Just what Pereira’s film company produced I saw later that evening. Dick was dancing with the most glamorous woman at the party, somewhere between sixteen and sixty, whose costume had ransacked a Las Vegas casino. The Dutchman and I had fallen in with an American casting director and her husband, who were imagining the impossible task of casting the party’s guests from the world’s stock of supporting actors. After a buffet supper together we went in search of Dick.

Outside the disco in the dining room I caught sight of a familiar stocky blonde climbing the stairs to an upper floor.

“You know Fortunata?” the Dutchman asked. “She’s trying to get into Pereira’s films.”

“Can’t she act? What’s the problem?”

“No, she’s stupid, but she can act—that’s the problem. His films need obvious amateurs. They employ a new kind of realism.”

A glass verandah fronted the upper floor of the duplex. Guests thronged the rail, looking out over the sea towards the lights of Copacabana, the Sugar Loaf, and the great illuminated Christ of Corcovado. But Fortunata had turned into a small corridor that led past a kitchenette and bathroom into the rooms at the rear of the duplex. A uniformed security man stood by a locked door, talking to one of Pereira’s gangster friends. He let Fortunata through, pointing out some defect in her makeup. When she smiled at me, snapping her compact, he assumed that we were with her and beckoned us forward.

We had entered a private suite within the duplex. An office equipped with desks and filing cabinets served as temporary storage space for the furniture moved from the rooms used for the party. Film equipment, lights, and silver umbrellas stood in the corner with a set of stage props—two plastic sofas, a roll of turquoise nylon carpet, and a tawdry bedspread, like the decor of a cheap motel.

Fortunata opened the rear door and stepped into the corridor beyond, where powerful, ice-white lights flooded through an archway. Two men in tuxedos and a woman in a ball gown with a drink in her hand were staring into the lights. Fortunata joined them, frowning as a dog barked in pain and its handler shouted angrily.