High Adventure

by Donald E. Westlake

  It was true; the 12 points put Manny out. “At least it wasn’t a skunk,” said Kirby, whose lead peg was 11 spaces from victory.

  “What’s the score now?”

  Kirby turned the board over, where ink checkmarks in groups of five ran in battalions down two strips of masking tape, which were themselves laid over previous strips bearing previous battalions. Making another mark with his ballpoint pen, Kirby said, “You’re ahead, as you damn well know.”

  “How much? How much?”

  “Three hundred twenty-nine games to two hundred seventy-eight.” Shaking his head, Kirby turned the board over. “I should have taught you checkers instead.”

  “Teach me now.”

  “You sound too eager,” Kirby told him, and glanced over as a couple of the dogs—who had been peacefully watching Guatemalan television with Estelle and the kids—got up and turned around and looked at the door.

  “Somebody coming,” Manny said.

  “Could be Tommy.”

  Manny liked Tommy Watson well enough, but Estelle always got purse-lipped when the Indian was around, as she did now, remaining silent but giving Kirby a quick look. “I’ll talk to him outside,” Kirby promised.

  And in fact he had something to tell Tommy. Yesterday’s expedition to San Pedro had been a bust, at least from a business point of view, but when he’d flown in here just before noon today—not wanting to miss Estelle’s lunch—there had been a message waiting which Cora had brought down from Orange Walk. It was Witcher and Feldspan’s answer to his cable, and it assured him Sunday would be just fine for taking delivery on the first shipment. So Kirby’s message to Tommy would be, Produce some Zotzes! Let’s start these new customers off right, with a nice platoon of devil-gods. No more excuses about how everybody’s too superstitious and afraid to make the damn things.

  Estelle still looked disapproving—she felt Tommy’s mere existence was a bad influence on the children, whom she had dreams of civilizing some day—so Kirby got to his feet and said, “Okay, okay, I’ll head him off.” While Manny sat shuffling the cards like the scraggliest cardshark in history, grinning faintly to himself, Kirby went out to greet his faithful Indian companion.

  Except it wasn’t. Squinting in the outer sunlight, Kirby first saw the gray Land Rover over near Cynthia, and then saw it was Innocent St. Michael who was clambering out of it. And not only that, but he was clambering out of the driver’s seat; he’d come here alone.

  Here? Innocent St. Michael, here?

  Kirby walked over toward the heavyset man, noticing that Innocent seemed rumpled, troubled, very unlike his usual smooth self-confident self. Innocent saw Kirby approach and reached back into the Land Rover to pick something up off the passenger seat. Kirby was just calling, “What’s happening, Innocent?” when Innocent turned around with the gun, pointed it more or less toward Kirby, and started shooting.

  The gun was a British-made revolver, the Webley and Scott Mark VI, weighing two pounds six ounces, length eleven and a quarter inches, six-shot capacity, firing a .455 calibre cartridge, and famous in the British Army and in many police forces around the world for a whole lot of recoil. Wherever Innocent had gotten this monster, the thing clearly had not come with instructions, nor had he taken it around the block for a few practice spins ahead of time. He clenched his jaw, squeezed the trigger, the gun made a sharp explosive sound flattened in the surrounding air, and the bullet went up over Kirby and over the house and headed out on a rising line toward the coast.

  “Hey!” said Kirby.

  Innocent’s second bullet whizzed up and away southward, climbing into the sky, straining toward a far-off tree just inland from Punta Gorda.

  “What the hell!” said Kirby.

  Innocent’s third shot went almost straight up into the empyrean. Some time later, in fact, it landed unnoticed between Kirby and the house.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Kirby.

  Innocent, looking intent, exasperated, determined, flustered, enraged, grieving, and bollixed, grabbed the goddam gun with both hands and wrestled its barrel back down to point at Kirby’s nose.

  “Ahhh!” said Kirby.

  The fourth bullet whispered in Kirby’s left ear on the way by.

  “DON’T!” said Kirby.

  Innocent mumbled something and stepped closer, holding the gun out in front of himself with both hands, as though it were an angry cat. The cat spat, and bullet number five made a scratch—but cauterized it immediately—on the skin above Kirby’s left clavicle, or collarbone, which is the top of the pectoral arch, extending from the breastbone to the shoulderblade.

  All of this was happening very fast, so it wasn’t until now that Kirby got around to taking appropriate action, which was to scream and hit the dirt, so that bullet number six passed through the air where the middle of Kirby’s head had recently been, then continued on its way to chunk into the door frame just as Manny opened the front door to find out what all that popping was about.

  Manny looked at the spot where the bullet had said “thup” going into the wood of the frame. He looked at Innocent with the gun, and Kirby on his face on the ground. He stepped back and closed the door.

  Kirby rolled over and looked up. Innocent, closer, stood over him with the expression of a man seating himself for the first time in front of a word processor; he will dope this damn thing out. Both Innocent’s hands clasped the gun, which now looked to Kirby like a round-mouthed gray metal snake with a crest (the front sight). Innocent’s right forefinger squeezed the trigger, and the Mark VI said, “Tsk.”

  Neither Innocent nor Kirby could believe it. They both looked at the gun. Innocent aimed it at Kirby and pulled the trigger. “Tsk,” it said.

  “Shit,” said Innocent.

  “Oh, boy,” said Kirby, and rolled madly away, over and over across the dusty bumpy ground. When he sat up, filthy and dizzy, he was some yards from Innocent and the Land Rover. Shaking his head, trying to focus, he saw Innocent hurry back to the vehicle, saw him reach inside it and come out with a small cardboard box, saw him fumble the box open onto the Land Rover’s hood. A few cartridges rolled away across the hood and plopped onto the ground. “For God’s sake, he’s reloading,” Kirby said.

  Somebody, unfortunately, had explained to Innocent how to open the cylinder. As Kirby struggled to his feet, still dizzy, and tottered across the open ground, Innocent pushed bullets business end forward into the cylinder. More cartridges rolled about and fell on the ground.

  Innocent saw Kirby coming and backed hurriedly away, stumbling a bit, pushing just one more bullet home, struggling to close the half-full cylinder and scramble backwards at the same time, and all the while watching neither his hands nor the world behind him. Kirby, pursuing, cried, “Innocent, why? Why?”

  “You killed her,” Innocent said, and slammed the cylinder shut, pinching one finger nastily in the process. He put that finger in his mouth and pointed the gun at Kirby.

  Who had stopped a few paces away, too bewildered to be either scared or smart. “Killed? Who?”

  “Wallawa Weeng,” Innocent said.

  “Who?”

  Innocent took his finger from his mouth. “Valerie Greene,” he said, “and you’re going to die for it!”

  “Tsk,” said the Mark VI, as Kirby threw his arms up to protect his head.

  “God damned bastard!” Innocent cried.

  “I didn’t!” Kirby yelled. “Innocent, I’m innocent!”

  “Tsk.”

  “Shit! Where are they?”

  “I didn’t do it!”

  “Boom,” said the shotgun in Manny’s hands in the doorway of the house, and a number of leaf bits and twig mulch pattered down onto the tableau of Innocent and Kirby.

  Innocent, wide-eyed, looked over at Manny who, untroubled by recoil, was lowering the shotgun barrel from his aim at the tree branches to a new sighting on Innocent’s torso. This piece of armament was a Ted Williams Over-and-under shotgun with 28-inch barrels, 48 inches overall, weig
ht seven and a quarter pounds, firing either two and three-quarter or three inch standard or magnum shells in 12 gauge, available at Sears stores. Manny’s finger had already moved from the front trigger, which had just fired the modified choke lower barrel, to the rear trigger, which at any instant could unleash the contents of the full choke upper barrel.

  Having no idea what Manny planned to do next, hoping against hope he wasn’t running into a blast of shotgun pellets, Kirby dashed forward, grabbed the Mark VI out of Innocent’s slack hands, and ran away holding the gun in both his hands, yelling, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  Innocent stared after him in frustration and aggravation: “How can I shoot? You took my gun!”

  “Manny!” Kirby yelled in explanation. “Manny, don’t shoot!”

  Manny came out of the house, the Ted Williams butt still nestled into his shoulder, cheek still lying against the hand-checkered walnut stock, right eye sighting down the ventilated rib, directly at Innocent. Estelle came out after him, looking stem, in her right hand the cleaver she used for quartering chickens. A couple of the dogs came out and trotted over to Innocent, sniffing him in search of the tastiest parts. A few children came out and arrayed themselves to one side, as audience. Innocent looked pained.

  Kirby, at a safe distance from everybody, looked at the weapon of destruction lying across his palms. He turned it around, held it in his right hand like people in the movies, and pointed it down at the ground. He squeezed the trigger. “Bang!” it said, and the recoil slammed up into his arm bones hard enough to jolt his whole skeleton. “Jesus,” he whispered. One tsk from eternity.

  Innocent was now looking merely weary, rumpled, and resigned. Kirby glanced at him, and walked toward the house. He passed Manny, who said, “Kirby? What do you need?”

  “A drink,” Kirby said. His right shoulder hurt.

  11

  THE MYSTERY OF THE TEMPLE

  The Indians didn’t expect the plane, Valerie could tell that from their reaction when it buzzed low over the village late in the afternoon. They loved it, of course; they seemed to love everything Kirby Galway did. They came scampering out of their huts and, driven by curiosity, every last one of them went hurrying out of town and up and over that nearby scruffy hill to meet Galway where he’d be landing. Driven by her own curiosity, Valerie followed, keeping some distance behind.

  She had never been up this way before. The Indians had told her how dry and lifeless the land was over here, fit for nothing but an airstrip, and she’d noticed they themselves never came up this way except that one earlier time to meet Galway. Now, she labored up the hill and it wasn’t until she reached the top and looked down the other side at the plane taxiing across the flat land in this direction that she suddenly realized where she was.

  It had to be, had to be. She and the kidnapper/driver had come in from that direction, way over there. The airplane had been parked exactly where Galway was now parking it. Her confrontation with him had taken place down there below the right flank of the hill. So this place, this place, had to be …

  … the temple?

  Valerie gazed about herself, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, bewildered. This was no temple. This was merely an arid brown hill, covered with a stubble of dead brush and dying stunted trees.

  Could this ever have been a temple? Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, which had been actual buildings filled with rooms and spaces, the Mayan temples had been mere stone skins veneered onto existing hills, so, in the few short days after she’d first seen this place, could Galway possibly have stripped it completely, every stone and every stela, every corbel arch, every wall, every terrace and stair?

  No.

  Having done that one impossibility, could Galway then have gone on to remove every trace of what he’d done, every mark and indentation, every touch of the ancient Mayan builders’ hands?

  Again, no.

  Impossible. In fact, absurd.

  “But …” Valerie said aloud, and continued to stare this way and that in total befuddlement. She had seen the temple, with her own eyes. She had stood down there, and looked up here, and had gazed upon an undoubted temple. Exactly where the computers had said it would be. Exactly where she had known it would be. And Kirby Galway had been so upset at her finding his secret temple that he’d gone absolutely berserk, threatening her with a machete, hopping up and down, throwing his hat on the—

  Movement down by the plane attracted her attention. Kirby Galway himself had climbed out and was talking and gesticulating with Tommy Watson and Luz Coco and Rosita while the other villagers stood around watching, wondering as much as Valerie what was going on. But now a second person was clambering awkwardly out of the plane, making his way to the ground with the help of several Indians. Valerie’s breath caught. It was Innocent St. Michael!

  She stared, forgetting the mystery of the temple. The ringleader himself, here. Ducking low, she watched through the fronds of dead foliage as the talk went on down there, Tommy and Luz now explaining some sort of situation to the other Indians, Kirby explaining, even Innocent St. Michael explaining. People started to point at Valerie.

  Well, not at Valerie, but certainly uphill. Toward the village, it must be, because the whole group, still talking and explaining, set out en masse, moving in this direction.

  What should she do? Crouched on her hilltop, watching the Indians and the villains climb the slope, she wondered what would be best. Hide in one of the huts, or stay away from the village until after Galway and St. Michael had gone?

  They were getting closer, their voices rising toward her. Clear on the afternoon air came the sound of Kirby Galway’s voice. Unmistakably she heard him pronounce one word:

  “Sheena.”

  Betrayed! By whom? It didn’t matter. But now Valerie understood why Galway and St. Michael were here; they had come to finish the job their minions had started, there could be no doubt about that. Like the startled deer she was, Valerie rose and ran.

  Downhill, fleet as the wind. Hoping Rosita wasn’t her betrayer, hoping none of the Indians she had come to like and admire in the last nine days had done this terrible thing, Valerie scrambled down the back side of the non-temple. Nervously missing her footing here and there, she hurried on, fright bringing bile to her throat.

  The huts were ahead. There was no help now, not even from the villagers, who were somehow or other in Kirby Galway’s thrall. Every man’s hand, it seemed, was turned against Valerie Greene, yes, and every woman’s too, and probably most of the children.

  The village was deserted. There was no place to hide, no sense trying to stay. The prospect of wandering in the wilderness once more was daunting, but not as daunting as the inexorable approach of Kirby Galway and Innocent St. Michael. She had to run for it; that’s all she could do.

  Rosita had been making tortillas outside her hut, now cooling on a flat stone. Grabbing them up—who knew when she’d find food again—Valerie tucked them inside her repaired blouse, leaped the little stream, and plunged into the woods.

  12

  IT HAPPENED ONE AFTERNOON

  Innocent sat on a flat stone, catching his breath. All about him, the Indians were in fevered motion, running in and out of huts, splashing through the stream, yelling at one another, slapping their children, kicking their dogs. Kirby Galway paced back and forth like a pirate captain on his bridge, shouting orders, barking commands, pointing this way and that, and being mostly ignored. The two men and one woman in the village who spoke English stood in the middle of it all arguing at the tops of their voices, though not in English, so it didn’t help.

  Long before the finish, Innocent knew how it would end. The question was, when it happened would he believe it?

  On the other hand, what was there at all to believe about this day? Himself, to begin with, he found utterly incredible. He had committed—or had attempted to commit—physical violence. He, Innocent St. Michael, a man who had always prided himself on his subtlety, a man who let his brains do his fighting
and let his money hire what physical labor had to be done. He had committed—or had attempted to commit—a major felony, and not for personal profit. He had committed—or had attempted to commit—a crime of passion! Him! Innocent St. Michael! Passion!

  Attempted; attempted; attempted; hadn’t even done the job right. Ten times he had fired at Kirby Galway and ten times he had missed. Well, nine and a half. One little scratch on the shoulder that Kirby carried on about as though he’d been crippled for life, before finally calming down and swearing all over again that he had absolutely, positively not killed Valerie Greene.

  There were reasons at least to believe that last part, which Kirby had elucidated for him in several repetitive shouted sentences. First, if he had murdered Valerie Greene and Innocent had found him out, there was absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t now go ahead and murder Innocent as well. Second, even if he’d had time to plot a murder with Innocent’s driver, the fellow was still Innocent’s driver and Kirby would have been crazy to trust him with such a dangerous request. And third, Kirby now believed that Valerie Greene wasn’t dead after all but was living in an Indian village under the name Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

  So hither they had come, hope and skepticism fighting in Innocent’s breast, to be surrounded by bright-eyed curious villagers, to be assured that yes, Sheena was living with them, she was right over the hill there—Kirby’s hill, Innocent had noted, wondering if it meant anything—and on to the village they had come, for the onset of pandemonium. Once the running and shouting and general disarray started Innocent had merely sat down on a flat stone outside one of the huts to catch his breath, knowing how it would end and wondering if he would believe it when it happened.

  Which at last it did. The village had grown quieter, and here was Kirby standing spraddle-legged before him, the very icon of frustrated generalship. “She’s gone,” he said.

  Innocent looked up at him; he had mostly regained his breath by now. “The question is,” he said, “do I believe it?”