The Maya Stone Murders

by Malcolm Shuman

  Somehow, before I even lifted it, I knew it was the Captain.

  “Micah!” It was more a bellow than a statement, and I wondered what effect it would have on the fiber optics of the long-distance lines.

  “I’m here,” I told him.

  “It’s about damned time. I thought I was going to have to talk to that goddamned thing of yours, that recorder. I’ll be damned if I will, too.”

  I sighed. They were an hour ahead of us in Charleston, so it was almost four, which meant he was well into his third cuba libre.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I said evenly. After all, he was my father. “What’s up?”

  “I want to know when you’re coming home, that’s what. I’ve been reading about that state in the paper. It’s all going to hell. I can’t for the life of me see why you’d stay.”

  “Just mean, I guess. How’s Mrs. Murphy?”

  “She’s fine. But don’t try to change the subject. She may just be the housekeeper, but she’s of the same mind as I am.”

  “Well …” I began, but he cut me off.

  “By the way, I saw Arnie Robbins the other day. He’s a captain now. Waiting for sea duty. He says you weren’t at the class reunion in May.”

  “That’s right. I had some business to take care of here.”

  “More of that private-eye stuff, eh? Boy, when are you going to grow up and get into something worthwhile? I could get you a vice presidency at B. L. Davis. With your background, education, you could be on the board in five years. They just got a contract from the Navy to—”

  “Thanks, but I really don’t see myself in that kind of job.”

  “Well, what about security then? You could head up their security division. I was talking to Bert Davis the other day and—”

  “Dad, listen: I don’t want any strings pulled for me. I have a job. Usually, I enjoy it. Anyway, it’s what I do.”

  I heard a sigh and I knew what he was thinking. First, I’d shocked him by choosing the Marines instead of the Navy upon my graduation from the Academy. His romance was with the big ships, but I never could relate to anything that didn’t respond to wind and wave. When I was wounded in combat and prematurely retired from the service, he’d considered it a worse tragedy than I had. He pulled every string to get me the kind of position a disabled war hero deserved. When I rejected his efforts, he was mystified. The truth was that it took me a while to adjust and to realize that a bottle wasn’t the solution to my problems. I lost a wife who’d married an able-bodied man, and if her image of me was changed, so was my own. I came through it all right, though, and made a new life. The last thing I needed was to go home where people would make allowances because I’d been wounded and, more important, because I was the Captain’s son. I heard him on the other end of the line now, clinking his glass, and I knew he was pouring another drink, probably standing there on the front porch in his immaculate white slacks and blue jacket, staring out at the dunes.

  “You know, sometimes I get lonely,” he said and it took me by surprise. The idea of the Captain confessing to such tenderness. “It’s been thirty years since your mother went. Thirty years last week.”

  So that was what accounted for the call. I’d been small when my mother died; I only remember brown hair, a soft voice, and a smile that meant nothing could go wrong. Then one day she was gone. I followed him from station to station then, growing up fast, under a succession of nannies. Most of the time he wasn’t around, but I got letters describing his various ports of call. I suppose he’d even been a commander at one time, but even then he’d had his own ship, so he was the Captain, always had been and always would be.

  “Twenty years,” he said. “Twenty years since they piped me ashore. You know we only had seventeen years together, and half that time I was at sea. I thought we’d have all the years after I retired, together here.”

  There wasn’t anything I could say, so I kept silent.

  “I was …” He cleared his throat. “I was going through some old letters of hers, boy. Written while I was in Japan, during the Korean thing. Telling me when you first crawled, when you walked. She was proud of you. I’d like you to have them sometime.”

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t like his tone of voice. There was something alien, as if he was afraid to tell me something.

  “Dad, are you all right?”

  “Me? Fine. I … well, it’s just some tests, is all. But I’ll come through with flying colors.”

  “Dad, are you telling me you’re sick?”

  “Hell no. Just getting old. Navy doctors. They killed more people in the war than the Japs. I don’t believe a thing they tell me. I’m fine, son. I was just standing here, thinking about … things. It’s been good hearing your voice. Look, go on back to what you were doing.”

  “Dad …”

  “Talk to you soon.” The line went dead and I hung up, feeling suddenly cold all over. The Captain not immortal? It was a heresy. He was the kind of man who lived forever, who’d had a destroyer shot out from under him in the Philippine Sea, who’d taken another almost into Haiphong Harbor to pick up a downed airman in ’67. Nothing could kill the Captain.

  I changed into my jogging clothes and made myself trot up Esplanade to the Beauregard Monument and back. It’s five miles, a distance I can usually do in just forty-five minutes, even with my arm bound against my side. Today, though, my energy seemed to be sapped, and I stumbled through the doorway of the voodoo shop feeling like a wet rag. Less tired, I might have been more alert. Instead, I caught a glimpse of a woman’s face, disconcerted behind the thick glasses, and when I turned back to Lavelle’s showcase, trying to place where I had seen her before, she was gone.

  I showered, shaved, dressed, and broke out a beer, chiding myself for exceeding my limit. My mind went unbidden to the old man on his porch overlooking the dunes and confronting his own mortality. I wanted to call, to tell him not to be afraid, but I knew it would sound foolish. He was the Captain, after all.

  I went out onto the balcony and took a seat overlooking the broken fountain. It didn’t seem to be working, and old Mr. Mamet, the caretaker, was puttering around with a toolbox and some wrenches. I kept trying to sort out my feelings about the Captain. He’d shown more of himself today than I’d ever seen and it frightened me, because it was a tacit admission of mortality on his part. Of course, I was going up at the end of July. My annual visit. Maybe that’s why I felt so bad; maybe it was guilt because I hated it so much, the visiting of old faces and places. Now I wondered if I shouldn’t go earlier.

  By the time night fell I still hadn’t made up my mind, so I sat quietly, listening to the distant rhythm of traffic in the world outside. Hours later, despairing of an answer, I went in to bed. I was drifting through a nonsensical dream of Mayan artifacts and Vietcong snipers when the ringing phone woke me. I fought the sense of dread and fumbled for the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Dunn? Micah Dunn?”

  It wasn’t the Captain. I knew that at once. But the voice was vaguely familiar.

  “Speaking. Who …?”

  “Mr. Dunn, this is Gordon Leeds. We talked earlier today. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I have to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

  “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?” I asked.

  “No. Really. Please. Can I come to your place in half an hour?”

  My brain cleared slightly. “How did you find out where I lived? Who gave you my phone number?”

  “I’ll explain later. Please.” The line went dead.

  I glanced down at the bedside clock. One-thirty. I swung myself to the edge of the bed.

  I fought my way into clothes and staggered out into the sitting room, put on some coffee to wake me up and slumped into my chair. What could be so damned important that Thorpe’s graduate assistant had to see me in the middle of the night? And who had told him where to find me? I hadn’t given anybody my address.

  Then I realized he wouldn’t be able to get in. Lavel
le’s shop was closed at this time of night, and the only other entrance was the locked pedestrian gate beside the driveway doors into the courtyard.

  I kicked on my shoes and went down the outside stairway. The plaza was dark and Mr. Mamet had cut off the floodlights. A car horn sounded somewhere beyond the walls, but then the world lapsed into silence. I felt my way along the brick paving toward the gate and opened it, looking out onto Barracks Street. There was a rustle in some trash boxes on the curb and then a cat leapt away into the darkness. I exhaled, leaning back slightly against the wooden barrier.

  Then I saw him, first just a shadow, rounding the corner at Chartres a block away, then merging back into the blackness of the buildings as if seeking cover. Leeds was too far away to see him clearly, but the walk gave him away, almost mincing at times, then hurrying as if he might miss his appointment. He was on the opposite side of the street, and I wondered why he had come from the direction of Canal, instead of parking a block away, on Esplanade. The Quarter is not known for its congeniality at night.

  As if eager to answer my question, he stepped off the curb, heading in my direction, and I moved forward to meet him.

  He had only gone a few steps when the darkness lit up. Tires squealed somewhere behind him and headlights pinioned him in their glare. The motor’s roar reverberated through the narrow street like an echo chamber and I glimpsed the car barreling toward him. All my senses were alert now and I knew this was no mere drunk on his way home in a hurry.

  I yelled a warning at the same time I left the curb, but he didn’t hear. Like a fool, he stopped to look behind him and for an eternal instant I caught his profile, terror-frozen in the light. Then bone and metal met and my body took over and I jumped back out of the way, slamming against the gate as the car bounced up onto the curb and roared past inches away.

  When I got to him he was going fast and I thought for a moment that he didn’t recognize me. Then he raised his hand and held something up for me to see: a dark stone, polished smooth. I took it and said his name but by that time he was past hearing. I got up slowly, pocketing the little relic. It was going to be a very long night.

  4

  By the time the cops let me go, it was half past three. I went with them to the station, gave a statement to a young detective named Castile, and then drove myself home. I’d told them the truth, that Leeds had called and asked to meet me. I’d also told them I didn’t know why. When they asked how I’d met him I said that I’d been asked to look into security for the museum. Had something turned up missing? No, I said truthfully, there had been no such problem to my knowledge. They marked it for the day shift, probable drunk driver, and I figured they’d have me in again before it was over, because people just don’t get run over on the way to clandestine meetings without some eyebrows going up. They weren’t going to mount a massive investigation to solve it, though, not when there was heat from city hall over a tourist who’d been raped and strangled near one of the projects.

  I hadn’t said anything to the cops about the little stone in my pocket, because I’d wanted to examine it in private. When I got back, I poured out some milk and lit my desk lamp. In the light I could see that it was not just a stone; it was a piece of almost unnaturally dark jade, perhaps two inches long by an inch and a half across. Roughly the shape of a hatchet blade, it had one smooth side with a pair of grooves running lengthwise from one end to the other. It was the other side, though, that interested me. It had been worked to show a face with slanting eyes, below which, cut into the smooth surface, was a series of esoteric designs. I had seen writing like that before, in the display cases at the exhibition, and then, again, in the cases at the Middle American Research Institute. They were Mayan glyphs.

  I wrapped the little jade in some paper, stuffed it in an envelope, and brought it into the bedroom, where I placed it in the bureau drawer. I slipped under the sheets and closed my eyes. In my dreams all I could see was the look on Gordon Leeds’s face as death sped toward him.

  It was eight-thirty when I stepped into the hallway of the Middle American Research Institute. Even without the four flights I felt like two miles of streetcar tracks, and when I saw Gregory Thorpe, standing in his office door with a dazed look on his face, I could tell he felt like the other two miles. They’d gotten to him, of course, and the world of police questions and statements was light-years away from the quiet world of tombs and potsherds.

  “What are you doing here?” he blurted and then realized he’d said the wrong thing.

  “A better question is what was your assistant doing in the street outside my apartment at two o’clock this morning? And how did he find out where I lived?”

  There was movement behind Thorpe and Katherine Degas stepped out into the hallway. “I’m afraid I have to take responsibility for that,” she said quietly. “Gregory, you aren’t very good at dissimulation, you know. You’re too much of a scholar.” She said it softly, almost as a compliment. “All this mumbo jumbo about an insurance man and everybody started asking what was going on. I took it on myself to try to calm them down because I knew you had your hands full with this business.” I gathered from the way she said it that it wasn’t the first time she’d undertaken to solve his problems. ‘I looked up Mr. Dunn’s company on his business card. It didn’t exist. So, on a hunch, I checked the directory listings for detective agencies.”

  “And you came up with a match,” I said. “Very smart.”

  “I try. Anyway, I told Astrid you were a detective and that it was about the artifacts that kept popping up in the exhibits. I was almost certain it was one of the museum people, one of Cobbett’s employees, and I just wanted to keep our people from going to pieces. They’ve all put a lot into this, especially Astrid.”

  “What about Leeds?” I asked, watching her face for a reaction.

  “Yes, of course,” she said calmly. “Everybody’s worked hard. But Astrid’s so high-strung she needed calming. Anyway, I guess she must have told Gordon.”

  Astrid. Of course. Now I remembered the face in Lavelle’s shop.

  “Well, Katherine, I don’t know, I can’t say I’m pleased …” Thorpe began.

  “I’m sorry. I thought it was for the best, but I guess I overstepped myself. In any case, Mr. Dunn, I’m responsible.”

  Thorpe sputtered and there wasn’t anything for me to say, so I changed the subject.

  “Can we talk privately in your office, Dr. Thorpe?”

  He nodded and Katherine watched us go down the passageway, then closed the door behind us. Thorpe flopped behind a cluttered desk, his eyes wandering from overflowing bookshelf to volumes stacked waist-high on the floor, as if he were just discovering the intense disorder of his surroundings.

  “When was the last time you saw Leeds?” I asked quietly.

  He frowned as if I had put an abstruse problem to him. “Well, last night, I suppose. At the function.”

  “Function?”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “A party for the Friends of the Center, at the Cobbetts’ house. It was a bore, but there’s always the chance there’ll be some well-heeled donor. Gordon was there, as were the other members of the crew. Come to think of it, he left early.”

  “What time would that have been?”

  “Eleven. My wife and I left just before twelve. Right after Astrid and her fiancé. She wasn’t feeling well. He came back after he dropped her off, I understand.”

  “Her fiancé?”

  “Yes. Decent young fellow. Fred Gladney. Something in oil. I think he’s taken by the romance of it all. He adores her. Been a good influence. She’s totally wrapped up in her studies. Brilliant girl, but you can study too much.”

  “And your assistant, Mrs. Degas?”

  “Katherine? Oh, yes, of course. I’d forgotten. She was there for a while, but she left at about nine o’clock. Something having to do with her son. She’s a widow, you know.”

  “I don’t guess your field assistant was there?”

  �
�Artemio Pech? No, he’d feel out of place. I know some of the old ladies would love to stare at him because he’s a Maya Indian, but I wouldn’t expose him to that.”

  “Does he speak English?”

  “He gets by. He’s picked up quite a bit in the field, just being around us, but we generally speak Spanish to him. He’s more comfortable with it, or with Mayan. Though none of us speaks that except Astrid. She’s made a special point to try to learn some words and grammar. Damned hard language.”

  I reached into my pocket and felt the little jade object, still wrapped in the paper, then thought better of the idea and took my hand out.

  “Did Leeds get along with everybody?” I asked.

  “Same question the police asked. And my answer’s still the same: In the lab it’s easy to get along. In the field, though, with long days, sickness, insects, the constant togetherness, tempers flare. That’s only natural, and it’s not worth making a lot of. Gordon could be a pain. He was a year ahead of Astrid and so he was the field supervisor, but, between the two of us, she’s the better scholar and student. He tended to go for gut feelings. Bad habit. There was friction at times. But I can’t imagine it was serious.”

  “How about Artemio? Did he resent Leeds?”

  Thorpe shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I doubt it. He’s a Mayan. They’re used to taking orders. It takes a lot to get them really riled.”

  “What happens then?”

  “Oh, well.” Thorpe gave a choked little laugh. “Then they rise up and kill every white they can get their hands on, like they did in the Caste War of 1847.”

  “Cheering thought,” I said.

  Thorpe stared up at me, his eyes bloodshot. “Look here, Mr. Dunn, do you think this is connected to that business with the artifacts?”

  “It seems likely,” I said. The little jade in my pocket made it seem even more probable, but my instincts told me not to reveal that yet. “It seems odd that there would be two such things happening and they wouldn’t be related.”