“So you’re saying I’m a sedative?”
“No,” I said, and laughed. “More like a glass or two of, I don’t know, spectacular Malbec?”
“I can live with that,” she said with a slight, sly smile as her index finger trailed up my forearm. “Do you want to finish our wine and go to the second stage of decompression before we sleep?”
“Decompression, stage two,” I said, leaning in to kiss her. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”
Chapter 56
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
3:00 p.m.
Fifty-Two Hours Before the Olympic Games Open
CHERIE WISE WALKED to the window in the sitting area of her suite at the Marriott and looked out through a narrow gap in the curtains.
“I feel like food,” she said.
“You can order room service,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I feel like I am the food, and the mob out there is salivating at the idea of eating me and my family.”
I could see how she’d feel that way. Matt Lauer, the Today show host already in Rio for the games, started off early that morning with a live stand-up in front of the hotel; he gave a brief synopsis of Wise’s life intercut with sections of the Favela Justice video and references to the billion-dollars-in-gold penalty.
At last count there had been fifteen cameras on Avenida Atlantica aimed at the Marriott and twice that number of journalists on the sidewalk and white-sand beach.
The front desk had received calls requesting interviews with Cherie from dozens of reporters, including Lauer, who was the most persistent. Either he or his producer left a message every hour on the hour.
Tavia and I had spent the morning interviewing the man who’d overseen the Wise girls at the sanitation project in Campo Grande and the woman who ran the Brazil branch of Shirt Off My Back, the NGO they’d been working for at the time they were kidnapped.
The sanitation guy had called the Wise girls “distracted,” which seemed to mean he didn’t think they worked hard enough. That ran counter to Amelia’s and Mariana’s descriptions of the twins. But then again, latrine duty is nothing to get excited about.
The woman in charge of the NGO said she’d never met Natalie or Alicia. Left with no idea how or where the girls had been identified and targeted, Tavia and I split up. I went to be with Cherie while Tavia fetched the girls, who’d been given the okay to leave the hospital.
At three fifteen, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and Natalie entered. She looked high on painkillers and pressed an ice pack to her bruised face as she walked by me in search of her mother. Following her, Alicia looked miserable. She was paler, and her eyes were sunken.
“Why release them from the hospital?” I muttered to Tavia as she came in behind Alicia. “They look like hell.”
“The doctors figured it would be fine as long as they were monitored by a nurse,” Tavia said. “There’s one on the way.”
We joined the Wises back in the suite’s sitting area; the girls sat on the sofa flanking their mother, who had her arms around both of them.
“My head still hurts,” Alicia said. “Why can’t I have something like Natalie’s getting? She’s sitting there with that goofy smile and I’ve got, like, the worst headache ever.”
Tavia said, “The doctors don’t like to use narcotics with concussions.”
“When the nurse gets here, we’ll see what we can do,” Cherie promised.
My cell rang. It was Sci.
“We got a Zip file just now from Favela Justice,” he said.
“Forward it to Tavia’s e-mail and then get to work on it,” I said.
“Coming right at you.”
I hung up, looked at Cherie, said, “It’s here.”
Wise’s wife blanched, said, “Girls, there’s something you’re going to see that you won’t like, but Jack and I think it’s important for you to watch in case you recognize anything or anybody.”
“What kind of thing?” Natalie asked.
“You’ll see,” Tavia said, getting out her computer and calling up her Gmail account. “By the way, we talked to a friend of yours last night.”
“A friend?” Alicia asked. “Who?”
“Amelia Lopes,” I said.
Natalie blinked dumbly, and her chin retreated. Alicia stared at us in a kind of dazed disbelief.
“You talked with Amelia last night?” Natalie said. “How is she?”
“Fine; working hard on her research,” Tavia replied as she typed on her keyboard. “She says she hopes you’re okay.”
“Where is she?” Alicia asked, looking confused.
“Some town near Porto Alegre,” I said.
“Oh,” Alicia said. “I couldn’t remember what it was near before.”
“She’s, like, the smartest person ever, Mom,” Natalie said.
“I think your dad holds that title,” Cherie said.
“Sure, but, like, she has insight, you—”
“Sorry, here we go,” Tavia said, and hit Return.
The screen blinked to life.
Chapter 57