by J A Kellman
Great. Kan again, and the pectoral, too. I could feel my stomach tighten.
~ * ~
It wasn’t until the final day of the month that anything new happened, not that Polop’s return counted as nothing. The weather had been well below zero most nights during the previous two weeks. Ice like granite made many sidewalks impassible. Side streets were reduced to one-lane roads, two hard ruts through frozen slush. The wind was vicious.
I’d been reading, curled in my old recliner with Rosie warm and kneading in my lap, during what I hoped was the last big blizzard of the winter, but I was having trouble concentrating. I set my mystery aside. Some of the things Polop had said had been nagging at me. First of all, how did the Nuevo know about Ruston, unless they were part of what had happened, and second, how did they know about the stele? They weren’t researchers, after all, nor were they privy to the latest archaeological gossip or bulletins. Additionally, how had they come to consider the jade pectoral as a link between Ruston’s find and their discovery without additional information? On top of it, Kan was their leader. There couldn’t be that many Kans in that part of Guatemala, could there? Yet, even the Riverview businessman’s bride was named Kan. Odd.
Maybe Luis and Zoila would have an idea. I’d give them a call, blizzard or no blizzard. I could hardly hear Zoila over the static once she answered. It must have been the wind disrupting the signal.
I told her what I’d been thinking, Kan, pectoral, and all.
“I don’t know if this has anything to do with the Nuevo, but we got an email from Luis’s brother this morning. You know, the one we stayed with near Xela,” Zoila said. “According to him, there are rumors an indigenous group in retro garb is helping Los Zetas establish themselves in the Petén…Yukatek speakers from southern Yucatán, he said. It reminded us of those kids in Flores you told us about, but they wouldn’t speak Yukatek. Other people must have joined in.”
I could hear Luis talking in the background over the rattling of my storm windows and the static on the phone, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Zoila repeated it for me. “Luis says the danger isn’t over. Snow or no snow, he wants to throw seeds tonight, and he wants everyone involved in the Ruston stele business to be here, too. He said attacks against Mayan scholars have to stop and all the related problems, too. Something isn’t right. I’ll make supper—tortillas and soup. At least we won’t starve. How about six?”
I groaned. The ancestors were up to something, I could tell.
~ * ~
Bill, Pat, and I bought flowers and a pint of vodka on the way to Luis and Zoila’s. Bill threw in a pack of cigarillos, just in case. I’d slid the vulture pendent, smelling faintly of parsley from its hiding place in the jar of dried herbs, into my purse before we left Burr Oaks. Maybe it was time for it to put in an appearance.
As we were finishing our meal, unsure of how to proceed, I carefully placed the pectoral in the middle of the table.
“Oh, my God!” Polop said.
Zoila gasped.
Luis gently picked the treasure up with his good hand, cradling it in his palm. He closed his eyes, perhaps feeling the thousands of years of stories running through the tiny object like water, perhaps sensing its connection to another world.
~ * ~
We took our coffee to the living room after dinner and arranged ourselves in chairs facing the balcony. I’d put the pectoral in my shirt pocket in case it was needed. Luis sat in his recliner facing us, tucked under his red and purple blanket.
“I pulled our altar closer to the doors, so it would be sheltered from the wind,” Zoila said as she slipped outside to feed more pieces of incense into the potsherd of smoldering copal on the low flat stone just beyond the windows. She placed the flowers and tobacco next to the shard and poured the alcohol over the altar. The wind sucked the curtains through the open door, as if someone leaving the room.
“I’ll get Luis set up,” Zoila said as she came back in, pushing her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, “then we can start.” She placed the small table with its bright striped cloth over Luis’s lap and positioned the sack of crystals and beans where he could reach it easily.
“Put the pendant here, too,” Luis said. “Right where we can see it.” He indicated a spot near the front of the table. I slipped it into place. As the sweet smell of copal filled the room, Luis poured out the seeds and crystals, placing ten of the largest stones in a row behind the pectoral. He began to chant, his voice barely audible over the sound of sleet against the windows and the rattling doors; he swayed with the rhythm of his words.
Hypnotized by the chant, the sound of Luis’s hand brushing against rough fabric, and the quiet questions he asked the ancestors, I closed my eyes as well. It was as if time itself had unfurled in the room, called forth from the seeds and crystals, the pale green pectoral, and the sighing wind.
When I went home that night, I left the pendent with Luis and Zoila. It was theirs, after all: they’re Maya. With the experiences of Ruston and Polop, they needed as much help from the ancients as possible, but they’d have to be careful. Who knew when some weirdo would come after them?
As I went out the door, Luis told me not to worry.
~ * ~
The same night that Luis cast seeds, a popular campus stand-up comic, known for his dirty mouth, outrageous patter, and bottomless need for attention, overdosed on heroin at a fraternity party where he was performing. He was found dead early on the morning following the festivities, covered with snow, half hidden in the leafless hedge that surrounded the colonial style house, and his face in a small pool of frozen vomit.
The police investigations were fruitful. Substantial quantities of marijuana were found in several students’ pockets and in a baggy stuffed behind the cushions of the couch in the living room; an enormous supply of Molly was discovered in a cookie jar in the pantry. Several bongs ringed the coffee table in the TV room, and two mirrors streaked with white powder formed its centerpiece. There was no evidence of larger amounts of heroin or cocaine except for the mirrors, a few empty glassine bags in the kitchen trash, and the dead man in the shrubs.
Two days later, the medical examiner confirmed that the comic had died of an overdose of heroin and cocaine—a speedball—an often lethal combination. The minute quantity of powder in the bottom of a small glassine bag in his pocket tested positive at the state lab for unusually pure heroin. His drug paraphernalia contained traces of heroin and cocaine. The young comic joined the innumerable other entertainers who died injecting the deadly mixture.
In the investigation that followed, a spreading area of rot, like the decay in the center of an otherwise unblemished apple, was uncovered, for the fraternity was found to be one source of the increasing supply of drugs that had spread across campus since the previous summer. Thanks to an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers, four fraternity members were found to be dealing drugs in substantial quantities—heroin, cocaine, Molly, marijuana—from their off-campus apartment a few blocks from the fraternity house.
Twenty thousand dollars in cash was found in the oldest student’s room; drug paraphernalia, scales, measuring equipment of a variety of sorts, and a vast supply of small bags were discovered in the kitchen. The drugs themselves were stored in four closets on floor to ceiling shelves installed behind clothes. In all, the entire haul—drugs and cash—was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the students, though they denied knowing anything at the start, soon indicated they’d set up shop the year before with the help of a contact known only as Jorge, whom they’d chanced to meet in the parking lot of a local restaurant.
All of this information came out in fits and starts over the next week and served as a main topic at our Friday cocktail evening. Bill had the most to say, since he and his friends on the police force discussed the situation at the gym every time some new detail emerged—off the record, of course.
“One of the students claims that Jorge had heard them talking about buying drugs w
hile they were eating in Cinco Gallos on a Thursday night,” Bill said. “He approached them in the parking lot. The police checked. No one of his description or with his name works at Cinco Gallos, or anywhere nearby. The story seems suspicious. What the hell? Was the guy hiding under the table or, does he just hang around in the parking lot? It doesn’t make sense.”
“When do drugs ever make sense?” Pat asked.
Bill conceded the point with a shrug. “The authorities’ main interest right now is that part of town is beginning to seem to be part of a drug trail. First the Cintas truck crashes right behind Cinco Gallos. Then someone skulking in the restaurant’s parking lot is trying to drum up business.”
“I find it interesting the priest from the church right near I-74 is the one that was murdered,” I added. “Might that be part of a larger picture, or is it just another coincidence?”
No one replied.
The priest’s death and the source of the drugs remained a mystery.
Twenty-two
Yucatán, Mexico, April
The house was quiet when Eduardo Guzmán and his bodyguards left his brother’s ranch and headed southwest toward Tikal. Eduardo told everyone at dinner two nights ago he’d like to visit an old school friend on his ranch near Tikal. He’d be back three days later, he said. His brother offered to loan him the Land Rover, thank God, since the driving wasn’t over paved roads, but Eduardo turned down a chauffeur. He couldn’t afford to have anyone knowing where he was going; or what he was doing once he got there. Arturo, one of the guards, could drive.
When they finally bumped along a dirt road into the airfield and construction area after hours, Eduardo was hot and irritable. Arturo, usually phlegmatic, had cursed under his breath most of the way, as he tried to avoid the biggest ruts and gaping holes. Juan, beside him in the passenger’s seat, had remained silent most of the way except for sudden intakes of breath, his knuckles white on the dashboard as he braced himself against the worst of the jolts. Arturo pulled up next to the brush shelter and cut the engine. The sudden end to the shaking and noise was like dropping into a hole. The men sat in silence, rattled. Finally, Eduardo eased out of the car.
The first thing he wanted was a cold drink, with ice, if possible. Then he needed to pull himself together. After that he’d be ready to tour the site, to see if they could start making full-sized shipments to Ciudad Juarez. Though he wasn’t looking forward to it, he’d have to address the airfield’s manager’s current concerns—tagged buildings, vandalism, theft.
“Theft, for God’s sake, in the middle of a jungle! Who the hell is out there to steal anything? What’s wrong with the guy? Why can’t he handle it himself?” Guzmán asked no one in particular, as he headed toward the office.
~ * ~
From the start, the situation was as Eduardo expected-—no ice, no comfortable place to sit, and no possibility of a really good lunch—but the work was finished. Streams of trucks poured in from the countryside, loaded with bags labeled cacao, or large boxes, and then backed into the loading docks of the sheds with the Maya Gold logo. Men darted along the dock with trollies loaded with gunnysacks and unmarked cartons. Hangers, planes, bunkhouse, mess hall, office, all carrying the Maya Gold logo, were bustling with activity. It was as he’d hoped, but he soon saw that the manager’s worries about vandalism were valid. The NM, whoever the hell they were, had tagged the hangers and even a plane near the gas pumps. If that weren’t enough, according to the manager, tools, building materials, and gas had been stolen, and someone had broken a window in the office.
“Worse yet, the runway lights quit a few weeks ago when a plane was landing. Someone pulled a breaker, but there was no sign of who did it,” the manager said. “We can’t have this screwing around as shipments increase. There won’t be room for errors or darkened airfields with a growing number of flights.”
“If the tagging means anything, the NM must have something to do with it,” Eduardo said as they turned toward the mess hall. “Maybe one of the guys at lunch will know something more.”
Over the meal of beans and rice, the men filled Eduardo in on what they knew about the Nuevo. It wasn’t much. One of the mechanics overheard talk in a bar near Flores of a stele found deep in Tikal’s jungle, a fragment, which seemed to enflame the nationalistic desires of a small group of Maya.
“Strangers from northern Mexico are showing up all over, too,” a warehouseman from Lacandon added. “Ogling women in the streets, getting drunk, starting fights in the bars. My family is worried. Something is going on.”
“There’s talk Los Zetas are making a grab for territory by supporting the indigenous people, using them to take over territory Los Zetas will control from behind,” another man from an aldea near Lacandon added.
Nothing was definite, but none of it sounded good. Maya going back to the old ways was as unappealing as Los Zetas on the move, and if that weren’t enough, the increasing drug activity in Big Grove was calling attention to his business in Illinois.
Eduardo would have to get in touch with the boss. Tell him what was happening before the airport development went sour, or the police found something incriminating in Big Grove after the recent flood of heroin ODs in the area. The trouble all started with that asshole priest. Somehow it was his fault. For the first time since he started this job, Eduardo was uneasy as well as angry.
Twenty-three
Big Grove, April
It was the prodding of Luis’s ancestors, concern over disappearing Mayan scholars, Bill and Pat’s desire to see Tikal, and my inquisitive nature that pushed me into flying to Guatemala the first week in April with everyone else, even though I had been offered an archiving job by St. Patrick’s parish on the northwest side of town. Since Father Diego had been murdered the previous autumn, they needed help sorting and disbursing his papers. I called the office and let the secretary know I would be available when I returned. “That’s fine. Just so we can have things done by July,” she said.
Happily, with two more people, the logistical problems of Luis, the chair, the walker, and the bags was easier than before, even though my hand was still giving me trouble. Bill managed Luis with a minimum of fuss and kept his eyes out for problems at the same time. This last part Luis was sure wasn’t necessary. Who would grab an old guy in a wheelchair who’d had a stroke? he had asked.
I’d booked rooms for the first night in the city at the Posada Belen Museo Inn, where I’d stayed before, and I made arrangements for rooms in the Tikal Inn after that. They’d been able to accommodate Luis before, and the reservation clerk was eager to have a party of five, since things were slow—the summer tourist season hadn’t started yet.
Polop, no surprise, refused to come. He was adamant. He didn’t care what the ancestors had in mind, he said; he wasn’t going anywhere near Guatemala. Besides, if the ancestors had been paying attention, he wouldn’t have spent weeks with a group of thugs trekking the length of Mesoamerica and then end up getting shot.
“No. Not again. Not so soon. My leg still hurts, I can’t sleep, and I have panic attacks. Forget it,” he said when Luis asked him if he wanted to join us.
I emailed Ochoa the day before we left to let him know when we were arriving and to fill him in on the latest events. I described the increase in drug activity that radiated from Big Grove: the growing amount of unusually pure heroin flooding our community and its surroundings, the comedian’s death in the hedge, and the investigations and arrests that had followed. And I shared my concerns for Luis. It was clear someone was stalking Mayan academics. Luis would be a sitting duck in Guatemala, since he’d be in the open at archaeological sites, museums, libraries, hotels, restaurants.
Ochoa’s reply came back later that afternoon. “I’m on it with Luis. I have something to tell you when you arrive. Things are moving. Tell Bill to be ready for anything. He’ll know what I mean.”
Guatemala City, Guatemala, April
We ate supper in the hotel dining room, next to the courtyard
filled with jungle plants, palm trees, and shrieking green parrots. Earlier, while the rest of us unpacked, Bill had made arrangements to visit a friend that evening.
“I’m going to see a guy I haven’t seen for years. Lives here in the city,” Bill said, finishing his meal. “He’s a former SEAL, married a Guatemalan woman, owns a trekking adventure business. He sends groups all over Mesoamerica, the Andes, the Amazon. I’ll be late, so don’t worry.”
~ * ~
Even though his room was next to mine, I didn’t hear Bill come in. He was quiet when he arrived for breakfast next morning; he wasn’t smiling, either. While the rest of us devoured fruit, granola, sweet breads, and café con leche, Bill toyed with his enormous pile of pancakes covered with fresh fruit, butter, and syrup. Something was wrong. Bill never fools around with pancakes.
~ * ~
The flight later that morning to Flores was easy: the plane was half full, and there wasn’t a hassle with luggage with three of us to carry bags. Bill was quiet the entire time. Even Pat couldn’t get anything out of him. I’d have to get Bill alone if I was going to find out what was happening.
We checked in at the Tikal Inn at two o’clock, plenty of time to get settled before we met Ochoa at four in the lounge.
~ * ~
We’d just settled into our chairs near the front desk when Ochoa appeared dressed in his usual park service outfit, but unlike before, he was wearing a sidearm. He and Bill gave one another one of those looks. Something was up.
“It’s good to see you all again,” Ochoa began. “I wish this could be something simple like an archaeological/anthropological visit with friends, but since you were here last, things have become difficult in the park. It seems as if the cartels and the nativist group, Maya Nuevo, have begun to get into one another’s hair in a serious way.
