Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43

by High Adventure (v1. 1)

  “Wait a minute,” Kirby said. “This isn’t even half what I paid you.” “Read on,” Innocent urged him. “You’ll see it makes sense.” “Not if I’m— What? I’m taking back a mortgage?”

  “That’s right,” Innocent said, with his blandest smile.

  Kirby looked outraged. “People don’t give mortgages on land.” Innocent shrugged. “All the trouble there’s been lately, I’d have a hard time right now getting my hands on that much cash. But I didn’t want to let our deal fall through just because I didn’t have enough cash money, and I knew you’d want to get all this settled and have some money to take with you when you leave, so—”

  “Leave? Where am I going?”

  Innocent gave Kirby a friendly but troubled look. “Don’t you know what your situation right now is, Kirby?”

  “I’m being shafted by you, as per usual.”

  “No no no. Kirby, you’re a hero.”

  Valerie smiled and said, “Isn’t that nice?”

  “Well, yes and no,” Innocent told her. “Unfortunately, Kirby’s the sort of hero who would be very smart to be modest and avoid the limelight.”

  Kirby said, “Tell me about it.”

  “Your radio calls to Holdfast and the police,” Innocent said, “meant help got there within thirty minutes of you breaking up the massacre. Two villagers dead, five terrorists dead, three captured and talking. Those little statues you threw out of the plane are being studied right now by a whole lot of experts. An American photojournalist on the scene managed to get some very dramatic shots of your plane coming through the clearing, in which your registration number is clearly visible.”

  “Oh,” Kirby said.

  “Right now,” Innocent went on, “Kirby Galway is the brave pilot who saved the defenseless village. However, I happen to know several people who are out and around Belize looking for the hero, because there’s just one or two questions.”

  Kirby sighed. Valerie said, “Mister St. Michael, what does this mean?”

  “It means if Kirby’s smart,” Innocent told her, “he’ll leave Belize. Just for a while, till it all blows over. Say three or four years.” Kirby sighed again. Innocent smiled amiably and said, “That’s why I worked so hard to get you just the best deal I could before you leave. A nice ten-year mortgage. And if you add up the purchase price and all the interest payments over the ten years, you’ll find it comes out to precisely what you paid me for the land in the first place.”

  “And you get to write off interest payments and ...” Kirby shook his head, disgusted. “You’ll put the whole amount in a high-yield investment, make my payments out of the interest, and it’ll never cost you a thing. And you’ll have the land. You’ll make money on this!” “You’ll have your purchase price back, Kirby,” Innocent pointed out, and spread his hands. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Kirby gave Valerie a long-suffering look. “Valerie,” he said, “if you ever see me even talking to this fella again, run over and knock me down. ”

  Valerie laughed, her eyes gleaming as she watched them both, enjoying herself.

  Innocent pointed to the folder. “And down in there, Kirby,” he said, “you’ll find a check for the first month’s payment. How’s that?” “Terrific,” Kirby said bitterly. Then he shook his head again, and sighed, and said, “Okay, Innocent, you win. Where do I sign?”

  25 CROSSROADS OF DESTINY

  Trump Glade, Florida. Route 216 south 8.4 miles from the movie house. Left at the sign reading Potchaw 12. Whitman Lemuel peered out the windshield of the rented car and there it was, a battered old metal sign, shot to death by any number of retarded louts but still discemibly reading, “Potchaw 12.” And the odometer showed exactly eight point four miles since he’d passed the movie house in Trump Glade.

  The Potchaw sign included an arrow, which pointed off to the right, where a blacktop road ran away between orange groves, but Kirby Galway’s directions said to go the other way, so Lemuel spun the wheel and the rental turned left onto the dirt road meandering out across the flatness of Florida’s scrub.

  Now it was supposed to be 15.2 miles on to where he would find a red ribbon on a barbed wire fence. Turning up the air conditioning slightly, Lemuel relaxed a bit against the seat, and drove slowly but steadily toward his meeting with Kirby Galway.

  Of course Galway expected those two New York merchants, Witcher and Feldspan, but he would certainly be willing to make his arrangements with Lemuel instead, once he understood that Witcher and Feldspan were now out of the picture completely.

  The memory of Feldspan on that airplane, and the revolting horror he’d created up and down those aisles, came back suddenly into the forefront of Lemuel’s brain, complete with sensory elements, and his lip curled in remembered disgust. It was better those two were out of it, much better.

  Actually, Alan Witcher would have been prepared to go forward, but Gerry Feldspan was just too nervous for the job. Some other passenger had looked at him wrong and the result was absolute chaos; fortunately, Feldspan at least did manage to be sick at one point on the passenger who’d started all the trouble, apparently ruining a quite valuable harmonica.

  But the upshot—well; perhaps we’ll find a better word—the result of it all was that, in the Miami Airport, Feldspan absolutely shrieked that he was never going to commit another crime, he wanted nothing to do with smugglers, on and on and on, it was a miracle he didn’t get the entire terminal arrested. Witcher, alternating between icy embarrassment and quite touching concern for his friend’s well-being, at last agreed it was impossible for them to go forward, they would have to abandon the project forever. They would turn around at once and fly right back to New York—“And get back that letter somehow,” Witcher had said mysteriously—and leave the field to Lemuel.

  Which they had. So here he was, driving 15.2 miles down this dirt road to his first rendezvous with Kirby Galway.

  It was better for it to end this way, really. Witcher and Feldspan, apart from their rather nauseatingly blatant homosexuality, were merely merchants, the exact kind of money-grubbing art-denying dealers who had given the import of precious antiquities such a bad name, so it was just as well they wouldn’t be getting their greedy little hands on any of the treasures from Galway’s temple. As for Galway himself, the man was merely a thug, wasn’t he, personally beneath contempt but useful as a tool in rescuing these treasures from the ignorance of the Central Americans and the venality of the likes of Witcher and Feldspan, so he could turn them over to selfless, dedicated, intelligent, learned, honest, unimpeachable scientists like himself.

  He was the only truly decent character in the whole story, and he knew it.

  And, as happened far too rarely in real life, this time the decent character was going to win. The meeting with Kirby Galway would happen in just the next few minutes, and whatever Kirby Galway was bringing to give to Witcher and Feldspan he could dam well just give to Whitman Lemuel instead.

  “I deserve it,” Lemuel muttered, as he drove.

  The next section of barbed wire fence beyond the red ribbon had fallen in, making access easy, so Lemuel was already out on the weedy spongy field when the airplane first appeared. It circled overhead, he waved, and down it came, landing at the opposite end of the field and roaring over to come to a stop just near where Lemuel was standing.

  The door opened in its side as Lemuel came around the wing, and there was Kirby Galway clambering out, seeming in an awful hurry. In fact, the engines still ran, propellers spinning, plane all atremble to be off.

  Galway looked at him in surprise. (There was someone else in the plane.) “Where’s Witcher and Feldspan?” he shouted, above the engine noise.

  For some reason, Lemuel gestured behind himself, saying, “They went—”

  “Still in the car? Okay, this is for them.”

  “No, they—”

  Galway turned back and wrestled with something in the seat behind the pilot’s, the other person helping. Lemuel stared, bewildered, and
some sort of bale of hay came free at last, dropping out of the doorway, bouncing off the wing, landing on the ground at Lemuel’s feet. “What—”

  “Sorry you’re getting it, too,” Galway told him, grinning, not looking sorry at all. “Tell your pals in the car, I know all about Trend.”

  “Oh, my God. What have you—”

  “Anonymous call to the DEA,” Kirby told him, with nasty satisfaction.

  “The what? What’s that?”

  “Drug Enforcement Administration,” Kirby said, and climbed back up into the pilot’s seat. “Sorry you’re here,” he called. “You should watch the company you keep.”

  Which was when Lemuel recognized the second person in the plane, and it was Valerie Greene. “YOU!” he cried.

  She nodded and smiled, with a little wave.

  “Every time I see you something terrible happens!” Lemuel shrieked, pointing at the girl. Kirby pulled his door shut and the plane moved away. “This is the third time!” Lemuel screamed, following after, shaking his fist. “You’re a jinx!”

  The plane picked up speed, leaving him. Lemuel stopped, suddenly panting for some reason. And now that the engine roar was receding, the plane was way over there lifting into the air, Lemuel could hear another sound, behind him, far in the distance.

  Sirens.

  Getting closer.

  He turned and looked back toward the rental car parked on the little narrow dirt road, and his eye fell on the bale Kirby had pulled from the plane.

  “That isn’t hay,” he said aloud.

  Third time lucky.

  26 SAILING DIRECTIONS (EN ROUTE) FOR THE

  CARIBBEAN SEA

  Valerie sewed with tiny stitches. Perched naked tailor-fashion on a beach blanket bearing a picture of Mickey Mouse surfing—seated mostly on his smile—she was up from the beach just far enough to be in the dappled shade of the coconut palms. Behind her, just visible through the ring-necked trunks of the trees, was the island’s only enclosed structure, a low house of unpainted concrete block with a slanted metal roof, flanked by the television satellite dish on the left and the electricity-generating windmill on the right. In front, the calm blue Caribbean folded itself time and time again on the beige sand.

  Deceptively calm. The unnamed wee island on which Valerie sat and sewed the hem of a full white cotton skirt lay deep within the perimeter of a well-known nautical hazard, the Banco Chinchorro, about 16 miles off the Yucatan coast of Mexico, due west of Chetumal Bay. At latitude 18 degrees, 23 minutes north and longitude 87 degrees, 27 minutes west, and existing mostly just below the surface of the sea, the four-mile-wide area of Banco Chinchorro is described in the United States Government publication Sailing Directions (En Route) for the Caribbean Sea, which Valerie had looked at shortly after arrival here, as “a dangerous steep-to shoal” with “numerous rocky heads and sand banks. The stranded wrecks which lie along the E side of the shoal were reported conspicuous both visually and by radar.” This navigators’ guide finishes its description with a uCaution.—In the vicinity of Banco Chinchorro there is usually a very strong current that sets toward its entire E side.”

  Commercial shipping and pleasure craft alike steer well around Banco Chinchorro. And yet, on a few of its tiny islets, the beach is wide and clean, the sea is blue and gentle and nearly transparent, the air is warm and soft with a delicious easterly breeze. If you’d like to be alone with your sweetheart, there are few better spots on Earth than this.

  Apart from Valerie herself, and the small house with its dish and windmill, the only other sign of human incursion on this island was Cynthia’s wheelmarks on the hardpacked sand, off to Valerie’s right. The first few times Kirby had flown down to San Pedro on the Belizean island of Ambergris Caye, 45 miles to the south, to pick up supplies or to be sure Innocent’s check had been deposited into their account (the bank branch in San Pedro is open three mornings a week), Valerie had flown with him, telling herself she needed the change, the opportunity to shop in the hotel boutique, walk around among other people, but in fact she didn’t need any of that at all. The truth was—and she soon realized this—the truth was, if she left the island with Kirby every time he was going somewhere, it meant she was afraid he wouldn’t come back, he’d strand her here. And that meant she didn’t trust him.

  And if she didn’t trust him, what was she doing with him?

  True, this life was a jolly and an easy one, particularly after all the running around just before they came here, but even more particularly after the total earnestness of her entire life prior to Belize. Thinking of that earlier self, of her earnest minister father and her earnest teacher brother, thinking of her own earnestness in pursuit of the dry joys of archaeology, she found it hard to believe she had spent so much time not being silly.

  Not being silly.

  What was the name of that book she’d read when she was a kid?

  Green Mansions. The idea inside that book had been an idea of fun, an idea of adventure and travel and strangeness and beauty, and what had she taken from it? In order to become Rima the bird girl, she had gone to college.

  Not that college had been wrong for her, only that college had been wrong to be everything for her. A life circumscribed by the graves of the Mayas and the computers of UCLA is not a full life.

  On the other hand, if she had always been too serious, Kirby had never been serious enough. They were good for one another, she felt. He took her out of herself—mm, yes, in several ways—he made her less self-consciously earnest and intense. At the same time, Valerie was leading Kirby slowly into the simpler forms and nearer waters of responsibility, showing him that a life spent in constant flight above the surface of things really isn’t very satisfactory in the long run.

  And that was why, about three months ago, she’d said to him one day, “I don’t think I’ll come along to San Pedro this time. I want to do more digging on the other side of the island.” (There were traces of ancient occupation buried over there, bits of rubble that might have been pots, small pieces of charred wood. Toward the end of the Mayan civilization, after their great days of temple building, they had become merchants awhile, sailing their goods up and down the east coasts of Mexico and Central America, with outposts and warehouses on various islands along the way. Had this been one? Valerie was still an archaeologist.) .

  Kirby had argued against her staying that first time, but she’d been adamant, and at last he’d agreed, and kissed her, and flown away. She’d watched Cynthia rise above the blue water into the paler blue sky, waggle her wings in farewell and roll away to the south, and she’d had no idea then if he would come back or not. If he did return it would mean he loved her as she loved him, they could trust one another, they were right to be together. And if he never came back, that would at least be a good thing to know.

  And if he didn’t come back she was sure that, sooner or later, once again she would be rescued.

  But, as it turned out, she was past rescue now; Kirby had come back. Now she traveled with him perhaps one time in three, and mostly only went up in Cynthia for her flying lessons, which progressed slowly but steadily.

  Valerie finished the hem, knotted the thread, bit off the end, and put the needle away in the little terracotta incense pot (fake-ancient, a gift from Tommy Watson). Standing, she shook out the skirt, looked at it, decided it was all right, and folded it over her forearm; there was a mirror in the house, she’d try it on there. She was stooping to pick up the incense pot when the buzz first became audible.

  Cynthia.

  She could always hear the plane some time before she saw it. Staying back in the shade, nevertheless holding one hand out above her eyes, Valerie searched the skies, and there it was, just circling by to come in from the northwest, against the easterly breeze. Cynthia disappeared briefly behind the cocoanut palms, then emerged again, much lower, about to touch down on the sand far to Valerie’s left.

  It took airplanes such an amazingly long distance to stop after they’d landed.
Still moving quite briskly, Cynthia rolled down the beach past Valerie, who waved, then continued on a while farther, and at last stopped. A brief engine roar, and then the plane turned around and trundled back, wingtips bobbing slightly. Smiling, Valerie started out of the tree shade, when all at once she realized Kirby wasn’t alone. There were other people in the plane.

  Oh, dear; and she naked. Quickly she stepped into the skirt and fixed the snaps at its side. There was nothing she could do about her top, and it would just be too silly and childish to run away to the house. Well, she’d just have to pretend everything was perfectly normal.

  Kirby had climbed down from the plane and waved to her, and now two people were getting out, a man and a woman. A brave smile on her face—I am not embarrassed at being bare-breasted—Valerie walked down like a proper hostess to greet her guests.

  The man and woman were both under 30, and extremely unalike. The woman was a skinny little ash blonde, with dry-looking skin the color of mahogany and a very attractive but tough-looking face. The man was very tall and gawky and pale-skinned, with a layer of soft baby fat all over his body. He was very slightly bucktoothed, and looked eager and naive and innocent and well-intentioned, whereas the woman looked like somebody who’d seen everything and believed nothing.

  “Valerie,” Kirby said, grinning, as she arrived, “I’d like you to meet a couple people I just ran into down in San Pedro. Ran into again. This is Tandy; she’s a Texas girl with a rich daddy.”

  “How do you do,” Valerie said.

  Tandy looked her up and down, taking it all in, the unusually tall girl with the all-over tan and the flowing white skirt, and she shook her head. With a crooked smile, she said, “You win.”

  Valerie wasn’t sure what that was—a compliment?—but she knew it was meant in friendly fashion, so she smiled back and said, “I’m glad Kirby brought you.”

  “And this is Tandy’s friend—” Kirby began.