Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (23 page)

 
 
 
          
“Nothin’
lasts here, Beka.” Gran’s eyes looked funny. “Tings bruk down.”

 
          
“Ah
wonder why?” Beka asked, bringing the conch and minced habanero peppers to the
stove.

 
          
Her
Gran leaned the fork carefully against the frying pan, pushed the window over
the back stairs, and propped it open with a long pole. Then she said,

 
          
“I
don’t know why, Beka. But one time, when I was a young girl like you, a circus
came to town. I can’t remember where it was from, and don’t ask me what
happened to it afta. The circus had a fluffy polar bear—a ting
Belize
people never see befo’. It died up at
Barracks Green, Beka. The ice factory broke down the second day the circus was
here.”

 
          
It
was nice to see
Belize City
again. Driving in Haulover Road in the battered pickup truck, entering
town through the white, bright, flower-strewn cemetery, seeing the little
pirate port sagging out ahead of him as ramshackle and unworkable and permanent
as ever, Kirby smiled and felt himself relax; it was good to be home.

 
          
Time
is
the great healer. Today was
Tuesday, the 21st of February (temperature 82 degrees, sky azure, humidity 90
percent, sun blinding). It was just 11 days since Black Friday, that awful day
when Valerie Greene had blown his beautiful temple scam; when Whitman Lemuel
had panicked and run back to Duluth with his tail between his legs; when Kirby
had reluctantly, angrily, but necessarily told the troops to dismantle the
temple, while he himself took what might very well be the final shipment of
fresh-made antiquities north to market. A furious, weary, and pessimistic Kirby
had made that flight, but the Kirby driving into
Belize City
today, Manny gap-toothed and grinning
beside him, was a changed man: happy, content, and hopeful.

           
What had happened in those 11 days
to change him so thoroughly? Very little. In fact, like Conan Doyle’s unbarking
dog in the night, it was what
hadn’t
happened that had most encouraged him.

 
          
After
the marijuana-and-artifact flight of the weekend before last, Kirby had told
himself he should take on a lot more cargo jobs, since the temple business was
probably dead, but he just hadn’t had the strength of will. For four days, back
in his little nest among the Cruzes, he had simply sat and felt sorry for
himself and watched videotapes: Errol Flynn in “Captain Blood,” Burt Lancaster
in “The Crimson Pirate,” Clark Gable in “
China
Seas
.” He had eaten Estelle’s food, drunk a
moderate amount of Belikin beer, played card games and pebble games with Manny,
and made no plans. Cynthia sat alone and unwanted in the shade of her hangar of
trees. Messages were neither sent nor delivered. Hope did not put in an
appearance.

 
          
But
then Tommy Watson did, last Friday afternoon. The only one of his Indian
co-conspirators from South Abilene who had ever visited Kirby at home, Tommy
came sauntering up the path out of the jungle, next to the tomato patch,
strolled over to where Kirby was hunkered in the dirt playing aggies with two
of the kids, and said, “How, Kimosabe?”

 
          
“Fried.”
That was Kirby’s joke.

 
          
“We
don’t see you around the old joint very much any more.”

 
          
“There
is no old joint any more,” Kirby said. “Hush a second.” With a greenie nestled
in the crook of the first knuckle of the first finger of his right hand, thumb
cocked and ready, he took careful aim across a clear patch of packed tan dirt
at a beautiful steelie, paused, squinted one eye shut, fired with absolute
precision, and missed by a mile.

 
          
As
the kids crowed and hollered, Kirby sighed, shook his head, and got to his
feet, brushing off his knees. “You distracted me,” he accused Tommy, and told
the kids, “I’ll get even with you guys later.”

 
          
Their
jeers echoed around the clearing. Dignified, Kirby turned away and strolled
toward the house, Tommy at his side. “What’s happening on my land?” he asked,
as though it were a casual question.

 
          
“Nothing.”

 
          
“Excitement
all over?” That would be a good thing; the sooner ended, the sooner forgotten.

 
          
“No
excitement at all,” Tommy said. “Nobody come out except that turkey sold you
the place.”

           
“Innocent?”

 
          
“There’s
a Mom and Dad couldn’t read the
future.”

 
          
“Innocent
came out? Nobody else? No cops?”

 
          
“No.
And no firemen, no farmers, no cooks, no sailors, no truckdrivers and no high
school girls. In other words, nobody.” “All right, Tommy,” Kirby said. “Don’t
get your back up.”

 
          
“I’m
happy,” Tommy said, as Kirby opened the front door and led the way inside. The
Betamax stood with its mouth open, ready to entertain. “I’m not hibernating,”
Tommy said, following him in, shutting the door. “I’m out and about.”

 
          
“All
right, all right.” Kirby shut the Betamax’s mouth, as a hint to Tommy. “Sit
down,” he said. “You want a beer? You want to tell me about it?”

 
          
“Sure,
sure, sure.”

 
          
So
they sat, and had a beer together, and Tommy described the inaction out at the
former temple. After a whole night and morning of back-breaking labor—Tommy
made quite a point of that part of it— untempling the hill, absolutely nobody
showed up for the closing. All day Saturday the Indians waited, using all their
age-old lore to watch from cunning concealment as no police Land Rovers came
across the plain, no vans of reporters and photographers, no truckloads of
archaeologists. No reconnaissance planes circled low for aerial photography.
Nothing at all, in fact, had occurred. “It was very boring,” Tommy said.

 
          
“Sometimes
it’s better to be bored. Then what happened?” “More of the same.”

 
          
Sunday
had been a repeat of Saturday. By midaftemoon they weren’t even bothering to
keep watch anymore, but merely walked around the hill every once in a while to
see if there were any activity, of which there continued to be none.

 
          
“They
were holding off,” Kirby suggested. “Watching from afar, hoping to catch the
perpetrators in the act, or on the site, or something. ”

 
          
“We
figured it could be that,” Tommy said, “so we laid low. Luz went to the mission
Sunday afternoon, see was there any news, any gossip, but no. I myself went out
almost all the way to Privassion, but there wasn’t a thing, man. No vehicles,
no stakeouts, nothing.”

           
“That woman was on her way to the
law,” Kirby said. “Valerie Greene. There’s no question in my mind.”

 
          
“Well,
maybe there was questions in
their
minds, because we still don’t have any law.” Tommy drained his bottle. “You got
another?” “Tell me about Innocent.”

 
          
“I’m
too dry.”

 
          
Kirby
got them a pair of beers, and Tommy said, “That was Monday afternoon. He come
out with this other fella, skinny nervous tan fella.”

 
          
“He’s
got an assistant like that in
Belmopan
,” Kirby said. “Young guy.”

 
          
“That’s
the one. They come out in a nice new pickup, said on the doors it was from the
Highways Department.”

 
          
“And
what did they do?”

 
          
“Walked,”
Tommy said, and swigged beer at the memory of what a hot and tiring sight that
had been. “They walked all over the hill. Your pal—”

 
          
“Call
him Innocent, not my pal.”

 
          
“He
isn’t
my
pal,” Tommy pointed out,
“and if I call him Innocent I’ll have to confess it in church.”

 
          
“What
did he do, Tommy?”

 
          
“Marched
around. Kicked the ground a lot. Stomped. Looked mad, confused, worried, upset,
pissed off. The young guy with him looked scared. ”

 
          
“Scared?”

 
          
“It
was like a man out with his dog,” Tommy said, grinning a bit. “Your pal stomped
up and down the hill, while the little guy scurried this way and that, looking
behind bushes, over the edges of drop-offs, up and down and back and forth like
he’s chasing a rabbit.” “Then what did they do?”

 
          
“Left,”
Tommy said simply.

 
          
“Come
on, Tommy,” Kirby said, trying to look and sound dangerous. “Tell me what
happened.”

 
          
“I
am telling you. They walked up and down the hill. They stood on the top a
while, your pal scratching his head and the other guy making little dashes back
and forth, looking under pebbles. We watched them, but we stayed out of sight,
and you can’t see South Abilene from up there, so there was never any
conversation, And after a while they went back down the hill again, your pal pounding
his feet down like he was mad at the ground, the other guy rushing back and
forth,
smelling
the earth. Then they
got. back into their Highways Department pickup and left. Your pal was
driving.”

 
          
“That
was Monday?”

 
          
“And
today is Friday, according to the mission,” Tommy said, “and that’s the last
visitor we had.”

 
          
“I
don’t get it,” Kirby said.

 
          
“It’s
beginning to look,” Tommy said, “as though the coast is maybe clear. ”

 
          
It
was beginning to look that way to Kirby, too. Had Valerie Greene simply been
too wild-eyed and weird, and had her story therefore been ignored by the
authorities? Anybody who knew that parcel of land at all well, of course, would
disbelieve Valerie Greene from the outset.

 
          
Which
raised the problem and question of Innocent. Why, at that time of all times,
had Innocent and his office assistant decided to come visit his old land? What
had he been looking for? He, of all people, had to
know
there was no Mayan temple there, that Lava Sxir Yt did not
exist and had never existed. So what was he after? What garbled story had
reached Innocent’s ears that had led him to believe there might be something of
interest on Kirby’s land?

 
          
And
who had told him the garbled story, whatever it was? Over the weekend, Kirby
brooded on those questions, on the absence of official response to Valerie
Greene’s undoubted report, on the bewildering visit of Innocent St. Michael,
and finally he came up with a scenario which seemed to him to fit all the
facts:

 
          
Valerie
Greene, as Kirby well knew, was an hysteric, particularly on the subject of
purloined antiquities. Let’s just say she went to town, she made a report to
the police at the top of her lungs, yelling and hollering and demanding
immediate action and send in the troops. What would the police do? They would
not want to be around such a crazy person, but just on the off chance she was
right they would not want to throw her out of the office either, so they would
pass her on to some other authority, who would pass her on to somebody else,
and so on and so on, until at last someone would recognize the land in question
as having once belonged to Innocent St. Michael. A quick phone call to Innocent
in
Belmopan
would produce his guarantee that no Mayan
temple could
possibly
be found out
there, and various maps and surveys would support his statement.

 
          
In
the meantime, of course, Valerie Greene would also have been hollering about
Whitman Lemuel, as being part of the scheme. Let’s say somebody went to
question Lemuel before he boarded his plane. That was exactly the sort of
situation Lemuel would know how to deal with; stand on his dignity, show his
credentials, denounce Valerie Greene as a dangerous lunatic with delusional
ideas. With a member of government (Innocent) assuring everyone the woman’s
story was impossible, and a distinguished North American scholar (Lemuel)
assuring the same everyone that she was crazy, and with Valerie Greene herself
ranting and raving in office after office . . .