Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (33 page)

 
          
Innocent
was now looking merely weary, rumpled, and resigned. Kirby glanced at him, and
walked toward the house. He passed Manny, who said, “Kirby? What do you need?”

 
          
“A
drink,” Kirby said. His right shoulder hurt.

 
          
The
Indians didn’t expect the plane, Valerie could tell that from their reaction
when it buzzed low over the village late in the afternoon. They loved it, of
course; they seemed to love everything Kirby Galway did. They came scampering
out of their huts and, driven by curiosity, every last one of them went
hurrying out of town and up and over that nearby scruffy hill to meet
Galway
where he’d be landing. Driven by her own
curiosity, Valerie followed, keeping some distance behind.

 
          
She
had never been up this way before. The Indians had told her how dry and
lifeless the land was over here, fit for nothing but an airstrip, and she’d
noticed they themselves never came up this way except that one earlier time to
meet Galway. Now, she labored up the hill and it wasn’t until she reached the
top and looked down the other side at the plane taxiing across the flat land in
this direction that she suddenly realized where she was.

 
          
It
had to be, had to be. She and the kidnapper/driver had come in from that
direction, way over there. The airplane had been parked exactly where
Galway
was now parking it. Her confrontation with
him had taken place down there below the right flank of the hill. So this
place,
this
place, had to be . . .

 
          
.
. . the temple?

 
          
Valerie
gazed about herself, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, bewildered. This was no temple.
This was merely an arid brown hill, covered with a stubble of dead brush and
dying stunted trees.

 
          
Could
this ever have been a temple? Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, which had been
actual buildings filled with rooms and spaces, the Mayan temples had been mere
stone skins veneered onto existing hills, so, in the few short days after she’d
first seen this place, could Galway possibly have stripped it completely, every
stone and every stela, every corbel arch, every wall, every terrace and stair?

 
          
No.

 
          
Having
done that one impossibility, could
Galway
then
have gone on to remove every trace of what he’d done, every mark and
indentation, every touch of the ancient Mayan builders’ hands?

 
          
Again,
no.

 
          
Impossible.
In fact, absurd.

 
          
“But
...” Valerie said aloud, and continued to stare this way and that in total
befuddlement. She had
seen
the
temple, with her own eyes. She had stood down there, and looked up here, and
had gazed upon an undoubted temple. Exactly where the computers had said it
would be. Exactly where she had
known
it would be. And Kirby Galway had been so upset at her finding his secret
temple that he’d gone absolutely berserk, threatening her with a machete,
hopping up and down, throwing his hat on the—

 
          
Movement
down by the plane attracted her attention. Kirby Galway himself had climbed out
and was talking and gesticulating with Tommy Watson and Luz Coco and Rosita
while the other villagers stood around watching, wondering as much as Valerie
what was going on. But now a second person was clambering awkwardly out of the
plane, making his way to the ground with the help of several Indians. Valerie’s
breath caught. It was Innocent St. Michael!

 
          
She
stared, forgetting the mystery of the temple. The ringleader himself,
here.
Ducking low, she watched through
the fronds of dead foliage as the talk went on down there, Tommy and Luz now
explaining some sort of situation to the other Indians, Kirby explaining, even
Innocent St. Michael explaining. People started to point at Valerie.

 
          
Well,
not at Valerie, but certainly uphill. Toward the village, it must be, because
the whole group, still talking and explaining, set out en masse, moving in this
direction.

 
          
What
should she do? Crouched on her hilltop, watching the Indians and the villains
climb the slope, she wondered what would be best. Hide in one of the huts, or
stay away from the village until after
Galway
and St. Michael had gone?

 
          
They
were getting closer, their voices rising toward her. Clear on the afternoon air
came the sound of Kirby Galway’s voice. Unmistak' ably she heard him pronounce
one word:

 
          
“Sheena.”

 
          
Betrayed!
By whom? It didn’t matter. But now Valerie understood why
Galway
and St. Michael were here; they had come to
finish the job their minions had started, there could be no doubt about
that.
Like the startled deer she was,
Valerie rose and ran.

 
          
Downhill,
fleet as the wind. Hoping Rosita wasn’t her betrayer, hoping none of the
Indians she had come to like and admire in the last nine days had done this
terrible thing, Valerie scrambled down the back side of the nomtemple.
Nervously missing her footing here and there, she hurried on, fright bringing
bile to her throat.

 
          
The
huts were ahead. There was no help now, not even from the villagers, who were
somehow or other in Kirby Galway’s thrall. Every man’s hand, it seemed, was
turned against Valerie Greene, yes, and every woman’s too, and probably most of
the children.

 
          
The
village was deserted. There was no place to hide, no sense trying to stay. The
prospect of wandering in the wilderness once more was daunting, but not as
daunting as the inexorable approach of Kirby Galway and Innocent St. Michael.
She had to run for it; that’s all she could do.

 
          
Rosita
had been making tortillas outside her hut, now cooling on a flat stone.
Grabbing them up—who knew when she’d find food again—Valerie tucked them inside
her repaired blouse, leaped the little stream, and plunged into the woods.

 
          
Innocent
sat on a flat stone, catching his breath. All about him, the Indians were in
fevered motion, running in and out of huts, splashing through the stream,
yelling at one another, slapping their children, kicking their dogs. Kirby
Galway paced back and forth like a pirate captain on his bridge, shouting
orders, barking commands, pointing this way and that, and being mostly ignored.
The two men and one woman in the village who spoke English stood in the middle
of it all arguing at the tops of their voices, though not in English, so it
didn’t help.

 
          
Long
before the finish, Innocent knew how it would end. The question was, when it
happened would he believe it?

 
          
On
the other hand, what was there at all to believe about this day? Himself, to
begin with, he found utterly incredible. He had committed—or had attempted to
commit—physical violence. He, Innocent St. Michael, a man who had always prided
himself on his subtlety, a man who let his brains do his fighting and let his
money hire what physical labor had to be done. He had committed—or had
attempted to commit—a major felony, and
not
for personal profit
. He had committed—or had attempted to commit—a crime of
passion
! Him! Innocent St. Michael!
Passion
!

 
          
Attempted;
attempted; attempted; hadn’t even done the job right. Ten times he had fired at
Kirby Galway and ten times he had missed. Well, nine and a half. One little
scratch on the shoulder that Kirby carried on about as though he’d been
crippled for life, before finally calming down and swearing all over again that
he had absolutely, positively not killed Valerie Greene.

 
          
There
were reasons at least to believe that last part, which Kirby had elucidated for
him in several repetitive shouted sentences. First, if he had murdered Valerie
Greene and Innocent had found him out, there was absolutely no reason why he
shouldn’t now go ahead and murder Innocent as well. Second, even if he’d had
time to plot a murder with Innocent’s driver, the fellow was still
Innocent's
driver and Kirby would have
been crazy to trust him with such a dangerous request. And third, Kirby now
believed that Valerie Greene wasn’t dead after all but was living in an Indian
village under the name Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

 
          
So
hither they had come, hope and skepticism fighting in Innocent’s breast, to be
surrounded by bright'eyed curious villagers, to be assured that yes, Sheena was
living with them, she was right over the hill there—Kirby’s hill, Innocent had
noted, wondering if it meant anything—and on to the village they had come, for
the onset of pandemonium. Once the running and shouting and general disarray
started Innocent had merely sat down on a flat stone outside one of the huts to
catch his breath, knowing how it would end and wondering if he would believe it
when it happened.

 
          
Which
at last it did. The village had grown quieter, and here was Kirby standing
spraddledegged before him, the very icon of frustrated generalship. “She’s
gone,” he said.

 
          
Innocent
looked up at him; he had mostly regained his breath by now. “The question is,”
he said, “do I believe it?”

 
          
Kirby
looked exasperated to the point of violence. “And just when, goddam it,” he
said, “was I supposed to have set up
this
one?”

 
          
“Your
gun'toting pal Manny,” Innocent suggested. “He has a radio there at that house.
He got on it as soon as we took off, he called here—”

           
“There’s no radio here,” Kirby said,
and waved his arms extravagantly. “Search the goddam place yourself, Innocent.
We never put a radio in because we didn’t want to attract attention.”

 
          
A
fact—if it was a fact—that Innocent stowed away in his brain for later
consideration. “There are other radios in this world,” he said. “Perhaps only
half a mile from here, some friend of yours. Manny called him, told him to pass
on the story he’d heard you tell me, about the white woman living in an Indian
village, and the villagers calling her Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and— Kirby,
many people would not believe that story.”

 
          
“They’d
all be wrong,” Kirby said.

 
          
“Let
me ask you something,” Innocent said. “You were here the day before yesterday,
they told you about Sheena living with them in their village, and
you didn't go look at her
.”

 
          
“I
didn’t believe it,” Kirby said.

 
          
“So
why should I?”

 
          
“Because
I saw a white woman after, when I flew over. I
told
you that, Innocent. I wasn’t sure then, but now you tell me
Valerie Greene disappeared, and the degenerate
you
gave her to has skipped the country, and—”

 
          
“All
right, Kirby, all right.” Innocent felt very tired, rather sad, oddly
ineffectual. “But all at once she’s gone. She was here, but not now. Why?”

 
          
“She
don’t trust you,” the English-speaking Indian—Rosita—said, suddenly with them,
pointing a sharp-boned finger at Kirby. “She told me all about how you cheated
Wintrop Cartwright.”

 
          
Kirby
blinked. “Who?”

 
          
“The
man she was gonna marry,” Rosita said.

 
          
Innocent
lifted his head at that, and looked at this sharp-featured skinny girl. “She
was going to marry someone?”

 
          
“Wintrop
Cartwright.” Rosita smiled at Innocent, apparently finding something pleasing
there. “He’s a rich man like her papa, but old. That’s why she run away. She’s
a pilot, you know.”

 
          
Innocent
shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” he told Kirby. “If the woman does exist,
she’s the wrong woman.”

 
          
“Wait
a minute,” Kirby said, and turned to Rosita. “Listen,” he said, “you people
just called her Sheena as a nickname, right?”

 
          
“It
was Tommy’s idea,” she said. “He’s the reader.”

           
“So what was her real name?”

 
          
Rosita
thought a second: “Valerie.”

 
          
Innocent
looked at her, trying to see inside that narrow head. Kirby said, “What was her
last name?”

 
          
“How
do I know? I just called her Sheena. She liked it.”

 
          
“But
her real name,” Kirby insisted, “was Valerie.”

 
          
“And
she told me all about you,” Rosita said. “How you don’t really have no crazy
wife in an asylum anywheres, you’re just taking advantage of me.”

 
          
Innocent
frowned deeply at this new development. “A crazy wife?
What
crazy wife?”

 
          
“Never
mind,” Kirby said hastily. “The point is, Innocent, her name is Valerie, and
she took off either because she’s afraid of you or she’s afraid of me. Any
case, she saw us coming.”

 
          
“She
has no reason to be afraid of me,” Innocent said.

 
          
Rosita
said, “Maybe she thought you were here to take her back to her papa, make her
marry Wintrop.”

 
          
Kirby
said, “Wait a second, light is beginning to dawn. Valerie was on the
run—probably from that driver of yours, Innocent—and she was afraid to tell the
truth, didn’t know who she could trust, so she told these clowns the old
runaway heiress plot, and they bought it.” “That’s just what she is!” Rosita
said, happy to confirm the truth. “She didn’t want to marry that Wintrop, so
she got in her plane and flew away, but then she got in a storm and crashed in
the
Maya
Mountains
over there and walked and walked and walked
for
days
and then we found her. And
she made us swear we wouldn’t tell, and then she told us the truth.”

 
          
“The
truth,” Kirby said. “The runaway heiress story.”

 
          
“Too
many stories going around,” Innocent said.

 
          
Rosita
looked off westward, toward the blue'shouldered
Maya
Mountains
. “We’ll find her pretty soon, I think,” she
said. Innocent sat up straighten “You do? Why’s that?”

 
          
“Stand
up a second,” she told him.

 
          
Innocent
frowned at Kirby, who shrugged. So Innocent shrugged, and stood up, and Rosita
looked at the flat stone where he’d been sitting and said, “Yeah, they’re
gone.”

 
          
Innocent
looked at the flat stone, at Kirby, and at Rosita. He said, “May I sit down?”

           
“Sure.”

 
          
“What’s
gone?” Kirby said.

 
          
“Sheena’s
got this throat problem or lungs or something,” Rosita explained, “so she can’t
smoke, so if we turn on sometimes she can’t join in, you know?”

 
          
“And?”
said Kirby, while Innocent reflected that for Kirby a crazy wife would be
redundant.

 
          
Rosita
said, “So I promised I’d make her some pot tortillas, but I never got around to
it till today. They’re pretty strong, you know.”

 
          
“You
made pot tortillas today?” Kirby asked.

 
          
“Yeah,
and put them on that rock and now they’re gone. Sheena must of took them.”
Rosita looked westward again, toward where the shadows lengthened on the steep
faces of the mountains. “She won’t get very far,” she said.