The Maya Stone Murders

by Malcolm Shuman

  I unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk, levered out my album with one hand, and dropped it before me on the desk. Then I reached into my in-basket and withdrew a large, stiff manila envelope. I turned it upside down, so that the contents slid out through the slit I’d made when it had arrived earlier.

  I caught the pictures by the edges and laid the accompanying note to one side. Then I leaned back and savored the colored photos.

  They depicted a yacht, grandiosely named the Excelsior II, a throwback to the J-boats of prewar days. It was owned by a billionaire from Miami, and it was supposed to have a good crack at the America’s Cup. The pictures had been taken by the owner’s nephew, whom I’d helped with a racing problem of another sort. The photos were the final installment in a bill it had taken him six months to pay and I was pleased to see he was a man of his word. I opened my album, took the glue from my top drawer, and carefully pasted the photos to the pages, covering them with a sheet of clear plastic. Then I leafed back through the earlier entries, to all the great Cup winners: Constellation; Intrepid; Courageous; Freedom; Australia II; Liberty. I even have a painting of the first winner, America, from 1851, and a sepia print of Defender, from 1895. And there were a lot of boats that didn’t win the Cup, but gave it a good try.

  I made a mental note to drop a thank-you to my erstwhile client and carefully replaced the album in the drawer. I stuck a cassette in the stereo—Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto—then got a beer, half a French-bread loaf, and a hunk of Longhorn cheese out of the refrigerator in the next room. I went out onto the balcony and took a seat in the lawn chair overlooking the patio. I settled back, slicing off pieces of cheese with my pocket knife to make a sandwich. Sometimes, in the late evenings, with the faint sound of traffic coming over the rooftop and the smell of exhausts in the heavy air, I have the sensation of being somewhere else. It’s one of the benefits of the locale, watching the water playing up from the fountain and now and then catching just the right light, so that there’s a rainbow in the center of the yard.

  I knew pre-Columbian artifacts brought high prices on the collector’s market. But Thorpe’s problem was just the opposite. I sighed, finished my sandwich, and went back down the stairs to my car, parked just off the street, behind the green wooden doors that led to the patio. I headed uptown, for Tulane, keeping to a steady thirty on most of St. Charles and only hitting a couple of lights until I reached the University District. It was a test of skill, driving in New Orleans with just one hand. At first I’d rebelled against the turning knob on the steering wheel, but common sense finally vanquished any residual machismo.

  You can do without the special blinker bar, the rehab counselor had said. But you have to accept the fact that things won’t be as easy.

  He was right. They weren’t. But I managed. I just made sure all my cars had automatic transmissions and I reluctantly gave up my accustomed high speeds. I scaled back my sailing and became a spectator. Most people who saw me, with my left hand in my pocket, seemed unconcerned. Thorpe was an exception.

  I found a place to park on Calhoun, about a quarter of a mile from the school, and walked the rest of the way.

  The University was founded in the 1830s as a medical college. Later, a millionaire named Paul Tulane left it a fortune and it began to cultivate an image as the Harvard of the South. The image was enhanced by the Gothic architecture, an elite student body, and a board composed of more old money than politicians. Most of the city’s doctors and half the lawyers are products of Tulane. I didn’t know about archaeologists.

  Thorpe’s offices were at the top of Dinwiddie Hall, a forbidding gray stone structure within sight of the streetcar tracks. I found the building and clambered the four flights to the top, where a sign said MIDDLE AMERICAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE. I stopped beside the sign to examine the alarms. They were Honeywells, which meant that someone had given Thorpe good advice. I emerged into a narrow, dimly lit hallway, with display cases on either side and what appeared to be a Mayan temple on the right, at the end. To the left I saw a classroom and, somewhere beyond, an office, where I heard a typewriter at work. I made a pass by the display cases. One contained a human skull, its teeth inlaid with flakes of jade. Another bore some pottery from the Classic Maya period. I stopped before the temple, which was really a plaster copy of the sculptured facade of the real thing. Then I passed along the other wall, checking the cases there. I’d thought for a moment that the artifacts might have been taken from the displays here, but I could see now that none of the cases bore comparable items. And besides, Thorpe would certainly have known his own displays, wouldn’t he?

  I started for the classroom and at that moment a woman emerged, a pad in her hand.

  “May I help you?” she asked pleasantly. She was in her early forties, with glossy black hair pulled back severely, and a pencil behind one ear. Her clothes were tasteful—white frilly blouse and a neat gray skirt and heels. I wondered if she took off her shoes to get up the stairs every morning.

  “My name is Dunn,” I said, handing her one of my appraiser cards with a phony company but the right telephone number. “Dr. Thorpe has asked me to assess the value of some of the artifacts in the current exhibition for insurance purposes.”

  The woman smiled. “My name is Katherine Degas. I’m Dr. Thorpe’s administrative assistant. That’s a fancy term for secretary, editor, and dogsbody. I’ll be happy to show you anything you need to see, Mr. Dunn.”

  “Thank you, Miss Degas. I think mainly I’d like to ask a few general questions.”

  She started to reply and that was when a voice cut her off.

  “I can handle it from here, Katherine.” A young man with a black, closely cropped beard emerged from a passageway between the display cases. He wore a white sports shirt and dark slacks and I caught a faint whiff of English Leather.

  “My name is Gordon Leeds,” he said with an accent I placed as midwestern. He stuck out a hand and I shook it. “I’m Dr. Thorpe’s assistant. I’ll be glad to answer any questions. Where did you say you were from?”

  “The insurance company,” I told him.

  He frowned slightly. “Really. I suppose it’s about the exhibition?”

  “That’s right. I’ve already been to the Cultural Center and I wanted to come here and get some background. I’m sure the items displayed are just a small amount of what was recovered.”

  “Absolutely. If you’d like, we can walk over to the other side of the campus and I’ll show you the lab.”

  “That would be fine.” We went down the narrow stairway and into the sunlight again. Walking away from St. Charles, we came into a shady quadrangle formed by a mixture of old stone and wooden buildings. Squirrels scurried across the green and on the far side two professors walked, heads down in discourse.

  We went around the new Biology Building and came out on Freret Street. Leeds was quiet all the while, as if something were puzzling him. I let him work it over in his mind, figuring it would come out when he was ready. We passed the library, turned down a side street, and came to a two-story white stucco structure.

  “This is where we actually do the analysis and restoration,” he explained. “The first floor is the Anthropology Department.”

  “I assume you were in the field with Dr. Thorpe?” I asked.

  “I was the field supervisor,” Leeds said quickly. “For the last three seasons I was there every day. Dr. Thorpe was the principal investigator, but he spent a lot of time in Mérida and Cancún. That’s not a criticism,” he added hurriedly. “I mean, the PI isn’t expected to be in the field all the time.”

  “Are you a graduate student?”

  “I’m working on my doctorate. This dig will be the basis of my dissertation.”

  He held the door open for me and we went into a hallway and down a flight of steps into the basement. I saw a large room with cardboard boxes stacked along the sides. In the center of the room was a long table where a slight, dark man with a hooked nose bent over the fragments of a br
oken pot. “Artemio is Dr. Thorpe’s personal assistant. He bossed the Mayan crew and came back from Yucatán with us. He’s working on analysis and preparation of artifacts. You can see that we really don’t have any place to store the things. This is only one of several buildings on campus where we have them stuck away.”

  “How many people were on the dig?” I asked.

  “Well, the fieldwork lasted for five seasons. A season is generally from January through May, the dry time of the year. There were different graduate students at different times and the Mayan labor force fluctuated, too. Usually there were seven to ten workers. Then there was the ceramicist, Astrid Bancroft. I was there as a shovel hand the first two years. Then I started my graduate work and was promoted to field supervisor. I guess Artemio, Astrid, and I were the only ones that were there for all three past seasons. As I said, Dr. Thorpe came and went.”

  “The dig is over now, though.”

  “Yes. We’ve been working all this last year on analysis and writing. Of course, the published monographs won’t be out for three to five years, but Dr. Thorpe thought it would be in order to have an exhibition.”

  “The discoveries were that spectacular?”

  Leeds let me have a quick, almost embarrassed, smile. “‘Success breeds success,’ Dr. Thorpe likes to say. If you put on a good show, you stimulate interest and there’s a good chance donors will come forward for more work.” He gave a little shrug. “It’s kind of a game. See how long you can stay in the field. I’m lucky I don’t have to get involved in that part of it.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “To tell the truth, this exhibition is sort of a nuisance. I’d like to get my dissertation written.”

  “Then the project didn’t really cast any new light on Maya civilization?”

  “Of course it did. They all do. And they raise new problems for the next project. We learned more about what was going on in eastern Yucatán after A.D. 900, when Maya civilization collapsed in Guatemala. And we recorded a number of glyphic inscriptions that bear on Mayan ideas of astronomy, which is a special interest of Dr. Thorpe’s. I don’t think any of it will change any ideas, though.”

  I stared at the clutter of potsherds. “In any case, there seems to be enough to do,” I observed.

  Leeds chuckled. “That’s for sure. People think the fieldwork is difficult, but the real problems come in the lab. Show me any batch of sherds two ceramicists would sort the same way.”

  “What about frauds?”

  “It’s a problem, but more to collectors than to archaeologists. I mean, who’d want to stick fake potsherds into an excavation?” He gave a little chuckle. “On the other hand, there are some quite good forgers who can manufacture replicas that even the best museums will buy, and most archaeologists say good for them.”

  “Really?”

  He smiled at my surprise. “Yes. After all, archaeologists have little to do with collectors. Collectors are in it to either make money selling artifacts or to have items to adorn their living rooms. They couldn’t care less about what archaeological knowledge is destroyed when the artifacts are plundered. A good forger will divert them from real archaeological sites.”

  “There must be ways to detect forgeries, though.”

  “There are. But most, like thermoluminescence, require that the artifact or part of it be destroyed. Otherwise, if it’s a very good replica, and the forger hasn’t let the paint run, you can sometimes fool anybody.”

  There was a noise on the stairway and a young woman stood staring at us, her brow furrowed. I realized then that she was letting her eyes adjust to the darker interior. Leeds nodded. “Mr. Dunn, this is Astrid Bancroft, our project ceramicist. Astrid, Mr. Dunn’s from the insurance company.”

  The girl squinted at me from behind thick, not very stylish glasses. She would have been attractive, even pretty, had she made an effort, but her mind seemed elsewhere. She squeezed out a quick smile, mumbled something, and then I caught a flash of jeans, tanned skin, and brown hair as she turned around and vanished back up the steps.

  Leeds gave a little laugh. “Don’t mind Astrid. That’s just the way she is. She lives in her own little world. Believe it or not, she was even worse before she got engaged to her oil broker.”

  We went back up the stairs and into the afternoon. I took a deep breath, sucking in as much water as air, and Leeds shook his head. “Nothing like a tropical climate to leave you wrung out by three o’clock.” We started toward Freret Street and when we got to the library he stopped. “I’ll leave you here. I have some work to do in the library.”

  I thanked him and went back across the quadrangle. He was right. There were times when the only thing a sane person would do was take to his hammock with a rum and Coke. I was mulling over the prospect as I approached Dinwiddie Hall and that was why I didn’t see the form until it stepped out of the shadows.

  “Mr. Dunn?” I recognized Katherine Degas, Thorpe’s secretary, and halted.

  “Have you been waiting here long?”

  “No. I called over to the lab and they told me you’d just left.” She fixed me with good-natured gray eyes. “Gordon can get very officious at times. After all, he’ll have his doctorate in a year or so and I’m only a secretary, as far as he’s concerned. But I’ve known Gregory Thorpe a hell of a lot longer. There’s not a lot he holds back from me, if you understand. So if there’s any way I can help you, just let me know.”

  “Thank you, Miss Degas.”

  “Mrs.,” she corrected. “I never got liberated. My husband was killed in Nam.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago. Gregory was good to me. He and his wife took me in. When Roberta died, it hurt him so badly. I’d do anything to keep him from being hurt again.”

  “If someone’s trying to hurt him, I’d like to know.”

  “So would I, Mr. Dunn.” She gave me a quick smile and then offered her hand. She looked down at my class ring and a light went on. “Of course. I knew I recognized your ring. Annapolis. You were a naval officer, weren’t you?”

  “Marines,” I said. “You’re very perceptive, Mrs. Degas.”

  “No. I just saw you looking at my hands and returned the compliment.”

  “Touché, Mrs. Degas,” I told her and felt her eyes on me as I walked away.

  3

  I went back to the office in time to get a message from Sandra saying they had caught the Riverwalk embezzler. Something about her glee left me depressed and I broke out another beer, even if it was only three o’clock. I went downstairs where I found that Lavelle had already been working on his sherry.

  “How’s witchcraft?” I asked him, sliding into a wicker chair under some hanging garlic.

  “Bad.” He shook his head. “Tourism is off fifty percent. I don’t know how I’m going to stay in business.” A small, dark man with a spade-shaped beard and darting eyes, he talked quickly, as if each sentence had to be uttered before it was too late. “And do you know the bastards actually cut the tourism budget this year? I mean, what else have we got in this state? What else?”

  “There’s always pre-Columbian artifacts,” I said.

  “Tougher all the time,” he declared. “Used to be Houston was half the market. Oil money. Now look at ’em. Do you know John Connally’s broke?”

  “Is that where most of the buyers are? Private individuals?”

  “A lot of them. But museums are a big market. Or they used to be, before the laws were tightened up. Now there’s a reciprocal agreement with Mexico, and with a lot of the other countries down south. So the museums have to be careful that what they’re getting is legally in the country. Papers can be forged, of course, but it’s a big risk. No, the money’s definitely with the private buyers.”

  “Tell me something. Where do you get the items you sell?” We had never discussed the subject and I knew I was taking a chance.

  He gave me a dark look. “You have your secrets, I have mine.”

  “Oh, come
on, David, I’m not going to screw up your action.”

  “I told you not to call me that. Not here, anyway. The name is Henri.”

  “Sure. Now about your sources …”

  He shrugged. “Various. Some tourists, but mainly from some people in the various countries who know what they’re doing. Some have diplomatic cover, so there’s no problem. Salvador is another good market these days. They don’t have any laws down there about export. Now please don’t ask me to name names.”

  “Of course not. But how do you know they aren’t selling you fakes?”

  He scowled. “How do you know your car has genuine GM parts?”

  “I don’t know. So how do I?”

  “Feel. Appearance. Dealing with reputable people. Sometimes, of course, you have to get an appraisal by an expert.”

  “Where would you go, Tulane?”

  “Tulane?” He snorted. “Those bastards won’t lift a finger. It’s against their ethics. I go to Jason Cobbett, the director of the Crescent City Cultural Center.”

  “The man responsible for the Maya exhibition?”

  “That’s right. He knows his artifacts, especially ceramics.”

  “And it’s not against his ethics?”

  “He’s a museologist, for Christ’s sake, not a damned archaeologist. Don’t you know they fight like cats and dogs? Archaeologists accuse the museum folks of being collectors, and museologists accuse the archaeologists of trying to be high priests that hide their knowledge from the public.”

  The door opened then and a middle-aged woman in designer jeans walked in, accompanied by a man in shades and Bermudas. Lavelle’s glance told me to get lost, so I went back upstairs, which was as well, because my phone was ringing.