No Job for a Lady (28 page)

I stare, speechless, as she disappears into the tent assigned to us.

Roger smirks. “Can I carry your bag in?”

“You—I’m going to—”

He grins and takes a puff of his pipe and blows smoke at me. “Missed me, haven’t you?”

Bewildered and befuddled, I retreat. I don’t know what it is about the man that causes my tongue to get tied when it is usually so liquid and even slippery when I need to make a point.

I storm into the tent and confront Gertrude.

“Don’t you think for one moment that I—”

She shakes her head and holds her hands over her ears.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

She smirks and rolls her eyes. “My dear, if you are going to tell me that your arrangements with that man for the past days—
and nights
—are not an example of your being a sexually liberated woman, I don’t want to hear it. Nellie, I admire you immensely for what at the very least has the appearance of scandalous behavior.”

She smothers another giggle. “Please don’t spoil it by giving me a perfectly reasonable explanation that proves that you are just a nice girl with unsatisfied passions like the rest of us.”

Her rather frivolous take on Roger and me actually works out perfectly. A truthful explanation that would satisfy her would necessitate exposing a can of worms.

“Good enough, think what you like. Think the worst, if that pleases you. What did you find out from your uncle?”

“Traven is excavating at the Temple of Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent. Don Antonio says he’ll talk to Traven about showing us the dig, but we aren’t just to wander over or even wander around by ourselves. There are spiders bigger than your hands, along with snakes and scorpions.”

“I’ll take nasty crawling creatures over ghosts and vengeful gods.”

Gertrude laughs.

What she doesn’t realize is, I am dead serious.

48

The cots in the tent have so many lumps, it makes the hard pads at the hotel seem fit for the princess who felt a pea through a stack of mattresses. Even the lumps have lumps.

Besides the two iron cots, a small wood table with a washbowl on top is the only other piece of furniture. No well or creek is in the vicinity to get water to freshen up with.

“Rain barrels outside,” Gertrude says. “Don Antonio said if there are rats or snakes in them, just toss them aside. He also said that the facilities are considered luxurious compared to most sites of archaeological digs. I think he’s trying to dissuade me from a life of travel and adventure.”

Rats, I could deal with. Snakes, I will scream.

There is neither soap nor towels, but we no sooner notice the lack thereof when the woman who was supervising the luggage removal comes in and sets down both.

“Señoritas,” she says, and leaves as quickly as she entered.

“Ah” is all I can say as I test a mattress. “It feels like it’s stuffed with scratchy hay. What do you want to bet that Lily and her beau will sleep on goose feathers tonight?”

“Probably one that she brought in that mountain of luggage that followed us like the supply wagon of an army.”

We leave the tent to take a walk down the Avenue of the Dead before dinner. Gertrude confirms that we are not the only visitors at the site.

“Don Antonio said to hire one of the young boys who come clamoring to be tour guides. He says their versions of the history of the ruins will be more fantasy than fact, but they know the places to stay away from because they’re unstable or have a nest of snakes.”

Walking toward the ruins, we see Thompson and Sundance. They are deep in conversation, with Mr. Thompson seated on the remains of a stone pillar. He appears to be doing all the talking, and Sundance doesn’t look a bit pleased. Rather agitated, in fact. Unfortunately, they are speaking too low for me to eavesdrop.

“Your cowboy friend seems a bit annoyed.”

“I don’t think it’s smart to ruffle Sundance’s feathers. He’s the youngest of the bunch, but the other cowboys seem to step lightly around him.”

A few more words are exchanged and then Sundance slaps his hat on and leaves Thompson, who stays seated and pulls out a little black book and begins to write.

“Ladies.” Sundance tips his hat and gives us a thin smile, not his usual cocky, friendly grin, as he stamps by with tight jaws.

Gertrude glances back at the cowboy. “That definitely was not a good conversation.”

What does the cowboy have going with the farm equipment salesman that has gone sour? I wonder.

A group of young boys runs up to us, each clamoring away about how he can give us the best tour of Teotihuacán. It reminds me of the boatmen at the Floating Gardens.

One boy in particular stands out to me. It makes no difference that he’s short and skinny. There’s a strong look of determination in his face, a glint in his eyes, and a liberal use of his elbows to make his way to the front. And unlike the other boys, who appear to know only a few words of English, he utters a whole sentence.

“I will give the lovely señoritas a fine tour of Teotihuacán.”

Gertrude nods her agreement that he’s our choice, and I ask, “How much?”

“Ten pesos.”

“One.”

“Five,” he counters.

“Fifty centavos,” I snap.

Cutting my original offer in half stops him cold.

“No, señorita, one peso,
por favor.
”

“
Bueno,
but you will be paid at the end and then only if we are satisfied.”

Gertrude whispers to me that I’ve gotten the hang of negotiating “in Mexican.”

“Oh, you will be more than satisfied,” the boy says. “I know all the history.” He stretches his very gaunt four-foot frame tall and proud. “I learned the history from the
alemán
hombre.”

He gestures up the broad boulevard, in the direction where I assume Traven is at his dig. He tells us his name is Juan.

Gertrude asks, “Did you learn your English in school?”

“No, señorita, here. No go to school. Must help my mother get food for the little ones.”

Oh my God.
“Five pesos,” I tell him. “But you still have to earn it.”

The boy is astonished at his sudden raise in pay.

Gertrude shakes her head. “Nellie, I take back my compliment about your negotiating skills.”

She’s probably right. No doubt he’s a little hustler and a fraud, but when he said he left school to help his mother, my heart ached, for I, too, had to make sacrifices to help my mother get food on the table.
9

Excitedly waving his arms like a symphony conductor putting out a fire, Juan says that the wide boulevard, the Avenue of the Dead, was crowded with people during sacrifice days. He gives us rather exaggerated but entertaining tales about how sacrifices were conducted and the bloodthirstiness of the crowds.

These ruins are not a place that many individual tourists would come to, but we pass a small group from Germany and one from Britain.

“Don Antonio says they don’t talk to one another,” Gertrude says, nodding her head at them. “Which is the state of the world, since the two countries are competing to be the world’s greatest military power.”

She goes on to tell me that her father says that someday America will be a world power. “But that will take a few lifetimes. First, you have to conquer your own Wild West.”

While the boy is walking ahead, leading us to a ruin, Gertrude and I talk about my “sunstroke.” I tell her only what I said to others, because I’m not sure yet if I can trust her not to tell her uncle that I’m running around claiming there is an Aztec murder cult thirsting for my blood.

“I heard you had dinner with Traven,” she says as a passing remark, but I feel she wants to know more. “Rather interesting man, one name and all.”

“True enough. Did he tell you I asked a million questions about his work?” I want to see if he told her we had discussed were-jaguars.

“Actually, Don Antonio told me about the dinner.” She lowers her voice so that the boy wouldn’t hear. “He also said that Traven is strapped for cash and may have to give up the dig.”

“No. Tell me.”

“He said Traven got a wire weeks ago saying his sponsor would no longer support the project because he’d gotten so little out of it. Don Antonio said Traven was in a fine state. I don’t know if it’s the case, but maybe that’s one of the reasons Frederic Gebhard has come to Teo. Apparently, he has some Egyptian pieces but has never collected any Mesoamerican artifacts.”

“Really?” That puzzles me, because Lily had told me the opposite. “Are you sure about that? I thought he had a significant collection of Mexican pieces.”

“No, Gebhard would have had to get a permit to export the pieces across the border.”

“And Don Antonio is the one he would have to get the permit from?”

“Exactly.”

Gertrude goes off to see something Juan is rattling on about as I wander a bit in deep thought.

So Lily lied when she told me Gebhard had a collection of Aztec pieces. But why? She doesn’t seem like the type to lie. Perhaps she was simply repeating what Gebhard had told her. And it may well be that he had gathered a major collection without getting a permit. So far, I have learned that money can buy anything in Mexico, including public services.

Lily’s invitation to lunch with her had been a puzzle from the start. She said Gebhard had asked her to talk to me about keeping a lid on their presence in Mexico, so that it didn’t drive up horse prices or expose his cheating. Yet they did nothing to hide their arrival. By now, every newspaper in Mexico City will have carried the story. Which means the story will be sent back by American foreign correspondents in the city.

I am jarred out of my brown study by a man who startles me. He is suddenly there as I walk next to the stone wall of a temple.

“Sorry,” I stammer.

He has a large mustache in the style of many Mexicans and is dressed as a peon would be, with a wide straw hat, a simple cotton shirt and pants, and leather sandals.

“Señorita.” He holds out a female doll. It’s a crude thing, made of straw and clothed in a simple dress.

“No, no bueno.”

“La Bruja,” he says, shoving the doll at me.

“What? What do you want?”

“La Bruja,” he says again, pushing the doll at me.

I slap it away. “Get away from me!”

“Nellie? You all right?”

I hear Gertrude’s voice from around the corner as the man says something in Spanish. He talks fast and the only words I recognize are
La Bruja.
He shoves the doll at me again and I back off, pushing it away.

He drops the doll at my feet and runs, disappearing behind a wall.

Picking up the doll, I realize it’s holding a rolled-up piece of paper. I pull the paper from its grip and unfold it, revealing a simple message.

La Bruja. 8. Here.

I hear the crunch of shoes and slip the message in my pocket.

“Are you all right? It sounded like you were yelling at someone.”

“I’m okay. Just … there was a man, tried to sell me a doll. Sorry, he startled me.”

Juan stares at the doll. “La Bruja…” he whispers.

He spins around and runs away like a banshee out of hell.

“Juan!” I yell after him, but he’s gone.

Gertrude stares at me. “Why’d he run?”

“Maybe he saw a snake.”

49

Dinner is in a communal dining hall, a large tent with the sides rolled up to let in a breeze. As we sit down for dinner, I find myself paying no attention to the chatter around me, because my mind is focused on my quandary.

A message from La Bruja to me? Literally a command that I meet with her tonight.

How does the infamous witch even know that I exist? Or that I’m in Teo? And how did she know what I looked like in order for her messenger to single me out for delivery of the doll?

Most important—what is the purpose of the invitation? This question is the sticking point, along with whether she really expects me to meet with her all alone in some ancient ruin that I’m sure has snakes and maybe even things that go bump in the night.

Obviously, she knows me better than I know myself, because that is exactly what I am thinking of doing. With one caveat. At eight o’clock, it will not be really dark. Close, but Don Antonio says that visitors often stroll up the Avenue of the Dead after dinner and even go up one of the pyramids to get close enough to enjoy the night sky. The ruins where I am supposed to meet the woman will have people around—I hope.

Why all the mystery? A doll with a note. Obviously, the doll is La Bruja’s calling card. One look at it by little Juan and the kid almost jumped out of his sandals as he made a getaway.

If she was aboveboard and had nothing to hide, she would have either come to the camp and introduced herself or sent me a simple message to set up a convenient time for a meeting in a civil place—during daylight.

Of course, she wouldn’t be called a witch if she weren’t sneaky and didn’t have a pocketful of tricks, would she?

I thought about asking Gertrude to come, but with her, it always goes back to those questions that she will ask and that I don’t want to answer. And I can just imagine what Don Antonio would do to me if I caused some harm to come to his dearest old friend’s daughter. That would definitely be the end for me on two counts, because I would never forgive myself if something happened to her and because I am hopelessly entangled in intrigue.

Wondering who gave the witch my particulars, I take stock of my dinner companions.

Everyone is here—the actress and the playboy, the consul general, the farm equipment salesman, the German archaeologist, the intelligent girl from Oxford, and me, the pretend foreign correspondent. Oh yes, and there is the historian from New York whose neck I would like to wring.

Still puzzled by this strange request, I slip out the mysterious note to look at it again for the dozenth time.

“Love letter from one of your many ardent admirers?”

To my chagrin, Roger has come over and is sitting himself down across from Gertrude and me. He nods at the note, which I quickly slip in my pocket.