The old man smiled. "I knew you'd be enough for the task."
As José left, he pointed to the air conditioner. "You should get your climate fixed, boss. Too hot in here."
"Off with you, boy."
—
Cusco.
The pawnshop owner whom Tami Capaldi consulted with the artifact she found in Roddy's antique store was called Jabon, or soap. Jabon had a reputation for being a slippery son of a bitch, as Pietro was fond of calling him.
As of the moment, Jabon called one of Pietro's boys about some merchandise worth millions of dollars. No thievery had been traced to him.
Until the woman who had brought the racket-shaped gold artifact.
He had just received a visit from a Pietro Oscar emissary who brought a bag filled with a quarter of a million dollars in sols to him. He had counted the money in his private office where there was a counting machine.
Back in the outer office, he drank beer and watched TV. The woman who had been knitting the day Tami came with her merchandise was there as well, but that day, she wasn't knitting. She was checking out a travel guide with photos of beautiful beaches and yachts. And women in bikinis, men in droopy shorts wading in high waves. She was smiling too, her not so pretty face covered in bad makeup.
Her name was Alexa, and she was Jabon's wife.
The business was good. The illegal arm of it, that was. People rarely brought authentic merchandise, original articles to be sold. Pawnshop keepers in Peru had a reputation for swindling, and Jabon was one of the foremost of them. His good ways masked the heart of a shrewd business shark.
Tami Capaldi opened the door and let the hot air outside blow in. The storm everyone hoped for the previous day had blown away to lands unknown.
Tami banged her hand on the counter.
The woman's jaw dropped open when she saw Tami. Jabon couldn't hide his surprise, too; the woman's appearance had been unexpected.
Tami's face was red with hot fury. Her eyes were black fire.
"You were the only one who knew about it!"
"What are you talking about?"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about, you filthy thing." His voice rose an octave. "You sent them! You sent them, didn't you?"
Jabon cocked his head to the side. He smiled; his voice remained feathery.
"Careful, ma'am, you accuse me of stealing now."
Tami looked at Jabon's wife. "She was here, she saw me too. Both of you, you should both go to jail for stealing from me—"
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave, or I'll call the police."
"I have reported the police already. What're you going to reveal?"
The man went to the telephone on the wall, but Tami left before he could do it.
—
"Jabon, what's going on, you got your package?"
"Yes, I did, but we have a bigger problem."
"What's the problem?" Pietro Oscar asked.
"The woman, she was here. She knows."
A pause, some static.
"Don't worry about it. I'll shut her up."
"Okay, good."
—
That night, two separate men came around Tami Capaldi's apartment; one to kill her, the other to see if someone might try to kill her.
Detective José Hanna was waiting for her in an unmarked car he took from a station in Cusco. That way, he protected himself—and by extension, Tami—from leaks in his own station.
The car was a black Mazda, nondescript, and fitted with cooling so that he wound up the windows and listened to the radio.
He parked such that he could see that when the taxi dropped her off, the plate number on the cab indicated that she had been in Cusco too. The woman had mentioned that she suspected the pawnshop guy and his wife.
José knew the soap. Jabon had done this many times. He has never been caught. Somehow he always slipped through the shreds of evidence, and of course, Pietro and the cops in his payroll had always made it easy.
Earlier, José had gone up to the apartment floor to scope it.
Now he watched the street behind Tami, instead of the woman herself. She climbed the stairs, looking up and down the road before disappearing into the building.
A man in a great dark coat and a brown hat, its rim extensive, appeared from the corner of the building. José had checked out that alley before. He'd guessed any assailant would best come from there.
He checked his watch. It was 8:55. He checked his gun. It was loaded and ready. This side of town settled in early, or maybe folks just kept to their business. Middle-class people with attitude, lower-class people with stress levels of the wealthy. It was a confusing phenomenon for detective José Hanna.
People in less urban places have mastered the art of minding one's own business than folks in the more opulent corners of Peru. He walked past a neatly dressed man setting up his cart for the night's round of anticuchos. José cut the length of his stride. He pulled his own hat down on his face so that the rim cast a shadow on his eyes. He went up the stairs and into the building.
The man in the coat was now walking up the last flight of steps to get to Tami's landing. José quickened his steps, left hand on the banister, and the other on the butt of his gun.
The man was already crouching at the door, and his tools were already picking the lock.
"Hey, let me see your hands in the air!"
The face on the hat turned very slowly. The jaws tightened, the lips so thin the lower face looked like a doll without a mouth.
"Slowly now, raise them up."
José pointed his gun at the man. He took the steps one at a time, his eyes not leaving the man's gloved hands. The overhead light was shining from behind the man, and it was so because the detective's position was lower than the bugler's own.
So José couldn't see that the man was leaning forward. He didn't notice his knees were bent, and that the muscles of his thighs propelled him as he twisted his body to the side, away from the detective's gun's aim. He didn't notice as he lunged forward, his knees connected with the detective's chest, and he fell backward.
Jose was caught off guard. His gun was knocked out of his hand. He lashed out with his other hand. The bugler raised his head in time for Jose's fist to brush his chin. The bugler bolted off the detective's body and darted down the stairs and was gone.
The detective picked up his gun and ran after the fleeing man. But when he got to the street, there was darkness, lighted homes, and a cart of anticuchos. Wispy white cloud, sweetened with the spice of rachi.
He went back up to Tami Capaldi's door and knocked.
"Hello, we meet again," he said and showed her his badge when the door opened.
She looked at the man's ruffled clothes and frowned.
"We need to talk," he said and pushed his way in.
5
Miami, Florida.
"I'm putting my team together. We leave in three days."
"Why three days?"
"That's the best I can do under the circumstances," said Olivia.
Mary Luca sighed. She seemed even more impatient than the last time. The woman said, "I want to come with you."
"What?"
"Yeah, I'm coming to Peru with you. It's important to some people here that someone from the faculty follow your team into the field."
Olivia laughed. "Into the field?"
Mary Luca's breath was coming through the earpiece of the telephone in whooshing static. Olivia shook her head.
"What do you mean?"
"There is nothing academic about this. It's a dangerous business. I can't promise you'd be safe. I don't have the resources."
"You make it sound like it's some military extraction."
Olivia closed her eyes, annoyed by the cocky edge in the woman's voice now. "We'll do it our way, or no deal."
"Miss Olivia, I'm aware of what you and your team did in Rome. I know how you work. But being in Peru in the circumstances isn't a decision I'm making, I don't have a death w
ish. The faculty wants eyes down there, and somehow they think I'm the best fit. So you see, this is as much inconvenience for me as it is for your team."
Olivia considered the proposal. The presence of another woman on the trip was something she could actually enjoy.
She said, "Alright. Get ready to move in three days then."
"Be seeing you then."
—
Cusco, Peru.
Pietro Oscar sat on the top of his townhome. There was a pool filled with blue water and delectable girls. The girls thrashed about the water and made girlie screams that echoed across the afternoon. The heat had dropped. Birds played in the sky, and everything felt peachy, except Pietro's mood. There was a good reason for that. The executioner he sent to eliminate the woman in the antique store returned to tell him that detective José Hanna had almost shot him instead.
"It's the Americans!" he bawled into the sky. "They think they can go anywhere and just take something. They think they can just take my gold!"
Two of his men stood beside him. One was holding a folder; he waited for Pietro to cool down. Pietro ranted some more. Then he looked at the girls in the water. All the women want is to spend his money and fuck.
He stretched his hand to the man holding the folder. He opened the folder and photos slipped out of it.
"This woman, she'd be coming here soon, I feel it." He held two photos in his hand. One was the face of Olivia Newton and the other of Tami Capaldi. There were others, too, mostly Rome and Miami. More photos of the team—Frank Miller, Lawrence Diggs, Liam Murphy, Anabia Nassif, and Victor Borodin.
Except for Andrew Gilmore, the former priest.
Pietro Oscar got off his beach chair suddenly. He spilled his colada. The girls in the water stopped screaming.
He raised one photo up to the nearest man with a gun.
"I want this woman and her friends dead by tomorrow morning. She will come here, I know it. Make sure she doesn't make it out of Miami. Go, do it now!"
One of the men took the photo and marched off.
—
Tami didn't show up at her workplace the next day. She locked herself up in her apartment—in her bedroom, after driving all the locks on her door in. Tami had rejected detective José Hanna's offer of protection from the previous night.
"I'm better off alone," she had said.
"No, you're not. That's what these guys hope you'll do."
"What?"
"You don't get it. These people, they hope you are alone, an easy target, and that's why they sent only one guy. Next time, they won't be so considerate. You have to let me help you. I have a place I can hide you until whatever you are involved with blows over."
She had shrunk away from the detective's handsome face. His aftershave had filled her apartment, and there was a reddening patch on his forehead. It must be where the burglar had hit him. She looked at the blister, and fury at the world choked her throat.
He should have killed the burglar, he should have shot him, give them a dose of their wickedness!
"I'm not involved in anything!"
"Well, someone dangerous certainly thinks you are."
Tami had said nothing more. The detective had left quietly after that. But she knew he was somewhere nearby, maybe in an alley, watching her place. This was the type of cop who loved his job more than he did his life. Somehow, men like José were easy to read; they chose a cause, then they gave their all.
Tami stared at her wet face in the bathroom mirror minutes after—it was past midnight at the time—and decided she qualified as someone with a lower sort of integrity. She had done horrible things. She had hurt others in the past—Gabby, her husband, Olivia, and her friends—she had crossed people, and when she looked at the lines in her palms, she saw blood running down those gullies.
She sighed and shut her eyes. I'm getting paid for my sins. Church bells clanged far away, and she looked at the window. The nearest church bells were miles from her location; strong winds were driving faraway sounds inland. The storm is still coming.
It's only a storm. Worse disasters had struck humankind and had brought humans to their knees.
She had gone to see what was happening in the street through the window. If someone was watching from those shadows down there, she could not tell. There was quiet, smoke from the dying fire of the meat seller.
She frowned then, thinking. The meat seller, when did he begin business at that spot? He hadn't been there last night. Or the one before.
Tami got a kitchen knife and went to sit in bed.
Then she thought about calling Olivia Newton. I have lost everything. I'd as well swallow my pride—and guilt.
—
Miami.
When Olivia's cellphone rang early while it was still dark outside, she was surprised when the female voice wasn't one she readily recalled.
The number of people who could call Olivia so early in the morning had significantly dwindled as the years went by.
"This is Tami Capaldi," the voice said.
Olivia grabbed the urge to laugh out by the throat and choked it down hard. She hadn't heard from Tami after Rome. And she had hoped she would not.
"Hey."
"Hi."
"What do you want?"
Then the woman broke down in tears, hard. Olivia sat up in bed. She grimaced and listened harder to the background. Could Tami be putting up another game? Warily, Olivia waited for her to calm down.
"Tami? What's going on with you?"
She sniffed, honked into something that muffled her voice.
"Someone's trying to kill me, Olivia. I'm sorry, you're the only one I trust now. Funny how it had to be you—"
"Tami—"
"Wait, here me out, please! I know I don't deserve a second chance from you. I'm sorry about Rome. I was stupid, greedy, and I'm not proud of the things I have done. I regret them all now. I need your help. I need your team’s help. There's a man in Peru here who stole from me. Gold. I will share the money with you if you want. I'm sure it's worth millions of dollars."
Olivia got up from her bed. What the hell is going on? Peru?
"Tami, slow down. What gold are you talking about?"
The woman paused. Then she told Olivia everything, from when she first saw the history book until the moment she stole the gold. When she finished speaking, Tami herself was amazed at her own honesty.
"Without this, I don't know what I'm going to do. I have nothing. These people killed my grandma. They took away my chance at a fresh start. I stole it, I know, but I was going to use the opportunity better this time. I was going to take care of us all, myself, grandma, and even Roddy—"
"Who's Roddy?"
"Rodriguez, he owns the antique shop where I found the gold."
"I'll be in Peru in two days, Tami. I and the team—"
She gasped. "You are going to help me? Just like that?"
Olivia smiled at the white wall of her room. She blew air through her lips and closed her eyes, not sure how to tell the other woman of her plans, which now seem like they were connected with Tami's present predicament.
"What the name of this man, the guy who stole from you?"
"They call him Jabon, that's soap in Spanish. He owns the pawnshop in Cusco. He's one real bastard. He tells you your artifact is fake, he and his wife, they tell you to drop it—and they sound pretty much convincing. They promise to help you get a good sale on it. That way, they make you think they are doing you a favor. Then they sell you out, or have someone come to your house to kill you."
"And this detective you talked about, the one who wanted to protect you?"
"What about him?"
"Do you trust him?"
Tami shook her head. Olivia sensed urgent fear. Her voice dropped, as though the walls could hear.
"You can't trust anyone here, least of all the police. This man, Jabon, probably has cops he pays to look the other way. What if they're just trying to get me to trust him so they can kill me?"
&nbs
p; "Alright, Tami, stay put, stay low, and be careful. We'll be in Peru soon. Stay alive, and we'll get through this together."
"Thank you, Olivia."
"One more thing, Tami."
"What?"
"Don't screw us over."
—
Frank Miller was skeptical. Liam Murphy freaked out. Lawrence Diggs, Anabia Nassif, and Borodin mostly indifferent.
"Olivia, we can't just forget what that woman did in Rome. Are you sure she's not going to do it again?"
"I'm not sure she will, but neither are we sure she won't—"
"Doesn't anyone care about my personal feelings in this matter?" came Liam's voice. Other sounds like running water also escaped through the phone.
"Where the hell are you, Liam?" asked Nassif.
"I'm floating on the Niagara, near the falls—hey, guys ,I don't like that bitch. She fucked us over once, Victor. There's got to be a saying in Russia about this sort of thing, yeah. If someone did it once, they'd do it again."
Victor Borodin said there wasn't any such saying in Russia. "And can we get this meeting over with? I have to get back to something important."
"What thing?" Liam shouted over the deafening noise of the water.
"I'm on a date."
Liam howled, "Victor, finally! You have a girlfriend! Jesus Christ!"
"Focus, Liam," cut in Frank Miller.
Olivia said, "I gave our word."
"Oh, Olivia, how can you do that? 'Our word,' what does that even mean?" Liam complained.
Finally, all the men said they would come down to Miami the next day. Except for Victor Borodin, who was meeting his girl's folks the next day in Moscow.
"I can't get in until next week."
"What do you mean next week? Victor, get here in two days. We'll wait for you," Liam called.
"I have to get her pregnant."
An uncomfortable silence followed. A proper man had just said something crude. It was like hearing a priest praise the advantages of porn while serving benedictions in the congregation, with the ciborium and all.
Anabia Nassif said, "Yeah, you're the man, Victor."
All the men chorused, "You're the man, Victor. You're the man."
Olivia shook her head. Men, she thought. Aliens from Mars.
—
The Inca Temple Page 7
