The Antiquities Hunter

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  “You hope. What if he suspects he’s being cheated?”

  “You will be safely in the States, and I will have the means to simply disappear.”

  “How does he take delivery of his share?” asked Cruz.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It may. We don’t want to accidentally cross his path.”

  Revez looked from one of us to the other. I knew he was feeling the thin paper of that twenty-five million dollar bank draft slipping from between his fingers.

  I gave it a little extra tug. “I don’t like this, Felipe. This is beginning to sound dangerous—”

  “There is a village called Sival southeast of Bonampak. It has an airstrip that is little more than a clear patch of earth, and a warehouse. When we have been able to dig, I take the helicopter there and leave my cargo in that warehouse.”

  “How is it he has allowed you to maintain the secrecy of the site?” Cruz asked. “Why has he not sought to exploit it himself?”

  “He is not an archaeologist. He’s an ideologue. A ‘warlord’, as Marianna styled him. This world is as alien to him as his is to you.”

  Cruz twitched as if something unpleasant had just scurried up his spine and I wondered what other worlds he might have lived in before going into the service of the Mexican government.

  “Mario Torres,” Revez continued, “does not want antiquities for their own sake. He doesn’t want to have to maintain a dig, or guard a treasure, or run a business. He wants only to receive the money those things produce so that he can arm his followers.”

  But that was only part of the puzzle, I mused, when we had left the penthouse. If Revez dug the treasure up and ferried it to Torres, and Sommers sold it to buyers at the other end, who were the matchmakers? Who connected the Mexican warlord to the crooked American auction house?

  Chapter 20

  Tink Goes Rogue

  It occurred to me to wonder how Felipe Revez had come to recruit Ted Bridges, but that was one question I wasn’t sure how to put into Marianna’s mouth. That is, I wasn’t sure until late that night as I was sitting on the balcony soaking up the light pollution and distant, discordant strains of warring street bands.

  I got suddenly to my feet on a rush of adrenaline and slipped back into the suite. Cruz had disappeared into his bedroom and the door was closed. I started to knock on it, but heard his voice carrying on one side of a phone conversation in Spanish.

  I hesitated momentarily, then went to the room phone and dialed Revez’s private number. I’d decided he wasn’t there and started to hang up when I heard his voice come on the line.

  “Felipe? This is Marianna. I’m . . . I’m a little concerned about a few things.”

  “Marianna, I told you, there’s no reason for concern—”

  “Felipe, can I come up and talk to you about it?”

  There was a moment of silence at his end, then he said, “And Cruz?”

  “Cruz doesn’t know I’m calling. He’d think I was being a coward. I think he’s already asleep anyway. I need to talk this out.”

  “Yes, of course. Come right up.”

  He was waiting for me at the front doors to usher me in. I had taken great care with my wardrobe. I didn’t want to look like I was either baiting him or blocking him, so I chose a pair of full-length gauze pants and a long-sleeved wraparound shirt that tied snugly in back. Front buttoning garments might send the wrong message, I figured.

  I was also careful not to overdo my angst. I didn’t wring my hands, but I came into the room playing with my engagement ring, which had the advantage of reminding him that I wore it.

  He led me into the living room where a pot of coffee had been set out, and poured me a cup before sitting me down in a huge, masculine chair that practically engulfed me. He perched on the edge of the coffee table facing me, our knees nearly touching.

  “What can I say to you that will calm your fears?” he asked softly.

  “The operative who was killed. Cruz got the feeling you thought your associate had done that. Is that true? Is this Torres capable of . . .”

  Shaking his head, he took the coffee cup from my hands, and wrapped them with his own.

  “Capable, yes. And Cruz was right—that thought had occurred to me. But the more I thought about it, the less credible the idea seemed for the very same reasons that have kept Torres from involving himself intimately at the site. Mario Torres is focused on his cause and whatever will further it. He is a powerful man in Chiapas, amor, but I don’t believe he has the resources to strike at someone in the United States. And that is where my operative died—in Phoenix, Arizona, far from Torres’s home ground. I feared Torres had done it simply because I could think of no one else who would wish to. And frankly, if Torres was behind the death of this man, I would have expected him to deliver a warning to me at the very least.”

  “The murder wasn’t warning enough?”

  “No. It is not like Torres to be even that subtle. Someone else is responsible for that man’s death, I think.”

  I felt as if someone had just pulled the plug on my higher faculties. If not the vicious warlord, then who?

  “What about your other associates?”

  “There are none of any account,” he admitted, wagging his head contritely. “I puffed myself up, you might say. To look bigger. My other associates are local businessmen who like to collect pretty baubles. They know nothing of where those baubles come from and nothing of my connection to Mario Torres.”

  Truth or soothing lie? Only Felipe Revez knew and I had no way to be certain. “Then what about the people who smuggle Torres’s antiquities into the U.S.? Do you suppose they might have killed that man? Maybe they thought he was—I don’t know—moving in on their territory.”

  “That,” he said, “is a distinct possibility. But with your Geoffrey involved, we will not have to rely upon small-time smugglers to connect us to the market, will we? And so, we may never run afoul of those people.”

  “How did you come to recruit this operative? Or any of your operatives?” There, I’d asked the question. I’d tried to set it up, but it still sounded bald, jarring.

  His eyes narrowed. “Is that important? He’s dead. And I suspect he was killed because he drew attention to himself.”

  “Whoever introduced you to him knew you two were connected. It seems to me that makes that person dangerous.”

  To my surprise, he chuckled. “Hardly. That person was a poorly paid and disgruntled museum employee whom I recruited personally at an antiquities show. He is of no importance.” He was smiling, and his eyes said, There, there. You see, I have put all the bogeymen to rest.

  If I were Marianna Esposito and there really were a rich and powerful Geoffrey Catalano in the wings, that would have been so. And my proper response would have been a demonstration of my relief. But I could not disengage from Gina Miyoko, who had just seen her best friend’s would-be murderer slip on another mask and fade into the shadows.

  Hence, I was staring somewhere over his left shoulder and trying to wrap my mind around this new information when Revez went to his knees in front of my chair and slid his hands up my thighs, bringing our faces close together.

  “Now, have I put your mind at rest?”

  Not even close.

  “I . . . I feel a little better. Yes,” I lied.

  He smiled into my eyes and moved his hands caressingly to my waist. “Only a little? I must try harder then.”

  He kissed me, pushing me back into the overwhelming chair and pinning me there. My legs were trapped between him and the chair, so I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed. He didn’t seem to notice. The kiss deepened and I pushed harder, digging in with my fingernails. This did not have the intended effect. Instead of discouraging him, it seemed to add fuel to the fire. He made a growling noise deep in his throat and pressed harder, crushing my lips and digging his fingers into my stomach.

  My cry of panic and pain sounded like the mew of an outraged kitten, but he relea
sed my lips at last and rocked backward. I shot straight up out of the chair like a jack-in-the-box, a move he mistook for enthusiasm. He wrapped his arms around me, burrowing his face into my stomach.

  My bare stomach. During the clinch, he’d untied the sash of my wraparound shirt.

  Note to self: From now on buy nothing but pullovers.

  “Ah, Marianna,” he murmured and licked my navel.

  That was it. That was absolutely it.

  I collected my breath, grabbed the hair on both sides of his head and said, “Felipe, please!” It came out in a throaty gasp.

  “Yes . . .” he murmured. He caught the waist of my pants and dragged it downward.

  I pulled his hair as hard as I could. “NO!”

  He rocked back on his heels and looked up at me, seemingly dazed. Which gave me a window of opportunity to disconnect his hands from my pants and do a half-assed backward roll over the arm of the chair. I landed shakily on my feet and quickly put the chair between us.

  “Marianna, I don’t understand—”

  “I can’t, Felipe,” I mumbled, trying to cover my swollen lips, pull up my pants, and catch the loose edges of my shirt all at the same time. “I just can’t.”

  “Why, amor?”

  “He’ll know.”

  “Who will know? Geoffrey? Cruz?”

  I shook my head. “Both. Either. It—it doesn’t matter. If one of them knows, the other will. Either way, this deal will be blown. You don’t want that.”

  He got to his feet, face flushed, eyes bright. “I want you, Marianna.”

  “Not that much. Not twenty-five million dollars worth.”

  The light faded from his eyes and he sagged back against the coffee table.

  “Good night, Felipe,” I said, and fled as fast as my strappy little sandals would carry me.

  As I went, I tried desperately to rewrap and retie my shirt, but my hands fumbled with the cloth, unable to draw it together. It was only when I was waiting for the elevator that I looked down and realized why. During his amorous foreplay, Felipe had pulled the sash completely out of its tunnel.

  I pressed one hand to my swollen lips and the other to my bruised stomach. Tears pressed for release. The capable, police-trained private detective was getting ready to melt down, and I could only pray that the elevator would get here before that happened.

  It did. Cruz was in it.

  I’d taken one step forward before I realized this and stopped in confusion. We stared at each other—me in complete mortification, he in I have no idea what—then he reached out and yanked me into the car.

  Well, I couldn’t cry now. Not with him looking at me. So I swallowed and tried to meet his eyes. That’s when I caught sight of myself in the mirrored back panel of the elevator. I was already crying. I was just too damn numb to feel the tears sliding down my cheeks.

  Cruz started to say something, then pulled me into his arms and held me until the doors opened on the fifth floor.

  I don’t drink, but the thimbleful of brandy he gave me put some of the sensation back into my face and limbs. He’d sat me down in front of the hearth and started the gas fire since I was shivering as if he’d just fished me out of a snowbank. Then he pulled his own chair up next to mine so that he could watch my face. He was careful, I thought, not to cut off my line of retreat.

  “Gina, what happened?” he asked at length. “Can you talk about it?”

  I listened hard for accusation in his voice, but heard none.

  “I wanted to . . . find out who . . . I wanted to know if he really thought Torres . . .”

  He read my face. “Killed Bridges? Maybe tried to kill Rose?”

  I nodded.

  “And?”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t think so. He didn’t think Torres had that kind of-of reach.”

  “I wondered about that, myself. And so . . . things got out of hand?”

  “I didn’t go there to seduce him,” I blurted. “I didn’t try to—to . . .”

  “I know. You just wanted to press for more information.”

  I met his eyes then and tried not to see my sorry state reflected in them. “How did I blow it, Cruz? What did I do wrong? I didn’t dress like a vamp. I didn’t come on to him. I didn’t even wear perfume, for God’s sake.”

  “But you let him think you were afraid, didn’t you?”

  “Well . . . yeah. I wanted to make him think I was worried about Torres.”

  “You gave him a vulnerable moment, Gina. You can’t do that with men like Revez.”

  Was he accusing me or just explaining what had gone wrong with my calculations?

  “You think I should have asked him to meet me someplace public.”

  “Well, that would have been a good start.”

  “But Cruz, I was afraid he wouldn’t level with me if he thought I didn’t trust him. That’s why I deliberately left you out of it. It was my way of showing him trust.”

  “That’s not quite the way he read it, unfortunately.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  He put his hand on my arm. Lightly, like a bird that would fly away at the slightest twitch. I held perfectly still.

  “He didn’t hurt you?”

  “No. Well, except for my lips.” I touched them with the tips of my fingers. They were still throbbing. “Grossed me out pretty badly though—he licked my navel.”

  Oh, night of nights. I seemed to have succeeded in humiliating myself not once, but twice. And with two different men. I watched Cruz silently for a moment as he lay back in his chair, shaking with helpless laughter, then said, “You can stop any time now.”

  He sat up, shaking his head and making vague, I’m okay gestures with his hands. “It’s just . . .”

  A flash flood of cold fury hit me out of nowhere.

  “It’s just what, Joe Cool? It’s just funny to see the cocky little PI get what she deserved? I suppose you think I should have just screwed him and gotten it over with.”

  I started to rise. Cruz sobered very quickly and stopped me. This time the hand on my arm was not in the least birdlike. Unless the bird had pumped a lot of iron.

  “Stop talking garbage, Gina. I was going to say, ‘It’s just relief.’ When I came out of my room and found you gone, I was pretty sure I knew where you’d gone and why. I was afraid it would get unpleasant. That’s why I went up there after you, prepared to play the outraged lover. When I saw you standing in the hallway like that . . .”

  I clutched my shirt together over my breasts and sat back in the chair. “I’m sorry. I’ve still got too much adrenaline surging through my veins. I was scared,” I admitted. “I was terrified. The black belt didn’t mean a damn thing in that situation. He had me trapped, physically and mentally. The only moves I had open to me were pretty dire and I didn’t want to really hurt him. I didn’t want to take a chance on screwing the sting.”

  “Screw the sting,” Cruz said.

  “Oh, now who’s talking garbage?”

  He smiled wryly, then looked at me through his lashes. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Nope. Felipe is under the impression that I’m hot for his body, but afraid you and/or Geoffrey will find out about our grand passion. We came to the reasonable conclusion that I’m not worth twenty-five mil.”

  “Really? I would have said you were worth at least twice that much.”

  “Why, thank you. You got Visa? I don’t take American Express.”

  He stood and drew me to my feet. “You joke, but if it comes back to haunt you later, don’t be macho about it, okay? I’m here if you need me.”

  “I think I’m okay now. Really.”

  “Except for your lips, of course.”

  “Yeah, I look like I’m on collagen, don’t I?”

  He put a hand to my face and brushed my lips with his thumb. “They’ll be fine,” he said and pushed me toward my room.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a practicing lip doctor, too?” I said over my shoulder.
/>   I think he said, “I don’t get enough practice,” but I couldn’t be sure.

  He meant what he said about being there if I needed him. When I left my room later to get a bottle of orange juice from the wet bar, he was asleep on the sofa just outside my door.

  Chapter 21

  Where On Earth is Itzamnaaj Balam?

  The sales slip turned out to be unnecessary. We didn’t take a commercial jet to Villahermosa, but instead flew in the charter Beechjet in which Revez had taken us to Palenque. It turned out that one of his “no-account” business associates owned the charter service. For providing the gentleman with the occasional eye-catching antiquity, our host had a jet pretty much at his beck and call.

  The flight was uneventful, and I was able to get back a little of the sleep I’d lost the night before. My encounter with Revez didn’t inspire nightmares, but I had trouble shaking the feeling of suffocation that had enveloped me when he’d crushed me into the fine leather of that monstrous chair. It was as if the flesh he’d touched was remembering the moment repeatedly, obsessively, whether I was consciously thinking about it or not.

  Haunting was a damn good word for it.

  “You okay?”

  I looked up from the magazine I hadn’t been reading and found Cruz looking at me, his expression noncommittal.

  “Why?”

  “You’re not talking.”

  “I’m reading. Honestly, Cruz, I don’t talk all the time.”

  “You were not reading. You were staring through the magazine into another dimension.”

  “I was not—”

  He grabbed the magazine and closed it. “What was the article about?”

  “What?”

  “The article you were allegedly reading. What was it about?”

  When in doubt, bunt. “Island getaways.”

  “A fascinating subject, but no.”

  He opened the magazine to a piece on New Age medicine. It wasn’t even a travel magazine. He tossed it into the seat across the aisle and turned back to me.