He turned to Pillow. “She’d like very much to see you.”
“Why should things be any different now?”
“She has changed for the better.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
The uncomfortable silence following Pillow’s heavy sarcasm ended with the delivery of his drink.
“Thank you, Kia. Nice and chilled, is it? Excellent.”
The professor’s lips puckered as he took a sip, quickly followed by another.
“Has Adrian Hart attempted to see you?” I asked, when the glass returned to the table.
“Several times. But I’ve avoided him so far.”
Pillow finished her beer and stood up.
“I’ll let you two get acquainted while I get some fresh air. When I get back we can talk business.”
The professor sighed after she left.
“I take it mother and daughter don’t get along,” I remarked.
“I should know not to bring it up, but Esme insisted that I try.”
“What happened between them?”
“Pillow pretended throughout her adolescence to forgive the drinking and general lack of maternal affection. It was unhealthy. When she left for university in the U.K. she cut all ties. Apparently she has told you little of her family.”
“We’re not much past the introduction stage.”
Middleditch smiled to himself. He knew his niece somewhat better than that. “What do you know about her father?”
“Nothing.”
“His name is Ivo Mackin, and my sister was his mistress. Ivo was once one of New Zealand’s wealthiest men.”
“Any relation to Wetere Mackin, the All Black fullback?”
The professor’s eyes widened slightly. “One and the same. He played rugger under his Maori moniker, but it made sense to emphasize his three quarters pakeha blood as a businessman. Made his first fortune with shipping containers. But the real money came when he cornered the tin market in Malaysia. Later, he acquired salt water conversion plants in the Middle East. Not bad for a lad from Porirua.”
“I take it he was married.”
Middleditch nodded. “Technically, he still is—to Millicent Praeger-Hyde, the daughter of our former deputy prime minister who gave him his start in business. They have a daughter who was born three days before Penelope’s delivery at the same hospital in Auckland. The newspapers had a field day when Ivo arrived with bouquets for both mothers. It’s one thing for a powerful multimillionaire to cavort discreetly with call girls, quite another to openly acknowledge his mistress and illegitimate daughter. This isn’t France.”
He stopped briefly to signal Kia for another gin, then continued.
“Ivo, being Ivo, claimed not to be fazed by the publicity and soldiered on, overextending his business empire, bullying partners and shareholders alike. He’d become poison to Millicent’s family and colleagues in the upper realms of business. Their ostracism cut deep and wide.
“Over time, his Midas touch deserted him. The tin market collapsed and his desalinization plants in the Emirates were nationalized. His personal fortune, once valued at half a billion dollars, dwindled to a third of that. The final nail in the coffin came five years ago when he was indicted in Australia for his role in a price-fixing scheme that cheated customers and suppliers out of one hundred million dollars. Ivo fought the case and lost, costing him treble damages. Forced to sell his companies, he turned half of the proceeds over to his wife and legitimate daughter. Then, for all practical purposes, he turned his back on the world. He headed to Hawaii before he eventually ended up in Paradise.”
“I don’t follow. Are you saying Mackin is dead?”
“Oh, certainly not,” the professor said, downing his drink. “Even if it were true, Ivo’s sins wouldn’t admit him past heaven’s gates. The wily devil set up a traditional Maori compound in Mount Aspiring National Park.”
“Wouldn’t the government control everything there?”
“There are exceptions. The New Zealand government, through the Waitangi Tribunal, started returning lost ancestral lands to Maori in the 1990s. Ivo used his great-grandfather’s position as chief of the mountain Kāti Māmoe iwi*1 to regain ownership of an isolated valley known as the Land of Tears.”
“Does he have title to it?”
“That’s pretty much the case. Or soon will be. The idea was to have transparent, effective tribal governance of these returned areas. But Ivo wasn’t about to answer to a tribal council. He still had friends in parliament, particularly with the New Zealand First Party, and was personally granted hereditary rights.
“To retain the land and qualify for tax exemptions from Inland Revenue, he’s re-created a community where native customs and values, tikanga Maori, supposedly rule. Ivo brought in gang members, prostitutes, and other questionable types culled from Auckland and other cities for the avowed purpose of rehabilitating them.”
“Do you think it’s legitimate?”
Middleditch swallowed the last of the second drink. Then he edged closer to me.
“I’d never say this to my niece, but I think what her father is doing is a bunch of claptrap. A ruse to have the taxpayers give him an incredibly valuable property. New Zealand already has a Department of Conservation. It doesn’t need a pseudotraditionalist pretending to be guardian of the land. In a few weeks Ivo’s five-year trial will have passed and the federal government will transfer to him full title. Tax-free, no less.”
“Assuming the people he’s brought up there are merely props, what if someone wants to leave the compound?”
“Apparently, few wish to. If a person is expelled or decides to leave, he or she tends to become a lost soul shortly after returning to their old haunts.”
“Are you saying they’re brainwashed?”
“I don’t know what to call it, Mr. Bevan. But something happens in that Maori Shangri-La to lead a person to will his own destruction once outside it.”
I thought of that empty shell of a young man in Wellington with the injured tern.
Pillow’s return to the room interrupted his tale.
“Some things never change,” she said, sitting down. “I went to primary school with those girls. Arataki’s having her eighth child and Betty Mura refuses to file a restraining order against her brutal shit of a husband. I’m glad I left when I did.”
She signaled Kia to bring her another beer.
Turning to her uncle, she said, “Well?”
He pretended not to understand. “What’s that, dear?”
“Have you brought Michael up to date?”
Middleditch hesitated. “I only got to the rise and decline of your father’s far-flung enterprises.”
“Please. Michael has come a long way to help.”
“This is neither the time nor place to discuss the matter.”
He shifted his heavy-lidded eyes reluctantly to me. “For now, I’ll just say Ivo approached me five years ago. He seemed obsessed with James Cook, wanted me to tell him everything I knew about the captain’s last voyage. At one point he casually mentioned having the memoir of a Marine who sailed on the HMS Resolution.”
He signed a chit for his drinks and, getting up to leave, said to me, “I suggest you visit the Turnbull Library this afternoon to conduct research on Maori mysticism and magic. You might also look for an article concerning a deathbed confession by a shipmate of Samuel Gibson’s. The sailor’s name escapes me, but the article was in the London Gazetteer, circa 1790 or thereabouts. You’ll find it most interesting, perhaps even helpful. Then join Penelope and Hart at my office at ten in the morning, when I’ll have more to say on the matter.”
I glanced at Pillow. The high neck of her blouse had slipped an inch or two. The mottled pink-and-gray skin that was visible seemed to pulse in time with the beating of her heart.
It suddenly occurred to me that our search might have more to do with finding her father than tracking down Hart and the journals.
But if that was the cas
e, why drag me along? I hadn’t traveled eight thousand miles to be involved in a family-reunion project—particularly since my personal experience in such matters has been somewhat mixed.
Of course, as things developed, getting kith and kin to reconcile turned out to be the least of my troubles.
* * *
*1 tribe
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning, I took a cab to the National Library. Designed in the same brutal architectural style that had disfigured much of central London in the 1970s, the four-story cement building covered an entire block on Molesworth Street.
Recent renovations to the interior, however, had produced a charming environment worthy of the remarkable collections within it. The most noteworthy tenant was the Alexander Turnbull Library, a billion-dollar collection that was the definitive source on Pacific exploration and Maori culture.
All I knew about the indigenous people of New Zealand was that, due to their skill as warriors, they were never conquered by the British. In the modern era, that warlike nature naturally evolved into rugby prowess. But I was ignorant of other aspects of their unique culture, especially the hold that the supernatural still had on their daily lives.
I entered the Independent Reading Room, settling at a search station under a huge mural portraying the Maori creation story. Dour purple, brown, and gray swirls contrasted in a sinuous pattern with bright orange and lemon colors representing the evolution of the universe from a formless void to the world of light. Beneath the image, I turned on the computer and began searching under the general category of “Maoridom.”
The name Elsdon Best kept cropping up. Best’s bio said he was an ethnologist who was the last of a small number of scholars in the twentieth century who had observed traditional Maori customs and beliefs as they were before the modern era. A treatise he’d presented to the Auckland Institute in 1901 titled “Maori Magic” looked interesting. I went to the front desk to request it and copies of the London Gazetteer for 1790 that Middleditch had recommended.
The ginger-haired librarian wore thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses that covered half her face. Her bulky, dark blue cardigan sweater boasted a “Save the Whales” button.
“Can I help you?” she asked indifferently.
I told her what I wanted. She called down to the archival stacks for it to be brought up.
She glanced at the claddagh ring on my right index finger.
“You Irish?”
“Nope. American with green blood.”
This produced a smile and slightly crooked teeth.
“My granddad was a Yank Marine stationed in Welly during the war. Fell in love with my grandmother and in 1946 came back just like he promised.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“Yeah. Granddad missed the States, though. He said that living permanently in New Zealand was like going to a party and dancing all night with your mother. But having grabbed him once, Granny wouldn’t tempt fate by letting him return for a visit. The police band played ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ at his funeral.”
She got a little misty.
“My name’s Beryl, by the way. Beryl Cowper.”
“And I’m Mike Bevan.”
We shook hands. Hers was soft and delicate. Before I could learn more about her, a young scholar with a pointy beard demanded help logging on to a site. Beryl excused herself to help him.
While waiting for the treatise to be brought up, I perused the document sign-out sheet. In addition to a dozen Maori names and thirty or more English, Scottish, and Irish ones, there was Mr. Fong from Fuzhou, China; Miss Aja Bek from Zandvoort, the Netherlands; Madame Adriana Hruska of Budapest; and Dr. Ion Paleologue, lately of Bridgetown, Barbados, following reassignment from Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania.
While absentmindedly pondering why Dr. Paleologue was exiled to a Caribbean Isle, I noticed another name that nearly froze my esophagus.
Midway down the column, dated the previous week, was the semilegible signature of William Bartow, town and country not included.
I shoved the ledger under Beryl’s nose.
“Do you remember seeing this man? It’s important.”
“So we can see,” the pointy beard huffed.
“Just a moment,” Beryl said, adjusting her glasses to study the ledger. There was a long pause before she looked back to me.
“I vaguely remember him.”
Another, shorter pause. “He seemed a rather odd duck. Quite keen on Captain Cook. He had us bring up several items from the stacks.”
“Thanks,” I told her. “If you see him again, please don’t let on that I was here. We’re rivals when it comes to eighteenth-century exploration. You know how it is.”
“Sure thing,” she said, returning my wink as an assistant appeared carrying a manila folder for her. He had a concerned look on his face.
“Sorry, Beryl,” he said, “but all twelve issues of the London Gazetteer for 1790 are missing.”
Another eyeglass adjustment followed.
“Right. Thank you, James.”
Then to me, “I’m sorry, but it seems that particular year has been misfiled. I’ll contact you as soon as we locate it. Please sign the checkout ledger and include your local address.”
I left my signature and the name of the Duxton Hotel thirty lines below Bartow’s scrawl and returned to my chair in the Reading Room with the Elsdon Best document. Glancing at the first page of the loose-leaf treatise, I was surprised to see it hadn’t been typed, but was handwritten in the author’s elegant cursive style.
I began to read.
Deaths from makutu, or witchcraft, were numerous in the days of yore, and still occur even in these times of the pakeha Europeans. Tapu, roughly meaning a spiritual restriction or implied prohibition, and makutu were practically the laws of Maoridom.
The old-time Maori had to carefully guard himself against magic rites, against infringing the laws of tapu, because a hair of his head, a shred of his clothing, a portion of the earth whereon he had left his footprint would, in the hands of an enemy, be sufficient to bring about his death.
In every walk of life, during every action, whether eating, drinking, sleeping, or taking his walks abroad, whether among friends or foes, death walked side by side with him, awaiting the opportunity to strike him down and dispatch his spirit to the gloomy underworld—the Po, or realm of darkness, of oblivion.
In the early part of the recent century a belief developed among the Maori of the southern iwi that the spirit of an Hawaiian god which, fleeing its enemies, took refuge in their mountains….
“Looking for this?” a vaguely familiar voice said from behind my chair.
A tattered, canvas-backed journal suddenly appeared next to my right hand on the table.
I jerked my head around to find Adrian Hart looking down at me with a stage conjurer’s grin. He’d lost a considerable amount of weight. His eyes, underlined by deep shadows, gleamed unnaturally.
“And this!”
The second Gibson journal joined the first.
I leapt from the chair, shouting so loud that Beryl Cowper, seeming more than a little perplexed at our joyous reunion, hissed for me to quiet down from across the room.
“How on earth did you get them?” I whispered, leading Hart by the arm to a corner near the staircase.
“Elementary, really,” he replied, with a feigned cheerfulness. “I assumed Bartow would eventually turn up here, but I’d almost given up hope until last week when he emerged, Orpheus-like, from the stacks in the basement. I watched him pick up his briefcase at the front counter. Then I followed him onto a parking lot off Molesworth Street, surprising him as he unlocked his car door.”
“Bartow didn’t put up a fight?” I asked, as we sat on a sofa so small that our knees touched.
“What, that febrile jellyfish? He must have realized long ago the futility of profiting from the theft. Indeed, I felt rather sorry for him. Gave him an earful, of course, citing all the trouble he’d caused us
while destroying his own reputation. He’ll probably go on to pilfer the Magna Carta someday, but I hadn’t the heart to turn him in to the police.”
“You must be joking!”
“Oh, I’ll let them know I recovered our property, but what’s the point of inflicting further damage on the poor sod? I squeezed the price of my airline ticket out of him, leaving him just enough to do his mischief somewhere else.”
“But what about Holt House? And Clive Sexton? They’ve suffered quite a black eye because of him.”
“Their reputations aren’t my concern. They hired the bloody thief and, along with their investigators, did damn little to search for him. Soon enough the insurance company will be demanding the trifle amount it paid for my loss. Before they come calling, I’ll continue to use their money to seek the third journal.”
I was bothered by Hart’s lack of ethics. And surprised, too, that he’d let the man who had caused us such misery get off scot-free. Bartow, unable to secure legitimate employment in the only profession he knew, would certainly continue to wreak havoc on the notoriously naïve community of antiquarian book lovers.
But having Gibson’s first journal in my hands again made it easy to forgive Hart’s puzzling decision. After all, he’d caught the fish; maybe it was his right to toss him back after recovering the goods.
“We must tell Pillow,” I said. “She’s been terribly worried about you.”
“Not to worry. I just came from seeing her at the Wellesley. How do you think I found you here?”
As we stood to leave, I said, “Thank you, Adrian. I had my doubts about you.”
He seemed touched by this. A bit of color returned to his face and his smile seemed genuine.
“Indeed, Bevan. You aren’t the first to mark me as a cad. I’ve sharp corners, but I’m a good mate when it comes to trouble.”
He extended his hand and I took it.
Now that we were bosom buddies, he suggested that a walk in the fresh air was what we needed to get better acquainted. His hotel was on the way to mine.
“Sure,” I said.
* * *
Left Turn at Paradise Page 8
