Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43

by High Adventure (v1. 1)

  “You can get the beer in there,” he said.

  “I get the beer?”

  Pointing to the left, he said, “Then we take that road. There’s a place to stop and eat down a few miles.”

  “In a swamp, no doubt,” she said, becoming irked.

  He looked at her with mild surprise but calm willingness: “You wish to eat in a swamp?”

  “No, no.” Even sarcasm was lost on this creature. Looking at her map, as an excuse to regain her poise, she said, “I can’t tell where we are.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I know the way.”

  Valerie sighed, realized how inevitable that answer had been. Acknowledging defeat, she opened the attache case and stowed her map in it, then put the case back in the storage well with her canvas bag. Beer, she thought in fatalistic irritation, as she clambered out of the car. And she might as well get beer for herself, too; this place wouldn’t have white wine.

  21 REUNION

  Lemuel found the whistle. “Now, this is something!” he said, holding it at arm’s length, staring at it.

  Kirby was just as pleased as Lemuel about the discovery. He never prodded his customers, never directed, always permitted them to make their own way across the terrain, and as a result only about half found the whistle. Which was a pity, because it was a beauty.

  About eight inches high, made of limestone carved with primitive stone tools, it was the figure of a priest in a high headdress, with arms straight out at his sides and a long skirt over slightly spread feet. A hole bored through from the top of the headdress to the bottom of the skirt between the feet had originally made the whistle, but when Lemuel now tried to blow through it nothing happened. “No, it wouldn’t,” he said, wiping his mouth. “It’s too old.”

  “To do what?” Kirby asked, parading his ignorance.

  “This is a whistle,” Lemuel explained, his amiability lightly sheathing his condescension. Lemuel was a changed man now that the dread drug dealers were gone. During lunch, over a vodka and tonic, he had reconstructed his academic armor, had got himself back under control, and during the flight out had even discoursed on his few encounters with marijuana, reminiscences occasioned by Kirby having pointed out cultivated fields of the stuff down below, orderly rows of fuzzy light green among the jumbled thousand greens of the jungle.

  Lemuel, in fact, had become so thoroughly the academic and the expert that he’d even shown some early indications of skepticism as Kirby had led him up the side of his extravaganza. “Hmmmmm,” he’d said, when he’d come to the shaped building block, and, “Odd this should be out here in plain sight like this.”

  “It was farther up when I found it,” Kirby told him. “I did some digging here and there, test'boring for a septic system, and that thing rolled down.”

  “Hmmmm,” Lemuel repeated, and when Kirby pointed out the silhouette of temple steps against the sky on the right side of the hill Lemuel had said, slowly, “Possible, possible. Could be a natural formation, or it might mean something.”

  But all skepticism had vanished once Lemuel’s foot, in poking into the hillside in search of purchase, had dislodged the whistle. Brushing dirt away, turning it around and around, even trying to blow through it, Lemuel had to know that what he was holding was the real thing.

  Real, but not particularly valuable. There were certainly hundreds, possibly thousands of similar whistles legally for sale among antique dealers and curio shops around the world, most of them priced at less than $200. The one Lemuel was turning this way and that way in his hands had most recently sold for $160 U.S.

  But value here wasn’t the point. This small artifact was real, it was honest'to-God one thousand and two hundred years old, the lips of priests had encircled that blowhole, the hands of reahlife ancient Mayans had held that whistle just as Lemuel was holding it right now. The whistle was legit, and Lemuel had to know it.

  He did. “A whistle,” he repeated. “Late Classical Period, I would say, prior to 900 AD.”

  “You know a lot more about it than I do,” Kirby assured him.

  Lemuel held the whistle up so the little priest faced Kirby, arms spread wide, like an infant recognizing its father. “This would have been used in religious ceremonies,” he explained, and then frowned past Kirby, saying, “What’s that?”

  Kirby turned. They were just high enough so they could look over the intervening jungle at the meadow—visibly drier today, by the way—where the plane waited and where now a coiling column of brown dust spread out and away from behind an approaching vehicle. “Hey, wait a minute,” Kirby said.

  Lemuel’s nervousness had shot back into existence, and in full flower. Stepping back a pace, his eyes getting rounder and rounder behind his round glasses, he looked from Kirby to the oncoming car and back to Kirby, saying, “What is this? What’s going on here?”

  “I don’t know,” Kirby said, “but I’ll damn well find out.” This remote place didn’t get visitors. Below, the vehicle had paused at his plane, but had not stopped, and now came rapidly on, bounding and bumping over the rough dry land, moving at an angle that would take it around to the easier slope, the one Kirby and the Indians used but which he never showed the customers. “You wait here,” Kirby said. “This is my land, goddamit.”

  Lemuel’s one sartorial concession to a trek in the wilderness had been to wear Adidas sneakers with his usual gray slacks and pale blue shirt and light cotton sports jacket. Till now, his garb had merely made him look slightly foolish but, with fright blotching his face and agitating his limbs, he looked exactly like the victim in some sadistic tale of a city man strayed among brutes; possibly by Paul Bowles. Staring fixedly at the machete held loosely in Kirby’s right hand, “I demand to know what’s going on,” he cried, spoiling the effect when his voice broke on the word demand.

  “So do I,” Kirby told him. He knew nothing about that onrushing car except it was none of his doing and was therefore trouble. “Wait here,” he repeated. “Play with the goddam whistle while I get rid of— whoever they are.”

  He hated having to take the easier path in full view of the client, but there was no choice if he were to stop the interlopers before they actually reached the base of the temple. Running diagonally down the hill, around to the right side, he kept catching glimpses of the car between vines and tree branches, and be God-damned if it wasn’t the peach-colored Land Rover from the hotel this morning! That, or one exactly like it.

  This morning’s Land Rover had had government licence plates.

  “Hell and damn,” Kirby muttered, running harder. Innocent has something to do with this, he told himself, but he was moving too fast to think about the question.

  A knot of vines was in his way. He swung the machete with both hands, teeth gritted, wishing it were Innocent’s neck. The vines fell away, grudging him a foot or two at every swipe, until all at once the hole was open, the Land Rover was dead ahead, and Kirby hurtled out and down onto the barren flat, waving the machete over his head and yelling, “Stop! Stop!”

  The Land Rover veered. There were two people in it, the driver black and male, the passenger white and female. They were the people he’d seen at the hotel this morning. He saw them, the driver blank' faced and the woman yelling something, as the Land Rover angled around him, not even slackening speed.

  What were they up to? Kirby turned, panting, the machete sagging at his side, and saw the Land Rover’s brake lights go on as it suddenly jolted to a stop. The woman was waving her arms, now yelling at her companion. The back-up lights flashed as the Land Rover came sluing and sliding backward, slamming to a stop beside Kirby, where the woman glared at him through her large sunglasses from under her floppy'brimmed hat and yelled, “Who are you?”

  “Who am I? Lady, what the hell are you—”

  “There’s a temple here!” she cried, astonishingly, horribly. Kirby gaped as she clambered out of the Land Rover, some sort of map or chart flapping in her left hand. Behind her, the driver sat immobile,
taking no part.

  “Oh, no, there isn’t,” Kirby said. “No, no. No way.”

  “But there is! There must be!” Waving the map at him, she insisted, “It’s all worked out! All I have to do—” She started around him, headed for the slope.

  “Wait! Wait!” Kirby ran to get in front, to stop her. “You can’t just— You can’t— This is trespassing!”

  “I have authority from the Belizean government!” She stood even taller than her normal six feet when she said this, and her eyes flashed.

  Innocent. Has to be Innocent. Damn, damn, damn the man, what was he up to and why ? Kirby said, “This is private land, this is my land and you can’t—”

  But now she bent almost double, looking upward past Kirby’s right elbow, whipping off her hat so she could see better. “There/” she cried.

  = Oh, God. Kirby reluctantly turned, also crouching a bit, and right there, through the hole he’d just this minute himself cut through the vines, was framed the top fraction of the temple. Steps, stela, flattened platform at the top. It was like a picture from a textbook. “No,” Kirby said.

  “The temple,” breathed this miserable pest of a woman, and Lemuel appeared in the opening, carrying the whistle.

  Shit. Kirby came around again to stand close in front of the woman, trying to block her vision, praying Lemuel would have the sense to stay away. “Cut this out now,” he insisted. “This is my land, this is private property, you can’t just barge—”

  “I know you,” she said, staring at him, and all of a sudden he knew her, too. Oh, this is impossible, he thought, this is unfair, this is beyond anything. This pain in the ass can’t queer my pitch with Lemuel twice.

  Yes. Lemuel did not have the sense to keep out of it, because here he came, carrying the goddam whistle, looking frightened and suspicious and determined and fatuous, saying, “Galway, I have to know what’s going on here, I have a reputation to—”

  “You!” cried the woman. The pest. Valerie Greene; the name returned unbidden to Kirby’s mind. Valerie Greene, twice in one lifetime.

  Lemuel also recognized her, if belatedly. His jaw dropped. “Oh, no,” he said.

  She saw the whistle in his hand. She pointed at it, rising up taller than ever, seven feet tall maybe, eight feet, nine. “DESPOLIA' TION!” she cried.

  Now everybody acted at once. Valerie Greene thundered into her historicaLpreservation speech, Kirby yelled uselessly for everybody to shut up and go away, and Lemuel backtracked, flinging the whistle away backhanded, like a small boy caught smoking. “I won’t— This isn’t—” Lemuel sputtered, “I can’t— Kirby, you have to—” And he turned and ran pelLmell toward the plane.

  “National treasures—Priceless antiquities— Irreplaceable artL facts—” Valerie Greene was in full cry now, orating to a stadium of 60,000.

  Kirby held the machete up in front of this virago’s face. His eyes were on her throat. “One,” he said.

  22 HALF A LEAGUE

  “Two,” said the crazy man.

  Valerie backed away. Was he counting to ten ... or to three?

  The crazy man’s face was very red. Veins stood out on his neck, reminding Valerie irrelevantly of Michelangelo sculptures, and he raised the machete even more menacingly, like Reggie Jackson seeing a fat one come across the plate. He didn’t say three.

  “I—” Valerie said, back'pedaling. “You—”

  She hadn’t realized the Land Rover’s engine was off until she heard, behind her, the driver switch it back on. nrnmmrnr, cough, CHUG.

  Would he leave without her? Would the one in front chop off her head? Men! Valerie turned about and scampered to the Land Rover, leaping in as the skinny black man shifted into low; so she would never know if he’d been waiting for her or if she’d just made it. The Land Rover jolted forward, the driver spun the wheel in a hard right which took them in a loop around the crazy man, and from the safety of the moving vehicle Valerie yelled at him, “I’ll report you! I’ll tell Mister St. Michaell”

  Something, probably the threat, possibly the name, drove the crazy man over the edge. With a mighty oath, he flung his machete to the ground, where it bounced in a sudden jump of pebbles and flutter of dust. Tearing his bush hat from his head, he hurled that atop the machete, then jumped on the hat with both feet.

  Twisting around in the metal bucket seat as the Land Rover sped back the way they’d come, Valerie saw the crazy man jumping up and down on his hat and machete, then pausing to pant and cough in all the dust he’d raised, then shaking his fist after Valerie, then shaking both fists at heaven. All at once, he stooped, picked up a handful of pebbles, and threw them after the Land Rover, though they were far out of range by now.

  Valerie looked up, and there it was, serene, silent against the blue sky, indomitable: the temple, looking like nothing more than a hill from this distance. Covered by a millenia of jungle growth, a thousand years of accumulated earth, growing plants, rotting flora and fauna, nature’s heavy veneer disguising the works of man. “Do you know what that is?”

  The driver looked in his rearview mirror: “A very angry man.”

  “No,” Valerie said. “The temple. I was right!”

  The driver veered, jolting Valerie almost out onto the hard dry ground covered with dead and dying grass. She faced front, and saw they were angling around the airplane, where Whitman Lemuel—oh, she remembered him—stood holding his jacket up over his head like arrested numbers runners in newspaper photographs. “I know you!” Valerie yelled, shaking her finger at him on the way by.

  And to think, to think, she’d been embarrassed at dinner last night, afraid he would notice her!

  The driver leaned forward, squinting at the rearview mirror. “That hill?” he said. “That’s really a temple?”

  “Over a thousand years old,” Valerie told him, awed by its existence, its reality, her own astonishing brilliance in rescuing it from oblivion. “A Mayan temple.”

  “Well, that’s pretty good,” the driver said. “And nobody knew it was there.”

  “The world is going to know, just as soon as I get back to Belmopan,” said Valerie.

  “Uh huh,” said the driver.

  23 CURRENTS OF PASSION

  “Not back yet?” Innocent shook his head, smiling at the desk clerk. “Women,” he said. “Never on time anywhere.”

  The desk clerk answered the smile; he and Innocent St. Michael had known one another a long time, in a limited but satisfactory way. “But what could we do without them, eh?” he said.

  “Bugger all,” said Innocent. Before the desk clerk could decide whether that had been idiomatic or literal his switchboard lit up and he had to excuse himself, being the only person on duty at the desk at this time.

  Innocent studied his watch: a Rolex, a birthday gift from his wife, selected and paid for by himself, gift-wrapped by the girl in the store. Two minutes to five, it said; by the time he got to the bar, the sun would definitely be over the yardarm.

  “Yes, yes,” the desk clerk was saying. “I’m doin the best I can, Mister Lemuel, but it just may not be possible. Oh, yes, sir, I’ll go on trying.” Hanging up, he turned back to Innocent, shaking his head and saying, “It always be Americans. Impossible.”

  Innocent had heard the name Lemuel and his ears had pricked up, because he knew who that was. Another of Kirby’s strange visitors from the States; a teacher on vacation, he claimed. “What’s this one want?” he asked.

  “The Earth and all,” the desk clerk said. “He registered here for two more days, but now in a rush his plans all different. He run in here an hour ago like the end of the world, had to be on a plane today, had to be out of Belize this very minute, sudden urgent message from home. Foo,” commented the desk clerk. “If this man got any sudden urgent message from home, I’d know it, wouldn’t I? I’d hand it him, wouldn’t I?”

  “Of course you would,” Innocent said, thinking, Hmmmmmm. “Sounds like he picked up the running shits,” he said.

  �
�I don’t know what that man’s problem be,” said the desk clerk. “I done all I can. I told him, there’s no more flights out to the States today, so then he wants a charter, he won’t spend another night in Belize. I told him, he already got to pay for tonight at the hotel, it way too late to check out, he don’t care ’bout that. I tell him, any charter out of the country, there’s all kinds of paperwork, Customs clearance, police, all that, now he’ll take a flight anywhere, he don’t care. Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, all the same to him. Now, you know there’s nothin I can do bout that.”

  “So he’ll spend the night,” Innocent said, “and go out in the momin. ”

  “Complainin, complainin,” commented the desk clerk. “Well, I go off at six.”

  “Let’s hope my little lady’s back by then,” Innocent said. “I’ll be in the bar.”

  “I be sure to let you know,” the desk clerk promised.

  On his way back to the bar, Innocent paused at the public phone booths to make three calls. In the first, he said, “There’s a man at the Fort George called Whitman Lemuel. Just a couple minutes after six, you call him, tell him you hear he’s looking for a charter flight, tell him to meet you at the Municipal Airport right away to make the arrangements, you’ll get him right out tonight. No, you don’t have to go to the airport.”

  In the second call, he said, “There’s an American fella named Whitman Lemuel gonna be out to the Municipal Airport around six- thirty, looking for some charter flight. Arrest him on twenty or thirty technical charges. No, no, you won’t have to defend them.”

  In the third call, he said, “There’s an American name of Whitman Lemuel gonna be comin in around seven. He’ll be spendin the night. Don’t hurt him, but do scare him. I’ll be comin down in the morning to rescue him, and I’m hopin to see a grateful man.”

  Smiling, well pleased with himself, Innocent went on to the bar, where he ordered a gin and tonic and sat on one of the low broad swivel chairs, looking out at the view over the tame swimming pool at the feral sea. The pool, in the hotel’s late afternoon shadow, looked cold, but the sea, glistening in amber sunlight, looked warm. The impounded black freighter still stood in the offing, awaiting auction. White sails far out moved toward the barrier reef.