The Antiquities Hunter

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  “Why should I, baby? You weren’t very nice to me outside just now. Maybe if you were nice to me . . .”

  Rose made a rude noise.

  “Fifteen hundred,” said Greg over the raspberry.

  “Fifteen?” echoed Bridges. “You’re pullin’ my leg—the whole lot’s not worth more than about three hundred fifty.”

  “I can’t let it go for any less than fifteen hundred.”

  “Nine hundred,” said Rose.

  The negotiations went on for a while with increased antagonism between Rose and Bridges. Rodney chewed his fingernails, Padilla offered him a nail file from a neat little pocket kit, Frakes checked his sidearm, and I tried to keep track of the conversation in the other room. Then Bridges won the bid by offering eight hundred in cash and an IOU for two-fifty. It was a deal Rose protested loudly and belligerently, before settling into fitful grumbles.

  “It was nice doing—” Greg began the code phrase that would send Padilla and Frakes into action.

  Bridges cut him off with a laugh. “Now, baby girl, let me set things right. I just happen to have something with me that I think you’re both gonna love.”

  There was a moment of relative quiet punctuated by the sounds of a briefcase being opened, then Bridges said, “Well, what do you make of that, my friends?”

  “That’s part of a bowl or vase, isn’t it?” asked Rose. “This isn’t local craftsmanship.”

  “Right, you are. Give the girl a prize.”

  Greg snorted. “C’mon, Bridges, who’re you trying to snow, here? This is some sort of fantasy art piece—a reproduction—”

  “Nope. This sucker’s old. Ask me how old, baby,” he prompted Rose.

  “Okay, pops, I’ll play your silly game—how old?”

  “Call me Ted, or I’m gonna pack up my artifacts and strut on outta here.”

  “Oh, for crap’s sake.” Greg growled.

  “It’s okay, let him have his moment. How old is that bowl shard, Ted, my love?”

  “Much better. I figure this guy dates from about 400 C.E.”

  “How much do you want for it?” asked Rose.

  “Five grand.”

  Rose uttered a sharp bark of laughter. “It’s just a shard! Probably from a midden. Maybe if you had the whole bowl . . . Besides, I don’t carry that kind of money on me.”

  “If you did,” Greg told her, “you should keep it.” To Bridges he said, “You’re full of it. There’s no way this is authentic.”

  “Where’d you get it?” Rose asked.

  “Why don’t you and I go off someplace private where I can tell you?”

  “Why don’t you two get a room?” Greg asked caustically. “I need to get out of here. I got another meeting in Winslow tonight.”

  “Sure thing,” Bridges said, and the conversation flagged again amid the rustling of fabric and paper.

  The briefcase snapped shut.

  “Nice doing business with you,” Ted said, and Padilla and Frakes went off like a couple of firecrackers. Rodney Hammermill and I were left staring at each other.

  “Does it count,” I asked, “if Greg doesn’t say it?”

  “At this point,” said Rodney, “that’s academic.”

  Several seconds passed during which Ted Bridges tried to coerce Rose into dropping by his place for a drink. Greg was silent; according to plan, he should be on his way out the bathroom window right about now.

  Then our headphones exploded with the sound of the cavalry arriving in full force.

  “Federal officers!” barked Frakes. “Get back inside!”

  The interrogation lasted over two hours. Ted Bridges refused to tell the agents where he got the roughly six-by-seven-inch chunk of colorful paintwork that inhabited a padded well in his briefcase, but he did roll over on a handful of other small-time dealers when promised lenience if he cooperated with the authorities. In the end, he was jailed on charges of dealing in stolen property and remanded to the Phoenix PD pending a hearing.

  Now you’d think that after an entire day of catching bad guys, an agent would want to get away from it all. Uh-uh. Over a late dinner in the Indian restaurant situated conveniently next door to the business hotel in which the NPS housed its agents, Rose waited only until a pair of sweet lassis arrived before pulling a photograph of the vase fragment out of her bag and propping it up against the sugar bowl. It showed a curved piece of ceramic bearing the image of a masked or painted character in a wild feathered headdress blowing into a truly bizarre-looking instrument.

  “What is that thing?” I asked.

  “A conch shell,” Rose answered absently, her eyes on the photo. She shook her head and addressed the shard: “What were you doing in Ted Bridges’s briefcase, my friend?”

  Perversely, I almost expected it to answer.

  “It’s valuable, isn’t it?” I asked. My eyes strayed to the kitchen doors through which I had high hopes of our veggie samosas appearing at any moment.

  “If it’s authentic, you betcha.”

  “What are the chances it is?”

  “In all the time we’ve been dogging Bridges’s tracks, I’ve never heard of him dealing fakes.”

  “And if it’s authentic, then what? Why is it significant?”

  The arrival of our dinners delayed the answer to my question, and I was glorying in the flavor of a mighty fine goat vindaloo by the time she said, “I’ve seen work like this before, Tink. But not in Arizona. Odds are this is from Chiapas.”

  “Mexico?” I mumbled around a bite of spicy heaven.

  She nodded. “The question is: how did it end up in the hands of a small-time dealer like Bridges?”

  “I feel another interrogation coming on.”

  Rose grimaced. “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m supposed to be an antiquities buyer, not an undercover cop.”

  “So, get Agent Frakes to do it for you. Remember, he lives for interrogations.”

  She laughed and slipped the photo back into her bag. “Well, I’m sure it will be a subject of discussion at our debriefing tomorrow morning.”

  It was, in fact, the main topic of discussion at the debriefing, which was held at the Phoenix area NPS office with Ellen Robb conferenced in from San Francisco.

  “I want to question Bridges again,” Rose told her. “But I’m not sure I want to blow my cover to do it.”

  “We did talk to him again,” said Frakes. “He was uncooperative.”

  “He was a real jackass,” Padilla corrected. “Flip, arrogant—it was as if he was convinced we couldn’t touch him.”

  “Oh, we can touch him,” said Frakes. He cracked his knuckles as if in anticipation.

  Greg shook his head. “Fat lot of good that will do if we can’t get him to roll over on his source for this Mesoamerican piece.”

  Ellen’s long sigh was clearly audible over the conference phone. “What are our options?”

  “We take him to trial with what we’ve got and keep working on him, I guess,” Greg said, sounding less than hopeful.

  I glanced at Rose. She had tuned out, her eyes focused on something I doubted was even in the room with us. But no, wait . . . there it was, a brown spider practicing her tatting maneuvers between the vanes of the vertical blinds.

  “Or,” Rose said, “we could try a little bit more deception.”

  “Huh?” said Padilla.

  Rose turned to look at him. “Maybe Bridges won’t open up to a government agent. But he might wax prideful and boast of his doings to someone he wants to impress.”

  “Like Stella Vasquez?” I guessed.

  “I don’t see—” Greg began, but Rose came to her feet on a surge of palpable electrical energy, and waved him down.

  “Hear me out, Greg. Right now he’s sitting in a holding cell awaiting legal counsel. Great. Why shouldn’t Stella Vasquez be waiting in the cell next door? Or maybe catch him for a moment at the DA’s office.”

  Frakes perked up (it was subtle, but I’d swear I saw his nostrils flare),
and Padilla said, “Not bad, Agent Delgado.”

  Greg frowned. “Could work. Ellen? What’s your call?”

  “Sounds like a plan. Figure out what approach works best, then do it.”

  There was only one flaw in our “do it” scenario, which was that we’d calculated without the solvency of Ted Bridges and the efficiency of his lawyer. Rose arrived in the PPD detention block to find that Bridges had been released on bail that morning.

  “I swear,” Rose told me as we sat in her rental car, trying to regroup, “that guy is as slippery as a weasel in axle grease.”

  “Nothing to be done?” I asked.

  “Research the piece to see if we can establish provenance. Some collection or field cache might be missing half a vase. Other than that, all I can do is write up my deposition and wait until the hearing to testify.”

  “Uh, pardon me if I’m missing something, but wasn’t that the outcome you were actually hoping for when we came out here?” I said. “Quick bust; good arrest; home again jiggety-jig, news at eleven?”

  Rose speared me with a hunter’s gaze. “It was. Before Bridges waved that potsherd under our noses. That piece of ceramic potentially elevates this case from the bush leagues to the majors.”

  “Potentially?”

  “If he bought it off another dealer, okay—not so much. But if it’s from a new hoard or if it was stolen from a major cache . . .”

  “Home run?” I surmised.

  “Grand slam. Stealing bits and bones within the US of A is one thing. Smuggling them across the border from Latin America is a whole new ballgame.” Rose’s fingers beat a war tattoo on the steering wheel. “I have an idea. As far as Ted Bridges knows, I’m just a spunky li’l ole antiquities buyer. I’ve already established my interest in the vase and anything like it. What if I were to pay him a visit?”

  “You mean what if we were to pay him a visit, right?”

  She started the engine and put the rented Passat wagon in gear. “If I can see what else he’s got, maybe even buy something off him, it’ll be easier to establish provenance and find out where these artifacts are coming from.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Why not?”

  “No reason. But shouldn’t you let someone back at sting central know what we’re up to?”

  She looked both ways and pulled out of the PPD parking lot, grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, now where’d be the fun in that?”

  I knew she was just yanking my chain. I took out my cell phone. “I’m calling for backup. We’re going to tell ‘daddy’ where we’re going and who’s gonna be there, like good little girls.”

  “Honestly, Tink, you have no sense of adventure.”

  “I have every sense of adventure, but my daddy didn’t raise an idiot—well, okay, maybe he did, but not about police work. Never go into a ‘situation’—”

  “Without adequate backup,” she finished. “I know, I know. 555-0483. That’s the agency dispatcher. Give him or her the case ID, responding agents, and location. And, just for the record, you are a responding agent.”

  “Woo-wee,” I said dryly, and dialed the number.

  The dispatcher on shift was a perky-sounding young man named Clive, who was only too happy to forward our information to all appropriate parties and who didn’t even giggle when I told him he was receiving this call from agent-in-training Gina Miyoko.

  “You know where to find this guy Bridges?” I asked Rose as I hung up and pocketed my cell phone.

  “He’s got a more or less legitimate antique business out in Surprise.”

  “Surprise?”

  “A half-eaten little township west of Phoenix proper. It’s right next door to El Mirage. Hence, the surprise, I guess.”

  In less time than I expected, given the sprawling nature of the Phoenix area, we arrived in Surprise and found ourselves tooling along West Santa Fe Drive, paralleling a set of railroad tracks that had an old elementary school song running through my head (“On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe-e-e-e!”).

  Ted Bridges’s antique shop was quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks from the more prosperous commercial section of town. The shop itself was an artful little adobe that would have looked much more at home in Sedona. Rose parked the Passat in the empty parking lot in front of the adobe and we got out to take a look around. The shop was closed, so we circled it to enter the sandy courtyard in back looking for any sign of Ted Bridges.

  There was none. The place was quiet except for bird twitters from the cacti and the distant sound of traffic. A breeze played lazily with dust in the courtyard, making little eddies on the cobbles.

  Bridges’s vehicle—a custom-painted Jeep Rubicon—was parked in the detached barn-cum-garage across from the shop. The garage door was open. The two-car garage took up only half of the building. The remainder might be storage or living quarters.

  I took a couple of sideways steps and laid my hand on the hood. Still warm.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he’s around.”

  “Unless he has a second car,” Rose observed, nodding toward the empty half of the garage.

  I glanced over at the second bay. “Could be, but I doubt it. There are no tire tracks on that side and that pile of cardboard boxes is sticking right out where a car would hit it.”

  “Motorcycle?”

  “Then there’d be an oil slick the size of Tempe. If it’s a Harley anyway.”

  Rose nodded and pointed. A steep adobe-and-brick staircase at the rear of the antique shop led to a second floor.

  Could be an apartment.

  She pulled the scrunchie from her braid and fluffed the yard or so of black silk she called hair. I grinned and ran my fingers through my own shorter do, causing utter mayhem. We moved to the bottom of the staircase and mounted it single file, Rose first. There was a mission bell hanging beside the brightly painted door, which she rang. When nothing happened, she rang it a second time then banged on the door.

  “Hey, Teddy Bear!” she called. “It’s Stella Vasquez. Remember me?”

  Still no answer.

  Rose tried the door. It opened easily. “Hey, Te-ddy!” She called, poking her head in. “It’s Stella! I’ve come up to check out your potsherds.”

  When no one answered, we made a quick tour of the four rooms that made up the apartment, then went down into the antique shop below. No sign of Ted Bridges.

  “Let’s try the barn,” Rose said, peering across the yard at the other building from the backdoor of the shop.

  “You know, we made enough noise coming in here to wake the deaf. Unless that little barn has incredible insulation, Bridges should have heard us.”

  “So he’s avoiding us, or he’s not here, or he’s lying in wait, or . . .” I reached for my Taurus, which was in my fanny pack.

  Rose stopped me. “If he’s just not sure about us and is being cautious, that is not going to put his mind at ease.”

  “Point taken.”

  Instead of my gun, I pulled out a lip gloss and wetted my legitimately parched lips. Then we made our way to the little adobe barn, calling loudly for Bridges as we went. The external rear door, which was partially concealed by a stubby juniper, was closed but not locked.

  We entered cautiously. There was no one lying in wait, but the large storage room with its floor-to-ceiling shelving had clearly been tossed. The floor was littered with debris that included broken pots, boxes, packing material, and splintered furniture.

  We drew our weapons in wordless unison, senses at full alert. I fought the urge to rub the sudden goose bumps from my bare arms. We made a careful sweep of the room. There was still no sign of Bridges.

  I was working my way along the back wall when the linoleum beneath my sandaled feet made a very peculiar sound for a concrete foundation. I stopped and leaned on the spot, feeling Rose’s eyes on me.

  Squork! the patch of floor repeated.

  I holstered the Taurus and got down on my hands and knees. This close to the linoleum tiles, I coul
d see that one of them wasn’t quite flat and flush. I pried at it with my too-short fingernails. It came up easily and revealed—ta-da!—a metal bezel with an inset ring.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” murmured Rose practically in my ear. “A trap door?”

  Indeed. And a staircase steep enough to be called a ladder descending into a dimly lit lower level. The sweet perfume of cool, dank earth wafted up from below.

  “I’ll go down,” Rose told me. “You stay topside.”

  “Excuse me? I believe I’m the bodyguard here.”

  “And I’m the government agent.”

  “You go down,” I said. “I’ll be at your back. Looking up,” I added when her mouth popped open to protest.

  I kept my word too, making my way down behind her, sidesaddle, hyperaware of the Caddie wire pendant tapping against my breast bone . . . and of my utter vulnerability on this ladder. When Rose reached the bottom, she turned, sweeping her gun in a wide arc.

  “Oh, damn,” she said and stepped out of sight to my right.

  I came the rest of the way down in a hurry and reached the bottom to see Rose heading across the underground room, which ran the full length and width of the building above. I followed, and was not surprised to find her bending over a body—Ted Bridges’s body.

  I slipped the gun back into my fanny pack. “Is he—?”

  She nodded, her fingertips to his neck. “Dead. Gunshot to the head.”

  I squatted on the floor beside her, feeling strangely but predictably numb. This was not the first time I’d been party to the discovery of a corpse.

  “Please tell me,” I said, “this isn’t something that happens often in your line of work.”

  Chapter 8

  The Trail Goes South

  While Rose called in our backup, I gave Ted Bridges’s treasure cave a thorough perusal, being very careful not to touch anything. The large room was lined on two sides with metal shelving; on the wall opposite the stairs was a big double sink set into a long empty workbench. The shelves had been looted. Every box and crate had been dispossessed of its innards, and excelsior, shredded paper, and artifacts littered the floor. That there were missing items I had no doubt.

  Hours later, after the coroner’s van had left, Greg went off to file a report with Ellen Robb. The place had been dusted and photographed by both the PPD forensics team and agents Frakes and Padilla, and what was assumed to be the murder weapon—which we found in one of the sinks—had been bagged. Rose directed Rodney, me, and a trio of specialists from the Phoenix office in cataloguing the artifacts left behind. It was a big job and took long enough that when Greg turned up again, he’d brought dinner.