“It’s probably a little of that, but I would have expected something, nonetheless. Did you sense a particular discomfort about bringing it up? Because I did.”
“You’re thinking they were imagining one of them had done it and looking around to see who it might be?” she asked.
“It did cross my mind.”
Maybe it was because she sensed my discomfort as well that she waited until we were almost home before she asked what I’d been doing upstairs.
Chapter 4
Ramon Xoc
At ten minutes after four in the morning in the ancient Mayan city of Izamal, his home town, Ramon Xoc stood outside the bus station. A small, neatly dressed man in his mid thirties, he was waiting for the four-thirty bus to Mérida, the capital of the state of Yucatan. He wore a guayabera, the traditional white sisal shirt of the Yucatan native, and a fine Panama-style hat, woven by one of his cousins from a minute hamlet not far out of town. In one hand he carried a battered suitcase, that more than 25 years before, when his father had purchased it, had nearly passed for leather, and in the other, a custom made wooden case, nearly the same size as the suitcase, but thicker, and covered in canvas. Ramon had made this himself.
The dim light from the station barely lit the faces of the few people waiting with him for the first bus of the day; two women who could have been mother and daughter, sitting on a bench with a sleeping boy between them, and an older man with two plastic bags and the same slender build and sun-darkened skin as Ramon. But where this man’s hands had the coarse, roughened look of field work, Ramon’s were long and graceful, with only traces of some residue under his fingernails to suggest he too worked at manual labor, but of a different kind.
Since Izamal was the first stop of the morning, the local bus was on time. Ramon checked his suitcase in the compartment below, but kept the wooden case beside him on the seat. His face was impassive and he avoided looking at the other passengers. His wide cheek bones and intelligent eyes spoke of his Mayan ancestors; his thick black hair came neatly to a widow’s peak on his forehead, but his looks were marred by teeth of uneven quality. On a black cord around his neck was a jade pendant of the Sun God, invisible beneath his shirt. From time to time, as the bus threaded its way over the narrow road through the jungle, slowing here and there for the inevitable tricycle drawn carts, Ramon’s hand moved to feel its form under the cloth. From a dozen years of research he was sophisticated enough about antiques to know it dated from the eighth century. He had discovered it when he was 17, in a mound of ancient stones less than two miles from his house.
The bus maintained an unhurried pace as it bounced along the road. Ramon kept the impassive look on his face, even though he was worried this morning.
After three brief stops in smaller villages, the bus pulled onto the Periférico, the circular highway around Mérida, just after six o’clock. The glare of the sun was creeping downward through the buildings, knifing along the narrow streets, and the temperature had already climbed into the mid-seventies The dense humidity was unchanged from the night.
Because Mérida was the state capital, Ramon was able to catch the Mercedes Benz expreso bus direct to México City--a luxury he could afford. He did well (in Méxican terms) in his business, but the expense was also a necessity, because Ramon was in a hurry. He had even considered catching a plane, but that required showing identification, and until he knew what was going on, he wanted to leave no record of having made this trip. This anonymity was costly; it would be 18 hours before he reached México City, and from there it would be another four hours to Dolores Hidalgo.
Despite the top-of-the-line comfort of the Mercedes bus, Ramon slept fitfully. Once in México City he struggled through the crowd at the bus station, full of travelers even at midnight, bought the ticket for the last leg of his trip, and settled down to wait for an hour, trying to stay awake.
Izamal, where Ramon had spent his entire life, was an ancient city of about 14,000; much less important today than it had been to the Mayans in the fourth century, when it was founded. Originally a major ceremonial center, it was now a market town for local farmers. People called it the Yellow City because for block after block the buildings were painted a vivid shade of ochre. On the property of Ramon’s family generations of the Xocs had lived, first in the old Mayan house with the palapa roof of palm leaves on the back of the lot. After that, with their walled garden in front, they had lived for the last hundred years in the newer house, facing the street. His two older brothers had started families and moved on, and only his mother remained. To her embarrassment, he had never married. When Ramon was 16 his father had been injured when he was thrown from a truck full of agricultural workers. He lingered for two days in the hospital in Mérida, and then died without regaining consciousness. His older brothers filled the void financially while Ramon remained in school.
For several years before his father’s death Ramon, had been fascinated by the Mayan ruins that still dotted the city. The church and convent complex of St. Anthony, at the center of Izamal, sat on an immense platform that had originally held an enormous pyramid, one of the largest in Central America. In the sixteenth century the pyramid was leveled and the dressed stone was used to build the church and convent. Lesser sites in the city had been ignored and allowed to mound over as they became covered with vegetation. Ramon and his friends became amateur archaeologists and chipped away at the edges of these ruins, bringing home pottery shards and bones, occasionally a tool. When he was 15 Ramon found an engraved Spanish spur that became the centerpiece of his collection.
Over time, the pottery fragments captured more of his attention, and by doing some detailed research in the Mérida library he was able to separate and classify the types he found. His parents let him take over the abandoned old house in back for his “laboratory” as he called it. They repaired the thatched roof and made it weather tight. He borrowed a book on conservation and learned what adhesives to use when he found shards that fit together. His sense of kinship with the makers of these artifacts grew and he laughed when he came across passages in the books on Mayan civilization that told how the Mayans had abandoned their cities and simply disappeared. He knew they were still there, all around him. He, too, was one of them.
The steaming jungle lay on all sides and Ramon began to venture further afield in his search for treasures. South of Izamal he came upon a small mound no higher than the surrounding trees. Official excavations tended to focus mainly on the larger sites that offered the possibility of pyramids. Ever mindful of the snakes, he worked to chop away the foliage and dig at the edges. He gradually learned that most of the snakes were either nocturnal or liked to hunt in the cooler mornings. The most feared was the fer de lance, whose bite was nearly always fatal. It was typically from two to three meters long, disappearing easily among the vines that choked the trees. Less threatening were the jumping pit viper, the hog nosed viper, and an odd rattlesnake called the Cascabel. He preferred to work in the heat of the afternoon when they were at their siestas.
After two days at this site he was rewarded with the best finds he’d ever made; two vessels, one in a cylinder shape with two wedge-shaped feet and a clear space where a third had been. Even after digging all around he could not locate the third foot. The sides were elaborately incised. The other vessel was also on a tripod base, but with all three feet present. It also had no lid. The sides bore elaborate painted figures of Mayan dancers.
Ramon was stunned at his good luck. At this early point in his career, he was neither archaeologist nor forger, but his first thought was how to restore the damaged piece. He knew he would have to attempt to make a replacement for the third foot, something he had never done. It was a challenge. The clay would be no problem; he had already discovered several hollows nearby where clay had been dug in the distant past. He could make the replacement foot, fit it perfectly to the space on the bottom of the vessel. But then he would have to fire it and get the color right before attaching it.
The bus stopped, and people began to stand up around him, pulling down packages and luggage from overhead racks. The bus station sign said Dolores Hidalgo. He found his suitcase above the seat ahead of him, and with the wooden case he descended from the bus. Ramon had been on the road for more than 24 hours. He felt in his pants pocket for the address where he had been shipping his merchandise and pulled it out. He had it memorized, but he read it again anyway. Independencia 132. It was just after six in the morning.
A few steps from the bus terminal there were several small, inexpensive hotels. Ramon took a room away from the street noise and unpacked the suitcase, pulled off his clothes and took a shower. Afterward he lay on the bed for a while but was too agitated to sleep any more. He would have felt better if he’d had a plan, but he did not know what awaited him on Calle Independencia. He ate a mango from a plastic bag in his suitcase and then sat on the bed and opened the wooden box. It was divided into two compartments and in the right compartment were tools rolled inside a wide canvas belt. In the left was a sample of his work. He wrapped the belt around his abdomen, pulled on a nondescript shirt and checked himself in the mirror. It made him look only a little thicker than normal, but there were no obvious bulges. He combed his hair and locked the door behind him.
On the way out of the hotel Ramon obtained a free map of the city from the desk clerk, then stood outside to study it. Calle Independencia began near the main square and ran roughly west for about eight blocks, when it changed its name to Calle de Los Padres. It looked like about two kilometers to the plaza from his hotel. Ramon started off at a brisk clip. Traffic was starting to thicken around him, an intimidating tangle of buses, taxis and cars. It was far more hectic than he had ever seen in Izamal, and remind him of Mérida, the farthest place from home he had ever been until now.
At the plaza he located Calle Independencia, but the first building number was 2. After the tropical climate of Izamal he was shivering in the thin shirt. Apparently not all of México shared the climate of the Yucatan. As he passed 120 he began to slow down. When he saw his destination he crossed the street and turned to look back at it as he considered what to do.
132 Calle Independencia was a narrow apple green facade between a house on the right and a large two story structure on the other side that announced itself as a boys’ school. The school wrapped around the corner, and Calle Independencia went on to become Calle de Los Padres, across the intersection. Perhaps the Padres ran the school, he thought.
132 was not wide enough to be a house and possessed no bell to ring. It had only one story and there were no openings other than the door. He came back across the street and tapped on it but got no response. He didn’t expect any with Tobey Cross dead. He had briefly regretted hanging up the phone on Marisol, but he’d been so shocked when she told him that he could think of nothing more to say.
Ramon passed purposefully by the school, looking in as he went. The paired front doors were open and inside, the school resembled many other buildings in México; a central courtyard with a fountain but no garden since the space was probably used for assembling the students. Two levels of arches surrounded the courtyard with shaded classroom doorways set back within. In one corner Ramon could see a staircase leading to the second floor, and further, to the roof. His left hand adjusted the tool belt beneath his shirt.
There were no students in view, classes had just begun. Inside the entry a janitor’s cart stood against the wall. Ramon stepped quickly inside, lifted a mop and an empty bucket from the cart with a single gesture and walked swiftly to the staircase on his right.
Once on the school roof he leaned the mop against the parapet, set down the bucket and crossed to the common wall adjoining 132. One story below a small untended roof garden displayed dead potted plants. Along the common wall a covered staircase projected above the roof to within a meter and a half of where Ramon stood. He slipped over the parapet and dropped to the angled roof over the stairs. Initially he slipped, then caught his footing as he held his breath, listening. No noise came from the school except a muffled droning from the students. Dropping to the flat part of the roof he examined the door at the top of the stairs. It was steel, hinged from the inside, with no window, knob or handle. If he got in, it wouldn’t be from this exit, and in this position he knew he could easily be seen from the school roof.
On the opposite side of the small roof a drain pipe led from the gutter at the edge to a cistern about six feet from the back wall. When Ramon tested his weight, the cast iron held him without sagging and he slid down to the top of the cistern and jumped to the ground.
It was at this point that a plan would have been useful, since if he did not get into the building and out the front, he was not going to get out at all. The yard he was standing in was no more than five meters deep to the back wall, and as wide as the building. It was littered with chunks of concrete and broken tiles, a few sections of pipe, and stands of long dry brush.
The rear of the building presented the same faded apple green as the front, stained by years of rust below the drain pipe, with a single-width door in the center and a large square window to the left. This window was the only source of natural light to the interior. The door was as unpromising as the one on the roof.
A six bar iron grid blocked the window, with cross bars at the top, center and bottom. All three of the cross bars were fastened at both ends with heavy bolts into the masonry at the sides of the window. Ramon lifted his shirt and untied the canvas tool belt. From the tool kit he selected a socket wrench of the right size, attached it to a ratchet and began work on the lower right bolt. As he leaned all his weight into it he heard a noise from the school roof and quickly faded into the corner between the back of 132 and the common wall of the school. His heart was pounding against the canvas tool belt, but no faces appeared at the parapet.
The fourth bolt, at the left of the center bar, was the most difficult. Ramon could feel his shoulder almost dislocating and he had to rest several times before the bolt began to move. He picked up a short length of pipe to extend the wrench. When the bolt finally came out, all that remained were two at the top, which he could not reach anyway. With one of the longer pipes from the yard, he levered the entire grid outward from the bottom and then jammed the pipe in, to keep the grid away from the sill. With a pry bar, he popped the interior latch on the steel casement windows. Hoisting himself up, he pulled the grid back into place, but it did not return all the way back to the window. He smiled to himself. It was not a bad outcome for a man without a plan.
Moving forward in the dim interior he found the light switch. The light couldn’t be seen from the street. He moved past stacks of familiar boxes bearing his own return address, past a small bathroom, toward the front of the building. The last space at the front was an office enclosure.
Ramon sat down at the desk, surveying the room. Everything was immaculate; the pale bluish gray walls displayed a few old architectural engravings framed in black lacquer. One depicted a moonlit ruin of a pyramid in the Yucatan that Ramon recognized. The desk lamp was sculptural in design and made from a pewter-colored metal with a light amber glass shade. The rosewood surface of the desk looked like the kind that grew in the jungle around Izamal. Small planks of it were available in the market two blocks from his house.
He ignored the computer and the expensive stereo set behind him. Computers made him uncomfortable, and although he had some minimal skills, he believed most personal data was protected by password anyway. He went drawer by drawer through the desk. By the time he left at lunch time, he had everything he needed; the customer lists, the sales records, and the sale prices (these greatly surprised him). He stuffed everything into a small briefcase he found on the computer desk, pulled the front door shut behind him and walked briskly down Calle Independencia.
With Señor Cross dead it was time Ramon Xoc took his business in his own hands. Although he thought of it as simply marketing his own work, Ramon was eff
ectively going to be an antiques dealer.
Chapter 5
Three days after the party Barbara Watt came for her first sitting. Every day I was feeling like I should have more going on with Tobey’s murder investigation, but I didn’t know what to do next. Marisol’s comment that I might see things differently sounded plausible, but in practice I was mostly seeing nothing and sometimes I wondered if I wasn’t avoiding the whole thing. I preferred to think about what pigments to mix to get Barbara’s coloring right.
Maya had gone to the revolutionary archive in Dolores Hidalgo to begin the research on a new book. It was not her book, she had signed on to do research for a former professor of hers who was now teaching in Albuquerque. She had taken the artmobile, my older Chevy van that I had fitted with a canvas awning that unrolled from the side over the sliding door and was supported at the other end by two aluminum uprights which could be stuck in the ground. I often used it to sit in the shade by the roadside and paint landscapes.
Maya had sold her Volkswagen beetle several years back because it was too difficult to keep two cars in San Miguel and we didn’t drive much anyway. It was more fun to just hobble over the cobblestone sidewalks. It strengthened our ankles. Marisol was still in Guanajuato working through her grief and we had drawn a blank on the idea that the 132 key might be for a locker at the bus station; we had checked and none were provided. We didn’t know what to do next. Tobey’s family in Minnesota wanted him to be buried there but the authorities had still not released the body. I couldn’t imagine what else they thought they were going to learn from it.
When Barbara came through the entry, she took my hand and went on into the garden. In the center an old well with dolphins carved on the sides now served as a fountain. In the area immediately around it, we have smaller plants, mostly bromeliads, which come in about a hundred varieties here, and then, moving outward toward the walls, we have lime and orange trees, and on one wall, a banana tree that wishes it were in a hotter climate. Bougainvillea climbs the arches at the loggia, mixed here and there with orange trumpet vine. The back wall has a tall stand of bamboo.
Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende Page 6
