Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (10 page)

 
          
“This
stela,” Witcher said, while the skinny black man looked out the hotel room
window, “could be very valuable. Depending on the condition of the rest of it.”

 
          
Directly
below the window was the hotel’s swimming pool, in which no one was swimming.
Just out of sight to the pool’s left were the large ocean-facing windows of the
dining room. From where he stood, the skinny black man could not quite see the
dining-room windows, but he knew who was there.

 
          
“There’s
a bunch of them here,” Kirby said casually, while the two cassette tapes
turned, steady and unromantic. “Let’s go on.” The voices stopped, to be
replaced by the panting and rustling sounds of hill-climbing.

 
          
The
skinny black man glanced over at the dresser top, where the linked cassette
players squatly sat, each with its own red eye. Then he looked down again,
vaguely regretting that he couldn’t quite see into the dining room where at
this moment Kirby, Witcher, and Feldspan were having lunch and continuing their
discussion. Were Witcher and Feldspan taping this meeting, too? Would he be
sent back to copy another conversation?

 
          
If
so, he would hear Kirby say, “The deal is, then, I’ll get the stuff out of the
country, whatever we find inside the temple. You guys sell it through your
contacts, and we split fifty-fifty.”

 
          
“You’ll
have to trust us,” Witcher pointed out. “Though I suppose you know the general
value of such things.”

 
          
“Fairly
well,” Kirby said, shrugging the problem away. “Besides, we have to trust one
another, don’t we? You have to trust me not to give you fakes.”

 
          
Feldspan
looked surprised, but Witcher merely amused, saying, “For Heaven’s sake, why
would you? There’s a whole temple of
real
things there, probably enough to make us all rich; why jeopardize the relationship?”

 
          
“Exactly,”
Kirby said. “And you fellas have the same motive to give me a straight count.”

 
          
“Of
course.”

 
          
Feldspan
said, “The only problem, really, is getting the material out of the country.”

 
          
“I
have my methods,” Kirby said, and stopped, because the waitress was bringing
them their main courses. Silence reigned at the table until she was done, the
three men looking out the window at the empty swimming pool and, beyond it, the
open sea. Out there, a black freighter stood at anchor; some nosy British Coast
Guard people had grabbed it a few weeks ago, north of here, finding it full of
marijuana. They’d impounded it (like Manny Cruz’s step-in van), and now it was
waiting to be auctioned by the Belize government.

 
          
Upstairs,
the cassette on the dresser said, in Kirby’s voice, “None of us can ever say a
word about this temple. Not here, and not in New York, and not anywhere.”

 
          
The
waitress left at last, and Witcher said, “Americans
have
been caught, you know, trying to get out of Belize with carvings
or whatnot. Caught and jailed.”

 
          
“That’s
why,” Kirby said, “in this operation, you’re dealing with the right man.”

 
          
Feldspan
said, almost timidly, “I don’t suppose you could tell us your smuggling
method.”

 
          
“Why
not?” Kirby grinned. “Truthfully, I’m proud of it. You see, there isn’t just
one smuggling business out of
Belize
, there’s two. There’s Mayan antiques,
that’s one, and the other one is marijuana.”

           
Feldspan smiled reminiscently,, and
Witcher said, “You’re involved in both, aren’t you?”

 
          
“I’ve
combined
them both,” Kirby told him.
“The government comes down hard on the artifact smuggling, as you know. In
fact, they’ll probably search your luggage on the way out, since your passports
say you’re antique dealers.”

 
          
“Oh,
dear,” said Feldspan. He and Witcher exchanged a troubled glance.

 
          
“It’s
only pre-Columbian stuff they care about,” Kirby assured them. “As for the
marijuana trade, the British and the Americans make a little trouble if they
can, but locally nobody gives a damn. It brings in a lot of U.S. cash, it’s all
on a small-time basis and a lot cleaner and less violent than Colombia or
Bolivia with their cocaine industries, and it makes a good back-up crop for the
sugar farmers up around Orange Walk. I’ve flown a lot of bales of pot out of this
country, and nobody’s ever looked at me twice. In fact, after lunch I have to
see a fellow about that side of it.”

 
          
Witcher
and Feldspan both looked agog. Leaning forward, speaking much more
confidentially than when they’d been discussing the smuggling of valuable Mayan
artifacts, Feldspan said, “You mean a dealer?”

 
          
“A
middleman,” Kirby told him. “An American, he’s coming in on the plane this
afternoon.” Then, as though afraid he’d said too much, he too leaned forward
and dropped his voice, saying, “Listen, this is a very bad man up north. If he
thought I was talking about him, we’d
all
be in trouble.”

 
          
“We
wouldn’t breathe a
word,”
Witcher
breathed.

 
          
“If
you see me with him,” Kirby said, “just pretend you don’t know me.”

 
          
“Absolutely,”
said Witcher, nodding solemnly, a co-conspirator.

 
          
“Okay,”
Kirby said. “Here’s my little stunt. I get in my plane, I fill it up with bales
of pot, everybody knows what I’m doing, nobody gives a damn, off I go to
Florida.” Leaning forward, winking, he said, “Now, what if there’s Mayan
antiques
inside
the bales?”

 
          
“When
we get back to
Belize City
,” the cassette with Kirby’s voice told the other cassette, “I will blow
your head right off your shoulders.” Then it giggled with Feldspan’s voice, and
its red light clicked off. The skinny black man yawned, stretched, walked away
from the window, and punched the buttons to rewind both cassettes.

 
          
“Brilliant!”
breathed Feldspan.

 
          
Kirby
smiled, nodding, appreciating their appreciation.

 
          
“I’m
stealing wheelbarrows,” Witcher said.

 
          
“Exactly,”
Kirby said.

 
          
Feldspan
said, “The Purloined Letter. The Trojan Horse.”

 
          
“I
never said I was original,” Kirby said, getting a trifle nettled.

 
          
Witcher
said, “And when you get to
Florida
, out they come!”

 
          
“Right,”
said Kirby. “Now, that brings up another question. When I reach the other end,
will it be you two meeting me, or somebody else?”

 
          
“In
Florida
, you mean?” They looked at one another, and
Witcher said, “I think we have to do it ourselves.”

 
          
“Yes,”
said Feldspan. “You just let us know where and when.”

 
          
“Okay,”
Kirby said. “Then I won’t deal with anybody else. In fact, I won’t even get out
of the plane unless I see one of you guys.”

 
          
“I
suppose you have to be very careful,” Feldspan said. “In your business.”

 
          
“Careful
is my middle name,” Kirby told him.

 
          
The
skinny black man put the talking cassette player back where he’d found it,
pocketed the listening cassette player, and let himself quietly out of Witcher
and Feldspan’s room.

 
          
Whitman
Lemuel obediently fastened his seatbelt, then pressed his right temple to the
cool lucite window and looked down past the wing at
Belize
. Far away to the west were lavendar
mountains, blurry and faded, blending and tumbling into greener hills,
smoothing down toward a pale band of beach on which a white foam line ran and
spread and vanished and ran again. Blue-green water, as clear and gleaming as
new stained glass, spread out from the shore, the color deepening into blue,
then breaking at a broad white irregular gash running parallel to the coast, a
few hundred yards off shore; the barrier reef, second longest in the world,
running for 175 miles north and south, separating the Belizean coast from the
Caribbean deeps.

 
          
Ahead,
where a blue scribble of river cut through the greenery to the coast, a
clustered, cluttered, colorful town had grown. The harbor was full of small
boats, and a black freighter stood off shore.

 
          
Lemuel’s
eyes moved away from the town, back toward the jumbled greenness of the nearer
mountains. Somewhere in there was Kirby Galway’s temple. He stared, unaware of
the lucite’s vibration against his brow.

 
          
The
stewardess distributed landing cards to be filled out, and Lemuel wrote,
without hesitation, “teacher” and “vacation.” He had been a teacher in the
past, and technically his current job with the museum could also be described
that way. Knowing the Belizean government’s parochial attitude concerning
antiquities, he saw no reason to call attention to himself by putting down his
actual job title, and he
certainly
wouldn’t describe his true reason for being here: “to save irreplaceable Mayan
artifacts.”

 
          
The
Mayan sites, except for the few largest, were not being properly cared for.
Much had already been lost forever, and much more would soon be gone. Even if
Third'World governments like that in
Belize
had the will to save what had not yet been
destroyed, they would never have the money or knowledge or resources for the
job. Frequently, as well, in these parts of the world, there was corruption
among the very officials charged with the task of preservation.

 
          
Governments
like Belize’s should
welcome
men like
Whitman Lemuel, scholars, historians, restorers, men selflessly devoted to
preserving the best of the past, in carefully controlled environments with
prescribed public access, allowing the people of today to experience for
themselves the mystery and wonder of the long-ago. It was only ignorance and
naivete, combined with backward peoples’ inevitable jealousy of the
better-educated and the better-off, that made it necessary for Whitman Lemuel,
who knew himself to be a decent and honorable and law-abiding and well-educated
and intelligent and reasonable man, to
sneak
into Belize as though he were a thief, as though he were planning to do
something
wrong.

 
          
Take
this fellow Kirby Galway. On the surface a plausible chap, an American, but
underneath the glib exterior what was the fellow but a smooth thug? It had been
a very fortunate accident that Lemuel had met him again, that second time, and
they’d had their little talk, very
⁷
fortunate indeed, because there
was no question in Lemuel’s mind that Galway would be prepared to sell the
objects from his temple to anybody, just
anybody.
Galway
was the sort of person the Belizean
government
ought
to concentrate on,
not honest scholars like Whitman Lemuel.

 
          
But
if he was to be honest about it—and Whitman Lemuel was rigidly honest—he had to
admit there were Americans too who completely misunderstood the situation, as
though scholars like himself were here for
profit
,
as though they were somehow stealing something that belonged to someone else
rather than preserving the past—which belongs to all mankind—to be handed on,
selflessly, properly catalogued and annotated, to generations yet unborn. He
remembered with particular distaste that tall young woman who had interrupted
his first conversation with
Galway
,
squawking words like “despoliation.” Such individuals, unhampered by facts,
took on moral positions just for the good feeling that comes from being
holienthan' thou.

 
          
Outside
the window, the turning Earth approached, red roofs stood out among the colors
of the town, individual trees waved to him, and in a sudden rush and jolt the
plane was on the ground, hurtling past the tiny airport building, reluctantly
slowing, then turning, coming back.

 
          
Lemuel
was among the few passengers getting off. He always felt a little nervous when
he entered a basically primitive country; who knew what ideas these people
might get in their heads? Shuffling slowly through Customs & Immigration,
he kept craning his neck, looking for
Galway
, but
didn’t see him. His bow tie constricted his neck in this unaccustomed heat, but
he wouldn’t remove it. All clothing is a uniform, and Lemuel’s uniform made
clear his status: American, college^educated, nonviolent, intellectual.
Nevertheless, he was ordered to open both his suitcases, and the black Customs
inspector fingered his Brut aftershave as though he would simply confiscate it.
In the end, he merely made an annoying long scrawl of white chalk on each
suitcase lid, and sent Lemuel on his way.

 
          
Outside,
blinking in the dusty sunshine, still not seeing Galway anywhere—he wouldn’t
have reneged at the last second, would he?— Lemuel fought off the persistent
taxi offerers with just as persistent head shakes, until he realized one of the
men was calling him by name: “Mister Lemuel? May I take your bags, Mister
Lemuel?”

 
          
Lemuel
frowned at him, seeing a short and skinny Indian type, with bright black eyes
and a big smile showing gaps between his teeth. “You know me?” he said.

 
          
“I
am from Kirby Galway.” The man had an accent that was nearly Hispanic, but not
quite. “I am Manuel Cruz.”

           
“I expected Mister Galway himself,”
Lemuel said, prepared to be irked.

 
          
“There
were little problems,” Manuel Cruz told him, more confidentially, flashing
looks left and right as though afraid to be overheard. “I’ll tell you in the
truck.”

 
          
“Truck?”
But he permitted Cruz to carry both his suitcases and to lead the way over to
an incredibly filthy, battered, rusty pickup truck. When the suitcases were
thrown in back, onto all that rust and dirt, the Customs chalkmarks became
irrelevant.

 
          
The
interior of the pickup was at least roomy and fairly comfortable. Cruz was a
bit too short for the controls, which only increased his childlike aura; also,
he drove in sudden jolts and hesitations, his feet playing the floor pedals
like a pianist, hands struggling the wheel back and forth, back and forth.

 
          
Out
on the empty blacktop road, Cruz settled down to a less fitful driving method,
and explained, “Kirby, he had to see some other men. You know about the gage?”

 
          
Lemuel
didn’t. “Gauge?”

 
          
“Pot,”
said Cruz. “Weed. Tea. Smoke.”

 
          
“Oh, marijuana!”

           
“That’s it,” Cruz said, happily
nodding.

 
          
“He
smuggles it into
America
,” Lemuel said, with some distaste. “Yes, I know about that.”

 
          
“Okay.
Now, some men come down from up there,” Cruz said. “Kirby, he didn’t know they
were coming, you know? But these kinda men, they come down, they say, ‘We gotta
talk,’ you say, ‘Okay, sir, yes, sir.’”

 
          
“Ah,”
said Lemuel, nodding at this glimpse of what was under the rock.

 
          
“So
Kirby, he sent me down, pick you up, say he sorry.”

 
          
“I
see,” said Lemuel.

 
          
“I
take you to the hotel. Kirby, he call you later, he take you out there
tomorrow.”

 
          
“Tomorrow?
Not today?” One of the reasons Lemuel had decided to come down to Belize a week
early—in addition to the honest excitement and anticipation he’d cited in his
message—was the fact that he didn’t entirely trust Kirby Galway. He didn’t know
what sort of scheme
Galway
might be able to perpetrate against him,
but perhaps if he were to show up a week early it might keep the man off
balance and give Lemuel some advantage. But now
Galway
was begging off until tomorrow; was that
significant? Was there anything Lemuel could do about it?

 
          
Probably
not. Still, it was worth a try. “My schedule is pretty tight,” he said.
“Perhaps I should talk to
Galway
right now.”

 
          
“Oh,
no,” Cruz said, looking a bit frightened. “Kirby, he told me, ‘Don’t let Mister
Lemuel come talk to me when I’m with these men. Tell Mister Lemuel to pretend
he don’t even know me.’ That’s what Kirby said.”

 
          
“Why?”

 
          
“These
are very bad men,” Cruz said. “They got—whatchu call it—
front,
some kinda legitimate life up in the States, they don’t want
nobody know what their business is. They kill a man if they got to.” Lemuel, of
course, had heard of such people, as who of us has not? The drug world quite
naturally drew them, and yes they would kill rather than have the seamy truth
exposed to their families and neighbors. “I see,” he said.

 
          
“If
you go to Kirby with those men,” Cruz went on, “if you say, ‘Hi, Kirby,’ then
you and Kirby and me, we all in terrible trouble. If those men know you know
Kirby, and they got to know you from the States just to look at you, then they
figure you know Kirby’s in the gage business—you know, the marijuana—”

 
          
“Yes
yes,” Lemuel said. “Gauge. I do remember.”

 
          
“Well,”
Cruz said, as they drove down the tom streets of
Belize City
, “they got to protect their lives, you see?
Their
front
.”

 
          
“So
if I see
Galway
with any Americans,” Lemuel said, a bit
amused at the cloak-and-dagger aspects of the situation, “I should just pretend
I don’t know him.”

 
          
“Oh,
you’ll probably see him,” Cruz said. “Kirby, he’s with those men at the hotel
right now.”

 
          
“Oh,
is he?” Lemuel hoped he
would
see
Galway
and his mobster friends; curiosity and a
faint prickle of danger made his eyes light up, and he rode the rest of the way
trying to imagine what the “very bad men” would look like.

 
          
The
hotel itself was decent enough, the staff competent, the room large and cool
and pleasant. Lemuel undertipped the bellboy, then removed the constricting bow
tie, opened his shirt, strolled over to the window, and looked down at the
swimming pool, wondering idly why no one was in it. He had brought a bathing
suit; perhaps, after he’d unpacked, he would go for a dip himself.

 
          
An
el of the building was to the left, with large windows on the first floor
through which he could see the dining room, where he would undoubtedly be
eating tonight. At one of the window tables sat three—

 
          
Galway!

 
          
Lemuel
pressed close to the louvered window, looking down. Galway and two men, just
finishing their lunch. The other two were hard to make out, at this angle and
from this far away, but they were certainly white men, undoubtedly Americans.