Stormlash

By John Elliott

During the Brazilian dictatorship in the seventies, Robert, a British executive, lives and works in Brazil. Brought up in rough industrial England, he achieved what he wanted by fists and daring and survived years of night school to become an engineer. His wife has taken their children back to England, but he prefers Brazilian life and speaks Portuguese. But his social life is uneven. Unlucky in his relations with women, he is befriended by a disaffected army officer who later deserts to a guerrilla group, compromising Robert.
He abhors the way men treat women and the way corruption is not punished. His company is failing. A Brazilian called Falcone is hired, claiming access to high government officers, but he is a fraud with criminal associates. Eventually Robert discovers and denounces Falcone who disappears but sends men to kill Robert, who himself has to flee Brazil along clandestine guerrilla safe houses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546203568

John Elliott

John Elliott (1935-2017) was a retired businessman, living in England after a forty year career in Europe and South America and five years living and working with emergency aid agencies in Africa and the Middle East. Fluent in Portuguese and French, and enjoyably conversant in Spanish and Italian, he was settling down to write thrillers set in Brazil seen through Brazilian and foreign eyes. Married to a Brazilian, with family and friends in Brazil, he follows the uncertain future of this BRIC country. Once the darling of emerging economies, now riven by crime, political and civil unrest, the result of decades of corruption and poverty, barely restrained by military control.

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© 2017 John Elliott. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/18/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0357-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0355-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0356-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017912253

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

Palermo, Sicily January 1950

Part I Living In Hope

Chapter 1 Rio de Janeiro, January 1971

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part II Decline

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part III Flight

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Part IV Defeat

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Aftermath

Foreword

M y husband John Elliott died on the 2 nd July 2017 shortly before this book was published.

Throughout the time of his writing, he received constant support and encouragement from Marge Clouts, who led the writers’ group he belonged to for many years. I believe he would have wanted to express his gratitude to her for her help. Equally, I am sure he would have wished to thank all the members of that Cheltenham group (CWWC) for their careful listening and constructive criticism.

I also think he would have dedicated his book to his beloved grandchildren Jake, Rory, Laura, and Murdo, the new generation of the Elliott family, in whom he had so much hope.

Lea K. Elliott

Palermo, Sicily January 1950

S hadows from the log fire fill the cavernous room with dancing devils. Embers crackle and skitter across the stone floor. The huge oak door swings open, sending candles into panic. Two men escort a third to the wooden table where the capo sits. They step back and stand behind him, short-barrelled luparas firm in hands that know them well.

The man advances slowly and kisses the capo’s hand.

The capo wipes his hand on his sleeve. He draws his chair nearer to the fire. ‘Giovanni, has the journey from Rio tired you? Sit down. I’ll read the report while you sup. What will you have? Cold meat, fruit? Beer? Not in this house until we are all safe.’

The capo snaps his finger. From the shadows a small, bent man in a black uniform wheels out a trolley. He selects food and places it on a tray. He holds the tray out and grunts once, then again.

Giovanni sees he has no tongue.

He bows to the capo. ‘Grazie, Don Filippo. Here is the report.’

The capo snatches the envelope and tears it open. ‘What’s this?’ he snarls. ‘A single sheet? What is Zalusi doing?’

‘He … said one sheet is enough, Excellency.’ Giovanni’s teeth chatter. He gazes at the tray the servant has thrust onto his lap and wishes he were back in Niteroi.

‘How do you know? Have you read it?’

Giovanni shudders and grips a pheasant leg tightly. ‘On my life, no, Excellency. Don Alfonso gave me the envelope already sealed. I swear I know no more.’

The capo’s eyes are failing. When he peers closely at the paper, his eyes harden. ‘So the stealing has begun.’ He glares into the fire while Giovanni crams his mouth, fighting the churning in his stomach.

After an age the capo crunches the letter and tosses it into the fire. ‘Did you see her? Do people talk about her?’

‘Zalusi says she is well, Excellency, but I have not … no … nothing.’

‘You are wise, my son. With silence you will live.’

The capo pauses to observe the effect of his words then flicks his wrist. ‘You can go now.’

He calls the guards. ‘See that he talks to no one.’

Part I

LIVING IN HOPE

Chapter 1

Rio de Janeiro, January 1971

T he day began too early for Robert. The noise wrenched him awake. He sat up, breathing fast, stomach heavy, his demons banished. Beside him the bed was untouched, as it had been since she left. The clock shone twenty past two. Whatever the noise, it had sliced right through the orchestra of sounds that held him in sleep each night: the muttering air-conditioners, clinging leechlike to tired apartment buildings; the rumble of sleepless traffic; the distant nervous hum of an oppressed city.

It came again. This time he recognised the clunk that the door of an expensive car makes when it slams shut: heavy, arrogant, bringing back his student days valeting the cars of the rich. Sleep would not return. He walked to the window and parted the white lace curtains. Forgetting he was half-naked, he peered out.

At the height of summer, Rio was an oven. The air trapped between mountains and sea basted the city with heat and humidity that often made him want to scream. The sun sat below the horizon, mulling over how to turn the coming day into an inferno. In the blackness of night, ancient lamps turned the street into a tunnel of gloom. Ageing apartment buildings leaned against each other. Tall, imperious palms swayed reluctantly to the sea breeze. Huge leaves clacked down like missiles. Sullen cobblestones waited for hasty cars.

Night porters and guards lolled in chairs, fanning the sticky night air. Housemaids sat on steps, chatting with boyfriends. Pinpricks of cigarettes glowed like hovering night-flies. A man in blue overalls and rubber boots leaned on a car bonnet, wringing a rag as if the effort of washing it was too much. High above, the statue of Christ sailed through gaggles of cloud, arms outstretched to embrace the suffering, eyes staring blankly across the bay, watchful, indifferent.

Across the narrow street the car sat like a long, fat slug. Robert felt he could touch it, though it was a good twenty yards away. Black-bodied with tinted windows, it was right out of a gangster movie. Even the driver opening the passenger door looked the part: dark glasses, grey uniform, black boots and leggings, peaked cap – not a submachine gun – tucked under his arm. Through the open door, a booming hi-fi blasted samba at the night street.

A woman got out, gripping the door. The purple head-to-toe cloak gave her a witchlike appearance. But when she pushed back the hood, a mass of frizzled hair sprang out, blonde in the yellow half-light of a tired street lamp. She walked slowly towards the steps of the apartment building opposite. Robert thought she was drunk until he saw the fine pencils of her stiletto heels. Strips of coloured paper clung to her hair, maybe from a pre-Carnival ball. He wanted to see her face, to know if she was young or old.

From the floodlit apartment building opposite, a porter was coming down the steps, holding out his hand. But before she could grasp it, a man’s voice called from the car. She went back and leaned in. Voices were raised. She hopped back as a man bounded out and grabbed her arm. In the half-light Robert could see he was bald and portly. In his white suit and cape, he seemed more gigolo than man-about-town.

‘Lascia-me!’ she cried, but he shook her roughly.

Her head jerked back. She lashed out with a foot.

He held her off. ‘Puta!’ he shouted and slapped her – thwack! with the front of his hand and thwack! with the back of his hand. As she fell to the pavement, one of her shoes tumbled away. She knelt head down, like a wounded fawn, while the brute stood over her, hands on hips.

She got up slowly, bowed, dazed, and crying, her full lips puckering. She said something. Was it ‘O Dio!’ or ‘Odéio!’ (I hate)? For a moment she was full face towards Robert. His mind registered it in photographic detail – neither young nor ageing, her pallid face said she was no Carioca. The tousled hair that probably began in festive straggle now drooped in single forlorn strands.

Robert Sampson’s childhood was peopled by violent men. He tensed as one voice told him to go down and help while another said ‘No!’ Yet he already hated the brutish gigolo, who stood, arms folded, watching her scrabble for the fallen shoe.

By now the street was filled with light and anger. Voices from apartments shouted abuse and protest: ‘Shame!’ ‘Filho da Puta!’ (Son of a bitch!) The gigolo beckoned the driver and counted out some notes. The driver called the woman. She tried to run, but he grabbed her and thrust the notes into her hands.

‘Cretino!’ she shouted and threw them down. He grabbed her arm and forced her to bend and pick them up. As he straightened up, she whirled and scratched his face. He swore, let her go, and raised his fist.

In his mind, Robert saw mouths opening in a collective Ooh! He pulled the curtain open and leaned out.

‘No, don’t!’ a high-pitched voice cried, piercing the night.

His stomach lurched. Everyone was staring towards him. It was English, his own voice. He swept the curtain closed and flattened against the bedroom wall. He had been seen. He was sure some chancer would denounce him. It was that kind of country.

He peered out again, curious about the woman. The gigolo and his driver were distracted by the shouting and the abuse. The woman was walking unsteadily towards the building opposite where not one but now three porters hovered, unwilling to intervene.

People began throwing things. The gigolo scurried to his car. An explosion shattered the night. The noise ricocheted around the narrow street. Everything froze. Robert ducked inside, blood pounding in his ears. When he peered out again, the driver was standing in the middle of the street, holding a revolver with both hands, nozzle upward, in the way professionals do. Smoke from the gun rose slowly. A moment of silence, then a scream.

Robert craned forward. People were bending over a body sprawled on the pavement – a woman’s, he saw – some crying, most silent, as if wondering if she really was dead. After an eternity while the whole street paused, she sat up. ‘She’s alive!’ someone shouted, and for a moment Robert thought the crowd would react, but they stood transfixed, and he saw why.

The driver was circling, pointing his gun at each group of people until they fell silent. It was like watching a film until suddenly the gun seemed to point at his head. His mind screamed, I am definitely not here! but he saw the driver’s hard face and the black hole of the barrel. His sphincter tightened. He was back in Cyprus, the day they were ambushed. Nineteen and green, they cowered in a ditch as bullets spattered the road. Sergeant Cole was bellowing Fire! but they all hugged the ground.

‘Chega! Nelsinho! Stop!’ the gigolo was shouting from the car. But the driver continued to threaten the street. People scuttled behind cars and in doorways.

‘Nelsinho. Stop, I said, damn you!’ The gigolo’s voice was high as if he was afraid of being disobeyed.

‘OK, Patrão. OK! OK!’ the driver replied, but did not stop. Then when Robert was certain he would fire again, the driver pocketed the gun as casually as he might button his jacket. He strode to the car and turned. He made an unmistakable gesture to the crowd – left hand on right upper arm – as if to avenge the public reprimand. The door slammed, and the motor revved and howled. With the angry growl that only huge engines can produce, the black monster slithered off, low and vile, its huge tyres slapping against the cobbles.

People milled around, talking in low voices. Perhaps like Robert they were reliving the shock and the violence. It took minutes for calm to return and for life to resume cautiously as if people were still uncertain that invaders would not return. Porters and guards returned to their posts, the car washer to his swabbing, loiterers to their beds. But the street did not sleep. The tension seemed to shimmer in the air. Robert felt his body shake as he relived the sheer obscenity of it all.

Robert watched for the light to come on across the street that would show where she lived. He waited until his back ached, but no light appeared. He cursed himself for shouting. They might come after him. The thought triggered childhood memories – fighting in the home, in the playground, in the streets. Now he was waking in the wood by the pithead, clutching a precious bag of coal, hearing the dawn chorus and the rustle of small life in the undergrowth, hoping the police would find him before his father did.

Eventually he slept. He dreamt he was her knight gallant. She was begging him to help, but across the street the gun zeroed on Robert’s breast, and a finger tightened on the trigger.

He leapt out of bed, pulled back the curtain, and leaned out.

Five o’clock. The sun caressed his shoulders. From the street came the morning theatre – the salty sea breeze, the smells of decay, humidity, and gasoline, the rattle of opening shutters, the clatter and chatter from kitchens, maids singing, radios squawking, the first motors starting in basement garages, the flip-flop of poor feet passing below, the acrid smell of tobacco, the cough of sick lungs … Across the street a family of yellow-breasted birds were calling, bem-ti-vi, bem-ti-vi, from their nest on a telegraph pole, amid a tangle of wires that might have been distributed by a fisherman casting his net.

In his bathroom he stood long, washing away the night’s horror. He dried himself and sat on his bed to gather his intelligence. The car he would never forget: a Ford, an LTD, long and boxlike, a car with darkened windows … a car for the rich and the criminosos. He could remember the driver, Nelson, with his devil’s face, and the woman with her tousled hair, pathetic and vulnerable. ‘Lascia-me,’ she had cried. Didn’t sound Brazilian. Maybe Angelo the porter would know. Of the gigolo, he recalled only his baldness, his booming voice, and his temper: a man who beats women. Of his face – beyond a big nose and large moustache – nothing.

He shaved on automatic. He reckoned he could work the razor with his eyes closed. Not today. He stuck tissue on the cut. The face in the steamy mirror was grey and haggard, like his father’s on a wintry Saturday morning, after drinking his wages the night before. ‘Five o’clock. Get up, ye laggards. Get some coal from t’ slag heap.’ Robert, age ten, eyes firmly closed, heard the cries and tremor through the pillow clamped over his head.

He dragged a comb through what Ros called his ‘mop’ and looked out. Now the sun was laser-strong. The street bustled with an ant-like stream of people straggling down from the mountain favela along narrow earthen paths – black, mulatto, white – on their way to pittance wages, energising the day with the colour and smells of their poverty.

He resented that building opposite where she lived. Its shuttered windows warned the curious as if its rich inhabitants condescended to emerge only when the great unwashed had passed. He could not understand why anyone rich should choose to live in Laranjeiras, in this street of faded respectability. Why not in more affluent areas, like Ipanema or Leblon? Had there been some scandal or family feud? Aloof and white-immaculate, it stood dwarfed by its elderly neighbours, five floors high against their seven or eight, one apartment per floor against two. Even the gold-painted nameplate, Edificio Aragão, boasted wealth and arrogance. She must be rich to live there.

***

The rasp of a key in the back door woke him. Elvira had arrived to prepare his breakfast. Seven fifteen, he noted. She must have got up at half four, left her child with a neighbour, walked in the darkness along mud tracks, taken three buses, and arrived without being delayed or robbed. He hoped she had remembered to buy fresh bread.

He put on a dressing gown and went to the kitchen. Elvira was putting on her apron.

‘Bom dia, Senhor Roberto. Am I late?’ she said.

He smiled down at her: five foot nothing, the high cheekbones of people from the northeast, eyes steady and serious. Her white uniform set off her light brown skin. The hand that caressed the figa, her crossed-finger protector, was rough and calloused, yet the nails were neat, bright red.

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Just the army,’ she said, as if no explanation was needed. She smiled at his disarray, ‘Shall I get your breakfast now, or will you dress?’

He laughed, so like Ros. He passed a hand over his tousled hair. ‘You’re right. I’ll dress.’

‘The porter said something happened during the night?’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

‘It was nothing,’ he replied, glad he had not heeded Ros. ‘Why keep Elvira?’ she said, ‘just because you’re idle?’

Wrong, Ros, he told himself. She is my link with the past, and I am bloody lonely. It took three years to learn enough Portuguese to talk to her like this, but worth every drop of sweat.

As he put on his tie, he watched the apartments opposite come alive. Maids swept balconies, watered plants, and opened curtains to reveal vast lounges while below a porter brushed curving marble steps. He studied the people coming out: that plump white-suited man clasping a briefcase to his chest; two women prancing down, dressed to the nines, off to the club to golf or shopping. Chauffeur-driven limousines emerged from the underground garage, washed and shining, to sweep them away from this tatty street. Then came the walkers: a gaggle of uniformed schoolchildren in perfect white and navy blue; white-uniformed nannies wheeling prams and their swaddled charges; a white-uniformed male nurse wheeling an elderly lady, head covered in white muslin against the sun.

He stiffened as two men, army officers, came out, gold-braided, belt–and-buckled, boots and leggings polished to shining, both wearing the dark glasses proclaiming importance and exclusivity. The one with fewer tassels and stripes carried the other’s bag. A black limousine drew up, also a jeep with two helmeted soldiers. The junior officer held the door for the senior, then got in. The little convoy roared down the centre of the road as if daring anyone to obstruct them.

When Robert went back inside to finish doing up his tie, he remembered he had not given Elvira her wages. As he went into the kitchen, she was closing the kitchen door. A woman was leaving, rather hurriedly, he thought. Just a chat between maids? Perhaps, but no. It was a girl like so many he had seen in the streets, in shops, supermarkets, and buses: sallow-faced, with subservient, disoriented eyes, émigrés from impoverished interior states, working mindless hours to sustain distant families. To see one such person up close upset his comfortable expectations. He forgot to ask who she was.

The moment he stepped onto the pavement, the night’s terror returned. He was afraid of being recognised. He looked for anything that seemed out of place without any idea what to look for. He looked across at the Aragão building in case she appeared but saw only a man in an olive-green uniform coming down. The shining belt, shoulder badges, and peaked cap said he was an officer. Not a senior one – there were no gold braid and tassels. At the pavement an elderly car in drab army green waited with a small, fat soldier in green fatigues, who saluted and held the door open.

In the sixth year of the dictatorship, Robert had noticed that people seemed unconcerned to see so many uniforms in this street. After all, Laranjeiras was cheap enough for junior ranks to live in. Maybe this officer enjoyed mordomía, the reward the junta gave to trusted underlings, military and civil: chauffeur-driven cars, privileged shopping, and other benefits, all discretely given. Even so, he wondered, how come a junior officer lives in an expensive apartment?

Chapter 2

W hen Robert wanted anonymity, he drove to work, braving the delays, the jostling, the potholes, and the swearing. Today the Rua de Laranjeiras was a horn-blaring, brake-shrieking madhouse of poisoned air and people scurrying like ants. The pavements were clogged by beggars; poorly dressed women from the countryside, hawking their wares; and hard-faced men leaning against walls with the blank expression of those with nothing to do. In women’s eyes he saw resignation and hunger and wondered if life was far worse way back in the interior.

As he neared the bus stop at the foot of his street, he was already looking at every woman and did not watch the pavement. He stopped. Two helmeted soldiers were walking towards him, rifles at the high port. People were walking round them as if their presence was normal. So why did they wear helmets? Did the generals want their soldiers to look threatening? In Cyprus his platoon slung their rifles over their backs and wore berets – until the day rioters pelted them with stones.

As they passed, some devil made him look straight at them. The helmets hid their eyes, making them robot-like. Their green uniforms were rumpled, black boots tired and scuffed. The tall one with corporal’s stripes was thin and haggard, his colleague plump and small. They reeked of sweat, tobacco, and oil, the smell of men who had probably been up all night. The dull, scratched metal of their weapons and the dented wood of the stocks made him wonder how often they fired them. He looked away hastily. Staring might get you arrested, Robert, and who would tell Ros?

The queue was a phalanx of gladiators, waiting for buses that might or might not stop. The bus that decided to stop was already packed. The rush swept Robert towards the door. He grabbed a hanging strap, bumping against people more concerned with keeping their feet than with complaining. Facing the conductor’s tired indifference, he fumbled for money, worrying about pickpockets, but he saw behind him only the stolid faces of people for whom this journey was the start of another wearisome day.

The door clanged shut. The driver hurled the bus into the traffic, throwing passengers against each other. A few yards on, a huge lorry cut him off. He slammed on the brakes and launched a barrage of abuse, banging his fist against the outside of his door, horns having been long banned from buses by some brave mayor. At the next stop, the driver got up and faced the passengers. ‘Senhores e senhoras! Companheiros!’ he said, ‘I apologise for my bad language. Normally I do not swear, but that Filho da Puta is a lunatic and deserves to be flogged. Thank you.’ There was a burst of clapping, and Robert laughed. In England you’d be sacked. Here nobody will complain. You’re a hero. Besides, letting off steam is good – when it’s safe.

The twenty-minute race to the city centre was a marathon of sweating and hanging on. He got off at the beginning of the Avenida Rio Branco and walked the last hundred metres, letting the morning sun burn his back. Sirens and whistles made him turn. A hundred or so metres away, soldiers were pouring out of lorries parked on the Aterro expressway. White-helmeted military police were waving on curious drivers. He walked rapidly past a crowd of watchers. Being tall and foreign-looking might draw attention.

When he first came to Rio, the elderly ten-story office block seemed tawdry compared with the shiny offices of headquarters in far-away London. In the lobby, the head porter Angelo was reading a newspaper at his desk while a small radio crackled and spluttered yesterday’s football results. Beside him, wide-eyed and alert, sat young Oswaldo the office boy in a bright blue uniform, with white teeth and shining coffee skin. Angelo claimed to be a retired police detective, a plump mass of crafty geniality with an egg-shaped head, bald on top, and big sideburns. Small eyes peered from above sagging pouches. Through a walrus moustache a cigarette jutted clouds of acrid smoke.

‘Bom dia, Angelo. Tudo bem? Everything fine?’ Robert said.

‘Tudo bem, Senhor Sampson. And you?’

Robert could not figure why Angelo had adopted him from the day he arrived. Maybe Angelo thought he was virginal. Angelo pointed to the army lorries. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Last night guerrillas burned a car of the policia militar.’

‘Who did it?’

Angelo waved a hand, ‘Oh, the vanguard of the popular something-or-the-other, I expect. I don’t know.’

Robert’s back ached. Still on edge from the night’s shock, he asked: ‘Weren’t you a policeman?’ Angelo nodded. ‘Surely you should know.’

Angelo gave him a quizzical smile. ‘Of course I should. I’m still a detective. They can’t get rid of me that easily!’ He stubbed out his cigarette and pulled out a police badge, burnished and indestructible. He raised his eyebrows. ‘But why are you so interested in our politics?’

Robert grinned. ‘You crafty bugger, you never handed it in.’

The queue for the lift gazed sullenly at the red light that descended with insolent slowness. The ancient metal box arrived with a thud, and Robert was carried forward and packed against the damp metal wall. He smelt the fatigue of people who had travelled hours from distant suburbs in rickety buses and crowded trains. Lisa, the ancient lift operator, whom everyone knew but few dared greet, sat in a tired black uniform as if welded to the lift, reading a book, ignoring them all. Then when the lift seemed about to burst apart, she looked up and pressed a button. The flimsy door crashed shut, she yanked a handle, and the lift shuddered upwards, followed by a cloying, fetid smell from the bottom of the shaft. Nobody spoke or looked at each other, reminding Robert that life for them was not all beach and sun.

His shirt clung to his skin. Each time the gate opened, he glimpsed dingy corridors and smelt floor cleaner, tobacco smoke, and coffee coming from the offices of Rio’s small players – the lawyers, accountants, dentists, private detectives, the despachantes, the indispensable, unavoidable masters of the jeito, the way around inconvenient rules and laws.

The lift reached the top with a groan as if it might give up and fall down the shaft. Robert staggered out to meet brightness, order, familiarity, and the smell of fresh coffee. The entire floor belonged to Kingston Paints, whose serene Britishness insulated him against the maelstrom outside.

He liked to arrive early so he could organise his work before the interruptions came and Sewell would summon him for a folksy interrogation. Ana would be waiting with a small cup of sugary coffee, his cafezinho. Today no Ana and no coffee. He threw his briefcase on his desk and was wondering why when she bustled in.

Ana was slightly older than Robert. Her matronly care brightened his every day. She was a handsome mulatta, tall and slim. Her cheeks were soft and light brown. In idle moments he longed to caress them.

Her lips were pursed, her eyes serious. ‘Senhor Sewell wants to see you … now, he said.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘He said it’s urgent. He’s been in his office with Senhor Eduardo for over an hour.’

He entered Sewell’s anteroom with its deep leather armchairs and fading copies of the Times. Zelda, the archetypal senior secretary, was polishing her nails as her lipstick-stained cigarette drooped over a heavy glass ashtray. She ignored his ‘Bom dia’ as she blew on the vivid red lacquer she was painting onto overlong fingernails. He could not find a reasonable explanation for disliking her, nor did he particularly want to. Her lurid lipsticks, black sleeked hair, theatrical nonchalance, and hoarse voice grated. ‘Too much smoking,’ Ros used to say with narrowed eyes. But then he was a mere technical manager, and Zelda spoke