Chapter 3
Rego woke up early the next morning. He walked out into the hallway to check on his grandmother. She wasn’t in her chair, so he felt relieved that she had gone to bed. He grabbed some bread from the cupboard and ate it as he stared out the window. Then he heard a commotion down on the street and he quickly realized what must be going on.
He quickly threw on some clothes and went down to the street and tried to blend in with a gathering crowd on the corner. Two police cars were parked on the street and an ambulance was near the alley. He peered around the corner to see two paramedics putting the body of Jacomé on a stretcher, his face covered over. Rego looked all around feeling paranoid and scared. He tried not to look suspicious.
A block away, Coutier stood looking on at the scene. He observed everyone on the street, where they lived, how they reacted. But, he did have a name. He just needed to wait for the street to calm down and clear before he could start searching the names on all the door ringers. It would be easy, he thought.
Rego went back inside and decided not to tell his grandmother about the satchel. He stowed it away in his closet where he knew she wouldn’t see it. I have to make sense of all this, he thought. “I have to find out what the old man meant.”
His grandmother was back in her easy chair with her eyes closed. He walked alongside the chair and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be back, Grandma.” Then he turned and walked out of the apartment.
Rego walked to the staircase of Rosa’s building and rang the buzzer for her door. A window opened three floors up and a head poked out of it. “I’ll be down in a minute!” Rosa shouted as she ducked back inside. Rego walked to the bottom of the steps and sat on the last one.
He watched as the cars and pedestrians passed by. He kept thinking of what happened the night before. Why was the man shot? How did the man know him? He was eager to piece all the clues together. He thought about all the people that passed by, totally unaware of what he was going through. Rego wished he was just like the people passing by, nothing like this to worry about. All he wanted to do was go to school and play football.
A few minutes later, Rosa came out of the apartment building and sat next to him on the doorsteps. “So, what do we do first?” she asked.
“I have to find out what the old man meant, last night,” Rego responded. “But I have no idea how to find this Mdina place. And the Sister of St. Paul, I have no clue.” He threw his hands up.
“You know why you don’t know where to look for Mdina?” she asked wryly. “Because you have to go somewhere you have never been to.” Rego looked at her like she was crazy. She lightly slapped the top of his forehead with her hand. “The library at school! Come on.”
They both jumped up and headed towards their school. The school was a few blocks away. “OK, but no more hitting me,” Rego said with a grin.
Back in Rego’s neighborhood, the street activity was back to normal and the crowd had left the scene where the body was found. Coutier casually walked from door to door, looking at all the names on the door ringers at each entry.
He finally came to the door of the building where Rego and his grandmother lived. He looked down the list of names and then saw the one he was looking for, Ouliveyra. It was next to apartment number 3A. He decided not to ring the buzzer and stepped down the stairs and stood on the street. He lit a cigarette and waited.
Soon a woman walked out of the door and passed Coutier without even looking at him. He watched her walk away, and then quickly jumped up the stairs to catch the door before it closed. He flicked his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it, discarding it on the floor in the hallway. He looked up the stairwell to see them winding its way to the top. He made his way to the third floor and walked to the door with a 3A painted on the outside. He raised his hand to knock on the door, but then he stopped his fist in mid-air.
The hell with this, he thought. I don’t need to knock for this old bird. He pulled a small metal pick from his overcoat and started to slide into the door latch.
“What the hell are you doing?” demanded a voice behind him. Coutier slipped his hand in his coat pockets and turned around with a smile. Behind him, stood Mr. Vittierri, the building superintendent. He lived right across the hallway in apartment 3B.
“Ah, good morning, sir. How are you this fine day?” Coutier said coyly.
“I said what are you doing to that door? What the hell are you trying to do, break in or something?” Mr. Vittierri demanded again.
“Of course not, sir. I merely wanted to speak to the lady of the house. I knocked on the door with my ink pen, that is all.”
“I don’t believe that for a second!” Mr. Vittierri said. He was no fool. “You leave that poor woman alone! This is my building and I don’t want anybody bothering my tenants. And I don’t want to see nobody selling in here either! Now get the hell out!”
Coutier tipped his hat and slowly walked down the stairwell to the entry door. Mr. Vittierri watched him intently as he walked all the way down. Coutier reached the bottom and then heard a voice shout down at him, “And don’t let me catch you in here again, you hear?” Coutier looked at him with a frown on his face, and then he walked out.
Rego and Rosa sat at a long table in the college library where they attended. “So this is what the library looks like on the inside,” Rego said sarcastically.
Rosa ignored him and flipped through a stack of encyclopedias. She opened the book labeled M and thumbed her way through to the Me section and saw nothing. She thought for a moment and looked at Rego. “You are sure he said, ‘M-dina’, right? Not Medina?”
“Nope,” Rego said staring at her legs. “I’m sure he said Mdina.” She turned her legs away from him and flipped a few more pages in the book.
“Here it is. I found it!” she said with excitement. She read out loud to him, “Mdina – The ancient medieval town on the island of Malta. It is the old capital of Malta and has remnants that date back to the year 4000 B.C. It is known as the ‘Silent City’ and has a commanding view of the whole island.” She smiled up at him in triumph.
Rego looked at her puzzled. “The island of Malta? Where the hell is that? Please tell me it is off the coast of Brazil.”
Rosa quickly flipped the pages back in the same book and found the name Malta. “Nope,” she said still staring at the book.
“Well, is it near Brazil?” he asked hopefully.
“Not quite,” she said sliding the book in front of him. Rego looked down at the encyclopedia entry and saw that it had a small map showing the location of Malta. In the center of the Mediterranean Sea, directly between Sicily and North Africa, was a tiny circle with a star in the center with the name ‘Malta’ next to it. Underneath the name was another name in smaller letters that read, ‘Valletta’.
“Off the coast of North Africa. Just perfect,” Rego said with disgust. “You can’t even see the place. It’s so tiny on this map. It’s just a speck!”
Rosa pulled the book away from him again. She became more and more intrigued with the tiny island. “Valletta must be the capital city now. It said Mdina was the ancient capital, so that’s why it says Valletta by the star.” She started to read about the island itself and looked at the map some more. “Wow! That is a long way off.”
“Tell me about it,” Rego said with his head down on the table.
“I wonder what it is like there.” Rosa was fascinated. “Hey, they speak English.” She read the passage further. “And Maltese too.”
“Great, neither one does me any good,” Rego complained. Rego was clearly discouraged. A look of despair and loss of hope came over him. “Can we go now?” He pulled himself out of his chair and stood behind her. She looked at him and remembered the reality of the situation again. She nodded and got up from the table.
They sat outside the library on the steps. Re
go had his forehead resting in his palm, and he sat shaking his head back and forth. “What am I going to do, Rosa? This is too much. If the man really meant this island, then it is impossible. How would I get there? I’ve hardly been twenty kilometers outside of Brasilia, much less out of the country.” His mind was racing again, and was clearly distraught about what he had to do. “I just can’t do this.”
Rosa sat thinking, occasionally looking over at Rego, then back at the people walking by in front of them. “There must be a way,” she thought out loud.
“It’s no use, Rosie,” Rego said, throwing up his hands. “This place must be halfway around the world!”
Rosa grabbed his hand from the air and looked directly at him. “What about the man on the street? You can’t just ignore what he asked you to do! You told me that he died right in front of you. Don’t you remember?”
“I know, I know,” he said sorely. “But let’s look at the other facts. I can’t fly there, it would cost way too much. I can’t even afford to go on a ship. I don’t think I could find much more than a couple hundred cruzeiros. That won’t get me very far.”
Then a light went off in Rosa’s head. “Maybe you could go by ship, Rego. You could take a bus down to Rio or Sao Paulo, or even to Salvador. There are ports at all those cities. My brother works at the bus depot. I bet he could find a way to get you on one of those buses.”
“And when I get to the port, then what?” he asked. “How do I find a ship to Malta, and how do I pay for it?”
“You get a job, silly,” she said smiling brilliantly. “You can work on those ships. That way they pay you and then you can find your way to the Mediterranean.”
“Ah, you make it sound so easy. And besides, it may take weeks or months to finally make it. I don’t want to be away from here that long, away from you.” Then he remembered something else. “And what about Grandma? I can’t leave her, Rosa. I have to look after her.”
“Away from me? I need to get you out of my hair for a while anyway,” she said with a shy grin. Her face grew serious at that moment. “I will look after Grandma, you know that. But the more I think about that satchel and how that man died for it, the more I think that you really need to do this.” Rosa knew she didn’t want him to leave. She couldn’t imagine how frightened he must feel knowing such a tremendous task faced him.
Rego thought a little more, and then put his hand into Rosa’s. He took a deep breath and looked in her eyes. “You have the prettiest eyes. And, you always know what to say.” Then he nodded in acceptance. “You are right. I will do it.”