The Last Place God Made. Jack Higgins
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could offer, I was on my way and it felt marvellous. Definitely one of life’s great moments and all tiredness left me as I turned and hurried back to the cab.
I had expected the worst of the hotel but the Palace was a pleasant surprise. Certainly it had seen better days, but it had a kind of baroque dignity to it, a faded charm that was very appealing, and Hannah’s name had a magic effect on the Senhor Juca he had mentioned, an old, white-haired man in an alpaca jacket who sat behind the desk reading a newspaper.
He took me upstairs personally and ushered me into a room with its own little ironwork terrace overlooking the river. The whole place was a superb example of late Victoriana, caught for all time like a fly in amber from the brass bed to the heavy, mahogany furniture.
An Indian woman in a black bombazine dress appeared with clean sheets and the old man showed me, with some pride, the bathroom next door of which I could have sole use, although regrettably it would be necessary to ring for hot water. I thanked him for his courtesy, but he waved his hands deprecatingly and assured me, with some eloquence, that nothing was too much trouble for a friend of Captain Hannah’s.
I thought about that as I undressed. Whatever else you could say about him, Hannah obviously enjoyed considerable standing in Manaus which was interesting, considering he was a foreigner.
I needed that bath badly, but suddenly, sitting there on the edge of the bed after getting my boots off, I was overwhelmed with tiredness. I climbed between the sheets and was almost instantly asleep.
I surfaced to the mosquito net billowing above me like a pale, white flower in the breeze from the open window and beyond, a face floated disembodied in the diffused yellow glow of an oil lamp.
Old Juca blinked sad, moist eyes. ‘Captain Hannah was here earlier, senhor. He asked me to wake you at nine o’clock.’
It took its own time in getting through to me. ‘Nine o’clock?’
‘He asks you to meet him, senhor, at The Little Boat. He wishes you to dine with him. I have a cab waiting to take you there, senhor. Everything is arranged.’
‘That’s nice of him,’ I said, but any iron in my voice was obviously lost on him.
‘Your bath is waiting, senhor. Hot water is provided.’
He put the lamp down carefully on the table, the door closed with a gentle sigh behind him, the mosquito net fluttered in the eddy like some great moth, then settled again.
Hannah certainly took a lot for granted. I got up, feeling vaguely irritated at the way things were being managed for me and padded across to the open window. Quite suddenly, my whole mood changed for it was pleasantly cool after the heat of the day, the breeze perfumed with flowers. Lights glowed down there on the river and music echoed faintly, the freedom from the sound of it, pulsating through the night, filling me with a vague, irrational excitement.
When I turned back to the room I made another discovery. My canvas grip had been unpacked and my old linen suit had been washed and pressed and hung neatly from the back of a chair waiting for me. There was really nothing I could do, the pressures were too great, so I gave in gracefully, found a towel and went along the corridor to have my bath.
Although the main rainy season was over, rainfall always tends to be heavy in the upper Amazon basin area and sudden, violent downpours are common, especially at night.
I left the hotel to just such a rush of rain and hurried down the steps to the cab which was waiting for me, escorted by Juca who insisted on holding an ancient black umbrella over my head. The driver had raised the leather hood which kept out most of the rain if not all and drove away at once.
The streets were deserted, washed clean of people by the rain and from the moment we left the hotel until we reached our destination, I don’t think we saw more than half a dozen people, particularly when we moved through the back streets towards the river.
We emerged on the waterfront at a place where there were a considerable number of houseboats of various kinds for a great many people actually lived on the river this way. We finally came to a halt at the end of a long pier.
‘This way, senhor.’
The cabby insisted on placing his old oilskin coat about my shoulders and escorted me to the end of the pier where a lantern hung from a pole above a rack festooned with fishing nets.
An old riverboat was moored out there in the darkness, lights gleaming, laughter and music drifting across the water. He leaned down and lifted a large, wooden trapdoor and the light from the lamp flooded in to reveal a flight of wooden steps. He went down and I followed without hesitation. I had, after all, no reason to expect foul play and in any event, the Webley .38 which I’d had the forethought to slip into my right-hand coat pocket was as good an insurance as any.
A kind of boardwalk stretched out through the darkness towards the riverboat, constructed over a series of canoes and it dipped alarmingly as we moved across.
When we reached the other end the cabby smiled and slapped the hull with the flat of his palm. ‘The Little Boat, senhor. Good appetite in all things but in food and women most of all.’
It was a Brazilian saying and well intended. I reached for my wallet and he raised a hand. ‘It is not necessary, senhor. The good captain has seen to it all.’
Hannah again. I watched him negotiate the swaying catwalk successfully as far as the pier then turned and went up some iron steps which took me to the deck. A giant of a man moved from the shadows beside a lighted doorway, a Negro with a ring in one ear and a heavy, curly beard.
‘Senhor?’ he said.
‘I’m looking for Captain Hannah,’ I told him. ‘He’s expecting me.’
The teeth gleamed in the darkness. Another friend of Hannah’s. This was really beginning to get monotonous. He didn’t say anything, simply opened the door for me and I passed inside.
I suppose it must have been the main saloon in the old days. Now it was crowded with tables, people crammed together like sardines. There was a permanent curtain of smoke that, allied to the subdued lighting, made visibility a problem, but I managed to detect a bar in one corner on the other side of the small, packed dance floor. A five-piece rumba band was banging out a carioca and most of the crowd seemed to be singing along with it.
I saw Hannah in the thick of it on the floor dancing about as close as it was possible to get to a really beautiful girl by any standards. She was of mixed blood, Negro-European variety was my guess and wore a dress of scarlet satin that fitted her like a second skin and made her look like the devil’s own.
He swung her round, saw me and let out a great cry. ‘Heh, Mallory, you made it.’
He pushed the girl away as if she didn’t exist and ploughed through the crowd towards me. Nobody got annoyed even when he put a drink or two over. Mostly they just smiled and one or two of the men slapped him on the back and called good-naturedly.
He’d been drinking, that much was obvious and greeted me like a long lost brother. ‘What kept you? Christ, but I’m starving. Come on, I’ve got a table laid on out on the terrace where we can hear ourselves think.’
He took me by the elbow and guided me through the crowd to a long, sliding shutter on the far side. As he started to pull it back, the girl in the red satin dress arrived and flung her arms around his neck.
He grabbed her wrists and she gave a short cry of pain, that strength of his again, I suppose. He no longer looked anything like as genial and somehow, his bad Portuguese made it sound worse.
‘Later, angel – later, I’ll screw you just as much as you damn well want only now, I want a little time with my friend. Okay?’
When he released her she backed away, looked scared if anything, turned and melted into the crowd. I suppose it was about then I noticed that the women vastly outnumbered the men and commented on the fact.
‘What is this, a whorehouse?’
‘Only