The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

“Political correctness isn’t my strong point,” I said. “Look, I can’t be responsible for the thing.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I guess you have other copies of the letter?”

  “Absolutely. And photos of the tablet. But when it comes to an artifact, there’s nothing like the real thing.” He took the tablet out of the metal box and handed it to me, wrapped in its cloth. “Thanks, Alan. I’ll sleep better tonight.”

  “I don’t know if I will.” I pulled the door open and turned. “Whenever you want this back, just ask me.”

  “Deal. Oh, Alan …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Our little conversation: Can you keep it under your hat? Well, you can tell Pepper, but …”

  “Nobody else,” I agreed and wondered if the same people who’d killed the man on the beach would think twice about killing for a piece of stone with scratches.

  Later that night Pepper and I walked along the beach, hand in hand. The huts, with their lit windows, looked like a string of landing lights. Only April’s, between Blackburn’s and our own, was dark, and I wondered if April was with Blackburn. I told Pepper about my talk with Paul Hayes and she gave a low whistle.

  “It sounds like poor Paul’s lost it,” she said.

  “Yeah. Still, it would be interesting if—”

  She jerked my hand. “Come on, Alan, you don’t believe any of that stuff? A Canaanite inscription?”

  “It seems pretty far-fetched.” We came to the end of the beach, where the steps led up to the restaurant.

  “Do you have this stone with you?” she asked.

  “In my pocket.”

  “Can I see it?”

  I nodded. “But it’s too dark down here. We’ll have to go to the top of the cliff, where there’s light from Geraldo’s.”

  We made our way up the steps to Geraldo’s back patio, where the tables were empty and a lone waiter was sweeping the green tiles. I moved into a pool of light, cast by one of the lamps that lined the side of the area, and took out the little piece of stone. Pepper unwrapped it and turned it over in her hands. After a few seconds she handed it back.

  “This isn’t anything,” she pronounced. “Those scratches could have been made by some Mayan artisan who—”

  “I know. But Paul’s convinced.”

  She walked over to the stone wall that guarded the cliff edge. The lake was black as a pit and I found myself thinking about metnal, the Mayan concept of hell.

  I’d stood here fifteen years ago when …

  “I mean, even if there’s some undiscovered site out there,” she said, “there’s no reason to think it has anything to do with ancient Semites coming here eighteen hundred years ago.”

  “No.” I turned away from the lake, where I was starting to imagine things lurking just under the placid black surface. “I wonder if it’s too late for a beer.”

  “At Geraldo’s?” She laughed. “I don’t think it’s ever too late.”

  I came back a few minutes later with two bottles and took a long swallow from my own.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “This business with Paul seems to have upset you.”

  I didn’t tell her about the lake.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You look worried. Hey, Paul Hayes is way out in left field on this.”

  “Paul’s brilliant,” I said. “I’ve read some of his papers on linguistics. Not that I understand everything he’s saying.”

  “That was when he was younger,” she said. “Before his stroke.”

  “You think his mind is affected,” I said.

  “It’s an explanation.”

  “Yeah.” I took another sip. “Unless …”

  “Unless what? Alan, you know as well as I do there’s nothing to this nonsense. There’s not one shred of evidence that Europeans or anybody else came to the New World between the time the first Indians crossed the Bering Strait and the time the Vikings found Newfoundland a thousand years ago, and after the Vikings—”

  “There was nobody until Columbus. I know.”

  “But you sound like you don’t believe it.”

  “I’m just saying interesting things pop up now and again and this is one of them.”

  “Oh, Alan, you’re so exasperating. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were trying to aggravate me.”

  “No.”

  “Look, all these diffusionists seem to have one goal: to prove that the first people who came to the New World—the Native Americans—didn’t have the brains to build the complex civilizations that we know existed here. The concept of building pyramids came from Egypt—even if there’s a two thousand-year gap between the first Egyptian pyramids and the first Mesoamerican ones. The Mayan calendar, one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements, was borrowed from the high civilizations of Southeast Asia. The art style of Mesoamerica is really from India. The poor Native Americans weren’t even smart enough to invent pottery! That had to come from Japanese fishermen floating down the whole damned coast of North and Central America two thousand years before Christ. Fishermen who just happen to have left no other traces of themselves, probably because the barbaric Indians ate them.”

  I took another drink of my beer. I knew better than to argue when she was wound up.

  “It’s just like in the 1800s, when people claimed the North American Indians couldn’t have built the Indian mounds, because they were only savages. The mounds had to have been the work of some superior group of mound builders who were wiped out by the savages. Alan, it’s nothing but racism!”

  “Well, Heyerdahl says the diffusion went both ways, that the South American Indians reached the South Pacific Islands by going west on rafts.”

  She squinted at me. “You really are jerking me around, aren’t you?”

  “Not in the least.” I leaned back against the wall. Through the doorway to the inner dining room I could just make out a few late drinkers at the bar. “I’m just saying it’s a question of looking at the evidence, if there is any. I don’t see any good evidence myself, but if somebody came up with some …”

  “Like this lost site of Paul’s?” She shook her head. “Alan, even if you had a sculpture that looked like Fabio, it wouldn’t prove anything. There are variations in any gene pool. There can be archaic genes that manifest themselves at a given time.”

  “Right.”

  “Besides, I doubt there’s any site like that out there, no matter what the sculptures look like. Chicleros have gotten to them all and after the chicleros the looters. And there’s been a hundred years of continuous archaeological exploration.”

  “But every once in a while you hear about a new site nobody knew about.”

  “Nobody but the tomb robbers. Chances are if you found it you wouldn’t recognize it because everything worth taking would have been carted off.”

  “A definite possibility.”

  “And don’t forget the sacbé, the causeway you say Williams mentioned in his letter: It probably would show up on satellite photos and archaeologists have been scanning those for over twenty years.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why are you agreeing with me?”

  “Keeps you off balance,” I said.

  She elbowed my ribs. “I’ll unbalance you.”

  Before I could respond, there was movement inside and José Durán came out of the restaurant. He halted when he saw us, frowning, and I sensed he was trying to decide something.

  “Ola, José,” Pepper said. “Buy you a beer?”

  His head gave a little shake. “I’ve had all I need.”

  “José” I said. “If there’s something we need to talk about—”

  ‘No hay nada,” he snapped. “There’s nothing.” I stiffened slightly. “I regret what happened the other day. I was wrong and I ask you to forgive me. Now, if you’ll both excuse me …”

  “Sure,” I said. “Oh, by the way …”

  “Yes?”

  “The other nig
ht don Geraldo said something about knowing you for almost as long as he’d known me. Did you work in this part of Mexico in the 1980s?”

  “As a student only. Very briefly. Buenas noches.”

  Pepper waited until José had reached the beach. “He never said anything about having worked here in the eighties. I thought that up to the last couple of years, all his experience was in Chiapas and Oaxaca.”

  I stared back at the lake. This time the spirits lurking under the surface were beginning to take forms.

  FOURTEEN

  It was two nights later, on a Friday evening just before dinner, that April and Eric had their fight. By the time it was over everybody else had weighed in.

  It started on the patio, while we were drinking beer, waiting for our food. I sat with my back to the lake, because there were still things out there I wasn’t sure I wanted to see. It started because Hayes insisted on going to Mérida.

  At first Eric tried to talk him out of it. “It’s a long trip. The AC is broken in the Rover.”

  Hayes laughed. “Jesus, I once went from Villahermosa to Mexico City in a bus full of chickens and pigs—”

  “—when I was in diapers,” Blackburn finished good-naturedly. “But back then you didn’t have a heart condition.”

  “My damn heart’s fine. It was a stroke I had. A very minor one. Hell, I’m not even sure the doctors were right. They make it up as they go.”

  “Sure, and when you get dizzy in the sun out on the site, it’s just an act.”

  “Down here everybody gets dizzy from the sun in August.”

  Blackburn said nothing.

  “Anyway, I was planning on going up to the museum, remember? There are some maps I need to look at, but I got sidetracked up near Tres Cabras. Otherwise, I’d have already taken care of this.”

  “Eric’s right,” Minnie said. “What if you had a breakdown?”

  “Mexican mechanics can fix anything. I’ve seen ’em rewire alternators and fix head gaskets with asbestos.”

  “Then why don’t you take somebody with you?” Eric said. He turned to April. “How about it? You could stay until Monday and see a doctor in Mérida who knows something. We can’t have you staying sick all the time.”

  “I’m fine,” April said. “Besides, the field season’s almost over.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to send you home sick. Look, there’s a guy named Robles, a good internist—he’s treated me. I can call ahead. He may even see you on Saturday.”

  “I’m not going.”

  Blackburn’s face reddened. “You’re forgetting who’s running things here. I’m responsible for the crew.”

  “Then fire me.”

  Eric shoved his chair back, shot to his feet, and stalked off into the restaurant. A few seconds later we heard an engine start in the parking lot and a screech of tires.

  “Where’s he going at this time of night?” Minnie asked. “It isn’t safe after that poor man was killed.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hayes assured her. “He’ll just drive up and down the highway a little until he calms down.” He looked over at April. “He was right, you know: You really ought to get checked out. And I’d like to have the company.”

  April looked down at the tabletop. “I’m sorry. I’d like to. But I just don’t want to go.”

  “Nobody wants to see you stay sick,” José said softly.

  “Thanks. But I don’t want to talk about it.” April got up then and we watched her walk across the patio, down the steps, and across the beach toward her hut.

  “A very strange young woman,” Hayes said, shaking his head. He squinted over at José. “You’re close to her, Jose”. What’s all this about?”

  The Mexican shrugged. “We’re not that close. We’ve talked, but she is a very private person, this April.”

  Minnie rose. “Maybe it’s a woman problem. I’ll go see if I can get anything out of her.”

  Paul Hayes drained his glass. “Well, with or without her, I’m going to Mérida tomorrow. I can stand the Rover, air conditioning or not, and Eric doesn’t need it. I just hope Eric doesn’t crack it up with his nocturnal escapade.”

  “Is it really April’s father he’s afraid of?” I asked.

  “He is very rich,” José said curtly. “She’s told me about him and growing up. He made a major donation to the project so that Eric would take her on.”

  “Poor Eric,” Pepper said. “A hostage to a rich donor.”

  “Poor everybody,” Hayes said. “Every principal investigator is a hostage to somebody, whether it’s the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, or their university. There’s no such thing as academic freedom anymore. You have to toe the company line.”

  It was just after midnight when I was awakened by a noise outside. I opened my eyes, trying to remember if my machete was within reach, and then I realized the sound was a tapping on the wooden door. I threw on my pants and went to open it.

  Eric was standing in the doorway, face anxious in a way I hadn’t seen before.

  “Alan, I’m sorry to bother you,” he whispered. “Is Pepper asleep?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Have you got a few minutes to walk over to my house?”

  I slipped my feet into my sandals and followed him across the beach, past April’s darkened hut, and to his house at the end. He opened the door and turned on the light.

  “Want a drink?” he asked, reaching for a bottle of tequila.

  “Too late for me,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He regarded the bottle for a second, then put it back unopened. “For me, too.”

  The hut was furnished like all the others, with a camp table and a couple of chairs, and he slumped into one of them.

  “Sit down.”

  I noticed that the hammock still hung, folded out of the way, from one wooden post, and Eric’s laptop was set up on the table, surrounded by stacks of papers and drawings.

  “I need your help, Alan. The whole project needs your help.”

  It would be a lie to deny that a little thrill of excitement ran through me. To be back in the game …

  “You saw what happened tonight with April.”

  I nodded.

  “She defied me in front of everybody. She knows her old man can get the president of the university on the phone any time day or night. And, considering how much he gives to the endowment every year, the president will listen.”

  There wasn’t anything I could say to that.

  “The girl’s been a liability ever since she’s been down here. I wanted to get her out of the way for a while—I think Jose feels sorry for her and he’s a good man. But I need him to be clearheaded, not mooning over some little girl with snakes in her head.”

  “You think she and José …”

  “I don’t know. And I really don’t give a damn, so long as it doesn’t affect the project. José’s a single man, she’s a single woman, over twenty-one. But he’s a sucker for a sad story. I imagine right now, in his macho Latin mind, he’s thinking I was too hard on her.”

  “I think Jose can handle it,” I said.

  Eric stroked his beard. “I hope so. But the point is, I’m tired of April’s hypochondria. There isn’t a goddamn thing wrong with her except she doesn’t want to have to sweat in the hot sun like everybody else. She grew up with a silver spoon, she knows her old man’s supporting this project, and she thinks she can do—or not do—any damn thing she wants.”

  “Tough situation,” I sympathized.

  “You got it.” He bit his lip. “I don’t have much time for rich bitch spoiled little girls. I grew up poor, with an old man who wasn’t there half the time, and when he was, everybody wished he wasn’t, because he was always looking for somebody to lay into with his belt. My mother died when I was in high school and I worked as everything from a janitor to a mechanic’s helper to get through school. Nobody ever gave me a thing. So if an old woman like Minnie O’Toole can work her butt off in Mexican sun, a twenty-tw
o-year-old rich girl can, too.”

  I kept waiting for him to tell me why he’d asked me here.

  “I was thinking about all this while I was driving up and down the highway. Believe me, I considered every possibility you can imagine. See, Alan, April’s not the only problem, though she’s a big part of it. We’ve had good weather for excavating, not much rain, but we’re still behind. Paul isn’t worth a damn in the field—he’s too busy running everywhere, doing his own thing. Not that I expected anything else. He’s not an archaeologist, anyway, though he’s been involved in it a lot over the years. And his health isn’t that good. When he disappeared a few weeks ago, I halfway expected to hear they’d found him dead in some village.” Blackburn took out a pipe and slowly packed it. He lit it, drew on it, and then exhaled a cloud of sweet smoke. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I like the smell of pipes,” I said.

  “Good. Anyway, you can scratch him, except for consulting on Mayan etymology and ethnohistory. Minnie? Well, she’s a great gal, but she had to be trained and that took a little while. Pepper’s great, of course: She’s picked up this kind of archaeology easily over the last couple of field seasons, even though she was trained as a historical archaeologist. But she’s committed to go back to teach the fall semester. It pretty much boils down to José. I know the Instituto Nacional will let me keep him as long as there’s a salary, but José can’t be everywhere.”

  “I thought the field season was ending in a couple of weeks. Do you mean you have money left?”

  He pointed the stem of his pipe at me. “That’s what I’m getting to. See, it all comes back to Miss April Blake.”

  Gradually it was starting to make sense.

  “Her father,” I said.

  “You got it. After I’d driven up and down a couple of dozen times and passed about twenty slow-moving cargo trucks, I came back to the restaurant and used Geraldo’s phone to call Byron Blake. I was going to tell him I was sending his daughter home and he could cancel the whole goddamned project if he felt like it.”

  “And?”

  “I got him. He was at home and still up. And the old bastard wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear from me.”

  “It’s happened before,” I suggested.