Death on the Patagonian Express

by Hy Conrad

  “Do you think it’s a murder?” said Fanny, knowing that she was recording herself and trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  CHAPTER 8

  Marcus tried Amy for the third time, and the call went once again to voice mail. He kept his phone out of sight, below the lip of his polished concierge desk, hung up without leaving a message, then watched the three-minute video one more time. The footage had been extensively edited and crudely dubbed with an overexcited narration from Fanny.

  Life at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park was not as hectic as it had been a few miles north at the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, especially now that he was working evenings. He had traded shifts with Xavier for two weeks so that he could keep Amy’s Travel open for business while the Abel women were away. But even during the day, Battery Park was nothing compared to Central Park.

  Up there he’d once had to deal with a Saudi Arabian oil wife who had lost two pieces of luggage filled with her sexy lingerie collection. Apparently, sexy lingerie, some of it almost comically, Frederick’s of Hollywood sexy, serves a critical function behind the closed doors of the Saudi Arabian kingdom. Marcus had had to arrange to replace the hundred-plus items based on very detailed descriptions transmitted to him by a male assistant who had received them from a very reluctant female assistant. Some of the items, Marcus had discovered, could be purchased locally, in Chinatown of all places. But for others, diagrams had been made, seamstresses engaged, and everything had had to be completed by sunset of the following day.

  Down here it was mostly business clients, Wall Streeters and international financiers. Their demands were small and easily handled. Last week a pair of Silicon Valley soon-to-be billionaires had asked for courtside seats with Spike Lee at a Knicks game. That had taken all of three calls to arrange: one to Spike Lee’s manager, a second to Spike Lee’s favorite charity, offering a sizable donation, and a third received from Mr. Lee himself, who needed a little persuading that these two geeks would not act too geeky at the game and would never speak to him unless spoken to. Easy by comparison. Almost boring.

  Marcus adjusted his earbuds and played the TrippyGirl video again. It began with a shakily filmed race through the streets of a picturesque South American town. Then it cut to the train station and pushed through the gathering crowd. Next was a close-up of the train engine’s boiler, steam still escaping through a small, open petal of ruptured steel. Fanny’s off-camera voice explained about the faulty valve that had just been replaced the day before in Buenos Aires, about the inexplicable explosion and the multiple injuries, two as it turned out. This was all very suspicious, she claimed breathlessly.

  The train station’s manager appeared next, saying a few things in garbled, half-decipherable English. Then the video cut to the two injured men as they received first aid on the platform, the older identified as the engineer, the younger as a tour guide named Pablo. The engineer, it seemed, had been adjusting the new valve, which became suddenly and inexplicably jammed during a boiler test. The explosion had resulted in his temporary deafness and second-degree burns from the steam. Pablo, who had been there to help the engineer with the test, was more seriously injured. Marcus couldn’t figure out what the injuries were exactly, but they didn’t appear to be life-threatening. The boy was conscious and was trying to reassure everyone that he was okay.

  This was followed by another close-up of the open steel petal and Fanny’s voice speaking almost rapturously about “so-called accidents” and mysterious plots and the tips of sinister, metaphorical icebergs. “This time there were no fatalities. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?” It ended when an older man with black, wavy hair put his hand over the camera lens, looking distraught and pleading with them “by all that is holy” to stop the filming. A nice dramatic touch.

  Marcus scrolled past the video, read the rest of the blog, which was big on hyperbole but short on details, then put aside his phone just in time to help a hotel guest—fiftyish, well dressed, and well maintained, Australian from the sound of her—who asked if he could help her get hold of a shrunken head as a gag gift for her husband’s birthday tomorrow.

  “He’s a psychiatrist,” she explained. “A headshrinker we call them. I guess you call them that, too.”

  “Does it have to be real and human?” asked Marcus, without skipping a beat.

  “No, it does not. Good God, no. But it should look real.” A thoughtful pause. The psychiatrist’s wife eyed Marcus with some newfound respect. “Could you really get an actual human head?”

  “Life-sized, no. Shrunken, probably.”

  “Let’s stick with a fake.”

  “I can have it for you by morning.”

  * * *

  It felt good not to be in a moving bedroom.

  The boiler explosion, whatever its cause, had failed to delay the Patagonian Express by more than a few hours. The engineer had recovered enough to be back on the job. And by some miraculous stroke of luck, Jorge O’Bannion had managed to track down a replacement engine in the town of Viedma, just across the Río Negro. The antique steam engine had been restored for a pharmaceutical magnate who was planning to move it to his estate, to replace the miniature train that circled his extensive grounds, a train that his five children had apparently outgrown. Jorge had reported all of this with a straight face, and Amy assumed it had to be true. At great expense, the New Patagonian Express had taken out the required insurance policy and had rented the shiny silver engine, pledging to return it in pristine condition to the Viedma station in exactly one week.

  After a second gently rocking night on the rails, and with no further incident, they had crossed the border into Chile and had wandered along a river valley to arrive at Glendaval station, an ancient stone whistle-stop, little more than a platform and a shed, half a mile from Glendaval, the first of the O’Bannion estancias. The ranch was picturesquely nestled between an apple orchard on a gentle hillside and an emerald lawn manicured by a flock of white sheep.

  The estancia itself, Timothy O’Bannion’s original sheep-herding manse, was everything his grandson had promised. It reminded Amy of a Montana hunting lodge, the kind owned by Internet billionaires pretending to be cowboys, except that this was undoubtedly the real thing. Long planks of polished mahogany led the way to a soaring stone fireplace in the great room. Two curving staircases, one on each end, brought you up to a gallery on three sides, off of which were the main bedrooms and corridors, which were floored in a gorgeous golden teak and led off to other bedrooms.

  The staff from the train joined the staff already working at the lodge. The train’s chef and his assistant, the waiter and the bartender, the cabin attendant and Nicolas, the new guide, continued their responsibilities in the new setting. Amy marveled, not for the first time, at how hard people in the hospitality industry worked, usually with smiles on their faces, as if this was somehow their vacation, too.

  It was still early in the day when Amy and Fanny settled into their room near the back and changed into their versions of ranch clothes. They had all eaten a late breakfast on the train, and everyone was looking forward to their first dude ranch excursion. Fanny stood in front of their full-length mirror, buttoning her light cotton sweater and securing the camera onto the Peruvian Batman wool hat with the flashy bat mirror and the earflaps and the pompom.

  “Are you really going to wear that?” Amy asked.

  “Don’t you like Batman?”

  “I’m not talking about the hat.”

  “What? You mean this?” Fanny tried to tighten the red head mount strap and succeeded only in making the camera slip off center. She straightened it as best she could. “If I hadn’t had this, we never would have gotten that video.” Fanny had spent much of the previous evening hopped up on maté, editing the footage on her tablet. Amy had been hoping that this sheep ranch at the end of the world wouldn’t have Internet access. But it did, a slow satellite signal, best accessed from a rocking chair in a corner of the great room. As soon as they’d arrived,
Fanny had planted herself there and had rocked as the video churned its way onto the World Wide Web. “I’ll bet you anything we go viral.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Amy. “You practically promised them a murder.”

  “I did no such thing. I might have suggested the explosion was suspicious.”

  “Mom, you laid in music from Psycho.”

  “I like the music from Psycho.” Fanny turned from the mirror to an end table where her gourd full of yerba maté was steaming away. She mashed the metal straw around the bottom, then took a long, powerful sip. “Ahhh! Good stuff.”

  “You should be careful,” Amy warned. “You’ve been jittery all day.”

  “It gives me energy,” said Fanny. “I feel I could do ten more explosions.”

  “Please don’t.”

  When the Abels stepped out onto the main porch, the three Spanish speakers were already on their horses. Amy had heard their names once, on the first day, during the introductions, but had forgotten them almost instantly. The women continued to huddle together, do everything together, with unsmiling faces and furious chatter. Fanny had nicknamed them the Furies, after the three angry sisters of Greek mythology. Alicia Lindborn was being assisted into her stirrups by a thin, weathered ranch hand with a step stool. Edgar Wolowitz, the bearded British hipster, had already mounted and was loosely holding his reins, looking tweedy and relaxed.

  The last of the guests, Todd Drucker, stood by the side of his tall steel-gray horse, waiting for the step stool to become available. His eyes locked on Amy’s as soon as she emerged from the lodge. “Brava,” he said, applauding slowly and sarcastically. “I was a skeptic, Ms. TrippyGirl. But it seems like danger does indeed follow you. I haven’t witnessed so much adventure since I had that flight delay in Newark. Is this a sign of things to come?”

  “You’ve seen the blog,” Amy ventured. “Already?”

  “It was the first alert that popped up on my phone.” He raised his hands and waved his stubby fingers in mock alarm. “Oh, the horror! A steam blast and second-degree burns.”

  “Pablo suffered more than second-degree burns,” Amy said, correcting him. “A wrenched back and who knows what. He’s still in the hospital.” Amy and Fanny had, in fact, gone to see Pablo in the Carmen de Patagones hospital, a newish two-story facility on the outskirts of town. They’d been the only ones from the tour to visit, and he’d appreciated their concern. Fanny took a minute’s worth of video of him, just in case.

  “Are you sure he wasn’t crippled?” Todd asked. “Or murdered? I can’t wait to see what you turn this into.”

  “We’re not turning it into anything,” said Fanny. “I just record.”

  Todd looked at Fanny for the first time since they’d emerged on the porch. “Oh, no.” His laugh was genuine but mirthless. “So you’re the culprit. I knew it didn’t sound like Amy’s voice. A second TrippyGirl. Heaven protect us.”

  “Senora Abel? Senorita? Welcome.” It was Nicolas, Pablo’s replacement. Like all good guides, he knew how and when to intrude and change the subject. “Have either of you ridden before?”

  “Once,” said Amy. “A pony at a birthday party.”

  Edgar Wolowitz chuckled. Fanny didn’t say anything but nodded like the expert rider she wasn’t.

  Amy regarded her steed, a docile-looking chestnut mare with a slight bow to her back, and decided that she needed a name. Hortense. For the next few hours it would be Amy and Hortense, two kindred souls joined at the saddle.

  “Don’t worry,” said Nicolas with a comforting grin. “I’m told these horses are very gentle.”

  Yesterday in Carmen de Patagones, Jorge O’Bannion had made a few frantic calls. The result was an ever-grinning Nicolas, who had joined the tour early this morning, when the train stopped for passport control at the border crossing from Argentina into Chile.

  The new guide reined his dappled palomino back and forth along the gravel drive, as if not yet quite in control. “Are you ready to see our famous Patagonian nature? We have majestic condors and guanacos, maybe a puma, if we’re lucky.”

  He pointed to the weathered ranch hand, who had finished with Alicia and was now moving the stool over to Todd. The unsmiling man fit the image of a South American gaucho, wearing a crimson poncho, a flat Buster Keaton hat, and fantastic thigh-high boots, which all the women, including Amy, eyed with envy. “Oscar has spent many years here,” said Nicolas. “He knows the best spots. We’ll be on good trails. Very safe.” Like Pablo before him, he repeated everything in Spanish.

  Nicolas didn’t strike Amy as the typical nature guide. He was older than Pablo, in his early thirties. Taller and paler than his predecessor, Nicolas wasn’t what you could call overweight, but there was a slight doughiness, which reminded Amy more of a grad student than an outdoorsman.

  “Will Mr. O’Bannion be joining us?” asked Alicia, turning her horse toward the stables to check.

  “I’m certain he wants to,” said Nicolas. “But he is busy arranging things, I think.”

  Nicolas had saved the shortest of the horses for Fanny, who insisted on mounting it without the step stool. Amy was surprised at how easy it looked when her mother simply threw herself at something, whether it was a life-affirming challenge or a stirrup on the side of an unsuspecting horse.

  Oscar took a minute to make sure everyone was adjusted. Nicolas went from horse to horse and snapped a canteen onto each saddle. “Specially made,” he said, showing off the custom design and lettering. “The New Patagonian Express. You can keep it as a souvenir.” Then the guide and the ranch hand swung up onto their mounts. Wordlessly, Oscar led them down the gravel path, through the apple orchard, and up a winding path into the hills.

  It was a beautiful summer afternoon, sunny but with a light breeze. Amy had heard that a breeze was as calm as the air ever got in this part of the world. Patagonia was famous for its winds, buffeting and harsh for weeks at a time, the kind that often drove people eccentric, the kind that could, on a bad day, make a plane fly backward. So the locals said.

  The horses knew every rock and gully, and they trailed Oscar’s horse without complaint. At the top of a small bluff, the path opened onto a rocky plateau with panoramic views of the snowcapped Andes, which seemed to almost circle the valley. Oscar and Nicolas rode side by side now, with the local man pointing out things that needed amplification and translation. The green and red bushes weren’t bushes, but firetrees, kept stunted and sturdy by the unending wind. The periwinkle-blue buds were edelweiss. Yes, like the song, but a South American variety. The green birds that looked like parrots were indeed parrots. The thing that looked like a furry ostrich on the next hill was a Darwin’s rhea, named after the great man, who had wandered these valleys 150 years ago.

  Amy was proud of herself and of Hortense. She had gotten into a riding rhythm, rocking her weight back and forth with each step, leaning forward for the uphill sections and back for the downhill ones, keeping her feet solidly in the stirrups. Her mother, one horse ahead, was not doing as well. The shortness of Fanny’s torso might have been part of the problem, denying her some needed leverage. But she was also distracted by the head-mounted camera, keeping it straight and focused, trying to find something exciting to look at. Amy wanted to ride up beside her and tell her just to enjoy the moment, but she knew better.

  “What is that bird?” Fanny called ahead.

  Nicolas turned to see her aiming her camera at a huge black thing with separated feathers, like fingers sticking out on the end of each wing. The wingspan was enormous, perhaps three times the length of its body. The bird flew high above, floating lazily from one thermal to another.

  Nicolas didn’t have to confer with Oscar. “That is our Andean condor, bigger than your condors in California. They are also like vultures, you know, eating dead things on the ground.”

  “Dead things?” asked Fanny. “You mean like bodies?”

  “Animal bodies, yes,” said Nicolas with an ingratiating grin. “
We do not have human bodies in the wilderness.”

  Fanny shrugged. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  The horse parade had stopped to watch and point and listen to the guide.

  “You sound disappointed,” Todd said. “Did you want the bird to find a murder victim? Would that make you happy?”

  Fanny pierced him with a scowl. “If I need a murder victim, I’ll make one myself.”

  The condor disappeared behind a ridge, allowing the parade to continue its journey across the plateau. Fanny kept one eye on the sky. Edgar and Todd were ahead of her now, and even with one eye, she could see them whispering and laughing, with Todd taking the occasional glance back at her, then turning to Edgar again and whispering and laughing.

  “Toad,” Fanny muttered.

  “Just ignore them,” Amy advised.

  Fanny ignored them as best she could. “Oh, look, Two more condors.” She pointed to the new pair, hovering by the same ridge where the first one had disappeared. This time a few heads nodded, but no one stopped. “And another one,” she announced a few seconds later. “Look, look, look!”

  By the sheer force of her enthusiasm, Fanny once again stopped the parade. By now there were six condors dipping below the same ridge, then popping up again. Nowhere else in the sky had they seen a condor except for now at this spot.

  “Must be something fresh,” said Fanny. After reaching up to her head, she clicked on the camera and switched over to her announcer voice. “We are horseback riding in the Patagonian wilderness, witnessing something extraordinary. See those magnificent condors by that ridge? They are messengers of death, come to feast on nature’s destruction.”

  “Mother,” moaned Amy. “Really?”

  “Say what you want, dear. I can edit you out.”

  “Not to worry. It is probably a goat,” said Nicolas. “Or an old guanaco or a skunk. Perhaps not a skunk.”