John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 20 - Cinnamon Skin

by Cinnamon Skin(lit)

  "Willy?"

  "Another friend named Evan Lawrence was working with him, and Evan didn't have any papers either."

  "Oh, what you mean is Weelliam Doyle, from Yooston."

  "That's who I mean."

  "Oh, he is gone a long time, that one. Many weeks: Too damn bad. My fren' thinks he comes back. I don't think so. She's a very high-class lady even if she's Indio. She's still living in his place, waiting for Weelliam."

  "Would she know where Evan Lawrence is?"

  "Who can say? I do not see him any more either."

  "Where can I find this woman? What's her name?"

  "Barbara. Barbara Castillo. The place, it is down that way, toward the land. You will see it on the right hand. La Vista del Caribe. Apartments. His is ground floor on the front, no view. Ring the bell on Doyle." She looked at her watch. "But Barbara is not coming there yet from work. She is running a reservation computer at Hotel Camino Real every day. And waiting. Maybe after six, a little bit after."

  "Thanks. Sorry we weren't in the market to buy."

  She gave a shrug, made a funny little gesture with her hand. "So if it looked like you could buy, the other girl would be here, no? She is working longer than me."

  We got to La Vista del Caribe shortly after six. It was already almost dark. I would never, by choice, live just over a time line, on the west side of the line. All year long, your days are too short.

  There was no one at the desk. Little kids were racing up and down the corridors. We looked around the ground floor until we found the right place: number 103. He had cut down an engraved calling card to fit the name slot. William Devlin Doyle, Jr.

  The bell was underneath the name slot. I pushed it three times without result. As we were discussing what to do next, the door suddenly opened. She was tall and slender. She wore a robe and held it closed around her with her left hand. Her smile of greeting disappeared abruptly. She wore a black shower cap. There were droplets of water on her face.

  "I was... who are you?"

  "We're from Houston, Miss Castillo. We're looking for Willy. My name is McGee and this is Meyer."

  I was trying to look my ingratiating, foot-scuffing, awshucks best as she looked us over. "Come in, then. Please." She led us into the living room. It was a small room, the furniture spare and gleaming, two unusual primitive paintings on the white wall, a bookshelf with books, small pieces of sculpture, two masks.

  "Please be seated. I will be with you in a few moments." She went down a short corridor off to the right. Ahead I could see through a pass-through arch into a white shiny kitchen.

  I slowly let my breath out and said to Meyer, "Is that the most unusually beautiful woman you have ever seen?"

  "Very unusual," he said.

  When she finally came back out, I hopped up. She wore a long toga affair in a crude rough weave, in an oatmeal color, sleeveless, tied at the waist with a thick gold cord. She wore gold sandals. Her gleaming black hair was brushed long. She had a suggestion of a look I had seen on drawings of old Mayan carvings, the slant of forehead, imperial nose, firm lips, the very slightly recessive chin, the neck as long as the ancient Egyptians'. Her eyes were a large almond slant, the color of oiled anthracite. Her hair was long, coarse, black, and lustrous.

  "Please be seated, Mr. McGee. May I get you gentlemen a drink?"

  I said a beer would be fine if she had one. I didn't really want it. I just wanted to watch her move around. She seemed to glide. It was the color and texture of her skin that was so unusual, and so complimentary to the rest of her, to her features, her slenderness, her polite dignity. It was a flat dusky tan, all the same even shade, not a suntan but a natural tone, without flaw, with the look of silk.

  She brought the beer to us in mugs, on a tray. She said she was having her third glass of iced tea. The air conditioning had broken in the offices of the Camino Real, and she was dehydrated. All she could think of, riding the bus home, was a long cool shower.

  "You are from Canada?" Meyer asked.

  She smiled at him. "You are very good with accents, I think. I was educated in Canada, Mr. Meyer. But I was born in a little village to the south of here called Noh-Bec. It's a Mayan village."

  "So you are Mayan?" Meyer said.

  "I suppose. If there are any true Mayans left. The Mayans were a quiet peace-loving people. Long ago the Toltecs, war-like Indians, came over from Mexico and conquered the Mayans and interbred with them. I would suppose there would be some Spanish blood as well. That is the rumor in my family."

  "It's a long way from Noh-Bec to Canada," Meyer said.

  She smiled again. "A leading comment? Why not. My father and mother went down to Chetumal when I was three. They worked in the home of a man named McKenzie. The McKenzie daughter and I became inseparable. We were the same age. When we were eight years old, with my father's permission, Mr. McKenzie sent the two of us up to Toronto to live with his aunt and go to school there. Eliza McKenzie is still my best friend. She's married and lives in Toronto and has two children."

  "I lectured in Toronto in June," Meyer said, ignoring my glance of warning.

  "How nice. Is it still beautiful?"

  "Very."

  "What did you lecture on?"

  "Economics, to economists. Dry stuff."

  She stared down into her glass for a moment and then lifted her head to stare directly at me. The impact of that look was astonishing.

  "I do not know where William is. I do not know where he has gone or why he went."

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "Neither do I. I don't know what to think. His clothing is here. His papers and credit cards. We were happy here together. We were talking about marriage. We quarreled, of course. I think everyone does. I thought he was wasting his abilities on these time-share projects. It is not really completely honest work. One has to promise more than can be delivered, and then try not to come upon the angry buyers later on. He is really a charming man, and quite intelligent, and with a lot of energy. But he was making a lot of money. He said that when he had enough, we would go back to Houston and he would go into another kind of work. But when I asked him how much was enough, he could not name a figure."

  "Where is the money?"

  "In the Banco Peninsular. All of it. Earning big interest in a peso account. He was buying peso C.D.s, and he told me he would cash in before the next devaluation. Then we would leave." Her eyes filled. "I am so terribly worried," she said. "I saw him last on the sixth day of July, almost one month ago. It was a day like any other. I go to work first. When I came to the kitchen, he was in here talking on the telephone. I asked what it was and he said he had to go see someone, so on that day he left exactly when I did, and he drove me to the Camino Real. He kissed me good-by and said we would have some fish for dinner. Our car is a gray Volkswagen. I have not seen that either. They say he tired of me and drove back to your country. I can tell you that is a lie. I am so terribly worried."

  "Do you remember a man who worked with him called Evan Lawrence?"

  "Of course. Why?"

  "How long did he work with him?" I asked.

  She frowned. "From Christmas last year. Maybe three months, maybe less. I told William it was against the law to have somebody working for you, a foreigner without papers. He said to me, 'Who will find out? Will you tell them? Will Evan? Will I? He is a very good salesman. He has made us a lot of money. He is very good selling to the rich widows, promising them nobody can ever be lonely in Cancun.' I just hoped he would go away, and he did. He met a woman, not very pretty, working for Pemex looking for oil, and he followed her back to Texas. I was glad."

  She frowned, pausing for a moment. "Nora? A name like that."

  "Norma," I said.

  "He must have followed her back and married her, because the newspapers from Florida said that he and his wife and another person had died in a boating accident, an explosion, in Florida. Perhaps they were on their wedding trip. Everyone here who had worked with him selling the
time sharing was talking about it."

  She looked at me with doubt and speculation. "How did you know her name? What do you really want?" She straightened in her chair and looked sternly at me and then at Meyer. "You will please tell, me what my William, your great friend, looks like. Every detail, please."

  I smiled. "A nice man. Tall. Well built."

  "Yes?"

  "Dark hair."

  She stood up quickly. "Dark hair? Dark hair? He has hair so red that the people here call him El Rojo, the red one. And his face and arms and shoulders are entirely freckled. So tell me why you are here or get out at once."

  "We mean you no harm, Barbara," Meyer said. "Please believe us. We need your help. And maybe you need ours."

  "I do not want soft soothing talk, Mr. Meyer."

  "Norma was my niece. She died as you say, in that explosion on July fifth. The boat had a bomb aboard. Norma was a successful woman. She had quite a lot of money she had saved. It is all missing. Everyone was supposed to think that Evan Lawrence died when Norma did. But he didn't. He wasn't aboard. That's why we're here."

  Her face was expressive. I could almost track the patterns of her mind from the changing expressions.

  "But he seemed so very nice!" she said. "He made us all laugh."

  Meyer said, "I don't want to be brutal, Barbara. I don't want to add to your pain. But it now looks as though William Doyle was the only person in Cancun who knew that Evan Lawrence lives down here, under another name and identity. I don't think the man you knew as Evan Lawrence could take that kind of risk. I think he did what he had to do, to protect his identity. That's who the phone call was from. That's where he went."

  Her lovely face twisted and then went vacant. She was standing. She put her hands forward, as though to brace herself, and then began to crumple. I reached her in two strides before she fell, picked her up, and took her to the couch, surprised at the warm sturdy heft of her under the coarse fabric.

  Meyer appeared at my elbow, with a cloth soaked in cold water. He placed its folded length across her forehead. "I'm so sorry," he said. "Maybe it was a wild guess, not true."

  She opened her eyes. "I've known he is dead. I've known it since three o'clock that day. I was working. And suddenly there was an emptiness in my chest, as if the strings that hold my heart had been sliced through, and it sagged to a lower place. I was going to tell William about that strange feeling. I know that was when he died, and I know he died thinking of me, trying to tell me. I could not admit it to myself. Suddenly you made me able to admit it. Don't be sorry. I couldn't live in limbo forever. He left everything behind."

  I moved away. Meyer eased himself down to sit on the floor beside the couch. He held her hand. "The dead have to leave everything and everybody behind. For some, it is the right time. For others..."

  "How could that shallow smiling man be so wicked?"

  "He has been able to get away with being wicked because he does not look or act wicked. He has the gift of friendship. He inspires trust. My niece loved him and married him."

  She tried to sit up and he touched her shoulder, urging her back. "Please," she said. "What is his other identity here? You said he is someone else here."

  "We can get into that later."

  "Could you please get the box of tissues in the kitchen?" I went out and got it and brought it to her. She blew her nose and she wiped her eyes, and she tried to smile. "Sometimes we laughed about what my babies would look like. Dark little Yndios with red hair. I said we should hurry with them. I am twenty-seven. William was thirty-two. He had been married once. I had not."

  She pushed Meyer's hand aside and sat up, swung her feet to the floor.

  "So! I am not a weak person. I come from people who have survived everything. And I come from people who know violence. That is the Toltec heritage, not the Mayan. And I am not going to mourn my man in front of strangers."

  "Who would like to be friends," Meyer said.

  She studied him. "Very American. Instant friends. Like your instant foods. Heat and serve. The heart does not move so fast. You walk in here and destroy me. In the name of friendship?"

  "But we only-"

  "Do you have a car?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "I will not work tomorrow. In the name of this new friendship could you pick me up very very early? There's a place I want to be when the sun rises. We'll have to walk a distance in the dark. Perhaps at quarter to four? I will bring a good flashlight. And insect repellent. Wear shoes for walking, please. I'm not asking too much?"

  Meyer beamed at her. "Not too much to ask of old friends."

  Twenty-two

  WHEN I pulled up to the entrance to La Vista del Caribe, Barbara was silhouetted against the dim interior lights. She came striding quickly to our pink automobile. Meyer had moved into the back. She slid in beside me and said, "I'm very grateful for this. I should never have asked."

  "It's fine," I said. "It's okay. Where are we going?"

  "Toward the airport, but don't turn off there. We go straight for many miles."

  She had brought cups, a thermos of coffee, a dozen doughnuts. The road was straight. It was almost eerily straight under the overcast night. It had no shoulders. The jungle grew right to the edge of the pavement. She sat quietly beside me, half turned to lean against the door, blue-jeaned legs turned and pulled up, sharply bent knees angled toward me.

  "If we could go a little bit faster?" she said at one point. This was after a big bus came booming up behind me, doing at least eighty on the two-lane road, and nearly blew me away when it went by.

  She identified the turnoffs as we passed them. There were not many of them. "Puerto Morelos, for the truck ferry to Cozumel." And San Carlos, Punta Bete, Playa del Carmen, Xcaret, Pamul, Akumal, Xelha, Tulum. Finally, not far past Tulum, where she said there were Mayan ruins on the seashore, she told me to slow down and pointed out the right turn. More straight two-lane road. But the vines and bushes leaned so far out over the concrete, I drove down the middle. An animal scuttled out of the way. It seemed to be tan and had an awkward waddling gait.

  "Coatimundi," she said. "There are small villages here near the road. All dark at night. The children catch the coatimundi pups and make pets of them. But when they are grown they get angry quickly and bite."

  "Where are we going?" Meyer asked.

  "Now it is only perhaps ten miles. It is called Coba. Great ruins, partially excavated."

  We arrived at a large parking area. There was a shack where one was supposed to buy admission tickets. I locked the car and we followed her and the beam of the flashlight directed on the ground.

  A man came wandering out of a dark structure behind the shack.

  "iSenora, senora, cerrado!" he cried.

  She put the light on him. As he stood blinking, bare to the waist, she said a single long sentence in a language unlike any I had ever heard before. It was full of snappings and pops and little coughs. He bowed and backed away and she began walking again, so swiffly I had to take a couple of running steps to catch up with her.

  "Watch where you step," she said. "It is uneven here. There are pebbles and stones."

  I would estimate we went two miles on a dark track wide enough in places for a car, through the jungle, through the keening, shrilling of a billion bugs, the caws of night birds, a thick stillness of the air. Toward the end she was almost running.

  When she stopped abruptly, I stopped in time but Meyer ran into her and backed off apologizing. She ignored the apology. She gave me the flashlight. "Here I am going up that pyramid. I will not need the light. Please don't turn the light on me while I climb it. It will spoil my night vision. Please wait here. When it is time, I will call for you to come up.

  I turned the light off. She went off into darkness. In a few minutes I could see that she had gone' toward a huge bulk that loomed up out of the jungle, bigger than any cathedral. As my eyes became used to starlight, I saw how it projected up and up, blotting out a big segment of the star
ry sky, and I could make out the paleness of her white long-sleeved shirt, a tiny object a third of the way up, moving steadily. Meyer was still panting from the fast twomile walk. We had, all three, forgotten the bug repellent. So we stood in the darkness, waved our arms, slapped our necks and foreheads. I broke some small leafy branches off a bush. When we whisked those around, it lessened the problem.

  A rooster crowed nearby, and when I looked toward the summit of the pyramid, it was now outlined against gray instead of against a blackness with stars. It was not much later when I realized I could see the tree trunks and see Meyer's face. Looking at the summit, I thought I could see her up there, sitting on a flat place at the very top, her back toward us.

  Morning bird sounds began. There was a gray morning light, and then a rosiness beyond the pyramid as the sun began to come up out of the sea. I could see her clearly then, with a spill of black hair down the back of the white shirt. Sunlight struck her, golden, setting her ablaze. Soon we could see it against the treetops to the left and right of the pyramid.