Secrets of the Apple (32 page)

Montgomery ’s smile broadened, exposing his entire set of straight, bleached teeth, the grin of the alpha male. “I wasn’t surprised she decided to wait for that teaching job. She loves teaching, born to it. I sat in on a couple of the classes she taught at the university as a grad student. She’s a natural storyteller, explains hard things with simple stories until they make perfect sense.” Montgomery chuckled. “Of course, the big brown eyes help. No man can resist, such is her power.”

“Brown? Brown eyes?”

“Oh, yeah, brown, did I say something else?” Montgomery said, his smile dimming. He twitched and looked around the room. “Nice place,” he said.

Ryoki heard the distant thump of the back door. Kate coming. Get to the point quick.

“Has Kate mentioned that you’ll need to stick close to her and remain in public places—”

“No problem,” Matt said heartily, swallowing a laugh.

“No need to be obvious or smothering, but take it seriously, more seriously than she does.” Montgomery chuckled nervously and seemed about to speak, but Ryoki went on. “One of the presidential guards came himself to warn me. That’s why I say I need you to take this seriously,” Ryoki said for the third time, keeping his gaze level, the way he learned from his grandfather. “Just for a month, maybe two. Until we’re absolutely sure.”

“Kate said—”

“I know what Kate says. I’m asking this as a personal favor,” Ryoki said, the full weight of his portfolio thickening the air around him.

Montgomery nodded his head once, but before he could speak Kate appeared at the parlor door holding her shoes, looking warily from one man to the other.

“Matt, I thought we were supposed to meet at Buca Romana.”

Montgomery rose to leave, belatedly noticing he should have removed his shoes in the entryway. “My bad, honey. Got my wires crossed.”

Honey.
The hairs stood up on the back of Ryoki’s neck. Careless use of condiments—yellow card.

Ryoki walked them to the front door. Kate put down her shoes and out of habit reached for Ryoki’s arm as she stepped into them. She caught herself just before contact, but luckily the damage was done; Montgomery had witnessed a domestic moment. For an instant his face hardened before relaxing into a polite smile. He put his arm around Kate, swinging her out to the car, two happy Americans on a date. Ryoki stood rooted before the open door, hand raised in a wave, eyes averted as if from an obscenity.

The next day Montgomery was scheduled to leave for a week in Brasilia and the Tanaka household let out a breath and prepared to settle back to a comforting normality. But
normal
can be a fluid, slippery thing, and at 1:24 a.m. that night Ryoki jerked up out of bed to sound of a shrieking alarm. He stood for half a second staring at his clock’s red digital numbers, trying to gather his wits before snatching a bat from his closet and pelting through the house and into the pouring rain to Kate’s cottage. He arrived just behind two security guards, dressed and on duty, who were already tracking the target, a single intruder coming from the northwest corner. Three more guards closed in wearing only shorts and T-shirts, but carrying loaded weapons.

The guards motioned Ryoki off, but stone-faced, he gestured to the door with his bat. Two guards sheared off to cover the back windows, while Ryoki and the other three advanced on the front door and tried the knob. Locked. They pulled back to kick it open just when the alarm cut and the lock clicked as Kate opened the door from the inside. They all stared at each other, blinking, the silence suddenly deafening.

Kate, calm and unflustered, had pulled on a practical, knee-length, white terry robe, her nightgown trailing clear to the floor, yards and yards of silky and sheer frothing around her feet. She moved out of the doorway.

“I’ve had a visitor,” she said quietly as she stood back to admit the men.

One guard stayed with the principles while the rest ranged through the small cottage, guns ready. Finding nothing, they rushed into the garden, stopped dead and listened before splitting off to check the property and communicate with the outside security company. The next morning they would determine a camera and a few motion detectors had been tampered with, too high for the boy to reach, prompting an overhaul and ruthless tightening of all security systems.

In Kate’s living room a small boy sat dripping with water and smeared with blood. He perched on the edge of the couch, coiled to spring, wild eyes gauging every exit.

“He broke a window and must have cut himself in several places, but that doesn’t explain all these bruises,” Kate said as she walked to the bar and began wetting a hand towel.

Ryoki hardly heard her, adrenaline pounding a freight train in his ears. He wanted an opponent, a good straightforward fight with the José he had expected. Gradually his eyes focused and he saw the marks on the boy’s face and neck, bruises big and small, different colors and different ages, nothing to do with the broken window.

Kate returned with a couple of wet towels and some antiseptic ointment, but Ryoki noticed she had a long jagged gash on her right hand that had begun pouring blood, a startling Christmas red against her creamy, pale skin. Ryoki snatched the wet towel. “You’ve cut your hand. Wrap it up and keep pressure on it,” he said, more gruffly than he’d intended. He began gently wiping the blood of the boy.

Kate looked at her hand in surprise. “I wrestled him through the window. So hopefully most of the blood on him is mine.”

“That may leave a scar, Kate,” Ryoki said, though his real fear was the threat of AIDS, rampant in Brazil. However, as Ryoki finished wiping the boy’s face and arm he found the skin was unbroken—bruised and smeared, but not cut at all. Kate’s blood then. When Cecelia arrived a few minutes later, he sent her to call a doctor known to make house calls for rich patients. Forewarned of the circumstances, the little doctor came laden with a rolling suitcase of medicine and equipment, including a dewormer, a delouser, and an AIDS testing kit, which in time would come back negative.

Ryoki sat next to Kate as the man stitched her hand, almost wishing she’d shudder or tremble so he could put his arm around her, let her know that she was safe and everything would be all right. Instead she sat holding her right hand very still, her eyes fixed on the boy, asking him question after question. But the boy was nervous and spoke colloquial Portuguese with a different accent, vaguely familiar, all kinds of
shz
sounds thrown in, so Ryoki only understood half his replies.

After the doctor had examined the boy, Cecelia returned with food and two fully dressed security guards. The smell of leftover lasagna misted warm and rich through the room. Even Ryoki’s stomach started gurgling. The boy’s eyes went big at the sight of the tray, and when the housekeeper handed him a plate, he held it close to his mouth, deftly sucking in pasta, cheese, ground beef and ham with little or no aid from the fork.

“Thank you, grandmother,” he said to Cecelia, slowly and gravely as he put down the plate and folded his hands.

Cecelia and two security men took the boy off to a utility washroom for a good scrubbing and delousing, leaving Kate and Ryoki alone.

“He’s probably a juvenile delinquent” Ryoki said.

“Very likely,” Kate said, looking at her hand, rubbing around her stitches.

“This probably isn’t the first house he’s broken into.”

“No, probably not,” she agreed.

“He’s probably been a thief for most of his life,” he said.

“He’s only eight.”

“I don’t think we should call the police,” he said.

“I don’t either.”

“But we have to call someone.”

Kate nodded, but looked uncertain.

“I’m sure there are government agencies to deal with kids like this. Did he tell you where his parents are?”

“He said his father died in an accident when he was little, a motorcycle messenger apparently. He lost his mother more recently, supposedly a hit and run, but he thinks it was an accident at the factory. I don’t know if any of it is true,” Kate said.

“Does he have any other family we could contact?” Ryoki asked.

“He says he doesn’t.”  She paused before adding, “He says his name is Lucas.”

Ryoki could hear something in the way Kate said the name, carefully, with a peculiar softness like a new mother trying out her baby’s name for the first time.

“He’s not a stray dog you can pull in off the street, Kate,” he said. “He’s a person with a history—”

“He’s a child.”

“—and we have no idea he’s even told us the truth about it,” he said. “What if he works for that José we’ve been concerned about?”

“
You’ve
been concerned about.”

“He may be working for any number of criminals a lot bigger and not nearly so cute,” he said.

“But why break in here and not the main house? I think he was alone and just looking for someplace dry. He said he stayed here once when it was empty, but the alarm was new and it scared him.”

“Or he counted on you being the easiest target and said anything to protect himself,” Ryoki said.

“He’s a little kid alone.”

She wouldn’t look him in the eye, but he could see what she was thinking. He took her hands in his, careful of her stitches. “This isn’t about those children on the mattress,” he said softly. “Don’t do crazy, careless things out of guilt. We don’t even know what damage that kid is capable of.”

“You’re absolutely right,” she said. But he could see her debating with herself, searching for the safe zone between compassion and good sense.

“He could stay here with me just for tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow I can call around and find out what we should do. That way he wouldn’t have an entrance to the main house.” She looked around. “You could take the TV and my laptop into the house. Then Lucas wouldn’t be a threat.”

Ryoki stared at her in blank astonishment. What exactly did she think he was trying to protect?

“Tonight he can bunk with the security guards. There’s an extra bed in one of their rooms anyway. But until this window is fixed and we figure out how he got so far, you will sleep in the main house, any room you want,” he said firmly.

Kate flopped back on the couch and rubbed her eyes. “All my things are out here. Besides, if he could break in here, there’s nothing to stop somebody from breaking in there. I don’t really see the difference. Everything’s alarmed.”
“Keep it up, Kate and you’ll be in my room with me,” Ryoki said exasperatedly.

Kate made her incredulous face, but he knew she wouldn’t push it further. The boy would be warm and dry, that’s all she really wanted. Tomorrow would be soon enough to quibble over details.

Cecelia returned with the boy, now dressed in a voluminous white T-shirt and a pair of drawstring shorts hanging nearly to his ankles. Ryoki told her where to take him and what to do, leaving special instructions that he was not to be let out of sight or allowed to use the phone.

P
rivately Cecelia had sized up the boy and saw no immediate threat, no inherent evil lurking behind his eyes. But she knew the streets made strange companions, especially for children. Just before bed she gave him a glass of sweet watermelon juice in which she’d dissolved half a sedative. The boy would be no trouble until morning. In the light of day they could all judge better.

When the boy finally awoke the next morning, the housekeeper sat with him as he ate, watching his large gray eyes dart around the room. “Young man, tell me who you are and what you’re after, and mind you tell me the truth because if I smell even a hint of a lie I’ll call my sons to tie you up and drop you into the Tietê at midnight and tell Dona Kate you took off.”

Lucas looked into the eyes of the fierce old woman and believed her. He’d seen the thick, sludgy water of the Tietê. They say if you fall in, no one will rescue you, because there was no chance of surviving the poisonous chemicals even if you managed to swim to shore. Weeks would pass before he understood Cecelia would do no such thing, but by then he wanted very dearly to be her son.

“My name is Lucas da Silva,” he said, “da Silva” being such a common name that she wouldn’t smell the lie.

“Where did you get those gray eyes, Lucas?”

“My mother. Her father was a German tourist. I never met him. We think maybe he was good with numbers, because I’m good with numbers too. I could help you with all your numbers, maybe counting things, making sure it’s all there. I can count to near a million if you need me to.”

“How’d you get so good with numbers?”

“My mother taught me. Reading too, but I’m best with numbers.”

“And your mother is—”

“Dead, ma’am since before my last birthday.”

“Where’ve you been since then?”

“I worked for a man who had me do all kinds of errands and he showed me how to keep accounts and figure interest. I could help with that too.” He left out the name. Roberto had told him names could be dangerous. Sometimes the truth would do just as well as a lie, if no one could trace you.

“Was he good to you?”

“He liked to sing and play chess. We played lots of chess.”

“How did you meet this chess-playing account-keeper?”

“My uncle traded me to cancel out a debt.”

Cecelia twisted her lips. “Bookie or loan shark?”

He shrugged like he didn’t know. Didn’t want to admit Roberto was too soft for his company. Got stabbed in an argument and Lucas lit out. No good being a witness. Roberto had taught him that too.

“So you’ve run all the way from Rio?”

Lucas felt his ears turn red. Stupid Carioca accent had given him away. He hated that his ears turned red, made him a terrible liar.

“How long you been in São Paulo?”

He shrugged, but Cecelia waited expectantly. “I’ve been staying with friends,” he said, hedging.

“The kind of friends who beat you up and leave you out in the rain?” she asked, her expression severe.

This was a sticky point and he wasn’t sure how to answer it and still sound respectable.

“There was a management change,” he said vaguely, repeating a line he remembered from a gangster
telenovela.
Better than saying that their old leader Cesar had been arrested for selling drugs. Only Lucas knew Cesar had been ratted out by Marco in a fight for control of the gang. “I was old management’s assistant ‘cause I’m so good with numbers. I can count anything,” he said, looking directly at Cecelia. “I’m sorry about the window. Last time I came, that window had a broken latch and the place was empty.” He thought it best not to mention that after hearing about that first visit, Marco had traded him to a man named José. Last night he had failed in his mission to creep silently into the cottage and open the door, for which he’d been promised a week of food coupons and an unimaginable five hundred reais. Missed that chance, but this morning it had crossed his mind that he’d hit a gold mine and if he could manage to contact Marco without blowing it, they might take him back, give him his old place.