The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Oye, ven acá!”

  The man with the light was calling the others over. Pepper pressed against me, shivering.

  We had nowhere to go.

  I fumbled for a rock, anything to use as a weapon …

  Shots and more yells.

  The flashlight shifted and as it did, an errant beam touched something in the corner of the room neither of us had seen before. It was a place where the masonry had collapsed, leaving a hole that led to the other side of the building.

  “This way,” I whispered, urging Pepper to her feet.

  Now there was a burst of automatic fire, a fusillade of single shots and two more quick bursts.

  But they weren’t shooting at us.

  It was the darkness. They were still confused, firing at anything that moved.

  “Alan, I don’t think I can—”

  “Yes, you can.” I dragged her forward, through the escape hole and into another room.

  There was almost steady automatic fire now, from several weapons.

  Then the ground shook with an explosion and pieces of masonry toppled onto us from the roof.

  “We have to get out of here before this whole thing falls in,” I told her, but there was no reply.

  I dragged her toward the opening and into the steamy night.

  A flash, another explosion, and yells. In the instant of sudden light, I’d seen we were in a second, smaller plaza, with buildings on the other side. If we could get to them, we might find better cover.

  “Come on,” I urged, trying to lift her, but she only mumbled something under her breath.

  I tried to lift her but lacked the strength.

  More running feet now, and yells, against the background of gunfire and explosions.

  Our pursuers had found the little plaza, were making a systematic search of the buildings.

  If I could get up, draw their attention, pull them away. But what little strength I’d had was gone. I sat dumbly, waiting, like a tethered goat.

  An inner darkness, the old man said.

  I remembered about Felicia now. And I knew why I’d dreamed of the Xtabai, the folk representation of the goddess Xtab.

  She-of-the-rope. The goddess of hanging, the favorite Mayan means of suicide.

  Except that Felicia hadn’t tried to hang herself, because she was from central Mexico. She’d cut her wrists instead.

  That was how I’d found her, lying in bed, soaked in blood.

  She didn’t die, of course. But I blamed myself.

  Just as I blamed myself now.

  I’d brought the darkness ….

  A ghoulish green light suddenly flooded the plaza from a hole in the tree cover above. Someone had sent up a flare and in its eldritch glow I saw them now, walking toward me, guns spitting fire. The bullets popped off the walls behind me and chips of stone stung my back.

  But I wasn’t looking at our attackers anymore. I was staring over them, at the temple that shone green in the night.

  I was staring at the masks.

  Then the ground split open, there was blinding light, and the masks disappeared.

  Sound and movement ceased and I was in darkness.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It took them a while to sort things out. At first they thought we were part of the gang and then Tapia recognized Pepper and we were carried out to the sacbé and lifted out by helicopter. Still dazed, I glanced down at the site from the open cargo door. There were several small fires and the black bulk of the plane still sat immobile on the runway. More flares had appeared and here and there I caught the hazy outline of a temple, bathed in flickering light.

  I turned my head to look at Pepper, but her eyes were closed, and when I tried to say something over the noise of the rotors to the soldier squatting beside her he ignored me. Then my eyes closed, too.

  They said I slept a day. I only know that when I awoke it was dusk and I was staring at green, flaking walls while from the window a tiny air conditioner circulated a smell of alcohol.

  I looked around, frantic. Where was Pepper? I pushed myself up in bed, half aware that I was in shorts and a T-shirt. It didn’t matter. I had to find somebody, find out where …

  The door opened and Eric Blackburn came in, smiling, a bottle of Presidente in one hand and a handsome, polished mahogany walking cane in the other.

  “About time you woke up,” he said, setting the bottle down on my bedside table. “I brought you a couple of presents.”

  “Pepper …” I blurted.

  “She’s fine. Got a pretty sore shoulder, lost some blood. That’s why she’s in the hospital. This is a motel, in case you didn’t notice. You’re in Chetumal. You’ve got a mighty hard skull. Seems like the bullet bounced right off. The doctor said there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage, but he wanted to keep you awhile. Seems like head wounds are tricky. I told him we’d get you back if you went into convulsions or had a stroke or started hallucinating.”

  “Hallucinating?”

  “Well, you were talking funny before you came around. About somebody named don Jildo.”

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds, trying to sort imagination from reality.

  “What about Santos?”

  Eric shook his head. “Not good. They shot him twice in the midsection. But you know how tough these chicleros are. He’s going to pull through.”

  “I have to talk to him.”

  “You will. Right now we have to finish getting that wound of yours healed so you can start on your new job.”

  “And Minnie?”

  “She’s got blisters as big as Nebraska and she was dehydrated as hell, but she made it. She stumbled into that village just after dark and there was a man there from the government co-op with a truck.” He laughed and leaned back against the wall. “Took her longer to make herself understood than it did to walk the whole damned trail, from what I hear. But he finally took her to the highway and they found Tapia’s men at the roadblock. Fortunately, one of them spoke enough English to understand what she was saying.”

  “They took their time getting there,” I said.

  “You know Mexico. He had to get more troops. That meant convincing his superiors, and from what I gather he wasn’t sure which ones he could trust. Tapia’s a hard-ass and the rest of them were getting tired of having him yell wolf all the time. But now he’s a hero, strutting around like a little Napoleon.”

  “I guess he earned the right.”

  “Sure. His soldiers killed five of those guys, including Jesus Cantu himself.”

  “Don Chucho?”

  “None other. Seems like he was there to make sure the goods from Colombia got there this time, because there’d been some kind of foul-up before. He wanted to count the stuff personally before any money was handed over. Then they’d have another plane come and take it to the States.”

  “Nice little operation.”

  “Amen. He had a ranch a few miles to the west, with a vehicle trail into the site. He’d taken a hell of a chance, getting the sacbé cleared and widened. I guess he figured once it’d been noted on recon photos, nobody would look too hard again. And if there were a few people working near it, they’d look like archaeologists. That is, if the satellite recon even zoomed in. There’s probably more than they can process as it is. The plane was even special, something the Spanish made for hauling cargo and people and setting down on short, rough runways. Called a CASA. Has a narrow wheel-base, about fifteen or sixteen feet, I understand. Range is a thousand miles. With extra fuel he could make it all the way from Colombia, or there may have been a refueling stop somewhere in Honduras or Nicaragua. Chucho was smart. Apparently thought he’d greased enough of the army brass to stay in operation, but Tapia is the rare officer who’s incorruptible. And apparently there are some others he knows, who listened to him.”

  “Yeah.” I shook my head. “Poor Jordan.”

  Eric nodded. “Poor Jordan, poor Abelardo Rojas.”

  “Who?”

  “The man
on the beach. He ran a little store up at Tres Cabras. Seems like he was working for Jordan, keeping his eyes open. Chucho and his people decided to make an example and left him where Jordan would find him. They knew others might figure he fell out of a boat, but they knew Jordan would know right away what message they were sending him.”

  Tres Cabras. The fat store owner … Of course. …

  “Chucho wasn’t about to let some guy from the DEA get in the way,” Eric went on. “It’s a hell of a scandal.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. The state government’s saying it was the federal police that killed him, the PAN Party says it was the kind of PRI corruption they’re cleaning up, and PRI says it didn’t happen on their watch. And both of them are saying the U.S. should keep hands off.”

  “Sounds like a train wreck.”

  “Yeah.” Eric pushed himself away from the wall. “Look, I’ve got a dig to run and we’re behind, thanks to this.” He tugged at his beard. “And now we’ve got a major new site that needs to be recorded, mapped, excavated ….” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “Hell, this project could last for the rest of our lives.”

  “Our lives?”

  “Hell, yes. You found the damn site. Now you’ve got to dig it.” He winked. “I think you just bought us all job security.”

  As the door closed behind him, I lay back against the pillow and thought about an old man in the jungle: An inner darkness, he’d said. A darkness that sucked in others. He’d been wrong, of course. I’d survived. Everybody had.

  Over the next twenty-four hours I was visited by the others of the crew, except for the two people I most wanted to see, Pepper and Santos, who were still in the hospital.

  First came Minnie, lanky and sunburned. She leaned over the bed and kissed my cheek and I felt something wet on my skin.

  “Now, look,” she complained, “I didn’t come here to start crying. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “We all owe you,” I said.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, you do, and believe me, you’re going to pay. Eric chartered a Cessna and had them fly him in so he could see it firsthand. Now he’s been telling us how it’s a major find.” She leaned toward me and whispered: “He’s named it already: Kaax Muul. He says that means jungle ruins.”

  “It already has a name,” I said.

  “I know.” She smiled conspiratorially. “But he said it would confuse things too much to go switching the name of where we’re working now to the new site, because all our permits and all his publications use the name Lubaanah for the place he’s been working for the last two years.”

  “There’s some sense to that,” I said.

  “Still, I think Paul’s up there looking down and saying, ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “Probably.”

  Next, to my surprise, came Tapia, alone and bearing a small box. If I expected him to be puffed up with self-importance, I was disappointed. Instead, he looked ill-at-ease, as if he weren’t quite sure what to say. He laid the box on the bed and asked me how I was feeling. I thanked him for saving us and congratulated him on his success, but he only nodded, as if the whole business were a slight embarrassment.

  “There’s a great deal more to do,” he said.

  “Then you’ll be busy for a while,” I suggested, but he only shrugged.

  “Not here. They’re transferring me to Sonora.”

  “Oh?”

  “A reward,” he said, but I could tell he was not impressed by the honor.

  We shook hands again and when he was gone I saw that the box contained chocolates.

  It was late that evening that I was visited by José Durán. He knocked and then came in alone and I wasn’t sure whether April was outside waiting or not. He stood just inside the doorway, as if he might have to leave in a hurry, and stared at me.

  “Doctor,” he said.

  “Skip the formality, José. Come on in.”

  “Eric said you were weak. I wasn’t sure …”

  “Close the door, will you?”

  He slowly shut the door, as if he were somehow shutting himself into hell.

  “I’m very happy that you and Pepper are all right.”

  It sounded like he’d rehearsed it and I smiled.

  “Look, José, I can save us both a lot of trouble. I’ve figured it out and you don’t have to worry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I pointed to the bottle on the table. “Pour us both a drink, how about it? There’re probably some glasses in the bathroom.”

  He hesitated, then picked up the bottle like it was a ticking time bomb, went into the bathroom, and came out with a pair of glasses. I watched him pour us each just enough rum to cover the bottom of the glass.

  I took my glass and the bottle and finished pouring.

  “You know, José, while I was in the jungle I had a lot of time to think.” I swirled the dark liquid around in the glass and then raised the tumbler. “Salud.”

  He lifted his own in a perfunctory toast.

  “I had some pretty wild hallucinations. I guess it was shock. The mind does funny things when it thinks it’s about to shut down.”

  The Mexican lifted his glass to his lips, as if the gesture kept him from having to reply.

  “One of the things I kept thinking about is what happened to me in these parts fifteen years ago.” I took a swallow, closed my eyes, and felt the alcohol burn its way down my throat to my stomach. “Damn, that’s good. For a while there, I thought I wasn’t going to ever taste anything like this again. Want some more?”

  “No, thank you.” His eyes were fixed on me now, as if he were expecting me to spring, and maybe he was right.

  “Anyway, I kept seeing the woman I used to be married to, a woman named Felicia Esquivel. We met when I was down here doing dissertation research and then we got married when I was on a big project. We lived in those same cabañas we’re using now.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “It was the happiest time in my life,” I said, ignoring his question. “But it turned into the worst time.”

  I picked up the bottle. “Let me put something in that glass.”

  “I’m fine. Now, Dr. Graham—”

  “There’s no need to give a blow-by-blow. I was young and immature and self-centered: All I could think about was my work. I didn’t understand Felicia’s needs, or the pressures she was under as a professional woman in a man’s world. She started falling apart. If I’d been as sensitive as I should have, I’d have seen it, because she kept doing things to get my attention, things that were really cries for help. But nothing worked. Finally, she tried to kill herself. And instead of being there for her, I went into a kind of shock myself. I acted like she’d betrayed me by being sick. I acted like she’d let me down when I needed her support instead of being there when she needed mine.”

  Durán looked away for the first time.

  “We couldn’t keep it going after that. I went back to the States. I said I’d send for her, but we both knew the truth. She went through other men, looking for somebody to give her the reassurance she needed. I heard she ended up in an administrative position in INAH, in Mexico City. I haven’t heard from her for thirteen years or so.”

  Durán lowered his glass, and this time when our eyes met I saw resignation in his face.

  “I don’t know what she told you about me,” I said. “I guess at this point it doesn’t matter.”

  “Doctor—”

  “Alan.”

  He turned around suddenly, giving me his back. “She was very bitter.”

  “I’m not surprised. Felicia was never halfway about anything.”

  “She’s a very passionate person.” He turned again, as if ready to do battle. “But how …?”

  “Why else would you be so hostile to me for no reason? I couldn’t figure it out, at least not consciously. But I think your tone of voice, your body language, the way you kept sneaking looks at me, like you were sizing me up—I th
ink my mind was putting it all together on some level.” I told him about the dreams. “It took me a while, but at some point, out there in the jungle, it came through.”

  “I didn’t know I was so obvious.”

  “I guess we all are.”

  “Dios,” he swore softly. He walked over to the nightstand, took the bottle, and this time he half filled his glass. “I was with her for five years.”

  I watched him take a healthy swallow. I’d known about Felicia’s indiscretion while we were married, and I assumed she’d been with men since we’d split, but this was the first time I’d ever met one of her lovers. For some reason the jealousy I’d expected to feel wasn’t there.

  “She was—is—a very unhappy person.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d hoped—”

  He shook his head violently. “No es culpa tuya. You aren’t to blame. I used to think you were. She told me things that made me think it was your fault. I was so involved with her I hated you. How could anyone do this to such a beautiful, sensitive woman?” His laugh was off-key. “I told her that if you ever dared come back to Mexico I’d even scores for her.”

  I nodded. “Understandable.”

  “No, listen: It was more than that.” He finished the glass and reached for the bottle again. “I had my own reason for hating you.”

  “But we’d never met.”

  “It had nothing to do with you. It was her. You see, no matter what I tried to do, how much I loved her, it wasn’t enough. Every minute I was with her, even in the most intimate moments, you were there.”

  It wasn’t what I’d expected to hear.

  “I finally gave up with her because of that,” he said. “I couldn’t compete with you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you?” An edge had crept into his voice. “Felicia still loves you. Any man she is involved with will have to live with the ghost of Alan Graham.”

  It was my turn to pour a stiff one.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “When I became a member of this project and met Pepper, I realized the man she kept talking about was the same man who’d been Felicia’s husband. The man who’d ruined everything for Felicia and me. Pepper made you seem like a superman.” He threw up a hand in frustration. “I hated you all the more. You’d ruined Felicia and now you were spreading your lies and ensnaring this decent young woman.”