Cry in the Night (14 page)

Jerry had described to me what might be in the Treasure of Axayacatl, intricate works of the softest hammered gold, ear spools and pendants, nose plugs and whistles, headdresses, breastplates, discs. Each piece would likely reflect the highly original mythology of the Aztec people. Jaguar heads and feathered serpents, a writhing skirt of snakes, the soft teardrops of falling rain—all of these and more might be captured in gold.

Tonight?

I don’t know that I consciously made a choice. Jerry had given me his home and office telephone numbers and told me to call at once should I discover anything.

I may, as I stood there, have remembered that and remembered also when he put me into the cab and said,
“For God’s sake, be careful, Sheila.”
If I thought about it at all, it was only in passing for there was really no choice to be made.

“Francesca,” I said urgently, “get Tony for me. Quickly. Tell him that I’ve talked to your grandfather, that I’m on his side. Please hurry. It’s very important.”

When she left, Rita close behind her, I dropped my robe and gown on a chair and slipped into a navy double-knit dress and white sandals. I don’t really know exactly what I had in mind. I do know that I never questioned my decision to call Tony, to tell him everything. I hoped that perhaps he and I might be able to put everything back together again. If we could find the treasure—perhaps we could follow Juan or demand that he show it to us—if we could find the gold, get it to safety, then we could see what might be salvaged out of the mess.

I didn’t think about Raúl, the clever, boastful young man, so ambitious, so early dead.

I was brushing my hair back, twisting it into a bun, when there was a soft knock at my door. I snatched up my sweater and ran to the door. I opened it and was startled to find the little maid there, the one who had brought me hot chocolate the first night.

She looked nervously over her shoulder, then gestured to me to follow her. Somehow I had expected the twins to return with Tony, but perhaps he felt the children had been through enough for one night and sent them on to bed.

To my surprise she led me downstairs—her finger to her lips—and out onto the terrace by the poolroom. I half expected her to turn toward the colonnaded wing. Instead she hurried me down the center path of the garden, then veered off to the right to scurry down the wooden steps that led toward the garages.

She didn’t stop at the garages. I paused and asked in my guidebook Spanish,
“¿Donde está Tony?”

She clapped her small, warm hand over my mouth, whispered something I didn’t understand, and tugged at my sleeve. We started off again. We passed the garages, dark and barnlike, and turned down a narrow brick walk that ran beside a tall, prickly cedar hedge. It was utterly secluded with scarcely enough space between the garage wall and the hedge to look up and see the stars.

I slowed down again.

She yanked on my arm, whispering.

When I stubbornly stopped, she gestured ahead at a huge wooden door. She stepped in front of me and lifted the heavy crossbeam. The door slowly swung out. She paused to let me go first. “He must talk to you, señorita. My brother is waiting for you.”

I tried to see ahead of me but that sweet-smelling hedge grew tall enough to block out the moonlight, making shadows as thick and black as a pool of oil.

I stepped hesitantly to the opening. Her brother? Someone who needed to see me? Midway through the door, something moved at the periphery of my vision. I swung around as arms reached for me.

Chapter 14

He was incredibly strong. One arm held me pinioned against him. The other crooked about my neck, pulling my chin high and my head back against his chest. I couldn’t move.

The wooden door slammed shut behind me. I heard the crossbar drop into place.

If he pulled my head any higher, my neck would break.

There is a point beyond fear where terror envelops you and the world is reduced to a frantic struggle to survive. Nothing existed in the world but the agonizing strain as my neck arched back and back. I was held in a hard, unrelenting grip, unable to move.

His voice was a harsh, hot breath against my cheek. “Be quiet and you will be safe.”

My heart thudded erratically. My head throbbed from pain and fear. I knew I was even nearer death than I had been when the bullets pitted that ages-old pavement on the Avenue of the Dead. I trembled, but I no longer fought to be free. Gradually he loosed his grip, easing the strain on my throat. Quickly, before I realized his intent, he pulled my hands behind me, twisted a leather strap around them, and tied the ends in two quick twists.

I was still frightened, terribly frightened, but I had wit enough to realize that I was not hurt. He could easily have strangled me if that had been his intent.

He herded me down the alley. The way was rough and rocky. His hand was hard on my arm. Far ahead a lamp marked the alley’s entry into the street. We were not far from the street when a flashlight beam danced around the opening into the alley and a musical whistle trilled.

My captor lifted me as if I weighed no more than a pillow and plunged half a dozen steps back into the obscurity of the alley, pressing both of us against another wooden gate recessed in a wall.

I knew better than to make even the tiniest of noises. The man holding me signaled his intent clearly. Menace emanated from him in waves.

The watchman almost passed us.

His flashlight was loose in his hand. He hummed a tuneless hum. His shoes scuffed leisurely along the rocky ground. He was in no hurry. A few feet from us, he paused and swung the light up to run along the rim of the wall. The light illuminated him for a moment, gray cap tipped to the back of his head, shirt a bright striped pink and yellow.

I don’t know what alerted him. Perhaps he saw the white of my sandals. I hope not. Perhaps it was the glint of my captor’s knife blade. He saw something. He stopped and swung the beam of the flashlight toward us. At the same moment, he lifted his whistle to his lips.

My captor moved quickly, yet one strong hand still gripped me. The knife in his other hand swung up to slash the watchman’s throat. The arc of blood from the severed vein was visible for an instant in the light of the flashlight. The light clattered to the ground, its beam trained on nothing.

The watchman fell heavily forward. There was a hideous noise in his throat, then silence.

I knew who my captor was now. I saw his face for a moment in the watchman’s light. It was that memorable face glimpsed at the airport and once again in the shadow of a bush at Teotihuacán, straight black hair and flaring sideburns, taut coppery skin, black eyebrows slashing sharply upward, thin, tough mouth. I knew who he was and now I knew what he was, a killer. One of life’s pirates. As vicious as a piranha. I was his prisoner.

Mercifully, I don’t remember too much about that horror-filled encounter. It was over quickly and we were running, his hand once again tight on my arm, down the alleyway. I do remember thinking gratefully that it was his other hand that gripped me, not the hand that had killed.

We left the watchman slumped on the ground, smaller in death than he had been in life.

When we reached the end of the alley, he stopped. I stumbled to a halt beside him, my breathing ragged and loud. No one moved on the broad, empty street. Vine-covered walls rose on both sides. Not a house could be seen. If I screamed, if I called out for help, no one would hear.

The knife was no longer in his hand, but he could draw it quickly, more quickly than the watchman had been able to lift the whistle to his lips.

We paused for an instant at the street, and then he hurried me across the cobbled stones and into the opposite alleyway. This time we didn’t go far. His motorcycle was well hidden in the deepest shadows.

He untied the leather strip from my wrists then, astride the motorcycle, he gestured to me to climb on behind him. I debated. Could I possibly run? I knew the answer. I couldn’t outrun a motorcycle or a knife. I climbed on behind him.

He grabbed my wrists, then pulled my hands around his waist and tied them. He kicked down on the starter and the cycle roared and began to lurch down the alley. Quickly the cycle picked up speed and turned into the street.

The ride was a nightmare. We hurtled down streets I’d never seen, past billboards that were meaningless. All was strange, the buildings, the road signs, the parks.

I had never before ridden on a motorcycle. The speed sucked my breath away, pressed against my face, pulled at my eyes. I could see only in a blur. Each swerve of the machine seemed perilously near disaster.

When we reached the highway and the city began to fall behind, the road swooped and curved and turned back on itself in sometimes shallow and sometimes steep ascents. The speed plucked at my will, tore at my mind. We rode on and on, occasionally roaring through a little village with only one light or two to mark huddled buildings clinging to the hillside. The air grew colder and colder and soon there was nothing in the world but the hard sweep of the wind and hurtling machine. I don’t know how long we rode. An hour at least. Perhaps two.

My face was pressed against his back. The rough cotton of his shirt rubbed my cheek. Finally, the cycle slowed. We plunged off the narrow road onto a one-lane dirt road that wound still higher among stubby pine trees. We rode perhaps another quarter mile and stopped. After the seemingly endless, wind-whipped journey, the sudden quiet jolted me out of my passive acceptance.

An owl hooted not far away. The man turned his head to listen. There was a faint crackling as some animal moved along the hillside. I saw patches of sky through the trees. Stars glittered bright as sequins, but there was little light among the pines. I dimly made out tumbled boulders and rough, uneven ground with trees clinging tenaciously to the hillside.

He untied my hands and helped me off the cycle.

I was so numb and stiff, I was scarcely able to stand.

He turned away, rolling the cycle off the road.

Stiff as I was, unsteady on my feet, I didn’t hesitate. I turned and ran.

He didn’t hear me for a moment. When he started after me, I swerved off the road and blundered down a steep slope, slipping and sliding on hoof-sized rocks. There was no place to go, but I kept on running, stubbornly, hopelessly, twisting and turning, stumbling on.

As frightening as anything was the utter silence of his pursuit. He didn’t shout at me to stop. There was no sound but the slap of his feet, the rattle of rocks as he jumped down a slope.

The angle of descent sharpened. He was close behind me. I dodged to my left and my ankle twisted under me. I fell, rolling over and over, rocks poking and jabbing against me until I brought up hard against the trunk of a pine tree and fell beside it. The sharp, clean smell of the pines reminded of a summer my mother and I spent in Minnesota, a happy, carefree summer. Now I huddled beneath the low-hanging boughs of a pine tree. Fallen needles were sharp against my face. Somewhere near, so near, a killer hunted me. I lay as still as the fallen needles. I waited.

He stopped, too. He knew I couldn’t be far from him. I heard his heavy breaths and then they quieted. He was so close to my tree that, if I crawled a half yard forward, I would be able to reach out and touch his shoe.

“I won’t hurt you.” He spoke softly.

I wondered if we might be near a house. I knew in the same instant that it wouldn’t matter if there were people only yards way. Long before I could rouse anyone with a cry, he would be upon me. I lay as still as the waxy, sharp-tipped needles beneath me and waited.

“Miss, miss, listen to me, miss.”

If it weren’t so horrible, it would be funny. Miss, indeed.

“I only want to talk to you.”

I took a delight in how quiet I could be. Not the lightest breath, not the faintest rustle would betray me.

“I know you can hear me. I know all about you. I’ve known since before you came to Mexico.”

Have you now? I thought, but I lay unmoving in my needle-lined depression.

“Listen.” Anger flickered in his voice. “You can’t fool me. You are here to buy the treasure for your museum. You have brought much money with you.” He paused and pine trees sighed in the gentle wind and night creatures scurried about on their nocturnal rounds. “Much money.”

Now I understood that there was no hope for me. I had no money. When he knew I couldn’t give him the riches he had killed for, he would dispose of me as easily as a housewife swats a wasp.

“I will have the money. It is mine. The treasure belongs to me.”

To you and to the Ortegas and to the Mexican government and to the shades of Aztec gods and Lord knows who all else.

“My brother found the gold . . .”

His brother. I listened hard to that soft voice.

“. . . so they killed him. They killed Raúl.”

Everybody loves somebody. He loved his brother. The bitterness in his voice made the hair prickle on my back.

He told me all he knew, how Raúl had realized that the señora did not ride aimlessly in the hills. Rather, that she searched for something and, when Señor Ortega was not at the hacienda, she rode all day, up and down the hills, the horse brought in lathered with sweat. One cool November day, Raúl followed Gerda.

“There are some, how do you say it, old places?”

Ruins? I thought to myself.

“Big humps that look like hills but it is said that once they were temples. There was a dried stream bed that curved around the hill. It was near here that the señora hunted every day. She had looked long that afternoon and she was resting, sitting in the shade of a pine when Raúl found her.”

I had trouble picturing blond and beautiful Gerda scrambling up and down rocky hills. After months passed, the hunt must have seemed hopeless to her. But that afternoon, Raúl found her. Gerda liked young men and Raúl was both handsome and ingenious. She shared her wine with him and told him an interesting story.

Raúl’s brother obviously didn’t question what Gerda had told Raúl, but I could scarcely believe my ears. She was hunting, Gerda told Raúl, for a cave. She had a map. She showed him the map.

“I didn’t see the map, you understand,” Raúl’s brother confided in that soft, whispering voice, “but Raúl told me that as soon as he saw the map, he knew why the señora’s search had failed.”

My captor didn’t doubt what he was telling me, but I was sure Raúl had lied to him. I could believe in gold. I could even believe in a treasure trove. I couldn’t believe in a map with an
X
marking the spot. A map four hundred and fifty years old?

His next words confirmed my skepticism.

“The cave was marked on the map, but it shows so many paces from the road and Raúl knew the map meant the old road. This the señora did not know. She had come to Tlaxcala this past summer and knew only the fine new road. She didn’t know the old road.”

Neither did Cortés’s soldiers know the old road, buddy. But I didn’t say a word. I lay quietly in my burrow. Raúl has sold his brother a bill of goods. I wondered why.

Raúl’s brother described what he knew of the map, the funny writing—what would be the romance of a treasure map without an exotic inscription?—the number of paces from an overhanging rock to the mouth of the cave.

“He told the señora. He showed her the old road. They went together and together they found the gold so the treasure is as much his as hers, do you not think, miss?”

It was cold on the hillside. The pine needles were like slick pieces of ice against my skin. I felt sure there was no treasure. It was all a mad fantasy, the treasure, this cold damp hillside, the eerily soft voice of the killer trying to coax me to come out of my hiding place, demanding money that I didn’t have.

If he found me, I would soon not feel cold. I wouldn’t feel anything ever again. The touch of Tony’s hand . . . The killer would find me. There was no escape possible. What could I do? How could I persuade him that I had no money?

I forced myself to face the truth. Even if I persuaded him that I had no money, he wouldn’t let me go free. I had seen him kill, watched his hand plunge a knife into a man’s throat.

I pressed harder against the pine carpet, felt again the breathless emptiness of fear, so like the sensation of falling. I missed some of what he said but when I heard again, he was insisting, “The treasure belongs to me now because my brother found the cave for the señora. He told me about the gold that last night. He was drunk and I didn’t believe him. He told me how the gold looked, soft and shiny, bright as butter, he said.”

For a moment that soft voice fell away. There was nothing but the gentle rustle of the pine trees and the clatter of rocks as he moved a step or so farther down the incline, ever closer to me.