. “And the one I seek as well.” He took a few steps across the sand to reach her before she could move away. As she turned her hugeness toward us I saw her face clearly for the first time. It was as ugly as the face of Yemanja was beautiful.

“Do you wish a reading, stranger?” she asked Simon.

“I wish what my friend Felix Brighter wishes—information regarding the death of Sergio Costa.”

The old woman cackled, and the flickering candlelight danced around us. “Why should I tell you anything?” she asked.

“Father Rudolph told me you could help.”

“The priest?” She fell back a step as if we had struck her.

“Was Sergio’s death meant as a sacrifice to Yemanja?”

“That is for Yemanja to say. I know nothing.”

“Then why was Brighter speaking with you just now?”

“He desires knowledge of the future, as does everyone else. He pays me to tell him of his future.”

“He came to you as a fortune teller?” Simon asked.

I could see what she wanted even if Simon couldn’t. I slipped a folded bill into her hand. “Tell us of the past, old lady. Tell us of Sergio Costa’s death.”

She accepted the money readily enough, but before she could speak there was a commotion down the beach. I turned to see what was going on but there was only a tide of worshipers running toward the water, leaving their candles flickering in the sand.

Felix Brighter appeared again at our side. “They are preparing for midnight when they will surge into the surf with their gifts for the goddess.”

“No,” Simon said. “It is something more.”

Behind us a native boy was beating on drums. There was chanting and wild dancing and a feeling of madness all around us.

“Yemanja! Yemanja.”

And then we saw her, caught by the glow of a thousand candles, coming out of the surf like the goddess she was.

Yemanja, ruler of the sea.

“No!” Simon shouted, rushing forward before I could stop him. “No! Go back! You’re in great danger!”

But his words did not carry above the chanting of her worshipers. Yemanja came on, through the surf, gowned in flowing blue and crowned with stars. It was a portrait come to life, and even as I realized it must be Rosetta Costa I heard the sound of a single shot cut through the chanting and the screaming. The goddess staggered, and a blossom of blood seemed to burst from her. She sank to her knees in the water, spreading her arms in supplication.

“There’s your murderer!” Simon Ark shouted. “Stop him!”

Then I was splashing through the waves after the running figure, aware of movement all around me, intent only on closing the gap between us.

I was almost upon him when at the last moment he turned, and I was staring again into the dead face of Sergio Costa at the morgue. I faltered at that vision, and his pistol came up again and I saw death as clearly as I ever had.

And then the detective Orleans was on him, tackling him in the surf. The gun went off, sending its bullet toward the moon, and I hurried to help Orleans hold him down.

“Simon!” I shouted. “It’s Sergio Costa! He’s not dead after all!”

But Simon Ark merely bent up and stripped the mustache from the killer’s upper lip. “Sergio is dead. This is Luiz who, like Cain, has slain his brother.”

“She may live,” Marcos Orleans told us later at his office in the federal building. “The doctors give her a better-than-even chance.”

“That’s what I can’t figure out,” I said, turning to Simon. “Why would he risk everything to take that shot at her?”

“Because, my friend, he had made one mistake that Rosetta of all people could discover. But I should start at the beginning.”

“With the embalming? Why did he do that? To shift suspicion to the spiritists?”

“Not primarily, though that became a secondary factor. No, he had the most practical of reasons for having his brother’s body embalmed—to hide the time of death. You see, I believe Sergio was murdered up to a week before he disappeared.”

“But that’s impossible!” I protested. “He was seen at the shop! That man Mira met him at the yacht club!”

“Exactly. And we’ve already established that the mustache is the main difference in the appearance of Sergio and Luiz. Don’t you see? Luiz poisoned his brother some time during the week before Christmas and took his place wearing a false mustache as he did tonight. We know they were never together in the shop so it was easy to work the substitution there. He found some undertaker who didn’t ask questions about embalming the body, and then hid it at his home until after Christmas.”

“But why?” I asked. “What was his motive?”

“He wanted the shipment of pre-Columbian art that Mira was smuggling in. I suppose somehow Luiz learned of his brother’s illegal activities. He decided to kill him, and in such a way that Luiz himself could profit from the crime. Mira would be cheated out of payment for his smuggled goods, and the already dead Sergio would be blamed.”

“Mira didn’t realize the man he met was Luiz and not Sergio?”

“They kept away from each other, remember, and met only two or three times a year. It was probably the phone call from Mira that triggered the whole crime. Luiz answered it, pretending to be his brother, and learned about the meeting. That’s when he decided to kill Sergio and take his place. He put Mira off for a day on payment and then announced his brother’s sudden disappearance. You see, Sergio had to disappear before Christmas because he always visited the children on Christmas and either they or his former wife would have surely seen through Luiz’s disguise.”

“And the mummy?”

“Luiz couldn’t have the police find Sergio’s body and announce he’d been dead a week because then Mira would have realized what really happened. But once Luiz had his brother’s embalmed body he decided to wrap it as a mummy and throw it in the ocean. That way it might seem a sacrifice to the gods, and the fact of the embalming would be only one more bizarre part of it.”

Marcos Orleans stirred in his chair. “Why did he try to kill Rosetta tonight?”

“He remembered his one mistake. Sergio always sent the children Christmas cards a few days before the holiday. Rosetta had already commented on their absence this year, and he feared she might realize that her former husband died earlier than everyone thought. He put on the false mustache to disguise himself tonight and tried to kill her when she came out of the sea as Yemanja, hoping her death would be linked to the spiritists too.”

Orleans nodded. “You are a wise man, Simon Ark. How did you know all this?”

“The missing Christmas cards, the strong resemblance between the brothers, the fact that poison could be most easily administered by someone living in the same house as the victim, and, lastly, a small oversight that Luiz made. He told Juan Mira that Sergio was missing on Christmas Eve, but he told us it was Christmas morning before he realized something was wrong.”

When we left, Simon suggested we stroll along the beach. The litter was still there from the night before—candle stubs peeking from the sand, champagne bottles unclaimed by the goddess but emptied by others, cigar butts discarded by ugly old women.

“There’s Felix Brighter,” I said, pointing toward a lone figure by the water.

“Yes,” Simon said.

Brighter turned in the sand as we approached. “You solved it, didn’t you?” he said, almost bitterly.

“Yes.”

“But for the federal police, not for me.”

Simon nodded. “You brought me down here to find the artworks, didn’t you? As Sergio’s lawyer, you knew about his involvement with Mira. And when he was killed you wanted those smuggled art treasures for yourself.”

“You knew that?”

“Not until last night,” Simon said. “I found Bamba Yin after the shooting and strolled with her here on the beach. That was the future you wanted to buy—the location of that final shipment.”

“She didn’t know.”

“Of course not. Her spirit world is made up of other truths. You wasted your money asking her.”

“But you knew, Simon?”

“I could guess. Those pre-Columbian items are no doubt in Luiz’s display cases right now, marked with price tags like his regular stock, waiting for the right buyer from America.”

Felix Brighter sighed. “And the police will be there first. There’s nothing more for me.”

“It is a new year, my friend. A time for resolutions and new beginnings. Put aside your dark thoughts and walk back to the hotel with us. I believe there is just time for a farewell drink before we catch the plane back to New York.”

T
HE MAN’S NAME WAS
Harvey Cross and he sat across the desk from me much as hundreds of other authors and would-be authors had in the years I’d been a senior editor at Neptune Books. In those first minutes of our meeting he wasn’t especially different from those others. Slim and just a bit boyish, with a trace of a stutter, he clutched the thick manuscript to his chest and said, “I wanted to try Neptune with it first because you published Simon Ark’s book.”

“That was more than ten years ago,” I reminded him. “If it’s something occult we wouldn’t really be interested at the present time.” I was beginning to regret having agreed to see him. He could just as well have left his manuscript with my secretary, the practice followed with most other unsolicited submissions. But there’d been something in his voice on the phone that interested me. Seeing him now, I couldn’t remember what it had been.

“Oh, it’s not an occult book. Not in the true sense of the word. It’s—I suppose you’d call it an adult fairy tale, about a strange place in the forest and a strange girl who lives there.”

“I don’t really think—”

“At least give it a reading!”

“All right, Mr. Cross. Why don’t you leave it with my secretary? She’ll—”

I was interrupted by the flashing of the intercom. I flipped a switch and heard Martha Scane, our publicity director, say, “This is Martha. Could I see you for a few moments when you’re free?”

Harvey Cross had gotten out of his chair and was walking to the window. “Right, Martha,” I acknowledged and flipped the switch.

I started to turn toward my visitor when I heard the shattering of glass and saw him going through the window. “Cross!” I shouted, but it was too late.

I sat stunned for a second, then ran to the big broken window and peered out at the street twenty-eight stories below. I could see cars stopping and people gathering.

My secretary ran in. “What was that crash?”

“Put me through to the police, Irene! A man just jumped through the window!”

“Was it that Cross fellow?”

“I’m afraid so.” I saw his manuscript in a corner of my desk and I glanced at the title page.
The Unicorn’s Daughter
by Harvey Cross. It was all that was left of him now. I noticed the return address in the upper left-hand corner. It was a box number in Catskill, New York.

Others crowded into my office as word of the tragedy spread. “Terrible,” Ash Gregory from the Art Department said, patting my shoulder. “Who was he, some nut?”