by Lyn Hamilton
I had seen rooms of ceramics, textiles, and metal-work made by these peoples and had been quite overwhelmed by the artistry and technique they had shown. I had even seen rooms filled with Moche erotic ceramics, by and large couples in positions I can only describe as anatomically challenging. Some of these ceramics had depicted one member of the twosome as a death skull and skeleton. The guard on the room had told me this meant the Moche thought too much sex would kill you. The current status of my love life being what it was, I had decided this was not something I needed to spend much time worrying about.
As entertaining as my museum tour might have been, the point was that if I were asked the question, Can you tell late Moche from Lambayeque? the answer quite clearly was no.
The question Neal posed took me completely by surprise.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about running a business,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “Paying bills, wages, dealing with government authorities, that sort of thing? The point is, I’m an archaeologist, not a businessman, and all the organizational stuff I have to do is getting me down. I’ve got some really good lab people, good workers on the site, but no one to keep the whole show running smoothly.”
Did I know something about running a business? Of course I did. I’d been running my antiques and design business for about fifteen years, with only one interruption. I needed to approach this with a certain amount of caution, of course. I’d decided that the only way to survive as Rebecca MacCrimmon was to keep her background as close as possible to my own. That way, I would be less likely to get caught out in a contradiction. Rebecca was from Kansas; her driver’s license said so, and I had only passed through Kansas once. That one I would have to be very careful about. But running a business? Who was to say Rebecca MacCrimmon didn’t have business experience?
“I have a fair amount of business experience,” I replied carefully in my best Spanish. “I had my own business for a number of years. Retail. I sold furniture. I didn’t have a lot of staff, but I had some, and they always got paid. The bills did too. I am also accustomed to dealing with customs officials and agents, bankers, tax people, accountants, and shippers. I can honestly say that I never missed a shipping deadline through a fault of my own.” I paused. “Although I’ll admit it was close a few times.” I laughed.
“You’re hired,” he said.
“I am?” I replied in surprise.
“Sure,” he said. “Your Spanish is good, Lucas says you can be trusted—trusted absolutely, actually— and you can take the work I hate off my hands. That’s good enough for me.” He laughed. “Lucas says in his letter he is asking me for a favor. Don’t tell him, but I think he may have been doing me one!
“You know the terms—transportation to the site, room and board once you get to the site. I know it’s not much. Will you do it? Do we have a deal?” he said, extending his hand across the table. I took it.
“We have a deal. When do I start?”
He spread a map out on the table. “We’re working at a site here,” he said, pointing to what appeared to be a blank spot on the map, “between Trujillo and Chiclayo. Early to middle Moche site. Showing a lot of promise. The closest town is Campina Vieja.”
Good old Lucas, I thought: right to Campina Vieja. I must have started, though, because Neal hesitated for a few seconds before continuing. “You can fly to Trujillo, and then you’ll have to find the Vulkano bus station and take the Trujillo/Chiclayo bus. The buses run almost hourly, and they’ll stop at Campina Vieja if you ask them.
“I’m flying back to Trujillo tonight, so why don’t you fly out tomorrow sometime and have a look around Trujillo—there’s some interesting Moche and Chimu sites to see there—then take the bus the following morning. I’ll be in town for much of the day and I’ll keep an eye on the bus stop. Just sit yourself down on the bench if I’m not there when you arrive: I’ll be along and drive you out to the site. We’ve taken over an old hacienda and set up operations there. You can meet the rest of the team, including the boss, Hilda, when you get there.
“Now let’s go and see about getting you an airline ticket,” he grinned, “before you change your mind. What do you prefer to be called, by the way?”
I almost made a mistake, I felt so relaxed in his presence, but I caught myself in time. As I hesitated he said, “Do you prefer Rebecca or something like Becky?”
“Rebecca,” I said. “Definitely Rebecca.” After Neal and I had parted company, as the sun began its rapid descent into darkness, as it does this close to the equator, I paid a final visit to the place where, according to Rob Luczka, the man I had called Lizard, Ramon Cervantes, had lived. It had not been all that difficult tracking the place down, there being only one Ramon Cervantes listed in Callao. As I had on two previous occasions, I hailed a colectivo, that particularly Peruvian mode of public transit, a private minibus or van that plies a regular route, a sign in its front and side windows indicating its destination. In addition to the driver, there is an assistant who opens the sliding door and signals the number of empty seats with his fingers. The van barely stops to pick you up and drop you off, but it’s cheap, and it gets you there, weaving its way through Lima’s appalling traffic, pollution, and noise.
Ramon Cervantes, I was now certain, was not a wealthy man, living as he had on a dark little street in a part of Lima out near the airport that I would characterize as decidedly modest, a neighborhood that reeked of rancid cooking oil and thwarted aspirations. The streets, unlike many of the streets in the old part of central Lima, were paved, although badly rutted and potholed. Ramon had lived in a flat that one reached by going up a dark and dirty staircase running between a malodorous restaurant and an engine repair shop. At street level, the visitor was overwhelmed by the dinginess of the location, but if one stepped back, across the street, one could see, on the second floor, vestiges of Lima’s colonial past in the large windows fronted by wrought iron railings, and the swirling plaster wreaths and garlands along the roofline above them. The shutters on the apartment to the left of the staircase were closed tight.
On my first visit, shortly after my arrival in Lima, I had climbed the dark steps to a second-floor landing. There were two apartments, one on either side of the staircase. On the door to the right was a little name-plate, not Cervantes, and on the other, a black ribbon tied to the door knocker. I knocked, tentatively at first, then louder. No one answered, and there was no sound from within. I waited outside for a few minutes, watched closely by a Chinese woman in a little chifa, or Chinese restaurant, across the street.
On my second visit, I was greeted by the same silence and lack of an answer. This time I took a seat in the chifa across the road where I could watch the staircase, and ordered a beer. After a few minutes, the Chinese proprietor came over to my table. “Who are you looking for?” she asked. I told her I was looking for Senora Cervantes.
“That tart,” she said. “Senora Cervantes you call her. Very fancy. She’d like that. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us, always putting on airs. But around here she’s just Carla. Or sometimes just the tart.” She used the word fulana. Spanish has as many words for those who ply the world’s oldest profession as we do in English. “She’s in there,” she went on. “Won’t answer the door. Worried it will be the landlord. She can’t pay the rent, you know. Or her brother-in-law, who blames her for what happened. Her husband’s dead.”
“I heard,” I said. “Too bad.”
“Too bad for her, that’s for certain. Maybe not for him. For him, perhaps, a blessing. Left her with three kids. She’s sent them away, you know, to her sister in Trujillo. She shouldn’t have kids. No patience with them. Too much of a child herself. Took all their money, did that husband of hers, what there was of it, and went off somewhere far, Canada I think, and then up and died.”
Clearly my newfound friend didn’t miss much, and didn’t mind whom she told about it either.
“Why would he do that, I wonder,” I said.
She sno
rted. “Die, you mean? Or go to Canada? The only thing to wonder about is how he got enough money to go there in the first place, and why he didn’t go sooner. Found her with someone. His own brother. A fine man, Ramon Cervantes. He didn’t deserve that, I can tell you. A real tart, that one.”
Dear me, I thought, poor Lizard. But how does finding your wife in flagrante delicto with your brother get you to an auction in Toronto and a gory and premature death in my storage room?
The woman from the chifa had more to tell me. She paused only long enough to get me another beer, unasked for. Buying from her was, I gathered, how I was paying for this information.
“But it’s no use feeling sorry for Ramon, is there? No use feeling sorry for the dead. It’s his brother I feel sorry for now: Jorge. Consumed with guilt. Just consumed with it. Drinks like a fish at the bar down the street, then comes and stands under the window watching for her. I call her a tart, but he calls her a witch, a bruja. Claims she bewitched both him and his brother, made them do bad things. His wife has left him now. Taken his kids too. Him, I feel sorry for.
“There,” she said, pointing to a young man, obviously drunk and disheveled, passing in front of the chifa. “Jorge.” We watched him lurch by. She was right: He looked pathetic indeed. A few moments later, when Jorge could no longer be seen, she went on. “As for her, when she does come out, she’s not dressed like a widow, that I can tell you. Disgraceful. Lots of loud colors: Pink’s her favorite. If she’s shedding tears, it’s for herself, and not for him. She’ll do all right, of course. Men like to look after her. First her father doted on her, then Ramon, the poor man. Not good enough for her, was he? A good man with a steady government job would be enough for most of us, wouldn’t it?”
“She goes out these days, does she?” I asked in what I hoped was a disinterested tone. The woman didn’t answer. I ordered a cheese sandwich to go with the beer. It was the cheapest bribe on the menu.
“At night,” she said, setting the grilled cheese sandwich in front of me. “After the landlord closes up his office down the street and goes home to Montericco. Then she usually goes out. About eight or nine.”
And so it was that I was back in Callao at night. I was a little uneasy about being out alone in this part of town, but the chifa was still open, and I ordered a coffee and a creme caramel while I waited to see what would happen.
Around seven-thirty, my newfound Chinese friend nudged my arm and pointed to a rather rotund middle-aged man heading down the street. As he passed the Cervantes residence, I saw him look up for a moment or two at the darkened apartment. “The landlord,” she whispered. “Going home. Now watch the shutters carefully.” I did, and a few minutes later I could see that a dim light had been turned on inside. The chifa owner gave me a knowing look.
About three quarters of an hour later, I heard, rather than saw, someone on the stairs, and a young woman entered the street.
“The tart,” the Chinese woman hissed, tossing her head in the direction of the woman. I quickly paid the bill and followed the young woman.
As my informant had predicted, Carla Cervantes was not dressed for a funeral. Instead she was wearing a pink dress, sleeveless, with narrow straps and a neckline that swooped rather low. The dress was, in my opinion, a little unfashionable, and more than a little tight on her, although I’ll admit I’d give my eyeteeth to be able to look like her in that dress. I could not help but note that all the men in the street gaped at her as she went by, and not one of them took any notice whatsoever of me, despite the fact that I was the only gringa on that street at that moment, testament, indeed, to the allure of Sefiora Cervantes.
At the end of the street was a busy avenue, and after a moment or two, Carla flagged down a colectivo headed for Miraflores. I immediately hailed a cab and asked the driver, a young man in jeans and a T-shirt advertising a rock group I’d never heard of, possibly the one on the tape in the car, to follow that colectivo. He jumped on the accelerator in his enthusiasm for the project, and whipped into the traffic, horn blaring, bouncing both me and his audiotape collection from side to side in the backseat like dice in a box. From time to time, he would turn to grin at me and quite unnecessarily point out the colectivo only one or two car lengths ahead. I held on to the door handle for dear life.
The colectivo turned off a side road, took a couple of backstreets, then turned down a ramp that led to what Limenos call the Ditch, a sunken expressway that cuts diagonally across the face of the city. A few minutes later, the colectivo pulled off another ramp and then dropped Carla at the door to one of the swankier hotels in Miraflores, in itself one of the poshest parts of Lima. I followed her through the glass doors into the hotel bar to the left of the main door, and took a seat at a table three away, but with a clear view of Carla and the man she had obviously come to meet.
He was much older than she was, sixty perhaps to her late twenty-something. He was not Spanish. He looked European to me, in the way he dressed, although with a Spanish rock video blasting from a large screen at one end of the bar, I could not hear him speak, until he called over the waiter and ordered a martini for his lady friend. French, I decided. I ordered a glass of white wine, and tried to look as if I belonged there. Surveillance, I would have to say, is not something in which I have any expertise.
I do like to think, however, that after fifteen years in retail, I can read body language pretty well, and this particular conversation, although I could not hear it and did not dare move closer, was an interesting one. The man, dressed in a tan suede jacket over charcoal-grey slacks, a yellow shirt, and a rather stylish cravat, leaned well back in his chair at first, distancing himself from his companion and keeping his face in relative shadow. One hand rested on his knee; the other he kept well to his side, between his thigh and the arm of the chair. Throughout most of the conversation, which lasted almost an hour, his body language said that he was not very interested in what Carla had to say.
She, on the other hand, was trying very hard to be persuasive. I had the feeling she had a proposal to make to him, and that she did not know him that well. First there was a lovely smile as she leaned toward him, then, when that appeared to have no impact, dainty tears and blowing of nose into a lace hanky. Still the man remained unmoved. Pouting was next, and then as a last resort she wriggled just enough to let one pink strap slide off her shoulder. The man leaned forward and smiled. It was not, I thought, a nice smile, rather one of victory, or perhaps anticipation.
Through all of this, I nursed my one little glass of white wine, and tried to look as if I were waiting for someone, glancing at my watch from time to time, and pretending to be a little impatient. The price of wine by the glass was so outrageous in this hotel that I had no intention of ordering another, no matter how long the two of them sat there. I ate every peanut from the little crystal bowl on the table, determined to eke out my time there and get my money’s worth. Being alone in a foreign country without the comforting presence of a credit card is an experience I would not wish to repeat.
Shortly after the shoulder strap incident, it was apparently time to leave. Carla’s companion signed the bill, thereby indicating he could afford to be a guest in this hotel. It was only then that I noticed that his right hand, which he used to hold the bill while he signed with his left, was missing the little and ring fingers.
They left the bar together. I didn’t really need to follow them any farther. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where they were headed. But I followed them just the same, at least as far as the elevator. As I went past their table, I tried to read the signature on the bill, before the waiter swept it away, but the light was too low and the signature appeared to me to be illegible. I could see the room number quite clearly, however: room 1236. I saw the two of them enter the elevator, then to confirm my suspicions, I watched the numbers over the door. It went directly to the twelfth floor. The widow Cervantes appeared to be dealing with her grief quite well.
I left the hotel and looked for a colect
ivo to take me back downtown, catching as I did so a brief glimpse of a man standing to the side of the entrance-way, who slipped into the darkness when I looked his way. Although I couldn’t say with any certainty, I could have sworn it was Ramon’s brother, Jorge.
The question was, what now? In my impulsive and one might well say ill-advised journey to solve the nasty situation in which I found myself, I had only two clues: a name, that of Ramon Cervantes, whose widow was now upstairs behaving badly—one could only assume—with a man I’d never seen before, and whom I had no reason to suspect had anything whatsoever to do with all this; and a little piece of jewelry that was probably genuine Moche. I could continue to follow the name—that is, I could wait and see where, and with whom, the widow Cervantes went next; I could go and search out Jorge, to see what light he could shed on what had happened to his brother; or I could follow the artifact, take the job in Moche territory and see what I could find.
I chose to follow the artifact. As some would say, when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. Personally, I prefer a line penned by the poet Robert Browning: Everyone soon or late comes round by Rome, he wrote. Rome, in this instance, was a little town in northern Peru called Campina Vieja.
