“So what I saw,” Valerie said, with a wondering expression, “was your fake temple.”
“A little bit of it, from a distance.”
“It was very good.”
“That was mostly Tommy’s doing. Anyway, when I first met you,” and he went on to describe Valerie’s inadvertent foiling of his first attempt to snare Whitman Lemuel, mentioning it with hardly any visible resentment at all, and then went on to tell her about the Indians dismantling the fake temple just as soon as she’d seen it, because everybody knew she was on her way back to Belmopan to report her discovery.
At that point, Valerie took over briefly, and told Kirby about her experiences with Vernon and the skinny black man and her wanderings in the wilderness, all of which had apparently been very difficult and frightening, though she was brave about it in the recital.
Kirby then took over again, saying, “Well, anyway, you were lost, and Innocent kept going back and forth between believing you were alive and believing you were dead, and if you were dead then he was sure I was pulling some con to persuade him you were alive for some reason, and back and forth like that. Also, he was going crazy about that hill and is there or isn’t there a temple.”
“We were all going crazy, Kirby.”
“Well,” Kirby said, “I offered him a deal. Buy the damn land back from me at the same price I paid for it, and I’d tell him the absolute truth about you and the temple, whether you were alive or not, and what the temple scam was.”
Valerie looked quite interested: “Did he say yes?”
“He did.”
“Well, that was very sweet,” she said, looking doe-eyed. “That Innocent would worry about me that much.”
“Sure,” Kirby said. “But that’s why I didn’t take you back there just now. Innocent and I no sooner shook hands on the deal when you showed up alive, so he already has that part. That’s half my deal gone already. Now, with what you already knew about my land and the people in South Abilene, and with what Innocent already knew, he could have put together for himself what I was doing with my temple scam, not needing to pay me to tell him about it, and that’s the other half. So why does he need me any more?”
“Oh,” Valerie said.
“If I know Innocent—and I do—at that point he would have found some way to weasel out of buying back the land.”
“So you don’t want me to talk to him,” Valerie said, “until he has the land and you have your money.”
“That’s right.”
Her expression was extremely enigmatic: “Do you mean I’ve been kidnapped again?”
Feeling a bit uncomfortable, Kirby said, “I was hoping, after I explained the whole thing, you’d sort of see it my way and agree to wait a little while. Not long. I mean, nobody’s pinning your arms down or anything.”
“Mmm,” she said, and folded her arms across her breasts to sort of pat her own biceps.
“It would just be for a day or two,” Kirby assured her.
“Mmm,” she said again, and then she yawned, covering her mouth with her hand. “I’m too tired to think now, Kirby,” she said. Raising her arms over her head, she arched her back and strrrretched. She was, Kirby noticed, very interesting when she stretched. “Lunch was delicious,” she told Estelle lazily, “but it made me so sleepy.”
“That’s good,” Estelle said. “You just sit, I clean up.”
Looking over at Kirby, her eyes round and guileless, Valerie said, “Your little apartment looked so cool and comfortable. Maybe I could just go there and take a nap.”
“Sure,” Kirby said, getting up from the table. “I’ll walk you over.”
She smiled, looking up at him from under her lashes as she rose.
Sex. How about that? If he and Valerie Greene got a little something on together, maybe she’d be more on his side in re Innocent. He had no idea where that idea came from, it was just suddenly there, just sort of popped up into his mind.
He ignored Estelle’s giggle as he escorted Valerie around the comer of the house.
24
PRESENT IMPERFECT
Saturday morning and Innocent sat in his office in Belmopan, his old self again, playing the telephone like a virtuoso, taking care of business he’d let go all to hell, covering his ass in every conceivable direction, and primarily seeing to it that none of the mud from the Vernon affair would stick to his own voluminous skirts.
Vernon. Who would have guessed? “I trusted that boy,” Innocent muttered aloud, yet even as he said it he knew that wasn’t the really accurate way to describe the situation. Innocent hadn’t exactly trusted Vernon, it wasn’t in Innocent’s character or training to throw something like trust around with a lavish hand, but what he had done was something that had the exact same effect as misplaced trust: he had underestimated Vernon. Patronized him, condescended to him, assumed that Vernon had no importance.
“And all along he was selling me out.”
Selling out his nation, too, of course, but that was secondary. He had betrayed Innocent, which meant Innocent had been unwary enough to get into a position where betrayal was possible. Now, among all the other things he was taking care of today, Innocent was going through Vernon’s desk and correspondence files, seeing what other unpleasant surprises might be in store, while down in Belize City Hospital Vernon was busily spilling what guts he had left, telling everything he knew about everything, naming every name.
“He could hurt me, that boy, if I’m not quick.”
“Talking to yourself, Innocent?”
Innocent looked up, frowning, not liking to believe he was the sort of person who talked to himself, certainly not wanting to be caught at it, and there was Kirby, grinning in the doorway, dressed for flying business in his open-neck shirt and khaki slacks and sturdy boots. “Well, Kirby,” Innocent growled, seeing nothing in that doorway that pleased him, “and what the hell happened to you yesterday?”
“Saved a village,” Kirby told him, grinning. “Went home to rest.”
“And what about Valerie?”
“Here she is.” Kirby stepped into the office then, and Valerie followed, looking happy and healthy and just a bit sheepish.
That son of a gun took her to bed, Innocent thought. There was pain in the thought, but also release. One of the things he’d been trying not to think about ever since Kirby and Valerie and the plane had all flown away yesterday from South Abilene was what he would feel—and what Valerie would feel—the next time they saw one another. The gradual suspicion had been forming inside him that the great life-changing love he had felt for Valerie was perhaps easier to maintain when she was dead or disappeared, a great mythic figure, than when she was an actual flesh-and-blood girl. The epiphany that Kirby had claimed Innocent was having the night before last in South Abilene had been a great shaking and cleansing of his system, long overdue he now believed, but it probably wouldn’t have been possible if Valerie had not been both (1) good, and (2) unobtainable.
So what should their relationship be, now that she was no longer among the missing and he’d already had his apotheosis? To go on being obsessed by her when she was present would be kind of silly, but what was the alternative?
On the other hand, even if she were no longer a goddess on earth but merely a woman, she was still quite an intriguing woman, and that pleasant afternoon spent in Vernon’s house—Vernon! by God, he knows so much!—was something Innocent would not at all mind repeating. Just how long would it take to get used to and bored with this great big tall girl with her happy enjoyments? It would be fun to find out.
But it was not to be. One look at Valerie, and a second look at Kirby, confirmed it, and a moment of sadness and nostalgia and regret passed over Innocent, like the final tremor when you’re getting over the flu. But then it was washed away by a sudden flood of relief: He would not have to follow through on his protestations of love after all. He would not have to behave toward Valerie present as he had sworn he wanted to when she was Valerie absent. He could have
his epiphany, and get away with it!
“Well, come on in, you two,” he said, rising from behind his desk, beaming at them, coming all over avuncular. “Looks to me like you’ve buried the hatchet.”
“We straightened out one or two things,” Kirby agreed.
“We talked it all out,” Valerie said, smiling softly, “and we understand one another now.”
“But what we’re here for, Innocent,” Kirby said, “I want to make good on our deal. You already know about Valerie, but I promised to tell you about the temple.”
“Oh, you don’t have to, Kirby,” Innocent said, just as smiling and open and friendly as anything. “What I saw in South Abilene, and talking with Tommy Watson, I’ve got it pretty well figured out by now.”
“Hmm,” said Kirby. He didn’t seem pleased.
“And then the tape, that helped,” Innocent said. “But you haven’t heard the tape, have you?”
“What tape?”
So Innocent got the tape out of the locked desk drawer and put it in the cassette player, and once again those sounds and words filled his office: “This way, gentlemen. Watch out for snakes.” Throk. “The noise keeps them in their holes.”
Valerie just looked bewildered, but Kirby stared at the cassette player as though it were his ancestors’ form of Zotzilaha Chimalman. The words and the sound effects went on, and Kirby just stood there and stared and listened until his own voice said, “Do you know how many people there are in New Jersey?” and that other voice said, “No one I know.”
“Witcher and Feldspan!”
Innocent hit the STOP button. “They recorded every conversation with you, Kirby.”
“Holy Christ! Those two?”
“Never underestimate people,” Innocent said: Vernon.
“But—They’re legitimate antique dealers!”
“That’s right. Doing undercover reporter work for a friend of theirs named Hiram Farley, editor of a big American magazine called Trend. Ever hear of Trend, Kirby?”
“Those dirty bastards.”
“I managed to have them lose these tapes at the airport,” Innocent said, “or otherwise you and your temple would be all over Trend magazine by now. You didn’t know I was helping you like that, did you?”
“Didn’t want me blown out of the water,” Kirby said, “until you figured out what I was up to and how you could horn in on it.”
“You always think the worst of me, Kirby,” Innocent said, and risked a smile at Valerie, telling her, “I hope you won’t be like that, Valerie.”
“I always say nice things about you, Mister St. Michael,” Valerie said.
Innocent almost laughed out loud. Oh, good, Kirby, you have no idea what you’re hooked onto here. He said, “The point is, Kirby, if you think of dealing with those fellas again, just remember these tapes.”
“Oh, I will,” Kirby said grimly, “but the deal I most want to talk about, Innocent, is ours. We did shake hands on—”
“Kirby, Kirby, do you think I’d try to reneg?”
Kirby frowned at him: “You won’t?”
“Certainly not. It’s true I know Valerie’s alive without you having to tell me; there she is, as beautiful as ever.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And it’s true I know all about your fake temple without you telling me. But, Kirby, I’d like to think I’m an honorable man. Why, I’ve been doing nothing at all this morning except put together this paperwork on our transaction.” And he handed over the manila folder.
Kirby, looking dubious, settled into one of the side chairs, opened the folder, and started to read. Innocent said to Valerie, “I am glad you’re safe, Valerie.”
“So am I,” she said, smiling.
“I keep remembering that lunch we had together, and how much you liked the conch. You did like the conch, didn’t you?”
She giggled, a sound Innocent would long cherish. “I liked it a lot,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” Kirby said. “This isn’t even half what I paid you.”
“Read on,” Innocent urged him. “You’ll see it makes sense.”
“Not if I’m—What? I’m taking back a mortgage?”
“That’s right,” Innocent said, with his blandest smile.
Kirby looked outraged. “People don’t give mortgages on land.”
Innocent shrugged. “All the trouble there’s been lately, I’d have a hard time right now getting my hands on that much cash. But I didn’t want to let our deal fall through just because I didn’t have enough cash money, and I knew you’d want to get all this settled and have some money to take with you when you leave, so—”
“Leave? Where am I going?”
Innocent gave Kirby a friendly but troubled look. “Don’t you know what your situation right now is, Kirby?”
“I’m being shafted by you, as per usual.”
“No no no. Kirby, you’re a hero.”
Valerie smiled and said, “Isn’t that nice?”
“Well, yes and no,” Innocent told her. “Unfortunately, Kirby’s the sort of hero who would be very smart to be modest and avoid the limelight.”
Kirby said, “Tell me about it.”
“Your radio calls to Holdfast and the police,” Innocent said, “meant help got there within thirty minutes of you breaking up the massacre. Two villagers dead, five terrorists dead, three captured and talking. Those little statues you threw out of the plane are being studied right now by a whole lot of experts. An American photojournalist on the scene managed to get some very dramatic shots of your plane coming through the clearing, in which your registration number is clearly visible.”
“Oh,” Kirby said.
“Right now,” Innocent went on, “Kirby Galway is the brave pilot who saved the defenseless village. However, I happen to know several people who are out and around Belize looking for the hero, because there’s just one or two questions.”
Kirby sighed. Valerie said, “Mister St. Michael, what does this mean?”
“It means if Kirby’s smart,” Innocent told her, “he’ll leave Belize. Just for a while, till it all blows over. Say three or four years.”
Kirby sighed again. Innocent smiled amiably and said, “That’s why I worked so hard to get you just the best deal I could before you leave. A nice ten-year mortgage. And if you add up the purchase price and all the interest payments over the ten years, you’ll find it comes out to precisely what you paid me for the land in the first place.”
“And you get to write off interest payments and …” Kirby shook his head, disgusted. “You’ll put the whole amount in a high-yield investment, make my payments out of the interest, and it’ll never cost you a thing. And you’ll have the land. You’ll make money on this!”
“You’ll have your purchase price back, Kirby,” Innocent pointed out, and spread his hands. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Kirby gave Valerie a long-suffering look. “Valerie,” he said, “if you ever see me even talking to this fella again, run over and knock me down.”
Valerie laughed, her eyes gleaming as she watched them both, enjoying herself.
Innocent pointed to the folder. “And down in there, Kirby,” he said, “you’ll find a check for the first month’s payment. How’s that?”
“Terrific,” Kirby said bitterly. Then he shook his head again, and sighed, and said, “Okay, Innocent, you win. Where do I sign?”
25
CROSSROADS OF DESTINY
Trump Glade, Florida. Route 216 south 8.4 miles from the movie house. Left at the sign reading Potchaw 12. Whitman Lemuel peered out the windshield of the rented car and there it was, a battered old metal sign, shot to death by any number of retarded louts but still discernibly reading, “Potchaw 12.” And the odometer showed exactly eight point four miles since he’d passed the movie house in Trump Glade.
The Potchaw sign included an arrow, which pointed off to the right, where a blacktop road ran away between orange groves, but Kirby Galway’s directio
ns said to go the other way, so Lemuel spun the wheel and the rental turned left onto the dirt road meandering out across the flatness of Florida’s scrub.
Now it was supposed to be 15.2 miles on to where he would find a red ribbon on a barbed wire fence. Turning up the air conditioning slightly, Lemuel relaxed a bit against the seat, and drove slowly but steadily toward his meeting with Kirby Galway.
Of course Galway expected those two New York merchants, Witcher and Feldspan, but he would certainly be willing to make his arrangements with Lemuel instead, once he understood that Witcher and Feldspan were now out of the picture completely.
The memory of Feldspan on that airplane, and the revolting horror he’d created up and down those aisles, came back suddenly into the forefront of Lemuel’s brain, complete with sensory elements, and his lip curled in remembered disgust. It was better those two were out of it, much better.
Actually, Alan Witcher would have been prepared to go forward, but Gerry Feldspan was just too nervous for the job. Some other passenger had looked at him wrong and the result was absolute chaos; fortunately, Feldspan at least did manage to be sick at one point on the passenger who’d started all the trouble, apparently ruining a quite valuable harmonica.
But the upshot—well; perhaps we’ll find a better word—the result of it all was that, in the Miami Airport, Feldspan absolutely shrieked that he was never going to commit another crime, he wanted nothing to do with smugglers, on and on and on, it was a miracle he didn’t get the entire terminal arrested. Witcher, alternating between icy embarrassment and quite touching concern for his friend’s well-being, at last agreed it was impossible for them to go forward, they would have to abandon the project forever. They would turn around at once and fly right back to New York—“And get back that letter somehow,” Witcher had said mysteriously—and leave the field to Lemuel.
High Adventure Page 28
