Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (24 page)

 
          
Yes.
It could have worked that way. It was a very probable scenario. The absence of
any official response at all, not even a quick casual investigation, supported
the idea. And if someone
had
checked
with Innocent, it would explain his driving out there to find out what if
anything was going on. Trust Innocent to leave no stone unturned.

 
          
This
scenario fit the facts as no other did, so by yesterday Kirby had become
convinced of its truth. Valerie Greene had done her worst, and had not been
believed. Innocent’s curiosity had been aroused, but had not been satisfied. Whatever
tempest in a teapot might have occurred in
Belmopan
or
Belize City
, it was over now. Lava
Sxir
Yt
could rise again!

 
          
There
was no reason to even slow down. Tommy and his fellow workers had been busily
creating carvings etched in stone, bone utensils, broken terracotta pots with
one triangular piece missing. Kirby for his part had two sets of customers, Mr.
Mortmain’s friend Bobbi and the team of Witcher and Feldspan, who had already
seen the temple. It was time to start rolling again by selling Witcher and
Feldspan some pre-Columbian artifacts.

 
          
Sorry;
no jade, no gold. Must have been a temple in a poor neighborhood.

 
          
So
yesterday Kirby had finally come out of his funk and become decisive again.
Last night he’d gone up to Orange Walk and talked to some people, and had come
back with a job flying a cargo to
Florida
this coming Saturday. And this morning
Estelle had given Manny a shopping list, and off he and Kirby had gone,
jouncing in the pickup the other way to
Belize City
, where Kirby dropped Manny off by
Swing
Bridge
and went on Cable & Wireless, where he
sent Witcher and Feldspan the good news: See you Sunday, with our first
shipment.

 
          
Coming
out of Cable & Wireless, Kirby ran into the devil himself; that is,
Innocent. “Well, well,” Innocent said, spying him, “my old friend Kirby. You
haven’t been around, man.” There was more than the usual edge in his voice.

 
          
They
shook hands in the usual way, though, gripping as hard as they knew how while
smiling in one another’s faces, but it seemed to Kirby somehow that Innocent’s
heart wasn’t in it. The smile on Innocent’s face seemed false, the strength of
his grip a fraction off. In that first instant, it seemed to Kirby that
Innocent was somehow doing an Innocent
imitation
.

 
          
They
released one another. “I’ve been resting,” Kirby told him.

 
          
“Heavy
labors?”

 
          
“Man
must work,” Kirby said. “How about you, Innocent? You up to anything these
days?”

 
          
“Not
much, Kirby.” There was something
grumpy
about Innocent, underneath the imitation smile. “Too many schemers around,
man,” he said, smiling hard at Kirby. “Too many schemes. Too much competition.
”

 
          
Kirby
grinned. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe, Innocent, you ought to retire.”

 
          
That
put the steel in Innocent’s
backbone. Rearing up, eyes sparking, Innocent said, “When I retire, Kirby,
you’ll be the first to know. And when I don’t retire, you’ll be the first to
know
that
, too.”

 
          
What
a nerve that man has got, Innocent angrily thought, as he watched Kirby swagger
away down the street amid the pedestrians and the bicycles and the rump-sprung
big American cars and the dusty pickup trucks and the dope dealers’
shiny-bodied black-windowed Broncos. To do what he has done, Innocent bitterly
thought, and show his face in this town again.

 
          
Valerie
Greene. A vision of her fine white rump grasped between his two hands came
unbidden into his mind, and he sighed. Her guileless big eyes and happy wide
smile shone on him like a memory of the sun in the rainy season down south. But
this rainy season would never end; the sun was gone for good. There was hardly
any doubt in Innocent’s mind any longer that Valerie Greene was dead, and just
as little doubt that Kirby Galway had done it.

 
          
He
himself was also guilty, of course, if only in a small way. He had trusted that
poor girl to a very bad man. He had trusted her to him
because
he was a very bad man, but a very bad man whom Innocent
believed he could control. And now see what had happened.

           
Valerie had never returned to her
room at the hotel. The Land Rover had never been brought back to its garage.
The driver had never showed up at his home in Teakettle.

 
          
The
Fort
George
, seven days ago, had packed up Valerie
Greene’s luggage and stored it away. The day before that, the Transportation
Section had reported the Land Rover stolen. Over the last 11 days, Innocent had
left messages for the skinny black man at all his usual haunts, and some
unusual haunts as well, but no answer had as yet been received. Nor had the
stolen Land Rover been found. Nor was there the slightest trace of Valerie
Greene, alive or dead.

 
          
On
Monday, thinking the land might tell him something about Valerie’s
disappearance, or about whatever the
hell
Kirby’s scheme was, Innocent had driven out there, looking fruitlessly all the
way for signs that the Land Rover had been in an accident. He’d brought
Vernon
along, to be a second person in case a
witness was needed, or if there was trouble, and that was when he first became
aware that
Vernon
was apparently in the middle of a nervous
breakdown.

 
          
Another
unnecessary complication.
Vernon
was too conscientious, that was the whole trouble, in a nation where
the lackadaisical was the norm. Innocent told him so, on the drive out: “You
work too hard,
Vernon
,” he said. “You don’t have to prove to me how valuable you are, I
already know it. I know you’re trustworthy, and I guarantee you’ll be sitting
in my chair some day. You’ve got a bright future, Vernon, you’ve worked hard
for it and you deserve it. A man’s reputation is everything, and yours is grade
A. If you just don’t overwork and make yourself sick, man, you’ve got it made.”

 
          
You’d
think all that would have perked Vernon up a little, but no, just the reverse.
The more Innocent tried to make him feel better, the more jumpy and unhappy and
pessimistic Vernon became.

 
          
Out
at the land, it was even worse. Innocent hadn’t told Vernon much about what
they were doing there, so the young man could have had no idea what he was
looking for, but he spent the whole time running up and down that hill, looking
here, looking there, frantic and urgent and searching like a man who just lost
the winning lottery ticket.

 
          
As
for the land, it had been exactly the same, of course, which made Innocent mad
at
himself.
What had he expected out
there, an entire Mayan temple, one he’d failed somehow to notice all the years
he’d owned this parcel?

 
          
But
if there was no Mayan temple here
—and
there was no Mayan temple here
—then what the hell was everybody so excited
about? What had that expert Lemuel thought he was looking at? What was that
conversation recorded by Witcher and Feldspan all about? And what had
Valerie
seen, when she’d come here?

 
          
Valerie.
Poor sweet Valerie. Poor sweet dead Valerie. Though Innocent tried to continue
to hope against hope, by now, 11 days after she and her driver and her vehicle
had all disappeared, what other possibility was there?

 
          
All
right, it wasn’t the end of the world. Well, it was the end of
her
world, obviously, but it wasn’t the
end of Innocent’s. It was time to get back to his own concerns. And if, in
dealing with his own concerns, it so happened he could poke a sharp stick into
the eye of Valerie’s probable murderer, so much the better.

 
          
Meaning
Kirby Galway.

 
          
It
all fit. According to Lemuel’s story, there had been a minute or two when Kirby
had been with the people at the Land Rover before Lemuel joined them; he could
have paid the driver then to do the job. Or, after unloading Lemuel in Belize
City—by air, remember, by air— Kirby could have flown back and intercepted the
Land Rover still on the way.

 
          
Which
was, of course, why Kirby had been so thoroughly out of sight the last 10 days.
Naturally afraid his plot would fall through, or be exposed, he’d lain low
until he was sure there was no more danger. And now here he was again, walking
the streets of Belize City as big as you please, cocky and smiling, going so
far as to taunt Innocent that he should retire!
Retire
!

 
          
Surly,
unhappy, unwilling to admit that his confidence in himself had been shaken,
Innocent glowered after the departing Kirby. “Retire,” he muttered. “I’ll show
you
a thing or two about retiring.”

 
          
His
real estate office was over on Regent Street. Walking there, feeling unusually
heavy, oddly stiff in his joints, he went in to find a telephone message from Vernon
in Belmopan. “Hmmm,” he said, and went back to his office, switched on the
overhead light and the ceiling fan, sat down at his mahogany desk, and phoned.

           
“Oh, Mister St. Michael,” Vernon
said, sounding terrible, worse than ever, “the police called.”

 
          
Innocent’s
eyes widened. He sat upright, hand squeezing the phone. Which of his many many
plots and scams had come unglued? “Yes?” “They have found that Land Rover,”
Vernon said. The man sounded as though he were actually weeping. “You know the
one I mean, the one we—”

 
          
“I
know the one! They found it?”

 
          
“In
pieces.”

 
          
“An
accident
?” Innocent was
flabbergasted.

 
          
“No
no,” Vernon whimpered. “Taken apart. Somebody took it apart all last week, down
by Punta Gorda. They sold the parts down there, to different people. The police
got onto it Saturday night when there was an accident, and the radiator—”

 
          
“Yes,
yes, never mind police procedure. Do they have the man?” “No, sir. They think
they got about a quarter of the parts now, they want to know should they go on
looking.”

 
          
“What
do I care?” Innocent yelled, raging. “Am I their
nanny?”
He slammed the phone down on Vernon’s mewling, and sat
glaring at the maps of nation and city decorating the opposite wall.

 
          
Punta
Gorda. The city at the very southern end of Belize, where eastern and western
national borders fold toward one another, meeting at the Bay of Honduras. From
Punta Gorda it is no distance at all to the border. From the border it is 30
miles across Guatemala to Honduras. And from there lies the entire world.

 
          
The
driver was gone. He fled in the Land Rover, disassembled it and sold the parts
in Punta Gorda to finance his flight, then left the country. He would never
return.

 
          
The
last dim hope was gone. Valerie Greene was dead.